Posted on 09/06/2005 5:56:44 PM PDT by bobsunshine
WASHINGTON - The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region - and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.
Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.
Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged Tuesday the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged. Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as "this near catastrophic event" but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, "Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities."
The initial responses of the government and Brown came under escalating criticism as the breadth of destruction and death grew. President Bush and Congress on Tuesday pledged separate investigations into the federal response to Katrina. "Governments at all levels failed," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Brown had positioned front-line rescue teams and Coast Guard helicopters before the storm. Brown's memo on Aug. 29 aimed to assemble the necessary federal work force to support the rescues, establish communications and coordinate with victims and community groups, Knocke said.
Instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees would focus on helping victims find the help they needed, he said.
'Time for Blame'
"There will be plenty of time to assess what worked and what didn't work," Knocke said. "Clearly there will be time for blame to be assigned and to learn from some of the successful efforts."
Brown's memo told employees that among their duties, they would be expected to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public."
"FEMA response and recovery operations are a top priority of the department and as we know, one of yours," Brown wrote Chertoff. He proposed sending 1,000 Homeland Security Department employees within 48 hours and 2,000 within seven days.
Knocke said the 48-hour period suggested for the Homeland employees was to ensure they had adequate training. "They were training to help the life-savers," Knocke said.
Employees required a supervisor's approval and at least 24 hours of disaster training in Maryland, Florida or Georgia. "You must be physically able to work in a disaster area without refrigeration for medications and have the ability to work in the outdoors all day," Brown wrote.
The same day Brown wrote Chertoff, Brown also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said Tuesday that Brown should step down.
After a senators-only briefing by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other Cabinet members, Sen. Charles E. Schumer said lawmakers weren't getting their questions answered.
"What people up there want to know, Democrats and Republicans, is what is the challenge ahead, how are you handling that and what did you do wrong in the past," said Schumer, D-N.Y.
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said the administration is "getting a bad rap" for the emergency response.
"This is the largest disaster in the history of the United States, over an area twice the size of Europe," Stevens said. "People have to understand this is a big, big problem."
Meanwhile, the airline industry said the government's request for help evacuating storm victims didn't come until late Thursday afternoon. The president of the Air Transport Association, James May, said the Homeland Security Department called then to ask if the group could participate in an airlift for refugees.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1479068/reply?c=37
An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
by Robert Tracinski, Sep 02, 2005
It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
ll of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005
So anyone stating there were serious response problems is just "spewing nonsense"?
Only Mr Brown acted properly? This is correct?
Huh no criticism from you about the incompetant LA and NO govts.
FEMA and Brown were hit with a double whammy, the first one a catastrophic hurricane, the second an incompetant local and state govt. whom you seem enamoured with.
""It's not Browns fault!""
"If Brown were a Clinton administration official, somehow I think all this a-s-covering for him by freepers wouldn't be happening."
This disaster is horrific in scope and time - it caused several cops to committ suicide and others to flea. And these guys have been around - they are not in one of the easiest crime areas.
Not every person is up to the challenge - Chertoff and Brown certainly are in this group.
Keep spamming your lies, need some addresses of MSM outlets to send your resume.
Seems like you would be a great little worker bee for them, even though you would be joining a sinking ship.
"The mayor's failure to deploy his buses in advance of a hurricane, when the mayor of a Mexican city was able to deploy his buses in advance of a hurricane, shows that New Orleans actually performed at a Fourth World level in this crisis."
No one here is arguing that the Mayor and Gov were not totally inept - what I can't understand is why some think that FEMA and Homeland are beyond reproach given the Hollywood icons and MSM icons got in before the Red Cross.
"It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans.
There in lies the core problem contributing to additional problems.
The concluding statement I feel is undeniable.
"The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting."
"With a good plan and implementation of the plan, the city could have evacuated most of those who don't own cars using city and school buses. That would have greatly reduced the casualties in this flood."
Agreed - but no excuse for letting in the MSM/Hollywood icons before the Red Cross.
After they've been corrected numerous times - yes, they're spewing nonsense.
"Hey guys, this thread needs your troll power. Care to play?
Or how about here or here?"
I am in total agreement with the criticism of the state and locals - La is a state that is loaded with graft - and its arcane laws are unique in this country.
Nevertheless, it is indefensible for Chertoff to claim that he did'nt know there was a problem till Thurs.
What is your defense of his statement.
Huh, those "icons" bring one personal photgrapher(i.e sean penn) and not truckloads of supplies and lots more people to a city 80% underwater, plus to a city where the National Guard was not called out in time, the civiialin police force deserted and looted, and where anarchy reigned.
But of course you are using some lame excuse to protect you friends blanco and nagin for their incompetance.
What is your defense of his statement.
Uh because NO is a cesspool and the local and state govts. were putting up roadblocks along the way, but what the hey blanco and nagin are the epitomie of competance to you.
It wasn't FEMA that broke down, it was the democrat local and state govts. of Louisiana.
Well put. Nobody I have seen on this thread stated the city or state did a wonderful job, it's the direct opposite and very obvious.
In terms of Brown's FEMA, some of the comments are clearly bordering on obsession among those which only have praise with blinders firmly fixed. The question should be why?
Fellow federal hacks?
Go away, little one. You've been slapped down enough that you're merely background noise now.
Fellow federal hacks?
Nope it's you and spanalot being fellow liberal media hacks.
"nobody will be shooting at the Coast Guard choppers and Fire Dept. boats that are trying to rescue them. And nobody will "beat back" the SD police when they move in to maintain order. Some of the people in New Orleans are completely insane and they greatly disrupted the early rescue and law enforcement efforts."
Are you sure there is no gang violence in southern Cal?
Personally, when we get our next disaster, it will be the same plan - PLENTY OF food, froth, fuel, and firearms BECAUSE I NEVER EXPECT THE GUBMINT TO SAVE ME.
"No, but they didn't go without food for five days and to say that there was no food or water there is to misstate the facts"
Did you check with Chertoff? He is the one that affirmed the problem at the Convention Center saying he did not find out about this problem "till Thurs"
"What, an Army of Gestapo is supose to take over entire citys and herd the people into camps whenever a storm is brewing? "
What is with the NAZI card? We have enough problems sorting this out..
What is this corrected stuff? Thou shall only worship Brown?
Give me a break. How many robotic parrots do you actually expect to continue acting like FEMA's Brown is always 100% on target?
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