The federal response to Katrina was not slow
 

Jack Kelly: No shame


Sunday, September 11, 2005

It is settled wisdom among journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow.


Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio ([email protected], 412-263-1476).

"Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever during a dire national emergency," wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in a somewhat more strident expression of the conventional wisdom.

But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth.

Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:

"The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne."

For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.

Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.

So they libel as a "national disgrace" the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.

I write this column a week and a day after the main levee protecting New Orleans breached. In the course of that week:

More than 32,000 people have been rescued, many plucked from rooftops by Coast Guard helicopters.

The Army Corps of Engineers has all but repaired the breaches and begun pumping water out of New Orleans.

Shelter, food and medical care have been provided to more than 180,000 refugees.

Journalists complain that it took a whole week to do this. A former Air Force logistics officer had some words of advice for us in the Fourth Estate on his blog, Moltenthought:

"We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on 'Star Trek' in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grown-ups actually engaged in the recovery effort were studying engineering.

"The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network.

"You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets (in the affected areas) since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region.

I just want to know why the busses were never used and put into action? Who can we blame for that?

http://www.algintech.com/DomeBuses.jpg

" "The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network.

"You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets (in the affected areas) since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region.
"

I think this answeres the question.

I think that a lot of people do not realize that news and information now travels much faster than it used to. When Andrew hit, Most people in the country did not know the extent of damage, or when help arrived, because there were no reporters. Now days, all it takes is a guy with a camer, and an internet connection. And the entire world knows.

George Bush should have known those buses were there.

In all reality, you figure each bus can carry maybe 50 people. We're talking 5,000 people per trip. Each trip would probably take 6-8 hours (organizing, loading, going to evac location, coming back to meeting point, repeat). In a 24 hr. span they may have been able to get out 5-10,000 people.

Who decides on those 5-10,000 people and how do the remaining people react? Keep in mind, we're talking about a lot more than the 25,000 people originally at the dome. As surrounding people notice the buses, they join the crowd.

did you want the buses converted into campers or something?

blame the mayor or governor

Well clearly Mayor Nagin had control of the busses.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2...8/114045.shtml

<snip>

However, Nagin's most newsworthy comments - where he explained why he didn't use hundreds of city school buses to evacuate his city's flood victims - went almost unnoticed. Turns out, Nagin turned his nose up at the yellow buses, demanding more comfortable Greyhound coaches instead.

"I need 500 buses, man," he told WWL. "One of the briefings we had they were talking about getting, you know, public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out of here."

Nagin described his response: "I'm like - you've got to be kidding me. This is a natural disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."

While Nagin was waiting for his Greyhound fleet, Katrina's floodwaters swamped his school buses, rendering them unusable.

http://www.adultsponsors.com/images/excuses_excuses.jpg

How does it feel to be a sheep. Baaaaaaaaa

Nagin didn't have control of the school busses, they are school board property. The busses he had control of, the city public transportation busses, he used to execute the city's part of the plan which was to get people that didn't evacuate to temporary shelters hwere they would ride out the storm and be relieved by the state and feds in a couple of days. These busses ran all day sunday for free.

One other point is that Nagin did not have the authority to transport people from NOLA to outside of his jurisdiction.

If the feds did such a great job, then why did the FEMA head get removed from his job and then quit? Must be because he did such a great job, that he thought the job was finished. Just like Bush and Iraq.

He got removed from his job to appease politics.

No, it's only Bush's fault. He didn't get down there in a rain coat fast enough to save people. Damn that guy!

Don't be one of the sheep! Learn what really happened:
fucking-around-and-business-discussion/515548-michael-moore-anti-bush-katrina-documentary.html

It's all part of the Bush plan...right?

I hope you are being sarcastic

Hopefully this will happen to Bush as well. :winkwink:

Yes. Bush planned to wipe out as many blacks as possible by hoping for a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, while at the same time not upgrading the storm walls around NO.

Kerry, on the other hand, was going to rush every available Engineer to New Orleans, the moment he took office, to strengthen the flood protection. It was going to be done in record time just in case a hurricane of this magnitutde hit.

Try to get with the program, please.

If he didnt have control of the busses to use in the evacuation why does it say in the NO/LA evacuation plan newly drafted in 01 those busses are to be used at the Mayors request.

Hopefully your name sake stumps hard for the next Democratic nominee. I'm a real fan of his work in the last election.

In regards to what? You think those buses could have gotten more people out of town and everyone would be all hunky-dory with the fact that not everyone would get to go?

Cheney taught him a new word today

"I can assure people ... that this recovery is going to be comprehensive. The rescue efforts were comprehensive, and the recovery will be comprehensive."

God he is one brilliant mofo :1orglaugh

At least the herd of sheep is getting smaller

According to a new Newsweek poll, only 38 percent of Americans approve of the way Bush is doing his job overall, a new record-low for this president. (Fifty-five percent of Americans disapprove of his overall job performance).

It gets worse (for Bush). Only 28 percent of Americans say they're "satisfied with the way things are going" in the country, down from 36 percent in August and 46 percent in December, after his '04 reelection. That puts Bush's support two points below where it was immediately after Abu Ghraib. Two-thirds of Americans now say they aren't satisfied with the direction of the country.

But if a Dem wins, won't I be out of business? :) Oh, I see... sarcasm. I'm not worried, I have plenty of fans: nearly 3,000,000 F9/11 DVDs sold... perhaps I should run for office. :pimp


Katrina Documentary?
fucking-around-and-business-discussion/515548-michael-moore-anti-bush-katrina-documentary.html

.

Michael Moore would be a great candidate! I can only hope he gets the nod.

One thing I find very interesting from the last election is the self-evident truth that Karl Rove > all of Liberal Hollywood :)

The mayor also said that there was no way he could have found enough drivers to man the school buses.. He said he had a hard enough time trying to find enough drivers to get the people to the dome...

I love people repeating this term over and over again.

I'm just going to go ahead and assume that you didn't start this trend, and are by definition simply following in it.

Here's another fun word: Ironic.

Once again if he would have followed the NO/LA evacuation plan he should have ordered the evacuation of NO 42-72 hours before the hurricane hitting. Instead he waited until 24 hours. That extra day or two could have made all the difference.

Blame the idiot Mayor for that . . . or if you are a liberal blame bush :)

Vacationing while a class 4 hurricane is on the way to one of the nations largest cities. $1000

Flying to California and campaigning for your failed war, while that same city is flooding. $3255

Showing up 5 days later....priceless

Here's one for ya. How many times has a republican used the term "blame game" in the last week. It's tough to be a farmyard animal isn't it? :Oh crap

Some of you people are nuts.

The mayor refused to evacuate and the state didn't know what to do until Bush called them and told them to evacuate on three days before the flooding.

There are over 2000 buses in NO and their plan calls for evacuation three days before the storm. This could have been done of Friday and Saturday and the bus drivers could have been off Sunday to get their own asses out so the mayors excuse is bullshit.

Here's a little fact: The Veterans hospital evacuated five hospitals and the one in NO had 1200 patients and 700 were bed ridden and none died.

FEMA and the red cross had supplies just outside NO and wanted to drop food and water from helos but the "State" told them not to.

There are federal laws against the President deploying federal troops in to a state without the states permission ans they didn't give permission until Saturday after the flood.

Finally, there is a reason FEMA doesn't rush in to a disaster and it's because the area could be a hot zone. Anotherwords they could become the victims from chemicals, radiation, floods etc. so by design they don't rush in and in all the plans the local and state shouldn't expect them for 5-7 days.

In fact, the Mayor was on the radio on Saturday before the flooding and said this himself but the press isn't playing it yet. He said anyone going to a shelter needs to have 5-7 days of food and water and don't expect help for 5-7 days.

"By late last week, Administration aides were describing a three-part comeback plan. The first: Spend freely, and worry about the tab and the consequences later. "Nothing can salve the wounds like money," said an official who helped develop the strategy. "You'll see a much more aggressively engaged President, traveling to the Gulf Coast a lot and sending a lot of people down there."

The second tactic could be summed up as, Don't look back. The White House has sent delegates to meetings in Washington of outside Republican groups who have plans to blame the Democrats and state and local officials. In the meantime, it has no plans to push for a full-scale inquiry like the 9/11 commission, which Bush bitterly opposed until the pressure from Congress and surviving families made resistance futile. Congressional Democrats have said they are unwilling to settle for anything less than an outside panel, but White House officials said they do not intend to give in, and will portray Democrats as politicking if they do not accept a bipartisan panel proposed by Republican congressional leaders. Ken Mehlman, the party's chairman and Bush's campaign manager last year, told TIME that viewers at home will think it's "kind of ghoulish, the extent to which you've got political leaders saying not 'Let's help the people in need' but making snide comments about vacations."

The third move: Develop a new set of goals to announce after Katrina fades. Advisers are proceeding with plans to gin up base-conservative voters for next year's congressional midterm elections with a platform that probably will be focused around tax reform. Because Bush will need a dynamic salesman to make sure that initiative goes better than his Social Security proposal, advisers tell TIME there is once again talk of replacing Treasury Secretary John Snow. There are no plans to delay tax cuts to pay for the New Orleans reconstruction or the Iraq war, and Bush is likely to follow through on his vow to veto anticipated congressional approval of increased federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...3581-1,00.html

it was fema who turned back walmart trucks containing water and supplies, not the state. it was fema who refused aid from several places. it was, in fact, michael brown and our head of homeland security who said we didn't NEED those supplies, that everything was under control, and that there was no need of drinking water.

i got that off the news where i heard them with my own ears, and you can still read 'em all on cnn and reuters and yahoo news.

Whoa, "sheep." You must be one of the cool kids.

however you look at it , it was slow, compare it to whatever you want but there was truckloads of food and transportation for millions of people within 6 hours drive, theres no way in any reasonable scenario that they couldn't have been used.. i blame fema, the mayor , and any person involved in any sort of planning "before" this happened.

The redCross at redcross.org said the state told FEMA "NOT" to let them in
with food and water.

The state department of homeland security also told the coast guard "NOT" to air drop
food and water to the superdome and convention center.

Here's the bottom line:

FEMA only has 2500 employees and they had them spread over FL, LA, MS and AL
and they are not set up as first responders and this was a democrat idea sponsored by Joe Liberman and pass by congress with a 99% vote.

If you want to change this set up and make them first responders you have to hire thousands of fed employees and you have to ammend federal laws allowing the President to use federal troops to go into states without their permission. You will also have to give them permission to issue evacuation orders against state and city wishes so keep this in mind when you think about it. You also have to have federal marshal law declared by the President and a slew of new laws to do most of this and I doubt 50% want Bush to declare this and the other 50% don't want Hillary Clinton to declare this so think about it really hard before you change all these laws.

"however you look at it , it was slow, compare it to whatever you want"

If you compare it to the last 15 or so hurricanes it was a fast response so what's your point?

Really? I had no idea. Which is it ranked as far as size?

Not even in the top 20

http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/co/?id=100185

Oh so now it wasn't a bad hurricane? Just a little breeze. Then again the president says that evolution is still in question.

Hey republicans here's a new talking point. What happened in Mississippi, and Alabama? Republicans in charge at the local level and the same problems.

Even your great leader says they fucked up, but he was gonna lead an inquiry into what went wrong. Spin that you ignorant fucks.

He's just a closet Bush supporter who talks a lot of shit about nothing. You are correct on the bus issue but he will never see it or admit to that at least.

Don't worry. The article in the first post is the usual Bush propaganda coming in action. You can expect more from that. Rove is working hard nowadays....

Decided to give up on calling people Sheep? :winkwink:

Now that "your' president says he fucked up, i bet i just hear a lot of crickets chirping now.

So what was the title of this thread?

God, I really do love conservative pornographers. They are a very smart bunch.

Can you even read at a 3rd grade level? You said NOLA was one of the nation's largest cities. I asked where they ranked in size. They are not even in the top 20.

Wait STOP! You can't use the LAW and FACTS in this debate! Only the anti-bush views can be put forward.... :1orglaugh

How many cities are in the US? I'd say top 20 would be considered one of the larger ones. It had an NBA and a NFL team, so I guess it would be small then?

Gotta think like a republican, right is left and left is right, and then blame it on those pot smoking liberals.

I'm a Canadian living in Costa Rica, the US President isn't my anything.

I voted Liberal in Canada. In fact, I've never voted conservative, ever. I don't believe in god and I don't hate homosexuals. I believe in stem cell research but I hate the idea of liberal social program hand outs for the stupid and lazy. Am I still a conservative, or perhaps there's another term you'd like to blindly throw my way?

If I was voting in the US Election, I'd have voted Bush over Kerry or Dean, but Clark, Edwards or Lieberman over Bush. What does that do for the mold you conviently think I must fit in to?

Bush is not a perfect President. He's not the greatest President ever and he's certainly made a ton of mistakes. Here's the kicker though, everything that happens that you don't like isn't necessarily Bush's fault. You're as blind and hateful as Rush Limbaugh or anybody else on the extreme right. See the Irony in you calling other people followers or barnyard animals? No, of course you don't.

You guys really crack me up. Anything from the Republican Party is propaganda but Democrats publish information. And you have the nerve to call ANYBODY Sheep? That's some funny shit right there.

There is so many ways to point fingers but it goes in all directions, local-federal, it can't be pinned on one organization or person. Too many breakdowns here to be able to do that.

HeHe...

Still a chance to do something with you...

PS: I intend to visit family in Costa Rica in the Fall... Thery have a hotel on the coast... Let me sere where it is ( called Sur something ... ). Drinks would be on me :thumbsup

Agreed, not slow at all. I am sick of hearing how people think it could have been faster... blah blah blah