Posted on 02/09/2006 8:34:49 PM PST by blogblogginaway
Among the findings that emerge in the mass of documents and testimony:
¶Federal officials knew long before the storm showed up on the radar that 100,000 people in New Orleans had no way to escape a major hurricane on their own and that the city had finished only 10 percent of a plan for how to evacuate its largely poor, African-American population.
¶Mr. Chertoff failed to name a principal federal official to oversee the response before the hurricane arrived, an omission a top Pentagon official acknowledged to investigators complicated the coordination of the response. His department also did not plan enough to prevent a conflict over which agency should be in charge of law enforcement support. And Mr. Chertoff was either poorly informed about the levee break or did not recognize the significance of the initial report about it, investigators said.
¶The Louisiana transportation secretary, Johnny B. Bradberry, who had legal responsibility for the evacuation of thousands of people in nursing homes and hospitals, admitted bluntly to investigators that "we put no plans in place to do any of this."
¶Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans at first directed his staff to prepare a mandatory evacuation of his city on Saturday, two days before the storm hit, but he testified that he had not done so that day while he and other city officials struggled to decide if they should exempt hospitals and hotels from the order. The mandatory evacuation occurred on Sunday, and the delay exacerbated the difficulty in moving people away from the storm.
¶The New Orleans Police Department unit assigned to the rescue effort, despite many years' worth of flood warnings and requests for money, had just three small boats and no food, water or fuel to supply its emergency workers.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
In a "sister city" relationship, emergency workers are cross trained in each others cities. The calvary hits the streets running.
Rather than waiting for an "invitation" to a disaster (which is require to keep helpers from being vigilantes under the law) the sister city can make their own determination and deal police to police and emergency worker to emergency worker. Bureaucratic red tape is avoided. To stop the smooth flow of assistance, an incompetent mayor must call and refuse help.
In addition, churches in sister city communitas would be asked to made arrangement to put up each other's congregations. Not every person in a strange city, but a sister congregation. The smaller number of people needing assistance can be helped by NGO and government groups. The smaller numbers will take pressure off a strained system in the event of large scale disasters.
These plans can also be used for terror attacks.
I saw some of the damage they got by Rita/Katrina in November.
Cities in hurricane zones should establish sister city reciprocities.
For example NO gets hit, and the Jacksonville, FL police and fire departments send in back-up. It allows police, fire, and emergency workers in the "hit" city to protect their own families and deal with their own disasters while having protection in place.
In a "sister city" relationship, emergency workers are cross trained in each others cities. The calvary hits the streets running.
Rather than waiting for an "invitation" to a disaster (which is require to keep helpers from being vigilantes under the law) the sister city can make their own determination and deal police to police and emergency worker to emergency worker. Bureaucratic red tape is avoided. To stop the smooth flow of assistance, an incompetent mayor must call and refuse help.
In addition, churches in sister city communitas would be asked to made arrangement to put up each other's congregations. Not every person in a strange city, but a sister congregation. The smaller number of people needing assistance can be helped by NGO and government groups. The smaller numbers will take pressure off a strained system in the event of large scale disasters.
These plans can also be used for terror attacks.
Please add your ideas...
Interesting concept -- it keeps the assistance on a local, peer-to-peer level without big brother's FEMA nose getting under the tent. The question I have is who pays the out-of-towners for travel, time, etc. getting to and responding to their sister city? And how do they get there if roads, bridges, etc. are down (as I recall, the responders to the MS Gulf Coast had to literally hack their way through forests downed on roads leading to the coast)?
Training can be done for 3 weeks in the spring - each city sends 40 emergency workers to it's sister city where officers "fill in" for each other. Since they're working each other's shifts, there's no pay loss for either city. Each city pays it's own people - it's a wash. On how to pay emergency workers during an actual emergency ... that's a hard one. I have no idea. What do you think?
I've been through several hurricanes (one direct hit) and it's not as bad as usually portrayed by the media (I'm sure you're shocked here...) Anyway, Walmart keeps information on how to get into cities and in fact were one of the first groups to get into NO. Under my "grassroots" system, while plans were being set up, someone would call Walmart and ask about the best roads - the ones that don't usually flood.
Agreed. Unless I'm mistaken, though, no urban area comparable to New Orleans was hit as hard in Mississippi. You can't deny the effect of population density in disaster situations and how much more critical intact infrastructure and essential services are. This is why New Yorkers know, deep in their hearts, that should anything massive happen, they're f**cked. One of the only lucky breaks about the World Trade center strikes was that the towers were located at the tip of Manhattan. That made a critical difference. Had the Twin Towers been in mid-town, I doubt the city would have bounced back as fast as it did.
Rather than sister cities, set up sister states. Team a state with one kind of problem with a state that has a different kind of problem. For instance, Louisiana sent emergency personnel to Oklahoma a few years back when there was a blizzard and ice storm. Last year, we returned the favor for the hurricane. It might have been more effective if it were "formalized" though.
The reason I say different types of problems per state--let's say there's a hurricane in Louisiana, and their "sister" state is Florida--and before Louisiana can fully recover, another hurricane hits Florida.
So basically, their argument is that the Bush Administration knew in advance that Louisiana government officials were incompetent, but did nothing about it. Does that sum it up?
I think I am a bit jaded about New Orleans, so you might be right. I sat through and pulled myself up from Hurricane Betsy way before Katrina--we prepared for the hurricane by stocking up on non-perishables, water, and flashlight batteries. Neighbors helped neighbors, and there wasn't a whole hekkuvalotta government aid. What I saw with the people in Katrina was--"somebody please come take me someplace safe." Folks, it's ultimately up to YOU to keep yourself safe, to prepare for disaster, and to help your neighbor when you can. Uncle Sam is not very reliable, and that's ok too.
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