Revisiting Hurricane Andrew: Bush Sr. 1992

[Emit]

On another board, one of the Bush supporters made this comment:

CallMeIshmael wrote:We have equally as many people as New Orleans yet before Andrew, we did it here without federal assistance. We did it by using our own resources, city transit buses and school buses. No one was left behind who wanted to go. We have many poor people here too. People who don't own cars yet we managed to get them to safety. New Orleans has no excuse. Even Mississippi, which lost two cities not just one to Katrina there wasn't the confusion and stupidity we saw in New Orleans. Don't try to blame this on the president, FEMA, or DHS.

Not even the people in the Superdome and at the convention center who were not adequately provided for can blame the "feds." The food, water and supplies were there, right outside the facilities. All they had to do was carry them inside. They even had Red Cross and Salvation Army volunteers there to do that. The governor decided against it. Call it stupidity, call it racism, call it anything you want. In the Army we called it a SNAFU (Situation Normal, All F*cked Up). When things really got bad we called it a FUBAR (F*cked Up Beyond All Recognition). That seems to be standard operating procedure in New Orleans.

Last year we had four serious hurricanes here in Florida. All four were among our country's top ten in all our history. Michael Brown, late of the FEMA recovery effort in the Gulf States was FEMA head honcho then as today. Together, all four of those hurricanes didn't precipitate the total chaotic response we saw last week in Louisiana. Of course, we have Jeb Bush as our governor. He was on the case. Hopefully, the whole country will have Jeb on the case starting January 20, 2009.

You know when the Krazie Lefties are cornered when they admit they failed but excuse themselves by saying everybody does it. Everybody else failed too. That's the Party Line now. We're not so bad. Bush failed us!

Let's have that investigation now please!

Which prompted me to do some googling.

I thought it interesting that much of the news surrounding the details of Hurricane Andrew is so similar to what occurred recently with Katrina.

Anyone else see a pattern here?

I have always believed that Hurricane Andrew was one of the major reasons that President George Bush failed to be reelected. Nightly television news showed American citizens living among the rubble for days. The television anchors implied that the Federal Government did very little to ease their suffering. Partisan politics may have been involved, since the Democratic Governor of Florida apparently hesitated before asking for federal aid. Three days passed between Andrew's assault and the arrival of federal help. Kate Hale, the Dade County emergency director, went on live national television on 27 August with tears in her eyes and castigated the federal government. Some of her comments were:

Enough is enough. Quit playing like a bunch of kids. Where in the Hell is the cavalry? For God's sakes, where are they? We are going to have more casualties, because we are going to have more people dehydrated. People without water. People without food. Babies without formula. If we do not get more food into the south end of Dade County in a very short period of time, we are going to have more casualties!

We have a catastrophic disaster. We are essentially the walking wounded. We have appealed through the State to the Federal Government. We've had a lot of people down here for press conferences, but Dade County is on its own. Dade County is being caught in the middle of something and we are being victimized. Quit playing like a bunch of kids and get us aid! Sort out your political games afterward!

We are all about ready to drop, and the reinforcements are not getting in fast enough. We need better National Guard down here...President Bush was down here. I'd like him to follow up on the commitments he made.

At the time of the speech, three days after the storm, 250,000 Florida residents were struggling to survive without foot, water and shelter. The nationwide uproar reached Washington DC and President Bush immediately ordered 30,000 troops to the disaster area. Lieutenant General Samuel Ebbeson (a former deputy of General Schwarzkopf during the Persian Gulf War) was placed in charge of the military relief effort.

On the same day, Miami Herald staff writers Martin Merzer and Tom Fiedler wrote:

The question echoed through the debris Thursday: If we can do it for Bangladesh, for the Philippines, for the Kurds of northern Iraq, why in God's name can't we deliver basic necessities of life to the ravaged population of our own Gold Coast?

Much more cont'd here about Bush Sr's reaction/response and a bit about how Clinton responded:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:XEysm32xCe0J:www.psywarrior.com/PSYOPHurricaneAndrew.html+Hurrican+Andrew+deaths&hl=en

The slow response to Katrina and poor federal leadership is a replay of 1992's mishandling of Hurricane Andrew, said former FEMA chief of staff Jane Bullock, a 22-year veteran of the agency.

~snip~

The slowness is all too familiar to Kate Hale. As Miami's disaster chief during Hurricane Andrew, Hale asked: "Where the hell's the cavalry?"

"I'm looking at people who are begging for ice and water and (a) presence," Hale said Wednesday. "I'm seeing the same sort of thing that horrified us after Hurricane Andrew. ... I realize they've got a huge job. Nobody understands better than I do what they're trying to respond to, but ..."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0901-01.htm

Deadly Silences by k.t. Frankovich
originally published in Nexus Magazine http://www.kt.cjb.net/

The largest natural disaster ever recorded in the history of the United States was Hurricane Andrew, which struck South Dade, Florida, as midnight turned the clock into August 24, 1992. Contrary to what the American news media broadcast across the United States and throughout Europe, the first outer wall of winds unexpectedly slammed into South Dade packing 214+ mph winds, which quickly escalated to 350+ mph. Most of the 414,151 residents living in the danger zone were asleep when the first outer wall of winds struck. Thousands of them lost their lives for no one in South Dade had been evacuated or even advised to evacuate. Instead, residents had been repeatedly informed by local news media that South Dade should expect to experience "50 mph winds."

By 11:00 A.M. the following morning, 8,230 mobile homes had vanished off the face of the earth, along with 9,140 apartments. The Hiroshima horror was beyond catastrophic. Entire families perished in ways too horrifying to describe. The stench of death had already begun to saturate miles-and-miles of the massive devastation, reeking the hot humid air with foul rotting flesh.
How do I know? Because I was in the midst of it all.

~snip~

Never will I forget the frantic, last-minute 'Emergency Alert!' broadcast that aired on television just before all hell broke loose.

~snip~

... For ten long days, we were roped-off from the outside world by United States military forces, leaving us stranded with no food, no water, no medical supplies or shelter. Suffering from severe shell-shock, we waited and waited for rescue teams to arrive but that just never happened. None of the injured in the roped-off areas were ever rescued from the devastation. It was the worst gut-wrenching betrayal I have ever experienced. I saw grown men lying on the ground in the fetal position, moaning and groaning pathetically, as they tried to hug and rock themselves.

My son was amongst them.

Don't get me wrong, United States military forces were indeed present in the roped-off areas within hours of Andrew ending. But they were not there to help survivors. The National Guard, along with the Coast Guard, the Army, F.E.M.A., Metro-Dade Police, State Police and local police, removed dead bodies and body-parts as quickly as possible, during those first ten days of the aftermath. Horrified survivors watched as both uniformed and civilian clothed men searched the rubble and filled body bags. After which, the body bags were stacked in military vehicles or huge refrigerator trucks normally used to transport food, only to drive off and leave the stranded injured to fend for themselves. Not until I managed to escape the aftermath, did I discover the thermo-king sections of these same refrigerator trucks jammed packed with wall-to-wall body bags, subsequently ended up being stored at Card Sound Navy Base, located in an isolated area just above the Florida Keys. The inside temperatures kept cool by portable generators until the bodies were either incinerated or just plain dumped into huge open grave pits.

http://www.bariumblues.com/deadly_silences.htm