WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- A U.S. after-action report on the co-operation between state emergency managers during Hurricane Katrina says the system of mutual aid needs more funding.
"Funding should be considered to facilitate the acquisition of a small full-time professional staff to provide continuity and capitalize on the phenomenal progress that has been achieved over the past decade," reads the 175-page report, produced by the Emergency Management Assistance Compact.
The compact, a largely informal structure created in 1996 that manages the mutual aid disaster-relief agreement among the states and territories, says it "is at a point where it needs a small full-time core support staff to carry on between emergencies and to serve as the foundation for sustained future operations."
The report says the compact deployed nearly 68,000 personnel, national guardsmen, first responders and others, in 2005 -- the largest annual total so far -- primarily in response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The report also acknowledges shortcomings in its information technology infrastructure, saying systems "are not well synchronized, resulting in considerable duplication of effort and redundant data entry."
The accountability of first responders and other personnel deployed across state lines to help out must also be improved, the report says, noting that state emergency operations centers had often been unable to keep tracks of the tens of thousands of out-of-state personnel.
