Posted on 08/27/2011 8:30:09 PM PDT by sinanju
US President Barack Obama warned the US east coast was in for a "long 72 hours" as he led his government's response to Hurricane Irene at a disaster command center in Washington.
Obama on Saturday chaired a meeting at the National Response Coordination Center (NRCC) set up at the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) headquarters in Washington, which is marshaling federal and local hurricane-relief efforts.
"This is going to be a tough slog getting through this thing," Obama said during a video teleconference including senior federal officials and local government agencies in the east coast path of Irene.
"It's going to be a long 72 hours. Obviously a lot of families are going to be affected ... the biggest concern I'm having right now has to do with flooding and power," Obama said during the videoconference.
"(It) sounds like that's going to be an enormous strain on a lot of states" that could last days, or even longer in some cases, he said.
Saturday evening Obama convened a conference call with members of his senior emergency response team including Vice President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, among others.
"The President was briefed on the current track of the storm, the weather impacts being felt so far and efforts to pre-position response and recovery assets," said a statement released by the White House.
"The President asked to be kept apprised of developments throughout the night and said that he wants the group to re-convene tomorrow morning."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Interesting that this is the first natural (sort of) disaster that he's decided to pretend leadership. You don't suppose poll numbers have anything to do with it?
Wasn't it like three days before he interrupted his vacation to address the BP blowout?
Oh, please!
Oh, thank God. Now I feel safe, finally! I know he’ll rescue us and send that pesky storm out to sea. He promised us that when he visited Germany, didn’t he?: “Now is the moment when the seas begin to recede,” he said, or something just as wise. Don’t you just feel all happy and comforted, knowing that Obama is going to take care of us? He’s so brilliant, so competent, so experienced in an emergency, so fantastic at reading from a teleprompter...
Omoslem is spending the night on a cot with Reggie Love.
Larry Sinclair wasn’t available — he’s bailing out his flooded basement.
There might be a silver lining here. With Obama in charge, the storm might run out of wind and water.
what an incredible asshole......the only one at the table that looks out of place.
The comments on yahoo are hysterically funny. I read about 200 and they all are ragging on obama and yahoo’s reporting.
In other words, this Zer0 asshole is wasting the time of those responsible for actually trying to do things.
The posts at the link are pretty funny, too. It makes feel better (just a little) when people post comments right to the news organization’s Comments section about their blatant bias.
I just remembered!
The weekend’s not a total loss. Twenty-four years ago Ray Davies and the Kinks recorded the perfect song for this occasion.
From the “Think Visual” album, 1987:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3kJx4JE0lM
Beautiful song too, well worth a listen.
The Kinks—”Lost and Found”—lyrics
Waiting for the hurricane to hit New York City
Somebody said it’s hit the bay
this is the nitty gritty.
And all the bag ladies better put their acts together
We’re near the eye of the storm
this is really heavy weather.
We were lost and found
In the nick of time while the ship was going down.
We were lost and found
Just in time with the hurricane crossing the coast line.
We were lost and found
just in time.
The thing is bigger than the both of us
it’s gonna put us in our place.
We were lost and found
iust in time
now we’ve got no time to waste.
They’re putting up the barricades
Because the hurricane is heading up this way.
So won’t you come in from the cold and the pouring rain?
And the old sea do@ says: shiver me timbers.
The sky’s gone blac and it’s like the dead of winter.
We were lost and found in the pouring rain
When the hurricane swept across the coast line.
This thing is bigger than the both of us
It’s gonna pvt us in our place.
We’re gonna say what really matters
When you see that storm stare us in the face.
We were lost and found
And we beat the fear
we came through the storm.
Now it all seems clear
we were lost and found
Standing here
looking at the new frontier.
Lost and found
just in time
With the hurricane crossing the coast line.
long 4 years is more like it.
I’m from the South,what’s a slog?
Emergency responders are highly trained, well-rehearsed, experienced from years of doing this, and are remarkably hard-working multitaskers that can bring together a multitude of subordinate responders; and, they use a military-based command system and they speak a common language (that simply cannot be learned OJT). They know the capabilities of the component responding agencies (and how they all dovetail together), and they likely know personally many of the key responders.
Ask any emergency responder what they fear, and he or she will say political interference and/or grandstanding.
A politically driven "take-over" of a command center during an active response (if this is indeed what is happening) is arrogant, irresponsible, and one suspects that it just happens to be the very model of the modern malignant narcissist.
.
I’m just wondering how many residents of Coney Island and Far Rockaway will be returning to cleaned-out apartments tomorrow morning.
You don’t have to be an extreme libertarian to have a problem with “mandatory” evacuation orders.
I remember one of those CA brushfires a few years back. Ahnuld ordered evacuations but quite a few neighborhoods could have come through unscathed if the able-bodied male members had stayed behind with garden hoses primed and kiddie pools filled with ladders and wet blankets at the ready.
Many houses were lost to blowing embers that could easily have been put out.
Creep-in-chief needs to get out of the way. Go play put-put in the WH basement and let the adults work.
Shame on him for turning an emergency into a photo op.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.