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Pastimes : Lake New Orleans -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mighty_Mezz who wrote (351)	9/5/2005 9:29:05 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1118

Disaster relief plans worldwide are geared toward bringing help in to stricken areas, not evacuating massive numbers of people who can't even be reached because of floodwaters. The main failure here, IMO, was that what local officials seem to consider an "evacuation plan" is to go on TV at the last minute and say "get yourselves out". That's fine for many people (if it comes early enough), but it does nothing for those without their own transportation or the resources to pay for transportation. A secondary factor was complacency, which extended all the way from individual citizens (62% said they felt safe in their homes in a cat 3 storm), through local and state officials (who had no evacuation plan) and congress (which has failed over the last four decades to fund levee improvements). The least forgivable, IMO, is the state and local level. They are in the best position to develop and implement plans to get people out. The levee issue seems like the all too typical situation where state and local taxpayers neglected their own infrastructure, figuring the federal government and the nation's taxpayers should and would bail them out. Local voters and officials often neglect critical infrastructure and then ask for state and federal bailouts - the city of Atlanta did it just a couple of years ago when its water and sewer systems were crumbling from years of neglect. And people in non-coastal states complain all the time about their tax dollars going to subsidize flood insurance for vacation homes on the beach, so it's no surprise that there was no political will in congress for appropriating the $2.5 billion necessary to protect NO from a cat 5 storm. But compared to the lack of a competent evacuation plan (and the mayor's refusal to use city school buses as part of it), the failures of federal agencies pale. They could have had all the water and food and medicine in the country lined up waiting to be delivered (I'm sure they had plenty) and it wouldn't have done any good because the people who needed it were surrounded by floodwaters. When they tried to deliver it to them by helicopter, panicked people rushed the helicopters, preventing them from landing, and local hoodlums shot at them. And when people from the convention center tried to walk out of there over a nearby bridge, people from the neighboring parrish wouldn't let them cross. The local failures abound, yet somehow, it's all the White House's fault.

To: Mighty_Mezz who wrote (351)	9/5/2005 10:31:54 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1118

I think Oeconomicus gave a pretty good answer. There's also plenty of blame to go around. FEMA should probably be disbanded. The Army and National Guard seem better at this- -in spite of liberal hatred of them. Things started straightening out when took over. Before the hurricane hit it was suggested to the mayor of NO that school busses and city busses be used to evacuate the city before the storm hit. His answer? "Where the hell is the federal gov't with Greyhound busses to get these people out of here. The head of FEMA should be fired and the guv of LA impeached and the mayor of NO removed. The only thing likely to happen is the head of FEMA gets removed.