RESPONSE:GOVERNMENTS NEED a "national doctrine" with a "common language" to respond most effectively to natural disasters such as the extreme floods which hit Ireland over the past week, according to the US admiral who directed the response to Hurricane Katrina.
Admiral Thad Allen, head of the US Coast Guard, told The Irish Timesthat the US authorities had learned from many mistakes made during the response to the hurricane that hit the Florida coast in August 2005. "We found that our co-ordinating mechanisms between federal government and local responders were not as robust as they should be."
Admiral Allen was appointed belatedly to handle the response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita by former US president George Bush, after much criticism of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s relief effort.
Speaking from London, where he is attending a meeting of the International Maritime Organisation, Admiral Allen said the template developed after Katrina was the incident command system, a standard model which is set up in any area affected by a manmade or natural disaster.
This model is equipped with a common national language and training systems, and with four divisions, comprising operations, planning, finance and logistics.
In Ireland, the situation of so many families affected by flooding in the west and south over the past week had been exacerbated by the existence of “too many agencies”, according to Irish Farmers’ Association president Pádraig Walshe.
The Department of the Environment said different departments and agencies were responsible for specific emergency planning functions.
Last week, a US court ruling cleared the way for compensation claims worth billions of dollars from victims of Hurricane Katrina after a federal judge found that negligence on the part of the army’s engineer corps, responsible for maintaining levees, was directly responsible for some of the most extreme flooding in New Orleans.