Katrina spawned plague of misinformation
By Mark Memmott
USA TODAY
One thing can be said for certain about what it was like in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina roared through:
Much of what was reported as fact by (local*) government officials and the media during the chaotic first week afterward turned out to be fiction.
Myths and misinformation multiplied, from how many people died to what conditions were really like inside the Louisiana Superdome.
"If you don't have accurate information ... you could be
making bad decisions and just creating the next
disaster," says Ken Murphy, director of Oregon's Office
of Emergency Management and a director at the National
Emergency Management Association.
Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, generated a number of false reports. Among them:
•The death toll. Mayor Ray Nagin warned the city's toll could reach 10,000 dead, a figure repeated often in news accounts. As of last week Louisiana had confirmed 1,003 Katrina-related deaths in the entire state.
•Lawlessness. City officials, police and others said they were told of crime sprees at the Superdome and Ernest P. Morial Convention Center, where tens of thousands of people had taken shelter. The reports put the Bush administration on the defensive and sparked a massive movement of troops to the city. But an investigation by The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune found no evidence to support claims that babies were raped and armed gangs were on a murderous rampage in either place.
•Draining the city. Federal officials said it would take three months to drain the city. Six weeks later, New Orleans is largely dry.
John Hinderaker, co-author of the widely read conservative weblog Power Line, and other media watchers say the media need to take a hard look at their behavior.
"When the mayor said there might be 10,000 bodies, he was
distraught, he was in the midst of a crisis," says
Hinderaker. "What was shocking was that news organizations
would just pick it up and keep repeating it when there'd
really been no basis for it."
Experts in emergency management and communications say the real problem was a collapse of conventional communications systems, like phone systems. Those who had good information had no way of transmitting it. They say it's time to create a system that allows facts to be conveyed more quickly to decision-makers.
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., have introduced legislation that would give telecommunications companies financial incentives to build crisis information systems into their Internet and cellphone networks. That way, information could be sent to multiple battery-powered laptops and cellphones via e-mails and text messages.
Reed Hundt, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, advocates designating a part of the wireless Internet spectrum known as Wi-Fi to a new emergency broadcast network.
"Wi-Fi networks can be run on batteries in times of crisis," Hundt says.
"You can float the antennas on boats. They can be dropped on to rooftops by helicopters," he says. "And laptops run by batteries too. There are darn few TV sets out there running on batteries."
Hundt also advocates equipping all police, fire and other emergency personnel with Wi-Fi-based, handheld communication devices.
Contributing: The Associated Press
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