Hurricane Katrina

You've hit the nail on the head Johann. Federal officials had been desperately trying to get the Louisiana Governor to do something about the disaster in New Orleans:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301680.html

Louisana's Disaster Plan
Is the state responsible for their disaster plan, or DHS?

http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/plans/EOPSupplement1a.pdf

Louisiana disaster plan, pg 13, para 5 , dated 01/00

The school buses referenced: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050901/480/flpc21109012015

An 18 year old gets it:

http://www.local6.com/news/4929516/detail.html


Alabama - under control

Mississippi - under control

Florida - under control

Louisianna - chaos

Three out of four states. Is state leadership in Louisiana different than the other three states?

 

Gtech

As usual you are misleading people. Here is the truth according to government's own web site.

"FEMA prepares the nation for all hazards and manages federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates mitigation activities, trains first responders, works with state and local emergency managers, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration. FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003."

www.fema.gov

Local government has responsibilities for small scale emergency preparedness but disasters have always been the responsibility of the Federal government.

 

Give it a rest gworld. No one questions FEMA's roles and responsibilities. If you take issue with the article, write to the author at the Washington Post.

 

Isn't that pretty much what you were doing in your last post?

 

No, it wasn't.

 

This is politics people...every group here is to try and spin it so someone else takes the blame.

There's not as much media coverage of areas outside of LA but from personal accounts I've come across other states are not necessarily under control, and/or response times lagged. A business associate with family in Gulport was able to connect with them finding out that they were stuck there (no evacuee busses, and no gas). Food and water did not arrive until Thursday.

A lot of people went unfed for many days in many many places. My catering associates have been desperately trying to get into various states to setup kitchens (they have hundreds of licensed chefs across the country that have volunteered to come in and help at their own cost)....they've been refused. The National Guard has controlled access in and out since almost day one. I understand there are a lot of "official" reports that they were not invited to help until Wednesday, yet I'm wondering why they still had the ability to lock down the area.

There were also reports all week long of LA officials requesting Natl Guard help, and statements that 40,000 troops were on their way (yet only 4,000 had arrived by Friday).


Let's watch the government spin, spin, spin this...

 

I just found out that THERE IS a letter by the LA Governor requesting funding and a state of emergency which was written on August 27th.

http://www.newschannel6.tv/news/default.asp?mode=shownews&id=8601

Apparently this letter is also in PDF format on the Louisiana state website, but I haven't been able to get the link to work. THere is more info about it here...


From Associated Press

My opinion is that if Bush created Homeland Security to make the US safer then one of it's first goals should have been to create a streamlined process for handling situations just like this. It also should have been helping update the infrastructure in key ports, cities, etc, that play a major role in keeping the country running. Unfortunately from what I can see funds and attention were diverted to the Iraq war. A war that certainly hasn't resulted in making our country safer.

 

r there any very informative blogs focussed primarily on this disaster?

 

DS, the PDF document you mentioned is here:

http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster Relief Request.pdf

A different perspective on the perceived/assumed funding:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050901corps,1,7189346.story?coll=chi-news-hed

There will be plenty of blame to go around in the months to come. By the time it's all mounted (especially at the rate it's coming down, whether correct or not), most will forget that it was a hurricane that devastated the area.

 

Here are a series of blogs written by folks in or near the area...


http://www.nola.com/

http://www.gumbopages.com/looka/

http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/


Craigslist has several boards up for hit regions, and those hosting evacuees. These are all highlighted in red on right nav menu of cities.

 

I know this is slightly off-topic, but i was talking about the whole disaster in NO with a friend of mine, and his 6 year old brother piped up, "It's a pity Superman doesn't exist, he'd be able to help"

Made me think, pity that superheroes don't exist, they pretty much need them there right now, seeing how inept everyone else seems to be.

Ah well, this is a chance for someone to rise above the rest and get things going, I suppose.

 

It's almost impossible to do that. The 10% are the ones with guns and the 90% are the ones without and the fools don't listen to anyone. That type of problem is something you fix through legislation and gun/contraband control, (most of them don't have permits for those guns) not in a day.

No illegal guns means no 10% fools.

I also believe that they, in some ways, have been enabled by the NAACP and other Black Leaders although in general I believe most of what they do has its merits and purpose.

They have to understand that when they rile people up and feed on paranoia the 10% fools are the ones who end up shooting at firefighters and police officers.

 

I was thinking of setting up a not-for-profit directory listing businesses that helped with this and, perhaps, other disasters. I hear that Delta, for instance, was flying refugees from the Katrina area for free. Then there was this businessman from San Diego who chartered small planes/helicopters that collected people from their rooftops and transformed them (~80) to San Diego. The idea would be to let people know which businesses deserve extra patronage. Does anyone know whether such directory already exists or can suggest any resources that can be useful in creating one?

 

In several news items I saw references and interviews with members of the "New Black Panther Party" which I found somewhat disturbing - they seemed to be threateding continuing violence and use of weapons. I found this provided some clarification

http://www.blackpanther.org/newsalert.htm

 

Yes, some super heroes would be great.