WASHINGTON — Amid the torrent of criticism swirling around
the federal government in the wake of deadly Hurricane Katrina, U.S.
Sen. Jim DeMint has singled out one agency for praise.
DeMint , R-S.C., held a Senate hearing Tuesday to spotlight the
National Weather Service and what it “did right” in predicting the
hurricane that killed almost 1,000 people along the U.S. Gulf Coast,
submerged New Orleans and leveled communities in Louisiana,
Mississippi and Alabama.
DeMint opened the hearing of the Subcommittee on Disaster
Prevention and Prediction, which he chairs, by reading the dire
warnings about Katrina issued from the Weather Service’s New Orleans
office — predictions of massive storm surges, power outages and
destroyed communities.
“This wasn’t a last-minute plea issued by emergency managers
Monday morning (when Katrina hit), DeMint said. “This is the
verbatim announcement from the New Orleans Weather Forecast Office
20 hours before the storm hit the city.”
And DeMint, who toured the stricken region Sept. 9, thanked
Weather Service staff for a prediction that likely saved thousands
of lives.
Meteorologists seem to support DeMint’s assessment of the agency,
which includes the National Hurricane Center in Miami, where much of
the actual predicting happens.
“They did a pretty good job,” said Cary Mock, a USC geology
professor who studies hurricanes. “The track was good,” he said,
referring to the predicted path of the storm — a Category 5, the
most severe.
A well-predicted track is one that comes within 50 to 100 miles
of the actual track, as it did with Katrina, Mock said. Katrina’s
predicted track lined up nearly directly with the path the hurricane
ultimately took.
And as far as timing goes, the Hurricane Center was only about
six hours off, which Mock also considered impressive.
What took more time was an accurate prediction of the intensity
of the hurricane. But Mock does not blame the Hurricane Center.
Intensity is inherently more difficult to gauge, he said.
Scientists use their knowledge of the physics of the atmosphere,
paired with computers, to predict hurricanes.
In the past five to 10 years, the science behind hurricane
prediction — which once relied more on statistics from past
hurricanes — has improved, Mock said.
At the hearing, National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield
explained how his agency tracked the storm from the time it was
detected Aug. 23 as a tropical depression in the Bahamas to the hour
it hit New Orleans on Aug. 29 as a Category 5 hurricane.
“The catastrophic devastation along the Gulf Coast from Hurricane
Katrina is like nothing I have witnessed before,” he said. But
without the Weather Service warnings, “the loss of life would have
been far greater.”
The applause DeMint gives the National Weather Service follows
some sharp criticism of the agency from a usual DeMint ally — U.S.
Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., the third-ranking Republican in the
Senate leadership.
After Katrina struck, Santorum questioned whether the agency
provided “sufficient warning” of the hurricane and said it might
have done a better job if Congress had passed his bill to limit the
agency’s powers.
Santorum’s proposed legislation, introduced in April, would limit
the scope of the Weather Service’s mission to services that cannot
be offered by private firms — except for severe weather warnings or
if the free market does not want to offer a service.
He reasons that this will keep the agency more focused on its
“core” missions — including predicting major storms.
Union officials representing Weather Service employees have said
they believe the bill’s purpose is to weaken the agency and drum up
business for weather-related companies in Santorum’s home state.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., also a member of the subcommittee,
slammed Santorum’s bill, offering an example of a private weather
service that wrongly predicted that Hurricane Dennis earlier this
year would hit New Orleans. It hit near Pensacola, Fla.
“We’re not going to let people monkey around by taking you off
the air,” he said to Mayfield.
Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com
