R.I.P. - New Orleans, August 29, 2005?? - Page 6  

The very first thing I posted was the EMERGENCY declaration, which as my post plainly shows (with bold type, even!!!) was on Saturday, BEFORE the hurricane actually hit. In other words, she DID start the process before the Hurricane.

You tried to shoot that down by saying you meant Disaster and not Emergency, so I made a second post with the date of THAT declaration.

Which is why both you and pbook are completely wrong.

See? That wasn't so hard.

this bureaucratic bullshit is exactly why america has sucked in response to this disaster. never in my life would i have expected bureaucracy and politics to become the barrier of life and death for thousands in america

Edit: forget it. Applenut is right on. We shouldn't be Vogons

I pretty much agree.

Well, I wouldn't say it's "all" the fault of the bureaucratic bullshit, but the bureaucratic bullshit definitely makes things much worse.

And, of course, the bureaucratic bullshit refuses to accept responsibility for that.
As always.

See you tomorrow fellow floridian.

It will be clearer when the sun comes up.

of that I have no doubt.

Insomnia sucks.

Good discussion. Good night.

For me it all keeps coming back to hurricane pam: http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=13051

not to mention zebra

A couple of interesting tidbits from cnn.com:
I was happy to read this.


I was not so happy to read that.

Another problem you have with Bush, is that he has become a lame duck president earlier than usual. The long vacations and banjo playing proved that, and so does his response to this disaster.

this from chicago:

As someone who's seen emergency preparedness planning from the "inside," I feel like I see things very differently than many of you. I work for a city government and have been involved in table-top exercises, crisis communication training, etc. Before we point fingers, we need to look at all the unforeseens that happened in NO.

First, I don't think anyone on the local or state level anticipated a nearly complete failure of communications. I'm not talking about this guy not telling this other guy what he's doing, but the fact that radios, cell phones and telephones ALL went down. In those situations, HAM operators have often been charged with the duty of supplying a communications backbone on which to rely. It sounds to me like they were crippled or non-existent after Katrina moved through. You all have to realize that communications are SO incredibly vital in disasters, and I would say that the majority of response failures occurred because communications were disabled.

Second, I suspect that local and state officials -- after Katrina moved slightly east and downgraded to a Cat 4 -- assumed that the levees were going to hold. Remember that they didn't break until nearly a DAY after Katrina hit landfall. The amount of destruction on Monday was far less significant than the destruction on Tuesday. Call it human nature or bad science, but somebody just got it wrong about the levees.

Dealing with disasters is an interesting beast, because it all goes from the bottom up. Our emergency preparedness manager consistently tell us that if we have a disaster in our city, we need to start getting information to the state. Anything that goes to the federal level has to go through the state first. That's every state in the union. So the NO officials knew that they had certain procedures that they needed to follow. Now for whatever reason, there were delays going from local to state and state to federal.

Without stretching this post out too much longer, I definitely think a lot of good will come out of everything bad that has happened. You have to realize that emergency planners all over the nation plan the best they can for the worst to happen. But very honestly, it's hard to know what the worst could actually be, and you can't drill the worst possible scenario because of logistics, funding, etc. So you get everything you know how to into place and hope your planning was good enough.

And unfortunately this nation has a history of more efficient planning through hindsight. We have to experience something worse to be able to plan better. That's just how things work. It sucks, I know. Funding is still a major issue. It's all well and good to say that we needed to have better plans, but who's paying for it? How MUCH are we willing to devote to planning/preparing for the absolute worst that could happen, even though we don't know if or when it will ever happen again? I'll almost guarantee you that NOBODY spent enough money to plan for this. What happened in NO is not a scenario that local or state emergency planners expect to ever escalate to. It might be something that the feds have provisions for, but folks, this was on the level of an atomic bomb detonation.* It goes back to planning as best you can based on what you know, but even that isn't good enough sometimes.

I GUARANTEE you that emergency planners all over the world will look at this situation and develop better plans for the future based on what we now know. It's cliched to say, but this amount and speed of response won't happen again because we'll be better next time. More funding will be released on all levels of government to take this type of disaster into account and better prepare for it.

* - Speaking of atomic bomb detonations, I would almost guarantee you that the no level of government has enough provisions in place in case of an atomic bomb detonation, let alone multiple detonations. The feds might, but local and state officials are at the mercy of hope that an a-bomb is not going to happen.

Thank you.

Not only that nearlyu 1/3 of the local police force turned tail and ran AND DID NOT COME BACK.

A whole series of falures happened and thus the delay.

That's what I've been saying - It produces no results to place blame on anyone

I'm sorry, but that's about where I stopped reading. Computer simulations had been run for years, and people knew exactly what was going to happen. The levees where built to withstand >Cat 3< - you would have to be a bit of an idiot to think they would survive Cat 4.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4210674.stm

Secondly - you have proof on video that Federal officials didn't give a shit. You have the director of fema LYING on CNN, and you have BUSH playing the Banjo on the weekend right before the storm.

Third - it really doesn't matter if the storm weakened on Monday - Federal officials weren't prepared anyway. Are you trying to tell me that as of Sunday night - they had proper emergency responses in place - but after the storm weakend on Monday - they cancelled everything?


Uh -NO, they are in complete shock and disbelief. 3rd world countries have already proven to be far more capable in handling disasters - by far. They are learning nothing from this - they are just shaking their heads.

Please tell me - what it is that you think we know now, that we didn't before? That if you do absolutely nothing after a natural disaster, that more people will die and suffer needlessly? BRAVO!!

That's not what you've been saying at all. You've been spending post after post blaming state and local responses while trying to downplay the federal response.

I trust that the people of Louisiana will deal their officials, it's my job as a resident of illinois to deal the federal ones.

cool gut: Bush-hate has blinded you to what's going on here. There's no need for you to post anymore we get who you blame.

There have been questions of Blanco's ability to coordinate this thing form day 2:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2...1/105333.shtml


It goes on to show hoe she has completely dropped the ball here. A weak link in the leadership chain.

more info on the nation guard issues, including this:

Since communication is required for proper response for major catastrophies, which include loss of power and local infrastructure, Satellite communications or mobile communication vehicles are required. Of course they might already have them or lack the funding for them. I would expect FEMA to have these and stationed for fast responce to emergencies. I also agree that we are good about revising plans after the fact. Hopefully we will do better the next time.

reg

Sometimes I wonder if you are even capable of going more than two posts without totally contradicting yourself.

The big problem with the FEMA and Homeland Security response is that it's national, it affects all of us and it's current state is wholly due to decisions by one administration.

Yeah - you know, if it turns out that this rescue operation was bungled, not because of racism - but because Fema and Homeland are really a bunch of fucking morons - then I would be pretty worried if I was living in L.A. when the "big one hit" or in NewYork during a chemical or biological weapon attack.

Right. Not that the pure raw power of nature is anything to worry about there or the threat that the Big one might hit any day.

That post was sad.

What " Big one " is that?

Who coordinate the city and state response? Why was it so late in coming?

Most of you here have NO idea how complex emergency management is. If you had even the faintest clue of how many people below the politicians actually are involved in the process, you'd be amazed that decisions were made as quickly as there were. Before, during, and after a disaster, it's a fallible system. Because of the very nature of how many people are involved and how complex an undertaking it is, added to the fact that the politicians aren't REALLY the ones implementing the plan, there are imperfections in the system.

Once you see it all from the inside, behind the scenes, you allow yourself to be a little more lenient in your criticism of the system. Do I think there have been major faults in the response to Katrina? Of course. Do I think everyone involved -- from the emergency management level up -- did the best they could with what they'd planned for? Most of the time.

So the question is, who do I blame for the poor response? I blame the system. Emergency preparedness in this country is such a convoluted system that I'm amazed it works as well as it does. There are so many layers of emergency responders, jurisdictional departments, emergency managers, jurisdictional law, politicians, agencies, etc. etc. that all this stuff has to go through that it's really amazing that anything gets done at all. If you'd like, we could play the "How Did the 9 Million MREs get to New Orleans?" game.

State responses = National Guard = In Iraq under Pentagon leadership (owing to war time situation).

Local response = uh the cops were trying to help people...

Cities and states coordinate their response. In this scenario, I think most of New Orleans' city services (police, fire, power dept., etc.) were all crippled by the hurricane and subsequent flooding. On the state level, they have emergency managers and can coordinate mutual aid from other local jurisdictions, but they're mostly paper pushers, interacting with the feds. The governor obviously has the ability to activate the national guard, but that's assuming they're available (i.e. not in Iraq or not wiped out themselves by the storm).

It seems to me that local and state officials here were caught with their pants down. I bet that everything they'd planned for was disabled, leaving them with very little usable resources. Once that occurred, they probably looked at the feds and went, "Uh, we've got nothing. Help. Now."

Cosmo is right on the ball here.

We need to all get together on all of this. We shouid celebrate the fact that people are being rescued and that help is being provided. Pointing fingers gets absolutely nothing at all accomplished.

I think we should all "ask not what your country can do for you: Ask what you can do for your country". This is a time to unite.

Let's knock this crap off. I'm done with this, let's help this get solved.

This was the Federal Government's responsibility, in particular, the Department of Homeland Security. 9/11 supposedly "changed everything," and this was the one thing - an attack/natural disaster - that the feds should have gotten right.

From the Department of Homeland Security's web page :

A couple of observations...

1) Unless you know anything more than what you may have read or heard in the last week about Mayor Ray Nagin don't bother trying to place blame on him because it makes you look foolish. This is a genuinely great man doing everything he can with the resources he has.

2) When this is all said and done and the situation has been assessed I predict more than 15,000 people to have fallen victim to this disaster. Many will be from the downtown area, but many will be from St. Bernard, St. Tammany, and especially Plaquemines parishes. While the population of Orleans Parish is along the order of 67% black (hence the large numbers of blacks who were being sheltered in the superdome) you will find the casualties in the other parishes surrounding the immediate metro area to be distributed without any racial bias, however nobody is talking about this on the news. It seems to be "an obvious racial issue" because all that people see are the "poor blacks" downtown. Honestly most people here feel like if thats what it takes to get aid here so be it, but what you dont see on the media (listen up Kanye West) are the hundreds of White AND blacks dieing in their attics all over the city.

3) There is no one person to place this blame on nor is their one decision that put us in this situation. For years and years people here have talked about this scenario and how bad it would be. Our state representatives (both Dem. & Rep.) have been begging and pleading to get much needed funding to prevent coastal erosion here. This may seem like a seperate issue but it is not. The fact of the matter is that Louisiana has long been ignored when it comes to funding. This was a HUGE factor when trying to assess the innitial damage after the storm. The local government up to the mayor (notice I leave the governor out of this equation) were as prepared as they could have been with the resources they had. When it was all said and done the mayor was screaming and cussing on the radio here, which is all we've had for most of the last week that we need help! This is a situation where most of the blame falls on the government from top to bottom. If you have any doubt that Louisiana doesnt pull it's end of the economic rope then go to your local gas station and watch the prices rise. This is simply a matter of neglect and misjudgment at many levels. It has little if anything at all to do with race or poverty.

Let's get together on this folks. If we all care, let's make a difference.

I was wrong on this one - insured losses are estimated at $26 billion, and uninsured losses are estimated at $50 billion, according to CNN.

And playmaker - I doubt that you are right about the even distribution of black and white casulties. White people are richer on average than black people, and the rich got out.

yeah e#, even though Playmaker LIVES IN NEW ORLEANS, you know more about the demographics of the local population than he does....

He does not know who is in their attic any more than you or I do. I think that it is very strange to suggest that there will not be a black-white bias on the pre-hurricane evacuations - because I guarenteee you that there is a difference in income and asset distribution between the races.

There will be an even greater bias in the death toll, because rich people will have a stronger house, higher up on the hill, and have more food stored, even if they were foolish enough to stay.

70% of the people evacuated - the rest are either foolish or very poor. Foolishness is not racially weighted, but poverty is.

I think his point was, the huge racial disparity will only be in Orleans Parish (which after all is over 60% black).

In the surrounding parishes (more suburban and even rural), the poor are white just as much as black.

Katrina was a plot by the white man to keep the brotha down.

I am right about it because I live here and I know from first hand knowledge. I really dont want to carry on with you over the race issue because I think it's already far too exploited as is. All I was trying to say is that the media and people like kanye west and jessie jackson love to throw a race card by telling you half truths or maybe it's just plain ignorance. Yes New Orleans metro area is 67% black and a large portion of the entire city (again mostly black) are poor. This does not explain why the people living in Chalmette, St Bernard, Slidell, Plaquemines, and even on into the Mississippi & Alabama gulf coast (who are prodominantly white are not getting the supplies they need or in many cases being rescued quickly either). The fact is this is a logistical disaster of epic proportions and it was vastly underestimated in terms the initial damage caused. It is not a race issue but whatever you and the hatred filled others want to believe is fine. You just keep an eye out for the people doing the rescuing and the people who have been stuck in the hospitals working around the clock to save peoples lives and risking their own because they come in all colors.

I can assure you of this however my best friend since childhood made it back to town today and he lives, wait excuse me LIVED in St. Tammany Parish and lost everything (I mean everything). He is one of many that I know who lost all of their possessions and NO the insurance even flood insurance does not cover rising water it only covers you if there is damage to your home and water gets in as a result. No need to argue here I know the facts and I have a devistated friend who can explain it all to you. Whatever FEMA and other organazations do to help out remains to be seen but it's really sad to loose everything you own in a house that is a little over a year old...have no compensation for it, but yet you still have a mortgage. So if you wanna talk about just the poor thats fine but at least they lost everything and are without a mortgage.

Race is an excuse that is being fed to people by the ignorant and people with an adgenda looking to get people fired up. Thats the facts.

Why weren't they ready for a complete failure of the levees? It was only a matter of time so they should have been better prepared.


only like 10% of the state's NG is in Iraq.


What happened in NO was text book. Levee breaks, city floods. They should have been better prepared. I like to keep blame close to the source. That's the mayor and the governor.

Yeah, but so is 90% of the money.

What do you mean?


Anyway think about this. The Hospital back up generators were below flood level. Even if they had diesel they couldn't run. What kind of city, living below sea level on a water way, has it's hospital back up generators below the flood level? That one mistake alone lead to many deaths.