Report Details Katrina Communications Fiasco

REPORT DETAILS KATRINA COMMUNICATIONS FIASCO
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Johanna Neuman]
As state and local officials on the Gulf Coast scrambled to help panicked residents flee Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29, mobile communications units developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, La. -- outside the disaster area -- and did not make it to the state's emergency operations center in Baton Rouge until the day after the storm hit. In addition, according to a bipartisan Senate committee report released Tuesday, most of the U.S. Forest Service's 5,000 radios -- the largest civilian cache in the United States -- remained unused. In the eight months since Katrina devastated Louisiana and Mississippi, much has been written about how the failure of communications hampered relief and rescue efforts. Several reports, including one by a House select committee that Democratic leaders boycotted and another conducted by the White House, documented a collapse of telephones, computers and radio networks.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-katrina3may03,1,3532430.story?coll=la-news-a_section
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