Could Jack Welch have done better?

I was glued to CNN and BBC for most of my free time last week. Even the mess in our own House of Representatives being covered live by ANC became irrelevant in the context of this human drama of massive proportions in New Orleans.

Through it all, I was very disturbed by the thought that the nation calling itself the only superpower in the world, one that’s able to invade and take over Iraq in a matter of days, is unable to take care of its own people from the impact of a natural disaster.

I cannot understand how they could have failed to adequately prepare for a storm that received wide coverage on CNN, days before it made landfall? Missing a terrorist attack is understandable because terrorists don’t announce the date they will strike. But a tropical storm can be predicted days in advance.

For those of us in management, this is an excellent case study material. That’s because the horrible thing about the Katrina debacle is the feeling that no one was in charge. Watching all that CNN and BBC coverage makes you conclude there was no discernible chain of command. This was confirmed when a very angry and very distressed mayor of New Orleans despaired in a media interview that bureaucratic logjams were keeping much needed help from arriving in New Orleans.

An extensive article in The Washington Post explained the roots of the mayor’s problems. As it turned out, the one agency mandated to quickly provide national assistance in situations like that caused by Katrina is in the midst of a bureaucratic struggle. Its powers and budget have been clipped. It is trying to survive itself.

The agency, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), used to be a Cabinet level organization but has since been absorbed by the giant Department of Homeland Security. Its focus on dealing with natural calamities had apparently been deemed too pre-911 to be taken seriously and given its usual share of the budget. The veterans in FEMA with valuable experience in handling past disasters have left the agency.

This brings me to the other realization that came to mind. If this superpower is this disorganized in handling a predictable emergency, if this is how it takes care of its own citizens, in their own homeland, how can we depend on them to provide us the defensive shield to a nuclear attack from a rogue state like North Korea? We should think about making our own separate peace with Pyongyang. Difficult to believe they got to the moon. Easier to understand what happened to their two space shuttles.

Yet, in fairness, the failure in America’s response to Katrina, as I see it, is not something that’s exclusively American. The failure has to do with the nature of government bureaucracies everywhere. In fact, even bureaucracies in the private sector could be susceptible to failures like that. Even super manager Jack Welch would have had serious problems if he were managing in a government setting.

Given the nature of bureaucracies, it was a mistake for Dubya to take away the direct reporting relationship of FEMA to the Oval Office. Once it became just one of the many offices in the Department of Homeland Security with its 180,000 employees and a nearly $40 billion annual budget, FEMA got lost in the shuffle. Our own Office of Civil Defense is headed by the Secretary of Defense, a senior Cabinet official with direct access to the President.

Adding to the bureaucratic miseries was this procedural need to get the state officials to officially request for help before Federal agencies can come in. That certainly looks good in a procedures manual. But there is risk of tragic consequences because bureaucrats are not expected to override procedures even in the face of urgent need in a real, stark naked emergency. That was what the mayor of New Orleans was so mad about.

Why was it so difficult, the mayor asked, to get the Governor of Louisiana and President Bush in a f_ _king plane so they can talk and settle the paperwork, so that food, water, and medicines could start flowing to the people suffering in the evacuation centers and elsewhere? The troops to protect what’s left of lives and property in New Orleans started to come in also only after President Bush took a direct hand.

Failure of leadership was clearly one major shortcoming. Outside of that "John Wayne dude" of a General Honore who walked the streets of New Orleans directing troops what to do, while at the same time comforting desperate mothers and taking their babies like a doting grandfather and ordering their speedy medical evacuation, there was no one that people there could turn to. Even the mayor of New Orleans could only bellyache.

It didn’t help that a senior Cabinet official tried to explain the delay in Federal response to a failure in their communications system when cellphones stopped working. Gee whiz! One of the first things one should do in disaster relief planning is making sure your communication system is going to work. Assume the cellphones won’t work because the storm would have blown away the cell sites. Think fixed line. Think satellite phones.

It didn’t help too when Michael Brown, the man in charge of FEMA admitted he didn’t know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center. That’s unacceptable.

Even if FEMA’s budget had been so drastically cut, I am sure they could still afford a cable subscription to CNN and as the man on top of disaster response, I would spend time monitoring CNN’s reports. I hate to think that this lowly columnist in this Third World country might have been better informed of what was going on in New Orleans than he was. We have a term for it when I was covering the police beat: Nahuling natutulog sa pansitan (caught napping in the noodle house).

One more reason why Jack Welch could have done better is that he would have been more hands on than Dubya. He would have insisted on being on the ground the first chance he had, not just view the disaster area from 18,000 feet on Air Force One. Actually, New York’s Rudy Giuliani comes to mind too, as a hands-on, boots on the ground type of public official who could have taken control immediately as he did in 9/11 in New York.

It is true that Dubya eventually did what a leader should do – provide comfort and reassurance – but he should have done it sooner and he should have gone to the worse areas even at some personal risk. Rudy G would have done it. Dubya seemed too laidback, and his handlers made things worse by making a big deal about cutting his vacation at his Texas ranch by one day.

But then again, I am not sure Jack Welch could have done better in getting the bureaucracy to respond in an "out of the box" fashion. Government bureaucrats are not the results-oriented and risk taking type that Welch is familiar with in GE and in the private sector in general. For one thing, they can’t be fired. And most bureaucrats won’t risk their tenure by doing something sensible but out of the book.

And then there’s the politics of pork. CNN and the major American papers report that after 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. In 2002 the corps’ chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration’s proposed cuts in the corps’ budget, including flood-control spending.

The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. America’s political leaders made a bet against Mother Nature and guess who won?

The irony is, President Bush and Congress, according to a New York Times column, agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island. Now I know where our own congressmen learned their ethics and sense of values. Remember those stupid bridges DPWH built that go nowhere? Those bridges wasted the money not just of Pinoy taxpayers but also those of the British taxpayers. The Brits co-funded those bridges.

And so it goes. A powerful angry burst of destructive energy from Mother Nature levels the playing field between a superpower and the Third World. CNN’s Christian Amanpour looked like she was reporting from Sri Lanka or the Congo rather than from America. Nothing exposes the vulnerability of our corrupt institutions better than a typhoon, an earthquake or a tsunami.

Maybe Jack Welch could have done better. But that’s academic. Don’t expect people to vote Jack Welch when Dubya (and Ate Glo) seems so much more reassuring, because as some people put it, they are the devil we know.

No Dr. Ernie E today

We will give Dr. Ernie E a rest today. The events of the past week are too distressing to make a smile appropriate. Let’s have a moment of silent thought instead, to remember those who perished in Katrina’s fury. Besides, Texas-based Dr. Ernie may be busy taking care of refugees.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]