Federal response to wildfires wasn't as great as you'd think

SAN DIEGO -- The narrative being spun by the White House -- and seemingly adopted by the national media -- is that the Bush administration learned from its mistakes after Hurricane Katrina and did a much better job responding to the San Diego wildfires.

Not so fast. It's true that President Bush was on the ground much quicker here in Southern California than on the Gulf Coast. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was here even sooner, laying the groundwork for the president's visit and helping coordinate the federal response to the crisis.

But at least in the chaos that followed Katrina, there were no fake reporters asking phony questions at a bogus news conference. That's what happened last week at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters, where officials posing as reporters lobbed softball questions at Vice Adm. Harvey Johnson, FEMA's deputy administrator, including this toughie: "Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?"

Chertoff bluntly called the stunt "one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I've seen since I've been in government."

Chertoff himself has done what looks like some pretty dumb and inappropriate things when he finds himself under pressure while responding to natural disasters. At the top of the list: clumsily trying to shift the blame away from his department and toward state and local officials, or even his own staff such as the much-ridiculed former FEMA chief Mike Brown, who took the fall for the Katrina fiasco.

Those options weren't available for Chertoff this time. Brown is long gone, and state and local officials at the heart of the California crisis actually performed quite well.

But with the federal government being criticized for not getting firefighting aircraft into the fray sooner, Chertoff took to blaming Mother Nature -- not for the fires, but for whipping up such strong wind gusts that it was difficult to get aircraft off the ground. That was what I took away from a conference call between Chertoff and The San Diego Union-Tribune's editorial board.

Many of us in Southern California would like to get on with our lives. But for those demanding to know if anyone could have done anything differently to save the 1,000 homes that were destroyed, one of the major questions is why it took so long for six C-130 military aircraft fitted with firefighting equipment to be utilized. The fire started sometime over the weekend of Oct. 20-21, but those planes -- while available -- didn't get in the air until Wednesday morning.

I asked Chertoff to respond to additional concerns being raised by Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, about firefighting helicopters. Hunter contends there was a breakdown in cooperation between state and federal officials, and that the firefighting effort got tangled up in bureaucratic red tape. Cal Fire, the state forestry department, wouldn't let military helicopters take off unless there was a state-employed "spotter" on board. It's a lame requirement that deserves to be scrapped.

Chertoff got defensive, suggesting that the problem was not "insufficient assets." It was all the wind, he said. Insisting that he wouldn't "second-guess the fire experts," Chertoff then took a shot at "people standing on the sidelines" and "political figures" who are now putting in their two cents about what went wrong.

Fine. But, as we learned after Katrina, there is something called a National Response Plan. It gives Chertoff the power to unilaterally set in motion a large-scale federal reaction to a crisis. With that awesome power comes enormous responsibility -- the very thing that the homeland security chief is so skilled at avoiding.

Mikey, you're doing a heck of a job.

© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group