Posted on 09/12/2005 2:43:49 AM PDT by Crackingham
Edited on 09/14/2005 2:56:32 AM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
A team of Indiana firefighters, volunteering to help rescue victims of Katrina, went to Atlanta, where Federal Emergency Management Agency staffers told them that their job was to hand out fliers and that their first task was to attend a multi-hour course on sexual harassment and equal employment opportunity.
This is, astonishingly, standard operating procedure at FEMA. And in other parts of the federal government: Former CIA agent Robert Baer writes in his recent book how in Central Asia he asked headquarters to send someone who spoke Afghan languages, and Langley offered to send a four-member sexual harassment team, instead. These are perhaps things to keep in mind when it comes time to assess the response to Katrina. Government is a clumsy instrument.
Even so, it is possible to spot some clear mistakes. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin should have ordered an evacuation on the Saturday, not the Sunday, before the hurricane, which, as predicted, came on Monday. Nagin made an even greater mistake by not following the city's emergency plan and using the 200-plus school buses to evacuate the elderly, infirm and infants who had no other way of getting out of the city.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco's state department of homeland security should not have blocked the Red Cross from bringing water, food and sanitary facilities to the people in the Superdome. I don't doubt that Nagin and Blanco wanted to do what was best for their city and state, and I would not want to have to shoulder the responsibility they had. But, alas, they made mistakes.
As for President George W. Bush, he probably should have left Crawford, Texas, a day earlier, and he might well have made a mistake in appointing Michael Brown, a man with little previous experience in emergency management, as head of FEMA. In a little-noticed move last week, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff named Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, who has such experience, to be Brown's deputy and to be in charge of all recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast. Reading between the lines, it looks as if Bush, despite his usual loyalty, recognized his mistake, bypassed Brown and put in a man who knows how to do the job.
But it's a bum rap to say that Bush left New Orleans unprepared for the flood. New Orleans has been engineered to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, as the result of decisions taken by many federal, state and local administrations over many years; Katrina was a Category 4. But the Army Corps of Engineers hasn't been shortchanging Louisiana.
As Michael Grunwald wrote in The Washington Post last week, "Over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large. Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate."
Excerpt. Story continues: Town Hall.com
This needs to be explained. And explained to the point of when it became SOP. I'll take 1998 in the pool.
Another article claiming that the blame must be allocated at all levels of government without naming one substantial error made at the federal level.
"and Langley offered to send a four-member sexual harassment team, instead."
That pretty much sums up Tenets's and Deutsch's people.
"Tenets's" typoholica..you know what I meant.
first task was to attend a multi-hour course on sexual harassment and equal employment opportunity
I would bet dollars to doughnuts this was not an idea or requriement that originated with FEMA. I wonder if some brilliant congress person or senator, appalled at the very thought of people not familiar with Federal Rules on Sexual Harassment and EEO contracting to work for the Feds, came up with a rule or law requiring these courses.
If so I would round up the usual suspects. Hint- it sure ain't the conservatives.
Were this a terrorist attack, like 911, instead of an act of nature, we would be taking our frustrations out on the enemy instead of eating each other alive.
It's hard to punch back at Mother Nature.
Don't get me wrong. I think Ray Nagin is an idiot and a poor excuse for a leader. Gov. Blanco is apparently incompetent. The feds didn't have their act together nearly well enough.
But I'm not sure the situation would have been much better if all had performed perfectly.
The human misery of a delayed evacuation would have been alleviated somewhat. But New Orleans would still be flooded, many would have still refused to leave even if ordered to by law, many would have died of drowning or ill health/stress, and miles of Mississippi/Alabama coastal communities would still lie in tatters.
Things might have been slightly better if government had performed more efficiently, but New Orleans and the Gulf Coast would still be in dire straits.
We can't stop hurricanes. We can stop building in vulnerable areas, like below sea level and on exposed beaches. But let's face it: some of the destruction this time was to buildings hundreds of years old. This was not your average storm.
Who's to say that higher levees would have held? Maybe it's just stupid to put your faith in concrete. Who would have thought the WTC towers would fall? Extraordinary circumstances can cause catastrophes.
We need to quit the yammering and fix what we can.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.