This bothers me because it is such empty spin. Every one of us on this site knew about the convention center for a day and a half before FEMA. What is our tax money good for if the info I get off cable news and web sites is theoretically better than FEMA's? A bald faced lie, and this agency needs to be replaced.
The first I heard about the convention center was yesterday, and I've been reading most of the FR threads.
All eyes were on the Superdome before then. I didn't even realize the convention center existed as a shelter until it was in the news as a big crisis.
First response is with the local people, and the local people could not have been more incompetent if they'd made a deliberate effort to do so. FEMA's supposed to come in after the local response, as it did. It does take time to get resources from outside of New Orleans, especially with the roads largely blocked.
I don't think FEMA did an exceptional job, but I'm not sure if they've done better in other crises; the sheer incompetence of the locals simply exposed pre-existing weaknesses.
I do think that if I werre head of FEMA I would do a detailed review to find out how performance could be improved and how things could have started faster.
The whole government of Louisiana, however, should be thrown out and replaced.
D
You would have to be an idiot not to have predicted it as a possibility before the storm even hit. I had even said to my uncle before the storm hit that I'd rather ride out the storm alone than be stranded in the dome with tens of thousands of people when they start to get pissed off.