FEMA most assuredly WAS NOT READY for this!!!

[Perky]

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Fights and trash fires broke out at the hot and stinking Superdome and anger and unrest mounted across New Orleans on Tuesday, as National Guardsmen in armored vehicles poured in to help restore order across the increasingly lawless and desperate city.

The Superdome, where some 25,000 people were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, descended into chaos.

Huge crowds, hoping to finally escape the stifling confines of the stadium, jammed the main concourse outside the dome, spilling out over the ramp to the Hyatt hotel next door - a seething sea of tense, unhappy, people packed shoulder-to-shoulder up to the barricades where heavily armed National Guardsmen stood.

City officials realize the Astrodome may not be big enough to handle the influx of refugees.

But the ambulance service in charge of taking the sick and injured from the Superdome suspended flights after a shot was reported fired at a military helicopter.

Fury rose among many of those evacuated. Outside the Convention Center, the sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of storm refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

Just above the convention center on Interstate 10, commercial buses were lined up, going nowhere. The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.

"They've been teasing us with buses for four days," Edwards said.

[natrat]

1. fema=just another *ush scam

[lebkuchen]

8. Bush put Cheney in charge of the Office of National Preparedness

which is umbrella'd by FEMA. Where is Cheney, anyway?

[OneBlueSky]

2. apparently the only ability FEMA has is to conduct press conferences . . .

because they sure as hell aren't out there saving lives . . .

[CornField]

3. WTF?!?!? They had to break a door to get to food?

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.


WTF?!?!?!

Why in the hell wasn't this fucking door already opened by someone in charge and those items passed around?

[damntexdem]

17. Because the Bushistas hadn't yet figured out ...

how much they could charge for the food and liquids, payable to the RNC. :-)

[Beam Me Up]

4. A link to share would be nice. TIA

[Perky]

11. link

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HURRICANE_KATRINA?SITE=CATOR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-09-01-11-50-30

[dogday]

5. Fema is now under the Homeland Security umbrella

so it is really Homeland Security which is responsible for this freaking ass mess. They are all responsible. I cannot believe the lack of help for these people, the response time of a snail. It is almost like they are waiting for these people to die....

[lebkuchen]

6. This is pitiful

How many of these homeless are black? Does skin color explain why Bush did not reenforce the levees?

[DURHAM D]

7. FEMA was not ready because we don't have Presidential

elections for 3 more years. They became an extension of the Republican Party with the Bush brothers in office.

[Serial Mom]

9. They had to wait for KKKarl to write the script ...

Nobody from this mis-administration came and said anything about plans (which they never HAVE) until 3 days later after they all had time to decide what the talking points were going to be!

[MissB]

10. FEMA is apparently planning on reconstruction

Wugh. They're apparently giving out money for reconstruction projects.

[BR_Parkway]

12. HS wasn't ready for this - one more total Shrub failure

Well, since those levees would have been such a potential target
for 'terraist' - why the f*/@# didn't Homeland Security already have a plan in place????

With the hurricane, they had days to prepare for this, imagine if
'Al Quaida' (their #3 man, of course) would have set off a bomb against the levee and caused the flooding with no warning to the city of NO to evacuate?

HS and the * misadministration are proving that they've been focused on the wrong damn thing for the past 4 years.

Are we any safer today than we were 4 years ago? HELL NO!

Bush = Failed leadership

[Beam Me Up]

13. About FEMA:

This was posted yesterday or the day before:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4520347#4520521

Divernan (1000+ posts) Tue Aug-30-05 09:20 PM
Response to Reply #4
8. YES ! Joe Albaugh, 1 of Bush's campaign managers & nutcase.

This man has a truly violent temper and short trigger to go with it. At one of his first meetings with career FEMA high level staff, one woman who was called on to make a report started out by introducing herself to Albaugh with her name and title. He went ballistic, screaming and raging - DID SHE THINK HE DIDN'T KNOW WHO SHE WAS?!?!?!? HOW DARE SHE PRESUME SUCH A THING??? . . .yada, yada, yada along the same line for minutes to the dead silence of everyone else in the room who had never seen such a display of temper. In other words, someone following standard business etiquette was screamed at and berated in front of her peers.

This was typical behavior for Albaugh, and one result was that many, many of the top level FEMA people left for other jobs or took early retirement because Albaugh wouldn't allow them to do the jobs they were trained to do. This was a tremendous loss of institutional knowledge for the relatively small federal agency. Albaugh hated being at FEMA and left after about a year. Although he had zip experience with disaster relief or any kind of government/public service before his explosive period with FEMA, when he left there he started a very high priced consulting firm on counter-terrorism.
Bush initially put Albaugh in place to gut FEMA - I mean why should all that federal money go to people in trouble and need through some natural disaster. Bush's attitude was that if you weren't wealthy enough to private pay someone to help you handle a disaster, you deserved whatever befell you. Anyway, when 9/11 occurred, he couldn't outwardly gut FEMA, but he pretty much emasculated it by putting it under DHS.

[nyhuskyfan]

14. Project Impact...

I don't know if it would have helped in New Orleans, but Bush got rid of it in March of 2001, largely because it was something Clinton did and it had to go to make room for tax cuts.

Project Impact was a FEMA project that dealt specifically with diaster preparedness (before and after). It dealt with teaching people how to prepare for earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes, and how to get emergency supplies available to people in the aftermath of disasters as quickly as possible.

The reason for scrapping it and its expansive $25 million budget? They claimed it wasn't an effective program.

I can't help but think that maybe a few dozen lives in New Orleans and Mississippi could have been spared.

[smbolisnch]

15. FEMA "stepping down"

Breaking on CNN

[Jacobin]

16. NOT TRUE. They CHOSE NOT TO RESPOND

Because there is NO leadership in the executive branch