Posted on 09/04/2005 11:39:17 PM PDT by smoothsailing
State and local officials did not inform top federal officials early on of the deaths and lack of food among hurricane victims in the Superdome or convention center, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday.
Mr. Chertoff said neither he nor Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown was told of the deteriorating situation in New Orleans until Thursday night.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Blanco SHOULD be nervous if the federal government had to find a way to get around the fact that she didn't make the formal request for federal help just to get in there to restore the peace and save people.
I'd say FEMA disagrees with your assesment of their responsibilities during a disaster to the tune of about a hundred percent...
FEMA coordinates the work of federal, state, and local agencies in responding to floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
RE: Post # 123.
The photo of 145 busses within 1.2 miles of Superdome.
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This should be sent to ALL MSM, because this is the new 'Shot' that should be heard around the world !!!
There was no one to tell them. The Mayor was in Baton Rouge with his buddies and the gov was busy making excuses why she wasn't responsible.
Did they even had a command center set up with sufficient communication???
And I don't care HOW much the local and state officials try to spin it, the truth will eventually get out. THEY are the ones responsible for failing "Disaster Planning 101" while a Category 5 hurricane was bearing down on them. If they had done their jobs and followed the plan, many of the dead would be alive right now. We will eventually find that most of the dead were room temperature within the first few hours of the storm.
If the NOLA and LA officials weren't trying so hard to pin their incompetence on Bush, I'd almost feel sorry for them. Despite their spinning and efforts to avoid responsibility for that Non-Evacuation fiasco, deep down inside they have to know. They have to know they screwed up and lives were lost because of it. And they'll have to live with that shame the rest of their lives.
That is an unsupportable assertion...
From experience I can tell you what happens.
1. Everyone who has a car rushes to gas stations to fuel up their cars. Within 12 to 18 hours all gas stations run out of fuel.
2. Everyone rushes to grocery stores for supplies. Shelves are empty within 4 hours. Many are unable to obtain food or water.
3. Everyone with cars locates their families and then gets on the highways headed out of town. The highways are jammed within 2 hours.
4. Even if the local government manages to load all of those without cars into buses they will stuck in traffic jams.
5. People who are stuck in their cars in traffic jams when the storm hits are at much higher risk of death and injury than those in homes or shelters.
That is why you can't evacuate a large metropolitan area.
FEMA had supplies in a perimeter before Katrina hit but told the local/state/citizens that chose to remain to have at least 3-5 days of food/water/shelter in order for relief to have time to get to them. If all it takes is for a bit of rain and wind for the entire government in Louisiana to crumble, who's to blame for that? I suppose your next useless post will blame FEMA for the NOPD who abandoned their posts and left their neighbors to fend for themselves.
Did state/local/citizen follow the emergency plan? Nope. Did they attempt to evacuate the infirmed, mentally ill or those in hospitals....? Nope. All in New Orleans were left to fend for themselves and your armchair generalization of the subject shows that you are part of the dependence class and will always be a "victim". That doesn't take an "expert" that you would depend on in a crisis.
Apparently, an 18-year old comandeering a school bus to evacuate 70+ people has more gumption than you or the goverment in the state while the rest of the buses of Nagin's navy sit submerged in a parking lot.
New Orleans seems to be the only area where the failures of government occurred when the devistation was mostly to the east of New Orleans. Mississippi and Alabama had far more devistation....entire towns wiped off the face of the earth, yet you still cannot make the connection that it was a failure on the part of Louisiana and New Orleans officials, not FEMA.
FEMA isn't delivering pizza, they are disaster relief! They can't get to flooded areas in 30-minutes-or-less. It's up to the state to coordinate all the pieces, yet why were no state troopers in the area to help prior to the storm? So I guess you don't know as much about it as you claim.
Let's be clear with the correct terminology here. According to their own disaster plan, the word "shelter" was a facility out of the flood area that was stocked with food and water. They never made it that far.
Instead, the inhabitants of New Orleans were forced to stand in line for hours at a facility that was supposed to be used as a "staging area" to bus them out to the "shelters."
Once the evacuation routes became impassable, then and only then would the "staging area" (the Superdome) become a "refuge of last resort."
All the satellite photos of the flooded buses tell the story. They didn't follow their own plan.
Agree with you. Chertoff has no business being the head of Homeland Security. He has very little executive/management experience. We really need an ex-Governor or former military person heading that operation. It shouldn't be a political reward or headed by a former federal prosecuter. Chertoff is over his head. This crisis makes it obvious. We need someone with political saavy as well as managerial experience running a large organization.
Disaster planning never anticipated breaches of levees
While some in New Orleans fault FEMA – Terry Ebbert, homeland security director for New Orleans, called it a "hamstrung" bureaucracy – others say any blame should be more widely spread. Local, state and federal officials, for example, have cooperated on disaster planning. In 2000, they studied the impact of a fictional "Hurricane Zebra"; last year they drilled with "Hurricane Pam."
But neither exercise took into account the failing of the levees. In an interview yesterday on ABC's "Good Morning America," President Bush said, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." He added, "Now we're having to deal with it, and will."
~snip~
So while you wish to pretend the President said he and he alone never anticipated the breaching of the levees, he was stating something else entirely.
I suppose the only elected official in the entire country you wish to hold accountable is President Bush and his appointments. I guess that tells volumes about your thinking process and priorities.
But President Bush will handle it now (and admit it, on some level you realize he can and some of these other characters can't or won't).
We have already learned...
That most of the folks with cars, DID evacuate in time..
- Maybe not at breakneck speeds, but they got OUT.
You don't need a tank of gas to get out of the city and out of the path of hurricane......In this instance, 100 miles West or North would have been a huge improvement over remaining in New Orleans.
The city could have accomplished the same thing, with their UNUSED buses for thousands if not hundreds of thousands... They didn't even try, with at least 2 days warning.
However -- if one doesn't wish to evacuate..they are welcome to stay.
If they stay......it's their decision and their consequence..
Semper Fi
Yes, as governor it should make her nervous...
Since it's so obvious, why don't you cite one example of a Chertoff mistake.
What is the system of accountability that this committee has in place to see that Homeland Security funds are being spent on preparedness?
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The 'job' of an oversite committee is to get as much funding as possible and then to divert as much blame as possible if things screw up. That is the real job of an 'oversite' committee. (Think 9/11 Committee !!)
Err...I was agreeing with you.
Would you prefer our federal government just toss aside the restrictions of the US Constitution? Should we eliminate that little phrase in the swearing in ceremony about "Protect and defend the constitution" and replace it with "unless it's inconvenient"?
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Heck, why not !!
The Supreme Court already seems to at every opportunity !!
Cops participated in looting, walked away from their post, or didn't doo much to stop the lawless thugs who run the city. Once that happened, there wasn't anything FEMA could do to stop it or bring in relief as they are not armed to control lawlessness.
Did the state place anyone in their "shelters of last resort" to assist with food and supplies? Did they deliver any food to these places when they opened them up for the citizens to take refuge from the storm? Although they knew that they had sent citizens to the Dome of hell and opened up the civic center, did they show up to speak to their constituents? Nope...they were too busy hitting all the news channels crying on TV interviews instead of minding the store. As far as they were concerned, FEMA was their to bail them out of the fix that they themselves created. Now they all stand in line to deflect responsibility, point fingers and extend their hand for federal relief. I guess you don't mind your tax dollars being misused by their inept "leaders".
Feds normally respond after the fact, just like cops. If you are being held up at gunpoint, are you going to say "Wait! I have to go call 9-11 (or FEMA)? The state didn't even utilize their own police force, the National Guard or any other assets at thier disposal.
When people are encouraged to sit on their tails and wait for help, they will always become a victim of something. People should have left before the storm and the state should have been on top of the evacuation prior to the storm but didn't want to use money from their own state to do the job that they were elected to do.
That wasn't my quote by the way.
But yes, the buses weren't utilized to evacuate the poor, and they ended up at the Superdome, which wasn't prepared to take them.
The same thing happened last year with Ivan and in 98 with Dennis(?).
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