Posted on 09/04/2005 10:21:53 AM PDT by markomalley
Edited on 09/04/2005 10:33:27 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
NEW ORLEANS - Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country's emergency management. The White House dispatched 7,200 more troops to the area, bringing the total in the stricken region to more than 40,000 National Guard and active-duty soldiers.
(Excerpt) Read more at buffalonews.com ...
Well okay, if they are breaking the law, good! Thank God. What took so long, people are dying, nothing else matters. There is no rule of law in New Orleans. Just on AP -> law enforcement just shot it out with eight armed men roadblocking the main bridge, killing five.
Yes. And that is about the normal timeline for these events. But they could not have been there days ago. As I said before, we don't have military assets just sitting around loaded with disaster relief equipment. All of that takes time. I know you know this, but it is NOT the job of the military to perform disaster relief within the United States. That IS one of the jobs of the National Guard, under the command of its state governor. And Governors cannot federalize anything. They can ask the President to federalize a situation, but to this day, I don't believe the governor of Louisiana has done such a thing. And while the active duty military will (like your brother) assist in relief efforts after the event has happened, I will guarantee your brother wasn't sitting on a bus or a ship following any of those hurricanes to where ever they made landfall. In all likelyhood, he got there 4 days or more after the disasters happened.
The response to this hurricane was disgraceful. It was disgraceful that state and city officials essentially had to be ordered to start evacuations. It was disgraceful that the Mayor told everyone to gather in a shelter but provided no food or water for them. It was disgraceful that the Mayor did not use all of the buses in his city (as the New Orleans evacuations plans dictate) to evacuate the citizens of his city. It is disgraceful that to this day, the Governor of Louisiana is still resisting efforts to turn full control of the relief effort over to Federal authorities. But what isn't disgraceful is the actions of federal organizations like FEMA and the DoD, who have had to work around the idiocy in Louisiana to effect one of the largest rescue efforts in national history. You simply cannot blame the Federal government for not performing the responsibilities of the State. That is not the role of the Federal government, and it does not have the capability.
My complaints may look like I'm giving the locals a pass. I don't have enough respect for the local leadership to even care about the disgracefull way they have conducted themselves, particularly about the preparedness planning.
Two things about that statement. First of all, there are AP wire pictures of helicopters delivering MRE's and water to the people at the convention center on Thursday. That was the first day anyone bothered to tell federal authorities that there were people at the Convention Center. It was also the first day news reports appeared that people were at the convention center. As late as Friday, media idiots like Geraldo were reporting that people at the Convention Center had received no food or water. That was a blatant lie, as pictures showed pallet after pallet of water and MRE's being distributed to people there before Geraldo even showed up. Please do not bite off on the distorted picture you are getting from the media. As you are fully aware from events at Fallujah, the picture provided by the media is so fuzzy and unreliable that it is safer to assume it is wrong than right. Friday was 4 days since the hurricane left and 3 days since the major flooding hit. If anybody was in that Convention Center for five days without food or water, it is clearly not the fault of FEMA or the military. A better question would be, why was anyone directed there at all (it was not a planned shelter), and if the city directed them there, why did the city not supply provisions for at least one or two days. Again, your frustration here is being misdirected.
I have mountains of respect for your analytical abilities and wisdom. You taught me a lot about how to assess difficult situations during those Fallujah days. But saying that the feds "should have the capability and decision making ability to know when the locally driven first response is inadequate" is to ignore the reality that that is not the role of our Federal government. We may as well disband all state authority if we expect the federal government to step in anytime they see the state failing. The Feds have to give the state some time to do its job. And if the state proves incapable, then the feds have to ask to step in. In this case, the Federal government has done just that. Note the difference between the first 3 or 4 days of the disaster with the last 2. But the Federal government is designed to assume the states have at least a minimal ability to perform their role and then aid as appropriate. Just look at Alabama and Mississippi. Two states with solid state and city governments that are well on their way to recovery (Alabama is even sending Guard troops to Louisiana) despite having huge portions of many populated areas wiped off the map. They are working in tandem with the feds, just like they are supposed to, and the work is getting done.
My gripe is that life-saving is job #1 and the relief effort was mis-directed.
I will never forget the video of the woman that died in her wheel chair while news crews drove in and out of the city freely.
The politics of the left is what killed those people. It must break their little hearts to know that many of their lib voters are now dead.......wait, for them it doesn't matter, dead people have the right to vote.
I will tell you in all sincerity that that simply is not true. I'm pinging Burbankkarl to this because he knows how to link pictures and I don't. He has posted several pictures showing water and food at the Convention Center well before Friday.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050902/480/ny21709021944
Bottom line.....there should have been a fast response group that can respond with spot relief of food and water on a 4 hour max. basis to any gathering of survivors as they are discovered. I saw the sand bags being dropped on thursday on, of course important work. But those crews should have insured people weren't dying of thirst, first.....
In any case the media feed on friday morning didn't show any further relief by noon when I stopped watching.
My point stands, too little, too late.
The people I saw were in very poor shape, I saw one infant, dead in its mothers arms. Late friday after troops arrived a correspondant went to get help for an older man that collapsed, he was dead when they got back with help, all on camera.
Too little...I'll agree. The city let these people down by directing them to what was essentially an empty cave. There was NO prior planning for such an event. Too late...refer to my previous post. People suffered. It was miserable (most disaster areas are). But how many died? Or even came close? It would appear, not many (possibly none due to dehydration or starvation). I'll let those facts speak for themselves.
One final thought. Like I said before, I respect your thoughts and wisdom too much to drag this on any further. Time will reveal what was done right and wrong in this disaster effort. We'll both have to wait until then to get the full picture.
The fact that Blank-o thinks she is capable of handling the disaster relief herself boggles the mind.
Blanco is a joke. She smeared Bobby Jindal (now Congressman for LA) and tricked enought LA voters, blacks in particular, into supporting her.
Well, they got their vote's worth, didn't they?
From what I have seen to date, she is a totally incompetent, self important, political hack, whose hubris cost thousands of lives.
She should be tarred and feathered before being forced to resign an put on trial for gross incompetence. Follow up with the mayor of NO.
They should all be in cells covered with pictures of those swamped buses.
mark
I have yet to hear anyone in the Bush administration
put the blame on the state and city. I sure have heard
a lot the other way though.
I think they doth protest too much!
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