>> I'd rather see FEMA transcend those boundaries and get all levels of government working efficiently during a time of crisis
I would, too, of course. With the money that is spent, more could be done -- but that's the nature of bloated government.
Here is the thing. At the time, some of my liberal friends in FLA (who had a good deal of FEMA experience) were raising hell about how the Bush response to the hurricane was inadequate. But hurricanes and floods are two totally different things. Had it been merely a hurricane, the response would have been totally adequate.
But in a flood of that magnitude, what is left standing is still inaccessible -- and that was the case in NOLA. There really was little that could have been done beyond what WAS done. The biggest failure of government were, IMO, leaving people without food or water at the Convention Center and the Superdome. The Superdome problem was sheerly a failure of local government. It was a shelter of "last resort" and there no provisions there.
The Convention Center disaster could have been picked up by SOMEONE, ANYONE who was watching the news. Federal, state, or whatever. There is no reason at all the LA National Guard couldn't have flown in a chopper load of bottled water and MREs. Or the federal government. The problem is all these people were too busy to be watching TV, I suppose. Walmart had parked truckloads of water in accessible areas north of town. But the reality is that NO ONE knew, until someone dragged an NBC news crew out of the Royal Sonesta over to Convention Center Blvd., how bad it was.
When it made news it was painted by the media as a Bush failure. It wasn't. It was a failure of Nagin and Blanco to have taken reasonable measures to provide for people who didn't evacuate.
It is worth noting that had it not been for Bush pressing these idiots, the casualties would have been far higher, because they were refusing until Sat nite to call for a mandatory evacuation.
There really was no ability for those people to communicate their circumstances to anyone who could do anything about it. And that was the great failure; FEMA was not and should not have been their point of contact. |
