E-Mails Show FEMA Had Warning

Official Testifies To Senate Committee He Sent Alerts Of Danger

(CBS/AP)  In the midst of the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina, a Federal Emergency Management Agency official in New Orleans sent a dire e-mail warning to then-FEMA Director Michael Brown saying victims had no food and were dying.

No response came from Brown. Instead, less than three hours later, an aide to Brown sent an e-mail saying her boss wanted to go on a television program that night but first would need at least an hour to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant.

The e-mails were made public Thursday at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing featuring Marty Bahamonde, the first FEMA official to arrive in New Orleans in advance of the Aug. 29 storm, which killed more than 1,200 people and forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate.

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Click here to read the e-mails (PDF).

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Bahamonde, who sent the e-mail to Brown two days after the storm struck, said the e-mails illustrate the government's failure to grasp what was happening.

"There was a systematic failure at all levels of government to understand the magnitude of the situation," Bahamonde testified. "The leadership from top down in our agency is unprepared and out of touch."

CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports that when the first levee failed, Bahamonde frantically called Brown, worried that floodwaters could keep FEMA trucks from reaching the city.

The 19 pages of internal FEMA e-mails show Bahamonde gave regular updates to people in contact with Brown as early as Aug. 28, the day before Katrina made landfall.

They appear to contradict Brown, who has said he wasn't fully aware of the dire conditions until days after the storm hit. Orr reports that Bahamonde, who spent two days himself in the squalid conditions of the Superdome, denied ever telling Brown the shelter of last resort was prepared for thousands of evacuees.

"I couldn't have been any more clear to him that food and water was a desperate situation at the Superdome," Bahamonde said.

Most of the blame for the federal response to Katrina has fallen on Brown, who resigned last month after Chertoff removed him from direct responsibility for Katrina relief and recovery efforts.

Brown, however, blamed state and local officials in Louisiana for the slow response to Katrina when he testified before the committee last month. But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff disagreed yesterday.