"FEMA has not been "incompetent"."
“Yeah. Isn't it amazing that the Governors of Mississippi and Alabama both just said FEMA has been "outstanding" and has responded to every request. FEMA works fine when there is leadership. Nothing works fine when you've got a government like Lousiana voted for itself."
Check out this post on another blog about your point: http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007442.php#c32
"This is the price of federalism. It’s a control issue. The federal government cannot be any more efficient in disaster relief than the affected state and local governments permit. Louisiana has the most corrupt and inefficient state government in the United States. New Orleans has the most corrupt and inefficient municipal government of any major city in the United States. The local ruling elites like it that way – they keep their power and their corrupt ways of doing business.They’ve been driving honest businesses and people away for scores of years. This was true a long time ago and is true now. Read:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_08_31_05ng.html - Will New Orleans Recover? which says:
"And the locals and outsiders who try to help New Orleans in the weeks and months to come will do so with no local institutional infrastructure to back them up. New Orleans has no real competent government or civil infrastructure — and no aggressive media or organized citizens’ groups to prod public officials in the right direction during what will be, in the best-case scenario, a painstaking path to normalcy.... But the city’s decline over the past three decades has left it impoverished and lacking the resources to build its economy from within. New Orleans can’t take care of itself even when it is not 80 percent underwater ...
... it’s up to New Orleans, not the feds, to dig deep within itself to rebuild its economic and social infrastructure before the tourists ever will flock back to pump cash into the city’s economy. It will take a miracle. New Orleans has experienced a steady brain drain and fiscal drain for decades, as affluent corporations and individuals have fled, leaving behind a large population of people dependent on the government. Socially, New Orleans is one of America’s last helpless cities—just at the moment when it must do all it can to help itself survive."
I read a blog post this morning (can’t remember where) by a Mississippi River shipping guy who had grown up in New Orleans saying that shipping companies had been leaving the Port of New Orleans for as long as he’d been in business, in favor of other River ports, because it cost too much to do business at the Port of New Orleans due to theft and corruption.Then check out how New Orleans elites behaved during the 1927 flood, in this book:
RISING TIDE: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
and compare that with what is going on now, as reported here (New Orleans live blog:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/
"The following is the result of an interview I just conducted via cell phone with a New Orleans citizen stranded at the Convention Center. I don't know what you're hearing in the mainstream media or in the press conferences from the city and state officials, but here is the truth:"Bigfoot" is a bar manager and DJ on Bourbon Street, and is a local personality and icon in the city. He is a lifelong resident of the city, born and raised. He rode out the storm itself in the Iberville Projects because he knew he would be above any flood waters. Here is his story as told to me moments ago. I took notes while he talked and then I asked some questions:
Three days ago, police and national guard troops told citizens to head toward the Crescent City Connection Bridge to await transportation out of the area. The citizens trekked over to the Convention Center and waited for the buses which they were told would take them to Houston or Alabama or somewhere else, out of this area. It's been 3 days, and the buses have yet to appear.
Although obviously he has no exact count, he estimates more than 10,000 people are packed into and around and outside the convention center still waiting for the buses. They had no food, no water, and no medicine for the last three days, until today, when the National Guard drove over the bridge above them, and tossed out supplies over the side crashing down to the ground below. Much of the supplies were destroyed from the drop. Many people tried to catch the supplies to protect them before they hit the ground. Some offered to walk all the way around up the bridge and bring the supplies down, but any attempt to approach the police or national guard resulted in weapons being aimed at them.
There are many infants and elderly people among them, as well as many people who were injured jumping out of windows to escape flood water and the like -- all of them in dire straights.
Any attempt to flag down police results in being told to get away at gunpoint. Hour after hour they watch buses pass by filled with people from other areas. Tensions are very high, and there has been at least one murder and several fights. 8 or 9 dead people have been stored in a freezer in the area, and 2 of these dead people are kids.
The people are so desperate that they're doing anything they can think of to impress the authorities enough to bring some buses. These things include standing in single file lines with the eldery in front, women and children next; sweeping up the area and cleaning the windows and anything else that would show the people are not barbarians.
The buses never stop.
Before the supplies were pitched off the bridge today, people had to break into buildings in the area to try to find food and water for their families. There was not enough. This spurred many families to break into cars to try to escape the city. There was no police response to the auto thefts until the mob reached the rich area -- Saulet Condos -- once they tried to get cars from there... well then the whole swat teams began showing up with rifles pointed. Snipers got on the roof and told people to get back ..."
If you've read RISING TIDE, it is obvious that the behavior of New Orleans elites and the government they control has not changed in the least since 1927. Them first and to hell with everyone else.
I.e., the reason Louisiana Governor Blanco refused to suspend habeas corpus and declare martial law for days after such was obviously necessary, and still refuses to formally ask for federal military assistance in restoring order (the first two are legal prerequisites to the third – legal words of art are required for the third), is that Louisiana & New Orleans elites would no longer be able to have special protection and most especially control over the relief efforts.
Honest, efficient, government is the last thing they want, and “federal military assistance in restoring order” would provide just that.
Look carefully at what is going on, and consider how Louisiana & New Orleans government are loathe to give up control of public order and relief to the federal government.
It’s about power. They really, really, really, don’t want to cede power to the federal government. This drastically limits what the federal government can do to help.
Anyone with experience in emergency management can tell you how essential it is that one person and one organization be ultimately in charge of major disasters. Lousiana and New Orleans elites, and the governments they control, do not want that to happen. Honest, efficient, government is their enemy."
Great post. Thanks.
Great series of posts you put together there, and the essential point boils down to three words.
That plays between the politicians, and it plays with the thugs.
http://www.donaldsensing.com/index.php/2005/09/02/mayor-nagins-kate-hale-moment/#comment-7688
"Robert Modean Says:
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:24 pmSorry Joel & ROE, but you guys are WAAAYYY off base in criticizing FEMA. Disaster preparedness is the responsibility of State and Local authorities – in this case LEMA (The Louisiana Emergency Management Agency). There is a state-wide director for disaster relief in every state – that person is called the Governor. There is a local director for disaster relief in every municipality – that person is called the Mayor.
FEMA is a coordinating body that assists State and Local authorities in getting the resources they need. Because they are the “go to” people most folks are under the impression that they are in charge, and in fact if the State and Local authorities abdicate control over a disaster area they will take over. Typically after the initial response to a disaster the local guys do just that, leave FEMA in control. That’s because they have the experience and personnel to manage disasters of this scale.
Disclosure: I’m a volunteer coordinator for MEMA (The Missouri Emergency Management Agency), I’ve been through three major floods and a few big storms that generated enough tornado damage to get the affected counties disaster relief – believe me when I tell you what we are seeing from FEMA now is lightyears ahead of what I’ve seen from them in the past. Typically it took two to three days just to get the disaster declaration, then another two to three to get FEMA deployed – of course by then the local guys had been on the ground working around the clock for five or six days and we were more than happy to dump everything in FEMA’s lap. That’s the way the system is designed. Bush saw that and tried to skip a few steps to speed things up, he pre-declared the areas disaster areas. So what we are seeing in NO is the result of a convergence of factors:
First, the storm damage was bad, but the flooding has made relief efforts ten times harder than anything they could have imagined. Second, Mayor Nagin’s performance has been pathetic. This is the worst case of poor planning and criminal incompetence I’ve ever seen.
Like I said, Bush declared the gulf coast area a Federal Disaster area on Saturday – two days before Katrina hit. That freed up FEMA resources for local and state coordinators and allowed for the pre-positioning of supplies so they could be rapidly deployed to the affected areas. Mayor Nagin waited until the last minute to call for an evacuation of the city, but the poorest people could not evacuate – why weren’t school busses used to get them out of town?
Mayor Nagin made the last minute decision to declare the Superdome and COnvention centers as refuge relocation points – why weren’t they stocked with water, food, bedding, generators, and fuel? Why weren’t hospitals offered additional resources by the Mayors office?
Mayor Nagin made the decision to allow looting and told the police to focus on Search and Rescue – but looting hinders S&R efforts (as we’ve seen) and no one I know could believe that decision – it’s emergency management 101, preserving order preserves life. There’s plenty of blame to go around – Blanco deserves her share too – but the real culprit in the aftermath here is Nagin."