“Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?” "The worst abandonment of American citizens in American history." The president of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans, Aaron Broussard, issued on Sunday an emotional appeal on NBC’s Meet the Press. By the end, he was completely broken down, sobbing uncontrollably. Streaming video in Real Media format Video in Windows Media format Video in QuickTime format Video for dial-up users Audio in MP3 format RUSSERT: You just heard the director of homeland security’s explanation of what has happened this last week. What is your reaction? BROUSSARD: We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast. But the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history. ... Whoever is at the top of this totem pole, that totem pole needs to be chainsawed off and we’ve got to start with some new leadership. It’s not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now. Broussard then discussed the difficulties local authorities had with FEMA, including one case where they actually posted armed guards to keep FEMA from cutting their communications lines: Three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA, we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. When we got there with our trucks, FEMA says don’t give you the fuel. Yesterday -yesterday - FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards and said no one is getting near these lines... Finally, Broussard told the tragic personal story of a colleague, and broke down: I want to give you one last story and I’ll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I’m in, Emergency Management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?” and he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you.” Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday... and she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night! [Sobbing] Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us. The Secretary has promised. Everybody’s promised. They’ve had press conferences. I’m sick of the press conferences. For god’s sakes, just shut up and send us somebody. http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001798.htm http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=8053
"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!" George W. Bush praising the head of FEMA a day or so ago. The rot starts at the top. Keep D&D Civil!!
Once again more mistakes and nobody being held accountable. What a horrible, horrible example of leadership. I am angry that these things have happened, and even angrier that they can happen, and the person who can affect the most change, is telling the folks at FEMA they are doing a good job. It is kind of hard to criticize the local leaders like the Mayor and Governor when they are being prevented from doing their job. It is inhumane and there is no excuse that the incomeptence of FEMA has caused so many deaths.
Is the president supposed to criticize the head of FEMA during such a time? I stand with what some guy said on CNN this morning. He was a senator, I think from La. He was asked if he aggrees with the idea, coming from angry and frustrated people in LA, saying that everyone atop of FEMA and other Gov opperations should be fired immediatly. He declined, saying this is not the time. We all need to work together. We don't need to be pointing fingers, it's time to help the needy. This has been a horrible tragedy, an inevitable one at that. NO is a swamp bellow sea level....before the Hurricane. I'm hoping for the best for the remaining traped people. I heard the Mayor of NO offered an apology to the President and some other Gov Officials for his outburst a few days ago. At this time, finger pointing is not the answer. Do what you can to help the people in need.
Amazing ... nothing has been done to protect NO from this type of disaster for the last 30 or so years and Bush still gets 100% of the blame from you guys. Un-freakin-believable.
Politics were thrown out the window once the eye of the storm passed the Gulf Coast. From the NO Times-Picayune
You know, one day, if you actually consider reading people's comments, you will see that people are not continually b****ing about Bush's pre-hurricane actions, but his POST-HURRICANE MANAGEMENT. Literacy is a good thing.
theres plenty of blame to go around at all levels, but like harry s. said "the buck stops here". under the bush administration, funding for the levies dried up for the first time in about 35 years. bush is the one who put FEMA under the direction of the homeland security department and put a guy w/ no experience in charge. bush is the one who stayed on vacation for 3 days after the hurricane. playing golf, eating cake and taking photo ops w/ an acoustic guitar. bush came to florida last year w/in 48 hours of the hurricane. he doesnt show up in new orleans for 5 days.
You don't understand. I WANT the President to succeed. I WANT him to show leadership. We NEED him to show leadership. I don't mind when he falls flat on his face politically, because more often than not, it has something to do with something I don't agree with. That's all out the window now. We need him to be the best damn President he can be, because lives are at stake. So far, he's somehow reached new depths in what has been a pathetic 4+ years in office. Goddammit I wish he'd turn it around. Until then, I'll be an inch away from the TV, writing checks, hoping he gets it right.
Let's not forget "the guy", who runs the Emergency Management, could have the opportunities to exert his authority and/or influence to arrange a chopper exclusively to rescue his mother trapped in nursing home. On one hand (ironically), it shows that both as a public official and as a private citizen how much confidence he had in the promises and abilities of our federal government (FEMA or whatever). On the other hand (sadly), you've got to have nothing but the highest respect for a guy who, in a crisis like this, placed the priority of fulfilling his responsibility over anything else - including rescuing his own mother at earlies possibilities.
Sadly, the one thing this ordeal has shown me is that anything is spinnable and fair game for political attack dogs.
For those of you who keep telling me it was President Bush's lack of preparedness that caused all of this or that's the most to blame and that the mayor of NO and the fovernor of LA aren't to blame, here's an article from the local media in NO in response to another hurricane, Ivan. http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/091904ccktWWLIvanFlaws.132602486.html Ivan exposes flaws in N.O.'s disaster plans 05:09 PM CDT on Sunday, September 19, 2004 By KEVIN McGILL Associated Press Those who had the money to flee Hurricane Ivan ran into hours-long traffic jams. Those too poor to leave the city had to find their own shelter - a policy that was eventually reversed, but only a few hours before the deadly storm struck land. New Orleans dodged the knockout punch many feared from the hurricane, but the storm exposed what some say are significant flaws in the Big Easy's civil disaster plans. Much of New Orleans is below sea level, kept dry by a system of pumps and levees. As Ivan charged through the Gulf of Mexico, more than a million people were urged to flee. Forecasters warned that a direct hit on the city could send torrents of Mississippi River backwash over the city's levees, creating a 20-foot-deep cesspool of human and industrial waste. Residents with cars took to the highways. Others wondered what to do. "They say evacuate, but they don't say how I'm supposed to do that," Latonya Hill, 57, said at the time. "If I can't walk it or get there on the bus, I don't go. I don't got a car. My daughter don't either." Advocates for the poor were indignant. "If the government asks people to evacuate, the government has some responsibility to provide an option for those people who can't evacuate and are at the whim of Mother Nature," said Joe Cook of the New Orleans ACLU. It's always been a problem, but the situation is worse now that the Red Cross has stopped providing shelters in New Orleans for hurricanes rated above Category 2. Stronger hurricanes are too dangerous, and Ivan was a much more powerful Category 4. In this case, city officials first said they would provide no shelter, then agreed that the state-owned Louisiana Superdome would open to those with special medical needs. Only Wednesday afternoon, with Ivan just hours away, did the city open the 20-story-high domed stadium to the public. Mayor Ray Nagin's spokeswoman, Tanzie Jones, insisted that there was no reluctance at City Hall to open the Superdome, but said the evacuation was the top priority. "Our main focus is to get the people out of the city," she said. Callers to talk radio complained about the late decision to open up the dome, but the mayor said he would do nothing different. "We did the compassionate thing by opening the shelter," Nagin said. "We wanted to make sure we didn't have a repeat performance of what happened before. We didn't want to see people cooped up in the Superdome for days." When another dangerous hurricane, Georges, appeared headed for the city in 1998, the Superdome was opened as a shelter and an estimated 14,000 people poured in. But there were problems, including theft and vandalism. This time far fewer took refuge from the storm - an estimated 1,100 - at the Superdome and there was far greater security: 300 National Guardsmen. The main safety measure - getting people out of town - raised its own problems. More than 1 million people tried to leave the city and surrounding suburbs on Tuesday, creating a traffic jam as bad as or worse than the evacuation that followed Georges. In the afternoon, state police took action, reversing inbound lanes on southeastern Louisiana interstates to provide more escape routes. Bottlenecks persisted, however. Col. Henry Whitehorn, head of state police, said he believes his agency acted appropriately, but also acknowledged he never expected a seven-hour-long crawl for the 60 miles between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. It was so bad that some broadcasters were telling people to stay home, that they had missed their window of opportunity to leave. They claimed the interstates had turned into parking lots where trapped people could die in a storm surge. Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Nagin both acknowledged the need to improve traffic flow and said state police should consider reversing highway lanes earlier. They also promised meetings with governments in neighboring localities and state transportation officials to improve evacuation plans. But Blanco and other state officials stressed that, while irritating, the clogged escape routes got people out of the most vulnerable areas. "We were able to get people out," state Commissioner of Administration Jerry Luke LeBlanc said. "It was successful. There was frustration, yes. But we got people out of harm's way." © 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Who's fault is it when the Feds are turning away supplies that could have saved lives? Who are the ones that cut off emergency communication lines to the locals? I'm not saying that the locals were perfect, and certainly there is room to blame them, but in these instances the locals were PREVENTED from doing a better job by the Feds. Then we have to hear Bush telling the head of the organization that helped cause some of the deaths what a great job he's doing. That is just sickening. Like all of the other mistakes this administration has made, nobody will be held accountable for it. I want people who mess up to be held accountable. That is an idea that is neither conservative or liberal. It is just one of common sense.
This is a sobering read: GULF COAST GRIMLY COUNTS ITS LOSSES Officials fear thousands killed by Katrina Monday, September 5, 2005 Rescuers in boats search reeking city New Orleans -- From a wicker rocking chair on a Nelson Street porch on Sunday, a man calls out to the aluminum boat. He wants to share a tip with the crew, rescuers trying to evacuate the last of the stranded survivors from the ravaged city of New Orleans. "The water's going down half an inch every four hours," he says, then smiles, waves and sits back, knee-deep in rancid water. His hammock is tied to the wooden poles of his porch, and a motorboat is moored to the railing. Standing tall on the rescue boat, Hal Sears considers this. James Christesson, the boat captain, has been steering it through waters laced with raw sewage and spilled fuel. Bottles, garbage cans, sunken cars and wooden chairs have scraped against the boat's flat bottom. The city smells foul. The reek of low tide clashes with the stench of decomposing flesh. That someone would choose to stay in this rancid mix seems beyond possible. But this encounter, like so many others on the boat patrols, shows how Hurricane Katrina has altered all assumptions. "I'm afraid to even think what we'll uncover" when the water that has swamped 80 percent of New Orleans finally recedes, says Sears, an officer from the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. New Orleans authorities will allow residents to return to parts of the city at 6 a.m. today. What they will see when they return will be surreal and terrifying. The thousands of refugees who filled the Convention Center and the Superdome are gone. The only people left in the city are those who chose to stay, those who have been unable to get out of their homes and those who died trying. Thousands may be dead. A bloated body, naked from the waist up, is floating in a carport near the corner of Palm and Eagle streets. A large orange barrel is floating next to it. More bodies are washed up on a traffic island on Carlton Avenue, in front of Xavier University. There is the body of a man, its arms and legs slightly bent and spread apart, its tongue too swollen to fit in the mouth. A few feet away, another body is laying face-down under an SUV. Still another is floating face-down in the water in the middle of the road. Tim Swick, another Miami-Dade firefighter, calls in the coordinates of the corpses, and the boats move on. "We just take care of the live ones at this point, sad as it may sound," says John Smithie, also from the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. The boat carrying Sears and Smithie approaches the yellow two-story building of the Prince Professional Building at the corner of Oleander and Dublin. A boat is moored next to the building, which the hurricane appears to have left intact, not counting the water that laps at the walls. "We're fine, we got boats," shouts Eva Borgan from the window. "My children, my mom, everybody's out. It's just me and my brother, rescuing people. That's why we haven't left." Smithie marks the building with bright orange spray-paint so that helicopters roaring overhead would see that it had been checked by rescuers on the water and does not need to be evacuated. But Terry Comes, who is standing on the wooden porch of Carrolton Pest Control next door, wants to go. He is 16 years old, and should have started 11th grade in high school last week. He has hasn't eaten for two days, and gives monosyllabic answers when the rescuers question him about his relatives. His parents are alive, still, somewhere in New Orleans. No, they don't want to leave. He had waded here earlier Sunday, hoping to find his buddy. Smithie and Sears help Comes into the boat and give him a bottle of water. The boat moves on. In one house, young men are wringing their T-shirts on a porch. A child peeks through the dirty window. They don't want to go anywhere. On a porch next door, a stranded dog looks expectantly at humans and howls plaintively. Christesson steers past him. The rescuers don't know what to do with abandoned dogs. Sears, meanwhile, receives a call from another rescue crew on the intercom. "Corner of Washington and ..." the transmission becomes garbled. "Police told me it's very dangerous and we're gonna get shot at." Sears had no plans to go to Washington Street, anyway. On Fig Street, a swollen body of a dog is bobbing in the water. It is the size of a small cow. Several blocks down, a dead rat the size of a rabbit is floating amid pieces of plywood. Comes surveys the scene silently. "How old are you, young man?" Smithie asks Comes. "Sixteen," Comes responds. "If you were 18, I would have given you a cigarette," Smithie responds. He cuts open a military packaged meal with a switchblade. He pulls out a brown plastic bag and hands it to Comes. "Pasta with red sauce," he announces. At 9131 Fig St., Swick calls from the other boat. "We got somebody in here!" It is a beige house that is halfway underwater. A cooler is floating by the porch. A young couple peers out of the house, Kenneth and Patricia Watts. Their eyes are wide with anguish. The hurricane did not destroy their house, but on Tuesday, the water started inching up. That night, the Wattses slept on the bed, and the water was lapping at their bottom mattress. On Wednesday night, the water covered the mattress. The Wattses slept on kitchen counters and in the attic. "After my skin started to peel off from my fingers and my legs, I realized it was time to leave," Kenneth Watts says, settling into Swick's boat. A block of houses on Fig Street, between South Carrolton and Dublin, is on fire, and flames reflect eerily in the murky water. A house stands with the words "Help Now" spray-painted in enormous red letters on the steps of its porch. Eddie Siles, a pastor at a nearby Pentecostal church, rows by in a powerless motorboat. He is using a 2-by-6 for an oar. He is on a mission to rescue people, too. On Carrolton Avenue, where an ancient oak cast shadows on the flooded road, the shrill of Sears' whistle goes unanswered. "I think a lot of them got out," Sears says. Then, on the corner of Forshey and Monroe, the rescuers hear something. Beep. Beep, beep. "Sounds like a medical alarm," Smithie says. The boat crawls up to the house and Christesson cuts the engine. "Hello!" Sears hollers. "Fire department!" No answer. "I don't think anybody's in there," Sears hollers. But it is impossible to tell whether the residents have left, or died. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/05/MNG6IEIMDD1.DTL It sounds like hell on earth. Keep D&D Civil!!
I saw Broussard, too. It was tough to take. Emergency management officials don't have any access to choppers or anything like that; they ride out storms in fortress-like command centers.
