Missing From the Katrina Dialogue

[xkenx]

is that the responsibility in the early hours of the disaster was squarely on the shoulders of the Feds for the simple reason that it had to be known in advance that the local responders in 3 states would be overwhelmed. How do locals operate when they themselves are stranded, underwater, no power, no communications, families directly affected?
The ONLY realistic help would have been from a preplanned military-run operation, using predeployed resources as soon as it was known that a cat 4 or 5 hurricanes was bearing down on the area. Only the Federal Government can do that. But then, what can you expect from an uncaring, unfeeling, non-compassionate, incompetent government of Bush cronyism?

[Mass]

1. Thanks, that's a great point.

[lebkuchen]

2. Forget CAT 4 or 5 -- as Brown goes, so should Bush

Cronyism to the max, resulting in 94,000 on a Red Cross "missing persons" list.

Keep Bush in the WH at the U.S.'s own peril.

[hwmnbn]

3. where did you get this figure? link?

I posted on an earlier thread regarding this.

[lebkuchen]

7. ta da

Red Cross website for Katrina missing logs 94,000 names

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/usweatheraidicrcun;_ylt=Ajay5W_ToYNM87Rz6ZWooaus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

[Corgigal]

4. True dat

I haven't been given an answer to this question so I will ask DU'ers.

Has any state ever handled a hurricane category 4 or 5 in the past 100 years by themselves? I doubt it. Why they think NOW, that their boy has the power that it's each state to themselves is beyond me.

[K-W]

5. That is the big fact that is being obscured.

A disaster of this magnitude must by needs be coordinated on the federal level.

[rurallib]

6. Also almost missing is that 2 Republican led states

were fucked over by Bush also. Alabama and Mississippi by name. They got the same treatment as Louisiana - none. While New Orleans ultimately was more of a disaster, Ala & Miss got little help either.

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. That's why the POTUS and the FEDS get the bunkers

and all the expensive communication gear, which never seems to work or get used much.

[politicat]

9. Not quite the same type, but I lived through Northridge of 1994.

FEMA was still independent, Clinton was in office, and I was in school about 30 miles from Northridge... and due back from Winter break on the 17th. Not knowing what else to do on the morning of the 17th, unable to get through to the school and knowing that in the worst case scenario, we had a gas card and a credit card for a motel. So my friends and I got in the car and drove from Mesa, AZ to Thousand Oaks, getting turned around at least once and ending up on the demolished 101 freeway during aftershocks.

The CA National Guard directed traffic, were passing out water in Northridge and doing all of the things that they do after disasters. There were not massive weapons presences visible, even in the most hard hit areas.

Unlike a hurricane, where you have warning and know where it is going to hit, an earthquake is essentially out of the blue. If FEMA could handle a 7 earthquake on a previously unknown fault that took out 9 hospitals, hundreds of miles of road with no warning.... It shows how badly FEMA has been gutted in the 11 years since. And the world got back to normal pretty fast then.

The staties and local police did what they could, but they had their own houses and families to deal with... and FEMA knew that then. They seem to have forgotten it since. Bush Cronyism is part of the problem, but the bigger issue I think is that the jobs were dropped under a catchall department with an unclear mandate, conflicting priorities that was run by incompetents who were exemplars of the Dilbert Principle and greedy to boot. I'm not excusing Bush, but there's enough bullshit to spread thick and deep.

[Hello_Kitty]

10. The Port of New Orleans is hugely important to the U.S.

It wasn't just the city. It's the entrance to the Miss. River, which is the shipping lane to several states. We get a quarter of our oil from this region and it the sole port of many of our imports and exports.