The exercise assumed that 300,000 people would not evacuate in advance, that 500,000 to 600,000 buildings would be destroyed, phone and sewer services would be knocked out and chemical plants would be flooded. Further, 97% of all communications would be down. About 175,000 people would be injured, 200,000 would become sick, and more than 60,000 would be killed. About 1,000 shelters would be needed for evacuees. Boats and helicopters would be needed for thousands of rescues because many residents would be stranded by flood waters. Further, it was estimated that the catastrophic flooding would leave swaths of southeast Louisiana uninhabitable for more than a year. For the most part the conditions and assumptions were uncannily accurate. Fortunately, the largest area of error was in the casualty estimates. The current official death toll of Katrina is 1,836 people.
The scenario was intelligently executed under desires from FEMA to reach conclusions on action plans for ultimate implementation of disaster relief protocol and infrastructure improvements amongst all the players extending from the Parish to the State to the Federal level. The level and breadth of the deficiencies noted required an inordinate amount of time and discussion through committee meetings to establish the criteria by which changes could be implemented.
According to the Bipartisan report, an effective emergency response plan as extensive as Pam could take up to 8 months to write, 6 to 12 months to train on the plan and about a year to issue the report. Pam was clearly a different type of plan in scope, execution, and timing.
According to IEM President Madhu Beriwal, “Hurricane Pam was a ‘planning exercise’ designed to develop usable information in a much shorter time frame.” FEMA and Louisiana officials accelerated the planning process because of the overwhelming consensus that a Category 5 Hurricane hitting New Orleans would carry significant devastation potential.
In the post-Katrina world, the Hurricane Pam exercise became a scapegoat for various media as they cited evidence for the lack of response of the government to the needs of the citizenry. Beriwal testified to the Bipartisan Committee that, “We were still fairly early in the process of developing a formal response plan for New Orleans when Katrina made landfall.”
According to Wayne Fairly, Response Operations Branch Chief for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Region VI in Denton, Texas, during testimony to The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, “It became clear after the first workshop, that a series of workshop cycles would be necessary to address the full range of complex response and recovery concerns associated with a catastrophic event.” Additional workshops were held in November 2004, July 2005, and August 2005 to provide further input for topics discussed.
Beriwal said, “…the plan derived from the Pam exercise was intended as a “bridging document” designed to serve as a guide and road map to be used by emergency operational officials at the state and local levels.” In other words, it was up to state and local officials to take the plan and turn it into more detailed individual operational plans.
According to the testimony of Scott Wells, Deputy Federal Coordinating Officer from FEMA, there were several Hurricane Pam Exercise “to do” items that state or local governments did not complete.” He cited that the state was supposed to develop more detailed concepts and plans in several areas: (1) search and rescue, (2) rapid assessment teams, (3) medical evacuation, (4) sheltering and temporary housing, (5) commodity distribution, and (6) debris removal. The state’s previous Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Deputy Director had laid these 6 areas out as priorities for the state to work on. Wells testified that in his view, progress was made only in the area of medical evacuation. Wells also said, however, that the need to shelter special needs’ people in the Superdome showed the state and city had not taken steps (which they had agreed to do after the Pam Exercise) to coordinate the movement and sheltering of these people further north and away from the Gulf.
As a result of the exercise and subsequent planning workshops, the state was supposed to develop “hasty plans” to address all these areas. He said although he had tried to get state officials to focus on these hasty plans before landfall, they would not do so. According to Wells, the state had also agreed to learn and exercise a unified command through the incident command system. Wells said the state did not do so, which led to major command and control problems during Katrina.
As an assessment and development technique, the Hurricane Pam exercise provided a template for action at all levels. Many of the action items were in progress with varying degrees of implementation. It appears that the biggest deterrent from full-scale action was a line of seamless communication between the participants, insufficient time to complete many of the infrastructure changes agreed upon in the first meetings, and a lack of political priority to expedite the process. Thus, the stage was set and the deficiencies were noted. Unfortunately, in human nature, imperatives are often driven by the expediency of realism. Katrina was real; Pam was not.
Hurricane Pam should not be forgotten. The discussions resultant for the task force teams in their assessments, followed by the actuality of Hurricane Katrina’s wrath, create a poster board for all entities at the federal, state and local levels to learn and improve. The hope lies with the learning and the non-emotional assessment of what could be done better next time. There will be a next time!
As the warm waters of the Gulf Stream move northward along the Mid-Atlantic, winding their way through the Caribbean, the warm weather of summer raises the temperatures of the surrounding waters. Prevailing seasonal weather patterns spurred on by the moisture of the warm waters create small tropical storm centers. Many of these small storms are brought into being, generate winds, rain, and frustrate tourists, only to fade away to brighter days, warm beaches, and pleasant weather.
Occasionally, some of these local tropical disturbances begin to nurse off of the warm waters, prevailing winds and weather. These are the children of hurricanes. They grow and pick up momentum. The warm temperatures of the Caribbean air and water become the devil’s milk for the child’s growth.
Hurricane season is considered the time beginning in mid-June and ending mid-September. During the season, the Northern Hemisphere experiences the summer months. Due the tilt of the Earth’s axis, the North Pole is a bit closer to the sun during this time of the Earth’s yearly cycle around the sun.
Extending from the equator northward, the waters of the Caribbean begin to warm. The currents of the Gulf Stream begin to speed up. The added warmth from the season begins to breathe energy into the waters. Global wind patterns over this area bring the colder prevailing winds streaming northward from the Antarctic.
The warming water and surface temperatures interact with the colder jet stream to create a cyclical interactive loop. The warm air rises and is cooled by the jet stream.
Ultimately, cyclic bands of pressure differences are generated.
So it goes with the changing of the seasons. The glory of Mother Nature proceeds as she endures her cycles. Sometimes she tends towards calm and at other times towards rage. Her cycles sometimes mixed with the tidal energies of the seas.
In the Northern Hemisphere, when conditions are right, a system of rotating energy can develop typified by low-pressure induced patterns rotating in a counter clockwise direction.
Interestingly, their equivalents in the Southern Hemisphere rotate clockwise. The rotational direction is said to be related to the weather momentum following the rotational axis of the Earth due to a tidal force called the Coriolis
