Posted on 09/02/2005 1:45:44 PM PDT by InspiredPath1
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. --Betty Babitzke and her husband were so frustrated after Hurricane Andrew slammed into Florida in 1992 that they pulled out a map and started looking for a safer part of the state in which to spend their retirement. They settled on Punta Gorda.
Then, two weeks ago, came Hurricane Charley, second only to Andrew on the list of Florida's most destructive hurricanes.
That is because life after Charley is much better than life after Andrew.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and state and local authorities are being praised for their response to Charley, something that did not happen after Andrew.
"After Andrew, it was chaotic, absolutely chaotic," Babitzke said, describing the lack of services and free-for-all created by intersections with missing signs and signals. "Cleanup was extremely slow. There's no comparison. This response team, they have it together. They're at least three days ahead. It's fabulous."
It is a far cry from what Kate Hale saw 12 years ago. Hale, who was the Dade County emergency management director when Andrew hit, asked in exasperation in the storm's aftermath: "Where in the hell is the cavalry?"
This time, "they've had food, water, people, equipment and communications in almost immediately. We were waiting days for that and sometimes longer," said Hale, now president and chief executive of the South Florida Mental Health Association. "This one's gone off the way you would want to see things happen."
It took four days for FEMA to get its first people into South Florida after Andrew. In the same time after Charley, disaster workers had finished search-and-rescue operations and were focused on getting residents necessities like food and water.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
The buses under water, poor planning. Why doesn't someone just say, it's NOT the FED's job to make the emergancy plans for a STATE and CITY. There's NO WAY the FED's can plan evac's and for worse senerio for ever major city in the USA.
I'm getting so sick of hearing about all the bad things going on because some people evidently have only money and control of thier territory on their brains and no way to think farther ahead then giving it to whomever they believe is their suppessor.
FEMA is there, was there right afterwords and if they have to do the organization from the ground up because the state and cities involved couldn't be bothered to develope a worst senerio plan, yeah it's gonna take longer, especially when you're working with flooding, roads lost and miles of coastline, not just one city.
NOPE they didn't complain about Clinton, just belly-ached about the speed of food and water arriving.
I grew up in South Florida and now reside in North Central Florida. Back then in the aftermath of hurricanes, we didn't have the "McDonald's mentality", where everyone wants it yesterday. People learned to get along the best they could, despite the damage and lack of food or water. And we helped each other.
But like the people in NOLA, many in Miami (prior to Andrew) didn't heed the years of advice to stock up on supplies or to evacuate when told to do so.
More hard headed people, same result.
Most have no one to blame but themselves.
BTW, My cousin is a nurse at Charity Hospital, and I hope to get word soon that he has been evacuated with his patients to Texas. I have been praying for him and hope to see him soon.
"Make it so."
It was Tuesday morning before any of us recognized the magnitude of this disaster.
By Friday morning, massive federal aid, FEMA and military, was pouring into all the affected areas.
That's three days.
That is NOT "paralysis."
Granted, we live in an "instant" socienty, and we've grown accustomed to pushing a button and getting immediate results. That ain't happening this time, because this disaster is simply overwhelming.
And three days is not too long for organizing and mobilizing the kind of relief we are seeing on the ground and in the air.
I was here in South Dade at our home for Andrew and it did take the better part of a week before significant outside help was in place.
After a while, the 82nd Airborne showed up, set up camp 2 blocks away. For close to a month, you couldn't get into the neighborhood after dark without ID, there were military checkpoints at every intersection. Curfew 10 PM.
I remember, August 25, after the storm passed west and once it was safe to go out of the house, driving around the neighborhood, mostly on peoples's lawns, since the streets were all blocked by debris. I almost got lost in my own neighborhood, it looked so different. The traffic lights weren't just not working, they were blown away, no one knew where they were, even. Almost every house had structural damage, but most were still standing. Not all, several were completely demolished. There were fish, peacock bass, finning in puddles alongside the road.
But the point is, for days we were on our own, no phones to call cops or ambulances, they couldn't come even if you'd gotten hold of them, the streets were all blocked with trees and debris. No communications at all, no way to buy food, gas, any kinds of supplies, no nothing. We didn't even know how far away the area was devastated, but we assumed it was far.
I'd grown up hearing that hurricane preparation meant having food and other kinds of supplies on hand for 5 days or more, so luckily we had plenty of food and a Coleman stove with a gallon of gas to power it. And we were armed.
My feelings about NOLA. The city and the state knew this flooding would happen in the case of a strong hurricane strike, but neither prepared for it anyway, sometimes I guess it's hard to allocate funds for future catasphrophes that not everyone worries about. But the leadership there is culpable.
On the national level, I believe it's within constitutional bounds to send in troops to restore order in the cause of national security, which seems reasonable to me when major areas of the country are affected, as they are now, and were after Andrew.
DipSh!ts
That's funny. Ha hahahaha!
How long did they evacuate Miami for?
Yeah. That post had more completely-wrong statements than any I've seen on FR.
The point that continues to be overlooked in all of this is that there were fifty miles of people who needed help between the staging areas and New Orleans. You could hardly expect the first rescuers to drive right by those in trouble simply so they could get to N.O. and be seen by the TV cameras. Imagine the outcry if they had.
And here's an example of how wide-spread and efficient that effort has been: The request for swiftwater rescue teams from CALIFORNIA came in on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the levees broke.
Gitmo may have meant that the winds were stronger in Miami, which is apparently true.
Of course the situation in NOLA, completely flooded, is considerably worse than Miami in terms of human suffering.
I wasn't the one who said Miami was worse. I was refuting every sentence in that post by america-rules. He said Miami was worse. I responded with "How many thousands were killed in Homestead? And how deep was the water a week later?"
OK, right, I checked it out, the post you refuted by america-Rules is off the wall on the face of it. The death toll from Andrew was amazingly small, maybe less than 50, including the aftermath? My apologies.
I'm not looking forward to finding out these details RE Katrina.
What will be interesting will be the studies of those who survived the storm but not the city. And compare those to people who got themselves out. Like these people.
Thanks for that story. Some folks don't realize that civilization is a fragile construct, made possible in a free country by the character of the citizens, in a totalitarian country by their fear.
It's time for some fear in NO.
How long did it take Lawton Childs to reqest Fed assistance, then when did FEMA show up.
I have a feeling the same thing is in play here with the liberal party.
Different kind of people though (mixed white, black, hispanic), we didn't complain all THAT much, and we took law and order into our own hands..
A much belated THANK YOU from a local resident of Cutler Ridge, at the time. You guys were GREAT and sure made us ALL feel a TON better. I will never forget that.
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