WASHINGTON – The US administration led a “national failure” in its response to Hurricane Katrina, while millions of dollars were lost to fraud after the disaster, Congress charges in an upcoming report.
Emergency planners failed to act on warnings before Katrina laid waste to New Orleans and the surrounding region last August. They then failed to give speedy help, House of Representative lawmakers assert in excerpts of a damning report to be released in full on Wednesday.President George W.Bush’s administration also faces scathing criticism from a Congress watchdog which says millions of dollars in Katrina aid were given to people who provided false identities and addresses.”In many respects, our report is a litany of mistakes, misjudgments, lapses and absurdities all cascading together, blinding us to what was coming and hobbling any collective effort to respond,” said the lawmakers.”Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare,” they added.”At every level – individual, corporate, philanthropic and governmental – we failed to meet the challenge that was Katrina.”According to media news, the full 600-page report will criticise the administration from Bush downwards over the disaster, which left more than 1 300 dead.The advance release of the report said Bush’s White House advisors did not check the incoming information nor react fast enough to the disaster.It said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), part of the Homeland Security Department, knew more than two days in advance that 75 per cent of New Orleans was probably going to be flooded.It criticised Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for not sounding a strong enough alarm.The US government has spent tens of billions of dollars on aid and reconstruction efforts following the disaster, but much of that was misplaced, according to the Government Accountability Office, a Congress watchdog.Almost 900 000 of the 2,5 million requests for direct financial aid may have been false, according to GAO investigators.- Nampa-AFPThey then failed to give speedy help, House of Representative lawmakers assert in excerpts of a damning report to be released in full on Wednesday.President George W.Bush’s administration also faces scathing criticism from a Congress watchdog which says millions of dollars in Katrina aid were given to people who provided false identities and addresses.”In many respects, our report is a litany of mistakes, misjudgments, lapses and absurdities all cascading together, blinding us to what was coming and hobbling any collective effort to respond,” said the lawmakers.”Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare,” they added.”At every level – individual, corporate, philanthropic and governmental – we failed to meet the challenge that was Katrina.”According to media news, the full 600-page report will criticise the administration from Bush downwards over the disaster, which left more than 1 300 dead.The advance release of the report said Bush’s White House advisors did not check the incoming information nor react fast enough to the disaster.It said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), part of the Homeland Security Department, knew more than two days in advance that 75 per cent of New Orleans was probably going to be flooded.It criticised Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for not sounding a strong enough alarm.The US government has spent tens of billions of dollars on aid and reconstruction efforts following the disaster, but much of that was misplaced, according to the Government Accountability Office, a Congress watchdog.Almost 900 000 of the 2,5 million requests for direct financial aid may have been false, according to GAO investigators.- Nampa-AFP
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