Local FEMA director recalls challenges

Jen Lawson

Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2005 | 8:49 a.m.

As one of the first federal emergency officials to arrive in the Gulf Coast region after Hurricane Katrina stormed through, local FEMA director Paul Bailey surveyed the destruction from a helicopter and was struck by the number of arms that were sticking out of holes in roofs.

"I thought, 'How long can they survive in there?' " Bailey said Monday morning outside of the Clark County Fire Department's training center just hours after arriving from New Orleans, where he had spent two weeks coordinating rescues.

"Here's a person trapped (by flood water) in an attic that will probably get up to 150 degrees," he said. "We were really concerned how long they could last in that heat."

Bailey, who serves as program manager for FEMA's Clark County-sponsored Nevada Task Force One, arrived in Shreveport, La., on Aug. 27, two days before Katrina made landfall.

Bailey said his job was to help local authorities with their rescue missions. But he had no way to coordinate with the local officials -- the communication infrastructure had been wiped out and remained down for four to five days.

"It was challenging, to say the least," Bailey said.

Another obstacle was the task force's lack of expertise in water rescue. The 70-member task force, composed of firefighters, police, engineers and doctors, is an urban search and rescue team and focuses on rescuing victims from building collapses, so the members had to team up with the Coast Guard to save residents from their homes.

As for the criticism of FEMA's response to Katrina, Bailey said: "We followed every standard protocol for hurricanes, but the flooding was just astronomical. Twenty to 50 percent of the population (of New Orleans) had not evacuated. That's going to take a while to ramp up the rescue operations and support operations. It just doesn't happen in the blink of an eye."

Rescuers were giving their own food and water to the victims, Bailey said, putting a strain on their supplies.

"We were pushing requests up to Washington saying we need help here," he said.

But, he said, placing blame "is not going to do any good, it's not going to bring anybody back," Bailey said. "I'd rather sit down and talk about what went right, what went wrong and what we can learn from this."

Steve Hanson, senior deputy fire chief with the Clark County Fire Department, said: "We are extremely proud that he could be part of the incident response team and it reflects upon the efforts we make in Clark County."