09/07/2005
Do You Want This Man Here When a New Disaster Comes Calling?
If you haven't already heard, before Michael Brown was FEMA chief, his job involved Arabian horses: "His job was to ensure that horse-show judges followed the rules and to investigate allegations against those suspected of cheating."
The latest news about this incompetent is that Brown waited until five hours after Katrina made landfall before summoning 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the Gulf Coast. He allowed them two days to arrive.
One of their jobs was to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public" according to a memo sent to Michael Chertoff.
Not rescue, not recovery. Public relations.
Blog Say Anything acknowledges, "FEMA isn’t intended to be a 'first responder' to natural disasters. They are to be called in when needed by local 'first responder' agencies. It is clear, to me at least, that the leadership and emergency planning in the areas effected by this hurricane are wanting."
Yet, according to the AP: "Brown also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts."
Brown blames New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin for not getting the people of his city out in time: "The mayor can order an evacuation and try to evacuate the city, but if the mayor does not have the resources to get the poor, elderly, the disabled, those who cannot, out, or if he does not even have police capacity to enforce the mandatory evacuation, to make people leave, then you end up with the kind of situation we have right now in New Orleans."
Unfortunately, Brown is the bigger dog, and he wasn't ready.
According to the Washington Post, "Brown's defenders say he is the scapegoat of a cataclysmic storm and failure of New Orleans's levee system that, in the words of President Bush and Chertoff, could not be foreseen."
The truth is: "Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, said Brown and other top federal officials were briefed as much as 32 hours in advance of landfall that Hurricane Katrina's storm surge was likely to overtop levees and cause catastrophic flooding."
"They knew that this one was different," Mayfield said yesterday. "I don't think Mike Brown or anyone else in FEMA could have any reason to have any problem with our calls. . . . They were told. . . . We said the levees could be topped."
Among FEMA's other incredible failures:
On Tuesday, FEMA sent a plane full of 180 evacuees needing treatment to Charleston, West Virginia rather than Charleston, South Carolina by mistake.
FEMA has refused to ship 20,000 trailers sitting in Atlanta to the Mississippi coast until contracts are secured.
A state of the art mobile hospital, developed after 9/11 and outfitted with 100 surgeons and paramedics, is stuck in rural Mississippi until bureaucratic red tape is untangled.
The list of FEMA failures can go on for pages.
Ben Morris, Slidell mayor: We are still hampered by some of the most stupid, idiotic regulations by FEMA. They have turned away generators, we've heard that they've gone around seizing equipment from our contractors. If they do so, they'd better be armed because I'll be damned if I'm going to let them deprive our citizens. I'm pissed off, and tired of this horseshit."
See, his job does have something to do with horses.
Kate Hale, former Miami-Dade emergency management chief: "He's done a hell of a job, because I'm not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm. The world that this man operated in and the focus of this work does not in any way translate to this. He does not have the experience."
Nancy Pelosi went to President Bush to discuss the Michael Brown situation: "If somebody is incompetent, has no credentials for the job that he holds, and that, I would say, is Michael Brown, the head of FEMA ... then he should not continue in that job," Pelosi said after her meeting at the White House.
Asked Bush's reaction, Pelosi said, "the president thanked me for my suggestion."
Bush continues to put his cronies in charge of jobs they can't handle and refuses to hold anyone accountable for anything. Is this the man you want in charge when another terrorist attack hits a major American city? In that scenario, at this point, it's every man for himself.
Fire Michael Brown now.
Sphere: Related ContentPosted 10:49 AM EST by Andy in Current Affairs | Permalink
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There's no question Brown is incompetent, but I think you let off Mayor Nagin a little lightly. In yesterday's NYT John Tierney compared New Orleans' response with that of the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, a metropolis with a larger population than New Orleans' but one that is also heavily poor and black:
"Instead of relying on a "Good Samaritan" policy - the fantasy in New Orleans that everyone would take care of the neighbors - the Virginia rescue workers go door to door. If people resist the plea to leave, Mr. Judkins told The Daily Press in Newport News, rescue workers give them Magic Markers and ask them to write their Social Security numbers on their body parts so they can be identified.
"It's cold, but it's effective," Mr. Judkins explained."
They also keep lists of everyone who is too suck or old or carless so they know where to send busses and other transporation.
New Orleans had none of the above. The lack of ANY planning in New Orleans would be responsible for many deaths even if FEMA rode to the rescue on Monday night.
Posted by: alan | Sep 7, 2005 11:00:35 AM
You're absolutely right. Nagin should be out of there as well.
Posted by: andy | Sep 7, 2005 11:04:21 AM
You know, I would like to hear more from the other two states invloved in this disater.
While FEMA is common among them all (and you don't hear NEAR the amount of bitching from them), there is one thing that isn't common to all three states: The sheer and utter incompetence of the LA state and NO local officials - you know, the ones FEMA DEPENDS ON TO DO THIER JOBS.
FEMA doesn't work if the state and local officials don't!
Posted by: Robert | Sep 7, 2005 11:36:09 AM
This interview is also worth reading:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/05/ltm.01.html
Posted by: rrgg@none.com | Sep 7, 2005 12:03:28 PM
FEMA has been a failure in Mississippi too - Biloxi is still awaiting help from FEMA (9/7). NO's local government was clearly ill equipped to handle the problem, but that was known and ackowledged by FEMA in their own reports. I remain deeply troubled by FEMA's poor response and the implications of a future ineptitude from FEMA for less predicable natural disasters elsewhere in the country
Posted by: Dan | Sep 7, 2005 12:12:24 PM
Barbara Bush Calls Evacuees Better Off:
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," she said, "so this is working very well for them."
Posted by: Boss | Sep 7, 2005 12:12:30 PM
Here's the pertinent part of the interview on CNN:
NAGIN: He called me in that office after that. And he said, "Mr. Mayor, I offered two options to the governor." I said -- and I don't remember exactly what. There were two options. I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision.
S. O'BRIEN: You're telling me the president told you the governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision?
NAGIN: Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: Regarding what? Bringing troops in?
NAGIN: Whatever they had discussed. As far as what the -- I was abdicating a clear chain of command, so that we could get resources flowing in the right places.
S. O'BRIEN: And the governor said no.
NAGIN: She said that she needed 24 hours to make a decision. It would have been great if we could of left Air Force One, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out. It didn't happen, and more people died.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: The mayor making it clear that much politicking was going on, even as people here were continuing to suffer. The mayor clearly thinking that the governor did way too little, way too late for her part.
We put a call into Governor Blanco's office. They declined to come on our show this morning and talk to us.
Posted by: rrgg@none.com | Sep 7, 2005 12:26:23 PM
I think the wwhole Katrina debacle has illustrated just how incompetent our entire government is at disaster response. New York would have been in much the same predicament on 9/11 if it had not been for our strong local leadership. Love him or hate him, Giuliani stepped up to the plate and filled the leadership vacuum left by the federal government and saved our butts that day. Unfortunately for New Orleans, they have no Rudy Giuliani to take over where everyone else failed. The only reason this untter ineptitude didn't come to light after 9/11 is because New York's local government diverted attention from the complete lack of ability of George Bush and his administration.
Posted by: MT | Sep 7, 2005 12:34:02 PM
Actually...
The study predicted the current situation for a Cat-5 hurrican, not 4. And, it predicted the levees would be topped -- not broken.
Facts matter, especially if we're gonna go after the beuacrats who are responsible for this allowed-to-happen-disaster.
rob@egoz.org
Posted by: rob adams | Sep 7, 2005 2:36:11 PM
It's good to see that people here are finally starting to realize that this was not a failure of just ONE political party, or of JUST the federal level of government. This realization helps us learn the ultimate lesson we must all take from this tragedy.
The ultimate lesson to be learned here is what we Libertarians have been saying since the dawn of time: Government does not work. Federal, state or local. Republican or Democrat. They all will fuck things up, especially in a crisis.
Which means that we should never rely on government to save us from natural disaster. That's the ultimate mistake, and too many people in Katrina's destructive path made it, and paid dearly for it.
Make your own disaster plan instead. If at all possible, plan to ride out the disaster in a safe bunker on your property. I realize this may not always be practical (ie, when you live next to a levee in a city 80% below sea level) but by staying on your own property you have the benefit of being able to guard your possesions against the inevitable looters.
As the recent Katrina events have demostrated, looters can easily be as destructive as the natural disaster which spawned them. They are an unfortunate by-product of the political rhetoric in this country, specifically the class-warfare class-envy rhetoric of the Democratic Party, which tells the lower economic strata which forms a large part of their voting base that they are poor because of "societal injustice." This naturally leads to a notion among the members of this strata that looting is some sort of entitlement to rectify said injustice, which can be morally engaged in when the opportunity for such behavior arises.
With this in mind, here is the Cassius Disater Survival Kit you should have prepared to fend for yourself when and if disater strikes:
1) Food
2) Water
3) Gun
All components I believe are self-explanatory, especially number 3 in light of the preceding paragraph on looting. You can add addtional items on top of these of course, but these three should be your "base" items, ALWAYS included, never neglected.
Posted by: Cassius | Sep 7, 2005 5:15:36 PM
Jessica H. Christ! Just what we need: a whacko, survivalist, cocksucking gun nut. But not just crazy--stupid, too.
"...looters can easily be as destructive as the natural disaster which spawned them."
Yep, it sure LOOKED like water, but I guess it was just the way the light was hitting all those looters submerging 80% of New Orleans up to the roof tops. And all those houses, churches, businesses left like chaotic piles of match sticks, when they didn't disappear entirely: I guess all dem looters just huffed and they puffed and they blew...."
Could "Cassius" just be the screen name of Charlton Heston. Nah, he played "Marc Antony."
But maybe you could play one of the hillbilly sodomites in a remake of "Deliverance." And George Bush could play the one with the banjo on the porch.
Posted by: Leland | Sep 7, 2005 5:44:52 PM
Where's Gov. Blanco in this little diatribe? Even CBS whacked her good last night on 48 Hours for refusing to give over control of the National Guard to teh federal government at a time when Louisiana's units couldn't be effectively mobilized, and for letting all those buses sink under water instead of evacuating her citizens.
There is a LOT of blame to go around. But I'll accept political criticism of Bush/FEMA/Brown more readily when it is a little more even-handed and less partisan.
Posted by: The Malcontent | Sep 7, 2005 6:23:13 PM
Agree. Off with her incompetent head. But why is ANY criticism of Bush automatically labeled "partisan"? "Even-handed" is impossible because the "playing field" isn't even. Mayor fucked up in many ways? Punish him. Governor fucked up many ways? Punish her. But neither of them, in fact, no one, has the power of the President. He made wrong decisions before the hurricane, some of which was directly related to the eventual disaster and some not-- National guard, funding for flood control, etc. But, assuming all the best intentions in the world in those pre-disaster decisions, once it was on its way, once it had arrived, once it turned the city into Hell--he was jacking off, and there are plenty of Republicans saying that, too. But, I guess they're a different kind of partisan.
Posted by: Leland | Sep 7, 2005 8:09:00 PM
Lemme tell you a few things about FEMA on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. FEMA waltzed into the only working hospital in the Gulfport area and took it over. They then didn't allow doctors to leave to see to people in the community until 'the papers were processed' (whatever that means). Then when the doctors asked for the FEMA folk to help out with the recovery, the FEMA folks responded 'We only work 10 hour days. We can't help you.' We have people frothing at the mouth to help out but are being turned away. We have people going days without eating. We have people dead from lack of water when we, the people of middle and northern MS are sending water south by the truckload. It is being stopped at checkpoints and stalled. It is sad that the epitaph of many people will be 'I died of red tape, not thirst'.
Posted by: Coffeegod | Sep 8, 2005 12:05:00 PM