The coast guard has done a stellar job...and I've made it clear in MANY posts on this that the mayor and governor clearly blew their parts, as far as pre storm evacuation planning goes. ALL the military that HAS arrived has performed extremely well.
That said, it's absolutely crystal clear that FEMA's response has been poor. When there was looting on Tuesday night, and the governor asked for the Guard, where were they? IF it was the major factor impeding search and rescue why wasn't they're presence ramped up immediately? Again, why weren't supplies prepositioned in the city (especially since many flood models predicted obstruction to access by ground after a levee breeching event). Am I angry? Hell yeah, I'm angry....I lived in New Orleans through childhood and for 22 years, and I will very likely know more than a few of the dead and soon-to-be-dead. Are there stupid people who f*cked up and didn't need to be there? Yes, but again, are we supposed to stand by and let beaureaucratic inertia kill the others along with them? 80% of people in the city left town, that doesn't leave a whole lot of the "able bodied" idiot contingent if you exclude: 1) Service workers who had obligations to stay (including police, firefighters, medical personnel scheduled to work, 2) children of people who otherwise refused to leave (is it a 2 year olds fault that his parents were dumb? uh, no.) 3) People in the dome who didn't have either the financial resources to get out or the financial resources to stay somewhere. Fact is the interviews you see are usually with someone who can actually stand or talk, so a disproportionate amount will be with able bodied idiots.
As far as criminals with guns shooting at the rescuers go, I have no sympathy for them. I feel the local police response was poor from the get go. That's under the mayor's control and is totally his fault. HOWEVER...when it was clear the storm would hit, the guard needed to be in place or needed to be ready to go with helicopter transport. I did not see a significant guard presence until Thursday. That is unacceptable for future catastrophes.
I stands by my statement that people died and are dying at the hands of the government (notice I didn't specify Federal, state or local). As I've also said it was a Bi-partisan cluster-f*ck, and that means both sides of the spectrum bear responsibility. Yes, that includes the federal government response. Some deaths were inevitable in a storm like this, but nowhere near the scale we are going to see, perhaps by a factor of 10. They died because of poor planning on levee maintanence and flood control, poor resource allocation decisions (ie, failing to fund SELA) and poor response to the disaster. |
