Senate panel recommends abolishing FEMA

? The nation’s beleaguered disaster response agency should be abolished and rebuilt from scratch to avoid a repeat of multiple government failures exposed by Hurricane Katrina, a Senate inquiry has concluded.

Crippled by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot be fixed, a bipartisan investigation says in recommendations to be released today.

Taken together, the 86 proposed reforms charge the United States is still woefully unprepared for a disaster such as Katrina with the start of the hurricane season a little more than month away.

“The United States was, and is, ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic event of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina,” the recommendations warn. “Catastrophic events are, by their nature, difficult to imagine and to adequately plan for, and the existing plans and training proved inadequate in Katrina.”

The recommendations, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, are the product of a seven-month investigation detailed in a Senate report to be released next week. It follows similar inquiries by the House and White House and comes in an election year in which Democrats have seized on Katrina to attack the Bush administration.

President Bush will visit Louisiana and Mississippi – which bore the brunt of Katrina’s wrath – today.

Katrina, which hit Aug. 29, was one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. The storm and its aftershocks killed more than 1,300 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage.

The Senate report urges yet another overhaul of the embattled Homeland Security Department – FEMA’s parent agency – which was created three years ago and already has undergone major restructuring of duties.

It chiefly calls for a new agency, called the National Preparedness and Response Authority, to plan and carry out relief missions for domestic disasters. Unlike now, the authority would communicate directly with the president during major crises, and any dramatic cuts to budget or staffing levels would have to be approved by Congress. But it would remain within Homeland Security to continue receiving resources provided by the larger department.

The proposal drew disdain from Homeland Security and its critics, both sides questioning the need for another bureaucratic shuffling that they said wouldn’t accomplish much.

“It’s time to stop playing around with the organizational charts and to start focusing on government, at all levels, that are preparing for this storm season,” said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke.

Former FEMA director Michael Brown said the new agency would basically have the same mission FEMA had a year ago, before its disaster planning responsibilities were taken away to focus solely on responding to calls for help.

“It sounds like they’re just re-creating the wheel and making it look like they’re calling for change,” Brown said. “If indeed that’s all they’re doing, they owe more than that to the American public.”