Doctor: Officials gave hospital staffers mops as people died

[struggle4progress]

Leadership vacuum stymied aid offers
Doctor: Officials gave hospital staffers mops as people died

Friday, September 16, 2005; Posted: 1:19 p.m. EDT (17:19 GMT)

<snip> Dr. Bong Mui and his staff, evacuated with 300 patients after three hellish days at Chalmette Medical Center, arrived at the New Orleans airport, and were amazed to see hundreds of sick people. They offered to help. But, the doctor told CNN, FEMA officials said they were worried about legal liability. "They told us that, you know, you could help us by mopping the floor." And so they mopped, while people died around them. "I started crying," he recalled. "We felt like we could help, and were not allowed to do anything." (Watch the video of hundreds languishing sick at the airport -- 4:16)

Steve Simpson, sheriff of Loudoun County, Virginia, sent 22 deputies equipped with food and water to last seven days. Their 14-car caravan, including four all-terrain vehicles, was on the road just three hours when they were told to turn back. The reason, Simpson told CNN: A Louisiana state police official told them not to come. " I said, "What if we just show up?' He says, 'You probably won't get in.' " Simpson said he later learned a dispute over whether state or federal authorities would command the law enforcement effort was being ironed out that night. But no one ever got back to him with the all-clear.

FEMA halted tractor trailers hauling water to a supply staging area in Alexandria, Louisiana, The New York Times quoted William Vines, former mayor of Fort Smith, Arkansas, as saying. "FEMA would not let the trucks unload," he told the newspaper. "The drivers were stuck for several days on the side of the road" because, he said, they did not have a "tasker number." He added, "What in the world is a tasker number? I have no idea. It's just paperwork and it's ridiculous."

Firefighters who answered a nationwide call for help were sent to Atlanta for FEMA training sessions on community relations and sexual harassment. "On the news every night you hear 'How come everybody forgot us?' " Pennsylvania firefighter Joseph Manning told The Dallas Morning News. "We didn't forget. We're stuck in Atlanta drinking beer." <snip>

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/15/katrina.response/

[Straight Shooter]

1. Who was heading FEMA and who appointed the head of FEMA?

Ultimate responsibility. People dying because someone is worried about liability? That's what happens when Republicans are in charge.

edit: first question is rhetorical

[Justyce]

6. I hope what comes around goes around...

[RagingInMiami]

2. Fucking ridiculous

We got doctors mopping, presidents eating cake, firefighters taking sexual harassment classes -- and people dying.

Somebody has to pay.

[Rose Siding]

3. Doesn't that just make you want to scream?

What a wrenching failure- from the top down, yes, but there's a human being at each level of the bureaucracy. Why was it so impossible for these "FEMA officials" to switch over to survival mode?

I wondered about that with the arrest of the old woman. How many dozens of people, at each step through the system, could have helped shorten her 16 day nightmare?

[glitch]

4. Forget Huxley, forget Orwell. The bushcult is pure Kafka. nt

[Dudley_DUright]

10. We are on exactly the same wavelength, glitch

I said the same thing a few days ago. :crazy:

[glitch]

12. Ha! Well, great minds... nt

:hi:

[acmavm]

5. Love the part about how it was the Mayor's and the Governor's fault.

Of course, this was according to the only guy who comes close to equaling bush** in the incompetency department, Michael Brown.

They all should be in jail somewhere for fraud. I'm sure each and every one of the screwups claimed their paychecks for that period of time. They sure as hell did not earn them. The truth be told they are all morally responsible for the unnecessary loss of life that occurred any and everywhere that hurricane struck. They need to be made to pay some serious consequences because what they were doing was playing politics and power games.

[koopie57]

7. I wonder if FEMA

didn't do anything, would the rescue efforts been more successful?

[Elidor]

8. As an astute DUer pointed out on another thread

The tasker number is the way contractors get paid for Homeland Security work. If you aren't officially in on the action, you don't get through the checkpoints.

All of these stories show clearly that the rot at FEMA is much deeper than the two turkeys who ran the place.

This is all such a fucking disgrace. Tar and feathers is too good for these bums.

[kath]

9. Agree that tar and feathers is too good for them - how about drawing

and quartering, then putting their heads up on pikes?

[ljm2002]

11. It just keeps getting worse

The reports keep coming about criminality from FEMA, the National Guard, and other government agencies during this disaster.

We absolutely, positively need to find out WHO the individuals were giving these orders. We need to take names and make arrests. They need to be held criminally liable for their actions. The ones who kept doctors from performing life saving actions, the ones who kept supplies from entering NO, the ones who kept citizens from getting out.

It's no use reading these articles and being outraged. There are two main threads here, one, the ineptness and tardiness of the government's response, which is already criminal negligence; and two, the active prevention of life saving activities, which is outright and actively criminal.

Because of the prevalence of these criminal actions preventing people from providing relief in the form of supplies, rescue, and medical attention, it cannot -- CANNOT -- have been just individual decisions. There WAS a policy. Charge enough of these assholes, and we just might find out from whence came the orders to leave the victims in New Orleans to die like animals while the whole world watched.

So how do we do this? I would really like to know so I can help. I'm through reading this stuff and being outraged. I want action. I want these people held accountable. I don't want them fired, I want them jailed. And I want the higher ups who put these policies in place jailed as well.

There is a point at which we cannot simply wring our hands. If we sit around spouting how outraged we are and do nothing, we are complicit. We as citizens need to channel our outrage and do something with it.

[1democracy]

13. I totally agree with you

criminal negligence or worse, if the plan was to let NO suffer without federal help. MURDER in the FIRST DEGREE is what I think. Every FEMA official that did not let in help NO MATTER WHAT should be charged in the largest class action lawsuit ever by the Atty. Gen of LA. Treason for not upholding the oath of office and the duties of the office, protecting the citizens. Those who appointed incompetents are as guilty as FEMA officials. Incompetence was planned. I demand justice for the innocent children and elderly. I want justice!!!