White House Enacts a Plan to Ease Political Damage

Karl Rove must be back on the job.

 

Abso-f*cking-lutely

 

Come on guys....what should the federal government have done?

I think the response time was about what it would be anywhere.....

People should have listened to the warning and gotten out.

DD

 

Here's what I think:

1. The airport. Harry Connick, Jr. was able to get in to town. And out. Seems reasonable that we could have gotten people out that way.

2. Airlifts. It was 4 days after before water and food started reaching the people trapped there. Sorry, but that's unacceptable.

3. NOLA is right along the Miss. River. So is the convention center. There were cruise ships from NOLA that parked in Galveston. They could have been comandeered. They would have served as immediate shelters and people could have been transported elsewhere.

4. There were clearly routes out of the city...two, to be precise. A combination of helicopters and buses could have been utilized immediately. They weren't.

This is off the top of my head. Without careful study for years and years. This isn't my area of expertise. Ultimately, all of these were actually done. Just too late. There was no one on the ground calling the shots in an effective way. FEMA dropped the ball.

As for the idea that people should have gotten out. I agree. But they didn't. For varying reasons. Didn't have mode of transportation out, or the money to make it happen...impoverished...stuck in hospitals...stuck n nursing homes. The city and state had a piss-poor plan for something they knew would ultimately happen. It is not enough in a city as impoverished as NOLA is to simply issue a mandatory evacuation and then sit back and blame the poor and the sick after they're unable to get out.

 

Have you been on vacation or something? You do realize the majority of the people who stayed behind were sick, elderly, or just too damn poor to afford a car, gas, or hotel money.

 

I am not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I think this is an interesting article:

This article was on MSNBC, but has been pulled. You can find it via google though:

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:..."Northern+Command"&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&strip=1

For me, I am not convinced that this was done as well as it could have been. For the sake of argument, I have seen few news articles commending the effort and many that have criticized it. More than anything else though, I just don't see any sincerity from the administration - the press conferances, the travel etc - it just seems faked. The nonchalance - that's what really gets me frustrated.

 

Awww, they deserved to die anyway. Serves 'em right for being poor.

 

3 Duke students tell of 'disgraceful' scene

By Ray Gronberg, The Herald-Sun
September 4, 2005 9:36 pm
http://www.heraldsun.com/tools/printfriendly.cfm?StoryID=643298

DURHAM -- A trio of Duke University sophomores say they drove to New Orleans late last week, posed as journalists to slip inside the hurricane-soaked city twice, and evacuated seven people who weren't receiving help from authorities.

The group, led by South Carolina native Sonny Byrd, say they also managed to drive all the way to the New Orleans Convention Center, where they encountered scenes early Saturday evening that they say were disgraceful.

"We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn't go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai," said Hans Buder, who made the trip with his roommate Byrd and another student, David Hankla.

Buder's account -- told by cell phone Sunday evening as the trio neared Montgomery, Ala., on their way home -- chronicled a three-day odyssey that began when the students, angered by the news reports they were seeing on CNN, loaded up their car with bottled water and headed for the Gulf coast to see if they could lend a hand.

The trio say they left Durham about 6 p.m. Thursday and reached Montgomery about 12 hours later. After catching 1½ hours of sleep, they reached the coast at Mobile. From there, they traveled through the Mississippi cities of Biloxi and Gulfport.

They say they elected to keep going because it seemed like Mississippi authorities had things well in hand.

Pushing on, they passed through Slidell, La., and tried to get into New Orleans by a couple of routes. Each time, police and National Guard troops turned them away. By 2 p.m. they'd wound up in Baton Rouge.

Stopping first at a Red Cross shelter and then at offices of a Baton Rouge TV station, WAFB, they eventually made their way to the campus of Louisiana State University. By 8 p.m. Friday they were working as volunteers in an emergency assistance area set up inside LSU's indoor track arena.

The students worked until about 2 a.m. Saturday, then slept on the floor of a dorm room. When they awoke, they went back to the TV station, which was hosting what Buder termed "a distribution center" for supplies.

At 2 p.m., the trio decided to head for New Orleans, Buder said. After looking around, they swiped an Associated Press identification and one of the TV station's crew shirts, and found a Kinko's where they could make copies of the ID.

They were stopped again by authorities at the edge of New Orleans, but this time were able to make it through.

"We waved the press pass, and they looked at each other, the two guards, and waved us on in," Buder said.

Inside the city, they found a surreal environment.

"It was wild," Buder said. "It really felt like it was 'Independence Day,' the movie."

The trio dodged downed trees and power lines until they happened upon Magazine Street, which runs in a semi-circle around the city parallel to and about four blocks north of the Mississippi River.

They stopped to give water to a 15-year-old boy sitting beside the road holding a sign that said "Need Water/Food," then went to the convention center.

The evacuation was basically complete by the time they arrived, at about 6:30 or 6:45 p.m. What the trio saw there horrified them.

"The only way I can describe this, it was the epicenter," Buder said. "Inside there were National Guard running around, there was feces, people had urinated, soiled the carpet. There were dead bodies. The smell will never leave me."

Buder said the students saw four or five bodies. National Guard troopers seemed to be checking the second and third floors of the building to try to secure the site.

"Anyone who knows that area, if you had a bus, it would take you no more than 20 minutes to drive in with a bus and get these people out," Buder said. "They sat there for four or five days with no food, no water, babies getting raped in the bathrooms, there were murders, nobody was doing anything for these people. And we just drove right in, really disgraceful. I don't want to get too fired up with the rhetoric, but some blame needs to be placed somewhere."

By about 7 p.m., the students made their way back to the boy on Magazine Street. He directed them to some people "who really needed to get out." The resulting evacuation began at a house at the corner of Magazine and Peniston streets.

The first group included three women and a man. The students climbed into the front seats of the four-door Hyundai, and the evacuees filled the back seat. They left the city and headed back to Baton Rouge. There they deposited the man at the LSU medical center and took the women to dinner. The women later found shelter with relatives, and the students got about four hours' sleep inside the LSU chapel.

At 6:30 a.m. Sunday, they made their second run into New Orleans, returning to the house at Magazine and Peniston streets. This time they picked up three men and headed back to Baton Rouge. Two of the men were the husbands of two of the women evacuated the night before. The students reunited them with their wives and put the two families on a bus for Texas.

Buder is from Martha's Vineyard, Mass.; Byrd is from Rock Hill, S.C.; and Hankla is from Washington, D.C.

 

DD - you were out of country, right? You should read the hurricane Katrina thread in the hangout forum from start to finish to get a sense of what happened and how it unfolded. No one - not Bush, not the House, not the Senate, not Louisiana, not anyone in the country, really - thinks the response time was what is should have been or could have been. Except the FEMA head, apparently.

 

They should have had Reservists preparing two days before the storm hit. No matter where the storm was to hit - it was clear it would be a devastating storm (at least a cat 3). The Midwest, Eastern and Western states could have been loading water, medicine and food onto planes in preparation. Had the storm fizzled out all they would have had to do was unload, instead they got caught with their pants down. You would think that a President whose own brother is Governor of a state that has had it's share of Hurricanes would at least have had a clue what kind of response would be needed. Even if the response was unprepared for the scope of the damage at least it would have been a response.

On CNN this weekend a Newsweek reporter, whose name I don't recall stated a truth about Bush that can't be denied. While he may have a handle on mid to long term recovery in both Katrina and 9/11 emergency responses, his leadership has been non-existant in the 36 hours following the disasters. That is the time when leadership was most needed to be shown and plans should have been put into effect. No sign of preparation was clear for days. Homeland security was too concerned with the terrorism front and troops, supplies and equipment were spread to thin for immediate response.

As far as people getting out - that is a played out response. Protecting your family home, staying with relatives too sick to travel, simply not being able to afford to, are very stong reasons to stay.

 

you're right..the governor should have had national guard troops ready to go hours before the storm made landfall. she didn't. failure everywhere. what you're talking about here is really a state failure. for the most part, if you're talking about preparedness, blame rests with city and state officials. after the fact, your'e talking federal.

 

That's awesome -- the part about the students driving down to help, not the part about all the people suffering. That was my instinct at first -- gotta drive over there and help. But, then I figured I couldn't get in and would only add to the problem by being another body in the city.

A friend of my mom's that lived in New Orleans obeyed the mandatory evacuation. However, she left one of her cars behind -- the Jag -- because there was no gas left to buy, she said. I wonder if many people stayed in the city because of a run on gas supplies. I don't know.

 

http://constructiveinterference.blogspot.com/2005/09/local-failure-caused-by-fema.html

To be fair, this is a leftist blog and I imagine much of it is political, but it does source everything in that particular post. Here's more:

http://femafailures.blogspot.com/

 

Of course they are doing damage control.
I saw that a mile away. Ever since Friday when Bush held well rehearsed briefings in Biloxi and NOLA airport and went around hugging people.
Along with Bush's briefing was the orchestrated line of the Army's convoy to the Superdome. Do you think that was a coincidence?

They also promised a long list of big shots making the trips to NOLA at that time. Who needs them now? Why don't they just stay in DC and let the real people do the work!

 

They City of Dallas prepares better for the possibility of an ice/sleet storm. They scramble sand trucks, and have them ready and running as the storm comes in, they have police officers on the scene of bridges and overpasses to survey the danger to motorists and report the conditions to the news agencies, they salt the stairs at all business, schools, and apartment complexes.

My point here is not to compare an ice storm to a hurricane. My point is that when you have a possible life threatening situation, you make preparations......and you PREPARE FOR THE WORST CASE SCENARIO.

If there are people that cannot get out due to illness, handicap, poverty, etc., you find a way to get them out.

The preparation for this storm was terrible. I won't point fingers at any entity or individual...because it's happened, and people need help NOW. But I am sure a thorough investigation will ensue. This type of event has been feared and discussed for decades, so I am not sure there's an excuse.

But an interesting twist is this - the gal that spoke at my church this past Sunday said the NO residents had two days to prepare and evacuate. She said they all thought, from the forecasts, that it was going to hit FL again. Then it took a different path, strengthened, and that left them two days. Is this accurate?

 

Oh, and any administration, Democrat or Republican, would be doing political damage control under this type of circumstance. That's what politicians do. Should be no surprise.