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-- Craig Martelle: FEMA is not a first responder

Craig Martelle: FEMA is not a first responder

What I've been trying to tell you all from the start...

quote:

Craig Martelle: FEMA is not a first responder Don't be so quick to pillory the federal response in New Orleans. Immediate emergency management is primarily a local and state responsibility Tuesday, September 06, 2005 As one who has received training by FEMA in emergency management and also training by the Department of Defense in consequence management, I believe that the federal response in New Orleans needs clarification. The key to emergency management starts at the local level and expands to the state level. Emergency planning generally does not include any federal guarantees, as there can only be limited ones from the federal level for any local plan. FEMA provides free training, education, assistance and respond in case of an emergency, but the local and state officials run their own emergency management program. Prior development of an emergency plan, addressing all foreseeable contingencies, is the absolute requirement of the local government --and then they share that plan with the state emergency managers to ensure that the state authorities can provide necessary assets not available at the local level. Additionally, good planning will include applicable elements of the federal government (those located in the local area). These processes are well established, but are contingent upon the personal drive of both hired and elected officials at the local level. I've reviewed the New Orleans emergency management plan. Here is an important section in the first paragraph. "We coordinate all city departments and allied state and federal agencies which respond to citywide disasters and emergencies through the development and constant updating of an integrated multi-hazard plan. All requests for federal disaster assistance and federal funding subsequent to disaster declarations are also made through this office. Our authority is defined by the Louisiana Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act of 1993, Chapter 6 Section 709, Paragraph B, 'Each parish shall maintain a Disaster Agency which, except as otherwise provided under this act, has jurisdiction over and serves the entire parish.' " Check the plan -- the "we" in this case is the office of the mayor, Ray Nagin who was very quick and vocal about blaming everyone but his own office. A telling picture, at left, taken by The Associated Press on Sept. 1 and widely circulated on the Internet shows a school bus park, apparently filled to capacity with buses, under about four feet of water. If a mandatory evacuation was ordered, why weren't all the taxpayer-purchased buses used in the effort? Who could have predicted the anarchy resulting as a consequence? The individuals who devolved into lawless animals embarrass the entirety of America. (I worked in a U.S. Embassy overseas for a couple years and I can imagine what foreign diplomats are thinking.) What societal factors would ever lead people to believe that this behavior was even remotely acceptable? The folks in New Orleans who are perpetrating the violence and lawlessness are not that way because of low income or of race, but because they personally do not have any honor or commitment to higher ideals. The civil-rights leaders should be ashamed at playing the blame game. The blame is on the individuals. The blame is on the society that allowed these individuals to develop the ideal that the individual is greater than the national pride he is destroying. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was very clear in her comments that she was offended at those who suggested the suffering in New Orleans was prolonged because of race. As a retired Marine, I hang my head in shame to see my fellow Americans degenerate so far. I spent so many years in the Corps helping the citizens of other countries rise to a higher level of personal responsibility to ensure that in case of emergency, anarchy did not necessarily follow. When people are held to a higher standard of personal responsibility and they accept that, then they will do the right thing when the time comes. It seems that the mayor of New Orleans is leading the effort in not taking responsibility for his actions. The emergency managers for the state of Louisiana do not have much to say either. The failure in the first 48 hours to provide direction for survivors is theirs to live with. When FEMA was able to take over, it started out behind and had to develop its plan on the fly. Now the federal government has established priorities -- rescue the stranded, evacuate the city, flow in resources and fix the levee. It appears that now there is a plan and it is being systematically executed. Hurricane Katrina was a national tragedy -- not just in the number of lives lost or the amount of physical damage, but also in the failure of people to do what is right when no one is looking.

>>Source<<

oh i can't wait for the congressional inquiry.


unfortunately, it can't come too soon whilst the media waters are polluted with partisaned propaganda and State/Local Government armchair first responder rhetoric.

Hmm, that must mean the DHS "strategic goals" for securing our homeland must need changing:

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Protection -- Safeguard our people and their freedoms, critical infrastructure, property and the economy of our Nation from acts of terrorism, natural disasters, or other emergencies. Response -- Lead, manage and coordinate the national response to acts of terrorism, natural disasters, or other emergencies. Recovery -- Lead national, state, local and private sector efforts to restore services and rebuild communities after acts of terrorism, natural disasters, or other emergencies. http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/intera...torial_0413.xml

Last I checked, FEMA falls under Homeland Security, right? Am I incorrect? What part of "lead" the national, state, local and private sector efforts in both the Response and Recovery section are unclear to anyone here as well as the author?

Now I've said it before and I'll say it again - I want everyone involved to have some blame, including the Mayor, Governor, FEMA director Brown, AND this Administration (where does the buck stop again?). So regardless of what was posted for the NO emergency response plan, as outlined by this author:

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"We coordinate all city departments and allied state and federal agencies which respond to citywide disasters and emergencies through the development and constant updating of an integrated multi-hazard plan. All requests for federal disaster assistance and federal funding subsequent to disaster declarations are also made through this office. Our authority is defined by the Louisiana Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act of 1993, Chapter 6 Section 709, Paragraph B, 'Each parish shall maintain a Disaster Agency which, except as otherwise provided under this act, has jurisdiction over and serves the entire parish.'

They made distinct requests to the federal government PRIOR to the hurricane hitting. For example, Governor Blanco declared a State of Emergency, which directs a rapid federal response, on August 26th which was on Friday:

http://gov.louisiana.gov/2005%20%20...caneKatrina.pdf

Now this runs contrary to what the WaPost ran and had to correct as well as Newsweek, citing "unnamed" Administrative sources saying that Blanco has yet to issue this Sate of Emergency:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...5090301680.html

Newsweek has yet to issue a correction:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179587/page/5/

Now let's put this little piece of the puzzle together - on Monday the WH declared the damage control will be run by none other than KARL ROVE and Dan Bartlett:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/n...ial/05bush.html

Gee, I wonder who that anonymous source leaking to the WaPost and Newsweek could be? Typical Rovian fucking bullshit.

Back to topic, I also found this on FEMA:

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FEMA's mission within the department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all potential disasters and to manage the federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident � whether natural or man-made. http://www.fema.gov/txt/library/thisisfema.txt

Which certainly goes nicely with DHS's strategy stated earlier, doesn't it?

One other issue I have with this tool's piece:

quote:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was very clear in her comments that she was offended at those who suggested the suffering in New Orleans was prolonged because of race.

I do agree with Rice on this, but only because I think race was secondary to the issue of class. But I wonder what Rice thinks about this "suffering" in NO on Thursday when she was buying 3,000 shoes, watching Spam-A-Lot Broadway show, and playing tennis with Monica Seles before she got off her ass and realized there was a major fucking disaster going on with people of her race?

Or how 'bout our boy Dick? That ****** didn't get off his fucking vacation until last weekend, reportedly shopping for a fucking mansion to boot:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...5090401391.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/o.../07dowd.html?hp

Hey, here's some more fun stuff on Brown:

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The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region - and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents. Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims. Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged Tuesday the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050907...saster_response

Image, image, image. Fuck people dying - this Administration is nothing but perception.

Like this - let's look at people underneath Brown and see their qualifications:

FEMA Chief of Staff Patrick Rhode. No emergency management experience whatsoever, but he does have this going for him:

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His first position with the Bush Administration was as special assistant to the President and deputy director of National Advance Operations, a position he assumed in January 2001. Previously, Mr. Rhode served as deputy director of National Advance Operations for the George W. Bush Presidential Campaign, in Austin, Texas. http://www.fema.gov/pdf/about/bios/biorhode.pdf

Or FEMA's Deputy Chief of Staff, Scott Morris. No emergency management experience either, but he's got this for himself:

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Mr. Morris was also the marketing director for the world�s leading provider of e-business applications software in California, and worked for Maverick Media in Austin, Texas as a media strategist for the George W. Bush for President primary campaign and the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign. http://www.fema.gov/pdf/about/bios/biomorris.pdf

Couple these clowns with Brown who's previous experience includes being fired for being in charge of horse shows for incompetence, as well as being a hack for Bush's campaign himself. Who the fuck is running FEMA?

Speaking of image, I really have to like Bush for this fucked-up job with the firefighters:

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As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas. http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197

Read the whole article. It's a beaut!

Re: Craig Martelle: FEMA is not a first responder

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Originally posted by Fir3start3r What I've been trying to tell you all from the start...

whether it's true or not is beside the point. in politics, perceptions matters a lot.

Yet another finger pointing down the chain from the Wall St. Journal...

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Blame Amid the Tragedy Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin failed their constituents. BY BOB WILLIAMS Wednesday, September 7, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT As the devastation of Hurricane Katrina continues to shock and sadden the nation, the question on many lips is, Who is to blame for the inadequate response? As a former state legislator who represented the legislative district most impacted by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, I can fully understand and empathize with the people and public officials over the loss of life and property. Many in the media are turning their eyes toward the federal government, rather than considering the culpability of city and state officials. I am fully aware of the challenges of having a quick and responsive emergency response to a major disaster. And there is definitely a time for accountability; but what isn't fair is to dump on the federal officials and avoid those most responsible--local and state officials who failed to do their job as the first responders. The plain fact is, lives were needlessly lost in New Orleans due to the failure of Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, and the city's mayor, Ray Nagin. The primary responsibility for dealing with emergencies does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to local and state officials who are charged by law with the management of the crucial first response to disasters. First response should be carried out by local and state emergency personnel under the supervision of the state governor and his emergency operations center. The actions and inactions of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin are a national disgrace due to their failure to implement the previously established evacuation plans of the state and city. Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin cannot claim that they were surprised by the extent of the damage and the need to evacuate so many people. Detailed written plans were already in place to evacuate more than a million people. The plans projected that 300,000 people would need transportation in the event of a hurricane like Katrina. If the plans had been implemented, thousands of lives would likely have been saved. In addition to the plans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill 13 months ago, in which widespread flooding supposedly trapped 300,000 people inside New Orleans. The exercise simulated the evacuation of more than a million residents. The problems identified in the simulation apparently were not solved. A year ago, as Hurricane Ivan approached, New Orleans ordered an evacuation but did not use city or school buses to help people evacuate. As a result many of the poorest citizens were unable to evacuate. Fortunately, the hurricane changed course and did not hit New Orleans, but both Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin acknowledged the need for a better evacuation plan. Again, they did not take corrective actions. In 1998, during a threat by Hurricane George, 14,000 people were sent to the Superdome and theft and vandalism were rampant due to inadequate security. Again, these problems were not corrected. The New Orleans contingency plan is still, as of this writing, on the city's Web site, and states: "The safe evacuation of threatened populations is one of the principle [sic] reasons for developing a Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan." But the plan was apparently ignored. Mayor Nagin was responsible for giving the order for mandatory evacuation and supervising the actual evacuation: His Office of Emergency Preparedness (not the federal government) must coordinate with the state on elements of evacuation and assist in directing the transportation of evacuees to staging areas. Mayor Nagin had to be encouraged by the governor to contact the National Hurricane Center before he finally, belatedly, issued the order for mandatory evacuation. And sadly, it apparently took a personal call from the president to urge the governor to order the mandatory evacuation. The city's evacuation plan states: "The city of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas." But even though the city has enough school and transit buses to evacuate 12,000 citizens per fleet run, the mayor did not use them. To compound the problem, the buses were not moved to high ground and were flooded. The plan also states that "special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific lifesaving assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedures as needed." This was not done. The evacuation plan warned that "if an evacuation order is issued without the mechanisms needed to disseminate the information to the affected persons, then we face the possibility of having large numbers of people either stranded and left to the mercy of a storm, or left in an area impacted by toxic materials." That is precisely what happened because of the mayor's failure. Instead of evacuating the people, the mayor ordered the refugees to the Superdome and Convention Center without adequate security and no provisions for food, water and sanitary conditions. As a result people died, and there was even rape committed, in these facilities. Mayor Nagin failed in his responsibility to provide public safety and to manage the orderly evacuation of the citizens of New Orleans. Now he wants to blame Gov. Blanco and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In an emergency the first requirement is for the city's emergency center to be linked to the state emergency operations center. This was not done. The federal government does not have the authority to intervene in a state emergency without the request of a governor. President Bush declared an emergency prior to Katrina hitting New Orleans, so the only action needed for federal assistance was for Gov. Blanco to request the specific type of assistance she needed. She failed to send a timely request for specific aid. In addition, unlike the governors of New York, Oklahoma and California in past disasters, Gov. Blanco failed to take charge of the situation and ensure that the state emergency operation facility was in constant contact with Mayor Nagin and FEMA. It is likely that thousands of people died because of the failure of Gov. Blanco to implement the state plan, which mentions the possible need to evacuate up to one million people. The plan clearly gives the governor the authority for declaring an emergency, sending in state resources to the disaster area and requesting necessary federal assistance. State legislators and governors nationwide need to update their contingency plans and the operation procedures for state emergency centers. Hurricane Katrina had been forecast for days, but that will not always be the case with a disaster (think of terrorist attacks). It must be made clear that the governor and locally elected officials are in charge of the "first response." I am not attempting to excuse some of the delays in FEMA's response. Congress and the president need to take corrective action there, also. However, if citizens expect FEMA to be a first responder to terrorist attacks or other local emergencies (earthquakes, forest fires, volcanoes), they will be disappointed. The federal government's role is to offer aid upon request. The Louisiana Legislature should conduct an immediate investigation into the failures of state and local officials to implement the written emergency plans. The tragedy is not over, and real leadership in the state and local government are essential in the months to come. More importantly, the hurricane season is still upon us, and local and state officials must stay focused on the jobs for which they were elected--and not on the deadly game of passing the emergency buck.

>>Source<<

You ain't lying. FEMA is a totally ineffectual organization.

Things better left to the military where it's going to now. Too bad the powers that be didn't figure that out from the get go.


[[[smoke]]]

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Yet another finger pointing down the chain from the Wall St. Journal... >>Source<<

And who the fuck is that author of the Bush-apologist hack WSJ opinion page - Bob Williams? And furthermore, what the fuck does he know? Not much, apparently:

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Who is Bob Williams, and why is he on TV talking about Hurricane Katrina? On September 6 and 7, numerous national media outlets featured G. Robert "Bob" Williams, president of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, falsely criticizing Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin -- both Democrats -- for their handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. But none of these media outlets disclosed that the Evergreen Freedom Foundation is a conservative think tank that espouses "limited, accountable government" and receives funding from numerous conservative donors. Nor did they make clear how Williams, who was a Washington state legislator during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, is qualified to comment on hurricane disaster relief efforts. Williams's media tour appears to have been launched by a September 6 Wall Street Journal op-ed. He also was featured on the September 6 editions of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, ABC's World News Tonight, and Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, as well as the September 7 edition of MSNBC's Connected: Coast to Coast. On his guest appearances on The O'Reilly Factor and Connected: Coast to Coast, Williams claimed that Blanco was largely to blame for the slow government response to Katrina's devastation, because "the feds can't come in" to provide disaster relief unless requested by the governor. This is false; in fact, the Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan clearly states that the federal government may take a "proactive" response to a catastrophe and bypass state requests for aid. Normally, it is a governor's responsibility to request federal aid in the event of an emergency. But under a "proactive" response, "[s]tandard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude." Moreover, Blanco requested federal aid three days before Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reprinted Blanco's August 27 request to Bush to declare a state of emergency in Louisiana and to provide "supplementary Federal assistance." Further, the White House had already authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist with the hurricane emergency. According to an August 26 White House statement, FEMA was authorized "to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency." In his Journal op-ed and his appearances on The O'Reilly Factor and Connected, Williams claimed that, "sadly, it apparently took a personal call from the president to urge the governor to order the mandatory evacuation." But news reports indicate that Bush -- in an effort to ensure such a precaution was being taken --called Blanco "shortly before" the press conference at which the evacuation was announced -- casting doubt on Williams's claim that Bush's phone call precipitated the announcement. Lou Dobbs Tonight and World News Tonight featured brief videotaped segments of Williams criticizing New Orleans' evacuation plans. None of these media outlets noted that the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, which purports to "advance individual liberty, free enterprise and limited, accountable government," is a conservative group that receives funding from conservative grant-making organizations such as the Scaife Foundations and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Nor did they make clear exactly how Williams is qualified to comment on hurricane disaster relief. According to the Evergreen Freedom Foundation website: "Our primary research areas are budget and taxes, education, health care, welfare, and citizenship and governance." Williams's biography on the site states that he "is known as a budget and tax expert in the state and is frequently consulted for advice on fiscal and tax policies." ABC News correspondent Dan Harris noted that Williams "dealt with emergency response issues after the eruption of Mount St. Helens," while Fox News identified Williams as a "Frmr. State Legislator in Mt. St. Helens Area." But the Mount St. Helens eruption (which occurred 25 years ago) and Hurricane Katrina are notably dissimilar -- specifically in their respective impacts and the amount of warning and preparation time preceding them. The eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, killed 57 people and was foreshadowed by two months of unusual seismic activity and an emergency declaration on March 31. According to census figures, Skamania County, where the volcano is located, had a population of 7,919 in 1980. By contrast, Blanco declared a state of emergency on August 26, noting that "Hurricane Katrina poses an imminent threat to the state of Louisiana." That same day, the National Weather Service predicted that there was a 17 percent chance Katrina would strike New Orleans by August 29. According to the most recent census figures, New Orleans' population in July 2004 was 462,269. http://mediamatters.org/items/200509070003

Nice obfuscating dumb fuck "expert" you got there.

State/local were slow. culpable almost. maybe even.

Williams doesn't have to tell us that.

you go ahead and waste our time tearing him down though Opus. awesome job.

oh and stop posting crap from your moonbat blogs and websites. mediamatters what was that shit about Mt. St. Helens parallel? fucking dumb.

as a sidenote, Opus, you may hav gotten ahead of your Rove hating self and misread the Wapost report about Blanco declaring an SoE. it's funny though.

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image image image

who cares? only people that want to tear down Republicans at all cost and context care. and yall are in the minority.

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Originally posted by Q5echo State/local were slow. culpable almost. maybe even. Williams doesn't have to tell us that. you go ahead and waste our time tearing him down though Opus. awesome job.

Why thanks. I thought his qualifications on the matter were pretty interesting myself.

But his content was even more interesting, and outright fucking bullshit. I've explained it in numerous posts throughout, and I'm happy to explain it again here.

quote:

oh and stop posting crap from your moonbat blogs and websites. mediamatters what was that shit about Mt. St. Helens parallel? fucking dumb.

Why? The article from Media Matters destroys YOUR FUCKING HACK of an "analyst" or "expert", not just on the matters of his notable political interests as a Bush apologist, but on the content itself.

Perhaps you missed the middle part of the article:

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On his guest appearances on The O'Reilly Factor and Connected: Coast to Coast, Williams claimed that Blanco was largely to blame for the slow government response to Katrina's devastation, because "the feds can't come in" to provide disaster relief unless requested by the governor. This is false; in fact, the Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan clearly states that the federal government may take a "proactive" response to a catastrophe and bypass state requests for aid. Normally, it is a governor's responsibility to request federal aid in the event of an emergency. But under a "proactive" response, "[s]tandard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude." Moreover, Blanco requested federal aid three days before Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reprinted Blanco's August 27 request to Bush to declare a state of emergency in Louisiana and to provide "supplementary Federal assistance." Further, the White House had already authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist with the hurricane emergency. According to an August 26 White House statement, FEMA was authorized "to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency." In his Journal op-ed and his appearances on The O'Reilly Factor and Connected, Williams claimed that, "sadly, it apparently took a personal call from the president to urge the governor to order the mandatory evacuation." But news reports indicate that Bush -- in an effort to ensure such a precaution was being taken --called Blanco "shortly before" the press conference at which the evacuation was announced -- casting doubt on Williams's claim that Bush's phone call precipitated the announcement. Lou Dobbs Tonight and World News Tonight featured brief videotaped segments of Williams criticizing New Orleans' evacuation plans.

Get it yet? When a State of Emergency is declared, all coordination and response plans IMMEDIATELY fall to the Federal level. This is clearly outlined on both the DHS and FEMA websites that I've posted numerous times throughout various threads. Nothing more need be said.

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as a sidenote, Opus, you may hav gotten ahead of your Rove hating self and misread the Wapost report about Blanco declaring an SoE. it's funny though.

Well I'm glad to humor you, but Rove has funny little "coincidences" pop up like that all the time whenever he steps in on things. Blatantly false information gets spread to news medias all the time. The WaPost had to correct itself as a consequence.

Do I know it's Rove? Of course not. But the coincidences of things like this pop up all the time when he gets involved.

Or maybe I misunderstood you - are you saying that I misread the WaPost itself? If so, what part? And why did they have to correct themselves, especially in light of the factual information on when a State of Emergency was declared?

I'm not quite sure I understand the ideological sidestepping here to defend FEMA and the federal government�s response. Certainly one can concede that part of what led to the circumstances where some 60,000+ people were left stranded in New Orleans can be blamed on state and local officials. However, all of this was before the hurricane. After the hurricane, the state was clearly overwhelmed to adequately respond to the crisis and anyone with a tv, radio, or computer saw that it was quite clear that an urgent federal response was needed. For Christ�s sake, how many times did we see Blanco or the New Orlean�s mayor plead for help on tv and describe the chaotic deterioration of the situation? It�s completely unacceptable that Brown didn�t even know about the situation in New Orleans and the Superdome until Thursday when you, I, and everyone else in America who had half a brain to watch the news or use the internet knew about it by Tuesday.

So what�s the defense of FEMA and the federal government�s response? Justifiable bureaucracy prevented them from intervening because it�s primarily a state/local issue??? This is the defense the supposed "advocates" of limited, accountable government turn to? Well than what�s the fucking point of the assload of federal money that's going FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security if it�s their job to go in second or third? So you�re telling me that if 9/11 happened all over again, FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security would do NOTHING until New York state and local officials appealed for federal help by submitting Form 5 Subform 13 and making sure to sign on the dotted line at paragraph 3 line 55? And once that were done, the federal government might finally respond a week after the twin towers fell? This is the kind of bloated government you want with your tax dollars? We now reward and defend agencies that are mandated to bureaucracy instead of agencies that take initiative??? This is analogous to the democrats suddenly supporting privatized social security if Hillary Clinton said it would be good for her �village�.

But yes, embrace the bureaucracy, the inefficiencies, and the ineptitude because that's exactly the kind of government we want and expect with our tax dollars. After all we can�t have good government that�s actually, you know, accountable. Why that�s just shocking to think that.

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Red Tape Snarls Katrina Volunteers Sept. 5, 2005 (AP) From all corners of this country, hundreds of would-be rescuers are wending their way to the beleaguered Gulf Coast in buses, vans and trailers. But government red tape has hampered many who ache to help Katrina's victims. Louisiana's Jefferson Parish is desperate for relief, but parish President Aaron Broussard says officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency turned back three trailer trucks of water, ordered the Coast Guard not to provide emergency diesel fuel and cut emergency power lines. Why? FEMA has not explained. But the outraged Broussard said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the agency needs to bring in all its "force immediately, without red tape, without bureaucracy, act immediately with common sense and leadership, and save lives." The government says it is doing the best it can in the face of a massive and complicated disaster. "Even as progress is being made, we know that victims are still out there and we are working tirelessly to bring them the help they need," said Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Some of the delays can be explained by the need to control a volatile situation. Long lines of volunteers are being stopped on freeways on their way into New Orleans. "Anyone who self-responded was not being put to work. The military was worried about having more people in the city. They want to limit it to the professionals," said Kevin Southerland, a captain with Orange Fire Department in Orange County, Calif., a member of one of eight 14-member water rescue teams sent to New Orleans at FEMA's request. From the first hours of the disaster, FEMA has been using the National Incident Management System, a command structure to get millions of dollars worth of government resources and thousands of workers ranging from firefighters to public health teams to places in need. FEMA also has teams designed to support smaller communities. FEMA is urging individuals and corporations to contact nonprofit organizations if they want to volunteer or donate. It was FEMA's management system that brought in members of the Nebraska Air National Guard to deliver 66,000 MRE meals and extra fuel to hard-hit areas, and rescuers from Hamilton County, Ohio to search the rubble of Gulfport, Miss. for survivors. And it was that system that dispatched a nine-member Disaster Medical Assistance Team from Hawaii to the New Orleans Airport where they triaged people evacuated from hospitals, nursing homes, the Convention Center and the Superdome. The federal government actually wrote a "How To" book for national catastrophes after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. The 426-page document, called the National Response Plan, was released in December, 2004. Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, said Hurricane Katrina is the first real test of the plan, and has exposed its strengths and weaknesses. "Quite honestly, at the federal level, the coordination was quite robust," he said. "It's just the interface between federal, state and local where clearly we need to look to ways to improve the process." But others were more critical. Beth Sharer, CEO of Washington County Memorial Hospital in Salem, Ind., said she was frustrated by a federal plan to create 40 new emergency medical centers with 250 beds each. "It's not any one person's fault, but the system failed," she said. Hospitals around the country were standing by with empty beds, staff, triage centers and air transportation to fetch patients, she said. But they couldn't launch the rescue flights without requests for help, and those requests never came. "These victims could have been here a week ago, and now they're spending a lot of time and money making triage centers? In situations like this every minute counts, not every day counts. Why not get them to these open beds?" she said. Even skilled volunteers with the best intentions can be more trouble than help if they arrive needing food, shelter or fuel, some say. "Our biggest problem has been trying not to put more stress on the community, particularly with regards to gasoline. We want to make sure we've got enough gas for chain saws and transportation," said Larry Guengerich of the Mennonite Disaster Service, a Pennsylvania-based relief organization that has three small crews currently working along the Gulf Coast, cutting and clearing downed limbs and covering damaged roofs. There are, at this point, several federal emergency command centers, as well as state and local command centers where coordinators are working to match nonstop requests with the appropriate nonstop offers of help. Frank Russo of the Chicago Ambulance Alliance said his organization was ready to send help immediately. But the request didn't come until Thursday, three days after the hurricane struck. "We didn't want to just up and go like everyone did after 9-11. We learned from that. After 9-11 everybody just went to New York and then they just sat there, they had no where to go." Early Saturday, ten Chicago ambulances and their medical staff finally headed south with orders to report to a command center set up outside of New Orleans. By Sunday the Chicago ambulances were delivering patients from the New Orleans airport to regional hospitals. "It makes sense to go through the government and have things set up," said Russo. Others were still waiting for the official request. In New Jersey, for example, Gov. Richard Codey said he had a task force of 105 police officers and 55 vehicles and a medical task force of 55 physicians and 43 nurses standing by. But other rescuers simply couldn't, or wouldn't, wait. Early Sunday morning, for example, a convoy of more than 35 fire, police, transportation and public works vehicles left Baltimore for an 1,100-mile drive to Gretna, La. Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley decided to send the help, including 40 firefighters and 28 police officers, without consulting FEMA "as a direct response to a direct request from the mayor of Gretna," said O'Malley's spokesman. On Friday, Gary Maclaughlin of Santa Cruz, Calif., flew to Nashville, Tenn., where he bought a diesel-powered 1990 yellow school bus for $2,000. He charged $1,500 worth of water, diapers, granola bars and peanut butter crackers on his credit card and headed straight for the shelters. By Sunday evening he was driving loads of evacuees from the New Orleans Airport to a rescue shelter in Covington, La. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005...611_page3.shtml

quote:

Katrina medical help held up by red tape Doctors waiting to treat victims in tax-funded, state-of-the-art unit Monday, September 5, 2005; Posted: 12:16 p.m. EDT (16:16 GMT) Manage Alerts | What Is This? BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (AP) -- Volunteer physicians are pouring in to care for the sick, but red tape is keeping hundreds of others from caring for Hurricane Katrina survivors while health problems rise. Among the doctors stymied from helping out are 100 surgeons and paramedics in a state-of-the-art mobile hospital, developed with millions of tax dollars for just such emergencies, marooned in rural Mississippi. "The bell was rung, the e-mails were sent off. ...We all got off work and deployed," said one of the frustrated surgeons, Dr. Preston "Chip" Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here," he said. That government officials can't straighten out the mess and get them assigned to a relief effort now that they're just a few miles away "is just mind-boggling," he said. While the doctors wait, the first signs of disease began to emerge Saturday: A Mississippi shelter was closed after 20 residents got sick with dysentery, probably from drinking contaminated water. Many other storm survivors were being treated in the Houston Astrodome and other shelters for an assortment of problems, including chronic health conditions left untreated because people had lost or used up their medicine. The North Carolina mobile hospital stranded in Mississippi was developed through the Office of Homeland Security after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. With capacity for 113 beds, it is designed to handle disasters and mass casualties. Equipment includes ultrasound, digital radiology, satellite Internet, and a full pharmacy, enabling doctors to do most types of surgery in the field, including open-chest and abdominal operations. It travels in a convoy that includes two 53-foot trailers, which as of Sunday afternoon was parked on a gravel lot 70 miles north of New Orleans because Louisiana officials for several days would not let them deploy to the flooded city, Rich said. Yet plans to use the facility and its 100 health professionals were hatched days before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, doctors in the caravan said. As they talked with Mississippi officials about prospects of helping out there, other doctors complained that their offers of help also were turned away. A primary care physician from Ohio called and e-mailed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after seeing a notice on the American Medical Association's Web site about volunteer doctors being needed. An e-mail reply told him to watch CNN that night, where U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt was to announce a Web address for doctors to enter their names in a database. "How crazy is that?" he complained in an e-mail to his daughter. Dr. Jeffrey Guy, a trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University who has been in contact with the mobile hospital doctors, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, "There are entire hospitals that are contacting me, saying, 'We need to take on patients," ' but they can't get through the bureaucracy. "The crime of this story is, you've got millions of dollars in assets and it's not deployed," he said. "We mount a better response in a Third World country." Leavitt, U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, and Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were in Louisiana on Sunday. Gerberding planned to go to Texas, where many evacuees are now housed. Many other doctors have been able to volunteer, and were arriving in large numbers Sunday in Baton Rouge. Several said they worked it out through Louisiana state officials. Dr. Bethany Gardiner, a 36-year-old pediatrician who just moved to Santa Barbara, California, from Florida, had been visiting parents in Florida when the hurricane hit. "I left my kids and just started searching places on the Web" to volunteer, eventually getting an invitation to come to Baton Rouge, she said. http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/09/0...ick.redtape.ap/

quote:

Offers of Aid Immediate, but U.S. Approval Delayed for Days By Elizabeth Williamson Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 7, 2005; Page A01 Offers of foreign aid worth tens of millions of dollars -- including a Swedish water purification system, a German cellular telephone network and two Canadian rescue ships -- have been delayed for days awaiting review by backlogged federal agencies, according to European diplomats and information collected by the State Department. Since Hurricane Katrina, more than 90 countries and international organizations offered to assist in recovery efforts for the flood-stricken region, but nearly all endeavors remained mired yesterday in bureaucratic entanglements, in most cases, at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In Germany, a massive telecommunication system and two technicians await the green light to fly to Louisiana, after its donors spent four days searching for someone willing to accept the gift. "FEMA? That was a lost case," said Mirit Hemy, an executive with the Netherlands-based New Skies Satellite who made the phone calls. "We got zero help, and we lost one week trying to get hold of them." In Sweden, a transport plane loaded with a water purification system and a cellular network has been ready to take off for four days, while Swedish officials wait for flight clearance. Nearly a week after they were offered, four Canadian rescue vessels and two helicopters have been accepted but probably won't arrive from Halifax, Nova Scotia, until Saturday. The Canadians' offer of search-and-rescue divers has so far gone begging. Matching offers of aid -- from Panamanian bananas to British engineers -- with needs in the devastated region is a laborious process in a disaster whose scope is unheard of in recent U.S. history, especially for a country more accustomed to giving than receiving aid. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday that to his knowledge, all offers of foreign aid have been accepted and some have arrived, such as Air Canada's flights to relocate displaced people. But many others must be vetted by emergency relief specialists. "I think the experts will take a look at exactly what is needed now," he said. FEMA spokeswoman Natalie Rule said the foreign complaints echo those from governors and officials "across the nation." "There has been that common thought that because [offers of aid] are not tapped immediately, they're not prudently used," Rule said. "We are pulling everything into a centralized database. We are trying not to suck everything in all at once, whether we need it or not." European diplomats said publicly that they understand the difficulty of coordinating such a massive recovery effort. In an open letter released yesterday, though, Ambassador John Bruton, head of the Delegation of the European Commission to the United States, wrote: "Perhaps one of those lessons will be that rugged individualism is not always enough in such a crisis, particularly if an individual does not have the material and psychological means to escape the fury of a hurricane in time." Soon after the flooding, the government of Sweden offered a C-130 Hercules transport plane, loaded with water purification equipment, and a cellular network donated by Ericsson. "As far as I know, it's still on the ground," said Claes Thorson, press counselor at the Swedish Embassy in Washington. He said that along with 20 other European Union nations that have pledged aid, "We are ready to send our things. We know they are needed, but what seems to be a problem is getting all these offers into the country." So far, Thorson said, the State Department has denied Sweden's request for flight clearance. "We don't know exactly why, but we have a suspicion that the system is clogged on the receiving end," he said. "But we keep a request alive all the time, so we are not forgotten." German telecommunications company KB Impuls contacted another company, Unisat, based in Rhode Island, with the idea of contributing an integrated satellite and cellular telephone system. In a region with its communications systems in tatters, the $3 million system could handle 5,000 calls at once, routing them, if necessary, through Germany. KB Impuls would contribute the equipment and two engineers, supplied with their own food, water and generator fuel, to set it up. Unisat contacted another firm, New Skies Satellite, with offices in Washington, which agreed to contribute satellite capacity. New Skies even arranged transport, securing a C-130 cargo plane from the Israeli air force, to pick up the equipment and technicians from Germany and bring them to Louisiana. "With one call, I got an airplane," Hemy said. And then, over four days, she and the owner of Unisat, Uri Bar-Zemer, called contacts at FEMA, the American Red Cross, the State Department, even members of Congress, trying to find someone to accept the gift. Finally the State Department told them that to receive flight clearance, the gift must have a specific recipient. "I was ringing, ringing, ringing -- and nothing," Hemy said. Finally, yesterday, she got a call from the U.S. Air Force's Joint Task Force Katrina Communication Operations division, thanking the companies for the gift and inquiring about the system's technical specifications. As of late yesterday, the companies were waiting for a written order from the Northern Command to begin the mission. "I don't have a problem confirming that," Bar-Zemer said of the story. But he expressed concerns that disclosing the difficulties in donating could jeopardize the company's chances of actually delivering the aid. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...90601994_2.html

The death of common sense continues to percolate ad nauseum.

quote:

Originally posted by occrider Well than what�s the fucking point of the assload of federal money that's going FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security if it�s their job to go in second or third? So you�re telling me that if 9/11 happened all over again, FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security would do NOTHING until New York state and local officials appealed for federal help by submitting Form 5 Subform 13 and making sure to sign on the dotted line at paragraph 3 line 55? And once that were done, the federal government might finally respond a week after the twin towers fell? This is the kind of bloated government you want with your tax dollars? We now reward and defend agencies that are mandated to bureaucracy instead of agencies that take initiative??? This is analogous to the democrats suddenly supporting privatized social security if Hillary Clinton said it would be good for her �village�. But yes, embrace the bureaucracy, the inefficiencies, and the ineptitude because that's exactly the kind of government we want and expect with our tax dollars. After all we can�t have good government that�s actually, you know, accountable. Why that�s just shocking to think that.

I might add the utter irony of the Conservative Norquist lovers who believe the federal government should be squeezed down the toilet, yet NOW seem to rally behind the actions of this inept Federal government ONLY when the President himself and his inane FEMA response is under scrutiny.

Fiscal conservatives are few and far between nowadays. Who woulda thunkit to see modern-day conservatives rally around the actions of the federal government?







The death of common sense continues to percolate ad nauseum. [/QUOTE]

Nobody's defending Brown; that hack obviously couldn't handle his posting.

The reasoning behind pointing out Nagin and Blanco is because no one else is doing it.
Everyone else is looking so far above the situation they are failing to even mention the PRIMARY first-time responders without a numbnifying, 2-fingered keyboard response of, "It-must-be-Bush-because-it's-always-his-fault-liberal-whelp".
Does it just take less energy to type that out "Blame Bush" when a little (and I do stress 'little') research clearly shows that blame goes in order of:

1) City
2) State
3) Federal

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Nobody's defending Brown; that hack obviously couldn't handle his posting. The reasoning behind pointing out Nagin and Blanco is because no one else is doing it. Everyone else is looking so far above the situation they are failing to even mention the PRIMARY first-time responders without a numbnifying, 2-fingered keyboard response of, "It-must-be-Bush-because-it's-always-his-fault-liberal-whelp". Does it just take less energy to type that out "Blame Bush" when a little (and I do stress 'little') research clearly shows that blame goes in order of: 1) City 2) State 3) Federal Why is everyone completely forgetting 1 and 2?? (and you can't blame me for 'defending' FEMA because you'll notice they made the list... ) I could site many, many examples of blogs, aritcles, opinions and dispite the source, the majority are all saying the same thing. FEMA is the last to blame in all of this. They were left holding the bag when everything went to shit and they couldn't hack it in the heat of the moment either. A new poll suggests that people understand this: >>Source<<

Well you know I've been advocating responsibility on all 3 of these aspects, and indeed as more comes to the surface there is evidence of some not-so-sound evacuation plans on the local level. Much will be known later in an investigation, PROVIDED that it is a fair investigation with an INDEPENDENT committee, rather than a bipartisan he-said/she-said Committee that the GOP wants done instead. The Dems. reject this and want an independent panel, much like the 9/11 Commission:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...5090801226.html

I see absolutely no reason why we cannot allow an independent inquiry in this manner, do you?

And in regards to polls, well you know they're like assholes - everyone has them. So what I do try to do is line up these assholes together and see if there's a trend. Okay, maybe that analogy went off the deep end a bit, but you get the picture.

The trouble with Gallup is it does tend to be an outlier at times. I don't dismiss Gallup, but in comparison to the rest of the polls, you see just how far out of reach it is on this issue. For example, CBS News has 58% disapproval with how Bush is handling Katrina with an overall 42% approval rating:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005...ain824591.shtml

Zogby has 60% disapproval vs. only 36% with only a 41% overall approval rating:

http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1020

And the newest Pew poll has a surprising trend in Bush's numbers falling in regards to Katrina not just with the public, but with his own GOP constituents. 2/3 of the public says Bush could have done more with a 40% approval rating:

http://people-press.org/reports/dis...p3?ReportID=255

And finally, we have the AP/Ipsis poll showing Bush breaking the 40% mark and has a 39% approval vs. 59% disapproval rating overall:

http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/client...1tb.pdf&id=2770

So where exactly do you see the public on this again?

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Well you know I've been advocating responsibility on all 3 of these aspects, and indeed as more comes to the surface there is evidence of some not-so-sound evacuation plans on the local level. Much will be known later in an investigation, PROVIDED that it is a fair investigation with an INDEPENDENT committee, rather than a bipartisan he-said/she-said Committee that the GOP wants done instead. The Dems. reject this and want an independent panel, much like the 9/11 Commission:

I totally agree with you on this being an independent committee as long as it wasn't the dog&pony, circus show like the 9/11 Commission. While I agree there should be updates from the press to how the committee is doing; it shouldn't become a grandstanding event either for people to put out their agendas much like the debacled 9/11 one.

Yea, polls are flakey at the best of times.
While they do give you the, "flavour of the moment" they certainly don't give you the overall opinion in some aspects.
I'm sure there's a poll about polls out there...

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Nobody's defending Brown; that hack obviously couldn't handle his posting. The reasoning behind pointing out Nagin and Blanco is because no one else is doing it. Everyone else is looking so far above the situation they are failing to even mention the PRIMARY first-time responders without a numbnifying, 2-fingered keyboard response of, "It-must-be-Bush-because-it's-always-his-fault-liberal-whelp". Does it just take less energy to type that out "Blame Bush" when a little (and I do stress 'little') research clearly shows that blame goes in order of: 1) City 2) State 3) Federal Why is everyone completely forgetting 1 and 2?? (and you can't blame me for 'defending' FEMA because you'll notice they made the list... ) I could site many, many examples of blogs, aritcles, opinions and dispite the source, the majority are all saying the same thing. FEMA is the last to blame in all of this. They were left holding the bag when everything went to shit and they couldn't hack it in the heat of the moment either. A new poll suggests that people understand this: >>Source<<

As I stated before, the state and local government were responsible for allowing so many people to remain unevacuated from the city. They're most certainly to blame for that. What the federal government can be blamed for, is that it took them 5 days to mount any kind of response to the humanitarian crisis which is completely unacceptable considering they had advanced warning. What if it had been a terrorist bomb that blew up the levees? Is it acceptable for the department of homeland security and FEMA to respond 5 days after the fact?? Why is it that the ONLY urban search and rescue squad conducting operations in New Orleans on Thursday was Canadian?? Canadian for christ's sake! The Canadians can deploy specialized urban rescue teams faster than our own goddamned government?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...National/Canada

Everyone killed during the hurricane and flooding was due to negligence by state/local officials. The descension into violence and the looming humanitarian crisis was due to federal negligence.

As for blaming Bush, I'm usually not one to blame him personally for everything that his dumbass administration does, but he personally was the one who appointed that "hack", as you call him, as head of FEMA, along with all the other incompetant retards who shouldn't have been there:

quote:

Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience 'Brain Drain' At Agency Cited By Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, September 9, 2005; Page A01 Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative. Meanwhile, veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman -- who led FEMA's offices of response, recovery and preparedness, respectively -- have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state emergency managers, according to current and former officials. Because of the turnover, three of the five FEMA chiefs for natural-disaster-related operations and nine of 10 regional directors are working in an acting capacity, agency officials said. Patronage appointments to the crisis-response agency are nothing new to Washington administrations. But inexperience in FEMA's top ranks is emerging as a key concern of local, state and federal leaders as investigators begin to sift through what the government has admitted was a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina. "FEMA requires strong leadership and experience because state and local governments rely on them," said Trina Sheets, executive director of the National Emergency Management Association. "When you don't have trained, qualified people in those positions, the program suffers as a whole." Last week's greatest foe was, of course, a storm of such magnitude that it "overwhelmed" all levels of government, according to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). And several top FEMA officials are well-regarded by state and private counterparts in disaster preparedness and response. They include Edward G. Buikema, acting director of response since February, and Kenneth O. Burris, acting chief of operations, a career firefighter and former Marietta, Ga., fire chief. But scorching criticism has been aimed at FEMA, and it starts at the top with Brown, who has admitted to errors in responding to Hurricane Katrina and the flooding in New Orleans. The Oklahoma native, 50, was hired to the agency after a rocky tenure as commissioner of a horse sporting group by former FEMA director Joe M. Allbaugh, the 2000 Bush campaign manager and a college friend of Brown's. Rhode, Brown's chief of staff, is a former television reporter who came to Washington as advance deputy director for Bush's Austin-based 2000 campaign and then the White House. He joined FEMA in April 2003 after stints at the Commerce Department and the U.S. Small Business Administration. Altshuler is a former presidential advance man. His predecessor, Scott Morris, was a media strategist for Bush with the Austin firm Maverick Media. David I. Maurstad, who stepped down as Nebraska lieutenant governor in 2001 to join FEMA, has served as acting director for risk reduction and federal insurance administrator since June 2004. Daniel A. Craig, a onetime political fundraiser and campaign adviser, came to FEMA in 2001 from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he directed the eastern regional office, after working as a lobbyist for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Brown has managed more than 160 natural disasters as FEMA general counsel and deputy director since 2001, "hands-on experience [that] cannot be understated. Other leadership at FEMA brings particular skill sets -- policy management leadership, for example." The agency has a deep bench of career professionals, said FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews, including two dozen senior field coordinators and Gil Jamieson, director of the National Incident Management System. "Simply because folks who have left the agency have a disagreement with how it's being run doesn't necessarily indicate that there is a lack of experience leading it," she said. Andrews said the "acting" designation for regional officials is a designation that signifies that they are FEMA civil servants -- not political appointees. Touring the wrecked Gulf Coast with Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff yesterday, Vice President Cheney also defended FEMA leaders, saying, "We're always trying to strike the right balance" between political appointees and "career professionals that fill the jobs underneath them." But experts inside and out of government said a "brain drain" of experienced disaster hands throughout the agency, hastened in part by the appointment of leaders without backgrounds in emergency management, has weakened the agency's ability to respond to natural disasters. Some security experts and congressional critics say the exodus was fueled by a bureaucratic reshuffling in Washington in 2003, when FEMA was stripped of its independent Cabinet-level status and folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Emergency preparedness has atrophied as a result, some analysts said, extending from Washington to localities. FEMA "has gone downhill within the department, drained of resources and leadership," said I.M. "Mac" Destler, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. "The crippling of FEMA was one important reason why it failed." Richard A. Andrews, former emergency services director for the state of California and a member of the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council, said state and local failures were critical in the Katrina response, but competence, funding and political will in Washington were also lacking. "I do not think fundamentally this is an organizational issue," Andrews said. "You need people in there who have both experience and the confidence of the president, who are able to fight and articulate what FEMA's mission and role is, and who understand how emergency management works." The agency's troubles are no secret. The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that promotes careers in federal government, ranked FEMA last of 28 agencies studied in 2003. In its list of best places to work in the government, a 2004 survey by the American Federation of Government Employees found that of 84 career FEMA professionals who responded, only 10 people ranked agency leaders excellent or good. An additional 28 said the leadership was fair and 33 called it poor. More than 50 said they would move to another agency if they could remain at the same pay grade, and 67 ranked the agency as poorer since its merger into the Department of Homeland Security. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...90802165_2.html

Hmmm let's put hacks in charge of a federal emergency response agency ... what could possibly go wrong? Yup good government at work here.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo

Some things need to be mentioned that this Drudge Report photo states or directly implies. First, about Red Cross being barred. Perhaps it would be best if we heard straight from the horse's mouth (and no, I'm not talking about Brown):

quote:

MARTY EVANS, RED CROSS PRESIDENT AND CEO: Well, Larry, when the storm came our goal was prior to landfall to support the evacuation. It was unsafe to be in the city. We were asked by the city not to be there and the Superdome was made a shelter of last resorts and, quite frankly in retrospect, it was a good idea because otherwise those people would have had no shelter at all. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRI.../02/lkl.01.html

IOW, they were trying to get everyone the fuck outa dodge. Could they have done things better? Undoubtedly, but considering that it was already thought they had supplies to last them a few days, it seemed unnecessary at the time and the Red Cross could get to those people after the hurricane had cleared.

Second, in regards to the buses - I covered this before with some ficticious hypothetical numbers, but the point is trying to evacuate tens of thousands of people outa the city would have been a complete logistical nightmare. There's no fucking way to coordinate this, let alone find the hundreds of drivers needed to round people up and coordinate them out. I'll turn this issue over to a poster on DailyKos who addresses this issue in full. In short, the city did have a plan for these people, a plan that was modified and worked on since their previous hurricanes:

quote:

The first piece of information the Right Wing Noise Machine is trying to argue is that the City of New Orleans didn't follow its hurricane plan as contained in the The City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan Annex I: Hurricanes. The second piece of information is that the City of New Orleans had no plan for sheltering its citizens who did not have their own transportation with which to flee with portions of this article from the Times-Picayune from July 24th. Join me after the jump... ArchPundit's diary :: :: There are several striking bits of information in a series of articles from the Times-Picayune over the last year since Hurricane Ivan was a near miss. Here are a four more articles that capture the major issues the city faced. Click these links to see the full articles over the last year. One clear conclusion is that the City was acutely aware of the problem of evacuating the poor and others who couldn't get out, but didn't have the resources to do it. Even with the claims on Drudge regarding the buses being available, the reality is the City didn't have 200 bus drivers to volunteer to drive them. The young man who comandeered a school bus was great, but imagine just grabbing two hundred drivers and sending them in heavy traffic to evacuate--the number of problems involving accidents would only make a difficult evacuation harder. City resources were focused on securing the city and moving people within the city to shelters including the Superdome, an action that save innumerable lives and the Times-Picayune agrees. By choosing to move people to a safe site, the City was able to reach far more citizens than if it had simply evacuated people out of the City. With the Contraflow plan under way, there was virtually no way to get buses back into the city after dropping off individuals so any bus trip out of the city would have been a one way trip for a bus. Most striking despite the attempt to blame the City, is this sentence in the Times-Picayune article quote: City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own. That's right--federal emergency officials were a part of the plan. Why? Because everyone understood there was no plausible means to evacuate everyone from the City of New Orleans in the face of a disastrous hurricane ( John Tierney is delusional). During Ivan, only 1200 people showed up at the Superdome. During another hurricane about 14,000 took refuge there as well. Since Ivan, the City improved it's plan and had city buses run routes for people without cars to places where other special bus routes ran people to shelters. This time, 20-30,000 people got there. If there was a mistake, it was not designating another shelter of last resort--such as the Convention Center (this would have helped additionally because there would have been some real security planned). The State and the City were aware that a Mandatory evacuation would still leave at least 100,000 behind. There simply is no infrastructure to solve that problem anywhere in the nation. Knowing that, the City was working to retrofit the Superdome during its rehab to provide exactly the kind of improvements that would have alleviated the suffering--power sources, food storage, and sewage modifications. Overall though, those who vote have their concerns most addressed and in Ivan's case the contraflow system was very poorly managed causing long delays for those evacuating. The State fixed that plan and those with the means to leave certainly had a lot of traffic to deal with, but it moved relatively fast. The Times-Picayune said average speed was about 45 miles per hour which is not speedy, but fast and orderly for an evacuation. Those who vote are those people who could evacuate and politicians responded. What's stunning is that even in the case of the worst off, the City of New Orleans still worked to improve the shelter intake and provision system to give a last resort. What is unbelievable is the federal government didn't have a contingency for evacuating those left in the City after the storm. The problem was known and the City did what it could do to alleviate those concerns and in the long term had plans to alleviate the problems even further. Katrina beat them to it though. Let's make it clear though that with the Hurricane Pam exercise, federal officials fully understood the Superdome was a refuge of last resort and as such would need to be evacuated after a devastating storm. While Ray Nagin should have called for a mandatory evacuation earlier than he did, he issued the first mandatory evacuation for the City of New Orleans ever and seems to have achieved a higher rate of compliance than any previous evacuation with estimates ranging from 70-80%. His actions to open the Superdome and provide transportation to it saved many lives. The failure was when federal agencies that knew the plan then failed to provide for evacuation of citizens stuck there after a catastrophic natural disaster. There are going to be thousands of mistakes to identify over the next few years. Everyone in the situation make some understandable mistakes given the breadth of the crisis. Some of those mistaked are not understandable and at a minimum we are seeing a flood of bullshit out of Mike Brown's mouth that seriously questions whether he is in touch with reality. Fire him now. Updated 9/7 10:30 CDT http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/7/15129/07517

Now the one issue I do have with the above poster is that Nagin perhaps could have called an evacuation sooner. I really don't know how Nagin could have done this. Keeping the timeline in mind:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/katrina-timeline.php

How would Nagin have known the strength of this hurricane building? How could they have acted quicker? And how could they have ever possibly evacuated tens of thousands of individuals in a coordinated fashion within 48 hrs., once they knew the size and strength of this sucker? It wasn't even a consideration until Saturday when it reached a Cat 3 level. We're talking 100,000 people folks. No, the best plan to coordinate was to get their asses in a bunkered down place close by, which is exactly what the city did in record numbers this time - a much bigger improvement from the past.

And again, let's do some math on this hypothetical scenario with the buses and evacuation to somewhere, keeping our timeline in mind:

quote:

But, hey, let's imagine that there was a safe place to evacuate 100,000 people with little or no means to support themselves. Just what would it take to accomplish that? Well, a few simple calculations show that, even with all those flooded school buses, it might have been an insurmountable task. If you assume 100,000 people with 24 hours to evacuate (which, in the case of Katrina, was actually less than 20) you would have to average nearly 4200 people evacuated per hour. Large school buses hold about 75 passengers. That means you'd need over 2600 buses -- BIG buses. End to end they would comprise a line of buses 20 miles long! And, of course, 2600 bus drivers -- drivers that were simply not available according to reports I've heard (using inexperienced drivers may have been as dangerous as just staying put -- driving a bus is not like tooling around in your Honda -- it is a skill unto itself.) As a practical matter, say it took 30 minutes to load a bus, you would have to load close to 100 buses simultaneously, continuously, hour after hour to even begin to get out of town and beat the storm. What about just making round trips with fewer buses? Not really an option since all the interstates out of the city were operating under 'contra-flow' so all lanes, north- and south-bound, were north-bound only. Returning vehicles would have been like spawning salmon swimming against the tide. The resulting traffic snarl would have been horrendous. The math just doesn't work. There is no practical, real-world way, given the typical time allowed by an approaching storm and the geographic challenges of New Orleans, to evacuate 100,000 people who cannot provide their own means of transportation. The emergency prep guys in the area knew it and it was obvious to anyone familiar with the demographics of Orleans Parish. I sat through many emergency prep meetings in New Orleans and it was the 'elephant in the room' that nobody really talked about. The official response to a Cat 4 or higher storm was to evacuate -- when they'd say that, some of us would just look at each other and shake our heads. We knew -- and they knew -- it just wasn't plausible. http://warrenreports.tpmcafe.com/st...9/9/13210/66695

Again, the local/state coordination shares some blame, esp. with the fighting going on with the feds., but this is a propaganda bullshit hypothetical nonissue that needs to cease.

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Originally posted by occrider As for blaming Bush, I'm usually not one to blame him personally for everything that his dumbass administration does, but he personally was the one who appointed that "hack", as you call him, as head of FEMA, along with all the other incompetant retards who shouldn't have been there: Hmmm let's put hacks in charge of a federal emergency response agency ... what could possibly go wrong? Yup good government at work here.

Happily...Brown has been relieved of anything Katrina related:

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Last update: September 9, 2005 at 12:22 PM Brown relieved of hurricane responsibilities Lara Jakes Jordan, Associated Press September 9, 2005 KATRINA0910.BROWN Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being removed from his role managing Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, The Associated Press has learned. Brown is being sent back to Washington from Baton Rouge, where he was the primary official overseeing the federal government's response to the disaster, according to two federal officials who declined to be identified before the announcement. Brown will be replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad w. Allen, who was overseeing New Orleans relief and rescue efforts. Brown has been under fire because of the administration's slow response to the magnitude of the hurricane. On Thursday, questions were raised about whether he padded his resume to highlight his previous emergency management background. Less than an hour before Brown's removal came to light, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Brown had not resigned and the president had not asked for his resignation. McClellan did not directly answer a question about whether the president had full confidence in Brown. "We appreciate all those who are working round the clock, and that's the way I would answer it,'' he said.

>>Source<<

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That's right--federal emergency officials were a part of the plan. Why? Because everyone understood there was no plausible means to evacuate everyone from the City of New Orleans in the face of a disastrous hurricane ( John Tierney is delusional).

If this is true, why the hell didn't Blanco let FEMA and the rest in??? wtf...

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