Posted on 09/03/2005 12:17:06 PM PDT by coffee260
We are getting a LOT of email and commentary from folks who are simply desperate to assign blame for this hurricane and the lackluster response somewhere. Frankly, the whole exercise sickens me. After 9/11 (and in my opinion, this disaster is clearly worse), at least we had the decency to wait a couple of years before we appointed a finger-pointing commission (which, we are learning, failed to notice the since most important and necessary target for finger-pointing, but I digress). However, given that folks are determined to finger-point right now, before the situation is even returned to normalcy, let us by all means examine a few pieces of relevant evidence, while they are "in the raw" and before they get dismissed as "irrelevant" by the inevitable official finger-pointing commission.
Sometime after the hurricane hit, when nobody knew what the heck was going on, we decided that it might be worthwhile to discover if there were, in fact, any official plans to deal with just the eventuality that the city of New Orleans is currently facing.
It turns out, there was an official plan on the books for the officials of the city of New Orleans - and the reason it is damning is that it reads like a laundry list of things that were not done in preparation for this hurricane. Take a look at the horror below the fold:
Sep 3rd, 2005: 11:22:36
One of the things we have been hearing is that many of the people who did not evacuate did not do so because the city had no means of getting an evacuation order to them, in that they did not have televisions in their homes. Well, the official city plan recognizes the need to be ready to evacuate at any time, the urgent need for having a warning system for those who cannot be reached by traditional media, and the most urgent need for timely notice to those individuals:
Evacuation planning and actual implementation has to be based upon certain assumptions. It must be understood that the need to evacuate elements of the population can occur at any time, events resulting in evacuations occur with various amounts of lead time and every evacuation will be unique and offer unexpected challenges to those conducting the evacuation. Evacuations in response to hazardous material spills or sudden severe weather are provided with little or no warning, and often have to be accomplished after the fact, and in a disaster response environment. Throughout the Parish persons with special needs, require special consideration regarding notification, transportation, and sheltering. Resources of equipment, facilities and personnel are more difficult to locate and coordinate when an evacuation is required during late night or early morning hours. If possible, advance warning should be given so an evacuation can be coordinated. Adequate provisions should be maintained at all times in order to conduct a warning or alert of an area. Certain hazards, such as a hurricane, provide some lead time for coordinating an evacuation. However, this can not be considered a certainty. Plus, the sheer size of an evacuation in response to an approaching hurricane creates the need for the use of community-wide warning resources, which cannot be limited to our City's geographical boundaries. Evacuation of major portions of our population, either in response to localized or citywide disasters, can only be accomplished if the citizens and visitors are kept informed of approaching threats on a timely schedule, and if they are notified of the need to evacuate in a timely and organized manner. If an evacuation order is issued without the mechanisms needed to disseminate the information to the affected persons, then we face the possibility of having large numbers of people either stranded and left to the mercy of a storm, or left in an area impacted by toxic materials.
Whoops.
The plan also lays out, with detailed explanations, the kind of notice a mandatory evacuation order requires to implement:
Using information developed as part of the Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Task Force and other research, the City of New Orleans has established a maximum acceptable hurricane evacuation time standard for a Category 3 storm event of 72 hours. This is based on clearance time or is the time required to clear all vehicles evacuating in response to a hurricane situation from area roadways. Clearance time begins when the first evacuating vehicle enters the road network and ends when the last evacuating vehicle reaches its destination. Clearance time also includes the time required by evacuees to secure their homes and prepare to leave (mobilization time); the time spent by evacuees traveling along the road network (travel time); and the time spent by evacuees waiting along the road network due to traffic congestion (delay time). Clearance time does not refer to the time a single vehicle spends traveling on the road network. Evacuation notices or orders will be issued during three stages prior to gale force winds making landfall.
Seventy-two hours. Not, you know, twenty-four hours. This is especially damning given that machiavel has already chronicled Nagin's stunning recalcitrance to issue a mandatory evacuation order.
But wait, there's more:
It must be understood that this Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan is an all-hazard response plan, and is applicable to events of all sizes, affecting even the smallest segments of the community. Evacuation procedures for small scale and localized evacuations are conducted per the SOPs of the New Orleans Fire Department and the New Orleans Police Department. However, due to the sheer size and number of persons to be evacuated, should a major tropical weather system or other catastrophic event threaten or impact the area, specifically directed long range planning and coordination of resources and responsibilities efforts must be undertaken. The clearance times facing Orleans Parish for a severe hurricane will necessitate proper traffic control and early evacuating decision making. The evacuation must be completed before the arrival of gale force winds. Evacuation should also start when school is not in session and when there is at least eight (8) hours of daylight included in the evacuation time allowed. Provisions must be made for the removal of disabled vehicles. Flooding of roadways due to rainfall before a hurricane arrives could close off critical evacuation routes rendering evacuation impossible. Want more?
The safe evacuation of threatened populations when endangered by a major catastrophic event is one of the principle reasons for developing a Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan. The thorough identification of at-risk populations, transportation and sheltering resources, evacuation routes and potential bottlenecks and choke points, and the establishment of the management team that will coordinate not only the evacuation but which will monitor and direct the sheltering and return of affected populations, are the primary tasks of evacuation planning. Due to the geography of New Orleans and the varying scales of potential disasters and their resulting emergency evacuations, different plans are in place for small-scale evacuations and for citywide relocations of whole populations. Authority to issue evacuations of elements of the population is vested in the Mayor. By Executive Order, the chief elected official, the Mayor of the City of New Orleans, has the authority to order the evacuation of residents threatened by an approaching hurricane.
I could go on, but at this point, it feels like I am beating a dead and decomposing horse. Sorry, Mayor Nagin, you screwed the pooch on this one. These people should never have been left in your city - they still ARE in your city because of your recalcitrance and lack of planning (you didn't follow your own stupid plan!) and now you are coming unglued at the seams over the people that are still in our city because no one knows they're there? And you have the audacity to suggest that the reason this is happening is everyone's fault but your own?
I can only hope that this is Mayor Nagin's way of manifesting his shame - since that is the only emotion he is justified in feeling right now.
The Dems are going to mount a lights out, no-holds-barred effort to blame this on racism.
Great find. Thanks for posting.
This needs to stay at the top.
I hope that RedState has sent this to all the MSM.
This is an excellent piece by Ben Stein on this subject.
Get Off His Back
By Ben Stein
Published 9/2/2005 11:59:59 PM
A few truths, for those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth:
1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying.
2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.
3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.
4.) There is no overwhelming evidence that global warming exists as a man-made phenomenon. There is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists. There is no clear evidence that if it does exist it makes hurricanes more powerful or makes them aim at cities with large numbers of poor people. If global warming is a real phenomenon, which it may well be, it started long before George Bush was inaugurated, and would not have been affected at all by the Kyoto treaty, considering that Kyoto does not cover the world's worst polluters -- China, India, and Brazil. In a word, George Bush had zero to do with causing this hurricane. To speculate otherwise is belief in sorcery.
6.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan. It is not his fault that many persons in New Orleans were too confused to realize how dangerous the hurricane would be. They were certainly warned. It's not George Bush's fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile.
7.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.
8.) George Bush is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been and this is shown in his appointments over and over. To say otherwise is scandalously untrue.
9.) George Bush is rushing every bit of help he can to New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama as soon as he can. He is not a magician. It takes time to organize huge convoys of food and now they are starting to arrive. That they get in at all considering the lawlessness of the city is a miracle of bravery and organization.
10.) There is not the slightest evidence at all that the war in Iraq has diminished the response of the government to the emergency. To say otherwise is pure slander.
11.) If the energy the news media puts into blaming Bush for an Act of God worsened by stupendous incompetence by the New Orleans city authorities and the malevolence of the criminals of the city were directed to helping the morale of the nation, we would all be a lot better off.
12.) New Orleans is a great city with many great people. It will recover and be greater than ever. Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day.
13.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.
God bless all of those dear people who are suffering so much, and God bless those helping them, starting with George Bush.
.....................................
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He also writes "Ben Stein's Diary" in every issue of The American Spectator.
bump.
The dems do not want the president to get popular like after 9/11. They were just starting to make headway to kill off his legacy.
So, they must strike while the iron is hot. Damn the consequences.
For years the democrats have known of the dangers that existed, not only in the levy system but of the criminial elements in their society.
They chose not to build up the levy system.
It was their choice. They used money for other things, then asked for more because they did not fix what needed fixin. It was their choice.
Now we reap what they have sown. Of course, they must blame others. They did it with the impeachment, with elections, with supreme court judgments. That's what democrats do.
Thanks for the post. Problem is the damn L/MSM cannot play fair, they have for years shown how deeply evil they truely are. The masses now think the blame must be placed on the POTUS, FEMA, and Military. The L/MSM cannot show how that sorry excuse for a mayor is at the bottom of the problem.
Hats off to Ben Stein.
Nagin might make a good race/poverty pimp but he can't hack being mayor.
BUMP!
Great stuff by Ben Stein. Do you have a link? I've seen some posts right here on FR that could use some of this.
Strongly disagree with #12. N O at best is a horrible crime ridden debauched hellhole with incompetents running it and awash is cronism and corruption. You go just for a visit and you are taking a chance to become a crime victim, its as lawless as a banana republic city. Not a dime of federal monies should go into rehabilitation of the city, if fellow Louisianians want to be taxed for it, that's up to them.
"The Dems are going to mount a lights out, no-holds-barred effort to blame this on racism."
No doubt about that, considering the vast majority of those that could not or would not evacuate were black. The delay in response "looks" really bad.
Was it racism per se? I don't think so. IF, and that is a big IF, there was some sort of bigotry associated with the slow response. Then I would think it was more of a "social class" bigotry, not racism. Though I don't think that was the case either.
Going to what I consider to be a BIGGER question is what should be our (Federal) response to the rebuiding of New Orleans. Except for those things of strategic importance to the entire United States (the petroleum industry), we should not fund rebuilding this place.
It was folly all these years to keep New Orleans in its present location. A city below sea level that requires constant pumping to keep it from flooding? A city that artificially keeps a MAJOR river from changing its course in a delta? Not wise at all. If the residents want to rebuild, then do it on their dime not mine. By all means provide humanitarian relief to victums, but don't finance them to be victums again.
This started down hill when the governor's mind went blanco. She was told by W to start an evacuation but she didn't. She could have called up her own Guard on Tuesday, but she didn't. She cried well but that didn't help, now did it? The jerk running N.O. turned out to be Bart Simpson in Black face. "Ididn't do it man! It wasn't me!" The kid who grabbed the school bus and took people to Huston had more leadership than both of them combined. And he is willing to be arrested if they're stupid enough to do that. Yes a 19 year old kid is willing to face any consequences, but neither blanc mind or empty noggin will. THe rats and their masters ratmedia and soros etc, will try to call this racist but it won't wash this will be yet ANOTHER time that the dopey rats will hitch themselves to a wagon on its way to a nuthouse.
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