About 2 Minutes

Over-Ruled: When There's No One to Ask, Just Do It By David Brown

It's difficult to say what specific actions might have made what degree of difference. But it seems that there was a dearth of big, risky and unambiguous decisions by mid-level responders -- managers or intermediate officials with some resources potentially under their control, who had the greatest opportunity to do the right thing at the right time. Instead, there was an excess of waiting for leadership and coordination.

You say letting people throw the switches whenever they think the time is right is a recipe for anarchy? Certainly it can be under normal circumstances. But a hurricane's aftermath creates abnormal circumstances. Anarchy is what happens when people are left without the essentials for life -- and are terrified to boot. They find their own stocks of water and food (and guns and drugs and liquor, too).

The unfortunate truth is, when a 100-year hurricane hits a city that is poor and violent under the best of circumstances, if the people in charge don't break the rules, the people who aren't in charge will. It seems at least possible that there would have been less disorder after the storm if more people had put their hunches and reputations on the line before and during it.

Of course there were examples of constructive rule-breaking in the Katrina disaster zone. One of the more memorable involved the mayor of Gulfport, Miss., who, as reported in this newspaper,ordered his police chief to hot-wire a privately owned fuel truck and move it onto city property. One of the more incredible was the report in the New York Times about two Navy helicopter pilots who, after delivering food and water to military installations along the Gulf Coast, heard a radio transmission saying helicopters were needed to rescue people in New Orleans. Out of radio range of their commanders and unable to get permission, they nevertheless went to the rescue of about 100 people. When they got back they were reprimanded, according to the article. One pilot was grounded and put in charge of overseeing a kennel holding the pets of evacuated service members.

There were others. Some search-and-rescue teams agreed to carry out pets -- against the rules -- because they knew it was the only way the animals' owners would leave.

But why weren't there more examples of ingenuity and initiative? Aren't Americans historically a people who don't bow to authority, who do things their own way? Isn't that part of the mythology of American restlessness, inventiveness and westward migration?

From what I've seen -- in daily life, as well as in my reporting -- two things have poisoned American decisiveness, at least in the public sector.

One is the consciousness of legal liability that has permeated our culture in the most astonishing way...

Another reason many Americans in authority hesitate to make risky decisions is the fear of criticism and even public humiliation -- at the hands of the news media, late-night comedians and, now, the nonstop cacophony of the blogosphere....

Five days after the hurricane, a Federal Emergency Management Agency official ordered Mark N. Perlmutter, a 50-year-old orthopedic surgeon from Pennsylvania, to stop treating patients on the tarmac of the New Orleans airport because he had not filled out the proper paperwork. He protested, explaining that the woman he had just diagnosed with diabetic ketoacidosis might die without immediate intravenous fluids and insulin. But he was led away. The official said to him, "We cannot guarantee tort liability protection," Perlmutter told me yesterday.

After learning that on-site certification wasn't yet possible, the doctor was allowed to return to the tarmac and get his medical instruments. The woman, who was semi-conscious when he'd first seen her, was dead, Perlmutter said. He then flew to Baton Rouge in a helicopter and got certified, a process he said "took about two minutes."