Oct 29 2005
More Blanco Blunders
For those new to the site I have quite a few posts on Katrina and how Nagin and Blanco were the primary sources of the debacle there (Michael Brown had successfully handled five major storms up to the point). The truth is Nagin and Blanco did not make any tactical adjustments once the levies broke, which is why so many people were left stranded. The 18 hour flooding of New Orleans allowed plenty of opportunity to move people away from the flooded areas -the state and local governments simply did not act.
And now we learn Blanco is responsible for one of the cruelest screw ups – how the dead were treated. Michael Brown relied on Nagin and Blanco to follow the disaster plans they had established and rehearsed with the Feds. But because Blanco and Nagin ‘winged it’ Brown was made to be the fall guy. Some in Congress lambasted him for not pretending to be Emporer and taking control from the state!
But he never did this.
Bodies of people killed by Hurricane Katrina went uncollected for more than a week in the New Orleans area as the federal government waited for Louisiana’s governor to decide what to do with them, according to memos released Thursday by a Republican-led House committee.
The families of the victims should be rightfully outraged. And all Americans should be outraged at what the acts of a few idiotic elected officials have done to our reputations.
So why is Brown out of a job and Nagin and Blanco still in their jobs (along with a US Congress that whines everytime it is shown they screwed up too)? Elected officials are not accountable! They find scape goats to cover themselves. And we buy into the game time after time.
Careful with the assumption that FEMA is blameless. They are not.
Blanco and Nagin have the lions share of blame for sure but FEMA had a bunch of stuff they need to answer for. I have to be very careful what I say because of my families position in the recovery.
FEMA had responsibilities and they failed to deliver. The method that they are alerted to those responsibilities might be an interesting area if the world had not split into those who defend FEMA because the Left has managed to attach FEMA to the Bush administration. Instead conservatives should be screaming from the rooftops that depending on Government institutions for help is ridiculous. Its supposed to be what we believe in and in FEMA we had a terrific example of nonsense in action. “I am from the Government and I am here to help” “Check is in the Mail” so on.
Pierre Legrand
Blanco and Nagin Blundered…but so did FEMA. When
When Katrina hit a weird thing happened on the way to recovery, conservatives started defending Big Government.
I’m still shocked about the NOPD failure during Katrina. For the first time in our Nation’s history that a metro police department ran away from its duty to protect its own citizens:
From The Times-Picayune http://www.nola.com
By Michael Perlstein Staff writer
Forty-five New Orleans police officers who fled during Hurricane Katrina were fired as outright deserters Friday, but the police department still faces the more delicate task of investigating another 228 officers who returned to the job after leaving without permission at some point during the storm and its resulting chaos……
…. Since the Aug. 29 storm, 15 officers resigned while under investigation, 45 officers resigned citing personal reasons, nine officers retired and two committed suicide, Riley said. Added to Friday’s firings, the department has lost 116 officers altogether — about 7 percent of the force — but their absence has hardly been felt in the past month because much of the city has been emptied of citizens, dropping crime to record low levels.
“We’re still functioning and we’re a very effective department,” spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said. The force stood at 1,650 before the storm. Including officers who are out with injuries or illness, it now numbers 1,448, including the 228 who are under investigation for leaving their posts….. Another 13 officers are under investigation concerning possible looting, Riley said…..
And keeping an eye on OUR money………
$17 billion aid shift proposed by Bush
By Bill Walsh
….. President Bush asked Congress on Friday to set aside $17 billion of already-approved hurricane recovery money to fix damaged highways and levees, rebuild federal facilities and provide affordable housing and child care for displaced residents from the Gulf Coast.
….. But the proposal was met with skepticism by members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation who said it falls far short of meeting the state’s needs and doesn’t live up to the president’s promise to rebuild the region quickly. The harshest criticism came from Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, who derided the proposal as “an accounting shell game” and said that the U.S.-led Iraqi reconstruction is taking a higher priority…..
The money is part of the $62 billion that was appropriated soon after Hurricane Katrina swamped the New Orleans area and the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. It isn’t being spent as quickly as expected — $40 billion still remains — so the Bush administration decided to steer it to needs beyond immediate hurricane relief and recovery……
LB comment: I’m sorry, but the LA folks are starting to get under my collar…..
The local and state government have chief responsibility for disasters for the first 72-96 hours. FEMA and Michael Brown are less at blame than Mayor Nagin and Governor blanco.
Once again, it must be the fault of the Republican, not the Democrat.
FEMA and Michael Brown are less to blame than Nagin and Blanco, peachy keen, but then again you do admit that they got it wrong? Or do you disagree with President Bush who said the response was unacceptable? No one denies that Nagin and Blanco got it desparately wrong, but if we don’t get off our partisan asses and understand that our Government agencies got it wrong as well when the next city gets destroyed like New Orleans the consequences might be even worse.
The entire Democrat Republican dynamic is becoming less and less impressive to me since I am starting to understand that a huge part of the problem behind all of this is simply the bureaucratic machinery that we must understand see’s the world less through partisan labels than simply us vs the public labels. The CYA quotient in the Government is so high that nothing effective can happen. We see the CYA quotient in the CIA, DIA, FEMA, DHS, STATE and its killing us.
Conservatives were supposed to be better than this. We were the ones who supposedly understood that it was likely that large government organzations could fail. We were the ones who supposedly were able to keep their feet to the fire. Its disheartening to the core to see us defend incompetence simply because the administration is Republican. Incompetence is rampant throughout the Bureaucracy its systems, people and just about anything else you might want to cast your glance to.
Pierre
Pierre,
First off, the Katrina response was the largest and fastest in history. The problem was the area impacted was the size of Britain. There is a point where it is nobody’s fault – you need to accept that. There comes a point where everything prepared is overwhelmed. Also, FEMA can only act on directions from state and local authorities. The state authorities direct where aid goes. When they screw up – like Nagin and Blanco did, then they compound the problem of tight resources.
For example, it was Blanco that withheld RedCross aid getting to the Superdome and Convention Center for two days. It was Nagin who did not grab buses and start moving those people out of those two places when the levies first broke and SLOWLY flooded the city over 18 hours.
Once Nagin and Blanco had gone off their prepared and practiced disaster response plans, FEMA had to re-assess and re-plan ON THE FLY. That is why Michael Brown spent nearly a day flying over the area (the size of Britain) trying to replan.
The need to rescue stranded people in New Orleans (there because Blanco and Nagin did not call for the evacuation in time) caused resources to be diverted from supply dispersion to search and rescue.
The reason you evacuate is so you do not have to spend all your time on search and rescue – which is a slow and resource intense process.
To be fair to FEMA, you have to accept the enormity of the storm, the area of damage, the fact Nagin and Blanco did not evacuate and the fact they went off their disaster plans causing a re-plan in mid crisis. Even after all that most people lived.
I know you have personal stories, but FEMA is made up of people – top to bottom – who do this for a living and do it well. Everytime Nagin and Blanco resisted them they were pretending they knew more than the experts.
My two cents.
It is impossible to evaluate FEMA in that situation. Anybody doing that is deliberately unfair.
“Just because the engine exploded and the wings fell off is no excuse for not making a perfect landing!”
There really isn’t much point in arguing with that type of idiot.
Boris,
I agree. But I kinda of know Pierre and he has some reasons to be really frustrated with the hole mess down there. He is a good guy.
AJStrata
Idiot?
AJ aren’t you the guy who is so frustrated by the namecalling going on? I haven’t called anyone names. I would ask that you remind your commenters that decorum is not only for those you agree with.
Perhaps y’all don’t understand FEMA blew it. You are claiming otherwise from reports you get in the news, I am claiming it from someone who is deep inside watching this trainwreck. Inside FEMA. Y’all are making these claims from people outside trying to defend President Bush from wackos who use anything to attack him. I am making it from the perspective that avoiding blame means not fixing problems. No doubt Katrina was overwhelmingly big…so? Does that mean we cannot learn from our mistakes? The world does not revolve around Bush being absolved from any blame. Even President Bush understands this. It is even possible that he might enjoy his supporters getting incensed by the idiocy that masquerades as thought inside of the bureacracy. Lord knows the bureacracy has no love lost for him.
Yes it may have been fast AJ but even President Bush said it was unacceptable. If he thought Michael Brown had done a terrific job, Michael Brown would still be leading the show. The only problem is its not just the leadership but the systems and rules in place.
And the bureaucratic machinery that screwed it up to begin with has gotten nothing but worse. I don’t know this from reading blogs, newspapers or seeing the nightly news I know this from my wife who is trying to help them sort out the problems. I know this from my Mother in Law who got to see the Governmental idiocy first hand in the Dome.
This partisan sniping is overwhelmingly bad for the republic. We are going to get our asses handed to us by some serious bad guy and when we are all standing around looking goofy like Wiley Coyote at the bottom of the cliff the only person around to blame will be us. Those of us who couldn’t put our labels aside for a moment to fix problems in our republic.
Pierre Legrand
PS I appreciate your kind words AJ. Its been terribly depressing to witness the destruction of a beautiful city. Its been even worse to see my described as a leftist with bad intentions towards Bush.
Pierre, I know Boris doesn’t know you like I do. I did not feel it was time to pull out a bludgeon yet!
I used to get into heated multi-day debates with people on the Opinion Forum – a full spectrum political forum at Delphi. One thing we all have to watch out for is ‘forum fever’ – where you have been debating trolls so long you accidentally fire a shot at a fellow con because you misread the criticism or were just on react mode.
Boris is OK. I agree with him, though, that FEMA’s apparent mistakes were more likely echoes from the Nagin-Blanco screw ups.
RINO sightings
Get out your binoculars and focus: The RINOs have been sighted.