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Fema informed levee breach earlier Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a6mk5v.PU8Hg&refer=ushttp://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a6mk5v.PU8Hg&refer=us
White House Told of Levee Breach Night Katrina Hit, Duffy Says
Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- A Federal Emergency Management Agency staffer informed White House officials on the night Hurricane Katrina hit that a New Orleans levee may have been breached, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said.
The FEMA staffer, Marty Bahamonde, told the White House he saw what appeared to be a levee breach during a helicopter fly- over of the region, Duffy said. But Duffy said the White House did not consider the eye-witness account an official confirmation of the breach -- a confirmation that he said the White House did not get until the next day.
The cause of the flooding was ``a secondary issue,'' Duffy said. ``What was of primary importance was the flooding, which we knew about and we're doing everything we could to deal with.''
Duffy declined to confirm a report in today's New York Times that then-FEMA Director Michael Brown personally notified the White House about the levee breach on the night Katrina hit. Duffy said he would not comment on communication between the White House and other senior federal officials. Brown is testifying today about Hurricane Katrina before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.
Duffy's statement confirmed reports about when the White House first learned of the levee breach that have circulated since December, when a Democratic lawmaker, Representative Charles Melancon of Louisiana, said the White House had received e-mails about the breach on the night Katrina hit. The Times today reported about Behamonde's notification.
Caught by Surprise
The early reporting of the levee breach to the White House is significant because Bush administration officials, in the aftermath of Katrina, first said the levee breach caught them by suprise. President George W. Bush said he had first felt that New Orleans had ``dodged a bullet'' in the hurricane.
Melancon said that at 10:30 p.m. Washington time on Monday, Aug. 29, the night the storm hit, the Homeland Security Department sent a message to the White House Situation Room reporting ``a quarter-mile breach in the levee near the 17th Street Canal about 200 yards from Lake Pontchartrain allowing water to flow into the city.''
In a 23-page memo in December to members of a House committee investigating the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, Melancon said, ``It is possible that the decision- makers in the White House and the Department of Homeland Security ignored or did not appreciate the significance of these Monday warnings, thereby delaying the urgently needed federal response.''
Bush, while touring the storm's devastation in Biloxi, Mississippi, on Sept. 2, said the levees were breached Aug. 30. ``The levees broke on Tuesday in New Orleans,'' Bush said. Ten days later Bush, in New Orleans, said reports ``over the airways'' led him to believe that the hurricane hadn't damaged the levees.
Last Updated: February 10, 2006 10:14 EST
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