The Army general who led the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina says he has long warned that the Atlanta area is ill-prepared to handle severe weather and other disasters.
“You’ve got a mid-19th century form of government in a 21st century city that’s got up to 6 million people moving in and around it every day,” retired Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore said Thursday in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Honore, a former Atlanta resident, said the region will remain vulnerable to the paralyzing gridlock that occurred with the snow and ice this week unless officials develop a plan for centralized decision-making. He pointed to New York City, where he said the mayor has the final say when there’s a threat of potentially dangerous weather.
“The challenge remains in Atlanta to have a command and control system similar to what you have in New York,” he said. “It will never work in Atlanta as long as you have that many people who can affect what can happen inside the perimeter. You know how many counties you have, how many cities you have.
“The mayor of New York controls everything for 8 million people. He makes the call when it comes to weather. Does he always make the right call? No. But you have one centralized control system that’s telling people what’s going on. And that’s what they fail to have in Atlanta.”
Honore said he has reached out to city and state officials since the storm to offer his assistance and was contacted Wednesday night by a member of Mayor Kasim Reed’s staff. He declined to go into specifics regarding the conversation but said he made his opinion known.
“I’m being brutally frank because I love Atlanta,” he said.
Reed’s spokesman Carlos Campos said he was not immediately aware of such a conversation. But in interviews this week, Reed has pointed out in response to criticism of his handling of the storm that he doesn’t have control over interstate highways or schools.
Honore, who retired from the military in 2008, lived in Atlanta from 2004 to 2009 before moving to Baton Rouge, La. During that time, he commanded Joint Task Force Katrina, set up to respond to both the devastating storm that put most of New Orleans under water as well as Hurricane Rita that followed.
In leading the task force, Honore stepped in to accomplish what civilian officials failed to do — rescue desperate people from rooftops and restore order to a hurricane-ravaged city. He also became a cigar-chomping, blunt-speaking national figure, at one point berating a gun-toting soldier with, “We’re on a rescue mission, damn it!”
Since Katrina, he has been a speaker, author and consultant. Atlanta’s lack of preparedness is a point he has made frequently, he said.
“After Katrina, I must have given three dozen speeches in Atlanta telling them to get their act together _ them and the state,” he said.
Honore recalled sitting at home in 2008 as a tornado struck the Georgia Dome during the Southeastern Conference men’s basketball tournament and thinking then that precautions should have been taken.
“Why would you have a bunch of damn basketball games with a tornado watch?” he said. “Would somebody explain this to me? So this is not the first time (the city has been out of touch).”
Given the lack of equipment to deal with snow and ice in the region, Honore said schools and government offices should have been closed in advance of the storm. That, in turn, would have convinced corporate offices to do the same, he said.
“Why would you send kids to school if there’s even a threat of snow?” he said.
Honore said he saw the forecast for Tuesday and advised his 30-year-old daughter, who lives and works in Buckhead, not to drive to work. She went ahead and drove anyway and wound up walking home a mile through the snow, he said.
“We go about our lives thinking we’re secure because the government is doing its job,” he said. “Then you end up with a situation like this and it’s a reminder that government isn’t good enough to get it right all the time.”
