Ivan! Jeanne! & Karl & Dennis The Menace & Katrina

nimh--

Where did Bush say there is no problem

--and these people who have asked Bush for help--when/where did they speak to him?

Lash wrote:

nimh--

Where did Bush say there is no problem--and these people who have asked Bush for help--when/where did they speak to him?

You keep setting yourself up.

During Bush's entire term as president, he has cut the funds in every budget for maintaining and improving the levy and lock system in New Orleans. This is well known. Where have you been?

BBB

nimh--

Where did Bush say there is no problem--and these people who have asked Bush for help--when/where did they speak to him?

I just hope that reasonable people will sift assumption and innuendo from fact.

Thank you for answering.

Shortly into his term, we suffered a catastrophic attack that sent Wall Street spinning. We went into Afghanistan, formulated a huge vital new department in response to this UNPRECEDENTED ATTACK--and those items PRE-IRAQ would have any reasonable president cutting what they considered non-emergent expenditures.

Friday, September 02, 2005
Local leaders call relief efforts too little, late

New Orleans on Thursday pulled back from an almost complete collapse of public order, a near anarchy that had supplanted receding floodwaters as the gravest threat to the city's still tenuous recovery.

Evidence that authorities were beginning to get a grip on gargantuan problems varied from the successful and orderly evacuation of Baptist Mercy Hospital to a sharp reduction in the menacing bands of idle refugees, many of them intent on looting that had haunted Uptown neighborhoods in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

With thousands of National Guard troops being mustered to join the Louisiana guardsmen already deployed to the hurricane-stricken city, one of the early signs of the beefed-up military presence was a Blackhawk helicopter touching down near the Riverwalk to deliver water to some 1,000 refugees still sheltered in the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

[..] everywhere: the homeless, some wandering aimlessly, others massed at bridges and ferry landings waiting for boats and buses no longer in service, many of them drunk on looted liquor in a city without drinking water. [..]

"I'm supposed to be cleaning up after a storm and I have to have sheriff's deputies walking around on the roof with AK-47s and machine guns," said Jefferson Parish Emergency Operations Director Walter Maestri. Basic cleanup operations, such as clearing downed trees, were on hold, and relief agencies, including FEMA and some private groups, had either pulled out or threatened to do so because of the dangers to their workers, Maestri said. [..]

But comments from officialdom and commoners alike, seethed with the sense that New Orleans had yet to be accorded a response adequate to the crisis at hand.

Terry Ebbert, head of the city's emergency operations, contrasted what he deemed a lackluster response by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the massive outpouring of humanitarian and military aid after this past winter's tsunami in southeast Asia.

Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard called the lack of federal response "a disgrace."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was equally blunt. Federal and state officials need to stop having "goddamn press conferences" and get the relief effort rolling, he said in a late-afternoon radio interview, an angry flare-up out of character for the popular, generally easy-going former cable TV executive.

Appearing in a New York studio on NBC's "Today" show, former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, now national president of the Urban League, called for "an effort of 9-11 proportions." "A great American city is fighting for its life," he said. [..]

That effort was being waged against long odds Thursday. National Guard spokesman Jack Harrison, in Arlington, Va., said the number of active-duty guard troops in Louisiana would rise to 20,000 overnight, about a quarter of them Louisiana guardsmen, but Gov. Kathleen Blanco estimated it would take at least 40,000 troops to quell the violence.

As troop transport vehicles rumbled through downtown streets, some soldiers appeared visibly unnerved by the chaos they witnessed around them. Scores of New Orleans police had simply gone AWOL and fled, according to a ranking NOPD officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. [..]

By day's end, the massive bus-lift to Houston had reduced the Superdome's population to a few thousand refugees, authorities said. But many now homeless people continue to wait on bridges and highway ramps. And while officials remained adamant about the need to get out of a flooded city without power, water, or much prospect of these services being restored for months to come, efforts to comply were frequently mired in miscommunication.

Beside himself after failing to get through to city and state officials, the chief of trauma surgery at Charity Hospital called a news conference on Thursday to beg for help. Charity was nearly out of food and power for its generators and had been forced to move patients to higher floors to escape looters prowling the hospital, Dr. Norman McSwain said.

Texas officials said they were concerned by unconfirmed reports that a group of prisoners under guard had somehow been mixed in with refugees in the bus convoy to Houston's Astrodome. [..]

Storm Victims Find Astrodome Full
By MATT CURRY 1 hour, 21 minutes ago
HOUSTON - Katrina refugees who had finally arrived by bus from the steamy Superdome were left in limbo for more than two hours after officials suddenly announced that the Astrodome was too full to accept them.

ADVERTISEMENT

Early Friday, after waiting on board and milling about the parking lot, the passengers were redirected to an adjacent exhibit hall, said Houston press secretary Patrick Trahan.

The change only added to the frustration of victims like Patricia Profit, who had relatives already inside the stadium.

"Before we left New Orleans, they said everybody will be in the Astrodome," said Profit as she stood outside one of the buses. "'Don't panic, don't worry, you'll still be with your family.' That's what they told us. Now we can't be with our family."

The daylong stream of buses was halted late Thursday, when the stadium population reached 11,325, less than half the 23,000 people that authorities had expected to put there.