Katrina response: actually better than past performances?

I didn't write any of the below, but I'm interested in hearing responses to this. It's potentially slanted or biased, I don't know, but if the facts in this article are accurate, it definitely sheds some light on things. This doesn't seem to have yet appeared on any of the big (TV and such) media outlets yet. But maybe that's because at this point it would make the media itself look terrible.

This is closer to my "realist" point of view. Gargantuan rescue operations are hard. How about that. The only issue I am very disappointed about is WHY the hell nobody realized, or seemed to realize, that the strength of the storm was greater than the city's levees could handle. (I hope this wasn't a case of "Don't tell the public because there will be mass panic and nobody will be able to get out of the city." But it seems to me that's moreso the responsibility of the locals to be knowledgeable of their own situation and then notify others, not just the feds who have to worry about an entire country and international affairs.

====================

The federal response to Katrina was not as portrayed

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

"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.

"No amount of yelling, crying and mustering of moral indignation will change any of the facts above."

"You cannot just snap your fingers and make the military appear somewhere," van Steenwyk said.

Guardsmen need to receive mobilization orders; report to their armories; draw equipment; receive orders and convoy to the disaster area. Guardsmen driving down from Pennsylvania or Navy ships sailing from Norfolk can't be on the scene immediately.

Relief efforts must be planned. Other than prepositioning supplies near the area likely to be afflicted (which was done quite efficiently), this cannot be done until the hurricane has struck and a damage assessment can be made. There must be a route reconnaissance to determine if roads are open, and bridges along the way can bear the weight of heavily laden trucks.

And federal troops and Guardsmen from other states cannot be sent to a disaster area until their presence has been requested by the governors of the afflicted states.

Exhibit A on the bill of indictment of federal sluggishness is that it took four days before most people were evacuated from the Louisiana Superdome.

The levee broke Tuesday morning. Buses had to be rounded up and driven from Houston to New Orleans across debris-strewn roads. The first ones arrived Wednesday evening. That seems pretty fast to me.

A better question -- which few journalists ask -- is why weren't the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck?

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05254/568876.stm

Unfortunately, none of this "volume" of support was able to:

- Rescue people from rooftops. (Lack of helicopters that are ... in Iraq)
- Protect looting/pillaging (Lack of boats / amphibious craft)
- Reach people in need (Lack of any semblance of plan if levees broke)
- Authorize use of emergency stations around the city that would have provided first responders with communications gear, food, water, medical supplies
- Let trapped people escape the city. Instead, they had been ordered from high-up to turn around people at gunpoint - people who just wanted to walk out. Cited as a problem was lack of ability to screen people due to Homeland Security measures.
- Authorize the use of the infamous now-underwater school buses
- Provide a large number of National Guard that were local - who would have had the home-field advantage in knowing local towns and areas - they were in Iraq up to 45% of troops in Mississippi, Lousiana, and Alabama.
- Stop a gang from hijacking the first bus out of the Superdome.
- Prevent the spillage of 6 million gallons of oil into the US's largest marshland. Compare this with Exxon Valdez' 10 million
- State the situation accurately.

I think the real lesson is that it's not all about numbers, but planning, leadership, and execution.

The media didn't quite portray the situation correctly, for sure; it was worse than reported, according to first and second hand accounts of real people that I've read about and personally spoken to.

I'm not saying there wasn't screwups, nor is the article. The article is saying that the level of successes are ALSO better than past performance. Take whatever opinion you want from that...

I think you have a misassumption.

You're assuming deployment = a success.

Deployment of troops is merely a means to an ends.

Success = getting people rescued and helped.

No, wait.

Doing an okay job = getting people rescued and helped.

Success = removing all the beaurocracy on so many levels that caused this, so that this never happened in the first place.

And you really think it's worse than the media reported? The media goes as far as it can possibly go (and still be acceptable on TV), I don't know. I mean it's possible that the media left things out, but would they? What about their ratings, and what if the "other news" talks about it but they don't?

Actually, you may have a point there. There's also the planning and execution aspects. It's certainly believable that the deployment and response was first rate but that due to the exceptionally bad conditions, mistakes, or whatever other factors-- other aspects were failures.

Yes, according to accounts I've read in the NOLA thread from the police officer, and from coworkers in my company who have been down there.

At some point the news is ordered by the Federal Government to not report on things. It's not a bad thing in itself - like when CNN was told where to point the cameras before "shock and awe" in Baghdad, but not reveal it until it starts.

Did you see the Geraldo clip? That was pretty telling of what the situation is. He seriously nearly fell apart at the seams reporting from the Superdome.

No, I didn't see any Geraldo clips myself. Isn't he always on Fox though?

Well, yes, that's exactly the case as from what I can tell.

It's good - because it does show that our soldiers, guardsmen, officers of the law, and good samaritans have flocked to the situation and it shows the power of the American spirit of brotherhood.

It's sad, though, because such goodwill had the door slammed in its face by beaurocracy, indifference, and greed.

And it's all of us that are ultimately responsible - we're a democratic society and we ought to understand that our actions as a country as a whole is still connected to us.

Yeah. That's what makes this whole thing so scary. Fox News has really shown the tragedy in in the negative light that it is in - despite its label of "fair and balanced" is more like "shows both sides, but obviously is right-leaning and slightly jingoistic".

Here's my rundown of events, including the link to the Fox coverage:


Before the storm, things were screwed up:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/09/katrina.setbacks/index.html

Well, we know it's a screwed up situation when Fox News tells us it's bad:
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Hannity-Colmes-Smith-Rivera-freak-in-NO.mov

John Stewart illustrates Bush's 3-day response to the disaster:
http://slapnose.com/archives/2005/09/08/stewart_knows_best/

And Keith Oberman did a great job showing the timeline of events and
the lies that were backtracked:
http://slapnose.com/archives/2005/09/08/clip_show/

And we have the head of the National Guard saying that the Guard could
have responded a day sooner had we not had his troops tied up in Iraq:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/09/katrina.natguard.ap/index.html

Our head of disaster relief was totally underqualified and has since
been removed from duty:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/09/katrina.impact/index.html

So the same day the head of Homeland Security removes Brown, Bush
decides he needs to allow government contractors to pay
less-than-average wages to its workers:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/08/news/economy/katrina_wages.reut/

Apparently you missed all the news a day before the storm hit where the mayor said this was the storm they had all been fearing. And to get out now.

Using the school buses really wouldn't have changed much at all. Those school busses would have only carried about 14,000 people. Almost all of those who had stayed, would have stayed. If the busses had been part of the evacuation plan, many who drove out would have opted to take the free ride out. Add to the expense of storm preparations the expense of use of all the busses, plus hiring drivers, plus accommodations wherever they took those people. Now multiply that times how frequently they evacuate, which isn't infrequent. What you come up with is the fact that it saves a huge amount of money to have people leave using their own transportation, and if a flood actually occurs, charter busses in that rare occurrence from outside. If they wanted to force everyone out of every city in the path of a hurricane using public transportation along with a room by room search of the affected part of the country, conducted with so many troops and busses that it would be completed in a day, every time there was a major hurricane - so several times a year - the expense of that would be so high that we would not do that. And we don't.

So whining about two hundred school buses sitting under water and no forced evacuation is all spin, unless you want to pay the price of the alternative. Even if you wanted to limit the capability to do a sudden forced evacuation of NOLA, ask everyone to leave, send in troops to do a house to house forced evacuation, round up the 120,000 or so who don't leave and force them out, subdue the gun nuts and survivalists, and do it all in 24 hours or so... that all sounds like wishful thinking.

Long story short, the school bus rant is spin.

Reality – “After days of searching, the United States Coast Guard has rescued more than 4,000 people from rooftops and flooded neighborhoods, devastated by Hurricane Katrina, since rescue operations began Monday.”
Source: http://usmilitary.about.com/od/coastguard/a/uscghistory.htm
That doesn't count the numbers of people rescued using flat boats or by other agencies.

Reality – The lack of boats or amphibious craft had little to do with the images and instances of looting that the media splashed across the television screens. Well over 90% of the looting that was shown occurred on streets that were navigable by walking – albeit some streets that were “walkable” had chest deep water. The point is, your reference about looting relating to a lack of boats and/or amphibious craft was specious. In fact, the NOPD was directed by Mayor Nagin to ignore looting, at one point, in favor of conducting rescue operations.

Reality – There was not a “lack of a plan” or even a semblance of a plan. You simply do not understand and haven’t read the plan. Nagin has repeatedly stated that the city’s plan was predicated on the assumption that assistance would arrive within 48-72 hours. The assistance HE ASSUMED he would have did not arrive – that assistance was never promised him by either state or federal officials in any written document that anyone has published. That fact leads me to believe, and if I am wrong why hasn’t it been published as a means of deflecting blame, that no such document/agreement existed before, during or in the immediate aftermath of the storm.

Reality – What a crock. Do you have any clue how many shelters are supposed to remain open after a declaration of “mandatory evacuation”? One. That’s it. That is why it’s called a shelter of last resort. While the Dome can seat 80,000plus for a football game, there is little reason to believe that anyone expected 30,000 to desire to ride out the storm there. As for the Convention Center, that was never officially designated, either before or after the storm, as a shelter. It was not intended to be used as such in any plan. If you can show evidence that it was, post a source reference.

As for providing responders with your list of things… do you even know what happened? The antennas were knocked down and/or broken, generators destroyed or eventually run out of gas, and in some cases, federally provided commsat equipment couldn’t reach 10 miles due to atmospherics, radio traffic/crosstalk, and other issues. As for food, water and medical supplies… have YOU ever tried to evacuate medical patients? You DO realize, of course, the number of such patients that are not relatively easily reachable at hospitals and such in a city as large and as populated as New Orleans… you do, right? Of course you do. You know everything.


Reality – You are mixing stories here it seems. The people who crossed the Crescent City connection bridge on foot after leaving the Convention Center reached that point at the “height” of the looting incidents. The mayor of a New Orleans suburb, Gretna, stated that his actions and concern at that time, was to protect those who lived in the area that he was elected to represent… and that he was unaware of the extent of the flooding in New Orleans at the time. So, people just wanting to “walk out” were seen as potential looters (in fact within 1.5 hours, at least some of these same people were suspected of/probably involved in setting a mall on fire 1.5 miles away from the Crescent City Connection)… Some of them DID loot in the area on the West Bank – an area that has a huge history of flooding, but of course you wouldn’t know that, would you? And, consider that to “escape” from New Orleans on foot via the West Bank, they’d have to walk a minimum of 10 miles and cross back to the East Bank to avoid a 90 mile walk to a non-Katrina affected area/open (not full up) shelter at that time. But of course you are intimately familiar with the geography of the New Orleans-Baton Rouge/West Bank area and know that the road system is REALLY designed for people to traipse along 90 miles in sweltering heat... "Yeah, you right" as New Orleanians say.

Reality – The freakin’ school bus argument again? OMG. Who was available to drive these buses? If the government is going to authorize or direct the use of the buses, whether school or RTA owned, as part of an evacuation order, you KNOW that they are going to only use properly licensed drivers even though practically anyone can drive one now since most have automatic transmissions. But you had to bring it up anyway… of course you did. And of course, in doing so, you glibly ignore the fact that there were few licensed bus drivers who were left in the city at the time..they had evacuated themselves and their families first/already and weren’t coming back. Uh huh. You knew that, right? Oh, by the way… that infamous picture you refer to… what date was that taken? That’s right – after things had already gone down the tubes…. So there weren’t any drivers left… none, nada. Or were you just planning to change the bitch and whine quotient when an unlicensed/unqualified driver had an accident with a busload of evacuees and killed them (as a licensed driver did have happen!).

Reality – Total horse pucky. Not all troops in the NG are trained to do SAR, medical, transportation or other appropriate work needed in such emergencies. Numbers don’t mean a thing if the resources are inappropriate for the task/mission. This was ajob for engineers, transport companies, medical units and aviation units trained in SAR procedures.. Do you have any idea of exactly how many of those troops are in the La. Contingent of troops currently in Iraq? Come one now.. you threw out a percentage.. get specific not wild with your assertion. Home field advantage my ptoot. You do know that NG members can associate with units up to 50 miles from home without special permission and even out of state with such permission, right? So, someone assigned to a unit in Jackson Barracks (home of the La. National Guard and locate in Arabi, a section which flooded and crippled the communications system for the entire LANG contingent for approximately 24 ours), could actually live in Baton Rouge, some 90 miles away… you knew that, right? How well do YOU know the streets of a town 90 miles away from where YOU live?

Reality – Let me ask you this, why weren’t you leading the 250 NG and police facing an armed gang in front of some 30,000 people. Do you like hose odds now? Would you have been able to stop that gang without hurting the innocents standing behind the gang? Of course you would.. because YOU would have been able to control the spray of not only your own bullets and all of those of your troops, you’d have been able to control the spray of bullets from the gang also… right? Of course you would have.

I would love for the omniscient among you to tell me how the heck was the Federal government supposed to PREVENT the spill? Dumb statement. Really dumb. The reality is that they have performed exceptionally in the cleanup -
“As of September 13, 2005, U.S. Coast Guard Sector New Orleans continues to support Urban Search and Rescue in affected areas, as well as respond to numerous oil spills and marine salvage cases in cooperation with several federal, state and local agencies. Listed below are the locations of ongoing response and recovery operations within the Captain of the Port, New Orleans zone:
Pollution Cases:
 Murphy Oil, Meraux, LA, MM 87 LMR: Est. 19,500 bbls of crude oil discharged; 5,731 bbls recovered.
 Bass Enterprises, MM 35 LMR: Est. 90,000 bbls of crude oil discharged; 14,221 bbls recovered.
 Shell Pilot Town, MM 3 LMR: Est. 23,235 bbls of crude oil discharged; 17,100 bbls recovered.
 Chevron Empire, Buras, LA, MM 30 LMR: Est. 23,614 bbls of crude oil discharged; 62 bbls recovered.
 Dynegy Venice, Wagon Wheel near Venice, LA: Est. 601 bbls of crude oil discharged; 34 bbls recovered.
 Chevron Port Fourchon Pipeline, Houma, LA: Est. 1276 bbls of crude oil discharged; 625 bbls recovered.
 Shell Nairn, Port Sulfur, LA, MM 35 LMR: Est. 250 bbls of crude oil discharged; none recovered to date -
awaiting skimmer and berthing barge.”
Source: http://www.uscgstormwatch.com/external/?cid=1008&fuseaction=external.viewDocument&documentID=83343
And that’s just the USCG effort. And that’s despite the lack of roads currently in great shape to move recovery and containment equipment and materials TO the spill locations. But.. of course you considered that when you stated you though the spills could have been prevented.


Reality – Accurately? Like you have portrayed it via your post?

Uh huh. So, you have portrayed the situation accurately because you happen to have read something or talked to 1-12 people… And that makes you an omniscient individual who KNOWS what went right, what went wrong and jus how things should have worked in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama? Why aren’t you working in the Disaster Prevention and Recovery industry then? If you know so much, why aren’t you part of the solution?

I think maybe we should blame …… you. Why not? You have all the answers and didn’t prevent the situation.

Or, is it just hot air you expound? Are you just an armchair quarterback who KNOWS what he knows and damn the facts? I know what I think the answer to those questions are.

Real Reality:

http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/

Saturday, August 27

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY IN MISSISSIPPI [Office of the Governor]

5AM CDT — KATRINA UPGRADED TO CATEGORY 3 HURRICANE [CNN]

GOV. BLANCO ASKS BUSH TO DECLARE FEDERAL STATE OF EMERGENCY IN LOUISIANA: “I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster.” [Office of the Governor]

FEDERAL EMERGENCY DECLARED, DHS AND FEMA GIVEN FULL AUTHORITY TO RESPOND TO KATRINA: “Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.” [White House]



As soon as the President declared a federal emergency at Gov. Blanco's request --the burden of providing aid fell to the Federal Government by definition and as oulined by the President on the whitehouse.gov sight.

But NOTHING was done. The local governments did everything expected of them and more --but the federal government under Bush's (lack of) leadership dropped the ball.

The assistance was OFFICIALLY promised and never delivered.

Let me make this clear --The President promised aid before Katrina hit land --but did not provide the federal response to that request for FIVE FUCKING DAYS. FIVE FUCKING DAYS of him strumming guitars and eating cake for photo-ops while the rotten bloating bodies of citizens of our nation swirled around in snake infested, disease riddled water or were eaten by wild packs of dogs, rats and hogs.

Wow what a great link, Kendra, thank you for that. I hadn't read about Condi's shoe trip, I sure <3 the woman who called her out on that.

Emphasis mine. Why did this take days? Helicopters coudl have taken 1 day. or 2.


By "navigable" you may mean "Snails pace". That certainly isn't going to get people out quickly.

Reality - the water there is a mix of spilled oil, chemicals from households, feces, and putresine (that's the chemical dead things give off when they rot).



"Our plan is for others to come rescue us."

Nice plan.


I didn't say shelters. I said stations. The stations were basically supply depots.

There was a call for literally 1,000 shelters to be used, but only the one (the Superdome) was usable once the levees broke. Again, where's the plan for levees breaking?


Look, you're getting way too hostile.

I'm not responding to any more. I recommend you take a cold shower and a chill pill. I didn't cause the hurricane.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/16/news.update/index.html

Coast Guard says it is working on 44 oil spills, 4 major

BATON ROUGE, La. (CNN) -- The U.S. Coast Guard says it is currently working to help contain 44 oil spills in southeast Louisiana as a result of Hurricane Katrina, including four major spills. It said the major spills are:

-- Murphy Oil Corporation, Meraux, La., near Mississippi River mile marker 87, where about 819,000 gallons of oil were discharged and more than 700,000 have been recovered, were contained or have evaporated;

--Bass Enterprises Production Company, Cox Bay, La., near river mile marker 35, where 3.78 million gallons of oil were discharged, and nearly all of it has been recovered, contained or evaporated;

--Shell, Pilot Town, La., near river mile marker 3, where about 1.05 million gallons of oil were discharged and about 87,000 gallons remain;

-- Chevron, Empire, La., near river mile marker 30, where about 991,000 gallons of oil was released and about 983,000 gallons naturally dispersed or evaporated and only about 7,600 gallons was recovered or contained. (Posted: 1:15 p.m.)

The levees wouldn't have broke if the environmentalists would have permitted the original levee plan to be implemented. Read up on New Orleans' levees and how the Army Corps of Engineers have been wanting to upgrade them for years. Or how the original plan was much more advanced then the one that was actually built because tree-hugging liberals were afraid some frogs or something would die.

Well, the frogs lived and hundreds of people died. Way to go, libs.

You miss the big picture. The Sierra Club (tree-hugging liberals) was part of the beaurocracy that I speak of. I don't single out Republican or Democrat. This is a huge mess caused by all sorts of political ideologies. But no one on either side put their foot down and fixed it.

I ain't playin' partisan here, no reason for you to.

Curse all you want, it doesn't add to your argument.
You refer to the Mississippi governor when I referred to Nagin, a citizen of Louisiana. Wasted typing on your part.

You quote a Blanco reference where she REQUESTS Bush do something. So what? Whether he declared the state of emergency in Louisiana BEFORE the hurricane hit in response to her request or not, you have to admit he ACTED. What more do you want him to PERSONALLY do? Supervise each and every Federal employee personally? While he's supervising one, what are the other Federal employees supposed to do.. stand around with their thumbs up their butts until he personally gives them orders?

Let's really put things in context here with a more detailed timeline than your sketchy references:
--- --- ---
Friday, August 26:
11:30 AM EDT: Katrina is upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane.
5:00 PM EDT: The National Hurricane Center issues an advisory forecasting that Katrina would soon be a Category 3 hurricane.

5:00 PM CDT: Louisiana Governor Blanco declares a state of emergency for Louisiana.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour declares a state of emergency for Mississippi.

Saturday, August 27:
President Bush officially declares that a "state of emergency" exists in Louisiana and orders Federal aid to the affected areas to complement state and local relief efforts.

4:00 pm CDT: Per Governor Blanco's order, Contraflow begins , reversing all traffic on inbound interstate lanes and making more room for evacuating vehicles in outbound lanes.

5:00 PM CDT: New Orleans Mayor Nagin declares a State of Emergency and issues a **voluntary** evacuation order, saying he is having his legal team determine if he can order a **mandatory** evacuation without exposing the city to legal liability for the closure of hotels and other businesses.

8:00 PM EDT: National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield briefs Louisiana Gov. Blanco, New Orleans Mayor Nagin and Mississippi Gov. Barbour on Katrina's status.

11:00 PM EDT: The National Hurricane Center issues a warning suggesting that Katrina is moving in a western direction in an area that includes New Orleans.

Sunday, August 28:
1:00 AM CDT: Katrina is declared a Category 4 storm.
8:00 AM EDT: Katrina is declared a Category 5 storm, the highest possible rating.
Approx. 10:00 AM CDT: New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin orders **mandatory** evacuations of New Orleans. (Note - post-strike actions and statements by Nagin demonstrate that he never intended to use force to enforce this mandatory evacuation order --- thus sending a mixed message to the citizenry of New Orleans.)

Approx. 12:00 PM EDT: National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield personally briefs President Bush as part of regular FEMA briefing.

Louisiana Governor Blanco sends letter to President Bush requesting various federal aid.

President Bush declares a state of emergency for both Mississippi and Alabama, and declared Florida a federal disaster area in light of damage done by Hurricane Katrina.
--- --- ---

Gee, kinda looks to me like Nagin waffled the longest due to legal considerations, that Blanco asked for somethign from Bush and got what she asked for - then went back to the well because she hadn't really articulated accurately and completely what she needed the first time she made a request.

As for the Feds assuming "the burden of providing aid" once Bush made his declarations, I have to laugh. You are simply clueless about what is actually going on still.

Cnsider the National Guard troops, for instance. Blanco remains in control of National Guard troops operating as agents of the State of Louisiana - whether those troops are from Timbuktu or from New Orleans. That's the law. She has not ceded control of those troops to the Feds. Part of the reason that General Honore was assigned was he was/is buddies with the LANG's commanding general and thus there is a personal relationship between the Active Army General and the LANG General. The USCG guy replaced Brown, so he gets to give Honore orders/directives - but even he is not in charge of the NG troops.

The State of Louisiana is and has been responsible for creating, finding and utilizing shelters alongside FEMA not instead of FEMA.

Local governments can expect whatever they want to expect. But no governor or local government official can cede responsibility to the Feds - if the Feds declare martial law, only then is absolute control/responsibility taken away from local officials. Federal law both proscribes and prescribes Federal action -- and you apparently haven't read the National Response Plan. At 426 pages, I am not surprised though, few have. While it spells out Federal assumptions, expectations and plans, the Plan indicates a desire to operate in a shared-responsibility environment with state and local officials. Organizing a Federal, large-scale response takes time - would you prefer we denude all areas of the country of all police, fire, EMS and other "emerency response" personnel to "put out this fire" while leaving other areas uncovered? What should the Feds have done as far as Ophelia goes? Remember we are now responding nationally to TWO post-hurricane periods in areas 900-1000 miles apart. What should they hold back in case of another terrorist attack along the lines of 9/11, the first WTC bombing or the Tokyo subway nerve gas bombing? Did you even consider this in your self-righteous outrage? It doesn't appear so in your post.

Also consider that ad hoc volunteerism can both help and impede the organized response --- as evidenced in the post-Katrina period. Local responses can be more timely and effect in terms of SAR provided the effort can be coordinated --- yet in areas like Plaquemines Parish where the local infrastructure is literally destroyed even more than in New Orleans, even that was not possible for days due to the physical conditions (and a huge percentage of the population remaining there had boats).

Show me of more than a handful (that means five.... just show me more than five) reports of any body being eaten by "wildpacks of dogs, rats and hogs". Even then, I say, so what? I'd rather rescue five trapped people than recover even 1000 bodies.

So, let ME make this clear. Self-righeous indignation and histrionics earn you no points. Acting fast and loose with wild misrepresentations and misinterpretations of "facts" doesn't win you any points either. Can you see the forest for the trees here? It seems that a consistent in-forum anti-Repiblican/anti-Bush sentiments might be overloading your ability to argue rationally. Too bad.

Now.. notice I didn't absolve anyone of anything here. There were numerous things that could have, and perhaps should have, been done differently. As far as your post, I am suggesting that perhaps engaging brain before typing might have been appropriate. I know that I personally would have appreciated it.

And since I'm going to be called on it:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/berlau200509080824.asp
http://soapbox.townhall.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2005/9/8/35343/34527
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19418
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1479991/posts
http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=108613
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003510.htm

Oh please. The levees weren't kept in working condition, because your precious Thief in Chief decided to cut the budget for the Army Corps of Engineers by 80%!

As it was you had workers trying to maintain the levees for FREE for the entire period of 2003-2004. All this so Chimpy McAwol could have his little war.

Way to go, Fascists.

Yes... after 3 days of flooding, he ended his vacation and ... congratulated Brownie on a fine job.

...

Aaron - environmental scientests are saying that the marshland that was removed in the past few decades by development would have soaked up the excess water from the Lake - ironically there might not have been need for the Levees.

Kendra, they were in working condition, but they were made for a category 3 hurricane, not a 4 or 5. Read the articles referenced for evidence and more links to the "Save Our Wetlands" lawsuits that STOPPED the upgrades to the levees ordered 40 years ago by President JOHNSON.

Oh stop it. You're making me laugh too hard by your taking a position of "being wronged and attacked".

Reeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaallly.

Weasel-wording and rhetorical two-stepping is, in the final analysis I guess, all I should have expected in response.

They were at 90% efficiency. Know what that means for a levee? means they weren't working at all.

As far as the wetlands go --if they had been saved, they would have acted as the much needed "nature's sponge" that infact have kept N.O dry as a bone for --hmmm --FOREVER. If Commander Cuckoobananas was so freakin' excited to stuff money down his corporate cronies panties every second of the day --we'd have had our wetlands and probably no problem with the levee.

Oh and please stop with the RW talking points -- they make you seem ill-informed.