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Audacity of Truth
Spinsational:
"We were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values."
-Obama, explaining recent Democrat losses, 1/20/10
Velvet Lair- The sexiness of winning the battle of good versus evil January 26, 2010
- Ever wonder why? January 12, 2010
- The decision to bench Peyton Manning: Right or wrong? December 28, 2009
- Is my dad turning into a metrosexual? November 24, 2009
- My “Things To Do For Christmas” list November 23, 2009
Disastrous disaster response from local and state La. officials
(Scroll down for more info and updates)
The facts coming out in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina devastation point more to gross incompetence on the part of local and state officials in La. The response was apparently so poorly coordinated, that the feds on Friday attempted to wrest authority from La. Governor Blanco:
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state’s emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they’d been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
The article goes on to say:
Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said.
Couple this with the fact that La. failed to implement the following disaster evacuation plan (page marked number 9/Adobe page number 14, item D):
The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating …
See photo of school buses submerged in water here.
Additionally, this is not the first time the city of New Orleans and state of La. have been criticized for their decisions regarding pre-and post hurricane responses (from a 9/19/2004 AP piece):
Those who had the money to flee Hurricane Ivan ran into hours-long traffic jams. Those too poor to leave the city had to find their own shelter – a policy that was eventually reversed, but only a few hours before the deadly storm struck land. New Orleans dodged the knockout punch many feared from the hurricane, but the storm exposed what some say are significant flaws in the Big Easy’s civil disaster plans.
(Emphasis added)
"If the government asks people to evacuate, the government has some responsibility to provide an option for those people who can’t evacuate and are at the whim of Mother Nature," said Joe Cook of the New Orleans ACLU.
It’s always been a problem, but the situation is worse now that the Red Cross has stopped providing shelters in New Orleans for hurricanes rated above Category 2. Stronger hurricanes are too dangerous, and Ivan was a much more powerful Category 4.
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."
It is becoming more and more clear with each passing day where the bulk of the blame lies for the slow responses to Hurricane Katrina: N.O. Mayor Nagin and La. Gov. Blanco.
See John Cole’s post as well as Jeff Goldstein’s for more about the disastrous disaster responses on the part of local and state La. officials. The Little Green Footballs blog has some interesting reads in the comments section.
Related: Michelle Malkin blogs about some heartwrenching stories of parents separated from their children in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and says:
Look hard at these photos, send them around, e-mail the networks and cable news stations and press them to air the names and faces of Katrina’s lost children–every night until they are all found, if need be. Let’s get O’Reilly and Greta and Shep and Steve Harrigan and Nancy Grace and Rita Cosby on the search team.
Indeed.
More: Captain Ed on Mayor Nagin:
Not only did Nagin know that the Superdome would prove inadequate for shelter for any period longer than a few hours, he encouraged people to gather there without providing the resources he knew that shelter to lack. Instead, he ran off to Baton Rouge despite his responsibility to oversee the execution of the emergency-response plans and ranted at Bush for not reacting quickly enough to the disaster.
And the Exempt Media, by and large, have covered for Nagin’s incompetence. Does anyone seriously wonder why?
Nope. We know why.
Linking up with Wizbang’s Sunday Katrina Edition and OTB’s Sunday Drive.
Even more: Michael King discusses some fed ball dropping as well, noting DHS Secretary Chertoff’s comments about the DHS’ initial response as well as FEMA director Michael Brown’s admission that he was not more proactive as early as last Sunday. Brendan Loy blasts Brown’s comments here (hat tip: Malkin).
Still more: Jeff Goldstein attempts to piece together the post flood reactions and responses from local, state, and federal officials.
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Don’t forget you can still contribute to the American Red Cross Hurricane 2005 Relief Fund or any one (or more!) of a number of other great organizations out there mobilizing to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. If you do contribute, please log it here at the TTLB contribution page as he is tracking the amount of money raised from each blog. Logging it is totally anonymous – in other words, you don’t have to give a name. Just an amount, the charity you donated to, and the blog that encouraged you to do so.
Technorati Tags: Flood aid, Hurricane Katrina
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13 Responses to “Disastrous disaster response from local and state La. officials”
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Yes, the local officials made some serious errors in judgment, however, these errors do not obsolve the perception of callous disregard for the lives of the people effected by the storm by the President and his administration. He went golfing and to parties after the levees were breached in New Orleans. FEMA officials turned truckloads of water away from Jefferson Parish. Condi Rice went shoe shopping in NYC. Chertoff continues to claim that no one new the levees were at risk.
If a terrorist bomb had breached the levees rather than flood waters, the result would have been the same. Thousands are dead. Millions are homeless and many are questioning Homeland Security’s efficacy.
I would like to add that the President’s remarks about rebuilding Trent Lott’s house were reprehensible.
Interesting report, ST. I had not heard any of this in the news. I wonder why that… nevermind.
Bush in Texas playing golf before Katrina. As far as I can tell this was his latest round and he sucked. LINK
No golf in California. The Prsident adressed seniors at several country clubs and community center but no time for golf in California.
On His visit to Idaho…He went on a nice boat ride and did about 32 miles of mountain biking. But sorry no golf.LINK
Bush in AZ….Did not playLINK
But behold…….Cindy Sheehan says he played in the Huffington blog.
Ms. Rice and other were MIA..this is true. Stupid remarks about Trent Lotts house also true. Bush golfing…not true.LINK
I stand corrected. He was not playing golf. But, he was also not attending to the matters at hand. And how about the tsunami of compassion that will be flowing to the gulf coast? If this week is an example of what compassion is all about, I’ll pass.
Webmistress,
Yeah. Millions. Millions of armchair first responders….
Way to go. You are convinving people that…. you hate the Bush administration. Doesn’t say much for how much you care. Says the opposite.
Webmistress wrote, “But, he was also not attending to the matters at hand.”
Can you stand to be corrected atain? Do you actually think you know what he was doing at any time of the day Tuesday or Wednesday?
Would like to hear your (made up) interpretation of what the President was doing or for that matter any federal official or state official.
In answer to Baklava, yes, I do hate Bush. In fact the words to describe the depths of my loathing for him escape me right now. We are making arrangements to take a family in. How about you? And we’ll take them in even if they love Bush and voted for him
As for what he was doing, that has been answered in the post above somewhat by GBA. He gave a speech in Arizona on Medicare. I believe he attended a fund raiser in California. He came back to Crawford and spent the night before going to DC.
Baklava,
I found a timeline for you:
Monday
President Bush hits the road to promote prescription-drug plan to. His first stop is Arizona, where he eats birthday cake with Senator John McCain and talks to senior citizens in Phoenix at a golf resort.
President Bush travels to Southern California to talk to more seniors about changes to Medicare. He spends the evening in San Diego.
Tuesday
With a San Diego naval base and the USS Ronald Regan as a backdrop , the president made a speech to celebrate the anniversary of V-J day two weeks after the actual Aug. 14, 1945 anniversary. He spends 90 seconds of a 40 minute speech on Hurricane Katrina.
Afterwards, President Bush plays a guitar presented to him by Country Singer Mark Wills, backstage following his visit to Naval Base Coronado. He then flies back to his vacation home in Crawford.
Wednesday
President George W. Bush and his top advisers held a video conference on the Gulf Coast disaster. Most of the staff was still on vacation and away from Washington. Afterwards he flew back to Washington to coordinate the federal response
Bush cut short his working vacation in Texas by two days.
As Bush returns to Washington he does a flyover of devastated areas on Air Force One.
The President makes a recess appointment.
Thursday
In the face of report after report that the levees were known to be vulnerable – Bush does an interview on Good Morning America and tells Diane Sawyer that no one expected the levees to break.
This was edited from a timeline compiled by Sam Ceder (sp?) of the Majority Report.
That timeline leaves an awful lot of time unaccounted for. Do you seriously believe that nothing was done aside from wnat is known publicly. No president has ever let everything done be seen which is to be expected so why should this one be any different.
For the record I find the response by the administration no less appalling than the mishandling of the evacuation on the state and local levels. Nagin and Blanco can whine all they want, but Nagin had hundreds of school buses and public transportaion vehicles available but left them parked. How many people could have been evacuated by those buses which are now water logged and will have to be replaced due to Nagin’s incompetence? He had plenty of warning as well.
To hear many on the left, one would think Bush steered the storm straight at New Orleans.
Likewise, for any federal to say with a straight face they thought the leveys would all hold is equally arant nonsense. That said, it is still the height of political blindness to put up a rather skeletal timeline and attempt to pass it off as the sum total of what has been done. When Katrina was in the Gulf gaining strength, what was the itenerary of Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco? From the looks of things, part of Mayor Nagin’s itenerary was making sure all the school buses were parked in neat rows rather than using them for evacuation.
Webmistress wrote, “In answer to Baklava, yes, I do hate Bush. In fact the words to describe the depths of my loathing for him escape me right now.”
It’s obvious.
Webmistress wrote, “that has been answered in the post above somewhat by GBA. He gave a speech in Arizona on Medicare. I believe he attended a fund raiser in California.”
A 12 hour speech and fund raiser? You must be certain through that cloud of hate that he wasn’t on the phone at any time during the day with people coordinating relief efforts and/or being briefed by people on his options or even having any discussions with anyone on what to do. In fact, you sound so certain, that you have me convinced and gosh darn it, I now that think that Bush did NOTHING and I hate Bush to. Wow you are so convincing. /end sarcasm.
Thank you JRob for making the obvious to everyone else except someone with seething hatred that there was a lot of time (more than 80%) unaccounted for.
If there are 100’s of people reading this blog, and if 10% were NEW to politics, I’d say that entire 10% was convinced they should not be swayed by webmistress whatsoever.
When you look at the source for that timeline it becomes even more dubious. Given Air ScAmerica’s total lack of credibility I’m surprised anybody would cite them for a source for anything.
Mayors are not disaster experts. Nor is their sole purpose to stand ready to bring the resources of a nation to bear on a catastrophe. Yes, in the tactical nightmare of getting more than one million out of the region, not every resource was used. More than 90% did make it out of harms way in a very short time.
The governor carried out most of the duties of that office under these circumstances in accordance with the regional evacuation plan. The Republican turned Democrat opportunist mayor failed to use the buses to move more people out. I can see how he should be made accountable for that.
Whatever happens to the mayor, how much worse should it be for those who failed to act without the challenges of being the mayor of the city undergoing the worst catastrophe in our history? Especially when this is all that FEMA is for: they are supposed to be the cavalry. How much worse is it to have invested so much in the centralization of authority under Homeland Security only for it to have failed its first test so spectacularly?
This is a wake up call for Republicans. Rather than waste time with how much blame can be assigned to the mayor, Republicans should be focused on what this situation has to say about who is in control of their party. The failures in this case expose a real need in the party for better leadership. Those who fail to recognize this will be shocked to find the party removed from power by a majority of Americans who recognize that the failure to respond in New Orleans exposes a grave threat to the security of our nation.