"To: Deo volente
Lisa Stark on ABC is now saying that the federal govt. can act only if the state requests help first, and this is one of the main reasons for the "slow" federal response.
"
This is inaccurate.
You can't send in 5 trucks full of food, you will start a riot.
You can't send 5 buses to the dome, you will start a riot.
You can't bus people from the dome to nowhere. You have to have food and a place to live on the other end.
You have to construct a "pipeline" end to end, before you start.
You have to assess the scope of the disaster, assemble a much bigger package, and then roll it in, with full support all along the way.
That takes time.
It takes three days, 72 hours. This isn't the first hurricane to hit the US. The storm hit Monday between 6 and 10 am. The storm was still blowing Monday afternoon, all across Mississippi, the staging area.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, there's your three days.
But the big convoys are only just now rolling into NO. Why the extra 24 hour delay?
Because NO "dodged the bullet", it didn't begin to flood until Tuesday, and all day Tuesday, there was hope that the levee breaches could be plugged. New Orleans didn't throw in the towel until Tuesday afternoon.
But the delay may well turn out to be the slim straw that saves the people of New Orleans.
A huge pipeline was constructed, but in the intervening time, the full magnitude of the storm has begun to sink in. Aid and relief from all over the world is now flooding into the staging areas, headed into a well constructed pipeline.
Repeating from an earlier post, New Orleans and the Gulf coast is in the process of being buried in drinking water, food and aid.
The pipeline is in place,and the first huge convoys are arriving right now.
So is Bush. That tells you that the executive work is largely complete. Not to fault him, he is a politician, but it is fair and right for him to ride in at the head of the relief column he worked to put in place.
Everything you have seen to date has been a holding action, trying to hang on by any means necessary until the cavalry arrives.
The cavalry is arriving.
Just a point of order...it takes a lot less than that to start a riot in American inner cities. But otherwise, your post (in fact all your posts)is and have been outstanding.
Instead, we the viewers are out here watching this tragedy unfold feeling so helpless.
BTTT