Disaster Preparedness
Better Planning Would Improve OSHA's Efforts to Protect Workers' Safety and Health in Disasters Gao ID: GAO-07-193 March 28, 2007Concerns about the safety and health of workers involved in the response to Hurricane Katrina included their exposure to contaminated floodwaters and injuries from working around debris. The Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is responsible for coordinating federal efforts to protect the safety and health of workers involved in the response to large national disasters. Under the Comptroller General's authority, GAO initiated a number of Katrina-related reviews. For this review, GAO examined (1) what is known about the number of response and recovery workers deployed to the Gulf Coast in response to Hurricane Katrina; (2) the extent to which OSHA tracked injuries and illnesses sustained by these workers; and (3) how well OSHA met the safety and health needs of workers. To address these issues, GAO reviewed reports; analyzed data; interviewed federal, state, and local officials; and conducted site visits.
No one, including OSHA,was responsible for collecting information on the total number of response and recovery workers deployed to the Gulf Coast in response to Hurricane Katrina and no one collected it, but 10 federal agencies provided estimates showing that, on October 1, 2005, the agencies had about 49,000 federal workers in the Gulf Coast area. In addition, six of these agencies estimated that their contractors had about 5,100 workers in the area on December 1, 2005, but the other four either did not track the number of workers employed by their contractors or did not employ contractors. Although OSHA was responsible for tracking the injuries and illnesses that federal response and recovery workers sustained during the response to Hurricane Katrina, the agency's efforts to collect it were delayed and it was unable to collect usable information. According to OSHA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) must assign and fund specific responsibilities for each disaster. However, FEMA did not direct OSHA to collect injury and illness data until more than 3 weeks after the hurricane struck. OSHA attempted to collect the data, but the information federal agencies provided were incomplete and unreliable. OSHA and other agencies did track fatalities. They reported nine worker fatalities attributed to work-related accidents: three employees of federal contractors and six nonfederal workers or volunteers. OSHA provided assistance to many response and recovery workers who responded to Hurricane Katrina, but not all workers' safety and health needs were met. OSHA quickly established operations in the Gulf area; intervened in thousands of potentially hazardous situations; and assessed air, water, soil, and noise hazards at many work sites. However, disagreements between OSHA and FEMA about which agency was in charge of providing safety and health assistance to federal agencies and workers and how it would be provided delayed some of OSHA's efforts. Also, some agencies' lack of awareness about the role OSHA plays in a disaster further hindered its ability to provide assistance. As a result, OSHA did not fully meet workers' safety and health needs, particularly their need for training and protective equipment. OSHA also did not coordinate with the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that workers had needed mental health services, and OSHA was not assigned responsibility for coordinating the needs of nonfederal workers, including state and local agency workers; many immigrants; and volunteers.
RecommendationsOur recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.
Director: Team: Phone:GAO-07-193, Disaster Preparedness: Better Planning Would Improve OSHA's Efforts to Protect Workers' Safety and Health in Disasters
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Report to Congressional Committees:
United States Government Accountability Office:
GAO:
March 2007:
Disaster Preparedness:
Better Planning Would Improve OSHA's Efforts to Protect Workers' Safety
and Health in Disasters:
GAO-07-193:
GAO Highlights:
Highlights of GAO-07-193, a report to congressional committees
Why GAO Did This Study:
Concerns about the safety and health of workers involved in the
response to Hurricane Katrina included their exposure to contaminated
floodwaters and injuries from working around debris. The Department of
Labor‘s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is
responsible for coordinating federal efforts to protect the safety and
health of workers involved in the response to large national disasters.
Under the Comptroller General‘s authority, GAO initiated a number of
Katrina-related reviews. For this review, GAO examined (1) what is
known about the number of response and recovery workers deployed to the
Gulf Coast in response to Hurricane Katrina; (2) the extent to which
OSHA tracked injuries and illnesses sustained by these workers; and (3)
how well OSHA met the safety and health needs of workers. To address
these issues, GAO reviewed reports; analyzed data; interviewed federal,
state, and local officials; and conducted site visits.
What GAO Found:
No one, including OSHA, was responsible for collecting information on
the total number of response and recovery workers deployed to the Gulf
Coast in response to Hurricane Katrina and no one collected it, but 10
federal agencies provided estimates showing that, on October 1, 2005,
the agencies had about 49,000 federal workers in the Gulf Coast area.
In addition, six of these agencies estimated that their contractors had
about 5,100 workers in the area on December 1, 2005, but the other four
either did not track the number of workers employed by their
contractors or did not employ contractors. Although OSHA was
responsible for tracking the injuries and illnesses that federal
response and recovery workers sustained during the response to
Hurricane Katrina, the agency‘s efforts to collect it were delayed and
it was unable to collect usable information. According to OSHA, the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) must assign and fund
specific responsibilities for each disaster. However, FEMA did not
direct OSHA to collect injury and illness data until more than 3 weeks
after the hurricane struck. OSHA attempted to collect the data, but the
information federal agencies provided were incomplete and unreliable.
OSHA and other agencies did track fatalities. They reported nine worker
fatalities attributed to work-related accidents: three employees of
federal contractors and six nonfederal workers or volunteers. OSHA
provided assistance to many response and recovery workers who responded
to Hurricane Katrina, but not all workers‘ safety and health needs were
met. OSHA quickly established operations in the Gulf area; intervened
in thousands of potentially hazardous situations; and assessed air,
water, soil, and noise hazards at many work sites. However,
disagreements between OSHA and FEMA about which agency was in charge of
providing safety and health assistance to federal agencies and workers
and how it would be provided delayed some of OSHA‘s efforts. Also, some
agencies‘ lack of awareness about the role OSHA plays in a disaster
further hindered its ability to provide assistance. As a result, OSHA
did not fully meet workers‘ safety and health needs, particularly their
need for training and protective equipment. OSHA also did not
coordinate with the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure
that workers had needed mental health services, and OSHA was not
assigned responsibility for coordinating the needs of nonfederal
workers, including state and local agency workers; many immigrants; and
volunteers.
Figure: Workers at an EPA Hazardous Waste Collection Facility near New
Orleans, Louisiana:
[See PDF for Image]
Source: GAO.
[End of figure]
What GAO Recommends:
GAO is making recommendations to the Secretaries of Labor, Homeland
Security, and Health and Human Services designed to improve OSHA‘s
efforts during future disasters. Labor agreed with the recommendation
to establish a system to better track injuries and illnesses but
disagreed with some of the findings on which the other recommendations
were based. The other two agencies agreed with the recommendations in
the report.
[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-193].
To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on
the link above. For more information, contact Daniel Bertoni at (202)
512-5988 or bertonid@gao.gov.
[End of section]
Contents:
Letter:
Results in Brief:
Background:
No One Collected Information on the Total Number of Response and
Recovery Workers Deployed to the Gulf Coast, but 10 Federal Agencies
Collected Data on Their Workers:
OSHA Was Unable to Collect Information on Workers' Injuries and
Illnesses:
OSHA Provided Assistance to Many Agencies and Workers, but Its Efforts
to Meet the Safety and Health Needs of All Workers Were Hampered by
Several Factors:
Conclusions:
Recommendations for Executive Action:
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology:
Appendix II: Data on the Estimated Number of Federal Workers Who
Responded to Hurricane Katrina and Their Injuries and Illnesses:
Appendix III: Comments from the Department of Health & Human Services:
Appendix IV: Comments from the Department of Labor:
Appendix V: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:
Related GAO Products:
Tables:
Table 1: Number of Fatalities Reported by OSHA and Other Federal
Agencies:
Table 2: Reported Number of Injuries and Illnesses for EPA, August 2005
to June 2006:
Table 3: Reported Types of Injuries and Illnesses for EPA, August 2005
to June 2006:
Table 4: Reported Number of Injuries and Illnesses for USACE, August
2005 to June 2006:
Table 5: Reported Types of Injuries and Illnesses for USACE, August
2005 to June 2006:
Table 6: Reported Exposures for the Coast Guard, November 2005 to March
2006:
Table 7: Reported Injuries for the Coast Guard, November 2005 to March
2006:
Table 8: Reported Health Effects for the Coast Guard, November 2005 to
March 2006:
Table 9: Reported Timing of Symptoms for Health Effects for the Coast
Guard, November 2005 to March 2006:
Figures:
Figure 1: Estimated Number of Federal Employees in the Gulf Coast Area
on the First Day of Each Month, September 2005 to April 2006:
Figure 2: Animals Such as Snakes and Alligators Presented Hazards to
Workers in the Gulf Coast Area:
Figure 3: Selected Quick Cards Developed by OSHA for Hurricane Katrina:
Figure 4: Selected Fact Sheets Developed by OSHA for Hurricane Katrina:
Figure 5: Work Zones with Equipment Not Protected from Traffic by
Safety Cones:
Figure 6: Workers on a Water Tower without Fall Protection Such As
Guard Rails or Safety Harnesses:
Figure 7: Workers on a Roof without Safety Harnesses and with Poorly
Secured Ladders:
Figure 8: Airborne Hazards on the Gulf Coast:
Figure 9: OSHA Field Staff Sampling the Air, Water, and Soil on the
Gulf Coast by Pinning a Small Personal Monitor to a Worker, Taking
Water Samples, and Taking Soil Samples:
Figure 10: Driving Hazards Faced by Workers in the Gulf Coast Area:
Figure 11: Safety Brochures in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese:
Abbreviations:
DOD: Department of Defense:
EPA: Environmental Protection Agency:
FEMA: Federal Emergency Management Agency:
NRP: National Response Plan:
OSHA: Occupational Safety and Health Administration:
USACE: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers:
United States Government Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
March 28, 2007:
Congressional Committees:
After Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, federal
agencies undertook one of the largest rescue and recovery efforts in
American history. Several agencies sent workers to the three states
that suffered the most damage from the hurricane: Alabama, Louisiana,
and Mississippi. Various reports have raised concerns about the safety
and health of workers involved in the response to Hurricane Katrina and
the dangers they faced, from animals such as snakes and alligators to
floodwaters contaminated by chemicals, oil, corpses, and fecal matter.
Public health advisories also warned about high temperatures and the
potential spread of diseases such as West Nile Virus resulting from
mosquitoes that breed in standing water. In addition, worker advocacy
groups, public health advisors, and representatives of the Congress
have raised concerns about the possibility of latent illnesses among
workers deployed to the Gulf, especially in light of such illnesses
among workers involved in rescue and recovery efforts at the World
Trade Center disaster site. Many workers at the site in New York were
not aware that they had developed debilitating respiratory conditions
or post-traumatic stress disorders until months or years after they
left the site.
The safety and health of workers responding to Hurricane Katrina is
addressed in a section, or "annex," of the National Response Plan (NRP)
of December 2004, the federal plan for responding to domestic
emergencies and disasters. As lead agency for carrying out the
provisions of the Worker Safety and Health Support Annex (the Annex),
the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA) is responsible for coordinating the worker safety and health
efforts of responders--including federal, state, local and tribal
governments, and private and nonprofit organizations--in protecting the
safety and health of their workers when the Annex is implemented.
OSHA's responsibilities under the Annex include identifying and
assessing health and safety hazards, providing technical advice and
support to safety officials, and collecting data on exposures and
injuries. Given the large numbers of workers who responded to Hurricane
Katrina and concerns about their health and safety, we addressed the
following questions: (1) What is known about the number of response and
recovery workers deployed to the Gulf Coast in response to Hurricane
Katrina? (2) To what extent did OSHA track injuries and illnesses
sustained by these workers? (3) How well did OSHA meet the safety and
health needs of these workers?
To address these objectives, we reviewed reports and documents related
to the federal response efforts for Hurricane Katrina and other recent
disasters; interviewed officials from 10 federal agencies identified by
FEMA and OSHA as having deployed response and recovery workers to the
Gulf Coast: OSHA; the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); the Coast Guard; the Department
of Defense (DOD); the National Guard; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
(USACE); and the Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services,
and the Interior. We also conducted site visits in Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana where we interviewed federal officials in
all three states and selected state and local officials who were part
of the rescue and recovery efforts. To obtain information on the number
of response and recovery workers who responded to Hurricane Katrina, we
contacted the 10 agencies identified by FEMA and OSHA and asked them to
provide information on the number of workers each agency employed in
the Gulf Coast. To obtain information on injuries and illnesses
sustained by these workers, we asked these same agencies for this
information for their workers. Of the 10 agencies, only four--USACE,
EPA, the Coast Guard, and the Department of the Interior--had data on
workers' injuries and illnesses that were sufficiently reliable for us
to report. We also obtained data on injuries and illnesses related to
Hurricane Katrina from workers' compensation claims filed by federal
workers, and information on worker fatalities from OSHA and other
federal agencies. To assess the reliability of the agencies' data, we
talked with agency officials about their data quality-control
procedures and reviewed relevant documentation. We determined the data
were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this report. Finally, we
interviewed workers' rights organizations, including the Mississippi
Immigrant Rights Alliance, Boat People SOS, the Center to Protect
Workers' Rights, and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and
Health. We conducted our work from October 2005 to December 2006 in
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. For
additional information, see appendix I.
Results in Brief:
No one, including OSHA, was responsible for collecting information on
the total number of response and recovery workers deployed to the Gulf
in response to Hurricane Katrina, and no one collected it, but 10
federal agencies provided estimates showing that, on October 1, 2005
(the month with the largest total number of federal workers), the
agencies had about 49,000 federal workers in the Gulf Coast area. In
addition, six of these agencies estimated that their contractors had
over 5,100 workers in the area as of December 1, 2005 (the month with
the largest total number of contractor employees), but three of the
other four did not track the number of workers employed by their
contractors, and one did not employ contractors for the response.
Although OSHA was responsible for tracking injuries and illnesses for
federal response and recovery workers, including federal contractor
employees, deployed to the Gulf Coast during the response to Hurricane
Katrina, the agency was unable to collect usable information from
federal agencies on their workers' injuries and illnesses. OSHA could
not track workers' injuries and illnesses because the agency (1) had
not developed a process for collecting this information prior to the
disaster, (2) was not directed by FEMA to track this information right
away, and (3) received incomplete and unreliable data from federal
agencies once it attempted to collect the information. In the 8 months
between the time the National Response Plan and the Annex was issued
and Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, OSHA focused its efforts on
introducing the Annex to agencies that might respond to a disaster and
did not develop a process for collecting data on workers' injuries and
illnesses. In addition, OSHA, like all other agencies under the NRP,
must wait for FEMA to assign it specific responsibilities for each
disaster and authorize funding for these activities, but FEMA did not
direct OSHA to collect data on federal workers' injuries and illnesses
until more than 3 weeks after the hurricane struck. After receiving
this assignment from FEMA, OSHA tried to obtain the data from the logs
that OSHA requires agencies to keep at each work site on workers'
injuries and illnesses. However, not all agencies that deployed workers
to the Gulf Coast provided these logs to OSHA as requested, and those
that did provided incomplete and unreliable data. OSHA and other
agencies also reported nine worker fatalities attributed to work-
related accidents, including three employees of federal contractors and
six nonfederal workers or volunteers.
OSHA provided assistance to many response and recovery workers who
responded to Hurricane Katrina, but OSHA's efforts to meet all workers'
safety and health needs were hampered by several factors. OSHA used its
own funds to quickly establish operations in the Gulf area prior to
receiving authorization from FEMA in the form of a mission assignment
implementing the Annex. OSHA developed health and safety plans;
provided information on common safety hazards to many agencies and
workers; intervened in thousands of potentially hazardous situations;
and assessed air, water, soil, and noise hazards at many worksites.
However, disagreements between OSHA and FEMA about which agency was in
charge of providing safety and health assistance to federal agencies
and workers and how and when the Annex would be implemented delayed
some of OSHA's efforts to provide assistance. Once OSHA began its
efforts, some agencies' lack of awareness about the role OSHA plays in
a disaster further hindered its ability to provide assistance. For
example, many agency officials did not know that, in a disaster, OSHA
provides technical assistance rather than conducting inspections of
work sites or that OSHA can provide assistance such as assessing safety
hazards and recommending the proper protective equipment for workers.
This lack of understanding contributed to agencies' not requesting
OSHA's assistance during the response and not inviting OSHA to
participate in emergency preparedness exercises in the months leading
up to Hurricane Katrina. In addition, although OSHA provided valuable
assistance to many agencies and workers, it was not able to ensure that
all workers' needs for training, protective gear, and mental health
services were met. The training OSHA provided was delayed for several
weeks because FEMA did not officially authorize OSHA to carry out its
responsibilities under the Annex until more than 3 weeks after the
hurricane, and some agencies did not request training from OSHA because
they did not realize it was available. OSHA provided some personal
protective equipment to workers in the Gulf Coast area but had not
developed a plan for ensuring that workers had needed protective
equipment as required by the Annex and FEMA, and some workers did not
have equipment to protect them from hazards. For example, National
Guard officials told us that some of their federalized workers did not
have equipment such as rubber boots to protect them from contaminated
floodwaters. OSHA also had difficulty getting counselors to provide
mental health services in the locations and during the hours they were
needed, and it did not coordinate with the Department of Health and
Human Services to ensure that workers had needed mental health
services. Finally, coordinating the safety and health needs of
nonfederal workers--including state and local government workers, many
immigrants, and volunteers--was not part of OSHA's assigned
responsibilities for Hurricane Katrina (nor any other federal agency's
responsibility), and some of their needs were not met.
We are recommending that the Secretaries of the Departments of Labor
and Homeland Security direct the Administrators of OSHA and FEMA to
improve their ability to meet workers' safety and health needs in the
event of a future disaster in several areas, including clearly defining
the criteria to be used in deciding when OSHA will be responsible for
carrying out its duties under the Annex to the NRP; clarifying OSHA's
and FEMA's roles under the Annex; and proactively working to provide
information to other federal, state, and local agencies about the role
that OSHA plays in a major disaster and the assistance it can provide.
We are also recommending that the Secretary of Labor direct OSHA to
establish a process for collecting data on injuries and illnesses
sustained by workers who respond to disasters and develop, implement,
and monitor an incident personal protective equipment program as
defined in the Annex. Finally, we are recommending that the Secretaries
of the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services develop a
plan for coordinating and providing mental health services in the event
of a future disaster. In responding to a draft of this report,
officials with the Departments of Health and Human Services and
Homeland Security agreed with our recommendations and provided
technical comments that we incorporated as appropriate. The Department
of Health and Human Services provided general written comments. (See
app. III for a copy of its comments.) The Department of Labor agreed
with one of our recommendations and, while it did not comment on the
other recommendations, stated generally that we did not give the agency
enough credit for the actions it took during its response to Hurricane
Katrina and disagreed with some of the findings. (See app. IV for a
copy of the agency's comments and our response.) The Departments of
Labor and the Interior; the Coast Guard; and the National Guard also
provided technical comments, which we incorporated as appropriate.
Although they were provided with a draft for comment, DOD did not
respond to our request for comments. Officials with EPA, USACE, and the
Department of Agriculture told us that they had no comments.
Background:
The Role of OSHA in Occupational Safety and Health:
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 authorizes OSHA to set
occupational safety and health standards, rules, and regulations and to
enforce their compliance. OSHA uses two approaches--enforcement and
compliance assistance.
Enforcement is carried out primarily by using compliance officers to
inspect employer work sites. Employers whose work sites fail to meet
federal safety and health standards face sanctions, such as paying
penalties for violations of safety and health standards. In this
enforcement capacity, OSHA targets employers for inspection using
injury and illness rates for industries and specific work sites. OSHA
also conducts inspections when employers report fatalities or serious
injuries and when workers file complaints alleging that a violation of
a safety or health standard exists that threatens physical harm or that
an imminent danger exists at their work sites.
Cooperative programs, in contrast, use a variety of incentives to
encourage employers to work with OSHA to reduce hazards and institute
practices that foster safer and healthier working conditions. Such
incentives include free consultations, recognition for exemplary safety
and health systems, and exemption from routine inspections.
OSHA has direct enforcement responsibility for federal workers in all
states and for private sector workers in about half the states. In the
remaining states, OSHA has granted approval for the states to conduct
their own enforcement of private sector, state, and local government
work sites.[Footnote 1] None of the three states most affected by
Hurricane Katrina conducts its own worker safety and health program;
OSHA provides direct oversight for workers in these states.
OSHA is organized by regional and area offices. The three states most
affected by Hurricane Katrina are located in OSHA's Region 4
(Mississippi and Alabama) and Region 6 (Louisiana). Its area offices in
these states are located in Jackson, Mississippi; Mobile, Alabama; and
Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Federal and private sector employers are required by OSHA to maintain
records documenting certain work-related injuries and illnesses: those
that result in death, 1 or more days away from work, restricted work,
loss of consciousness, or a significant injury or illness diagnosed by
a physician. Each employer's work site is required to record illness
and injury data on a form known as an "OSHA 300 log." While employers
are not required to submit these logs to OSHA, they must be available
for inspection upon request. Federal agencies are required to submit
summary information to OSHA about their safety and health programs on
an annual basis, but these reports generally do not contain information
on specific injuries and illnesses sustained by their workers.
The Role of OSHA in a Disaster:
Based on lessons learned during the response to the World Trade Center
disaster, OSHA now uses its statutory enforcement discretion during a
disaster to exempt selected employers from normal enforcement
operations and provide technical assistance and consultation in
combination with traditional enforcement as required by the
incident.[Footnote 2] At the World Trade Center, OSHA made this
decision based on the recognition that a rescue effort should not be
hampered, that enforcement takes time and can affect the speed of the
correction of safety and health hazards, and that its goal was
protection, not citation. The Assistant Secretary of OSHA, in
conjunction with regional administrators, makes the decision when to
exercise its enforcement discretion and move to a technical assistance
role, and when to return to traditional enforcement.
While federal, state, and local agencies as well as private sector
employers are responsible for ensuring the safety and health of their
workers, OSHA is responsible for coordinating with other federal
cooperating agencies to provide safety and health technical assistance
to response and recovery workers involved in the response to a
disaster. The federal cooperating agencies are DOD; the Departments of
Energy, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security; and EPA.
As the lead coordinating agency for the Worker Safety and Health
Support Annex (the Annex), OSHA's coordination responsibilities
include:
1. providing occupational safety and health technical advice and
support to safety officials at the Joint Field Office, a temporary
federal facility established at the site of a disaster to coordinate
federal assistance to affected jurisdictions;
2. developing and implementing site-specific occupational safety and
health plans and ensuring that the plans are coordinated and consistent
among multiple sites;
3. identifying and assessing health and safety hazards and
characterizing the incident environment, to include continued
monitoring of incident safety on a 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week basis;
4. monitoring responder personal exposure on a 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-
a-week basis, including monitoring for chemical and biological
contaminants, noise, heat or cold, and ionizing radiation;
5. monitoring the medical condition of responders and, in conjunction
with the Department of Health and Human Services, evaluating the need
for longer term monitoring;
6. assessing responder safety and health resource needs and identifying
sources for those assets;
7. developing, implementing, and monitoring an incident personal
protective equipment program--including the selection, use, and
decontamination of the equipment; implementation of a respiratory
protection fit-test program--and distribution of equipment;
8. collecting and managing data on exposures, accidents, and injuries
to facilitate consistent formatting and data sharing among response
organizations;
9. communicating with labor unions, contractors, and other
organizations regarding responder safety and health issues;
10. coordinating and providing incident-specific responder training;
11. providing psychological first aid during and after incident
response and recovery activities; and:
12. identifying, in coordination with the Department of Health and
Human Services, appropriate immunization and prophylaxis for responders
and recovery workers.
Even though OSHA has been assigned responsibility for coordinating the
activities in the Annex, during an actual disaster, FEMA must issue a
"mission assignment" that authorizes OSHA to receive reimbursement for
carrying out some or all of these activities, depending on the needs of
the disaster and which groups are covered during each response effort.
Without a mission assignment, services provided by an agency cannot be
reimbursed by FEMA.[Footnote 3] For Hurricane Katrina, FEMA issued
mission assignments to OSHA tasking it with 11 of the 12 activities
listed in the Annex for federal agencies and their workers, including
federal contractor employees. The only activity in the Annex for which
OSHA was not assigned responsibility for Hurricane Katrina was
monitoring the medical conditions of responders, including assessing
the need for long-term medical monitoring because, according to FEMA,
it does not have the authority under the Stafford Act to pay for the
collection and management of data for long-term studies or
analysis.[Footnote 4] FEMA also did not assign responsibility to OSHA,
or any other federal agency, for coordinating the safety and health of
nonfederal workers, except workers employed by federal contractors.
State and local agency employees, private sector employees other than
those employed by federal contractors, and volunteers were not covered
under the Annex.[Footnote 5] OSHA had difficulty addressing the needs
of nonfederal workers not covered under its mission assignment, but was
able to provide some assistance to these workers using its own funds.
No One Collected Information on the Total Number of Response and
Recovery Workers Deployed to the Gulf Coast, but 10 Federal Agencies
Collected Data on Their Workers:
No one, including OSHA, was assigned responsibility for collecting data
on the total number of response and recovery workers deployed to the
Gulf and no one collected it, but 10 federal agencies were able to
provide estimates of the number of federal workers they deployed to the
Gulf for specific points in time. However, only six of them tracked the
number of workers employed by their contractors.[Footnote 6] According
to FEMA and OSHA, 10 federal agencies deployed response and recovery
workers to the Gulf in response to Hurricane Katrina: the Departments
of Agriculture, the Interior, and Health and Human Services; the Coast
Guard; DOD; EPA; FEMA; OSHA; USACE; and the National Guard. We asked
officials from these 10 agencies to provide us with the total number of
response and recovery workers they had in the Gulf Coast from August
2005 through April 2006. Agency officials said they did not collect
data in a way that would enable them to provide us with unduplicated
counts of workers who rotated in and out of the Gulf Coast area. All 10
agencies, however, told us they could provide us with estimates of the
number of workers they had in the Gulf Coast area at any specific point
in time. Therefore, we asked them to provide us with information on the
number of workers they employed in the three states on the first of
each month for the period from September 2005 to April 2006.
As shown in figure 1, the agencies estimated that they had about 31,000
federal employees in the Gulf Coast area on September 1, 2005. That
number increased to approximately 49,000 workers on October 1, 2005,
and dropped to about 8,500 workers on April 1, 2006.
Figure 1: Estimated Number of Federal Employees in the Gulf Coast Area
on the First Day of Each Month, September 2005 to April 2006:
[See PDF for image]
Source: Data obtained from selected federal agencies.
[End of figure]
The National Guard reported having the largest number of federal
employees--about 31,000--in the Gulf Coast area on October 1, 2005, and
FEMA reported the second largest number--about 4,800 workers. The Coast
Guard reported the third largest number of federal employees in
October--approximately 3,100 workers. OSHA reported that it had 84
staff in the Gulf Coast area on the first of October and November 2005.
Of these 10 federal agencies, only six of the agencies that employed
contractors in the Gulf area--EPA, OSHA, FEMA, and the Departments of
Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and the Interior could provide
data on the number of employees their contractors employed. These
agencies estimated that their contractors had over 5,100 workers in the
Gulf Coast area on December 1, 2005, the month with the largest total
number. FEMA and EPA reported the most contractor employees: FEMA
estimated that it had approximately 3,800 contractor employees at one
point, and EPA estimated that its contractors had about 1,200 workers
in the Gulf area. The other agencies reported much smaller numbers of
contractor employees, ranging from 1 worker to 150. USACE and Coast
Guard officials told us they could provide us with information on the
number of contracts they issued, but they did not know the number of
workers employed under each of these contracts. Officials with DOD told
us that, although DOD employed contractors in the Gulf area, they did
not track the number of workers employed by their contractors. National
Guard officials told us that they did not employ any contractors.
OSHA Was Unable to Collect Information on Workers' Injuries and
Illnesses:
Although OSHA was directed by FEMA to collect information from federal
agencies on injuries and illnesses sustained by federal workers during
the response to Hurricane Katrina, the agency was unable to collect
useable information from all of the agencies that deployed workers to
the Gulf. Four federal agencies provided some information to us on
their workers who were injured or became ill, and OSHA and other
agencies provided information on worker fatalities that occurred during
the response.
Several Factors Hindered OSHA's Efforts to Collect Data on Injuries and
Illnesses:
Although the Annex assigned responsibility to OSHA for collecting data
on workers' injuries and illnesses during disasters, and FEMA directed
OSHA to collect this information from federal agencies for Hurricane
Katrina, several factors hindered OSHA's efforts to collect these data
as required. OSHA did not establish a process for gathering these data
between the time the Annex was issued in December 2004 and when
Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in late August 2005. According to
OSHA officials, during this 8-month period, they focused their efforts
on introducing federal, state, and local agencies to OSHA's new role
under the Annex in a disaster rather than developing a process for
collecting data on workers' injuries and illnesses during a response.
The second factor that hindered OSHA's ability to collect data on
workers' injuries and illnesses was that fact that FEMA did not issue a
mission assignment directing OSHA to collect these data for federal
agencies' workers until more than 3 weeks after the hurricane hit the
Gulf. FEMA instructed OSHA to track workers' injuries and illnesses
across all federal agencies that deployed workers to the Gulf in the
mission assignment it issued to OSHA on September 21, 2005, more than 3
weeks after the hurricane struck on August 29, 2005.
Third, OSHA tried to collect data on injuries and illnesses for federal
workers in the Gulf Coast area from the logs that OSHA requires
agencies to maintain at each worksite on workers' injuries and
illnesses but received incomplete or unreliable data from federal
agencies. In November 2005, OSHA asked federal agencies and their
contractors to submit their injury and illness logs for worksites
located in the Gulf area to OSHA headquarters on a monthly basis.
However, according to OSHA officials, because they did not request
agencies to provide their injury and illness logs to OSHA until five or
six weeks after the hurricane hit, and because agencies are normally
not required to send their logs to OSHA, not all agencies submitted
their logs. In addition, many of the agencies could not separate data
for workers assigned to the Gulf Coast area temporarily since employers
are not required to establish separate logs for temporary worksites
expected to be in operation for one year or less. Some agencies
provided their logs to OSHA, but the data they provided were incomplete
and unreliable, according to OSHA officials. For example, one agency's
logs included information on accidents involving heavy equipment but
did not contain information on the related injuries to workers. OSHA
officials cited several reasons for the poor quality of the data,
including the fact that the agencies may have placed a low priority on
recording injuries and illnesses while responding to a disaster.
In technical comments on the draft report, OSHA officials stated that
neither their efforts to educate the federal community about the Annex
nor the more than 3-week delay in receiving its mission assignment
prevented them from developing a system for collecting injury and
illness data.
In a mission assignment, FEMA tasked OSHA to collect these data in
order to facilitate consistent formatting and data sharing among
response organizations. OSHA could then use the data to track emerging
trends in the types of injuries and illnesses sustained by workers so
that appropriate measures, such as providing specific safety training
and information on hazards, could be taken to address emerging safety
issues and prevent or reduce injuries and illnesses. Although OSHA was
unable to use injury and illness data to track emerging trends, it did
identify some injuries and illnesses that occurred during the response
through the information it obtained from other federal agencies at the
Interagency Safety Committee meetings held at the Joint Field Office in
each state.
Available Data from Four Agencies Show Over 3,000 Injuries and
Illnesses:
Because OSHA could not provide data on injuries and illnesses, we asked
the 10 agencies that deployed workers to the Gulf Coast area for these
data. However, although agency officials told us they collected
information on the injuries and illnesses for their workers on the
injury and illness logs required by OSHA, most of them could not
separate out this information for workers sent to the Gulf Coast. Four
of the 10 agencies--EPA, USACE, the Coast Guard, and the Department of
the Interior--collected information on the injuries and illnesses their
workers sustained in the Gulf Coast area using their own data systems.
The four reported that their workers sustained over 3,000 injuries and
illnesses from the end of August 2005 through June 2006 including minor
injuries that would not have been recordable on the OSHA logs. The most
frequently cited injuries were bites from insects such as mosquitoes
and dogs; sunburn; exposure to floodwater; heat stress; and exposures
to chemicals, infectious or biological agents, mold, and carbon
monoxide. (See app. II for additional information on the injury and
illness data provided by these four agencies.) The data were not
comparable across the four agencies because each one collected
different types of information and categorized it differently. For
example, EPA used nonstandard, detailed descriptions of the illness or
injury, such as "tripped on wire and bruised knee," while the Coast
Guard described the health effects of injuries or exposures using
consistent and concise categories, such as "infected skin" and "skin
laceration."
The Department of Labor's Office of Workers' Compensation Program,
another source of data on injuries and illnesses, reported that federal
workers filed 770 claims related to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita from
August 2005 through June 2006.[Footnote 7] While data on the number of
claims were reliable, the information on the nature and causes of the
injuries and illnesses was not reliable. Therefore, we could not use it
to identify the types of injuries and illnesses sustained by federal
workers in the Gulf Coast area.
Eleven Worker Fatalities Related to Hurricane Katrina Reported:
OSHA and other agency officials identified 11 fatalities of workers
involved in response and recovery work for Hurricane Katrina from
September 2005 through June 2006, 9 of which occurred as a result of
work-related accidents.[Footnote 8] No worker fatalities directly
related to the response were reported in Alabama. In Louisiana and
Mississippi, three federal agency contractor employees died in work-
related accidents, including two employees of FEMA subcontractors and
an employee of a USACE subcontractor. (See app. II for additional
information.)
OSHA Provided Assistance to Many Agencies and Workers, but Its Efforts
to Meet the Safety and Health Needs of All Workers Were Hampered by
Several Factors:
Although FEMA did not issue a mission assignment to OSHA implementing
the Annex until more than 3 weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck the
Gulf Coast, OSHA was able to establish several of its operations within
hours of the hurricane. FEMA officials told us that all of the NRP's
annexes take effect when the NRP is implemented, but OSHA officials
said they must first receive a mission assignment from FEMA to receive
funding and begin the work as described in the Annex. OSHA used its own
staff and budget to establish operations and provide assistance to
utility workers in the Gulf Coast before to receiving authorization
from FEMA. OSHA staff developed health and safety plans, provided
information on safety and health hazards to many workers, and
intervened in thousands of potentially hazardous situations. OSHA staff
also assessed air, water, soil, and noise hazards at many worksites.
However, OSHA waited to provide assistance that involved substantial
funding--such as deploying worker safety and health trainers and
purchasing protective gear for other federal agencies--until FEMA
formally authorized OSHA to receive reimbursement for these activities
through mission assignments. Disagreements between OSHA and FEMA
delayed issuance of the mission assignment that implemented the Annex,
which delayed OSHA's efforts to provide assistance to workers. In
addition, lack of awareness by other agencies about OSHA's role in a
disaster further hindered its efforts. Because of these and other
factors, the agency was unable to ensure that all workers' needs for
safety and health assistance were met, including obtaining needed
training, protective gear, and mental health services, and OSHA had
difficulty addressing the needs of nonfederal workers not covered under
its mission assignments.
OSHA Established Operations Quickly, Developed Health and Safety Plans,
Provided Valuable Information, Intervened in Hazardous Situations, and
Sampled Work Sites:
OSHA Quickly Established Operations in the Gulf:
OSHA effectively used its existing relationships with private companies
and another federal agency to quickly establish its operations in the
Gulf Coast area and provide safety and health assistance to workers.
Through these relationships, OSHA quickly set up staging areas for its
staff, obtained needed equipment, and provided safety and health
information to workers early in the response. For example, when OSHA
had difficulty finding housing for its staff in New Orleans, it
contacted a chemical company that is part of one of OSHA's cooperative
programs, and the company gave OSHA space in its parking lot for
recreational vehicles that OSHA used to house several of its field
staff. OSHA also obtained support from the Mine Safety and Health
Administration, another agency within the Department of Labor, for
almost 3 months after the hurricane. The agency provided OSHA with two
large trailers equipped with satellite communications that it uses for
mine rescue operations. OSHA used the trailers as mobile command post
centers to communicate with other agencies at a time when communication
in the area was very difficult. The agency also gave OSHA generators to
power electricity and plumbing.
OSHA also capitalized on relationships with utility companies
established during previous responses to hurricanes in the three
affected states to target its safety and health assistance. Utility
companies are among the first responders on the scene of hurricanes,
restoring power and communications in the affected areas. OSHA
accompanied the utility companies to staging areas each morning to
brief workers on safety and distribute printed safety information. OSHA
also advised utility workers on using the proper safety equipment. For
example, although utility workers were trained on how to safely handle
downed power lines, some were not aware that they needed to wear boots
with steel shanks to prevent puncture wounds from debris containing
nails and other sharp objects or that floodwater and drainage pipes
could contain alligators, snakes, or other animals. Figure 2 shows some
of the wildlife encountered by Hurricane Katrina response workers.
Figure 2: Animals Such as Snakes and Alligators Presented Hazards to
Workers in the Gulf Coast Area:
[See PDF for image]
Source: EPA.
[End of figure]
OSHA Developed a Health and Safety Plan for the Entire Response and
Helped Other Federal Agencies Develop Their Own Plans:
OSHA developed a health and safety plan for the federal response to
Hurricane Katrina that included all responders and hazards commonly
encountered. The plan included information on how to:
* monitor exposures;
* provide adequate supplies of protective gear that was:
- appropriate for the hazard,
- fitted to the employee, and:
- inspected, repaired or replaced as necessary;
* provide training on safety and health hazards that was:
- conducted before deployment,
- applicable to general conditions,
- customized for different sites, and:
- customized for specific tasks;
* develop decontamination procedures; and:
* provide psychological first aid and other mental health services.
OSHA also assisted other federal agencies in developing similar plans
for their workers and ensured that all of the plans were coordinated
and consistent across the response.
OSHA Provided Information on Common Hazards on Its Web Site and in
Public Places on the Gulf Coast:
OSHA also provided information about hazards on its Web site and
directly to workers at public places such as hardware stores where they
purchased materials. For example, OSHA developed 58 small, laminated
"quick cards" and 1-page fact sheets in English and Spanish with
information about hazards and how to address them, such as how to
safely handle traffic in work zones, how to operate a chain saw safely,
how to work safely with electricity, how to prevent falls, and how to
use ladders safely. See figures 3 and 4 for selected quick cards and
fact sheets distributed by OSHA.
Figure 3: Selected Quick Cards Developed by OSHA for Hurricane Katrina:
[See PDF for image]
Source: OSHA.
[End of figure]
Figure 4: Selected Fact Sheets Developed by OSHA for Hurricane Katrina:
[See PDF for image]
Source: OSHA.
[End of figure]
OSHA also provided pre-recorded public service announcements on its Web
site with information on safe work practices that could be aired by
local radio stations and stores. According to OSHA officials, one large
national hardware chain played the public service announcements over
its loudspeaker system in stores in the Gulf area as a safety and
health reminder for its customers.
OSHA Intervened at Work Sites by Correcting Potential Hazards:
From the beginning of the response in August 2005 through June 2006,
OSHA's field staff intervened in more than 15,000 potentially hazardous
situations at work sites throughout the Gulf--6,800 in Louisiana and
8,320 in Alabama and Mississippi.[Footnote 9] OSHA targeted these
visits based on information it received from other federal agencies and
utility companies about work sites with large numbers of workers or
potential hazards. As shown in figures 5, 6, and 7, OSHA staff
intervened in many different types of hazardous situations, including
work zones containing equipment not protected from traffic by safety
cones and individuals working on water towers and roofs without proper
fall protection such as safety harnesses and guard rails.
Figure 5: Work Zones with Equipment Not Protected from Traffic by
Safety Cones:
[See PDF for image]
Source: OSHA.
[End of figure]
Figure 6: Workers on a Water Tower without Fall Protection Such As
Guard Rails or Safety Harnesses:
[See PDF for image]
Source: OSHA.
[End of figure]
Figure 7: Workers on a Roof without Safety Harnesses and with Poorly
Secured Ladders:
[See PDF for image]
Source: OSHA.
[End of figure]
OSHA staff offered advice on safety and health measures and followed up
to make sure hazards were corrected. For example, an OSHA official in
Louisiana stopped work at a site until unprotected workers in an aerial
lift 50 feet above the ground received safety harnesses and orange
cones were placed around the lift to protect against traffic. On the
few occasions when an employer did not follow OSHA's recommendations,
or if there were repeat problems with an employer, OSHA would elevate
its concerns to company management or to the federal agency that
contracted with the company and this usually brought abut the needed
changes, according to OSHA officials. For example, OSHA staff told a
supervisor at one worksite that workers repairing a bridge needed
safety harnesses to protect them from falls, but the workers did not
have the equipment when OSHA visited the next day. OSHA staff then
called the owner of the company, who promptly provided the safety
equipment and made sure the workers used it.
Other federal agencies asked OSHA to intervene in hazardous situations.
For example, EPA asked OSHA to monitor the health of workers at the
site of an oil spill where more than a million gallons of crude oil
leaked from an above-ground storage tank. FEMA asked OSHA to provide a
hazardous materials specialist to accompany its staff to jails and
Department of Justice buildings in New Orleans and assess what
protective gear was needed to enter and inspect buildings and to a
local hospital to assess general safety and health hazards. FEMA also
asked OSHA to conduct air-monitoring tests and assess hazards at local
courts and other public buildings in the area, and OSHA staff advised
FEMA on how to properly ventilate temporary housing trailers
contaminated with formaldehyde gas emitted by construction materials
such as plywood and rugs.
Officials with OSHA and other federal agencies told us that the
technical assistance OSHA provided during the response was well
received and was more effective in protecting workers than if the
agency had been operating in an enforcement mode. The officials noted
that enforcement actions can take months to complete due to the legal
requirements of an investigation, the amount of documentation required,
and the due process provided to employers to appeal citations. By
providing technical assistance and immediately addressing hazardous
situations, OSHA officials said they were able to assist many more
workers and correct more hazardous situations during the response than
if they had been operating in an enforcement mode. OSHA typically
conducts about 1,500 inspections each year in the three affected
states--about 430 in Alabama, about 530 in Louisiana, and about 500 in
Mississippi--but intervened in over 15,000 potentially hazardous
situations during approximately 11 months of the response.
OSHA Sampled Air, Water, Soil, and Noise Levels at Many Work Sites:
In addition to providing safety and health technical assistance, OSHA
also took more than 6,000 samples at work sites throughout the Gulf
Coast area to assess air, water, soil, and noise hazards. As shown in
figure 8, workers in the Gulf Coast area faced many airborne hazards.
Figure 8: Airborne Hazards on the Gulf Coast:
[See PDF for image]
Source: OSHA.
[End of figure]
EPA was responsible for sampling the general environment--such as the
air, water, and soil--in order to assess the dangers to the public,
while OSHA was responsible for sampling worksites for hazardous
substances harmful to workers. For example, OSHA field staff pinned
small personal monitors on workers' clothing to sample for potential
exposure to hazardous chemicals and substances, and sampled water and
soil at worksites (see fig. 9).
Figure 9: OSHA Field Staff Sampling the Air, Water, and Soil on the
Gulf Coast by Pinning a Small Personal Monitor to a Worker, Taking
Water Samples, and Taking Soil Samples:
[See PDF for image]
Source: OSHA.
[End of figure]
OSHA field staff also monitored unoccupied buildings for carbon
monoxide that may have accumulated from the use of generators before
the building was vacated and to determine whether the siding and
shingles contained asbestos. OSHA officials told us they posted the
results of the samples taken on the agency's Web site and said they are
developing a data management system for future disasters that will
provide faster access to sampling results.
Disagreements with FEMA and Lack of Awareness of OSHA's Role Hindered
OSHA's Efforts to Assist Other Agencies:
OSHA and FEMA disagreed about how and when to implement the Annex and
about each agency's responsibilities in the rescue and recovery effort.
As a result, some of OSHA's efforts to provide assistance were delayed.
Additionally, before Hurricane Katrina, OSHA provided limited
information to federal, state, and local agencies about the Annex, and
many agencies did not understand the services OSHA can provide or that
OSHA provides technical assistance, not enforcement, in a disaster.
This may have contributed to agencies not inviting OSHA to participate
in emergency preparedness exercises held prior to Hurricane Katrina or
asking for OSHA's help during the response and recovery efforts once
the storm hit.
OSHA and FEMA Disagreed about Implementation of the Annex and about
Each Other's Roles and Responsibilities:
FEMA did not issue a mission assignment to OSHA implementing the Annex
until September 21, 2005--more than 3 weeks after the hurricane hit the
Gulf Coast. Before Hurricane Katrina, FEMA and OSHA had not developed
criteria or procedures for implementing the Annex in a
disaster.[Footnote 10] FEMA officials told us that all of the NRP's
annexes take effect when the NRP is implemented; however, OSHA said it
must first receive a mission assignment from FEMA to receive funding
and begin its work as described in the Annex. OSHA used its own staff
and budget to establish operations and provide assistance to workers in
the Gulf before receiving authorization for reimbursement from FEMA.
However, OSHA delayed activities that involved substantial funding,
such as deploying worker safety and health trainers and purchasing
protective gear for other federal agencies, until FEMA formally
authorized funding through mission assignments, assuring that such
activities would be reimbursed. However, although FEMA and OSHA were
developing procedures for their operations in future disasters, as of
December 2006, these procedures did not contain criteria that clearly
defined when and how OSHA will carry out its responsibilities under the
Annex or the type or magnitude of disasters in which OSHA will be
involved.
FEMA and OSHA also disagreed about which agency was in charge of worker
safety and health for the response and recovery efforts and which
workers should be covered. The agency in charge assumed the role of
Safety Coordinator at the Joint Field Office in each state, where the
federal agencies met to coordinate their response and recovery efforts.
Because of their disagreement about leadership, FEMA and OSHA each
fulfilled the role of Safety Coordinator for different periods of time
in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, and other federal agencies did
not know which agency was consistently and officially in charge. In
addition, some FEMA officials viewed the role of the Safety Coordinator
as providing support only to FEMA employees and personnel at FEMA-
managed facilities. In contrast, OSHA officials saw the role of the
Safety Coordinator as supporting all federal workers, including federal
contractor employees involved in the response. For example, both FEMA
and OSHA officials in Mississippi identified a need for driver training
because of the large number of motor vehicle accidents. FEMA's Safety
Coordinator in Mississippi sought the driver training for FEMA staff
only, while, under its mission assignment, OSHA had already worked with
the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to develop a
similar program that was available to all federal responders.
In addition, under the Annex, OSHA is responsible for coordinating with
the Department of Health and Human Services to monitor the medical
conditions of responders and evaluate the need for long-term medical
monitoring. However, FEMA did not direct OSHA to coordinate this
activity in the mission assignments issued for Hurricane Katrina
because, according to FEMA officials, they do not have the authority
under the Stafford Act to pay for the collection and management of data
for long-term studies or analysis. Although it is not clear whether
there is a need for this type of monitoring for response and recovery
workers involved in the response to Hurricane Katrina, the fact that
some workers at the World Trade Center disaster did not exhibit
symptoms of illnesses until months or years after they left the site,
and others developed acute conditions at the site that later worsened
or became chronic, highlights the importance of considering these
issues for rescue and recovery workers who responded to Hurricane
Katrina or for those involved in future disasters.
FEMA and OSHA are in the process of developing new procedures for
future disasters. However, the procedures do not specify the type or
magnitude of disaster in which OSHA will be involved, and they include
FEMA's definition of the scope of the Safety Coordinator as providing
safety and health support only to FEMA employees and personnel at FEMA-
managed facilities, not OSHA's definition that covers all responders,
including federal contractor employees at all facilities. As a result,
OSHA may have difficulty providing assistance to all workers involved
in future response efforts. The new procedures also do not resolve the
issue of how OSHA will be able to monitor the medical condition of
responders or evaluate the need for long-term medical monitoring in
future disasters as described in the Annex, given that FEMA does not
believe it can authorize such activities or reimburse them under the
Stafford Act.
Many Agency Officials Were Not Aware of OSHA's Role in a Large
Disaster:
OSHA officials told us they did not have enough time to conduct
extensive outreach to other federal agencies in the months between the
issuance of the NRP in December 2004 and the end of August 2005 when
Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. They said they planned to inform
other federal agencies about the Annex and OSHA's new role in large
disasters through a committee comprised of the key federal agencies
that have a role in the Annex in responding to disasters. OSHA was in
the process of developing this committee when Hurricane Katrina hit,
but these efforts were suspended during the response.[Footnote 11]
OSHA's efforts to inform state and local agencies about its role under
the Annex were limited to making presentations and staffing information
booths at training sessions conducted by the Department of Homeland
Security after the NRP and Annex became effective in April 2005. The
sessions were offered in seven cities to state and local emergency and
health officials from fire departments, police departments, and local
hospitals. The Department of Homeland Security chose to visit cities it
considered likely targets in future terrorist attacks: the District of
Columbia, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, and Houston.
According to OSHA and FEMA officials, the presentations were attended
by individuals from federal, state, and local agencies; trade groups;
and support personnel. OSHA officials also said they provided
information about the Annex at meetings and conferences held by
organizations such as the National Governors' Association. These
presentations, however, were not targeted to the key state and local
agencies involved in disaster response efforts, such as state emergency
management agencies.
Officials from several federal, state, and local agencies told us that
they did not understand OSHA's role in a disaster response, including
providing information on potential hazards, recommending proper
protective gear, and testing for hazardous substances at work sites.
They also did not know that, in a disaster, OSHA switches from
enforcing regulations by conducting inspections of work sites to
providing technical assistance. National Guard and EPA officials we
interviewed told us they did not know OSHA's role in disaster response.
Representatives from state police and fire departments in Louisiana,
the state highway patrol in Alabama, and the Federal Law Enforcement
Officers Association--an organization that represents officers from
more than 50 different federal law enforcement agencies--said they did
not know that OSHA provides technical assistance in a disaster or that
they could have asked for OSHA's help.
OSHA Was Not Invited to Participate in Emergency Preparedness Exercises
Held Prior to Katrina:
Because many federal, state, and local agency officials did not
understand the assistance OSHA could provide in a disaster or its role
under the Annex, OSHA was not invited to participate in many of the
emergency preparedness exercises the agencies held prior to Hurricane
Katrina. Moreover, in the few exercises to which OSHA was invited, the
Annex was never implemented. For example, OSHA attended a national
emergency preparedness exercise conducted by FEMA in June 2005 that
simulated a response to a large, destructive hurricane, but the
exercise did not include implementing the safety and health Annex. OSHA
headquarters officials told us they thought the Annex was not
implemented during these exercises because other agency officials did
not fully understand the assistance OSHA can provide in a disaster or
its new role under the Annex. OSHA's participation in state and local
emergency preparedness exercises held prior to Hurricane Katrina was
also limited. Two of OSHA Area Office Directors in the affected states
told us they had difficulty getting invited to participate in state and
local emergency preparedness exercises, and often when they were
invited, they did not play an active role in the exercise. For example,
the Director of OSHA's Mobile Area Office told us he attended regional
training exercises on his own initiative. It took him a year to
convince the sponsoring agencies that OSHA provides assistance in a
disaster, at which point they incorporated OSHA into an exercise
involving a chemical spill from a railroad car, but OSHA's services
were not used during the exercise.
Since its response to Hurricane Katrina, OSHA officials say the agency
has been invited to participate in more emergency response exercises
where the Annex is implemented and the agency plays an active role.
OSHA officials also told us they plan to participate in an exercise
sponsored by EPA in 2007 that will simulate a large chemical spill.
OSHA's regional and area office directors told us they continue to look
for opportunities to participate in regional, state, and local
emergency preparedness exercises.
OSHA Was Only Partially Successful in Providing Training, Distributing
Protective Gear, Serving Nonfederal Workers, and Providing Mental
Health Services:
Some of OSHA's Training Was Delayed, and Some Agencies Did Not Request
Needed Training from OSHA Because They Did Not Realize It Was
Available:
Because OSHA and FEMA disagreed about the process for issuing the
mission assignment authorizing OSHA to receive reimbursement for its
safety and health training to workers, FEMA did not issue it until more
than 3 weeks after the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast. As a result, OSHA
and its cooperating agency, the National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences, reported that trainers who were ready to begin work in
the aftermath of the storm were not deployed to Mississippi until
October 2005 or to Louisiana until November 2005. In addition, some
agencies did not ask OSHA to provide training because they did not
realize that OSHA offered this type of training. For example, EPA
regional officials told us that, although their response managers noted
a need for driver safety training in October 2005 because of the large
number of motor vehicle accidents that occurred in the Gulf Coast area
during the initial response efforts, it was not provided until March
2006 because it took them several months to determine that OSHA could
provide this training. Workers faced many hazardous driving conditions
during the response to Hurricane Katrina, including missing road signs
or signs pointing the wrong direction, debris-strewn streets,
intersections without working traffic signals, and lack of street
lights--which made nighttime driving especially hazardous. (See fig.
10.)
Figure 10: Driving Hazards Faced by Workers in the Gulf Coast Area:
[See PDF for image]
Source: OSHA.
[End of figure]
OSHA Distributed Some Protective Equipment to Workers but Was Not
Prepared to Establish a Protective Equipment Program, As Required:
FEMA authorized OSHA to receive reimbursement for establishing a
personal protective equipment program as described in the Annex for
other federal agencies that included the selection, ad hoc
distribution, fit, use, and decontamination of equipment for the
response to Hurricane Katrina. While OSHA field staff distributed ear
plugs, eye goggles, respirators, and safety vests to workers throughout
the Gulf from supplies they had on hand for the use of OSHA staff, the
agency was unprepared to establish a program that included procuring
and distributing needed equipment on an ad hoc basis to other agencies
as required by its mission assignment from FEMA. In its lessons learned
from the World Trade Center disaster, OSHA recognized the need to
ensure an adequate supply of personal protective equipment before a
future incident and to develop a program to ensure for the storage,
transportation, and distribution of this equipment through FEMA and
other federal agencies. However, OSHA did not have such a program in
place prior to Katrina, and OSHA and FEMA disagreed on how to obtain
personal protective equipment: OSHA ordered equipment from its
Cincinnati Technology Center, while FEMA ordered equipment from its
contractor. In addition, OSHA had not made prior arrangements for
storing the equipment during the response. OSHA and FEMA resolved their
disagreements about suppliers and OSHA arranged to store equipment in
its area offices and FEMA-managed facilities near the Joint Field
Offices in Louisiana and Mississippi, but these difficulties delayed
the provision of some equipment to workers and highlighted the need to
establish a personal protection equipment program in advance of a
disaster.
Some federal agency officials reported needing advice on proper
protective gear, and other officials reported a shortage of equipment.
For example, National Guard officials in Louisiana told us they would
have liked information from OSHA on the hazards workers were facing,
recommendations on how to protect workers, and assistance in obtaining
protective equipment such as rubber boots needed to protect workers
from contaminated floodwaters. USACE officials told us they had
difficulty obtaining sufficient supplies of protective equipment such
as gloves and reflective vests.
OSHA officials told us the agency has not yet fully addressed what the
personal protective equipment program, as defined in the Annex, should
entail. Issues to be addressed include obtaining agreement with FEMA on
how such equipment should be purchased and where it will be stored, how
the equipment will be distributed at disasters, and which workers will
be entitled to receive the equipment.
The Need for Mental Health Services Exceeded the Assistance OSHA
Provided:
FEMA tasked OSHA with coordinating with the Department of Health and
Human Services to ensure that mental health assistance was provided to
workers during the response to Hurricane Katrina.[Footnote 12] However,
OSHA did not coordinate with them to ensure that all workers in the
Gulf area who needed mental health services received them, and OSHA had
difficulty obtaining these services. OSHA and FEMA officials told us it
was difficult to get mental health counselors to go to the base camps
where workers lived during the response and to get counselors to
provide services during off-hours to workers who did not have standard
work schedules. They also said it was difficult to obtain mental health
services for non-FEMA employees because while FEMA believed its
contract with a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services,
Federal Occupational Health , to provide counseling would cover all
federal workers responding to Hurricane Katrina, the contractor
interpreted the contract to only cover FEMA workers. In addition,
instead of sending counselors to work sites throughout the Gulf, the
contractor provided a toll-free number for workers to call. This was
not an effective way to provide services because phone service in the
Gulf was widely disrupted, and OSHA and FEMA officials said they
thought on-site counseling was a better way to help workers. Although
the contractor eventually provided services to non-FEMA employees by
sending counselors to work sites and base camps in the Gulf area and
distributing literature about available services, these efforts did not
begin until late December 2005--too late to address the needs of
response workers who were most in need of these services and the needs
of many recovery workers involved early in the response.
According to a FEMA official, the agency recently began an effort to
review its contracts to ensure that non-FEMA employees are explicitly
covered in the event of a future disaster response. However, OSHA
headquarters officials told us that, in their opinion, ensuring that
mental health services are available to workers in a disaster response
should not be part of OSHA's responsibilities under the Annex because
the agency does not have the resources needed; this responsibility
should be placed with a federal agency that has subject matter
expertise and access to appropriate mental health resources, such as
the agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services. OSHA
officials we interviewed said they are coordinating with FEMA and the
Department of Health and Human Services to improve the delivery of
psychological first aid and informational materials during future
disasters. Such efforts include distributing pamphlets to workers and
their families throughout the Gulf area; consulting with other agencies
to learn what types of mental health assistance are most appropriate
for workers who respond to disasters; developing pamphlets on mental
health issues for employers, employees, and their families; and
distributing these pamphlets to OSHA area offices and other federal
agencies to use during future disaster responses.
Although OSHA Provided Some Information and Training to Nonfederal
Workers in the Gulf, the Safety and Health Needs of Some Workers Were
Not Met:
Although OSHA staff intervened to assist any worker when they observed
unsafe work practices, some of the safety and health needs of
nonfederal workers not covered by OSHA's mission assignments for
Hurricane Katrina--state and local government employees, immigrants,
and volunteers--involved in the response were not met.[Footnote 13]
OSHA officials in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi said it was
difficult to address the needs of these populations. The mission
assignment FEMA issued to OSHA only covered federal workers and federal
contractor employees. OSHA's efforts, therefore, were focused on those
workers, and no other federal agency had responsibility for meeting the
safety and health needs of nonfederal workers. OSHA had limited access
to state and local workers because the states did not request the
agency's assistance. OSHA also had difficulty addressing the needs of
immigrant workers because of language barriers, low literacy levels
among some immigrants, the transience of many employers that hire
immigrant workers, and immigrants' fear of deportation and the federal
government. In addition, OSHA had no authority to compel volunteer
workers in the Gulf to follow safe work practices.
Some state and local agency officials reported that they could have
benefited from additional assistance from OSHA, including information
about potential hazards and protective equipment for their workers. For
example, Louisiana state troopers involved in recovering bodies were
provided with boots and gloves, but officials said they would have
liked additional information on potential hazards and guidelines on
appropriate protective gear such as waders and on proper
decontamination procedures. Similarly, many state and local agencies
reported that they did not have waders to protect workers from
contaminated flood waters. An official with the New Orleans Police
Department told us the only staff who had waders to use during rescue
efforts were fishermen and hunters who owned their own waders. However,
because the governors of the three states most affected by Hurricane
Katrina did not request OSHA's assistance, the mission assignments
issued to OSHA by FEMA did not cover state or local workers, they only
covered federal workers. As a result, OSHA's efforts were focused on
providing assistance to federal agencies and workers.
Several advocacy groups have issued reports highlighting the worker
safety and health issues among immigrant workers in the Gulf Coast area
who lacked information on hazards, training, and protective equipment.
For example, a study by the Advancement Project, the National
Immigration Law Center, and the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition
concluded that, in their opinion, the level of health and safety
training and equipment provided to many workers in the Gulf area,
including immigrants, fell well below federal standards.[Footnote 14]
OSHA trained its staff on the cultural aspects of working with
immigrant populations, hired some bilingual field staff, and built
relationships with immigrant advocacy groups. For example, OSHA's
Mississippi Area Office hired several Hispanic staff to provide
training to immigrant workers and participated in several local
cultural events and job fairs to improve workers' awareness of OSHA's
role in protecting workers. In addition, OSHA officials in Alabama,
Louisiana, and Mississippi developed worker safety literature in
Spanish and Vietnamese, two languages frequently used by non-English
speaking workers in the Gulf Coast area, and distributed the literature
at cultural events sponsored by immigrant groups. The unit that
conducted most of OSHA's training in the Gulf area through an
interagency agreement, the National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences, developed brochures in Spanish and Vietnamese.[Footnote 15]
(See fig. 11.)
Figure 11: Safety Brochures in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese:
[See PDF for image]
Source: National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences.
[End of figure]
OSHA officials told us they issued five public service announcements in
Spanish and translated 26 safety and health technical assistance
documents into Spanish and 3 into Vietnamese. They also said they
worked closely with the Mexican Consulate offices in Houston, Texas and
Atlanta, Georgia to address concerns about the safety of Hispanic
workers involved in the response. For example, according to OSHA, the
consulate in Houston arranged several events in New Orleans designed to
give the Hispanic community a chance to raise concerns and meet with
OSHA staff. In addition, OSHA officials said they worked with local
Catholic churches to reach Hispanic workers in the New Orleans area.
OSHA also raised concerns about the safety and health of volunteers who
arrived in the Gulf Coast area to assist in the recovery efforts,
including concerns about the lack of training and protective equipment
among the volunteers. For example, OSHA staff encountered several
volunteers working on roofs without the proper training or proper fall
protection. OSHA staff intervened when they encountered such situations
and, according to agency officials in the Gulf area, provided on-site
training and protective equipment to volunteer workers when it was
available.
Conclusions:
Although OSHA did not have a lot of time to prepare for its new role in
a disaster between the time the NRP became effective and when Hurricane
Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, the agency moved quickly to provide
assistance to workers who were part of the early response effort and
those involved in recovery work. In preparing for future disasters,
however, it is important for OSHA to note the areas in which its
efforts in responding to Hurricane Katrina could have been improved.
Without the ability to collect data on injuries and illnesses sustained
by workers involved in disaster recovery efforts, OSHA cannot fulfill
its role as defined in the Annex to identify trends and use this
information to prevent further injuries and illnesses by informing
workers and their employers about potential safety and health hazards.
Furthermore, unless OSHA and FEMA clearly define their roles, the type
and magnitude of the disasters in which OSHA will be involved, and how
and when the Annex will be implemented, there may continue to be delays
in providing critical assistance and information needed to protect
workers in future disasters. As a result, workers may sustain injuries
and illnesses that could have been prevented. In addition, if OSHA and
FEMA do not resolve the issue of who is responsible for assessing the
need and paying for long-term medical monitoring of workers involved in
a response effort, these needs may not be met in future disasters.
Because OSHA has not taken a proactive role in educating many federal,
state, and local agencies and their workers about the role the agency
plays in large disasters, some of the agencies do not know about the
assistance OSHA can provide or how to request it. Similarly, by not
seeking opportunities to participate in emergency preparedness
exercises held by federal, state, and local agencies, OSHA has not been
able to demonstrate the assistance it can provide or how the agencies
can obtain its services during a disaster. As a result, without
knowledge of OSHA's role, it is unlikely that state and local agencies
will request OSHA's assistance in future disasters, hampering the
agency's ability to meet the safety and health needs of nonfederal
workers, many of whom are first responders. Further, because OSHA was
not prepared to establish a program for providing information on what
protective equipment is needed or how to use it during future disasters
or for ensuring that agencies obtain adequate supplies of equipment,
workers may not be properly protected from potential hazards. Finally,
some workers' needs for mental health services in future disasters may
not be not met, and the full extent of workers' unmet mental health
needs will not be known because OSHA has not coordinated with the
Department of Health and Human Services to determine how it will assess
the need for mental health services or ensure that these services are
provided to rescue and recovery workers.
Recommendations for Executive Action:
In order to improve the ability to meet workers' safety and health
needs in the event of a future disaster, the Secretaries of the
Departments of Labor and Homeland Security should direct the
Administrators of OSHA and FEMA to:
* clearly define the criteria to be used in deciding when OSHA will be
responsible for carrying out its duties under the Worker Safety and
Health Support Annex to the National Response Plan, including the types
and magnitude of disasters in which OSHA will be involved, and:
* clearly define OSHA's and FEMA's roles under the Worker Safety and
Health Support Annex, including resolving the issue of how the need for
long-term medical monitoring of workers involved in the response to
future disasters will be met; and:
* proactively work to provide information to federal, state, and local
agencies about OSHA's role in a disaster and the assistance it can
provide under the Worker Safety and Health Support Annex, including
seeking opportunities for OSHA to participate in emergency preparedness
exercises at federal, state, and local levels.
In addition, the Secretary of the Department of Labor should direct
OSHA to:
* establish a process for collecting data on injuries and illnesses
sustained by workers who respond to disasters as defined in the Worker
Safety and Health Support Annex to the National Response Plan, such as
requiring employers to record injuries and illnesses on logs maintained
at each disaster work site and periodically submit them to OSHA during
the response;
* use the information collected on injuries and illnesses to identify
safety and health hazards and analyze injury and illness trends; and:
* develop, implement, and monitor an incident personal protective
equipment program as defined in the Worker Safety and Health Support
Annex.
In order to improve the ability to meet workers' needs for mental
health services in the event of a future disaster, the Secretaries of
the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services should:
* develop a plan for coordinating and providing mental health services
to response and recovery workers as described in the Worker Safety and
Health Support Annex to the National Response Plan.
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
We provided a draft of this report to the Secretaries of the
Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Homeland
Security, the Interior, and Labor; EPA; the Coast Guard; DOD; the
National Guard; and USACE for comment. We received written comments
from the Departments of Health and Human Services and Labor, which are
reproduced, along with our response in appendixes III and IV. Both
agencies also provided technical comments, which we incorporated in the
report as appropriate.
The Department of Health and Human Services agreed with our
recommendations. The Department of Labor agreed with our recommendation
for OSHA to establish a process for collecting data on injuries and
illnesses sustained by workers who respond to disasters as defined in
the Annex, although it noted several challenges in doing so. Although
the agency did not comment on the other recommendations, it disagreed
with our findings in several areas and provided additional information
on the actions it took to provide assistance to agencies and workers.
Officials with the Department of Homeland Security stated in oral
comments that they agreed with our findings and recommendations and
provided written technical comments, which we incorporated as
appropriate. The Department of the Interior, the Coast Guard, and the
National Guard also provided technical comments, which we incorporated
as appropriate. DOD did not respond to our request for comments.
Officials with EPA, USACE, and the Department of Agriculture told us
that they had no comments on the report.
We will make copies of this report available upon request. In addition,
the report is available at no charge on GAO's Web site at
http://www.gao.gov.
If you have any questions about the report, please contact me at (202)
512-5988 or at Hbertonid@gao.govH. Contact points for our Offices of
Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last
page of this report. Key contributors to the report are listed in
appendix V.
Signed by:
Daniel Bertoni:
Director, Education, Workforce and Income Security Issues:
List of Congressional Committees:
The Honorable Edward M. Kennedy:
Chairman:
The Honorable Michael B. Enzi:
Ranking Minority Member:
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions:
United States Senate:
The Honorable Joseph Lieberman:
Chairman:
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs:
United States Senate:
The Honorable Tom Harkin:
Chairman:
Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related
Agencies:
Committee on Appropriations:
United States Senate:
The Honorable Patty Murray:
Chairman:
Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety:
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions:
United States Senate:
The Honorable George Miller:
Chairman:
Committee on Education and Labor:
House of Representatives:
The Honorable Tom Davis:
Ranking Minority Member:
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:
House of Representatives:
The Honorable James T. Walsh:
Ranking Minority Member:
Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related
Agencies:
Committee on Appropriations:
House of Representatives:
The Honorable Henry Cuellar:
Chairman:
The Honorable Charles W. Dent:
Ranking Minority Member:
Subcommittee on Emergency Communications, Preparedness, and Response:
Committee on Homeland Security:
House of Representatives:
[End of section]
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology:
We met with OSHA national, regional, and area office officials to
obtain a general understanding of their specific roles and
responsibilities under the National Response Plan (NRP) and the Worker
Safety and Health Support Annex (the Annex). We documented the steps
OSHA took to ensure the safety and health of workers in the Gulf Coast
area during the response to Hurricane Katrina; the extent of the
agency's coordination with other federal, state, and local government
officials; and the lessons learned that included any new initiatives
that had been implemented or were being considered.
We also met with officials from federal agencies that, according to
OSHA and FEMA officials, deployed federal workers and contractor
employees to the Gulf Coast in response to Hurricane Katrina: OSHA;
FEMA; EPA; the Coast Guard; DOD; the National Guard; USACE; and the
Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and the
Interior. As a part of our interviews, we asked about them the extent
of their involvement with OSHA, lessons learned, and specific
initiatives being implemented or planned to address the challenges
faced by their workers during Hurricane Katrina. In addition, we
interviewed representatives of several workers' rights groups to obtain
their perspectives on the role OSHA played in protecting the safety and
health of workers involved in the response to Hurricane Katrina,
including the safety and health of the immigrant population. These
groups included Boat People SOS, the Mississippi Immigrants Rights
Alliance, the Center to Protect Workers' Rights, and the New York
Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. We also reviewed several
studies on emergency preparation, response, and recovery efforts
conducted prior to and during Hurricane Katrina.
We conducted our work from October 2005 to December 2006 in accordance
with generally accepted auditing standards.
Analysis of Agency Documents:
We reviewed provisions of the NRP and the Annex to identify the
specific roles and responsibilities of OSHA in an incident of national
disaster or a catastrophic event. We also reviewed state emergency
management plans in Alabama and Louisiana to determine whether these
state plans had provisions for ensuring the safety and health of rescue
and recovery workers. Mississippi did not have a current state
emergency management plan.
Site Visits:
To provide some perspectives on the extent of OSHA effectiveness for
ensuring safety and health of workers at the state and local levels, we
conducted site visits in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, the
states that suffered the most damage from Hurricane Katrina. We spoke
with OSHA regional and area officials as well as federal officials from
FEMA, EPA, and USACE. We also interviewed many state and local response
and recovery workers, including state police in Louisiana and
Mississippi; local law enforcement in New Orleans, Louisiana and
Jackson, Mississippi; firefighters in New Orleans, Louisiana; the
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries; the Louisiana
Department of Environmental Quality; and a county emergency management
official in Mississippi. In addition, in March 2006, we attended a
conference sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences that discussed the various lessons learned and challenges
federal agencies encountered during the responses to Hurricanes Katrina
and Rita.
Data from Federal Agencies on Injuries and Illnesses:
Because OSHA was unable to collect useable data on the number of
injuries and illnesses sustained by federal workers in the Gulf Coast
area, we asked the 10 agencies that sent rescue and recovery workers to
the Gulf Coast to provide this information. Although agency officials
told us that they tracked illnesses and injuries on the work site logs
that OSHA requires them to maintain, they were not able to separate out
this information for all workers deployed to the Gulf Coast because
injuries and illnesses are recorded at the work sites where workers are
permanently assigned, not the work sites to which they were temporarily
assigned during the response.
We asked these agencies whether they maintained their own data on
workers who were injured or became ill as a result of their work in the
Gulf area. Four of the 10 agencies--EPA, USACE, the Coast Guard, and
the Department of the Interior--provided data on injuries and illnesses
for workers deployed to the Gulf Coast that were sufficiently reliable
for us to report. However, each of these agencies used different
methods to report this information. In an effort to summarize the
injury and illness data reported by the agencies, we developed a coding
scheme for classifying and combining the data on injuries and illnesses
provided by EPA and USACE into more consistent and concise categories.
For example, we classified an injury described in USACE's data as
"contractor chain saw operator suffered laceration," as a "laceration,"
and an injury described in EPA's data as "employee lost his footing and
fell onto the deck landing," as a "trip/fall." We determined that the
codes used by the Coast Guard were sufficiently reliable in coding
scheme to use to report the number and types of injuries and illnesses
sustained by their workers. We received the data from the Department of
the Interior too late to include it in its entirety but provided a
brief summary of the types of injuries and illnesses sustained by its
workers in the Gulf Coast area (see app. II).
In addition, to determine the number and types of injuries and
illnesses sustained by their workers, we looked at the nature and
causes of the injuries and illnesses reported by the four agencies and,
where possible, the number of injuries and illnesses reported for each
month. Because some incidents reported by EPA and USACE contained more
than one injury or illness, we used more than one code to report on the
type of injury or illness sustained. For example, we classified an
injury reported by EPA where an employee had "pulled and strain neck
and back from a motor vehicle accident," as a "motor vehicle accident"
and a "pain/strain." As a result, the total number of injuries and
illness reported by the agencies may differ from the numbers we
reported.
Data on Federal and State Workers' Compensation Claims:
Because the data on injuries and illnesses provided by the federal
agencies on their workers were limited, we obtained information on
workers' compensation claims filed by federal workers from the
Department of Labor's Office of Workers' Compensation Programs in order
to obtain more information about injuries and illnesses sustained by
federal workers involved in the response. The Office of Workers'
Compensation Programs provided us with data on 770 claims related to
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita filed from August 2005 through June
2006.[Footnote 16] However, we found that the data provided to us on
claims filed by federal workers were not sufficiently reliable to use
in reporting the types of injuries and illnesses sustained by federal
workers involved in the response.
[End of section]
Appendix II: Data on the Estimated Number of Federal Workers Who
Responded to Hurricane Katrina and Their Injuries and Illnesses:
Officials with OSHA and FEMA told us the following federal agencies
sent workers to Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi--the three states
that sustained the most damage from Hurricane Katrina--to perform
rescues and conduct recovery work such as clearing debris:
1. the Department of Agriculture;
2. the Department of the Interior;
3. the Coast Guard;
4. FEMA;
5. EPA;
6. the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health,
the Food and Drug Administration, the Office of Force Readiness and
Deployment, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration;
7. OSHA;
8. USACE;
9. DOD, including the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps; and:
10. the National Guard.
In early May 2006, we asked these agencies to provide us with the
number of employees and contract employees they employed in the three
states to assist with rescue and recovery work related to Hurricane
Katrina from the beginning of the response through April 1, 2006. Many
agency officials told us that they could not provide the total number
of workers for the entire period because they did not collect data in a
way that would enable them to provide us with unduplicated counts of
workers who rotated in and out of the Gulf Coast area. However, many
said they could provide us with estimates of the total number of
workers for specific points in time so we requested such data from all
10 agencies.
We asked them to provide the total number of full-time equivalent
workers they employed in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi on the
first day of each month from September 1, 2005, through April 1, 2006.
We also asked them to exclude employees of other agencies that were
temporarily assigned to them or volunteers who were not government
employees or contractors. All of the agencies submitted estimates for
their federal employees working in the Gulf area, although some
agencies were not able to provide information on all personnel deployed
to the Gulf Coast.[Footnote 17] Only 6 of the 10 agencies tracked
information on the number of workers employed by their contractors in
these three states to work on response and recovery work related to
Hurricane Katrina: the Departments of Agriculture, the Interior, Health
and Human Services, EPA, OSHA, and FEMA. Although officials with three
of the other four agencies--the Department of Defense, USACE, and the
Coast Guard--said they employed contractors in the Gulf, they did not
track the number of workers employed by their contractors. Officials
from the National Guard told us they did not employ contractors in the
Gulf Coast area.
We obtained data from OSHA and the other agencies on 11 response and
recovery workers who died in the Gulf, 9 of whom were killed in work-
related accidents. OSHA provided information on 10 fatalities, 9 of
which were work-related, and USACE on 2 fatalities, one of which was
work-related.[Footnote 18] All of the other agencies said that none of
their workers was killed during the response to Hurricane Katrina. (See
table 1 for additional information on these fatalities.)
Table 1: Number of Fatalities Reported by OSHA and Other Federal
Agencies:
State: Louisiana;
Description of incident: A worker was struck by a bulldozer at a debris
site;
Employer: Employee of a federal subcontractor for USACE;
Work-related?: Yes.
State: Louisiana;
Description of incident: A worker was crushed during the installation
of a parked trailer that was accidentally released and ran over him;
Employer: Employee of a federal subcontractor for FEMA;
Work-related?: Yes.
State: Louisiana;
Description of incident: A worker who was attempting to reinstall
electrical services to a residence was electrocuted;
Employer: Nonfederal employee or volunteer;
Work-related?: Yes.
State: Louisiana;
Description of incident: A worker suffered a massive heart attack while
sitting in a company truck;
Employer: Nonfederal employee or volunteer;
Work-related?: No.
State: Louisiana;
Description of incident: A maintenance worker fell 18 feet to his death
after receiving an electric shock;
Employer: Nonfederal employee or volunteer;
Work-related?: Yes.
State: Mississippi;
Description of incident: A worker operating a tractor to clear debris
died when the tractor overturned into a ditch with 5½ feet of water,
pinning the operator under the tractor;
Employer: Employee of a federal subcontractor for FEMA;
Work-related?: Yes.
State: Mississippi;
Description of incident: A worker was killed when a 75 foot pole fell
from a forklift and struck him;
Employer: Nonfederal employee or volunteer;
Work-related?: Yes.
State: Mississippi;
Description of incident: A worker fell 40 feet to the floor of a
warehouse;
Employer: Nonfederal employee or volunteer;
Work-related?: Yes.
State: Mississippi;
Description of incident: Two workers on a casino barge were overcome by
hydrogen sulfide fumes and drowned;
Employer: Nonfederal employees or volunteers;
Work-related?: Yes.
State: Mississippi;
Description of incident: Employee died on the way to work as the result
of a car accident;
Employer: Employee of a federal subcontractor for USACE;
Work-related?: No.
Source: GAO analysis of OSHA and USACE data.
[End of table]
Because OSHA was unable to collect data on the number of injuries and
illnesses sustained by federal workers in the Gulf Coast area, we asked
the 10 agencies that sent workers to the Gulf Coast area to provide
this information. Although agency officials told us that they tracked
illnesses and injuries on the worksite logs that OSHA requires them to
maintain, they were not able to separate out this information for all
workers deployed to the Gulf Coast because injuries and illnesses are
recorded at the worksites where workers are permanently assigned, not
the worksites to which they were temporarily assigned during the
response.
We asked these agencies whether they maintained their own data on
workers who were injured or became ill as a result of their work in the
Gulf Coast area. Four of the 10 agencies--EPA, USACE, the Coast Guard,
and the Department of the Interior--provided data on injuries and
illnesses for workers in the Gulf area that were sufficiently reliable
for us to report. However, each agency used different descriptions of
the injuries and illnesses to report the information collected. In an
effort to summarize the data reported by the agencies, we developed our
own categories to use in classifying and collapsing the descriptions of
injuries and illnesses provided by EPA and USACE into more consistent
and easily understood categories. For example, for an injury described
in USACE's data as "contractor chain saw operator suffered laceration,"
we reclassified it as a "laceration;" and for an injury described in
EPA's data as "employee lost his footing and fell onto the deck
landing," we reclassified it as a "trip/fall." We determined that the
descriptions and categories used by the Coast Guard were sufficiently
clear to use in reporting the number and types of injuries and
illnesses sustained by their workers. We received the data from the
Department of the Interior too late to reclassify it and report it in
its entirety, but we provided a brief summary of the types of injuries
and illnesses sustained by its workers deployed to the Gulf Coast on
page 58.
To determine the number and types of injuries and illnesses sustained
by their workers deployed to the Gulf Coast, we looked at the nature
and causes of the injuries and illnesses reported by the agencies and,
where possible, the number of injuries and illnesses reported for each
month. Because some incidents reported by EPA and USACE contained more
than one injury and/or illness, we used more than one code to report on
the type of injury and illness sustained. For example, where EPA
reported that an employee had pulled and strain neck and back from a
motor vehicle accident, we classified it as "motor vehicle accident"
and "pain/strain." As a result, the total number of injuries and
illness reported by these agencies may differ from the types of
injuries and illnesses reported for that same time frame.
EPA reported information on the number of injuries and illnesses
sustained by their federal workers and contractor employees. (See table
2.)
Table 2: Reported Number of Injuries and Illnesses for EPA, August 2005
to June 2006:
Month: August;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 0;
Total: 0.
Month: September;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 7;
Total: 7.
Month: October;
Region 4: 1;
Region 6: 22;
Total: 23.
Month: November;
Region 4: 1;
Region 6: 32;
Total: 33.
Month: December;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 14;
Total: 14.
Month: January;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 13;
Total: 13.
Month: February;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 12;
Total: 12.
Month: March;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 7;
Total: 7.
Month: April;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 5;
Total: 5.
Month: May;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 8;
Total: 8.
Month: June;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 2;
Total: 2.
Month: Total;
Region 4: 2;
Region 6: 122;
Total: 124.
Source: GAO analysis of EPA data.
Note: These numbers represent data on EPA agency personnel, employees
of their contractors, and employees of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
At OSHA's request, EPA collected data on all types and causes of
hurricane response-related injuries and illnesses. However, according
to EPA, the totals do not include some minor injuries and illnesses.
[End of table]
EPA also provided information on the types of injuries and illnesses
these workers sustained. (See table 3.)
Table 3: Reported Types of Injuries and Illnesses for EPA, August 2005
to June 2006:
Type of Injury or Illness: Cut/scrape/bruise;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 43;
Total: 43.
Type of Injury or Illness: Skin condition;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 16;
Total: 16.
Type of Injury or Illness: Pain/strain;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 13;
Total: 13.
Type of Injury or Illness: Animal/insect bite;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 12;
Total: 12.
Type of Injury or Illness: Sprain/fracture;
Region 4: 1;
Region 6: 10;
Total: 11.
Type of Injury or Illness: Irritation;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 9;
Total: 9.
Type of Injury or Illness: Chemical Splash;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 6;
Total: 6.
Type of Injury or Illness: Trip/fall;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 4;
Total: 4.
Type of Injury or Illness: Medical condition;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 3;
Total: 3.
Type of Injury or Illness: Chemical exposure;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 3;
Total: 3.
Type of Injury or Illness: Infection;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 2;
Total: 2.
Type of Injury or Illness: Exhaustion/dehydration/heat stress;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 2;
Total: 2.
Type of Injury or Illness: Smoke exposure;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 1;
Total: 1.
Type of Injury or Illness: Nausea;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 1;
Total: 1.
Type of Injury or Illness: Burn;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 1;
Total: 1.
Type of Injury or Illness: Viral infection;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 1;
Total: 1.
Type of Injury or Illness: Motor vehicle accident;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 1;
Total: 1.
Type of Injury or Illness: Seizure;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 1;
Total: 1.
Type of Injury or Illness: Acute appendectomy;
Region 4: 0;
Region 6: 1;
Total: 1.
Type of Injury or Illness: Rupture;
Region 4: 1;
Region 6: 0;
Total: 1.
Type of Injury or Illness: Total;
Region 4: 2;
Region 6: 130;
Total: 132.
Source: GAO analysis of EPA data.
USACE reported information on the number of injuries and illnesses
sustained by their federal workers and contractor employees. (See table
4.)
[End of table]
Table 4: Reported Number of Injuries and Illnesses for USACE, August
2005 to June 2006:
Month: August;
Total: 0.
Month: September;
Total: 64.
Month: October;
Total: 99.
Month: November;
Total: 49.
Month: December;
Total: 40.
Month: January;
Total: 95.
Month: February;
Total: 70.
Month: March;
Total: 75.
Month: April;
Total: 46.
Month: May;
Total: 17.
Month: June;
Total: 7.
Month: Total;
Total: 562.
Source: GAO analysis of USACE data.
[End of table]
USACE also reported information on the types of injuries and illnesses
sustained by these workers. (See table 5.)
Table 5: Reported Types of Injuries and Illnesses for USACE, August
2005 to June 2006:
Injury/Illness Category: Motor vehicle accident;
Total: 247.
Injury/Illness Category: Motor vehicle rollover;
Total: 90.
Injury/Illness Category: Property damage;
Total: 62.
Injury/Illness Category: Struck by object;
Total: 48.
Injury/Illness Category: Trip/fall;
Total: 25.
Injury/Illness Category: Cut/scrape/bruise;
Total: 24.
Injury/Illness Category: Animal/Insect bites;
Total: 13.
Injury/Illness Category: Laceration;
Total: 11.
Injury/Illness Category: All other injuries;
Total: 11.
Injury/Illness Category: Pain/strain;
Total: 8.
Injury/Illness Category: Fire;
Total: 7.
Injury/Illness Category: Sprain/fracture;
Total: 6.
Injury/Illness Category: Broken limb;
Total: 5.
Injury/Illness Category: Limb caught in object;
Total: 4.
Injury/Illness Category: Skin conditions;
Total: 3.
Injury/Illness Category: Operational stress;
Total: 3.
Injury/Illness Category: Unknown;
Total: 3.
Injury/Illness Category: Burn;
Total: 2.
Injury/Illness Category: Contusion;
Total: 2.
Injury/Illness Category: Medical conditions;
Total: 2.
Injury/Illness Category: Fatality;
Total: 2.
Injury/Illness Category: Violence;
Total: 2.
Injury/Illness Category: Muscle spasm;
Total: 1.
Injury/Illness Category: Heat exposure;
Total: 1.
Injury/Illness Category: Gastrointestinal;
Total: 1.
Total: 583.
Source: GAO analysis of USACE data.
[End of table]
The Coast Guard provided information on injuries and illnesses
sustained by their workers and contractor employees from November 2005
though March 2006 in several different categories. According to Coast
Guard officials, about 5 percent of the data it received on illnesses
and injuries that occurred during this period had not been entered into
its injury and illness tracking system. It reported data on the number
of types of exposures their federal workers and contractor employees
experienced during the response. (See table 6.)
Table 6: Reported Exposures for the Coast Guard, November 2005 to March
2006:
Type of Exposure: Animal vector (e.g., bites from insects such as
mosquitoes or animals such as snakes and dogs);
Total: 1,171.
Type of Exposure: Sunburn;
Total: 1,002.
Type of Exposure: Floodwater;
Total: 737.
Type of Exposure: Heat stress;
Total: 727.
Type of Exposure: Chemicals;
Total: 684.
Type of Exposure: Infectious agents or biological agents;
Total: 659.
Type of Exposure: Mold exposure;
Total: 562.
Type of Exposure: Carbon monoxide;
Total: 246.
Total number of exposures;
Total: 5,788.
Source: GAO analysis of Coast Guard data.
[End of table]
The Coast Guard also reported the number of injuries sustained by their
federal workers and contractor employees. (See table 7.)
Table 7: Reported Injuries for the Coast Guard, November 2005 to March
2006:
Injuries: Penetrating injury;
Total: 419.
Injuries: Slips, trips, falls;
Total: 136.
Total number of injuries;
Total: 555.
Source: GAO analysis of Coast Guard data.
[End of table]
In addition, the Coast Guard provided data on the health effects of the
injuries and illnesses sustained by their federal workers and
contractor employees. (See table 8.)
Table 8: Reported Health Effects for the Coast Guard, November 2005 to
March 2006:
Health Effects: Sinus infections;
Totals: 299.
Health Effects: Diarrhea;
Totals: 196.
Health Effects: Skin rash;
Totals: 179.
Health Effects: Dehydration;
Totals: 174.
Health Effects: Other (e.g., cough, fatigue, flu, headache);
Totals: 157.
Health Effects: Joint pain;
Totals: 151.
Health Effects: Loss of appetite;
Totals: 139.
Health Effects: Muscle strain;
Totals: 138.
Health Effects: Depression;
Totals: 134.
Health Effects: Nausea;
Totals: 132.
Health Effects: Difficulty concentrating;
Totals: 128.
Health Effects: Skin lacerations;
Totals: 87.
Health Effects: Cramps;
Totals: 61.
Health Effects: Vomiting;
Totals: 50.
Health Effects: Skin puncture;
Totals: 50.
Health Effects: Infected skin;
Totals: 45.
Health Effects: Confusion;
Totals: 38.
Health Effects: Excessive weight loss;
Totals: 22.
Health Effects: Total number of health effects;
Totals: 2,180.
No known long-term health effects;
Totals: 1,295.
Source: GAO analysis of Coast Guard data.
[End of table]
The Coast Guard noted which symptoms occurred during workers'
deployment and which occurred post-deployment. (See table 9.)
Table 9: Reported Timing of Symptoms for Health Effects for the Coast
Guard, November 2005 to March 2006:
Symptoms During and Post Deployment to the Gulf Coast Area: Symptoms
while deployed;
Total: 729.
Symptoms During and Post Deployment to the Gulf Coast Area: Symptoms
post deployment;
Total: 506.
Source: GAO analysis of Coast Guard data.
[End of table]
Finally, the Department of the Interior reported that 90 workers
sustained injuries or illnesses during the response to Hurricane
Katrina from August 2005 through April 2006. They included injuries
such as falls, slips and trips; strains from lifting; dermatitis from
exposure to poison ivy; and reactions from exposures to toxins, dust,
gas or chemicals.
We took several steps to assess the reliability and reasonableness of
the data the agencies provided. To assess the reliability of the
agencies' data, we talked with agency officials about their data
quality control procedures and reviewed relevant documentation. For
example, we asked about the types of procedures and systems they had in
place to ensure that the data were collected and reported consistently.
We found the data were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this
report.
[End of section]
Appendix III: Comments from the Department of Health & Human Services:
Department Of Health & Human Services:
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Legislation:
Washington, D.C. 20201:
Feb 17 2007:
Robert E. Robertson:
Director:
Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues:
U.S. Government Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
Dear Mr. Robertson:
Enclosed are the Department's comments on the U.S. Government
Accountability Office's (GAO) draft report entitled, 'Disaster
Preparedness: Better Planning Would Improve OSHA's Efforts to Protect
Workers' Safety and Health in Future Disasters" (GAO-07-193), before
its publication.
The Department has provided several technical comments.
The Department appreciates the opportunity to review and comment on
this draft.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
Vincent J. Ventimiglia:
Assistant Secretary for Legislation:
Comments Of The Department Of Health And Human Services On The
Government Accountability Office (GAO) Draft Entitled: Disaster
Preparedness: Better Planning Would Improve Osha's Efforts To Protect
Workers' Safety And Health In Future Disasters" GAO 07-193:
General Comments:
* The fundamental issue that this report brings to the forefront is the
vital importance of ensuring that disaster planning and response
includes a focus on worker safety and health.
* The World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina/Rita events were
disasters on an unprecedented scale. The types of hazards and
environmental risks confronted in such disasters are complex and
unique. In these events, the physical injuries to relief workers can be
counted, but the impacts on health are often not revealed until much
later. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS),
a component of the National Institutes of Health, through its research
centers and other partners, is beginning to obtain information on the
relationships between exposures during disaster remediation activities
and later morbidity. There is a clear public health and research value
that underscores the GAO recommendation to clarify the roles of federal
agencies regarding medical monitoring for response workers.
[End of section]
Appendix IV: Comments from the Department of Labor and GAO's Response:
Note: GAO comments supplementing those in the report text appear at the
end of this appendix.
U.S. Department of Labor:
Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health:
Washington, D.C. 20210:
Mar 9 2007:
Mr. Robert E. Robertson:
Director, Education, Workforce and Income Security Issues:
United States Government Accountability Office:
441 G Street NW, Room 5930:
Washington, DC 20548:
Dear Mr. Robertson:
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has received
the Government Accountability Office's (GAO's) draft report to
congressional committees entitled Disaster Preparedness: Better
Planning Would Improve OSHA's Efforts to Protect Workers' Safety and
Health in Future Disasters, and appreciates the opportunity for advance
review and comment.
This GAO report represents many months of investigation over a wide
geographic area about newly-created procedures for responding to
domestic emergencies and disasters. While GAO accurately captured some
of OSHA's actions, the report fails to fairly and adequately reflect
OSHA's efforts to prevent occupational injuries and illnesses and work-
related fatalities in the Hurricane Katrina response operations.
Further, it should be noted that OSHA has resolved many of the issues
noted in the GAO study, which focuses on activities through December
2005, and continues to make progress on others.
During OSHA's 12-month involvement in the Hurricane Katrina response,
the Agency undertook the following tasks aimed at preventing
occupational injuries and illnesses and work-related fatalities:
* Distributed over 4,000 pieces of personal protective equipment on an
ad hoc basis;
* Developed a sampling plan and took approximately 10,000 samples to
evaluate potential exposures;
* Distributed approximately 200,000 OSHA compliance assistance
products;
* Interacted with approximately 16,000 federal and private sector work
crews;
* Conducted interventions that covered more than 50,000 workers; and:
* Removed more than 20,000 workers from serious hazards.
As the report accurately points out, OSHA did not wait for the storm to
make landfall before taking action to respond to the anticipated
aftermath of the hurricane. For example, OSHA's regional and area
offices in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana contacted local
utilities to assist with occupational safety and health issues they
would encounter after the hurricane. This action was undertaken based
on lessons learned from earlier hurricane seasons that indicated
utility crews are some of the first responders after storms hit, and
often face life-threatening hazards when trying to get systems back up
and working. OSHA took another proactive step on September 2, 2006,
days before the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) completed
the mission assignment, by activating its own National Emergency
Management Plan, enabling it to focus the resources of the entire
Agency on response operations.[Footnote 19]
Once FEMA completed the mission assignment, thereby providing OSHA with
access to additional funds, the Agency continued to take action and
deployed over 50 safety and health professionals to the affected
region.[Footnote 20] The additional professionals aided in the
management and coordination of safety and health assistance to federal
agencies and others, as outlined in the mission assignment. As part of
its assignment, OSHA's responsibilities included:
* Deploying staff to national level coordination centers including the
Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary's Operation Center;
* Developing an overall Health and Safety Plan that guided those
designing plans for individual worksites;
* Cooperating with HHS to develop and reproduce psychological first aid
materials to help responders, their families, and their home offices
deal with the stresses associated with this work; and:
* Providing training to responders, delivered by OSHA staff in the
field, and through an agreement, by which the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) trained an additional 3,500
responders in specialized classes. OSHA also sponsored construction
safety conferences for contractors engaged in hurricane recovery work.
In addition to its management and coordination responsibilities, OSHA's
staff traveled throughout the disaster area providing technical
assistance directly to employers and employees. When OSHA teams
identified a dangerous situation, they approached work crews and
managers to make them aware of hazards and to provide on-site training.
To support its field work, OSHA staff developed an array of compliance
assistance products, including quick reference materials for people
working in hazardous environments.
The details above offer a sampling of the vast and varied occupational
safety and health assistance OSHA provided during the Katrina response.
As with any domestic emergency or disaster, OSHA enters the situation
with the goal of preventing occupational injuries and illnesses and
work-related fatalities. This goal is carried-out though a variety of
means, including coordinating occupational safety and health assistance
for responders, delivering safety and health technical assistance in
the field, and developing quick reference materials to keep safety and
health at the forefront of responders' minds.
After a review of GAO's draft report, OSHA submits several
clarifications to better enable prospective readers to understand the
Agency's responsibilities by which to measure its response.
Number of Responders Deployed: GAO's report notes that no one collected
information on the number of workers deployed to the disaster area.
OSHA would like to clarify that it was not responsible for tracking the
number of workers responding to Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast
region.
Annex vs. Mission Assignment Language: The report focuses on the
language in the National Response Plan (NRP) Worker Safety and Health
Support Annex (WSHSA), rather than on the mission assignment for the
Katrina response. The language in the mission assignment is what
directed OSHA's activities in response to Hurricane Katrina, and should
be the basis by which the Agency's response is evaluated.
Training: OSHA repeatedly noted the availability of training through
the interagency Safety Committees in Joint Field Offices (JFO's) in
both Louisiana and Mississippi. Under tasking from OSHA, NIEHS, an
Annex cooperating agency, made presentations at these meetings
informing the federal response community of the training resources
available under the Annex. OSHA made a consistent effort to stress the
need for and availability of training in the affected region. However,
there was a greater response to these efforts in Mississippi than in
Louisiana. In total, approximately 3,750 people were trained through
the resources made available through the Annex.
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE): There are several issues of
concern in the sections of the report dealing with OSHA's
responsibilities for PPE.
Availability of PPE: The mission assignment states: "Procure and
provide essential PPE to responders and recovery workers on an ad-hoc
basis." The mission assignment did not call for OSHA to be responsible
for purchasing and distributing all the PPE needed by workers in the
disaster zone, which under law is the responsibility of the agency or
entity that employs the workers. OSHA's mission was to provide PPE on
an ad-hoc basis. OSHA successfully did this by distributing over 4,000
pieces of PPE. Through ongoing daily briefings, we offered assistance
to federal agencies concerning PPE programs and respirator fit testing.
At no time during the response did federal agencies or their
contractors indicate that they could not acquire needed PPE.
PPE Program: The current WSHSA language did not anticipate a PPE
program on such a colossal scale as the one experienced in the Katrina
response. The Annex was focused on a more compact site. Moreover, a
general plan broad enough to encompass the many environments and
operations in the Katrina response would not have had value for a
specific worksite. Rather, in meeting the mission assignment, OSHA
developed and distributed to federal agencies a response-wide Health
and Safety Plan (HASP). This included guidance to those who were
developing worksite-specific HASPS for what they should include in
their plan to address PPE needs. Through JFO interagency safety and
health committee meetings, the development of agency HASPS and their
content was covered. On the need to include PPE in worksite specific
HASPS, the guidance read:
"Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) The use of PPE must be properly
assessed. Equipment must be properly selected for the hazard, and
properly fitted for the employee. Employees must be trained in the
equipment's uses and limitations, as well as proper donning and doffing
techniques. Equipment must be inspected before each use and repaired or
replaced as needed. PPE shall be maintained and stored in a clean and
sanitary manner. Employers shall maintain adequate supplies for timely
replacement of lost, worn, or broken PPE."
PPE Distribution: As tasked under the mission assignment, OSHA provided
PPE on an ad hoc basis when it encountered workers who lacked it or
whose PPE was broken or ineffective.
Source of PPE: The report makes an issue of whether PPE was purchased
through FEMA's vendor or through OSHA's Cincinnati Technical Center
(CTC). There may have been discussion about how PPE would be acquired,
but it had no impact on whether PPE was available for the responders.
Need for Mental Health Services: The report states, "OSHA did not
coordinate with them [HHS]." This statement is not accurate. Within one
week of receiving a mission assignment, OSHA sent its Director of
Occupational Medicine, a physician, to Louisiana to address the need
for mental health services and determine how best to deliver them.
Further, OSHA staffed a desk at the HHS Secretary's Operations Center
to address worker safety and health issues, providing an industrial
hygienist and an occupational physician daily to support this function.
OSHA continually reached out to HHS, FEMA, and other agencies to meet
its obligations under the mission assignment. Through regular
discussions with FEMA and HHS, it was decided that the mission
assignment from FEMA to Federal Occupational Health (FOH), a service
unit within FUN, addressed the need for on-site mental health services.
This included the need for assistance materials for deployed personnel,
their supervisors, and families, concerning psychological resiliency
during disaster response and recovery. Under the mission assignment,
OSHA coordinated with FEMA and HHS to develop these materials and make
them available to federal agencies.
Agency Unawareness of OSHA's Role in a Large Disaster: OSHA does not
believe the report accurately reflects the awareness of the Worker
Safety and Health Support Annex among the federal agencies prior to
Hurricane Katrina. All federal agencies signed off on the NRP,
including the Worker Safety and Health Support Annex. In addition,
several of the agencies most involved in Katrina response operations
(FEMA, USACE, EPA, HHS, etc.) are cooperating agencies to the Support
Annex. While not all of the employees of these federal agencies may
have known about the Support Annex or the full extent of the resources
available through it, the Support Annex was generally recognized among
the federal agencies, and agencies were advocating for its
implementation. Further, once OSHA was activated to implement the
Annex, OSHA personnel staffed the JFOs, established contacts with state
and federal agencies, held individual briefings with federal and state
entities concerning OSHA's role in Katrina response and recovery, and
attended numerous daily meetings that were also attended by federal and
state agencies.
What may not be completely understood throughout the federal community
was how to implement the Support Annex and to access its resources.
This was largely due to the fact that the Worker Safety and Health
Support Annex is the only support annex that requires a mission
assignment to both provide financial resources to an Agency and be
implemented. All other support annexes are administrative and process-
oriented rather than focused on providing operational support at
disaster sites. Since most resources are provided by Emergency Support
Functions, it was not clear among the federal agencies how to activate
the resources available through the Support Annex.
Enforcement: OSHA continued to investigate fatalities, complaints, and
referrals throughout its response efforts. OSHA did not "suspend"
enforcement during the response to Katrina. Rather, the agency delayed
planned inspection activities as appropriate to the unique
circumstances. Normal enforcement operations continued nationwide
except in the specific areas devastated by the storm. Furthermore,
OSHA's inspections levels for FY2006 continued at the levels planned
for the year. Despite responding to and assisting the recovery of one
of the nations worst natural disasters, OSHA's regular staff in
Louisiana conducted 616 inspections for fiscal year 2006, exceeding
their inspection goal by nine percent.
OSHA resumed full enforcement in the areas affected by the stones as
response operations ended. As of January 25, 2006, normal enforcement
operations for planned inspections resumed throughout Florida and
Alabama, in Mississippi north of Interstate 10, and in Louisiana
outside of the seven parishes in and around New Orleans. On June 28,
2006, normal operations for planned inspections resumed throughout
Mississippi. OSHA resumed normal operation for planned inspections
throughout Louisiana on September 15, 2006.
Recordkeeping: OSHA agrees with GAO's recommendation that recognizes
the benefits of collecting data on injuries and illnesses sustained by
workers who respond to disasters as envisioned by the Worker Safety and
Health Support Annex. OSHA's existing injury and illness recordkeeping
forms (OSHA Forms 300 and 301) and definitions are a good platform on
which to build. These forms and definitions provide two major benefits:
1) they are already well known and understood, as all federal agencies
currently use these forms, as required by 29 CFR Part 1960 Subpart 1
(effective January 1, 2005); and 2) the forms provide the detailed
information needed to evaluate trends and identify problem areas.
However, as evidenced in this report, emergency and/or disaster
conditions present unique challenges not anticipated by OSHA's current
recordkeeping rule. These challenges include:
* The need for real time data collection and dissemination;
* The need to identify responsibilities of federal, state, and local
government agencies for reporting during a response;
* The need to clarify contractual obligations to report injuries and
illnesses in a disaster response; and:
* Prioritization of the use of limited man-power.
Again, OSHA appreciates the opportunity for advance review and comment
on this draft report.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
Edwin G. Foulke, Jr.
GAO's Response to OSHA's Comments:
1. We disagree that our report does not fairly and adequately capture
the actions OSHA took to prevent occupational injuries and illnesses
and work-related fatalities in the Hurricane Katrina response
operations. The information on pages 15 through 27of the report details
many of these activities, but the purpose of the report was to provide
a broader picture of OSHA's overall effectiveness. While the magnitude
of the activities accomplished by OSHA's field staff was noteworthy,
the agency's overall effectiveness was hampered by its lack of
preparation for implementing its responsibilities under the Annex at
the national level. This was also noted by the Department of Homeland
Security's National Preparedness Task Force, which stated in its
technical comments that, "As a signatory agency, Department of Labor
should have anticipated and put in place mechanisms to ensure the
success of OSHA in meeting their Workforce Safety responsibilities." In
addition, our work focused on OSHA's activities through December 2006,
not December 2005.
2. Although OSHA provides more detailed information about its action
during the response to Hurricane Katrina, our report mentions many of
these same activities. For example, on page 33 of the report, we stated
that OSHA distributed personal protective equipment to many agencies
and workers; on pages 25 to 27, we noted that OSHA sampled many
worksites for hazards; on pages 19 and 20, we provided examples of the
quick cards and fact sheets OSHA developed and distributed throughout
the Gulf; and on page 21, we discussed the thousands of interventions
that the agency's staff conducted.
3. We agree that OSHA, nor any other federal agency, was responsible
for collecting information on the number of workers deployed to the
Gulf area in response to Hurricane Katrina. In the absence of such
information, we attempted to collect it ourselves but, as noted in the
report, were not entirely successful because many of the agencies we
contacted did not have systems in place for tracking the number of
workers deployed.
4. We noted on page 9 of the report that the mission assignment FEMA
issued to OSHA implementing the Annex for Hurricane Katrina included
all of the activities listed in the Annex except long-term medical
monitoring. We measured the effectiveness of OSHA's performance only
against those activities included in its mission assignment.
5. Despite OSHA's efforts, as noted on page 32 of the report, other
agency officials told us that there still were gaps in the training
provided to workers involved in the response effort and additional
information was needed about available training.
6. While we agree that establishing a personal protective equipment
program for a disaster response is a difficult and complex task, we
continue to believe that the underlying issue is the need for OSHA to
define how it will implement and monitor such a program as specified in
the Annex. The issues that OSHA raises need to be addressed in
developing an incident personal protective equipment program for future
disasters, including developing a process for deciding what providing
equipment on an "ad-hoc" basis means, what types of equipment will be
provided, who will provide it, which workers will receive it, and where
will it be stored.
7. We disagree with OSHA's comment that our statement about its lack of
coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services is
inaccurate. Our statement is based on OSHA's lack of coordination
before the disaster in order to ensure that the cooperating agencies
were adequately prepared to meet the mental health needs of workers.
Furthermore, in technical comments on the report, the Department of
Homeland Security's National Preparedness Task Force also noted this
lack of coordination. It stated that OSHA did not seek assistance from
cooperating agencies that have provided mental health services during
major events in the past, such as the Department of Health and Human
Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
8. We disagree with OSHA's assertion that the report does not
accurately reflect the awareness of the Annex among federal agencies
before Hurricane Katrina. As noted in the report, many of the agency
officials we interviewed who were in charge of day-to-day operations in
the Gulf area were not aware of OSHA's role or the services it could
provide. We continue to believe that OSHA needs to provide information
to federal, state, and local agencies about its role in a disaster,
including seeking opportunities to participate in emergency
preparedness exercises at all levels of government. Because so many
responders are associated with nonfederal agencies, it is particularly
important for OSHA to reach out to state and local agencies to provide
this information.
9. We used the word "suspend" to describe the fact that, in its press
releases, OSHA noted that it had "exempted" large areas of the three
affected states from its normal enforcement operations for specific
periods and limited its inspections to cases involving fatalities,
catastrophic accidents, or complaints, as noted on page 7 of the
report. We changed the wording of the report in response to OSHA's
technical comments and no longer use the term "suspend." However, we
believe that this is an accurate reflection of the change in OSHA's
activities during a disaster.
10. The challenges OSHA recognizes in its comments regarding the use of
its standard recordkeeping forms (OSHA forms 300 and 301) to collect
data on injuries and illnesses sustained by workers during a disaster
correctly identify some of the drawbacks involved in using the forms
for this purpose. OSHA's comments also emphasize the need for it to
develop a process for collecting needed data that overcomes the
challenges identified. We disagree, however, that the forms are a good
platform on which to build such a process. They do not contain detailed
information on injuries, and employers are not required to include many
of the more minor injuries and illnesses sustained by workers, such as
those requiring only first aid. In addition, the use of the logs could
cause confusion among federal agencies about whether the standard rules
for recording injuries and illnesses are to be applied. For example,
federal agencies are not normally required to submit their injury and
illness logs to OSHA, but OSHA will need to obtain this information on
a timely basis during a disaster response in order to monitor injuries
and illnesses and identify trends.
[End of section]
Appendix V: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:
GAO Contact:
Daniel Bertoni, (202) 512-5988 or Hbertonid@gao.govH:
Acknowledgments:
Revae E. Moran, Assistant Director, and Karen A. Brown, Analyst in
Charge, managed all aspects of the assignment. Amanda M. Mackison,
Claudine L. Pauselli, and Linda W. Stokes made significant
contributions to the report. In addition, James D. Ashley, Lise Levie,
Sheila R. McCoy, Jean L. McSween, David Perkins, and Tovah Rom provided
key technical and legal assistance.
[End of section]
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September 11: HHS Has Screened Additional Federal Responders for World
Trade Center Health Effects, but Plans for Awarding Funds for Treatment
Are Incomplete. HGAO-06-1092TH. Washington, D.C.: September 8, 2006.
Catastrophic Disasters: Enhanced Leadership, Capabilities, and
Accountability Controls Will Improve the Effectiveness of the Nation's
Preparedness, Response, and Recovery System. HGAO-06-618H. Washington,
D.C.: September 6, 2006.
Coast Guard: Observations on the Preparation, Response, and Recovery
Missions Related to Hurricane Katrina. HGAO-06-903H. Washington, D.C.:
July 31, 2006.
Hurricane Katrina: Better Plans and Exercises Needed to Guide the
Military's Response to Catastrophic Natural Disasters.HGAO-06-643H.
Washington, D.C.: May 15, 2006.
Hurricane Katrina: Status of the Health Care System in New Orleans and
Difficult Decisions Related to Efforts to Rebuild It Approximately 6
Months After Hurricane Katrina. HGAO-06-576RH. Washington, D.C.: March
28, 2006.
GAO's Preliminary Observations Regarding Preparedness and Response to
Hurricane Katrina and Rita. HGAO-06-365RH. Washington, D.C.: February
1, 2006.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: Provision of Charitable Assistance. HGAO-
06-297TH. Washington, D.C.: December 13, 2005.
September 11: Monitoring of World Trade Center Health Effects Has
Progressed, but Not for Federal Responders. HGAO-05-1020TH. Washington,
D.C.: September 10, 2005.
FOOTNOTES
[1] At present, 22 states have been approved by OSHA to operate their
own enforcement programs covering all private sector workers and state
and local public sector workers, and 4 have been approved to cover
state and local public sector workers only.
[2] OSHA retains the ability to enforce regulations and issue citations
even when it is in a technical assistance role and may cite employers
that do not comply with the suggestions of OSHA staff or if there is an
employee complaint or a fatality.
[3] Reimbursement is provided under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster
Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (the Stafford Act) 42 U.S.C. §
5147.
[4] In the mission assignment FEMA issued to OSHA implementing the
Annex for Hurricane Katrina, FEMA stated that it did not have authority
under the Stafford Act to pay for the collection and management of data
for long-term studies or analysis.
[5] In order for state and local agency workers in a state to be
covered by the Stafford Act in a disaster, the governor of the affected
state must specifically request services from FEMA. For Hurricane
Katrina, none of the governors of the three states requested assistance
with safety and health issues.
[6] National Guard officials told us the agency did not employ any
contractor personnel during the response to Hurricane Katrina.
[7] Officials with the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs told us
they could not use their computer database to distinguish claims for
injuries or illnesses related to Hurricane Katrina from those related
to Hurricane Rita, a hurricane that caused extensive damage in Texas
and Louisiana in September 2005.
[8] Some of the fatalities reported involved workers that were not
covered under OSHA's mission assignment, such as volunteers or private
sector employees.
[9] OSHA refers to these visits to work sites by its field staff in
which potentially hazardous situations were identified and corrected as
"interventions."
[10] A majority of the disaster response efforts FEMA oversees involve
small, regional disasters, such as flooding in a single county. FEMA
oversees 50 to 60 such disasters annually.
[11] The Annex assigns responsibility to OSHA for establishing a Worker
Safety and Health Support Annex Coordination Committee. This committee-
-comprised of officials from DOD, the Department of Energy, the
Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health, the National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences, the Coast Guard, and EPA--is responsible for
coordinating the assets needed to protect worker safety and health at
all levels of government during a disaster.
[12] Specifically, OSHA was tasked with providing short-term
psychological first aid during and after incident response and recovery
activities. Psychological first aid is an approach to help children,
adolescents, adults and families in the immediate aftermath of disaster
and terrorism. It is designed to reduce the initial distress caused by
traumatic events and to foster short-and long-term adaptive functioning
and coping.
[13] Some immigrants may have been employed by federal contractors and,
therefore, covered under OSHA's mission assignments, but many of these
workers were not employed by federal contractors.
[14] The Advancement Project, the National Immigration Law Center, and
the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition, And Injustice For All:
Workers' Lives in the Reconstruction of New Orleans, (2006).
[15] The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is part of
the Department of Health and Human Services' National Institutes of
Health.
[16] Officials with the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs told
us they could not separate claims related to Hurricane Katrina from
claims related to Hurricane Rita using the information recorded in
their database.
[17] DOD, for example, did not track the number of active duty Navy
personnel who assisted with rescue and recovery efforts in the Gulf
because the Navy base was damaged by the hurricane and they were not
able to report this information.
[18] Both OSHA and USACE provided us with information on one of the
fatalities.
[19] OSHA's National Emergency Management Plan (HEMP) clarifies
procedures and policy for OSHA's national office and regional offices
during responses to nationally significant incidents.
[20] FEMA utilizes mission assignments to specify the tasks the
department or agency is to perform during a specific incident. FEMA's
mission assignment identifies the specific tasks the department is to
perform to support the inter-agency efforts for a specific incident.
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