Federal review teams are going to every state and 75 urban areas with one objective: Is everyone ready for a catastrophe?

01:00 AM EST on Monday, February 27, 2006

BY AMANDA MILKOVITS
Journal Staff Writer

CRANSTON -- Rhode Island's plans for handling disasters will come under the scrutiny of a federal review team when it arrives in three weeks.

Federal review teams are going to every state and 75 urban areas with one objective: Is everyone ready for a catastrophe?

So far, according to self-evaluations that all the states completed last month, the answers have ranged from "not quite" to "no."

Rhode Island fits somewhere in the middle.

In its first self-evaluation returned last month, the state Emergency Management Agency told the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that Rhode Island wasn't ready on nearly any level. But after that report was criticized by Governor Carcieri and others as vague and inaccurate, the state EMA sent a revised report.

Now, the state EMA says it is confident in its basic plan and somewhat confident in its plans for evacuations, mass care for evacuees, health and medical services, and its communications and public warning systems. But the EMA said it has no confidence in its plans for management of a joint emergency public information center and its ability to manage large-scale resources, volunteers and donations. Aside from those changes, the revised evaluation offered few details.

Now, it will be up to the federal review team to look over Rhode Island's plans and needs -- and to make recommendations on where the state needs to improve. Robert J. Warren, executive director of the state EMA, said the federal team was already asking for more elaboration and examples of Rhode Island's plans.

The self-evaluations and review teams are part of a directive from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in reaction to the tragic failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina.

The federal government wants to know how well each state's emergency plans will stack up against a catastrophe on the scale of Hurricane Katrina. Are the states ready for mass evacuations, particularly for people with special needs? Can they care for thousands of evacuees? How will they get critical services -- such as food, water, medicine and fuel -- into the state? And, do they have the right training, equipment and communications systems for first responders, such as police, firefighters and medical staff to handle a disaster?

All of these questions are based on what went wrong in the Gulf Coast. The answers are ending up in a report that will be submitted to President Bush in May -- just before the start of the hurricane season.

Homeland Security had already compiled the self-evaluation answers into a report that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff presented to Congress this month. The Journal obtained a copy of the report from the office of Rep. James Langevin, who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee.

Just the preliminary report highlighted several needs, including a better focus on national preparedness, having a national measurement system that periodically assesses how adequate and feasible the plans are, and synchronizing the national plans.

While many states and cities were working on upgrading their emergency plans and said they were in line with federal plans and standards, many also said they didn't have enough confidence that their plans were adequate or feasible to deal with a catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina.

In the report, Rhode Island's original responses to the self-evaluation gave it the dubious distinction of being among the 29 percent of states -- and the only one in New England -- to claim no confidence in its state emergency plans to handle a catastrophe.

Connecticut, Maine and Vermont all said they were confident about their plans, while New Hampshire and Massachusetts said they were somewhat confident.

When it comes to evacuations, though, Rhode Island wasn't the only New England state that believed its plans weren't ready for a disaster like Hurricane Katrina. Rhode Island, Maine and Massachusetts were among 44 percent of states that had no confidence in their evacuation plans for major catastrophes.

But Rhode Island's answers no longer fit in the federal preliminary report. The state EMA sent in its revised report on Feb. 10, the same day the federal report was released.

amilkovi@projo.com / (401) 277-7213

READY OR NOT: Look back at a Journal series on the state of Rhode Island's disaster preparedness, find evacuation maps, and a survey on your own preparedness, at:

http://projo.com/extra/2005/disaster/