[tutstar]

bump

[MizSterious]

It wouldn't have helped anyway. The only water pressure available is from fire BOATS, which draw water from the floodwaters or rivers. New Orleans has plenty of fire gear, but they can't use it.

[mtbopfuyn]

OT, but what happened with the firefighters who were being held hostage yesterday? Never saw it on the news.

[Socratic]

It has become obvious that a National Governors' Conference must be convened by the Dept. of Homeland Security with attendance mandatory upon threat of withdrawl of all Federal disaster funding. It appears there are too many idiots who don't know the basic duties of their offices. I hope some Repub. politician sees this post and moves to throw the resposibility squarely back where it belongs.

[USNBandit]

It almost seems like FEMA needs to have a posse of government assist teams to shadow the local government officials. Whenever the locals start hitting a roadblock the FEMA guy whispers in the locals ear "PSST, I can fix that," or "Have you thought about, _____."

There are some local governments, NYC for example, that are geared to handle almost anything. N.O. doesn't seem geared to handle anything past a Mardi Gras crowd and even that takes a lot of outside LEOs. For example ,the Mayor didn't know enough to utilize his school buses, but yesterday was asking about spraying aircraft to spray for mosquitos. Another example is all the communications problems. The N.O. Police don't have any comms and I'm sure FEMA has a metric tonne of IRIDIUM sat phones charged up and ready to rock.

[msnimje]

When is CNN going to learn that THE GOVERNORS are the heads of the individual states, not the Federal Government??

[CCPlanner]

The reason that someone has to ask for the equipment is that it needs to go to someplace and someone. Just sending it to "New Orleans" doesn't get it to the people who need it. Do you send it to the EOC? The Superdome? The Mayor's office? The Fire Chief's office? Which one's are functioning? Who is responsible to receiving the equipment and getting it out to the first responders? Do you just leave it at the first fire station that you see and leave it?

When the local officials ask for it they give this information. The best thing to do is ask for it before the hurricane hits and stage it outside the expected area to be affected.

[nicmarlo]

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Marc Short said Friday the gear has not been moved because none of the governors in the hurricane-ravaged area has requested it. A federal official said the department's Office for Domestic Preparedness reminded the Louisiana and Mississippi governors' offices about the stockpiles on Wednesday and Thursday, but neither governor had requested it.

Blanco, the governor.....a major disaster.

[XHogPilot]

Ping for the incompetent Governor Blanco...

[oldbrowser]

Nine stockpiles of fire-and-rescue equipment strategically placed around the country to be used in the event of a catastrophe still have not been pressed into service in New Orleans

Along the same lines I have been thinking that some of the bases closed in the last round of military base closures should be turned over to FEMA.

Particularly near hurricane areas it would be good to have a staging area for supplies and equipment. It would also serve the need for an evacuation facility for people that don't have transportation or resources.

Hurricanes are going to keep hitting populated areas and since we have the bases closings we should consider this option.

[lpfan3397]

I'm interested in getting in contact with someone about the gear see i am in the U.S. Army and we are in need of gear our unit has told us that they do not have the funds for fire gear so we can't do training and we have been called to a couple brush fires and all we have where i am is flight suits and three sets of bunker gear that is not up to par I am wandering if we could get a number and get in touch with someone to see if we could get some donated to us seeing as how there are nine stock piles of gear if someone could email me with some info or this gear or somehow get some gear donated to us my email address is speak2charles@yahoo.com if anybody could give me some info it would be greatly appreciated

thank you
PFC Barnes