WASHINGTON '04 memo: FEMA unprepared for major disaster

WASHINGTON (AP) -- FEMA's top official was told more than a year before Hurricane Katrina that the agency's emergency response teams were unprepared for a major disaster and were operating under outdated plans, documents show.
Additionally, e-mails obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press indicate that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff tried to call Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco the afternoon before Katrina hit.
The e-mails indicate she could not be immediately reached and may have been napping.
A spokeswoman for the governor said Wednesday that Blanco was getting personal items at her residence when Chertoff called. "There was no time for napping," Denise Bottcher said.
An 11-page memo to Michael Brown, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, from June 2004 described teams of national response managers that were not prepared and were getting "zero funding for training, exercise or team equipment."
Those responders "provide the only practical, expeditious option for the [FEMA] director to field a cohesive team of his best people to handle the next big one," wrote William Carwile, one of FEMA's federal coordinating officers.
As for the plans that response teams use during an emergency, Carwile wrote: "Revision should be a priority since not one word of response doctrine ... has been published in over two years."
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