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 ...
LOL! Yes, they blew 'em up --- and didn't count on ANY survivors to assign blame.
LOL! Well that's true. But you don't have a whiny, incompetant governor in the governor's mansion either. :)
They weren't supposed to survive!
That's right! Nagin said so!
And MS is WHERE most of the actual storm damage IS and will remain over the next two to five years. New Orleans was a man made disaster.
Bush had divers dive down, plant explosives and blowed the whole thing up! That's what Calypso Louis said after he heard Hal Turner's goofy radio show!
The evil White House hurricane machine, designed by Rove and built by Halliburton, has long since been disassembled and launched into deep space from a secret base on Dick Cheney's ranch.....they'll never pin nuthin' on the bastards!
I wish I could be as optimistic as you PD. Today, I am feeling overwhelmed with my corrupt local politics.
Who the hell is that and does he post here?
Yeah, I think they've known for decades.
Let's look at this another way. What would the NYT have printed had the Federal government FORCEABLY removed 100,000 Black folks from their homes? Anyone care to guess? Anyone care to guess the reaction here on FR?
Calypso Louis? That's Ministah Louis Farrakhan. LOL
OH, that race-baiting moron.
So did I.
Indeed. They even enumerate most of the failings on the local rather than federal level.
Ya know, it's comical. Libs bitch about W's government being too intrusive in their lives, but apparently wanted him crawling up every individual citizen's butt to play mommy and daddy.
Meanwhile, the state and city officials take a fraction of the heat for the problem to begin with!
We ALL knew. They did too.
the rest of America knew it too and has for decades! I guess the translation is that those 100,000 were morons.
Also, anyone believing that there were 100,000 people with absolutely no way to leave with a good 48 hours worth of warning, please raise your hand.
Since the 1980's, the Federal government gave LA over $ 20 Billion dollars to work on levees and flood control. What did NOLA spend it on?
Optimism comes from the fact that the Liberals can yell and scream, but they keep losing. We are going to pick up seats in November in BOTH houses. Count on it. Democrats have no clue, and look like utter fools.
Think of it like this: Haliburton had record profits this year. The NY Times? Layoffs due to declining revenue. What else do you need to know?
The headline is misleading. The National Hurricane Center warned that the levee could be topped. They did not foresee a levee break.
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