GAO reports on the military response to Katrina and the lessons learned for future disasters

The US GAO has just released "Hurricane Katrina: Better Plans and Exercises Needed to Guide the Military's Response to Catastrophic Natural Disasters." The report seeks to capture the lessons from military involvement in the post hurricane disaster recovery in time for this year’s Hurricane Season.

In the report the GAO makes four recommendations to improve the military’s response to catastrophic events:

1) It recommends that the Secretary of Defense provide the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security with proposed revisions to the NRP that will fully address the proactive functions the military will be expected to perform during a catastrophic incident, for inclusion in the next NRP update.

2) It recommends that the Secretary of Defense establish milestones and expedite the development of detailed plans and exercises to fully account for the unique capabilities and support that the military is likely to provide to civil authorities in response to the full range of domestic disasters, including catastrophes. The plans and exercises should specifically address the
- use of reconnaissance capabilities to assess damage,
- use of communications capabilities to facilitate support to civil authorities,
- integration of active component and National Guard and Reserve forces,
- use of search and rescue capabilities and the military’s role in search and rescue, and
- the role the military will be expected to play in logistics.

3) GAO recommends that the Secretary of Defense direct the Chief of the
National Guard Bureau to work with the state governors and adjutants general to develop and maintain a list of the types of capabilities the National Guard will likely provide in response to domestic natural disasters under state-to-state mutual assistance agreements, along with the associated units that will provide these capabilities. GAO recommends that the Secretary of Defense direct the Chief of the National Guard Bureau to make the above information available to Northern Command, US Joint Forces Command, and other organizations with federal military support to civil authority planning responsibilities.

4) Finally, GAO recommends that the Secretary of Defense establish milestones and identify the types of scalable federal military capabilities and the units that will provide those capabilities in response to the full range of domestic disasters and catastrophes covered by DOD’s military support to civil authorities plans.

In commenting on a draft of this report, DOD partially concurred with the GAO recommendations and stated that the report was thorough and made a significant contribution to DOD’s plans to improve the department’s support to civil authorities during domestic disaster incidents.

Read the report at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06643.pdf

•Date: 17th May 2006• Region: US• Type: Article •Topic: DR general
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