Bush supporters' aftermath thread

Well unless you have solid information on such 'majority', I suggest you best not scorn those who have been there witnessing people putting their lives back togehter.

For most devastations and/or crisis, there will always be a minority that seems to come out okay. That's to be expected from the tragedy of Katrina. It's still too early to start assuming all (or the majority) the survivers of this tragedy will come out okay. Only time will tell. I'd say a reasonable period to wait to arrive at any conclusion is still about 24 months away.

No scorn, fosfyre. Just telling it like it is.

From the Department of Homeland Security:



Preparing America

In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort. The new Department will also prioritize the important issue of citizen preparedness. Educating America's families on how best to prepare their homes for a disaster and tips for citizens on how to respond in a crisis will be given special attention at DHS.

It says they "will assume primary reesponsibility."

Think about the thousands of elderly who lived their entire lives there. Are they better off uprooted from the only home, no matter how meager, that they've ever known? Between the wealthy who managed to come out okay and the poor who are blessed with a clean slate are all the people in the middle who had lives and homes and jobs, careers, businesses, and now have to start over. These are the people that I know and have talked to and it's not a pleasant conversation.

It was a natural disaster. They have no one to blame for the destruction.

I'm thankful that so much money and resources are being set aside to help the people who were displaced and left without homes and jobs. They are about to be a part of a historical boom in that area. If people will give it a good effort, they may ride the crest of a new dawn for their community. If they sit around and bitch, they can just blame some Republican the next time some disaster strikes.

It's just too emotionally tragic and financially catastophic for many of us to even imagine. Those of you who toss around these theories of so many being better off need to stop and think just how better off YOU would be if a hurricane came along today or tomorrow and wiped you out completely.

I would gladly trade places with any of them who hadn't suffered a death in the family.

In a second.

The ones who made it have a chance to start over.

I wouldn't toss theories about the lives of people you don't know. Nothing is too emotionally tragic or financially catastrophic for me to imagine.

Most New Orleans citizens are displaced. They're not even in the city to ride that boom. There's no new dawn for them. Not in New Orleans. As cicerone imposter said, it's way too early for the tragic far-reaching aspects in all of this to emerge and trying to tie it all up in a neat bundle of let's just all pull together is niave and ignorant.

Lash writes


Amen to that. Property can always be replaced. Lives can't.

But then some of us are not committed to seeing everything in absolutes. We can see the good that happens along with the bad and, even as we look for ways to help those who need help, we can celebrate small and great successes.

Wouldn't you hate to be among those who seem to be unable to do that?

Foxy Unfortunate placement of posts, eh!!??

Hilarious example of why I should ALWAYS mention which post I'm referring to--

Responding to eoe's post--

If anyone were to do that, it would be naive and ignorant.

Conversely, pretending there aren't resources and Herculean efforts and programs and the greatest outpouring in the history of the country and thousands of dollars going to these families no matter what state they are in is stupid. Glad nobody's doing that, either...

The "Let's all pull together" action is what has raised more money and mobilized more volunteers in this nation's history. The citizens of NO need to get busy being part of their community's solution. God, I hope they don't take the Democrat's tack and sit around and complain about it.

Well I don't know how unfortunate it was, Lash. Seemed to fit for me.

Anywho.....

Eoe writes


But that was the whole point that Barbara Bush was making, however indelicately and politically incorrect she said it. Many of the people housed at the Astrodome (and also at the Albuquerque Convention Center) had formerly lived in conditions most of us have never experienced complete with rats, roaches, bullets, inadequate sanitation, and perpetual unemployment.

At the Astrodome and at the Convention Center they had a clean cot, plenty of nourishing food, medical care, and a jobs fair that offered jobs to any able and willing to work. An outpouring of donated food, clothing, furniture, and other necessities allowed most to be able to move out into the community and start a new life, either temporarily or permanently. However tragic the circumstances that brought them to this point, many now do in fact have a chance at a better life.

The two young women I had a chance to talk to did not plan to return to New Orleans. They were going to try to make it here and once established hoped to bring more of their family members here. (I don't think either were married or had kids but I didn't ask either.)

The point is, that the disaster in New Orleans was and is a tragedy. But it does not mean there has to be a tragic future for all the victims of it.

I guess there are two worlds in this country, reality and fantasy world.

And there are those who can see nothing but the negative and there are those who look for the best possible outcome for all situations.

Justice Department goes out hunting for some/any way to blame guess who for the Katrina mess....well, the environmentalists, of course.

Clarion Ledger

Talk about incompetence:

September 17, 2005
FEMA, Slow to the Rescue, Now Stumbles in Aid Effort
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and ERIC LIPTON
BATON ROUGE, La., Sept 16 - Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina cut its devastating path, FEMA - the same federal agency that botched the rescue mission - is faltering in its effort to aid hundreds of thousands of storm victims, local officials, evacuees and top federal relief officials say. The federal aid hot line mentioned by President Bush in his address to the nation on Thursday cannot handle the flood of calls, leaving thousands of people unable to get through for help, day after day.

Federal officials are often unable to give local governments permission to proceed with fundamental tasks to get their towns running again. Most areas in the region still lack federal help centers, the one-stop shopping sites for residents in need of aid for their homes or families. Officials say that they are uncertain whether they can meet the president's goal of providing housing for 100,000 people who are now in shelters by the middle of next month.

While the agency has redoubled its efforts to get food, money and temporary shelter to the storm victims, serious problems remain throughout the affected region. Visits to several towns in Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as interviews with dozens of local and federal officials, provide a portrait of a fragmented and dysfunctional system.

The top two federal relief officials in charge of the effort both acknowledged in interviews late this week that they too have listened to the frustrated voices of local officials and citizens alike, and find their complaints valid.

"It is not happening fast enough, effective enough and it is not impacting the people at the bottom as quickly as it should," said Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, standing along the waterfront in New Orleans on Friday. "I have heard frustrations."

Admiral Allen, who was put in charge of the federal government's emergency operations along the Gulf Coast a week ago Friday, said entrenched bureaucracies hampered attempts to accelerate his top priorities: aid to residents, providing housing and clearing the vast swaths of wreckage from homes and trees damaged by the storm.

Working from Baton Rouge, William Lokey, FEMA's coordinating officer for the three-state region, echoed Admiral Allen's criticisms. "It is not going as fast as I would like, and yes, I do not have the resources I would like," he said on Thursday. "I am going as fast as I can to get them."

The problems clearly stem largely from the sheer enormousness of the disaster. But the lack of investment in emergency preparedness, poor coordination across a sprawling federal bureaucracy and a massive failure of local communication systems - all of which hurt the initial rescue efforts - are now also impeding the recovery.

FEMA, Mr. Lokey said, is an agency with limited federal money that must quickly expand its operational capacity only after a major disaster strikes. It has not won a large chunk of the new federal homeland security dollars, that have been dedicated to terrorism.

"If the billions of dollars that have been spent on chemical, nuclear and biological response, if some of that had come over here, we would have done better," he said. "But after 9/11, the public priority was terrorism."

The Katrina troubles underscore serious questions about the federal government's ability to handle similar disasters in the future.

"I don't think federal bureaucracy can handle the next disaster," said Toye Taylor, the president of Washington Parish, one of the hardest hit areas in Louisiana, who met with Mr. Bush this week.

"I expressed to the president that it would take a new partnership between the military and private sector," Mr. Taylor said. "Because there will be another one and I don't think the federal government is going to be able to help." Indeed, Mr. Bush said in his address to the nation from New Orleans on Thursday night that the military would play a new role in federal disaster relief.

The struggle to return parishes, towns and individual lives to some semblance of working order is visible throughout the region.

The president of St. Tammany Parish, Kevin Davis, is praying that it does not rain in his sweltering corner of Louisiana, because three weeks after the storm severely damaged his drainage system, FEMA has yet to give him approval to even start the repairs.

Up north in the poor parish of Washington, residents are sleeping in houses that were chopped in half by oak trees. The promised wave of government inspectors have not shown up to assist them.

James McGehee, the mayor of Bogalusa, a small Louisiana city near the Mississippi border, could barely contain his rage in an interview on Thursday.

"Today is 18 days past the storm, and FEMA has not even put a location for people who are displaced," he said. "They are walking around the damn streets. The system's broke."

Some critical aspects of the federal response to the storm are moving significantly faster than expected. The Army Corps of Engineers, which initially predicted that pumping out New Orleans would take up to three months, now predicts that the enormous task will be wrapped up by Oct. 2.

FEMA and its partners have delivered as of Friday morning more than 177 million tons of ice, 63 million liters of water and 26 million ready-to-eat meals throughout Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

More than $1.25 billion of federal disaster aid has also been distributed directly to many of the just over one million victims in the three-state region that registered for aid. Just in Louisiana, another $100 million in disaster food stamp benefits have been distributed.

"The commitment is an aggressive one," said Ann Silverberg Williamson, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Social Services, which is working with federal officials on several of these efforts.

In many affected areas, Americans continue to live in conditions unthinkable in most of the industrialized world, like the rural unincorporated areas in Washington and surrounding parishes, where the uprooted trunks of 20-ton trees have left dinosaur foot-size crevices in roads, and homes are still surrounded by a maze of twisting branches.

In Tangipahoa Parish, the parish president, Gordon Burgess, said he called FEMA officials daily to ask when they would arrive to assist residents with housing. Mr. Burgess said the federal workers say, " 'I'll get to you next week,' and then the next week and then you'd never hear from them again."

Indeed, almost every local leader interviewed - even those sympathetic to FEMA's plight - complained that they could not get FEMA to approve their contracts with workers, tell them when they would be opening help centers or answer basic questions. Often, they say, the FEMA worker on the ground, eager to help, has to go up the chain of command before taking action, which can take days.

"People on the ground are wonderful but the problem is getting the 'yes,' " said Mr. Davis of St Tammany parish, who has a contractor ready to clean his drainage system of the same trees FEMA allowed him to take off his streets, and to repair parts of the sewage system.

"I'm saying, 'Wait a minute, you pick up debris on the road but not the drainage?' If it rains, I've got real problems. I just need someone to tell me make the public bids and I could rebuild our parish in no time."

Perhaps the greatest frustration expressed by state and local officials - as well as by some federal officials - is the pace of finding or setting up temporary housing to move people out of emergency shelters and the slow opening of specialized recovery centers.

The Bush administration had set Oct. 1 as the deadline for moving those 100,000 people in shelters out of these often overcrowded and uncomfortable facilities and into temporary homes. The goal is to install tens of thousands of mobile homes and trailers, so people are not only out of the shelters, but they can move back closer to their homes. But progress on the installation of these new homes is off to a slow start.

"That is not going to happen," Mr. Lokey said Thursday afternoon of the Oct. 1 goal. "It is just too big." By Thursday night, in his speech to the nation, Mr. Bush had revised the deadline to Oct. 15, which Mr. Lokey said would still be hard to meet.

Tempers are already flaring among many of the thousands of people displaced by the storm who have had a hard time getting through to FEMA on the telephone or finding centers where FEMA representatives can answer questions about various federal assistance programs. Only 8 of 40 promised sites have opened in Louisiana.

"I still do not have a firm date as to when they will put a site," said Mr. Taylor of Washington parish. Baton Rouge, which has received a huge influx of evacuees, did not get such a center until this Thursday. Evacuees and local officials also complain that FEMA's request for them to register on line or via phone is unrealistic, given that as of Wednesday 310,000 households in Louisiana were still without telephone service and 283,231 were still awaiting power, or nearly 30 percent of the state's households. And the phone lines are almost always jammed anyway. As such, those with cars drive miles to operating help centers in other counties, where the lines are sprawling. Confusion is rampant.

"FEMA don't communicate with you very well," said Tommy Nelson, as he cleaned out the home of his girlfriend's mother in Waveland, a Gulf Coast town now more of a memory than a place. "You got to learn things second-hand. We just happened to be in a post office line and we just happened to learn you got to register down here for a trailer. I was talking to a FEMA representative about trailers yesterday and she didn't have a clue." The best way to reach FEMA is about 2 a.m., various evacuees said.

Meanwhile, truck drivers carrying tens of thousands of tons of ice and driving water have been sent on a cross-country tour, from city to city, only then to be told to wait for up to a week in a parking lot in Memphis, with their engines, as well as their tabs as drivers running.

"It is a sad experience," said Frank Link,, who was sent from to Missouri, then to Mississippi, then to Alabama and then to Tennessee - all with the same load of 41,580 pounds of ice that he had loaded in Chicago. "I went down there to help. All I did was get the runaround from FEMA."

But the disaster has also exposed several serious flaws that hampered FEMA's response. Communication systems, especially in rural areas, were crippled and have still failed to return, making it impossible for residents as well as local officials to reach the federal government.

Further, many of the residents affected had few resources and limited power to begin with. Isolation proved to be a liability. Those who had leaders with access to television cameras and a little political influence have begun to make out better than those without.

Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, assailed the federal government on national television the first days after the storm. Today he boasts that FEMA has moved "at lightning speed" to get his parish housing, paychecks for workers, and carries in his tote bag a personal letter from the president.

Admiral Allen, whose jurisdiction spreads across the Gulf Coast region, said he recognized that he had a brief window in which to turn things around for the hundreds of thousands of affected residents. "There should be a low tolerance for a learning curve on my part," Admiral Allen said. "It is not weeks. It is days. And if it is not days, it is hours."

http://www.klfy.com/Global/story.asp?S=3856582

"St. Bernard Parish has been dealt an especially hard blow by Hurricane Katrina.

Five days after the storm hit, flood waters forced an oil tank at a refinery off its foundation.

That spilled 820 gallons of crude oil into a neighborhood that was already submerged in twelve feet of water. "

Looks like a little bit more than zero to me.



Let's see them, then.



You don't think the almost complete absence of help for several days after the storm and the poor to nonexistent coordination is lackadaisical.



Let's see them, then. Show me how the feds were on the job. If it had been a terrorist attack and they didn't show up for days, or didn't fill out the necessary paperwork to allow New Mexico's national guard to help, or didn't even know where people were taking shelter, would you still say they did a great job? Have a look at the National Response Plan on the DHS site and tell me that they followed it. The point about local and state governments being first responders is moot in cases where they have indicated that they don't have the resources to respond. In such cases, what do you suggest the rest of the country do, stand back and watch them flounder?

After 911, we were told that the new DHS make us better at responding to catastrophe. Clearly, that's not the case.

"When the doctors asked why they couldn't help these critically ill people lying there unattended," Mr. Creswell recalled, "the FEMA people kept saying, 'You're not federalized.' "
September 17, 2005

Going (Down) by the Book
By JOHN TIERNEY

NEW ORLEANS

When President Bush spoke from Jackson Square on Thursday night, across the Mississippi River a few men sitting next to a trailer watched him on a television powered by a generator. They listened respectfully, but they were not exactly dazzled.

"Intentions and results are two different things," said one of them, Wayne Savoy, who knows something about results from his work at this makeshift command post of the Acadian Ambulance company. During the flood, it was a lonely island of competence.

The city's communications system was wiped out, but Acadian dispatchers kept working, thanks to a backup power system and a portable antenna rushed here the day after the hurricane. As stranded patients wondered what had happened to the city's medics and ambulances, Acadian medics filled in at the Superdome and evacuated thousands from six hospitals.

While Louisiana officials debated how to accept outside help, Acadian was directing rescues by helicopters from the military and other states. When the Federal Emergency Management Agency's paperwork slowed the evacuation of patients from the airport, Acadian's frustrated medics waited with empty helicopters.

The company sent in outside doctors and nurses to the airport, where patients were dying and medical care was in short supply. FEMA rejected the help because the doctors and nurses weren't certified members of a National Disaster Medical Team.

President Bush has promised to find out what went wrong and make sure the government has a better plan for the next disaster. But plans can do only so much. As the Acadian workers demonstrated, coping with a disaster requires the ability to improvise and break the rules - talents notably absent in most bureaucrats.

After Sept. 11, federal officials vowed to make sure that cities' communications systems would survive a disaster. Improving them was a priority of the new Homeland Security Department. But when a predictable disaster struck New Orleans, city officials couldn't talk to their rescue workers on the street and had a hard time even calling leaders in the state capital.

No government planners expected the only working radio network in New Orleans to be run by a private company, but Acadian had the flexibility to take on the job. It also had better equipment than city agencies - its chief executive, Richard Zuschlag, is a fanatic for state-of-the-art gear and backup systems.

When the phone system failed, his medics were ready with satellite phones. When the hurricane winds knocked over both of the company's antennas in the New Orleans area, Acadian quickly located a mobile antenna and communications trailer owned by Iberia, a rural parish west of New Orleans. The sheriff, fortunately, didn't ask FEMA for permission to move it to Acadian's command post, across the river from the city.

Thanks to their network, Acadian's dispatchers quickly learned before anyone else how bad the flooding was throughout New Orleans. Mr. Zuschlag tried alerting city and state officials, as Gardiner Harris reported in The New York Times. But the city and state communications systems were so bad that nothing got done.

So Acadian directed the evacuation of hospitals and dispatched help to local officials. Its medics improvised as they went along. Trees and light posts were cut down so helicopters could land. Medics commandeered three tractor-trailers to move patients out of a hospital. They packed newborns in cardboard boxes to squeeze more of them into the helicopter.

But when they tried to speed the evacuation of hundreds of patients at the New Orleans airport, the medics were no match for FEMA officials determined to get clearance from their supervisors in Baton Rouge.

"At one point I had 10 helicopters on the ground waiting to go," said Marc Creswell, an Acadian medic, "but FEMA kept stonewalling us with paperwork. Meanwhile, every 30 or 40 minutes someone was dying."

Mr. Creswell said he had ferried in more than a dozen doctors and nurses to help at the airport, but they weren't allowed to work because they weren't certified. This was explained with a line Mr. Bush might keep in mind as he contemplates expanding Washington's role in the next disaster.

"When the doctors asked why they couldn't help these critically ill people lying there unattended," Mr. Creswell recalled, "the FEMA people kept saying, 'You're not federalized.' "

E-mail: [email protected]

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company