#99 Postby Steve » Tue May 02, 2006 4:50 pm
Not sure where you're going with this. Many people who are apparently party partisans seem to continue to blame the governor and mayor as the major problems, when in fact the United States Senate (along with me) spreads the blame around with primary accusations at the Federal Government. I'm anti-party so I don't care. Like I said, I didn't vote for Clinton or Bush and I didn't vote for Nagin or Blanco (though I did vote for her twice as Lt. Governor where she did a pretty good job).
I do know, however, how inept FEMA has been in dealing with this particular disaster. I see it every day on the news and talk to people several times a day about their problems. If you want them detailed, I can cite you numerous examples of people who have trailers but no keys, didn't want trailers but got them anyway, told FEMA to remove their trailers so they could bulldoze their houses while getting calls every other day to lease them in to the trailers they weren't planning on using, etc. Then I could cite the e-mails between the one FEMA guy on the ground in the Superdome and Mike Brown's secretary - you know, the one where the FEMA guy was told Mr. Brown could not be bothered because he was dining in Baton Rouge (Ruth's Chris FWIW), and Baton Rouge was very hectic and he responded that he just ate an MRE with 30,000 of his closest friends and took a **** with them in the hallways of the Superdome).
Yeah, AFM, it's hardly anecdotal evidence that we're dealing with here. It was utter lunacy and sheer stupidity. I witnessed plenty of it first hand and could also offer my own experiences with this sad bureaucracy. But for now, I'll spare you the details.
You may note that it has not been addressed in this thread, but I have had nothing but praise for the military in the aftermath of Katrina (special mention to the Coast Guard for risking their lives to save others and the National Guard for being here on the ground after they took the streets back and also to assist with handling the relief efforts).
Now to your points:
I'm not listening to any "group" concerning FEMA as a cabinet level position. Apparently it was prepared - became prepared after Witt said give me 1 year to clean it up or scrap the whole thing if I can't - as you guys wrote the book.
>>And to lump what the US had been through with the 2004 season, 9/11, and all the other disasters with what FEMA faced during the Clinton years is also bad information on your part. How do I know this? Our OPS TEMPO. We support FEMA with bodies for the JMO and RTF/DCO deployment cells for weather. We have never been as busy as we have the last 2 years. Yes there were many disasters during the Clinton years...but they were SPACED and they did not TAX the agency's logistics.
So I don't get it. I'm offering some disasters that happened then (can't remember if WTC 1 was under his administration or President Bush's), but how can you call those "spaced out" when you're talking 2001, 2004 and 2005? There have literally been only 3 or 4 major disasters in the last 5 1/2 years. We had 9/11, three years later we had 4 storms of some consequence hit Florida, the next year we had 2 storms of much consequence hit Louisiana and 1 hit south Florida. Well It had been pretty much 10 or 11 months since the previous storm system until Hurricane Katrina hit SE LA, MS and Alabama. The response was PATHETIC. And yes, this includes state and local even though any logical view of the situation would state that there's no way a small city or small state has the resources to handle the largest disaster in modern US history. Only the Federal government can respond at the level needed. Oh yeah, and to keep the politics to a minimum, notice I didn't reference the 40% of the LA National Guard troops who were then-deployed or training for overseas missions. But yes, it's true.
>>Please...you do not know as much about this as you think...and I think you are trying to make some political hay where there is a lot less...and getting some information that is faulty. I worked under FEMA, VIA the military, through the Bush, Clinton and Bush years and to say it went from Bad to good to bad again is jsut plain ignorance and political hackery...and means you must be ignorant of the facts.
Ask the guy on the street. Whether the James Lee Witt era of FEMA might have been better prepared than a FEMA under DHS where actual FEMA people stated ON THE RECORD that had this been a terrorist attack, there would have been significiantly more resources deployed shows that you're military-political background probably hasn't fallen too far from the usual tree (acknowledging that military politics is across the board in some instances). Trust me, I'd take anyone over Chertoff/Brown. As noted above, Brown was a horse-show judge. Political patronage at its best that can be denied any way you see fit to do so. Answer that one. We're the ones dealing with the aftermath of this disaster. Ask anyone in Louisiana what they think of FEMA. Outside of the initial emergency assistance and the subsequent rental-assistance checks, you're not likely to hear anything good. In fact, the winner of this year's Tennessee Williams "Stella" scream in the French Quarter won specifically by yelling "FEMA." It's engrained into our heads here that FEMA=bad. If you call that bad information, I think those of us who have lived it first hand would beg to differ.
>> If the LOCAL AND STATE GOVERNMENT had FOLLOWED THE PLAN we exercised with them back in the summer of 2004...and had done their part of the job they said THEY WOULD DO (and they DID NOT)...it would have made it a lot easier for the Federal Government to Do OUR JOB!
Unfortunately the Feds didn't have it in either. It is my understanding that there were significant resources up in Barksdale and some of CENLA's miiltary installations. How were they supposed to get to New Orleans once the levees broke? I blame Mayor Nagin in part because the buses that were supposedly for the evacuation lay idle as the drivers fled. Yeah, that's on him. I blame the governor for not coordinating enough with the White House. That's on her. But then again, 50 governors were polled in the aftermath and either 49 or 50 stated that they didn't want the Federal Government taking precedent over state-controlled troops without consent. Apparently the red tape crosses the boundaries of this state all the way to Washington. Then you have the problem with the communications going out. I know. I was 200 miles away and the local phones there, despite gusts only to 20 in the area and no measurable rainfall - didn't work. No one's cell phones worked. Apparently ground communications were zero even for emergency responders and the military. One National Guard friend of mine in NE Alabama had one switch router working on the MS Gulf Coast. That was it. It was later to be figured out by consumers that text messaging was the only means of reliable communications. Our cell phones otherwise didn't work.
It is my understanding that the government has rectified this situation for future emergencies with mobile communications posts operating at some government frequency that is supposed to stand up. But you can't blame that on the state or city either. It just happened. And if you want to call that "getting better", I'd agree it is now - assuming it works, but it wasn't last year. So we might as well face that even though that exercise on Cat 5's was coordinated in 2004 (only one year prior), it didn't really matter. No one - local, state or federal, was prepared for what was to come.
>>Period. And that is the truth. I was there when the Gov. and Parish Pres.'s signed the papers with Fema on how we would work evacs. Gues who didn't do their job first?
Which Parish President - Broussard? New Orleans doesn't have a President-Council form of government. And while I'm in one of the only parts of Jefferson that took a major hit (water funneling in from the city), he called for everyone to get out once the NWS swung wildly on Friday afternoon in response to the 18z guidance that had come out. Remember, this was "florida's storm" up until that point. The state had set up phased evacuations, but that was to take a minimum of 72 hours to execute. Nonetheless, > 90% of the area's population did heed the warning to leave while they could. So if you would say that they didn't do their jobs or follow them to the letter or spirit of how they were written, I'd say you were mistaken. But as many European and Asian countries marved in the aftermath about all that talk America does, it was exposed that even in an American city in the Twenty-first century, there was a major underclass who live in the same abject poverty as many 3rd World denizens. So of the 100,000 people who stayed, somewhere between 90-95% were honest and poor citizens left with no way out. Maybe 5-10% were opportunists that made all the tv headlines.
But still, if you don't believe me, check out Peter King. My understanding that outside of infrastructure and trucking away debris, very little of the billions that have been appropriated have actually made their way down here. I guess that's the fault of the city and state too, right?
>>When I say I am going to cook dinner for 20 people...and 50 people show up...there are going to be a lot of people hungry and sitting on the floor. There was a plan to get the poor outta NOLA (and FEMA came up with it), it wasn't done.
Maybe. But when you can't even get a bottle of water to an 85 year old woman for 3 days, I say there's something seriously wrong. And yeah, wrong at the state and local level but especially at the federal level.
So if you have a beef with what I said, I think you should dispute things rather than drop the innuendos. Seriously. Find something in fact to dispute anything I've offered and I'll apologize. I don't think you can.
Yeah, I'm real sour on the GOP these days. But I'm also sour on the Democrats. I don't have a dog in either fight because I'm an independent. But I know that the Senate has the most data (despite being denied specific information by the White House) to point a finger in the primary direction. And that direction is at FEMA.
Steve
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