First responders warned of change in training (terrorism over natural dis)

[sabra]

http://www.katc.com/global/story.asp?s=3809634&ClientType=Printable

First responders warned of change in training

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration was warned by congressional investigators this summer that some first responders were concerned that their training and equipment was tilting too much toward combatting terrorism rather than natural disasters.


It's too early to tell whether the shift affected the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina. But it led some emergency personnel to raise red flags.

The emphasis changed once the Federal Emergency Management Agency lost its independence and joined the 22-agency Homeland Security Department in March 2003.

The mammoth department was created in 2002 as a response to the lack of coordination prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and its emphasis clearly is terrorism. Officials developed an "all hazards" policy that used the same training exercises and equipment to prepare for two distinct types of disasters: a terrorist attack and an event of nature.

[alarimer]

1. It doesn't take a rocket scientist

to realize we need both. When are these people going to get over their obsession with terrorism enough to realize there are very real emergencies that happen for other reasons?

[oneighty]

2. An emergency

is an emergency is an emergency.

The cause of the emergency is of no consequence. This is cover your ass bullshit.

180

[jus_the_facts]

3. here's what *help* looked like in New Orleans.....

....is it any wonder why so many desperate..destitude angry people lost it and started shooting their way around..this is what happens now when disaster strikes america.

[txaslftist]

5. Caption:

"Can I have a bottle of water, sir?"

[1democracy]

7. These men are trained to use force for law and order, not compassion

Our National Guard should be trained for disastors, not how to fight a war. How does that help the people in New Orleans? Guns can't give them food or water.

[TahitiNut]

9. That looks exactly like Soweto during apartheid.

:puke:

[Robb]

4. Yes and no

If your training certification has a bunch of stuff on biohazards and little on fire fuels, you're going to suck at a wildfire. Our local rescue team has very little time in flood situations, because we're in the mountains; but even more generalized emergency management is affected by training content.

Just sayin'.

[iverglas]

6. August 29, 2005 -- and LAST YEAR

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9113550/

“All indications are that this is absolutely worst-case scenario,” Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, said Sunday afternoon.

'A refugee camp of a million people'
The center’s latest computer simulations indicate that by Tuesday, vast swaths of New Orleans could be under water up to 30 feet deep. In the French Quarter, the water could reach 20 feet, easily submerging the district’s iconic cast-iron balconies and bars.

Estimates predict that 60 percent to 80 percent of the city’s houses will be destroyed by wind. With the flood damage, most of the people who live in and around New Orleans could be homeless.

“We’re talking about in essence having — in the continental United States — having a refugee camp of a million people,” van Heerden said.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9178501/

A government document obtained by NBC News shows just how radically the focus shifted to terrorism. It is dated July 2004 and lists 222 upcoming FEMA and homeland security exercises scheduled to prepare for national emergencies. Only two involve hurricanes.

... What's more, it appears that the federal government did not follow up on an exercise last year that mostly predicted what happened in New Orleans — devastating flooding and hundreds of thousands stranded.

The scenario was dubbed Hurricane Pam: 120 mph winds, a massive storm surge, 20 feet of water in the city, 80 percent of buildings damaged, refugees on rooftops, possibly gun violence that would slow the rescue.

... Van Heerden says the federal government didn't take it seriously. "Those FEMA officials wouldn't listen to me," he says. "Those Corps of Engineers people giggled in the back of the room when we tried to present information."

When asked on MSNBC on Sunday what he would do now if he met the woman from FEMA who had sarcastically informed him that "Americans don't live in tents", in response to his urging that large numbers of tents be ready on site to shelter evacuees, he said he'd wring her neck.

[BootinUp]

8. Can't you hear? No one could have predicted!

A double catastrophe like this!! :sarcasm:

Good info there ;)

[iverglas]

10. it is, isn't it?

We've been deprived of CBC / Newsworld coverage of this entire event -- CBC locked its employees out last month, in a labour dispute arising, generally, out of management's growing efforts to run the national broadcaster like a private corp. The CBC would certainly have given us less-filtered news and views than the US media.

So we've increasingly checked out MSNBC on our digital cable dial while watching hour after hour of this misery, in frustration at not being allowed to send help -- and found it to be maybe just a tad more investigative than CNN ... and Fox ... (which we're still getting on "free preview" months after it was approved as a pay channel here; sales must not be too good).

[slor]

11. But But....We had to train...

for TERRORISM, so we could spread the FEAR. And then we could steal the ELECTION, and maintain the THEFT of the nation's treasury, while continuing the lies about FREEDOM. Don't you get it?

[rainbow4321]

12. There were a couple first responders talking on the radio...

last night via scanner. One of them made a comment: "Guess we should have asked more questions about all of this at last Wednesday's drill, after seeing what happened Sunday"

"We are on our own, doing what we can with what we have"



----------
I got the impression that the pre-storm "emergency drill" meeting didn't do shit to prepare them for this disaster.