Re: "The point is that there was plenty of advance notice."
Lots of notice, eh? Not. Friday morning is when the storm took an ominous turn tracking to N.O. Saturday Morning is when it had hit 115mph overnight. Saturday at 5 pm is when a "voluntary evacuation" order was given by the mayor (the Hurricane had become a sure Cat 5). Sunday was when, well:
"In the face of a catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, a mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday for New Orleans by Mayor Ray Nagin....Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding."
nola.com
Sunday was when the mayor said if you are going to the Superdome, to bring a few days worth of food along, just to be safe. Saturday evening was when the Mayor said he'd look into the legal ramifications of issuing a mandatory evacuation, cause he worried the city would be sued if he did, but he thought he might well do so on Sunday Morning for the first time ever.
Interesting enough for you? Try this.
"Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said."
washingtonpost.com
Of course, that's ok, the levees didn't break and flood the place 'til Tuesday, right? What's more, local officials are expected to be first responders and not to expect help for days from the federal level, by plan. Yes, "Blame goes to those that already knew of NO's particular hazzard," as you said. There was a newly thought-out local plan in place since Ivan threatened last year. They acted upon that and, quoting you again here for effect (and quite interestingly, I think), "How stupid is that when you then have to fish them out of the drink and off rooftops by expensive helicopter runs?"
No one is closer than those at the local and state levels. You can find pictures of plenty of flooded busses around N.O., enought to have bussed 20,000, maybe 40 or 50 thousand out in one trip. It didn't happen. But if you wish to point fingers, then you should be interested to know it turns out that your notion of of bussing the poor around ahead of time (at least to local shelters), is actually part of the local plan (quite the inadequate plan indeed, at the local level). And it's not as if the local level thought the problem was covered by any plan at any other level of Government. Here (from July '05):
"City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own."
Does that spread the blame around enough for you? Here's more:
"The local Red Cross executive director was quoted as saying, "You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you. If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for that person outside the area. We can help you. But we don't have the transportation."
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Selected excerpts from July Picayune article by Bruce Nolan appear below.
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In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation...
Officials are recording the evacuation message even as recent research by the University of New Orleans indicated that as many as 60 percent of the residents of most southeast Louisiana parishes would remain in their homes in the event of a Category 3 hurricane.
Their message will be distributed on hundreds of DVDs across the city. The DVDs' basic get-out-of-town message applies to all audiences, but the it is especially targeted to scores of churches and other groups heavily concentrated in Central City and other vulnerable, low-income neighborhoods, said the Rev. Marshall Truehill, head of Total Community Action.
"The primary message is that each person is primarily responsible for themselves, for their own family and friends," Truehill said.
Production likely will continue through August. Officials want to get the DVDs into the hands of pastors and community leaders as hurricane season reaches its height in September, Katz said.
In an interview at the opening of this year's hurricane season, New Orleans Emergency Preparedness Director Joseph Matthews acknowledged that the city is overmatched.
"It's important to emphasize that we just don't have the resources to take everybody out," he said in a interview in late May."
rawstory.com
But here: "New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas acknowledged that the city was surprised by the number of refugees left behind, but he said FEMA should have been prepared to assist.
"Everybody shares the blame here," said Thomas. "But when you talk about the mightiest government in the world, that's a ludicrous and lame excuse. You're FEMA, and you're the big dog. And you weren't prepared either."
washingtonpost.com
"EITHER" Can you get that through your head?
Sure, perhaps there was plenty of advance notice, or there would have been if as I said, anyone at any level had thought through and put in place anything to handle the potential problem cum reality!
Get off your idiotic Bush Bashing in these times, when the notion that there is where all the fault lies for the ills of the world, remains ridiculous.
Dan B. |
