They were there within 72 hours of the levee breech. Tues....Wed......Thurs.....Frid(today) ...........24..........48..........72 Come on people let's reality check here!!!
Please oh please tell me the similarities between homeland security and homeland mass evacuation? I'm not seeing it.
We are the richest nation on earth and the disaster is here...not halfway across the world. After 5 days, it seems we are not even close to finishing the evacuation. What have we spent all this $$$ on for homeland security? That is true. However we have known about the weak levee's for 30 years and Bush cut back their budget multiple times. Many Many Many people did not have cars. I spoke to a guy today that said he drove people that lived in the NOLA housing projects that told him they have never been further away than 5 miles of their house their entire life. Do you think these folks instinctively knew where to go, even if they had a car? And 9/11 was another "greatest in history" event. How many times will you be happy with that excuse. Besides, the difference between 9/11 and Katrina is we knew Katrina was coming ahead of time plus we knew the weaknesses a large storm would have on the area. And still, we were unprepared. The only way to fix problems is to understand and accept how we got into this mess. We hopefully will never have another 9/11. The next event will be something else we never saw before. I'd like to think somebody is thinking about this stuff and addressing proactively ...not retroactively. btw, I'm doing several things to assist in relief efforts. I can help and offer constructive criticism at the same time. By trying to hold politicians accountable and assist in the releif effort, I am fighting to restore balance. There is plenty of blame to go around. You can't put ALL the blame on the victims.
The Homeland Security Department's mission includes national disasters, which is why FEMA is a part of it. It's not a terrorist-response department.
Seriously? Wow. Given that we have anarchy right now in NOLA, I'm not feeling the homeland is too secure.
So what we're saying is Homeland Security should be able to mass evacuate a flooded city with only one route out and scores of hostile citizens and other scores of people hiding? Exactly how were we supposed to prepare for this? Or I guess they should have just "known", huh? Natural disasters, and man-made disasters are always unique. This one more so than the others. You put your best response team together, and you go to work. Y'all were the same people who yelled at Exxon in 89 for not cleaning up all the oil in a few days. Believe me, respond to something like this yourself first, before you go b****ing about how badly it's going.
People have been warning about exactly this scenario for years and years. Yet Bush cut budgets. Why? So we can send our national guard and equipment to protect our homeland thousands of miles away. Makes sense.
No, we're saying that once the disaster hit, the HSD should have been ready to go in with food supplies and other critical services to maintain order and save lives. That is the entire job of the department, after all. They had several days warning that this was coming. What people are b****ing about is the terrible response to the crisis, not the crisis itself. You can get military into a city within 24 hours. You can get water and food into a city within 24 hours. It's not difficult and is done all the time. We've been watching NOTHING being done from Tuesday through Thursday. NOTHING. Everyone agrees except for you and the head of FEMA apparently. Bush agrees it was unacceptable. The Louisiana residents know that. The military knows it. Civilian assisters know it. Everyone on this board knows you. You and FEMA are the only people that are delusional, it seems.
There have about three prior Cat. 5 storms in recorded history (since the Catagory system has been in place). It's a very rare event. There has been one major terrorist attack on the U.S. in recorded history (probably lots of small ones, but only one 9/11). What do they both have in common? People rushing in to lay blame on someone for events that were conceivable but extraordinarily rare. It's conceiveable that a large space object will hit the planet and cause a bigger catastrophy than anyone can imagine. It's happened before (ask the dinosousrs) and we've seen it happen on another planet in our solar system (Jupiter) and scientists say it will happen again (it's just a matter of time). But no one is screaming NOW to spend a ton of money on an asteroid defense system. There are some people asking for it and lots of TV shows about it but there is no real public outcry for it. But if it ever happens (and there's anyone left) you can bet they'll probably blame Bush for not doing enough. I know that a large hurricane or a major terrorist attack is more likely (from an odds point of view) than an asteroid impact on the planet but my point is that all those events are possible, have been conceived as a real threat yet very little was/is done to prevent them because you have to prioritize your threats (threat matrix) and I'd bet that all of them ranked pretty low on the "likely to happen" collumn. Anyone here preparing for the asteroid strike? Or for when Yellowstone erupts? Probably not. Both events will probably happen and when they do watch the blame go flying. As for the response after the hurricane or the lack of putting people in place to react as it was approaching (i.e. staging the guard in Houston or Atlanta to move in immediatly after the storm).... it's been pretty pathetic. We CAN blame the government for that.
It's not like none of this was predicted. This exact situation has been warned about for years and years. And yet the Agency expressly created to handle things like this doesn't have a clue. This is a very important city, both economically and socially - you'd think that maybe FEMA would have a contingency plan in place. There was even a harbinger of future problems a few years back when Ivan(was that the name?) swept through - and the evacuation was a complete shambles. And yet a few years later and we're still not ready. What has FEMA been doing? It's not like New Orleans is some insignificant city, or that hurricanes aren't a predictable problem on the Gulf Coast. The negiligence of FEMA has cost thousands of Americans their lives, and in the moment they needed the government most - it wasn't there for many citizens of New Orleans.
I saw some interviews with the FEMA chief on CNN, and I can't help it, but he really made an incompetent impression. Unfortunately, not only that, he also seemed to retreat to bureaucratic responses and denial. Not a display of strong leadership, imho.
Nice post. I just wanted to point out that some of us have been "crying out" for an asteroid defense system. Here, at least. Keep D&D Civil!!
Why should FEMA do anything? According to them, everything's peachy. http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/katrina.response/index.html They won't believe there are dead bodies until they see them (never mind they don't have people in there to see them). There's also no significant violence, apparently. All the images and reports we're getting must be fabricated.
1) I have (and am) too. 2) And I haven't. pdf file of effort I am heading up Link to donate directly to the same fund Securely here (to which I have already contributed via my church's website ...you know this already if you'd look to help in hangout, before griping in the D&D.
So was Iraq really a higher priority than protecting the mainland? That decision looks pretty silly now. No WMD. Yes - major hurrican thrashes the gulf coast citizens and jeapordizes our oil economy. Anyway, I'm sure you saw the refererneces in other threads to the FEMA report that said that NOLA was the 3rd most probable natural disaster waiting to happen. It sounded like it was on their threat matrix...yet still unprepared. Our government can't protect us from everything but it would be nice if they can protect us a little. I'm not feeling too comfy right about now. 9/11 and Katrina are two foreseeable events where we got caught with our pants down. How many times does this type of thing need to happen before people realize we need to get our troops home and spend money on domistic issues ...not nation building in Iraq.
I'm not blaming you for not helping. I'm saying I am helping but I can also be mad about events to led to our current situation. Why are you so disinterested in hearing constructive citicism? Are you afraid there might be some truth in it?
