Bush wants right to use military if bird flu hits

EXACTLY!

I am a member of the National Medical Service Corps and I'll be working PROUDLY right along with the military docs and medics should this pandemic occur.

"the people within the quarantine area are going to be treated as disease vectors and written off. It will be damage control and the folks within the quarantine area are SOL."

Where in the world do you get THAT idea from? TV shows? You are far removed from reality, I can assure you. A quarantine area is set up, sure it secured, but then triage is set up, and there are levels of protection build in from within this zone. Nobody is left to rot. Gezz. The idea is to expose as few as possible, and keep it from spreading, while treating as many as possible because hospitals at this point would be overflowing and unable to handle the volume.

Bush posed the questions. He didn't propose a solution. He just mentioned one of the options.

That's right. He said that this is an important subject and Congress should debate it now so we don't have to scramble in the middle of a crisis. Deploying troops on American soil to manage our citizens is not something I am comfortable with, but up to now we really have not had to face some of the problems we are going to be facing in our now complex and crowded society.

Storms. Earthquakes. Disease. Large acts of terrorism. These are all things that can and, as in the case of Katrina, have already pushed our needs past the capabilities of standard emergency response. When people start dying in front of our eyes on television, the country will scream for the troops, just as they did in the last storm. We need to decide now if we are going to continue to use our military for such things and if so, we'd better hash out the dirty details first.

The truth is that our standing military is about the only organization that can mobilize and do the kind of jobs that need to be done in the middle of a mega crisis. We can also assume that in the case of rapidly spreading disease, the powers that be know that we will not only be faced with the problems of disease containment, but the inevitable panic and societal breakdown which would occur on a wide scale. Non of this is pretty or comfortable to consider, but I'd like to hear this debated before something actually hits the fan.

You believe a Hollyweird movie starring that famous patriot Dustin Hoffman, do you?

The National Guard initially detained people in the Astrodome. They searched people at the door, took their weapons and guarded the exits. People died inside. They let some of them outside for a bit when it got too hot outside, and were watched by soldiers with rifles.

Looks like your confusing two seperate locations in the same sentence. The Superdome and the Astrodome.

Quarantining whole parts of the country??? This is medical, economic, and constitutional absurdity. Gotta flee. To my monitor: Please don't leave me, Danny!

Just a little early afternoon levity ... I would, however, defer to the CDC on any issues involving medicine and public health.

I don't think these people know just how fast we can set up a hospital city.

Somewhat - The ROE are a bit too restrictive for my taste

People didn't die inside. Not by all these supposed rapes and gangs etc. that was hype.

I'll have to defer to the opinions of those who were there: (sorry I couldn't use paragraphs, it would have taken a long time to edit these)

Katrina Britons 'moved from dome' [Moved for personal safety] BBC News ^ | September 2, 2005 | Unsigned Posted on 09/02/2005 1:01:16 PM PDT by aculeus Around 30 Britons sheltering in a sports stadium after Hurricane Katrina are being re-located to hotels in Texas, the Foreign Office said. The move comes after stories emerged of violent confrontations, bullying and shortages of food and water at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. Overall, the Foreign Office said there were around 100 British people in Louisiana when the hurricane struck. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "There were 20 to 30 British people in the dome, and they are being moved out to hotels in Dallas and Houston and other places in Texas. "There is a lot of confusion about what is happening at the moment, but we are working closely with the US authorities to try to get a clearer picture." 'Chaos' The Camp America organisation, which provides work placements for young adults, said earlier they believed one of their workers, from Epsom in Surrey, was still in the dome. A Camp America spokesman said they would do everything possible to get him to the safety of a hotel as soon as possible. "They were being targeted because they were the only white people there" Jonathan Trout The Daily Mirror carried extracts from the diary of Jamie Trout, 22, one of the Britons trapped in the dome for four days, who said it was "like Lord of the Flies". Mr Trout's brother, Jonathan, from Sunderland, told BBC News his brother had now been transferred to the nearby Hyatt Hotel, along with most of the other stranded Britons and other foreigners. Another Briton, Keith Nelson, said his son, Will, had also now been moved from the Superdome after three days. He told the BBC: "On the third day the army told them that it was getting too dangerous so they moved them to another, smaller stadium. "Some of the army got shot and the army refused to go into the dome so they moved them again to the Hyatt hotel." International group A number of UK families are still waiting for news of their loved ones. Mark Hashmy, 36, sent his mother a text message on Monday describing the destruction he had witnessed. "Disaster area, no power for weeks, freeway flooded and blocked, and they can't fix. "No shops, no food, no petrol, no nothing! Army helicopters everywhere. We are isolated." Mark Graydon, from Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, and his 23-year-old American girlfriend Gretchen sought refuge in the Superdome last Sunday. His father, John Graydon, said the British authorities told him on Thursday his son would be moved from the dome within 24 hours. By Friday evening he had not heard anything more. Gloria Hashmy, of Kingsbridge, south Devon, has not heard from her son since the text and is desperate for news. She told the Western Morning News: "I'm in absolute turmoil and I'm not going to know anything till God knows when." 'Crushed' Elizabeth Pond was relieved to hear from a friend that father Alan, 59, had not been hurt in the hurricane. "Bullying tactics are taking place - it is being run by the strong" John Graydon Ms Pond, 30, had been due to leave the UK and move to New Orleans permanently, shipping all of her belongings already, but now does not know how long it will take for normality to return. Claire McMath, from Bristol, said she had been immensely worried about her great aunt and uncle and cousins. They had been stopped from escaping because one of the family is disabled and unable to move. "The house was crushed by a tree and the neighbours had to pull them out." In addition to the Foreign Office hotline, there is also a 24-hour contact number for the British consulate in Houston, which is 001 713 659 6270. Published: 2005/09/02 19:20:39 GMT © BBC MMV

Troops find grisly scenes in New Orleans (find "at least" 40 mutilated bodies in convention center) UPI ^ | 9/6/05 Posted on 09/06/2005 11:05:47 AM PDT by Uncle Joe Cannon Troops find grisly scenes in New Orleans NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 6 (UPI) -- Troops scouring New Orleans for survivors and victims reported finding at least 40 mutilated bodies in the Convention Center refugee center. Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the New Orleans Times Picayune many of the dead were elderly, or showed signs of trauma. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut," he said. As the searches became more organized since the Aug. 29 onslaught of Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said repair crews had patched the ruptured levee along the 17th Street Canal and had begun pumping out water. The failure of the levee system after the storm left about 80 percent of the city flooded up to 20 feet deep, and Corps officials said it would take nearly three months to drain some neighborhoods, CNN reported. Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley told reporters that thousands of people -- many of them with pets -- are insisting on staying in what he called "a hazard." "We advise people that this city has been destroyed. It has been completely destroyed," Riley said.

Manatee sheriff's detective witnessed horrors of New Orleans convention center MICHAEL BARBER Thu, Sep. 08, 2005 BRADENTON - Detective Bill Waldron went to New Orleans to testify in a murder trial. He wound up spending more than 50 hours trapped in a cauldron of chaos inside the New Orleans Convention Center. Trained to help people in need, Waldron became an involuntary witness to the deaths of infants and the elderly who couldn't survive until assistance arrived. A policeman unarmed and alone in a boiling sea of frustration, Waldron spent three days hiding the fact that he was a cop because he feared for his own personal safety. Sitting shaken but safe in his west Bradenton home Wednesday afternoon, Waldron said he has heard wild rumors in the media about what happened at the convention center in the desperate days following the killer storm. He said he knows what went on. He was an eyewitness. A six-year veteran of the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, Waldron traveled to New Orleans on Sunday, Aug. 21, to testify in a murder trial he's been working on for more than a year. Waldron helped arrest the suspects in Bradenton after they were charged with murder in New Orleans. Prosecutors thought the trial might last until Saturday, Aug. 27, so Waldron made flight reservations to return to Manatee County on Sunday, Aug. 28. While he was in New Orleans that week, Waldron started keeping a distant eye on Katrina's development. "I knew that there was a storm off the east coast of Florida and had kept up with that, calling back home and checking on things here," Waldron said. The trial Waldron was called to testify in wrapped up Friday evening. By that time, Katrina was intensifying rapidly and moving toward New Orleans. "Basically at that time, there was a lot of panic, a lot of chaos," Waldron said. "There were a lot of people leaving the city. From my hotel you could see the line of cars on (Interstate 10) backed up." With the help of law enforcement officials in New Orleans, Waldron searched Saturday for a way to flee the city and return home. "By that time, the airport was being evacuated, very few airlines were flying and the ones that were, were booked," Waldron said. "I tried to get a rental car, but the places that were open had no rental cars available and a lot of the other ones had started closing down and boarding up." While Waldron could see streams of traffic leaving the city, he also noticed a lot of people who couldn't or wouldn't leave. "There was a lot of people stranded due to not having vehicles to get out of the city, not having the financial means; and there was still a large amount of tourists," Waldron said. "Even Saturday night and Sunday morning they were walking around the French Quarter as if there was nothing going on." Staying on the 10th floor of a Holiday Inn in the French Quarter, two blocks from world-famous Bourbon Street, Waldron filled his room's bathtub with water and hunkered down. "I just figured I'd ride it out and be OK," Waldron said. Sunday night and Monday "I remember waking up around 2 a.m. and the winds were pretty significant then, but still not too bad," Waldron said. "I turned on the TV and saw the storm was still making its track toward New Orleans. The power went out around 3:30 a.m." Waldron woke up about 8 a.m. Monday. By midafternoon, he said the heavy winds and rain had stopped and the sky began to clear. He left his hotel and bought the only food he could find - a can of Pringles - and some water. It would be the last meal he would have for three days. Waldron walked around to check out the damage. Some old buildings had collapsed and windows in some buildings were blown out. His hotel had no noticeable damage. "My initial opinion was it wasn't too bad, that it might take a couple of days for the National Guard to get into the city and start food and water distribution points," Waldron said. "A lot of people were still walking around. Some of the bars opened up and were carrying on as if nothing happened. A lot of people were walking around talking to each other." Waldron couldn't help but notice something else. "There was literally no law enforcement presence," Waldron said. Monday night, sleeping with his hotel window pried open, Waldron heard the first sounds of looming trouble. "Throughout the night, I could hear breaking glass," Waldron said. "I would look out and see some law enforcement vehicles. That's when some of the looting had started." Tuesday Tuesday morning the management at his hotel told guests they had to leave because the water on nearby Canal Street was getting higher. "From my hotel window I could see a little bit of water in the streets along the gutters where it was slowly rising," Waldron said. Without power or contact with the world outside, Waldron did not know the levees protecting New Orleans had given way, flooding the city. Told to go to the nearby convention center, Waldron gathered his two suitcases and started walking. As he walked he saw groups of police officers standing in the streets next to their cars. "It seemed as if they were just as much in shock as everyone else there," Waldron said. "Talking to a couple of them, they couldn't get gas, so they were staying stationary because they didn't want to run out of gas." When Waldron arrived at the convention center about 2 p.m. Tuesday, there were about 1,000 people milling about. "We were being told by law enforcement that the convention center was not a shelter, that we needed to go to the Superdome," Waldron said. "We said, 'We can't get to the Superdome because the water is rising.' They said, 'Well, we don't know what to tell you.' " Waldron said the people flocking to the convention center were confused and frustrated because they had been told there was food and water there. "The National Guard was bringing people to the convention center and then they were being turned away," Waldron said. "When people heard that the convention center wasn't going to be open, people started walking away." While he was waiting with other people outside the convention center, Waldron spotted stores with food and water inside being guarded by National Guardsmen. "I saw the trucks come and I could see through some of the open doors that they had MRE's (Meal Ready to Eat) and water," Waldron said. "The National Guardsmen were walking past eating their food and drinking their water. People would walk up to them to try to ask questions and they would be ignored." About 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, law enforcement officials opened the doors of the convention center to the crowd, which continued to swell with people who had been rescued from rooftops or homes by boats or helicopters. Tales of mass destruction circulated, according to Waldron. "There were rampant rumors that the water was rising and that it was going to flood the convention center," Waldron said. "Some people left during the night in an attempt to find higher ground." Surrounded by thousands of stranded strangers, Waldron spent Tuesday night sitting in a folded chair inside the powerless, sweltering convention center. Although food and water was scarce, what people inside the center wanted most, according to Waldron, was someone to tell them what was going on. "There was no one of any authority," Waldron said. "No one was telling anyone what was going on and what could be expected." Despite the spartan conditions, Waldron said the crowd at the convention center Tuesday was well-behaved. "There were no problems," Waldron said. "People were helping each other out. People who did have some food and water were trying to get that to some of the elderly people. People were just in shock and exhausted." Wednesday People continued to pour into the convention center and the surrounding area Tuesday night and into Wednesday. As many as 25,000 evacuees eventually found their way to the site, according to reports from The Associated Press. Tension inside the convention center mounted as stories of escalating violence throughout the city swept through the crowd. People were saying police officers were being shot and killed and were in turn shooting and killing civilians. "Wednesday morning is when the looting really got out of control," Waldron said. "There was a Wal-Mart nearby and people were going to the Wal-Mart and bringing back food, but it was mostly just junk, potato chips and water. Then the alcohol started flowing in." With circumstances deteriorating and anger with police and other absent authorities growing, Waldron decided to keep his identity as a cop to himself. "I definitely wasn't going to announce to anyone that I was a law enforcement officer," Waldron said. "When people would ask what I was doing there, I just said I was a tourist that came to visit friends and got trapped." Waldron said a lot of people at the convention center still pegged him as a police officer. "A lot of people would ask, 'Are you a cop?' " Waldron said. Waldron said a contingent of about 100 National Guardsmen were on hand but they offered little to no assistance to the restless throng. "I think they were scared the people might lash out at them because communication had broken down and the rumors were getting more and more outrageous all the time," Waldron said. Worn down by the withering heat and lack of water, the situation at the convention center became deadly by Wednesday afternoon. "By this time people were getting very dehydrated," Waldron said. "I stayed busy trying to help people out. I'd see people collapse and would get assistance from other people to move them inside. We'd try to beg water from other people to get these people water. It just wasn't enough. At that point is when people I was trying to help began dying." Although 12 buses arrived late Wednesday afternoon to take some of the elderly and sick to safety, it was too late for others. Waldron said he saw at least 10 people die at the convention center. One was an elderly woman who apparently died of dehydration. "She just kept saying over and over again, 'Jesus' and 'Angels,' " Waldron said. "We tried to cool her off with dirty water. We went to the National Guard to get something cold, and we didn't get anything. Eventually she just stopped breathing and that was it. I was very frustrated." Waldron said he also saw two deceased infants. "The babies were in the bathroom laying on sink counters just wrapped up in paper towels," Waldron said. All the while the crowd grew more restless. While people heard reports on transistor radios of assistance at the nearby Superdome, no mention was made of the mass of people waiting at the convention center. Although there were media reports of murders and other crimes at the convention center, Waldron insists he saw nothing like that occur. However, at some point Wednesday night, Waldron said, police officers came by the center. When they were accosted by the angry and frustrated crowd, they fired guns in the air, causing the crowd to stampede back into the center. "People got hurt in that," Waldron said. "I was more afraid of being accidently shot by police or National Guard than I was with anybody I was in the convention center with." Thursday Thursday morning the national media began to show up, according to Waldron. He said he spoke to a reporter who told him that the media had been unaware of the crowd at the convention center. Using a pay phone inside the convention center, Waldron had periodically been able to reach his son, Nicholas, and mother, Judy Heston, with whom he lives in Bradenton. He had kept them abreast of his situation. At the same time, he had established contact with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office and was aware that they were working to rescue him. "He was up there on sheriff's office business so we felt obligated to get him out," sheriff's spokesman Dave Bristow told The Herald on Wednesday. "We felt helpless back here because we had little communication with him." The sheriff's office dispatched some deputies to Louisiana to try and bring Waldron home. In addition, the sheriff's office was working with the Louisiana state police and other law enforcement agencies to get him out. As the situation grew more desperate and reports of the conditions at the convention center began to be broadcast around the country, a team of game wardens from Texas and Louisiana headed to the convention center to rescue Waldron. "I knew something was being put in place," Waldron said. "I knew at some point someone would be coming for me." Rescuing Waldron was a precarious task from a law enforcement perspective, according to Bristow. "It was a difficult situation to go in there and get one person," Bristow said. "We didn't want people to get upset that we were taking him out of that place, but we had sent him there and we felt we had to do anything we could to get him out." After searching the crowd for close to 30 minutes, the game wardens found Waldron. "They handcuffed me to make it look like I was being arrested," Waldron said. "The reason for doing that was because by that time tensions were pretty high. A lot of people were confronting me, asking me if I was a police officer. For my safety and their safety, they had to make it look like they were arresting me." Waldron was taken to Gonzalez, La., where he took his first shower in almost a week. It was there that he was reunited with fellow Manatee County sheriff's deputies sent to bring him home. The deputies drove all day and night and delivered Waldron to his Bradenton home at 6:30 a.m. Saturday. "I was relieved," said Nicholas, Waldron's 16-year-old son. "It was an exciting moment when he finally made it home." For the time being Waldron is resting and recuperating. Bristow said they'll let him decide when he's ready to return to work. Although he still wakes up with dreams that he's still in the convention center, Waldron said he's glad to be back in Bradenton. "It's good to be home," he said. Waldron hopes he can use his experience to help law enforcement agencies handle similar situations better. As a member of the local Emergency Services Response Team he hopes he can work to improve responses to crisis situations. The most important lessons, Waldron said, are keeping people apprised of what's going on and providing some sense of organization to calm fears and curb chaos. "I know I'm a lot stronger than I ever thought I was," Waldron said. "I hope I can use what I learned to help other people, because there's going to be more hurricanes." "I knew at some point someone would be coming for me."

yikes!!!

A BBC article. Must be true then....

Looks like your confusing two seperate locations in the same sentence. The Superdome and the Astrodome.

Thanks for the correction.

A BBC article. Must be true then....

I know... It wasn't on Fox, so it didn't happen...

In a scenario such as this, if it's bad, first thing you do is shut down the airlines immediately! Or at least stop all aircraft from overseas, all international travel must be halted immediately. My order would be all airlines, to help stop the spread within this country until they got a handle on it. Some fat cats would scream and cry...Too bad.

In tests so far, some antiviral meds have been effective against H5N1. To the best of my knowledge there is no vaccine available yet but work on this is ongoing. I would assume that emergency responders - military and civilian - would have some kind of protection.

I understand your concerns with Posse Comitatus but in this (hypothetical) case I do not agree. This would be an extraordinary event that would threaten the entire country.

I have extensively researched the 1918 Pandemic. There is NOTHING on Earth that has the potential to do more harm to humanity than a repeat of that. Repeat: NOTHING. What took months to spread worldwide in 1918 would take days now.

Because of this and in spite of your concerns, the US Military is the ONLY organization with the necessary resources to mount any kind of effective response - in partnership with their civilian counterparts in such organizations as the National Medical Service Corps (of which I am a member).

That was in the hay-day of the rumor mill running amuck.

When the authorities finally got in there, there were only several people dead. They did autopsies on them and found nothing nefarious about their deaths. They ruled them natural causes I think. Things like they had an on going illness when they got to the Superdome.

The BBC, you're going to believe them? They hate America as much as the islamofacists do.

:-)

That was in the hay-day of the rumor mill running amuck.

You think it was rumors. I think subsequent reports of it being not so bad are damage control and spin. We'll have to agree to disagree until someone comes onto this thread who was there.

I do have to say that the Detective in the third article is a credible witness.

The whole idea of fast response is to PREVENT another 1918, especially in this day and age where, as you stated, it can get out of control very quickly.

I don't think some people get it. They WILL be left SOL if it got out of control.

All bases will get sealed tight and they'd shoot anyone trying to get in at that point. The Army would have to preserve itself, no matter how many pleas for help after it is beyond control.