I read that the Louisianna chief of disaster planning has said that FEMA has yet to set up a command post, and that he hasn't even met anyone from FEMA yet.
That's the disgrace here, never mind the looters...
Lash wrote:We've never had a major city underwater before, coupled with the people who are being rescued trying to kill their rescuers.
Would you mind faxing over your plan for that?
Gimmie a minute...I need to print it. :wink:
(a dash of humor in such a serious time)
These people act under tremendous emotional distress,
they lost everything, they have no place to go, they're hungry,
thursty and at the end of their physical resources.
I don't know how I would react under those cicrumstances,
when I'm left for 3 days on the roof of my house, in 95 F heat and unbearable humidity, without any sight of a government
help. Yes, anarchy would come to my mind as well.
D'artagnan wrote:I read that the Louisianna chief of disaster planning has said that FEMA has yet to set up a command post, and that he hasn't even met anyone from FEMA yet.
That's the disgrace here, never mind the looters...
In light of that, and the report i just heard on NPR that FEMA claims to be spending a half billion dollars a day, one does wonder where the money went.
Quote:I notice journalists are there, asking questions of desperate people, getting them to say how bad off they are. Did they bring anything for the people, in whatever vehicle brought them there?
Journalists are not relief workers.
Why should they be?
CNN is airing a news conference with a FEMA director.
He's giving great lip service - nothing else. Very discouraging.
Biloxi, Ocean Springs, Pascagoula, Pass Christian, Jefferson Parish...the places where people are ACCEPTING help, food, water,...
D'art, perhaps you refer to this:
The CBC website wrote:New Orleans official criticizes FEMA
Last Updated Thu, 01 Sep 2005 14:22:27 EDT
CBC News
The head of New Orleans emergency measures office has criticized the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency for indaquate response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
Terry Ebbert says it's a national disgrace. He says FEMA has been in the city for three days, yet there is no command and control.
Ebbert says the U.S. can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims in Asia but can't bail out the city of New Orleans. He says the city has a mayor who has been pushing and asking but not getting supplies.
He says the evacuation is almost entirely a Louisiana operation. At the Superdome Wednesday morning, Ebbert said he hasn't seen "a single FEMA guy."
Source
It just dawned on me, slow-y that I am, that not only are people not getting water and medicines, a whole bunch of folks aren't getting self-medication drugs and alcohol and are fairly agitated about that too.
He might just be out of the loop. You know FEMAs there. I think they may have bypassed that guy and he's trashing them in the news.
A possibility.
Good grief. Osso makes a good point. Hadn't thought of that.
osso--
Good point.
Also, these are not flexible people and they are more inclined to anger than to cogitation.
This is the current
Associated Press report on the situation. I attempted to link the AP site directly, but had trouble with it, so i've linked the Guardian (UK) site, which is a more reliable link. The reports are identical, the Guardian taking the AP report in its entirety.
I saw a report where they were rescuing people from a roof and on it was written "diabetic!"
Noddy24 wrote:Also, these are not flexible people and they are more inclined to anger than to cogitation.
And what is the basis of this disgustingly elitist contention? Reveal to us the source of your wisdom.
Heart wrenching to read the reports and see the devastating
pictures.
On looting, that's a fairly predictable occurrence.
I'm no expert on the benefit of policing looting right away or letting it go, but letting it go made sense as a decision with all the people needing to be saved then and still needing to be saved now. But when the looting started to get towards the hospitals, geez louise, and, I gather, approach the superdome, the mayor demanded the police switch the goals of their efforts over to stopping looting -
I won't second guess the mayor on that, what a tough decision.
I don't get why guardsmen and women weren't in there faster - someone said they'd have no place to stay, but...
Moving along on my thoughts, there must be myriad power struggles going on within the dome and convention center areas.
Oh, and..
lot of people with diminishing packs of smokes..
I want to know what those f'n boneheads are even doing in New Orleans. Not like they didn't know this huge storm was coming. Wasn't there an evacuation?
People who are shooting at the military haven't lost their minds...they're obviously people with no minds to begin with. New Orleans wasn't exactly a low-crime area before this happened.
