It's difficult to gauge the extent of damages from media and government official reports. I wonder why emergency response centers operated by Homeland Security/FEMA don't have status reports continuously available for the press to more accurately access the situation when they keep the entire population from returning to clean up the mess.
For example, the Big 6 natural gas pipelines that produce natural gas for the bulk of northeast US and Canadian consumers have the bulk of their gas sources in the gulf along Rita's and Katrina's track. Their compressor stations are placed about every 50 to 200 miles along their pipelines. If not allowed access to those systems, the NE would be without Natural Gas for about a week after they are allowed to return.
Throughout the entire region, the bulk of repairs will never be made by the government, but by the population with free markets and small business efforts. Most trees in roadways aren't going to be cleaned up by the government, but by local residents with chain saws.
Potable Water isn't going to be guaranteed for the population by bottled supplies, but by repairing the existing water mains to water supply points and then restoring all municial utility districts over a 1-3 month period.
There's no need to declare bayous off limits during regular times, so IMHO, rather than creating a Big Brother police state appearance, the efforts would focus on communicating the extent of damages and where areas are so flooded to not allow any occupation.
The TV reports in most cases of evacuation I've seen so far, are nothing greater than any 3" rain every neighborhood receives on a monthly basis in Houston. Streets might be flooded 6" above the curb but houses are still 1-2 feet above the water levels. This tells me that there is grossly insufficient reporting underway.
The issues I see evolving are how to 'reboot' the logisitcs in the gulf coast. The best way I see that happening, IMHO, is by 'parallel multiuser, multitasking,..not a sequential minimal response made with lots of effort by a few.' The later seems to be off by several orders of magnitude and is likely to cause significant repercussions nationally and internationally.
My frustration of our Homeland Security is not that they aren't involved, but that there seems to be lack of intuition of how to trust the people themelves in the region being assisted. Rather than acting in grace and love for their fellow man, there seems to be a more intuitive lust for control being exercised by local and state government officials who are clueless of the magnitude of liabilities they are addressing.
Great post.
Hence the saying, "Hi. I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
The government does not trust the people, but asks for trust (and votes) in return, and demands cash and obedience once in power.
post 1402,,I am intrigued. Was wondering myself about the mode of response. Everyone focuses on letting people in or out and criticize Nagin for "letting people in" and yelling that some texans are "going in without permission".
Isn't that what we did in this country at the beginning? We went to wild dangerous places and settled.
I can see those Cajuns down in the southern part of the state, going in if the watere receded and building just like they did so long ago. And people will go into Orleans and squat, build and make the place habitable.
I guess lawsuits and big govt think they can change the nature of people. Heck, we fought the Indians, the wilderness, wild animals, weather, drought, famine, bugs once upon a time. Without FEMA and the Red Cross.