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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (251073)	9/12/2005 6:15:52 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573766

Ted, I don't think they are even doing that now. Last nite on the news, they said the program had been discontinued. I don't understand why the rules keep changing from day to day. The more I watch, the more I'm convinced that FEMA suffers from a severe lack of leadership. That almost takes the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans off the hook ... almost. There is no question that the mayor and the governor could have done better. However, you have to remember that the local officials usually have no experience in disaster relief.....because typically there is a gap from one disaster to the next. For an example, neither Blanco nor Nagin were in office when the last hurricane hit LA in 1998. That's why FEMA is supposed to take charge and act as first responders. They are supposed to bring to the equation past experience and the history to help the local officials get through it. However, because we are a republic, there has to be the appearance that the local officials are in charge. Otherwise, it looks like the feds are taking over. Knowing this is the reason why I blamed FEMA, Brown and Bush from the get go. FEMA and Brown because they were failing miserably at their job and Bush because he's the only one who can get FEMA off a dime. I know to you, this seems like a change in position, but in reality I've been withholding my judgement until now. The resignation of Mike Brown only clinched it for me. For me, it seemed patently obvious as to what was happening in the first week. I realize now that if you have never worked on a disaster or have never been in a disaster, it might not be so obvious. From the outside, the relationship between the local officials and the feds must appear somewhat murky and unclear; that the local officials are the ones who are in charge and FEMA is there simply to fill in the gaps. In fact, its the other way around. Because JF and CJ got it.......I figured you didn't get it because you were having a partisan reaction. But then today I remembered that you probably have never been through a disaster unlike JF and CJ.......so that might account for their perception vs the one you have had. The bottom line is that many Americans suffered needlessly because of FEMA's ineptness. It seems Brown was more concerned about getting it right legally than doing the job that FEMA is expected to do. I feel almost sorry for Brown. I really think he thought he was doing it right. ted

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (251073)	9/12/2005 6:32:05 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1573766

Downtown Los Angeles, Surrounding Cities Blacked Out Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Los Angeles, the second-largest U.S. city, lost electric power, blacking out downtown and some nearby cities. An oil refinery was idled and people were stranded in elevators. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the nation's largest municipal utility, is trying to determine the cause and the number of customers affected, spokeswoman Kim Hughes said in a phone interview. Power has been restored to some customers, said Kwin Peterson, spokesman for the Western Electricity Coordinating Council, which monitors reliability of the grid. The blackout started when something shorted out a transmission line near the Adelanto substation near Burbank, which is about 20 miles from downtown Los Angeles, according to Peterson, who spoke by phone from the council's office in Salt Lake City. `The system is stabilizing and power is being restored,'' Peterson said. Customers representing about 2,200 megawatts of electricity demand were without power when the blackout was at its most widespread, he said. That amount of power could serve roughly 1.8 million homes. Millions of Californians lost power in seven days of blackouts in 2001 during the height of the state's energy crisis. New power plants have helped avert such failure since then, state officials have said. Those power failures didn't affect the City of Los Angeles, where the municipal agency provides power. The blackout started around 12:35 p.m. and affected industrial facilities such as Valero Energy Corp.'s Wilmington oil refinery, which shut down after losing power, according to spokeswoman Mary Rose Brown. The failure came about three weeks after rolling blackouts occurred across Southern California because of problems with a power line. Didn't Spread The power failure affected people in downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, Hughes said. More than 350,000 people were without power in Burbank, Glendale and surrounding areas, Captain Bill Lynch of the Glendale Fire Department said in an interview. Traffic was snarled in some parts of the city when signals were disabled. Other parts of Southern California, including Pasadena and Walt Disney Corp.'s theme parks in Anaheim, were unaffected. The power failure also did not threaten electricity supplies in the rest of the state, said Gregg Fishman, a spokesman with the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the power system in most of California other than the city of Los Angeles. The power failure sparked calls to fire departments from people stuck in elevators, said Ronald Myers, a spokesman with the Los Angeles Fire Department. continued.......... pid=10000103&sid=a.t2hYscqpqk&refer=us