Posted on 09/02/2005 12:58:04 AM PDT by BenLurkin
"Jill, respectfully ma'am -- its (American) citizens are the city's first priority."
good, if we can expect the same of other countries, we can finally get rid of all the natalie halloway threads
It's the ACTUAL number of people who are in the AstroDome at this very minute.
They are not going to take anymore; you might have been told they were going to take 25,000 but they have changed their mind.
How exactly, you said yourself he didn't know.
Where's the lie?
How exactly, you said yourself he didn't know.
Where's the lie?
Any reasonably healthy person can walk twenty-five miles in a day on flat ground. They had two full days of beautiful weather, in full knowledge of what was coming, and still didn't get the hell out of there.
-ccm
He didn't know because there was nothing TO know; it's not an official site and he only heard late yesterday afternoon that there were people hanging out there.
You tried to characterize it as if there was a shelter that FEMA didn't know about.
The media makes it out as though they are the same building
The fact that they are not and really 2 DIFFERENT buildings totally changing the argument of blaming FEMA
I know I shouldn't be surprised at this with the Media
But IMO .. they just stepped to a new low
Unfortunate, but true: Tourist dont vote in our elections. Hence their last place standing.
Okay. So they were able to move 11,000 people in 24 hours. That is what about 110 buses ? I wonder if evacuees now have to be decontaminated ? IE - Disease threat now real. The Astro Dome has no way to decontaminate right now ? Thus when decontaminate order was issued, Astro Dome influx stopped ?
When were the FIRST warnings that Katrina would most likely hit that area? I beleive it was the middle of last week. (could be wrong, but...)
Besides planes & rental cars - there are also trains & buses. Furthermore, the hotels themselves could have/ should have arranged with bus companies to evacuate the tourists long before an order was given to do so.
I can, in the back of my mind, understand a homeowner who decides to stay and ride out the storm. I can NOT fathom a tourist WITH family hanging around.
Having said that - even if some were trapped - what makes THEM any more "special" than any of the other survivors who likewise need evacuation??
Queue up, wait like everyone else and quit yer bitchen . . .
No, I didn't. I tried to characterize it as a place with thousands of people needing help that FEMA didn't know about, and that it was.
FEMA's job is to find people who need help and render that help. That's the job. They can do it, or they can't.
It doesn't have anything to do with decontaminate; they just cannot handle anymore people.
No, it's not; they don't just ride around looking for wherever people have gathered and dump food and water; it has to be staffed and guarded, especially down there.
If you don't think so, you should hear the doctors who were in the SuperDome and left and are now refusing to go back.
Tourists have homes and jobs to return to, unlike the locals who require food and water. Getting the tourists out makes perfect sense, because it saves resources.
Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in Washington, said she had no such report.
"We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of them reported being fired on," she said, adding that the FAA was in contact with the military as well as civilian aircraft.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1087205
Please pass on this information and add some fact to this rumor.
So we agree, FEMA can't find people and render assistance.
Look, I thing Nagin is doing a terrible job. NOPD, worse than terrible, as a force, though I'm sure individuals stand out. Blanco is totally useless. But FEMA is blowing it too, and there's nothing wrong with saying that.
If your emergency plans depend on everyone going where you expect them to in an orderly fashion, you just aren't very familiar with the American people. That's not what we do. And if your plans need that, they're bad plans.
This is the real world, this is what has to be dealt with.
When those dirty bombs start going off, do you think this kind of organization is going to work?
We need real plans. We don't seem to have them.
Fema's job is to manage federal assistance during disasters, etc. The state should be the frontline.
You obviously missed my point.
FEMA is in charge of getting EVERYBODY out. Priorities must exist in such a situation - kind of like the old women and children first traditions on the high seas. To borrow from "Titanic" - just because someone can afford to pay for a bus trip does NOT give him the right to be evac'd before the rest of the "scum".
Let me ask you a hypothetical question. Assume that you and your family were trapped at the dome and the authorities are asking you to be patient, a bus will arrive soon so that you too can be evac'd. You are out of food and water and the mob around you is "irratable". Then you see a chartered bus full of tourists leaving the city BEFORE you. What would your reaction to that be? What of that of the "mob"?
Is it so hard to understand that some semblance of "fairness" must prevail in order to keep the mob from rioting? Or would you like to be on a bus and attacked by the angry mob? Furthermore - how many additional security forces will be necessary to ensure the safety of the passengers of chartered bus?
Mobs are strange. They "cause" otherwise sane people to do things they might never have conceived of doing otherwise.
IMHO - those that are caught looting/shooting need to be shot on sight (or at least rendered harmless and held separtely from the others AND be the last ones out!). However, bringing order in the chaos is no easy job, and, ANY action that is not a part of the "orderly" evacutation needs to be prohibited.
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