He's got a point. Look at the situation outside the Convention Center...thousands stranded for days with no food or water except what they've been able to loot from inside the concession areas, SEVEN DEAD BODIES STILL THERE, no evacuation, no information. If the AP presstitutes and TV crews can get there, then somebody else can get there with food, water, and medicine.
I don't know who dropped the ball here--city authorities in New Orleans, the state of Louisiana, FEMA, DHS, the National Guard, hell, maybe the Tooth Fairy for all I know--but this thing is turning into a fustercluck of totally epic proportions. This is not just garden-variety governmental incompetence like when the DMV screws up your driving records. This is incompetence that is killing people.
And I know this is no time for politics, but think about this--the MSM WILL turn this back around on Bush. Nagin and Blanco will get an undeserved pass; the entirety of the horrendous response to this will be blamed on the Federal government and the Bush administration. Bank on it.
}:-)4
This is a disaster of epic proportions.And, no branch of government can step up to a podium and tell you the truth.That is, this is something even your beloved governments are gonna struggle big-time with.They're humans, not gods.Sometimes you just have to fend for yourself.
I concur. The situation is ridiculous, regardless of who dropped the ball.
FEMA has known for a long time that a direct hit on NO would cause these problems, but they are addressing the situation as if it is a complete surprise.
FEMA gets Hurricane Katrina help from unlikely place [FCW.com, 08/29/05]
BY Bob Brewin
Published on Aug. 31, 2005
Operation of the New Orleans police radio system in the wake of Hurricane Katrina has been plagued not only by floodwaters but by a lack of natural gas to power generators.
Not only that, Louisiana State Police turned away repair technicians when they attempted to reach the city, according to an on-scene report the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International relayed to Federal Computer Week.
The report, contained in an e-mail Wednesday from Dominic Tusa, a communications consultant in Covington, La., to Willis Carter, chief of communications for the Shreveport, La. fire department said the New Orleans Police Department’s dispatch center on the second floor of police headquarters was flooded. The police were forced to relocate to the nearby Hilton Hotel.
Tusa said the police department’s citywide 800 MHz radio system functioned well during and immediately after the hurricane hit New Orleans, but since then natural gas service to the prime downtown transmitter site was disrupted and the generator was out. Transmitter sites for the police radio system “are also underwater with the rising water and [are] now disabled,” Tusa said.
Owners of the sites that housed police radio transmitters would not allow installation of liquefied petroleum gas tanks as a backup to piped gas, meaning generators did not have any fuel when the main lines were cut, Tusa said.
Radio repair technicians attempting to enter the city were turned away by the state police, even though they had letters from the city police authorizing their access, Tusa said.
In contrast to the problems in New Orleans, Tusa said the Harrison County, Miss., Department of Public Safety’s radio system, which serves Gulfport and Biloxi, remained fully operational throughout the storm and continued to operate afterward. He added that the system has experienced generator problems, “but those are being resolved as they crop up. “
Check this post out: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1474387/posts?page=106#106
I'm not willing to completely agree with anything the poster writes here, but it might get you to understand the magnitude of this problem. Airlift is not the answer to taking care of a half million or more people.