Posted on 09/13/2005 11:58:45 AM PDT by numberonepal
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco lashed out at FEMA on Tuesday, complaining the agency is moving too slowly in recovering the bodies of those killed by Hurricane Katrina.
The dead "deserve more respect than they have received," she said at state police headquarters in Baton Rouge.
She said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency still has not signed a contract with the company hired to handle the removal of the bodies, Houston-based Kenyon International Emergency Services.
Calls to a FEMA spokesman in New Orleans and the Homeland Security Department in Washington were not immediately returned.
"Why is FEMA responsible for body removal anyway?"
I'll take a wild stab at that: just as military tacticians need to examine what kills troops to minimize future losses, the same with FEMA I would guess. They probably examine bodies to see what killed people, to amass stats and to consider future plans, recommendations, etc.
Isn't Kenyon a Halliburton subsidary?
The democratic party's FEMA!??!:
1999 Hurricane Swamped Clinton's FEMA
Democrats led by Sen. Hillary Clinton are blaming the Federal Emergency Management Agency for failing to respond adequately to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
But FEMA didn't do much better under much less taxing conditions, when the floods that followed Hurricane Floyd left tens of thousands stranded up and down the Eastern seaboard, wondering what happened to federal rescuers.
Story Continues Below
New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida were hit hard when Floyd slammed the coast on Sept. 16, 1999. It was the worst storm to hit the U.S. in 25 years - yet it killed only 61 people. That death toll expected to be dwarfed by Katrina.
Clinton FEMA Director James Lee Witt won high marks for hurricane preparation, but the flood that followed swamped his agency.
A full three weeks after the storm had passed, Rev. Jesse Jackson interviewed Witt on his CNN show "Both Sides Now" - and complained that flood victims were still suffering from a "misery index."
"It seemed there was preparation for Hurricane Floyd, but then came Flood Floyd," Jackson began. "Bridges are overwhelmed, levees are overwhelmed, whole town's under water . . . [it's] an awesome scene of tragedy. So there's a great misery index in North Carolina."
Witt explained that the storm's devastation was unparalleled, prompting Jackson to ask what was being done for the thousands of families left homeless by Floyd.
Though nearly a month had passed since the storm first hit, Witt said his agency was just beginning to address the problem.
"We're starting to move the camper trailers in," he explained. "It's been so wet it's been difficult to get things in there, but now it's going to be moving very quickly. And I think you're going to see a -- I think the people there will see a big difference over within this next weekend."
The Clinton FEMA Director came in for more criticism during another CNN interview - this time for failing to do a better job with Hurricane Floyd evacuation efforts.
"I hate to do this to you so early in the morning," host Carol Lin began apologetically.
"But I want to show you some video of Hurricane Floyd. This was the evacuation scene out of Florida last year. And you can recall, some three-million people in three different states were hitting the highways, jammed back-to-back trying to get away from the danger. And much of the local as well as the federal government was criticized for this backup. What is being done this year to prevent something like this from happening again, keeping people out of harm's way?"
Witt explained that evacuation problems were to be expected under such dire conditions. "It was very unusual when you had multiple states all evacuating at the same time," he told CNN. "It was the first time that that has happened that way and it did clog the highways."
While Witt's reputation remained largely intact after the Floyd fiasco, more than a few of the storm's thousands of flood victims complained that the agency had failed them.
"I had heard FEMA was going to be downtown, so I got up early to get down there and get in line," one North Carolina woman told the Associated Press, recounting her ordeal months after Floyd had passed. "The time came and nobody was there, just all these people waiting in line."
FEMA's sorry performance left her overwrought.
"I had been let down so many times, I just lost it," the flood victim said. "A friend of mine came walking up, and I just started toward her. She said, 'Robin, what in the world is wrong?' I was just standing there in the middle of the street crying, totally disoriented, practically hysterical."
Weeks after Floyd's floodwaters subsided, the suffering for many had yet to be addressed.
"We passed hundreds of families sitting outside their now-uninhabitable homes, with their water-soaked possessions spread out on their lawns," the Raleigh's News & Observer noted on Oct. 3, 1999.
"Desperately picking through the mess for anything to salvage, most people - particularly the elderly - seemed to be in a state of shock."
And where was FEMA?
"The larger towns had a visible FEMA and Red Cross presence," the paper said. "But in smaller towns it looked like utter confusion and despair - no one in charge, no one knowing what to do or where to go for help."
That said, it astounds and disgusts me that this so called governor, knowing the difficulty of the task, the extreme care and diligence needed, the gruesome and emotionally tough part of this task, the necessity of having to locate bodies that have been in water or have been struck by debris and possibly under said debris would ever SAY SUCH A THING publically.
She is a monster.
Liberal democrats know how to demoralize and crush the American spirit better than any group in America.
This woman is pitiful.
She wants to make sure they dont use the dead's name on the next absentee ballots...
Why is it the FEDERAL government's job to remove the bodies.
Get down there yourself, "madam" and remove them. Or, get the Mayor to do it. Oh...that's right...he moved to DALLAS!
Apparently , Kenyon International is a wholly owned subsidiary of Service Corporation International, a Houston based corporation.
SCI is a company owned by a friend of Bush who was allegedly part of something called Funeralgate, "the scandal involving Bush and Joe Allbaugh, former director of FEMA, in 1999" according to some e-mails we're seeing.
"Also, SCI has settled claims for $100 million for allegedly dumping bodies in the woods, among other atrocities," according to the claims.
"Bush Cronyism Extends To The Dead" has been posted here and apparently also to DU
Poor Blanco and Nagin sure have a lot of explaining to do?
If she had avoided the pissin' contest with Nagin, there wouldn't have been as many bodies to pick up. Shame on that woman. Has she even been to N.O. yet?
FOX News just reported at 5 pm on The Big Story that the death toll has climbed in N.O. to 426 today.
"I guess filming dead bodies before the family members even know these people are dead and digging up graves to take pictures is giving them the respect they deserve."
Finally a use for that duct tape.
I happen to agree that its her fault that most are dead......I just said that after 2 F' weeks, the corpses should have been picked up....that's it.
It could have been done by the county morgue, or by the natl guard or it could have been done under FEMA using our troops, but the bodies should have been removed!!!Think if it was a relative of yours ....would you still feel this way?
What doES a log and Kathleen Blanco have in common, EVERYTHING.
Blanko is so arrogant, she actually makes Mary Landrieu look humble.
Kenyon and FEMA entered into a verbal agreement...when they saw the contract, they regnegged on signing it. Blanco signed one with them.
They probably expected a lot larger fee, since 20,000 bodies were supposed to be floating all over the place.
She's faint dead away if she saw a two day old body exposed to the elements, never mind a two week old one.
"There wouldn't be so many bodies to remove if you had done your job in the first place!"
Exactly! She's b*tching that not enough respect is being shown to the dead - and while others are out there cleaning up her mess - literally... Where is HER respect for ANY these people?
BLANCO: "I killed them. Now YOU respect them!"
Blanko et al (all the culprits) are trying to muddy the waters with these various complaints to take the focus off what they didn't do in the first place.
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