BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A bystander for hurricanes Gustav and Ike, former Gov. Kathleen Blanco said her successor performed well during the storms, using the lessons learned after Blanco’s heavily criticized response to Hurricane Katrina.
Blanco, whose political career was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, said Gov. Bobby Jindal called upon the pre-storm contracts and emergency plans her staff developed after Katrina and Hurricane Rita ravaged Louisiana three years ago.
“I think he worked very hard, and I think he did a commendable job,” the Democratic former governor said in a phone interview Tuesday.
While Blanco was criticized as seeming dazed and overwhelmed as she responded to Katrina, Jindal has been widely praised for a take-charge demeanor during Gustav and Ike, with daily briefings that were a rapid-fire array of statistics and descriptions of state response efforts.
Blanco said she came into office with emergency preparedness plans that weren’t strong enough to cope with the catastrophic devastation of Katrina, which drowned 80 percent of New Orleans in floodwaters for weeks, and Rita, which wiped out entire low-lying coastal communities in southwest Louisiana.
After those storms, Blanco ordered a review of all preparedness plans. Her administration set up contracts for shelters, evacuation transportation and food and water for future hurricanes. Her administration put money into upgraded communications equipment for first responders and worked with nursing homes on evacuation plans of their elderly residents.
She said Jindal, a Republican who took office in January, benefited from those plans.
“He didn’t have enough time in office to even think about the level of detail that we were able to analyze and put in place. I was very happy to leave a very good plan behind, and obviously, I had the very best plan in place,” she said.
Not all the plans went well, however.
Before Gustav struck Sept. 1, Jindal’s staff called on a contractor to provide 700 buses promised to help evacuate residents who couldn’t drive themselves away from the storm. Hundreds of the buses didn’t arrive, so Jindal worked with education officials to gather school buses and the Louisiana National Guard provided bus drivers to move people to safety.
Also, shelters in north Louisiana didn’t provide showers for evacuees until three days after they opened, and bathrooms were too few. The contractor that provided showers said the company received a request for them from the Department of Social Services on the day Gustav struck.
“I think that the system was in place, but I think you’re always going to have some human failings,” Blanco said.
A Jindal spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In the aftermath of Gustav and Ike, Jindal strongly criticized the performance of the social services department, which oversees the state-run shelters and a disaster food stamp program that encountered a series of problems in providing aid for storm victims. Jindal’s DSS Secretary Ann Williamson resigned because of the criticism, and two of her top deputies were forced out.
Blanco called the leadership shake-up an overreaction. Williamson also was DSS secretary in the Blanco administration. Of Williamson, Blanco said, “She’s as bright a person as this state can generate. She’s as sincere and hardworking a person as I’ve ever met.”
Another disappointment to Blanco was the refusal of some residents of coastal Cameron Parish, which was slammed with storm waters from both Rita and Ike, to evacuate before Ike. She said residents should have remembered the lessons of Rita. “I found that a little startling, frankly,” she said.
 
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