The US authorities were criticised for their slow response to disaster, but would we have done better? asks Tom Clonan
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern has expressed misgivings about how US authorities have responded to the hurricane in New Orleans: "The resources they have took their time getting to the people involved," he said.
Mr Ahern was correctly exercised by the delay in the US administration's federal response to the crisis. The predicted arrival of Katrina made it a potential text book study in mobilising local, state and federal responses to a mass casualty incident.
The need for a fast response was the original rationale behind the establishment of Fema. Essentially a ready-made command and control system, Fema is the US federal agency whose task it is to respond within minutes of a crisis to immediately co-ordinate local, state and federal assets - specifically National Guard and US military resources including vital medical, engineering and airlift assets.
In the case of a predictable event such as Hurricane Katrina, Fema would be expected to move in the period before the disaster hit - for example, to evacuate the civilian population . In the case of unanticipated, sudden catastrophes or terror attacks, Fema is designed to provide an effective response within the "golden hour" after such an event, when rapid reaction can save many lives. Fema's equivalent in Britain, the Cobra Committee, initiated such a response with a well-rehearsed emergency plan immediately after July's London bombings, where over half of the 700 injured were treated on site by consultant-led medical teams. This rapid response saved hundreds of lives.
Why did the US authorities fail to effect a swift response? Speculation has ranged from a suspicion of racism in some quarters - the majority of Katrina's victims were African-Americans - to a suspicion among others that the war in Iraq has drained the US of thousands of National Guard troops and US military assets vital to the success of such operations.
There is a growing consensus, however, that the main answer may lie in the disruption and fracturing of Fema's centralised management structures under the its latest chief executive, Michael Brown . US media have accused him of introducing unnecessary layers of bureaucracy, and of disempowering Fema's key stakeholders with excessive red tape.
Hurricane Katrina's destructive legacy contains timely omens for Ireland's emergency preparedness. Ireland lacks the minimum resources, training or infrastructure necessary to deal with even more modest natural or man-made disaster.
While not threatened by hurricanes, emergencies that may confront Ireland in the near future include the aftermath of a nuclear or biological attack in Britain or a nuclear accident in a plant such as Sellafield or Wylfa in Wales. Such scenarios are now predicted as inevitable by key political and security figures throughout Britain, the EU and the UN.
Dublin, if confronted by such a nuclear threat or a freak severe weather event would be almost impossible to evacuate by road. Typically gridlocked, neither the city centre nor any of its suburbs have ever been the subject of a "boots on the ground" evacuation exercise. It would also be impossible to evacuate Dublin by air. Ireland's Air Corps and Coastguard do not have the helicopters required to airlift significant numbers of civilians in an emergency.
Aside from the nightmare of thousands of gridlocked workers trying frantically to exit the city to reach their children in the commuter counties of Louth, Meath, Wicklow and beyond - there would be the doomsday scenario of the city's inability to deal with mass casualties.
A number of senior Irish medical consultants including the secretary of the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine, Aidan Gleeson, have said the ability of Irish emergency medical personnel to deal with a mass casualty incident anywhere would be significantly hampered by the gross overcrowding of A&E units that is now a feature of our hospital system.
In addition, Ireland has no centralised or co-ordinated approach to emergency planning. It has a jumble of committees and working groups operating in virtual isolation. The Departments of Health, Justice and Environment are meant to co-ordinate the "Framework for a Co-ordinated Response to a Major Emergency" and the "National Emergency Plan for Nuclear Accidents". There is also a Government Task Force on Emergency Planning, which works with the Department of Defence office for emergency planning. Minister for Defence Willie O' Dea chairs the Government task force, which oversees the work of the Interdepartmental Working Group on Emergency Planning. But he does not have the statutory authority to initiate multi-agency exercises or co-ordinate the disparate stakeholders. In a disaster, he is not a member of the Committee of Ministers who with the Emergency Response Co-ordination Committee are supposed to take control.
This tangle of administrative and bureaucratic emergency response structures reveals that Ireland lacks both the basic resources and an effective command and control system to swiftly and meaningfully respond to an emergency. This is a recipe for disaster.