Tierney: Going (Down) by the Book (FEMA's Miserable Failure)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/17/opinion/17tierney.html?hp

When President Bush spoke from Jackson Square on Thursday night, across the Mississippi River a few men sitting next to a trailer watched him on a television powered by a generator. They listened respectfully, but they were not exactly dazzled.

"Intentions and results are two different things," said one of them, Wayne Savoy, who knows something about results from his work at this makeshift command post of the Acadian Ambulance company. During the flood, it was a lonely island of competence.

The city's communications system was wiped out, but Acadian dispatchers kept working, thanks to a backup power system and a portable antenna rushed here the day after the hurricane. As stranded patients wondered what had happened to the city's medics and ambulances, Acadian medics filled in at the Superdome and evacuated thousands from six hospitals.

While Louisiana officials debated how to accept outside help, Acadian was directing rescues by helicopters from the military and other states. When the Federal Emergency Management Agency's paperwork slowed the evacuation of patients from the airport, Acadian's frustrated medics waited with empty helicopters.

The company sent in outside doctors and nurses to the airport, where patients were dying and medical care was in short supply. FEMA rejected the help because the doctors and nurses weren't certified members of a National Disaster Medical Team.

[opihimoimoi]

1. SNAFU continues...figures

[DELUSIONAL]

2. If Washington State does have a major disaster -- FEMA keep the hell out

So people DIE -- due to the idiots in charge who have to call bosses who probably have to call their bosses . . . .

The more I learn about how FEMA now operates -- I really feel sorry for the competent workers who are getting slimed from the behavior of piss poor political appointees.

[ljm2002]

3. Criminals

It was criminal to prevent much needed aid from getting to people in distress.

No I don't mean just morally reprehensible, which it certainly was as well. I mean, it had to be criminal. Surely there are laws on the books about rendering aid and the responsibility to do so.

Now would be a good time to find those laws, take names, and hold those individuals responsible for their criminal actions.

By doing so, we can perhaps get to the bigger criminals, those who OBVIOUSLY made it a policy to withhold aid from the citizens of New Orleans.