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Audacity of Truth
Jack Kelly on the federal response to Katrina
He makes a pretty convincing case that the feds did better than average on response time. Some snippets:
Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that: "The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne." For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three. [...] I write this column a week and a day after the main levee protecting New Orleans breached. In the course of that week: More than 32,000 people have been rescued, many plucked from rooftops by Coast Guard helicopters. The Army Corps of Engineers has all but repaired the breaches and begun pumping water out of New Orleans. Shelter, food and medical care have been provided to more than 180,000 refugees. Journalists complain that it took a whole week to do this. A former Air Force logistics officer had some words of advice for us in the Fourth Estate on his blog, Moltenthought: "We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on ‘Star Trek’ in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grown-ups actually engaged in the recovery effort were studying engineering. "The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network. "You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets (in the affected areas) since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region. [...] The levee broke Tuesday morning. Buses had to be rounded up and driven from Houston to New Orleans across debris-strewn roads. The first ones arrived Wednesday evening. That seems pretty fast to me. A better question — which few journalists ask — is why weren’t the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck?
Read the whole thing. More: From the Palm Beach Post:
But the most recent Louisiana emergency operations plan doesn’t address how to evacuate in the case of flooding from storm surge, saying simply that "The Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area represents a difficult evacuation problem due to the large population and its unique layout." It continues, "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." Buses were unable to transport New Orleans citizens for days following Katrina’s landfall. The plan acknowledges that, in the event of a catastrophic hurricane, "the evacuation of over a million people from the Southeast Region could overwhelm normally available shelter resources." But it doesn’t include a solution to the shelter issue. Louisiana officials could not be reached for comment this week. Mississippi and Louisiana officials, however, have increasingly decried what they called a slow federal response to the disaster, blaming the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But Gov. Bush defended FEMA. "If we weren’t prepared, and we didn’t do our part, no amount of work by FEMA could overcome the lack of preparation," he said. Natural Hazards Center director Kathleen Tierney agreed, saying emergency planners in the Gulf states should have taken a tip from the jazz legends that made New Orleans famous. "Organizational improvisation" is essential to cope with unpredictable events such as Katrina, Tierney said. "Research on jazz musicians shows that people don’t just pull stuff out of the air when they’re improvising. These are people with an extremely wide knowledge of musical genres. They have always practiced and practiced and practiced. Similarly, improvising involves a deep understanding of the resources you have at hand in your community." Local officials, she said, "could have listened to researchers. They could take seriously Congressman Patrick Kennedy’s bill called the Ready, Willing and Able Act that calls for more interaction with the community. They could have approached this improvisational task with imagination." And they might yet, Biloxi spokesman Creel said.
(Hat tip for PBP article: John Hawkins - who has some great commentary on this) Even more: Michael Kinsley weighs in.
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12 Responses to “Jack Kelly on the federal response to Katrina”
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I don’t care about past history or who or what prevented people from giving relief…. I saw those people on TV suffering and dying for 3 days and therefore I know what Bush thinks… Bush thinks that the people in New Orleans didn’t vote for him and should be punished. Plus this is an opportunity for his oil and gas buddies to get rich…
/end leftism (knowing what someone else thinks)
Wow, Baklava that’s some TV you’ve got. To have actually seen people dying on it. By all means don’t let the facts stand in the way of your thought process.
haha!
oops! I was laughing at the “We do not have teleporter technology” line.
Jeez, I hope your comment is a joke Baklava
. That is a horribly invalid argument saying “I saw those people on TV suffering and dying for 3 days”, and concluding that this somehow gives you the ability to “…know what Bush thinks…”
If it was a joke, I apologize for not getting it
.
ps. Nice ‘preview’ Ms. Toldjah! Much better than a button.
Thanks Kevin
And yes, I do believe Bak was being sarcastic.
I’ve seen the figure of 2,000 buses frequently repeated in the right wing media but I don’t where this number came from. According to this article, New Orleans has 364 municipal buses of which not all of them would be available in a crisis.
LINK
According to the below document, the New Orleans the school district owned 324 school
buses:
LINK
This comes out to alot less than 2,000.
If the feds did such a good job responding to the crisis, why was Michael Brown removed from heading the hurricane relief effort and later resigned? Why have Republicans been so critical of the federal response to the hurricane? Sen. David Vitter, who is a Republican and a strong supporter of Bush blasted the federal government’s hurricane relief efforts as “ineffective” and said people are dying and suffering because of the incompetence.
LINK
Perhaps you should ask him. I’ve been convinced that the federal response has been much better than the media initially reported. The administration responded to political pressure with removing Brown from his Katrina duties.
Brian asked, “If the feds did such a good job responding to the crisis”
Faster than previous hurricanes (of less severity even) – (yet you word it “such a good job”)
And blamed for things that the federal government couldn’t/shouldn’t be blamed for so people are defending the federal government from the Brian types yet Brian word it “such a good job”.
Does it have to be extreme with you Brian?
Does it either have to be “such a good job” or a Failed Grade?
The federal government was mobilized, lots of people provided hard work. Sweat was pouring off of many people’s brow. Effort was hampered here and there and communications wasn’t perfect.
Complaining about it here and putting people in the position of responding to your complaints (setting the record straight) doesn’t make it “such a good job”.
This was a huge disaster and hundreds of organizations provided relief and did their job to almost 90% of their capability or more. Given the communication difficulty and the problem of having to invoke the Insurrection Act and the Red Cross (managed by FEMA) being denied the ability to give food and water to the Convention Center and Superdome (which you keep missing Brian) by Louisiana DHS, I’d say 90% of liberals complaints (and yours) are simply childish.
Brian wrote, “Sen. David Vitter, who is a Republican and a strong supporter of Bush blasted the federal government’s hurricane relief efforts as “ineffective” and said people are dying and suffering because of the incompetence.”
Due to the mass media inability to report, do you think that it is quite possible that David Vitter is not aware of the attempts for the feds to provide relief only to be denied by the Louisiana DHS or denied by the law?
Star Parker wrote about the buses. She also writes, “The first line of authority in emergency management, all agree, is local. It appears that Ray Nagin, New Orleans black mayor, was grossly negligent.“
Sister Toldjah,
You said:
“Perhaps you should ask him. I’ve been convinced that the federal response has been much better than the media initially reported. The administration responded to political pressure with removing Brown from his Katrina duties.”
According to the following article, Michael Brown was removed from his position based on a progress report from the Vice President that was critical of Michael Brown’s management, after a fact-finding trip to Mississippi and Louisiana.
LINK
I don’t see President Bush as one who gives in to political pressure.
I think you’re convinced that the federal response has been much better than the media initially reported because you get much of your information from very biased sources that aren’t always accurate, such as the article above. As I mentioned before, the article greatly exaggerated the number of buses available in New Orleans. The article says:
“You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets (in the affected areas) since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region.”
The U.S. Navy ship USS Bataan was positioned off the coast of Louisiana but was not effectively utilized by FEMA.
LINK
According to the article, the levee broke on Tuesday. The levee actually broke on Monday.
LINK
I think that many of the sources of your information are more intent on defending the Bush Administration than providing accurate information.
Baklava,
The Red Cross was not allowed to enter New Orleans because it was not safe. I have already stated this before.
I find it very arrogant of you to think you have better access to information about the federal response to the hurricane than the Republican Senator of Louisiana. I don’t have any doubts that Senator Vitter” is much more informed about what was going on than you are. It’s very clear that the President and the federal government did a poor job in responding to the hurricane. Maybe if President Bush tried watching the news he would have known how serious the matter was to begin with.
LINK
Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.
“I think that many of the sources of your information are more intent on defending the Bush Administration than providing accurate information.”
You can THINK that all you want but that doesn’t make it so. You apparently haven’t been paying attention to the number of articles I have posted here over the course of the last few weeks concerning the Katrina response. They are chock full of sources for you to take a look at, most of which are not op/ed pieces. Please do not come to my blog and assume because of the information you have cherry picked that you know more than the rest of us here about who did what in the aftermath of Katrina. You called Bak “arrogant” for assuming he knew more than a Senator, well that’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black because you’re assuming you know more than the rest of us here when in actuality you’re cherry picking information to back up your points and making assumptions that I’ve gotten all my information from partisan sources. Think again. Here’s a list of my posts on this issue and I’d also advise you to visit this blog which has been the go to source as far as newslinks on the Katrina response. The federal response to this disaster was much better than initially reported and there are loads of sources out there that prove the bulk of the blame for the slow response goes to local and state officials. That’s something you really CAN’T cherry pick, Brian. I’m not going to continue to sit here and go round and round with you in a source war when there is plenty of information available for your perusal that contradicts your belief that this was a total cluster by the feds. I’ve got sources posted in my links and so does PW and many other places. I advise you to do a bit more digging for sources that give you the FULL picture, not just a partial picture.
I have lost my patience trying to over and over again explain the failure of the local and state officials. You guys are convinced this was W’s screw up and continue to give no to very little blame to those it actually belongs to. Everytime evidence comes out to contradict that belief, you guys raise the bar. I’m not playing that game. Been there, done that. No amount of convincing on my part is going to get you to change your mind and you have not changed mine. Time to move on.