Counting Down to June 1

Why does this just not inspire confidence in me?

Is U.S. Ready for Hurricane Season?
Chertoff Expresses Confidence, but Katrina's Impact Lingers

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 24, 2006; A01

U.S. disaster-preparedness officials declared themselves ready yesterday for the June 1 onset of hurricane season, amid mounting anxiety in Gulf Coast states hit by last year's devastating storms that recovery efforts and repairs to the nation's emergency response system remain incomplete.

Federal authorities have stockpiled four times as much food and ice as they had before hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck last year, supplies capable of sustaining 1 million people for at least seven days, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and top U.S. military commanders said at a news conference. The government has also spent $800 million improving National Guard communications and has forged the closest civilian and military disaster response command structure ever, they said.

"We are . . . much more prepared as a nation than we have ever been to confront a major hurricane," Chertoff said. He called on the nation's 60 million coastal residents to prepare their families for disasters and to heed any warnings that authorities issue.

But the claims came with hundreds of thousands of displaced victims from last year's hurricanes still living in more than 100,000 trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi, creating the potential for a new evacuation and housing crisis if another storm strikes. States and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are rushing to overhaul the tracking and movement of disaster supplies, but efforts are uncoordinated, state leaders warn.

FEMA's hurricane operations plan is unfinished, state officials said, and the agency remains 15 percent understaffed. Repairs to New Orleans's levee system by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are incomplete, and a state commission recently warned that 40,000 Floridians could face a catastrophic flood if a storm hits weakened flood-control systems near Lake Okeechobee.

I hear from inside that everybody who was competent enough to get a job on the outside is gone. This is true across the civil service, by the way. My spies inside tell me that there is only one cabinet secretary, Mike Leavitt, who is competent.