Editorial: Leadership during a crisis

Monday, May 1, 2006 | 7:26 a.m.

A Senate report on Hurricane Katrina will be released to the public this week and it is expected to recommend that Congress tear down the embattled Federal Emergency Management Agency and build it back up again as a different kind of organization.

There has been much talk about how to restructure the agency that came under fire for its poor response to Katrina. Many bureaucrats and politicians are focused on a dramatic reshuffling of FEMA's organizational chart, and this report will offer yet another strategy.

The Washington Post says the report will recommend undoing structural changes made by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. And the report will go further than previous White House and congressional recommendations about how the agency should be organized and respond to disasters, according to the Post. The report will not support a restructuring proposal floated in Congress to make FEMA its own agency again, out from under Homeland Security.

Perhaps the 800-page report by a 16-member bipartisan Senate staff panel will prove to be the definitive word on reorganizing the agency.

But as the Great Box Shuffling Debate unfolds, we hope that an important point is not missed: People, not an organizational chart, dropped the ball in Katrina, just as FEMA and the first President Bush bungled the response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Indeed, FEMA was well run during the eight years of Bill Clinton's presidency when a seasoned professional, James Lee Witt, headed FEMA. An agency is only as good as its top leaders, and last year they did too little too late in responding to Katrina.

In the case of Katrina, President Bush was not adequately engaged from the earliest warnings. Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff did not have command of the situation. And Michael "Brownie" Brown was inexperienced and incapable of managing the disaster.

Regardless of how FEMA is ultimately restructured, it will not function at its best without commanding, competent and prepared leaders.