I have no opinion about the job....
By jkelly
Irish Pennants
....that Michael Brown is doing as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA, but I am unwilling to join -- yet -- in the criticism the media is freely offering. Among those piling on is the National Review crowd. Here's Rich Lowry:
<<<
I think the federal response should have been quicker and that Michael Brown is singularly unimpressive (almost unimpressive enough to be qualified to be mayor of New Orleans).
>>>
Brown has said some things -- and some things have been said about him by Louisiana politicians eager to deflect criticism from themselves -- that make him sound out of touch. But the fundamental premise on which criticism of Brown and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is based is false. The federal response to Katrina has been more rapid and more massive than to any previous natural disaster in history.
Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is entailed in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, no gasoline is available, and roads and airports were covered with water or debris. Yet this was done within four days of Katrina dissipating. The most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history is being libeled as a national disgrace.
Idiot journalists wonder why helicopters were not used to bring food and water right away to the people in Louisiana's superdome. The reasons are
(1) the local government was supposed to have provided them with food and water for three days, but didn't; and
(2) you don't divert helicopters from rescuing people in danger of drowning to the aid of people whose lives are not at risk.
Thousands of people were rescued from rooftops in Louisiana and Mississippi Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. This wasn't a failure just because there were no television cameras there to record it.
I endorse wholeheartedly this analysis by MoltenThought, a former Air Force logistics officer:
<<<
1. Things can get destroyed far more swiftly than they can get fixed.
2. 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.
3. You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region.
4. We do not yet have teleporter nor replicator technology like you saw on "Star Trek" in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grownups actually engaged in the recovery effort today were studying engineering.
5. Getting people out of the stricken areas is the most pressing concern, since we cannot get enough supplies into it to safely sustain them.
6. Getting the airport, bridges, and roads repaired is the next priority, since the supplies and people needed to fix levees, drain the city, and repair the infrastructure cannot be transported via aircraft. You need to truck them in.
7. Once the infrastructure is repaired, it is vital to get the ports in working order. Equipment and supplies can only be moved into the area in large quantities by sea.
8. Only then can recovery efforts begin in earnest.
9. The above will take weeks and months, not days or hours.
10. No amount of yelling, crying, and mustering of moral indignation will change any of the facts above. Facts are facts. Opinion is cheap.
11. You could do more help actually keeping your damned satellite trucks out of the way of the folks doing the real work.
12. If you must vent your indignation, how about targeting the Louisiana officials who did absolutely nothing to protect their constituents? At least you can help ensure the populace doesn't elect these clowns again.
>>>
The big knock on Brown is that it took him a day longer than Louisiana officials would have liked to organize a bus lift of the people in the superdome. The buses have to be obtained; provision must be made to fuel them; the bus drivers need to know where to take the evacuees. And -- oh, yeah, water and debris must be cleared from the roadway so the buses can get to New Orleans in the first place. The levee broke Tuesday morning. The bus lift began Thursday afternoon. I'd say that was pretty damn fast.
A better question for journalists to ask is why weren't the nearly 1,000 city and school buses available in New Orleans used to evacuate the people who wound up in the superdome before the storm struck?
Journalists will criticize Bush no matter what, because he's a Republican. I wish the National Review crowd would at least check the facts before they pile on.
That said, I think the head of FEMA should always be a National Guard general. Then we'd always have someone used to command who is familiar with disaster relief in charge.
irishpennants.com
moltenthought.blogspot.com |
