mysteryman wrote:I dont recall any of you demanding the resignation of the FEMA head when they allowed 1000 people to die in Chicago in 1995.
Why didnt you?
I read that and said to myself: "that's a rather odd statement, even considering the source" Surely anyone could figure out the differences between a hurricane and a heatwave, and why the response to the former would be radically different from the response to the latter (one example: during the Chicago heatwave, there was no looting).
A quick Google search, however, resolved any questions I might have had regarding the comparison. It seems that the conservative blogosphere has been raising the 1995 heatwave as a means of deflecting criticism from Bush and redirecting it (per usual) to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The comparisons may have actually started as early as Sept. 2, when Slate.com published a
"history lesson" on the Chicago heatwave. That got picked up by
conservative bloggers who couldn't help but notice that Clinton was in office during the 1995 event.
One blogger asked: "Hillary Clinton has called for a 'Katrina Commission.' How come she never called for a commission to investigate why at least 1,000 Americans died in a 1995 heat wave when her husband was president?" That post was linked to the
National Review Online site on Sept. 9. From that point on, we can say that this particular meme was "released to the general public."
Mysteryman posted his version of it on Sept. 12.
A few things to know about the 1995 heatwave: the Cook County medical examiner attributed to the heat wave both the deaths that were directly linked to heat-related causes and also those "excess deaths" that were above the average. There were
739 "excess deaths" during the heatwave, and so that's the number that people usually cite when they try to measure the number of people killed by the killer heatwave. Is that the correct figure? Well, we don't know. It might have been more, it might have been less. There was, at the time, no standard for determining what constituted a "heat-related death," so we're not even sure if the definition that the medical examiner used was correct.
What is free from doubt, however, is that the mayor of Chicago and state officials did not ask for federal relief or request a state of emergency or national disaster area designation from the federal government. FEMA had no involvement in the 1995 heatwave.