Kansas Governor: Guard Troops Needed at Home
Houston Chronicle/NY Times
By SUSAN SAULNY and JIM RUTENBERG
New York Times
May 8, 2007

CHICAGO — For months, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and other governors have warned that their state National Guards were ill-prepared for the next local disaster, be it a tornado or a flash flood or a terrorist's threat, because of large deployments of their soldiers and equipment in Iraq and Afghani-stan.

Then, on Friday night, a deadly tornado all but cleared the small town of Greensburg off the Kansas map. With 80 square blocks destroyed, Sebelius said her fears had come true: The emergency response was too slow, she said, and there was only one reason.

"As you travel around Greensburg, you'll see that city and county trucks have been destroyed," Sebelius, a Democrat, said on Monday. "The National Guard is one of our first responders. They don't have the equipment they need to come in, and it just makes it that much slower."

For nearly two days after the storm, there was an unmistakable emptiness in Greensburg, a lack of heavy machinery and an army of responders. By Sunday afternoon, more than a day and a half after the tornado, only about half of the Guard troops who would ultimately respond were in place.

It was not until Sunday night that significant numbers of military vehicles started to arrive, many streaming in a long caravan from Wichita, about 100 miles away.

Sebelius' comments about the slow response prompted a debate with the White House on Tuesday, which initially said the fault was hers. White House spokesman Tony Snow said the governor should have followed procedure by finding gaps after the storm hit and asking the federal government to fill them — but did not.

"If you don't request it, you're not going to get it," Snow said on Tuesday.

The debate was reminiscent of the Bush administration's skirmishes with Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, also a Democrat, after Hurricane Katrina. But after an angry flurry of words, both sides seemed to back down a bit later Tuesday. Sebelius said she now had enough equipment and personnel to deal with the problems in Greensburg, and the White House acknowledged that the governor had requested several items that the federal government supplied, including a mobile command center, a mobile office building, an urban search-and-rescue team and coordination of extra Black Hawk helicopters.

Nonetheless, the governor expressed concern that the problem could occur again. Late Tuesday, in a statement, Sebelius reiterated: "I have said for nearly two years, and will continue to say, that we have a looming crisis on our hands when it comes to National Guard equipment in Iraq and our needs here at home."

Original Text