Guard faces shortages in dealing with natural disasters
By Nancy A. Youssef
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - With much of their equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan, state
National Guards face profound shortages in responding to natural
disasters, particularly as they get ready for the hurricane season,
which begins June 1.
The Guard has been shipping gear to hurricane-prone states in an effort
to ease concerns, but a large disaster affecting several states would
tax the Guard's ability to respond, according to National Guard
officials and government reports. Some deficiencies aren't correctable.
The Texas National Guard's helicopters, for example, are in Iraq and
can't be replaced easily.
The potential impact of the equipment shortages became apparent over the
weekend when a tornado devastated Greensburg, Kan. Kansas Gov. Kathleen
Sebelius said Monday that the state's National Guard couldn't respond as
quickly as it should have because much of its equipment is overseas.
About 300 Kansas National Guardsmen have been sent to Greensburg.
"Fifty percent of our trucks are gone. Our front loaders are gone. We
are missing Humvees that move people," Sebelius told NBC's "Today" show.
"We can't borrow them from other states because their equipment is gone.
It's a huge issue for states across the country to respond to disasters
like this."
That problem is likely to worsen in the event of a major hurricane,
which generally affects a much larger area than a tornado does. Guard
officials in hurricane-prone states say they're ready, but only if they
can get help from other states. That will slow critical response times,
emergency managers say.
Guard and other government agencies have been warning of the problem for
months.
"Most of the units in the Army and Air National Guard are under-equipped
for the jobs and the missions that they have to perform" domestically,
Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard bureau, told Congress
last month. "Can we do the job? Yes, we can. But the lack of equipment
(means it takes) longer to do that job, and lost time translates into
lost lives, and those lost lives are American lives."
Sebelius, a Democrat, first warned of her state's equipment shortage in
February, when she complained in Washington that Kansas Guard units had
left $117 million worth of equipment overseas. "The president and
Congress need to step up to the plate and give our Guard members the
support they deserve," she said then.
A Government Accountability Office report in January found that of 300
types of equipment needed in natural disasters, the Guard had fewer in
all categories than it did in 2001, before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Some of the equipment is unavailable for domestic disasters, the GAO
found, including radios and dump trucks. Only 2 percent of the diesel
generators needed are available, the study found.
The GAO report estimated that Guard units in the United States have only
50 percent of the equipment they'd need in the event of a disaster. A
study by the National Guard Association of the United States pegs the
percentage at 40 percent, according to John Goheen, the group's spokesman.
Even to achieve that number, Goheen said, some Guard units have had to
count privately owned vehicles that would be made available under lease
agreements in the event of a disaster.
Finding such substitutes "has become urgent," Goheen said.
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Guard units had access to 75 percent of
their equipment needs, according to the GAO. But Guard units deployed to
Iraq and Afghanistan have been leaving their equipment behind when they
return to the United States so that other units can use it.
Much of the equipment that remains in the United States is rundown. Blum
estimated that it would cost $40 billion to bring the National Guard to
80 percent readiness.
"Now we find (ourselves) with our shelf stockage so low that it's at an
unacceptable level, in my judgment, here at home, and it needs to be
addressed," Blum testified.
Hurricane-prone states might be in a better position than some other
states because of a program, directed by Army Gen. Richard Cody, the
Army's vice chief of staff, to move equipment there from other states or
from the active-duty Army.
In interviews with McClatchy Newspapers, National Guard representatives
in Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Mississippi and Texas said they had at least 50 percent of the equipment
they needed. Only North Carolina officials said they expected to have
all the equipment they needed by June 1.
Those hurricane-prone states also benefit because most of their Guard
units aren't currently in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Alabama is in the weakest position, with 4,000 of its 11,400 Air and
Army National Guard deployed, or about to be, overseas. Total
deployments for the other states total only about 2,000, state National
Guard officers said.
"We have adequate numbers, but it will be a challenge," said Lt. Col.
Robert Horton, an Alabama Guard spokesman.
Several hurricane experts are predicting this year to be more active
than usual. Two of the most notable experts, Philip J. Klotzbach and
William M. Gray, estimate that there will be seven hurricanes, three of
them Category 3 or higher.
But the Guard is likely to be called up even for weaker storms,
especially in Mississippi and Louisiana, where victims of Hurricane
Katrina are still living in approximately 85,000 trailers that could be
toppled by winds as low as 50 miles an hour. Minimum hurricane winds are
74 miles per hour.
The lack of equipment to move those people could create serious delays.
"If another Katrina hit, it would be really, really bad," said retired
Gen. Tim Powell of the Mississippi National Guard. "There is going to be
a huge evacuation, even if it's a Category 1 or 2 storm. They will have
to get out of those trailers."
The January GAO report said that the Defense Department had taken steps
to address the equipment shortages, but that it wasn't certain that
those steps could reverse the Guard's lack of readiness for large-scale
disasters.
"Until the Army makes decisions as to what equipment non-deployed Army
National Guard forces can expect to have on hand, it will remain unclear
whether the National Guard has the equipment it needs to successfully
perform its domestic missions, including responding to large-scale,
multi-state events," the report said.
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