Disaster response: Pentagon can do better.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: SECURITY BEAT: Homeland Defense Briefs

Pentagon Can Do Better, McHale Says

Lessons learned from the military's response to Hurricane Katrina showed too many ad hoc solutions and not enough pre-disaster planning, said Paul McHale, the Defense Department's assistant secretary of homeland defense.

"We performed well, but we intend to get better," McHale told a gathering of military writers. An after-action review will point out flaws and areas in need of improvement, he said.

He noted that the department's response was historically the largest and fastest deployment in support of a civil crisis. The department received 93 mission requests from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, McHale said.

One example of an on-the-fly solution was the disbursement of 1,500 Motorola radios to emergency responders in New Orleans after the city's communications system was destroyed. The radios were in storage at the Washington Navy Yard and are normally provided to military personnel detailed to security duties at sporting events such as the Olympics or the Super Bowl.

In the future, the Pentagon must do more to prepare for catastrophic events, McHale said. The Pentagon certainly will assist civil authorities in similar crises, but proposals calling for the military to take the lead role in disaster management are unreasonable, McHale said. Comments by President Bush to that effect have been misinterpreted, he noted. The Defense Department would be called on only during "catastrophic events," similar to Hurricane Katrina, or a terrorist attack where weapons of mass destruction are employed. Such catastrophes are "once or twice in a generation" occurrences, he said, unlike the dozens of natural disasters that take place regularly over the course of a year.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors released a position paper at its annual conference endorsing the idea of the military stepping in when state or local authorities request help. "The current legal paradigm is that the military is viewed as the 'resource of last resort' deployed to restore order," the position paper said. "However, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have given us reason to re-evaluate this paradigm."

Definitions of such catastrophes are not set in stone, McHale said, but Katrina or a terrorist attack where local authorities are overwhelmed, or perhaps wiped out, would be an example.

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