Instead of all the finger pointing and screaming

[WebmasterAlex]

What real lessons can we learn from this? All the anti Bush people want to blame Bush and other people want to pin it on the Governor and Mayor etc etc.
My belief is what happend would have happend under Clinton, Bush Sr, Reagan, Kennedy or anyone else you care to name. You can fire Brown, it isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference in the end except to make people feel better.
What it also won't do is save a SINGLE life if this happens again. What I want to hear is real practical things the government can do, within the constitution to make a real difference the next time.

I'll start

1. The national guard needs to be reorganized. If we are going to make them the primary responder in these situations they need to be set up and equipped to do it, not be primarily battle troops that do this as a side job. For example the US Air Force has excellent command and control aircraft they are using them now to coordinate rescues. Should the Air National Guard have one to be made available to state governors? Should there be National Guard units set up as disaster supply units with pre-positioned caches of emergency supplies?

2. Should we end the National Flood Insurance program? For those not famaliar with the program it basically is a subsidized insurance program and many people feel it encourages people to build in areas that they should not have been built in the first place

What are some other ideas for practical suggestions?

[peachgirl]

All the anti Bush people want to blame Bush and other people want to pin it on the Governor and Mayor etc etc.

Just wanted to jump in and say that this just isn't true...at least not for a lot of us.

I'm as anti-Bush as they come, can't stand the man! But, I want this examined at every level..Republican, Democrat, state, local, federal...I don't care, and there are many just like me.

My suggestion? Take FEMA out from under the umbrella of Homeland Security and make it a cabinet position.

[MossMan]

What real lessons can we learn from this? All the anti Bush people want to blame Bush ...


No, I think the real lesson is that many Pro-Bush people will ignore obvious evidence of federal incompentence in order to protect their guy.

Thus the first practical solution should be to get rid of all incompentent leaders.

[BuckNaked]

No, I think the real lesson is that many Pro-Bush people will ignore obvious evidence of federal incompentence in order to protect their guy.

Thus the first practical solution should be to get rid of all incompentent leaders.

Oh well Alex, it was a good try anyway. ;)


As for your suggestions, I agree that if the National Guard is going to be the first line of response, they need to be organized such that there are groups for law enforcement and groups for immediate relief efforts.

I also believe that once a President declares an area as a federal disaster area, ALL responsibility for relief efforts should be completely directed by the federal government. But I believe that except in THE most extraordinary circumstances, all evacuation and shelter/supply issues should be the responsibility of and under the control of state and local officials.

I agree with peachgirl that FEMA should be pulled back out from under Homeland Security.

[Puffy2]

Have to agree with MossMan. There are entirely too many worthless "leaders" in Washington - 1/2 there because they are someone's frat brother, or former business parter or whatever (ie., FEMA director).

It's time for a turn over of leadership. A real house cleaning. Otherwise, this country is doomed to failure. It's obvious that those in charge haven't done dilly squat to protect this country from anything...much less a terrorist.

So, you want a constructive suggestion:

1. Come election time, fire every last one of them.

[Charade]

Oh well Alex, it was a good try anyway. ;)

::yes::


As for your suggestions, I agree that if the National Guard is going to be the first line of response, they need to be organized such that there are groups for law enforcement and groups for immediate relief efforts.

I also believe that once a President declares an area as a federal disaster area, ALL responsibility for relief efforts should be completely directed by the federal government. But I believe that except in THE most extraordinary circumstances, all evacuation and shelter/supply issues should be the responsibility of and under the control of state and local officials.

I agree with peachgirl that FEMA should be pulled back out from under Homeland Security.

Works for me. Even agreeing with (gulp) peachgirl. :teeth:

[lovemygoofy]

My thoughts on this include of coursing look at the level of incompetence on every level of gov't. Obviously there needs to be a shortening of red tape within all this beauracy.

My main concern is that there need to be some national plans of action should major cities be evacuated for whatever reason. If God forbid another terriorist attack happens, that makes 9/11 look like nothing, say in L.A., we need to have a plan already in place knowing exactly how many people can go to what place. This is obviously going to be an extreme amount of money but honestly we have hundreds if not thousands of places across this country that can be used a shelter in a pinch. One specific list needs to be created stating exactly how many people can be sheltered in each state with an accompying list of how man in each city of that state.

Some new laws and red tape need to be thought about in this post 9/11 world. I read an article, and can't find the link, that stated one reason it took so long to get people on planes is because now marshalls need to be on planes as well as the extensive screening that needs to take place. All these people had to be flown in first and then the equipment didn't work at the airport. Someone from homeland security had to sign off on person to person screening. I think in a time of crisis, there need to be loopholes. I also know that in time of crisis the federal gov't can pretty much commandeer anything they deem necessary to mission including airplanes and buses, which when something like this evacuation happens all resources need to be utilized.

Honestly, my last thought is to give the reporters limited access because they aren't helping the situation and in most parts are only making it worse. They love to get things riled up and get the people going. Well trust me I don't need to see Katie Couric in some fishing gear to be already pissed off.

[RadioNate]

I agree with your #1

I also think that in situations like this paperwork and buracratic red tape should go out the window.

The navy didn't help because they weren't asked through 'official' channels. The national guard didn't respond because of a paperwork snafu. If the governor is on CNN screaming for the national guard just get it done and worry about the proper paperwork later.

I also agree with all the FEMA re-organization. Oh and Brown must go. He will be the fall-guy. There has to be one and he'll be it.

[Kitty 34]

Real lessons we can learn from this??? Hmmmmm.....maybe stop building on flood plains would be a good start, I think.

[WDWBetsy]

What it also won't do is save a SINGLE life if this happens again. What I want to hear is real practical things the government can do, within the constitution to make a real difference the next time.


I'm not screaming, but this says a lot... imagine the lives saved if the situation had been taken a bit more seriously by FEMA's Brown - the actual memo from Brown to his Homeland Security Boss is at the bottom.

FEMA Chief Waited Until After Storm Hit
By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer

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.

Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as "this near catastrophic event" but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, "Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities."

The initial responses of the government and Brown came under escalating criticism as the breadth of destruction and death grew. President Bush and Congress on Tuesday pledged separate investigations into the federal response to Katrina. "Governments at all levels failed," said Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Brown had positioned front-line rescue teams and Coast Guard helicopters before the storm. Brown's memo on Aug. 29 aimed to assemble the necessary federal work force to support the rescues, establish communications and coordinate with victims and community groups, Knocke said.

Instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees would focus on helping victims find the help they needed, he said.

"There will be plenty of time to assess what worked and what didn't work," Knocke said. "Clearly there will be time for blame to be assigned and to learn from some of the successful efforts."

Brown's memo told employees that among their duties, they would be expected to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public."

"FEMA response and recovery operations are a top priority of the department and as we know, one of yours," Brown wrote Chertoff. He proposed sending 1,000 Homeland Security Department employees within 48 hours and 2,000 within seven days.

Knocke said the 48-hour period suggested for the Homeland employees was to ensure they had adequate training. "They were training to help the life-savers," Knocke said.

Employees required a supervisor's approval and at least 24 hours of disaster training in Maryland, Florida or Georgia. "You must be physically able to work in a disaster area without refrigeration for medications and have the ability to work in the outdoors all day," Brown wrote.

The same day Brown wrote Chertoff, Brown also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (news, bio, voting record), D-Md., said Tuesday that Brown should step down.

After a senators-only briefing by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other Cabinet members, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (news, bio, voting record) said lawmakers weren't getting their questions answered.

"What people up there want to know, Democrats and Republicans, is what is the challenge ahead, how are you handling that and what did you do wrong in the past," said Schumer, D-N.Y.

Sen. Ted Stevens (news, bio, voting record), R-Alaska, said the administration is "getting a bad rap" for the emergency response.

"This is the largest disaster in the history of the United States, over an area twice the size of Europe," Stevens said. "People have to understand this is a big, big problem."

Meanwhile, the airline industry said the government's request for help evacuating storm victims didn't come until late Thursday afternoon. The president of the Air Transport Association, James May, said the Homeland Security Department called then to ask if the group could participate in an airlift for refugees.

___

On the Net:

Federal Emergency Management Agency: http://www.fema.gov

Homeland Security Department: http://www.dhs.gov

The memo from FEMA Director Mike Brown to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is available at: http://wid.ap.org/documents/dhskatrina.pdf

[Wish I lived in Fl]

Proximate cause: Reducing funding for levee maintenance from 400,00 to 40,000 for the last two years.

Long term: adressing land subsidence and the loss of buffering swampland.

How about limiting flood insurance to a max value of 150 k per residence to discourage building mansions 18 inches(!!!!!) above sea level as i saw being built in Panama City Florida.

[Wish I lived in Fl]

Since an attack on American soil of a dirty bomb is said to be a matter of when, not if: we need to be prepared on a much larger scale than ever.

[bsnyder]

I'm not screaming, but this says a lot... imagine the lives saved if the situation had been taken a bit more seriously by FEMA's Brown -

Imagine the lives saved if the State and local governments had actually had a workable hurricane plan in place, and implemented it.

Ghost Plan for a Ghost Town
Ghastly oversight in New Orleans.

By Chris Regan & Bryan Preston

Until it became known as the city of looters threatening jihad against Red Cross rescue workers, New Orleans, Louisiana was known as a city of ghosts. A walk through its French Quarter made clear why. Stately homes dating back to the city's founding look out on streets that have seen war, flood, storm, and pestilence over the centuries. Those floods used to literally raise the dead: The water table is so shallow in the Mississippi delta that even a slight rain would make buried coffins float. City residents eventually tired of seeing Uncle Etienne, dead ten years, riding the rapids down Canal Street after the latest spring shower, so they started placing all of their dead in above-ground mausoleums. But the ghosts, it was said, still stalked the streets, haunting the city whose spongy ground and seasonal storms had disturbed their eternal rest.


After hurricane Katrina, thousands of new ghosts will take up the march. Their lives, history will record, were taken not so much by yet another natural disaster, but by a human-made disaster of epic scale. If you go looking for these ghosts, any New Orleans bus lot will be a good place to start.


The Lesson of Georges
The story of buses has become the seminal tale of dereliction in New Orleans. Though the city owned hundreds of buses, it failed to use them to move its most vulnerable citizens — vulnerable either because of poverty or physical infirmity — out of the bowl-shaped city to safe higher ground. Initially it seemed as if the city that knew the levees protecting it would one day break just didn't have a plan to move so many people to safety. But it turns out that emergency-preparedness officials in New Orleans did have a plan, and they did think to use buses to evacuate the city before a major hurricane. They just decided not to fully implement it as Plan A. The plan was developed as a hurricane Georges lesson learned. This appeared in an article that appeared in November 2004 in the Natural Hazards Observer:
Residents who did not have personal transportation were unable to evacuate even if they wanted to. Approximately 120,000 residents (51,000 housing units x 2.4 persons/unit) do not have cars. A proposal made after the evacuation for Hurricane Georges to use public transit buses to assist in their evacuation out of the city was not implemented for Ivan. If Ivan had struck New Orleans directly it is estimated that 40-60,000 residents of the area would have perished.

So the question after dodging the Georges bullet seemed to be, "Do we figure out a way to use buses or do we allow 50,000 people to die for the crime of not having a car?" They chose Plan B.

Hurricanes come in cycles of frequency and activity. Meteorologists don't really know why, other than that it might have something to do with solar activity and shifting deep sea currents (but responsible scientists do know the hurricane cycle has nothing to do with humans burning fossil fuels). We are currently at the cusp of an intensification of hurricanes. We can expect more of them, and we can expect more of them to be strong.

As the hurricane cycle kept building in the last decade or so, there were increasing calls to create a real evacuation plan. Many of those who pleaded for the use of buses will come forward soon, but for everyone who does, there are others who do not have the strength to come forward. They can't hack their way out of their attics right now to tell us their side of it. And the journalists at the New Orleans Times-Picayune are no longer interested in speaking on their behalf. As their "Open Letter to the President" shows, they're now the spokesmen for other political interests. It didn't used to be that way until the inevitable happened. Now they have circled the wagons to protect the guilty and accuse the innocent.

Each hurricane season Louisiana officials decided to play a game of Russian roulette with those lives. They knew disaster would eventually strike, but gambled that it would happen on someone else's watch. They did take the action that nervous officials typically take: They formed a working group to reassure themselves and look busy to everyone else. According to that Natural Hazards Observer article from November 2004, here's what the hard-charging working group came up with:

Unwilling to merely accept this reality, emergency managers and representatives of nongovernmental disaster organizations, local universities, and faith based organizations have formed a working group to engage additional faith-based organizations in developing ride-sharing programs between congregation members with cars and those without. In the wake of Ivan’s near miss, this faith-based initiative has become a catalyst in the movement to make evacuation assistance for marginalized groups (those without means of evacuation) a top priority for all levels of government.

So a working group decided that the workable solution to the problem of thousands of stranded citizens was to ask churches to set up a giant car-pool system. The plan further called for a DVD to get the word out, which was still in production when Katrina struck. A cynic might say that such a plan was drafted so city officials could say they had a real evacuation plan, written down on official letterhead and signed and announced and all of the other things that make bureaucrats swoon, but was in point of fact yet another exercise in passing the buck to the next schmuck to occupy the conference-table chair. If it was a real plan, it doesn't seem a stretch to say that as hurricane Katrina bore down on the Big Easy, the real plan really failed.

More hurricane lessons from Georges and actions for Ivan, from the Natural Hazards Observer:

To aid in the evacuation, transportation officials instituted contraflow evacuation for the first time in the area’s history whereby both lanes of a 12-mile stretch of Interstate 10 were used to facilitate the significantly increased outbound flow of traffic toward the northwest and Baton Rouge. The distance of the contraflow was limited due to state police concerns about the need for staff to close the exits. And, although officials were initially pleased with the results, evacuees felt the short distance merely shifted the location of the major jams.

You read it right: "for the first time in the area's history."

So not only did officials keep putting bus-utilization plans on hold, they only began using an ineffectively implemented contraflow system last year. The contraflow plan was to turn both sides of the highways into outgoing lanes, but all that did was move traffic tie-ups from nearer the city to the points where the contraflow was ended. And they couldn't make the entire highways contraflow for miles and miles because some lanes were needed to get things into the city (rescuers, etc.). City officials barely even scratched the surface of what could have been possible in competently evacuating that city using an early-warning system, buses, and contraflow.


Third Time's a Disaster
The result was that in the worst-case scenario. The Natural Hazards Observer again:
Regional and national rescue resources would have to respond as rapidly as possible and would require augmentation by local private vessels (assuming some survived). And, even with this help, federal and state governments have estimated that it would take 10 days to rescue all those stranded within the city. No shelters within the city would be free of risk from rising water. Because of this threat, the American Red Cross will not open shelters in New Orleans during hurricanes greater than category 2; staffing them would put employees and volunteers at risk. For Ivan, only the Superdome was made available as a refuge of last resort for the medically challenged and the homeless.

It was to take ten days for rescue to get everyone out, not counting the dead. And city and state officials knew it would take ten days. For them to cry in the current crisis that 72 hours is unacceptable rings more than a little hollow.

Now we see belatedly that there never was a reasonable local evacuation plan or shelters with a hope of withstanding a real hurricane. And the communication process before the storm was as atrocious as the plan itself. It was no different for hurricane Ivan:

As Ivan charged through the Gulf of Mexico, more than a million people were urged to flee. Forecasters warned that a direct hit on the city could send torrents of Mississippi River backwash over the city's levees, creating a 20-foot-deep cesspool of human and industrial waste.

Residents with cars took to the highways. Others wondered what to do.

In this case, city officials first said they would provide no shelter, then agreed that the state-owned Louisiana Superdome would open to those with special medical needs. Only Wednesday afternoon, with Ivan just hours away, did the city open the 20-story-high domed stadium to the public. Mayor Ray Nagin's spokeswoman, Tanzie Jones, insisted that there was no reluctance at City Hall to open the Superdome, but said the evacuation was the top priority.

"Our main focus is to get the people out of the city," she said.

Callers to talk radio complained about the late decision to open up the dome, but the mayor said he would do nothing different.

"We did the compassionate thing by opening the shelter," Nagin said. "We wanted to make sure we didn't have a repeat performance of what happened before. We didn't want to see people cooped up in the Superdome for days."

When another dangerous hurricane, Georges, appeared headed for the city in 1998, the Superdome was opened as a shelter and an estimated 14,000 people poured in. But there were problems, including theft and vandalism.



Katrina was a three-peat major hurricane failure in planning. City and state officialdom didn't do enough after Georges warned them, kept hoping against hope when Ivan spared them, and have now reaped the mighty whirlwind of Katrina. When compassion is defined as delay and the subject is hurricanes, you are asking for a serious catastrophe. President Bush's call during the height of Katrina interrupted that compassionate liberalism. The goal of the locals was to avoid a mandatory evacuation that would cause trouble by having too many people in the shelter of last resort with too little security and no food or water. The goal was to fool more people to stay home or leave so that the city didn't look bad or descend into violent chaos if it took a direct hit. The mayor knew the danger of mass chaos with too many stuck in the Dome and planned for none of it.

Now we know that had Katrina held its strength and course at Cat 5+ it would have probably ripped most of the roof right off the Superdome. And the roof in that design is what holds the walls up. That was the other part of the scam. Nobody really knows if the Dome could take over 130MPH sustained, though they claimed a 200MPH design.

So the Louisiana state governor and emergency-preparedness officials allowed them to get by all these years with a sham plan that doesn't appear to even meet state standards. And guess what? Oh yeah, the state didn't even measure up to the federal requirements either:

Other federal and state officials pointed to Louisiana's failure to measure up to national disaster response standards, noting that the federal plan advises state and local emergency managers not to expect federal aid for 72 to 96 hours, and base their own preparedness efforts on the need to be self-sufficient for at least that period. "Fundamentally the first breakdown occurred at the local level," said one state official who works with FEMA. 'Did the city have the situational awareness of what was going on within its borders? The answer was no."

This is why every city must have sharp leadership, and a disciplined, non-corrupt police force that won't melt away into the population when under attack, like Saddam's army. And every state must have a governor who, when under pressure to perform, will not freeze and cry before consulting with lawyers and advisers before freezing up again in a passive-aggressive way that shifts blame to those trying to help. That's what we're all supposed to get in exchange for the big salaries, fancy dinners, 24-hour security, and other perks that go with the powerful political jobs. We give our politicians quite a lot. Is it too much to ask them to prepare for disasters in ways that won't get us all killed?

New Orleans is a major port of entry and exit for commerce. It's sinking into a bowl and is threatened by a gulf, a lake, and a river. It needed leadership, but what New Orleans had was an old political machine, a corrupt police force, and no real disaster leadership. Since the state knew of the problems with that police force though, the Louisiana National Guard could have had a dedicated special force with a plan to secure the city after the big one. A whole team of fast boats and such could have been training for years and deployed immediately to not just rescue but to keep order. That's the governor's job to think up something creative like that, not the feds. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. And here come the ghosts.

When you're clearly vulnerable to a nuke-sized catastrophe every summer, and you fake your emergency preparation like you've got it all under control, and then you still pretend that you have things under control even after it's perfectly obvious that everything has spun out of control, then you shouldn't blame others for being angry at the negligence. Who would want to have that many dead on their watch? You have to assume they had done everything humanly possible to save lives. But Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin did not even come close. Neither did others before them. Local leaders kept pulling the disaster trigger, but got empty chambers. Blanco and Nagin were just the unlucky pair who got the bullet.

It seems as though emergency planners in New Orleans gave up serious disaster preparedness a long time ago, even as the hurricane cycle swung toward intensity. They counted on luck and instantaneous "rescue welfare." Only the recent hurricane cycle woke them up. Slightly. They were still half asleep, under a strong spell of complacency any New Orleans voodoo witch would have been proud of casting. Anyone left out of the evacuation plan was given a massive overdose of false hope. It was playing Russian roulettewith 50,000 people, first fearing, then knowingthis time that the fatal bullet had moved into the chamber offshore, just praying that it didn't actually go off when the trigger was pulled at the shoreline and hoping to blame the world's universal scapegoat, George Bush, for racist genocide if it did.

The levees were designed to protect against hurricanes only in the lowest three of five categories of intensity, Strock said. Katrina was Category Four when it hit the U.S. Gulf Coast on Monday.
"We figured we had a 200- or 300-year level of protection. That means that an event that we were protecting from might be exceeded every 200 or 300 years," Strock told reporters. "So we had an assurance that 99.5 percent, this would be OK. We, unfortunately, have had that 0.5 percent activity here."

"The intensity of this storm simply exceeded the design capacity of this levee."


Plans, working groups, more plans, an in-progress DVD, a near-miss, a relieved sigh, a folding of the hands, and then back to sleep. The city and state had directives to plan the planning session to start the process of making a plan, but little in the way of any real plan to deal with a real disaster. So the buses sat in their lots. The winds and the floods came, the unlucky local officials kicked in Plan B, and the city of New Orleans drowned with its least fortunate trapped inside. The evacuation plan was a plan, but it was really just a ghost plan with ghost buses and ghost drivers, with ghost emergency supplies kept in ghost "shelters" under control of a ghost police force with a ghost emergency communications system overseen by a ghastly governor.

It was a plan for a ghost town. That plan worked.

And here come the ghosts.

We'd better learn from them. The countless dead will expect nothing less.

— Chris Regan and Bryan Preston are freelance journalists.

[WDWBetsy]

Imagine the lives saved if the State and local governments had actually had a workable hurricane plan in place, and implemented it.

I totally agree.

[bsnyder]

What if FEMA, prior to this year's hurricane season, had announced that New Orleans didn't have a workable plan, and that they (the feds) were going to have to take over all responsibility?

You think the state and local government would have gone along with that, or would they have resisted?

Should the federal government make those assessments in other cities, beginning now?

[wvrevy]

1 - Sorry, but Brown needs to be fired. His response to this whole situation has been an absolute joke. For a man that campaigned on being "all about accountability", he shows a remarkable knack for never holding anybody accountable for their mistakes.

2 - A directive needs to come from congress that forces both FEMA (which should stay within homeland security...too much coordination is necessary for it to be completely its own entity) and other federal agencies to work with local governments (state and city or county level) to develop an evacuation plan for every major city in the US. (By major, I'm thinking any area over 100k in population.) This plan will be published, to the public, and every effort will be made to ensure that the citizenry is aware of what their responsibilities are in case an evacuation is ordered.

Important note...this study is to be funded 50/50 by the states and the fed. That will reduce the burden on both, while ensuring that both sides will want to keep costs as low as possible.

[BuckNaked]

2 - A directive needs to come from congress that forces both FEMA (which should stay within homeland security...too much coordination is necessary for it to be completely its own entity)

I'm not sure about that. It seems to me that FEMA was much more efficient when it was its own agency and didn't have to go through the additional level of bureauocracy of Homeland Security.

As for working with FEMA on evacuation plans, I think that's already a requirement. One of the documents I read this weekend mentioned an evacuation plan for NOLA that FEMA had approved. I think the problem was that the plan wasn't followed.

[bsnyder]

1 - Sorry, but Brown needs to be fired. His response to this whole situation has been an absolute joke. For a man that campaigned on being "all about accountability", he shows a remarkable knack for never holding anybody accountable for their mistakes.

2 - A directive needs to come from congress that forces both FEMA (which should stay within homeland security...too much coordination is necessary for it to be completely its own entity) and other federal agencies to work with local governments (state and city or county level) to develop an evacuation plan for every major city in the US. (By major, I'm thinking any area over 100k in population.) This plan will be published, to the public, and every effort will be made to ensure that the citizenry is aware of what their responsibilities are in case an evacuation is ordered.

Important note...this study is to be funded 50/50 by the states and the fed. That will reduce the burden on both, while ensuring that both sides will want to keep costs as low as possible.

I might agree with #2. But then what happens if it becomes clear that some of the local governments just wouldn't be up to the task at hand? I can think of several major cities where the local government has such a history of incompetence and corruption that it would be folly to count on them in an emergency. Then what do we do?

IMO, the jury's still out on #1. The federal response seems slow to me too (maybe by about 24 hours) but it's hard to know, at this point, what specific things should or could have been done differently.

[BuckNaked]

I should have said in my previous post that ITA with wvrevy re: his number one suggestion. Brown should be fired immediately. There are two other storms brewing off of Florida, and I really don't think we can afford to have someone that incompetent in charge should another Katrina-type storm hit the U.S.

[bsnyder]

I should have said in my previous post that ITA with wvrevy re: his number one suggestion. Brown should be fired immediately. There are two other storms brewing off of Florida, and I really don't think we can afford to have someone that incompetent in charge should another Katrina-type storm hit the U.S.

And you think it makes sense to have someone brand new on the job?

[WDWBetsy]

The federal response seems slow to me too (maybe by about 24 hours) but it's hard to know, at this point, what specific things should or could have been done differently.

Well, how about the 5 hours after the hurricane made landfall on Aug. 29 that FEMA's Michael Brown waited before going through the red tape asking for Michael Chertoff to approve his response for Katrina assistance? Or the 2 days he gave the FEMA teams to get there? I think that's something specific that should be handled differently.

Or how about on the same day Brown wrote Chertoff, he also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts. Was no one watching CNN to see what was going on ??? Maybe those state and local officials thought their initial pleas for emergency help would cover that. I
would! :confused3

Or there's also the issue with the airline industry saying the government's request for help evacuating storm victims didn't come until late Thursday afternoon. That might have helped if asked a little sooner.

[wvrevy]

As for my #1...Obviously, I meant Bush had campaigned on personal accountability. That said, has a single official in his government - and particularly among his longtime friends - been let go for inability to do their job ? Or are people going to argue that there have been no failures of this administration ?

As for FEMA being it's own entity...I just think that the HSA needs to be able to call on (read: order) FEMA to do certain things in case of a security related crisis (read: terrorist attack). That is more easily done if the agency falls under the same HSA umbrella.

For point number 2, you both make good points. But I have never heard of any plan to potentially evacuate a city the size of New Orleans...let alone New York, Chicago, or LA. On the list of most likely catastrophies to hit this country, a major San Franciso earthquake is right up there with terrorist attacks on New York and the New Orleans flood. Is there a plan to get people out of that city, should the "Big One" hit ? If not, why not ?

My point is, ANY city would be completely overwhelmed by the amount of details necessary to manage a catastrophy of this magnitude, which is why it's absurd to expect them to do so without federal assistance. As I've said many times in the last week, the lack of response from the federal government certainly wouldn't give me a heck of a lot of confidence if I lived in an area likely to be the target of either natural or manmade disaster.

[WDWBetsy]

And you think it makes sense to have someone brand new on the job?

I think someone like Witt would be better than the current goofballs.

[wvrevy]

Or how about on the same day Brown wrote Chertoff, he also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments.
Just got a funny - but sadly apt - image from reading that...Remember the scene in Aladdin where Al gets dumped into the sea by Jafar's thugs ? The genie pops out, but says he can't help unless Al "says the words"... :rotfl:

Sad, but that seems to be fairly apt to this situation. Unfortunately, the cartoon genie was bright enough to realize that, if he didn't do something, and quickly - maybe even, there-by, bending the rules a bit - someone was going to die because of the delay.

[BuckNaked]

And you think it makes sense to have someone brand new on the job?

I don't see how brand new could do any worse than he has.

Or how about on the same day Brown wrote Chertoff, he also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts. Was no one watching CNN to see what was going on ??? Maybe those state and local officials thought their initial pleas for emergency help would cover that. I

Sorry, but I can't go along with the idea of fire trucks from the entire country just showing up. If state and local officials didn't know that there were specific requirements for requesting help, they probably shouldn't be in those jobs. Which, IMO they shouldn't be.

But I have never heard of any plan to potentially evacuate a city the size of New Orleans...let alone New York, Chicago, or LA.

There is no other American city that faces the unique challenges that NOLA faces. Water doesn't flood in and then roll back in - it stays. And we've known for years that if a levee broke, the entire city would be inundated with water.

My point is, ANY city would be completely overwhelmed by the amount of details necessary to manage a catastrophy of this magnitude, which is why it's absurd to expect them to do so without federal assistance.

I don't think anyone expects them to do it by themselves. But they should be expected to at least have a clue as to what to do to get that help.

[bsnyder]

For point number 2, you both make good points. But I have never heard of any plan to potentially evacuate a city the size of New Orleans...let alone New York, Chicago, or LA. On the list of most likely catastrophies to hit this country, a major San Franciso earthquake is right up there with terrorist attacks on New York and the New Orleans flood. Is there a plan to get people out of that city, should the "Big One" hit ? If not, why not ?

My point is, ANY city would be completely overwhelmed by the amount of details necessary to manage a catastrophy of this magnitude, which is why it's absurd to expect them to do so without federal assistance. As I've said many times in the last week, the lack of response from the federal government certainly wouldn't give me a heck of a lot of confidence if I lived in an area likely to be the target of either natural or manmade disaster.

I've given this a tremendous amount of thought over the last week. I've got a 19 year old son attending college 2500 miles away from home, in Los Angeles. The university is located in the urban core of that city. And it's become clear to me that if "the Big One" hits there, he very likely would not be able to rely on school officials or the local, state or federal government for his own survival.

I don't know that there are any easy answers.

[bsnyder]

In reading the memo from Brown to Chertoff, it was written 5 hours after Katrina made landfall. Before the levee broke and the city flooded, right?

Seems like back then we were all looking at this thing a little bit differently, weren't we?

[wvrevy]

I don't know that there are any easy answers.

There aren't, Bet. But one of the jobs of the federal government is to help find answers to those difficult questions. Unfortunately, I just don't see that happening under this administration. Too much emphasis on blaming the other guy, not enough on solving the problem and holding those that are part of the problem accountable.

And the above paragraph pretty much explains my lack of support for this administration on every issue from Iraq to social security to education to actual homeland security (as opposed to a veneer of it...meaningless gestures that accomplish nothing).

[BuckNaked]

In reading the memo from Brown to Chertoff, it was written 5 hours after Katrina made landfall. Before the levee broke and the city flooded, right?

Seems like back then we were all looking at this thing a little bit differently, weren't we?

::yes:: I remember thinking on Monday night (it seems like so much longer than a week ago) that NOLA had really been lucky.

Too much emphasis on blaming the other guy, not enough on solving the problem and holding those that are part of the problem accountable.

I agree that people need to be held accountable, but at least let's be honest and acknowledge that the finger pointing has happened on both sides, and it wasn't the federal government that started it. It's becoming more apparent that the local and state government didn't hold up to their part of the bargain when it came to protecting the citizens of NOLA in the beginning, and then when the feds didn't respond as fast as they should have, NOLA and LA officials started blaming it all on the feds.

[bsnyder]

There aren't, Bet. But one of the jobs of the federal government is to help find answers to those difficult questions. Unfortunately, I just don't see that happening under this administration. Too much emphasis on blaming the other guy, not enough on solving the problem and holding those that are part of the problem accountable.

And the above paragraph pretty much explains my lack of support for this administration on every issue from Iraq to social security to education to actual homeland security (as opposed to a veneer of it...meaningless gestures that accomplish nothing).

I guess the difference is that I wouldn't feel any differently about what I wrote (about my son) if we had a Kerry presidency instead of a Bush presidency.

A bureaucracy is a bureaucracy...and they all tend to react slowly to unfolding events. It's the nature of the beast.

[wvrevy]

I agree that people need to be held accountable, but at least let's be honest and acknowledge that the finger pointing has happened on both sides, and it wasn't the federal government that started it. It's becoming more apparent that the local and state government didn't hold up to their part of the bargain when it came to protecting the citizens of NOLA in the beginning, and then when the feds didn't respond as fast as they should have, NOLA and LA officials started blaming it all on the feds.
But the difference, as I see it, is that the local officials really didn't have the resources to handle a problem of this size. No doubt they could have done better, but the problems would have all still existed, even if in a slightly smaller scale.
I guess the difference is that I wouldn't feel any differently about what I wrote (about my son) if we had a Kerry presidency instead of a Bush presidency.

A bureaucracy is a bureaucracy...and they all tend to react slowly to unfolding events. It's the nature of the beast.
But, in my opinion, we would be much more likely to see apositive result from the bungling, should it have occurred. I think the person in charge would certainly be gone, and some kind of plan would be put in place to try to address the problem.

I just don't believe for a second that either of those things will really happen under a Bush administration. And believe me, it isn't a Republican thing...I truly think either Bush I or Reagan would have handled things much better. I certainly dont think they'd have been fiddling while New Orleans sank beneath the waves.

[WDWBetsy]

In reading the memo from Brown to Chertoff, it was written 5 hours after Katrina made landfall. Before the levee broke and the city flooded, right?

Seems like back then we were all looking at this thing a little bit differently, weren't we?

Well, first of all - they knew the situation in NO was possible - FEMA had a mock disaster 13 months prior where flooding, massive destruction & deaths were major problems.

And they knew it hit Biloxi, right? I think there should have been more urgency in Brown's memo. There were people needing help there, too.

So no - they knew on SATURDAY that the hurricane was coming (Bush declared the emergency then), so Brown should have started the ball rolling then - not wait until Monday.

[bsnyder]

But the difference, as I see it, is that the local officials really didn't have the resources to handle a problem of this size. No doubt they could have done better, but the problems would have all still existed, even if in a slightly smaller scale.

But, in my opinion, we would be much more likely to see apositive result from the bungling, should it have occurred. I think the person in charge would certainly be gone, and some kind of plan would be put in place to try to address the problem.

I just don't believe for a second that either of those things will really happen under a Bush administration. And believe me, it isn't a Republican thing...I truly think either Bush I or Reagan would have handled things much better. I certainly dont think they'd have been fiddling while New Orleans sank beneath the waves.

Perhaps you've forgotten what happened after Hurricane Andrew, while Bush 1 was President?

If it turns out that there were concrete things that Director Brown could have done, and didn't, that would have affected the situation, I think he should be fired. But I haven't seen any evidence of that yet.

[DisneyDotty]

(At the risk of sounding like G.W.), I agree that an investigation needs to be done not only to figure out what went wrong but also what we can do to improve in disaster situations. Unfortuately, I can't really think of anything that hasn't already been suggested. However, I do have a couple questions re: previous posts:
1) Do you need flood insurance in order to build on a flood plain? My understanding was that most in NOLA were without flood insurance.
2) And hasn't the press actually been helpful in some instances in the rescue effort? There were instances of reporters handing out water, helping retrieve items, etc. And would we understand the scope of the disaster without their reports? I found myself truly thankful for the press this past week.

[WDWBetsy]

Yes, the local/state officials could have done better. They need to be held accountable for their actions or inactions. But many of their city workers pulled together and dealt with (and are still dealing with) a nightmare situation. Some people couldn't take it and fled (the NO police). Some worked countless hours keeping people alive and saving many. Not to mention the danger they have been exposed to in that toxic water (which is now poluting the Gulf - by hey, we can worry about that later). The Coast Guard was invaluable. The National Guard troops should be commended.

But I can't say that just because screw-ups were made at the state and local level - those same people who were actually caught up in the disaster itself - that they should be held to the same level as those miles away who reacted incompetently before and after the disaster, which continued to get worse on Tuesday.

Those who were on the federal level were safe from the destruction around them, and they were able to react without threat of rising water, damaging winds, and people screaming for help, not on TV but in person.

Let's not let this happen again. If you're not satisfied with the response on any level, write your senators and representatives.

If you are satisfied, well - I guess you can just continue being comfortable with those in charge of running the country.

And regardless if things are changed or don't change, I hope the next disaster is handled with urgency and the utmost care. Life is precious, rich or poor.