What would have been an acceptable response? Have you given that any thought? If federal assets arrived "too slow", what would be fast enough? If federal relief was "too little", how much would be enough?
Katrina was a Cat 4 hurricane impacting 3 states and one major city. It was not just a simple 911 call for an ambulance. FEMA has approximately 2,600 employees nationwide. To my way of thinking, the federal response was normal. If "normal" is not good enough, please offer your specific measures of "good enough".
As a nation, we seem to have all fallen into the anti-administration canard that the response was "too slow", or "insufficient", or "failed". I won't buy that assumption just because the media says so. I would like to see some concrete and realistic definitions of what is "fast enough", or "sufficient", or "successful" response to a major disaster of these proportions. If the measure of success is to be "no inconvenience" then I'd call that asinine -- after all it's called a "disaster" for a reason.
Excellent post!
susie
If we had the same media during WWII, they would have been whining that we didn't defeat the Japanese in less than six months.