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Is U.S. Ready for Hurricane Season?
The Army Corps of Engineers recently said that the large floodgates designed to protect central New Orleans will not be ready until July.
(By Mario Tama -- Getty Images)
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Assistant Defense Secretary Paul McHale said military forces "are better prepared than at any point in our nation's history" to move in assistance, including about 367,000 National Guard troops available for hurricane operations.
Navy Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of active-duty homeland defense forces at the U.S. Northern Command, said the military is preparing in advance to fulfill FEMA requests for communications, damage assessment, transportation and other needs in the event of a major storm.
"There will be no command-and-control issues this year," said Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau.
But plans to assign the Justice Department responsibility for law enforcement and the Housing and Urban Development management of temporary housing are not yet completed. Neither is a new national emergency communications strategy or an infrastructure-protection plan due June 1.
Pending FEMA supply plans are competing with state and local efforts, said Robert Latham, Mississippi's emergency management director.
"Here we are less than two weeks before hurricane season, and we need to know," Latham said. "The time to do that is not when stuff arrives in a disaster area but well before landfall."
In Mississippi, 70,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, and 100,000 people are living in 38,000 trailers, so more people are "much more vulnerable" now, Latham said.
Louisiana's emergency chief, Jeff Smith, said the United States has not fully agreed to state requests for air ambulances, 250 buses and extra shelter space. His Texas counterpart, Steve McCraw, noted an outstanding request by Gov. Rick Perry (R) for access to more than 20 helicopters. Both called overall cooperation good, however.
The Army Corps also said recently that large floodgates designed to protect central New Orleans will not be ready until July. The agency said it has a plan to reinforce levees if a major storm strikes early.
Fugate said Florida has "grave concerns" about housing plans if a storm directly hits a city. Gov. Jeb Bush (R) recently ordered that evacuation plans be drawn up for 40,000 inland residents who could be endangered by a failure of the 140-mile, mostly earthen levee system holding back 730-square-mile Lake Okeechobee.
