Most people I've talked to seem satisfied that what happened in New Orleans was either the fault of President Bush, or the Federal government, or the state government, or city and local government. Already, most of what I hear is one or the other -- New Orleans' demise was due to the failure of our institutions, by various measures. If that's the verdict -- that what happened will be pinned squarely on institutional bureaucracy of one branch or another, without looking at ourselves -- then we're in deep trouble.
Donklephant link coming up broken.
My apologies if you can't view the post yet. I tried to post it sooner, but it wouldn't seem to take. All it showed up as is an error.
Check back in at 9 am CST and you can read it.
Again, my apologies...
best,
-jpg
Justin, if it's showing an error, that will probably require active intervention. And 9am CST is quitea few hours away.
Cicero, might you consider a cross-post and fill in the Extended Entry on this one, so folks aren't disappointed? You have an awfully good point here.
Sum it up in two words: stupidity and corruption. Those two human characteristics explain the problem. Government at all levels is naturally corrupt, and government tends to multiply the stupidity of the humans involved by an order of magnitude. The mayor and the governor were certainly both stupid and corrupt in their actions. But the people who were genuinely stupid were the people who elected those two idiots.
Amongst the finger pointing and the blame naming I hope the uncommon heroism of the New Orleans Police Officers who STAYED at their posts when the rest of the City Government was heading for safety is not forgotten/
I put together something on it I called
Gideon's Band
I fixed the link this morning.
Readers -- I'm getting on a plane for New York in an hour. I hope to get back this essay and your comments sometime, but it might be a while.
From Donklephant: "Ask yourself if you are prepared for a disaster right now. Do you have enough water or calories stored in your basement to survive a calamity? Most of us don’t. We figure that we’ll get rescued by one of those institutions we feel so bitter towards."
After a discussion on WoC about bugout packets, and the spare provisions we were all blithely naming, I heard a comment about 'these people are better off' because they're under the care of the government (and maybe that's the answer to why our communities aren't stronger). I had to realize that when I casually comment that I always have a week's supply on hand, there are people who can't afford a week's supply for present necessities, much less to plan in advance.
I've been a tourist in NO, and I saw very few unsightly poor people in the French Quarter. I think maybe we're seeing a lot of them now. We're also seeing people band together and help them, maybe that's the beginning of a more truly cohesive community.
Yall, this was a breakdown of City and State government. Make no mistake about it. I can say this as a native New Orleanian, currently housing my exiled family here at my place in Baton Rouge. Before Katrina, the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana were simply making sure the wheels didn't come off. No doubt, I am not certain better equiped municipalities and States could have faired much better in the face of such a disaster. The breakdown could have easily happened in LA, NYC, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston. You name it.
This exposed the weakness of our local government on a national scale. Hopefully the horrors of the failure will prompt the betterment of these entities when the rebuilding begins. New Orleans is/was an American Jewel, important in its port access. It has so much potential. The slate has been wiped clean.
It breaks my heart to see my city lie in ruins. People and places I grew up around are now shattered. Please pray and contribute what you can.
To reiterate my point, the breakdown lies at the feet of City and State leadership.
God Bless New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
"To reiterate my point, the breakdown lies at the feet of City and State leadership."
And Federal failure to fund flood control projects and levee repair is irrelevant. Empty hospital ships floating offshore and FEMA turning back trucks full of water do not matter either.
This comment actually reinforces the original posting. There is plenty of blame to go around and if we focus on loading all guilt in one direction we will never fix the problem.
Certainly there were massive failures at a State and Local level, but only a blind partisan could miss the failures at the Federal level. Even Bush himself admitted the response was unacceptable.
FEMA is broken and we need to fix disaster management at a Federal level before the next disaster occurs. Pointing all the fingers at state and local level just allows continued failure at the federal level.
Tom, Surely there are things that the Feds could have done better.
Plenty of blame to go around when the time comes. I am exhonerating no one. Sounds like a partisan, eh? Maybe I should have been more clear.
I'd LOVE to hear about water being turned back and unused hospital ships sitting in the Gulf. Where are your sources? moveon.org and dailykos don't count, Tom. The levee repair questions have been around FOR DECADES.
The crux of the matter is that there was a massive breakdown in local leadership exacerbated by the poor support infrastructure over decades of mismanagement by city and state officials.
Bataan cruises nearby unused, while kids and old people die of dehydration
From the Chicago Tribune
Walmart water trucks turned back quoting President of Jefferson Parish
from BayouBuzz
Nice link text! I appreciate being able to tell that the link goes to another site.
Thanks. Aaron is know for overblown and outrageous statements. I will wait for a verification of that accusation. Perhaps Wal Mart can confirm.
If FEMA was leaving the Bataan unused, then there should definitely be repercussions. Defintely. I am anxious to see the rebuilding of New Orleans and the after action report.
Really? Unwilling to take what, from who?
Back in the 70s, when Howard Beal yelled "I'm mad as hell" in Network, the country was enduring gas shortages, runaway inflation, high unemployment, and a malaise-ridden president who was telling us that we would have to learn to "lose our fear of communism."
There was not a single neoconservative in sight, yet everybody in the world hated us as much as ever. The Europeans made fun of our president and his hillbilly relatives, and the Ayatollah shoved the Tehran hostages in our face day after day after day, while we seemed powerless to do anything at all - except sit and take the kicks.
And all of the pre-Reagan resentment about taxes and Leviathan government was smoldering like a time bomb. Being a child in the 70s, I thought the entire world was one big festering mess of resentment with no future in sight.
I don't see anything like that today. After Katrina, the economy is standing stronger than anyone expected. High gas prices are a problem, but not because OPEC has us by the short hairs. And we have no shortages, because the Price Control Luddites of the 70s are out of power for good.
In all the things that still annoy us - bad schools, crime, the culture wars - people have something they didn't have in the 70s: a way to talk back and fight back.
David Brooks is looking to a past that no longer exists, when people expected benevolent government to dispense wealth and happiness. Along with forced busing, punitive taxation, and the liberal fad-of-the-week.
Tom #9,
Thanks for a comment that I can finally agree with.
There was a program to secure New Orleans against something like Katrina. It might have been ready by 2030, but was called the 'Coast 2050 Plan' - which tells you all you need to know. From the June 2003 issue of Civil Engineering Magazine; it's a great, very understandable article.
And of course, Tom misses the point of Cicero's post entirely. One wonders, Tom, did you even read it?
Sure I read it.
I thought the whole point of Cicero's post was that there were problems at all levels, from individual response to community level on up to city, state, and federal government and that the most effective response to the Katrina debacle would adress problems at all those levels, rather than focusing exclusively on whichever level fits a partisan viewpoint.
Emphasizing that all responsibility does not end at the state and local level would seem to reinforce that point.
Is there some other point to Cicero's article that you wanted to clarify for me?
Tom, only a blind partisan? Would you not agree that only a "blind partisan" would call the Bataan a "hospital ship" when it is not? Would you not agree that only a "blind partisan" would say that the Bataan is "unused" when in fact it is not unused, but according even to the article you link to underutilized. The Bataan is not a hospital ship but an amphibious assault ship that has a large medical suite. But falsely claiming it is a hospital ship certainly adds that extra zip which your partisan attacks need, doesn't it? And the Bataan is not unused, it sent medical personnel ashore last week and its helicopters have been flying in support of rescue operations since the day after Katrina's landfall more than a week ago.
Write me down as somebody who thinks there's a lot of blame to go around.
But while we're handing out blame I think we should reserve some for the media. We don't have a state-run television network or a state-run newspaper. As I've written before (and am getting an Instalanche on right now) we depend on private media as the principle means for the dissemination of public information.
The media did not get the message out. They could have done a much better job of informing the people on the danger of the situation and the need for the evacuation.
I'd go farther. We really should reflect on whether the 24/7 news media's hyping of hurricane news that generally doesn't pan out helped to create an environment in which people were more inclined to ignore the warnings. Sort of a "Boy Who Cried Wolf" except it's the villagers who get eaten rather than the boy (who gets a Pulitzer prize for his coverage of the wolf).
Robin,
If my intent was to mislead, would I have provided the link above? Agreed the Bataan is not a "hospital ship" but it does have about 600 beds which are apparently still empty, from the link
"But now the Bataan's hospital facilities, including six operating rooms and beds for 600 patients, are empty. A good share of its 1,200 sailors could also go ashore to help with the relief effort, but they haven't been asked. The Bataan has been in the stricken region the longest of any military unit, but federal authorities have yet to fully utilize the ship."
Would you argue that the Federal efforts were perfect and could in no way be improved? My point is that we should honestly look at failures at all levels, in order to fix them.
I stand by my comments above
"Certainly there were massive failures at a State and Local level, but only a blind partisan could miss the failures at the Federal level."
This link Governors Watch,Worry Over Katrina Fiasco is more in the spirit of the original posting.
Selections from the article "No strangers to bureaucratic bungling and turf wars, the nation's governors watched in horror as government agencies handled Hurricane Katrina with glaring incompetence — and now worry that the next disaster could deal their states the same ugly fate.
The fear is bipartisan. Republican and Democratic governors agree that the response to Katrina was deplorable, and many ordered reviews of their own state emergency strategies to root out problems they're witnessing in the Gulf Coast.
Their top priority: Avoid the bureaucratic red tape that tripped up state, local and federal authorities at every step of the Gulf Coast crisis. Thousands of lives may be at stake after the next natural disaster or terrorist strike."
While Democrats were a bit more likely to blame President Bush and Republicans tended to question the actions of Democratic leaders in Louisiana, the governors as a whole were far less partisan than politicians in Washington.
From top to bottom, all forms of government failed Katrina's victims, they said.
"I think it's unfair to blame President Bush here," said Richardson, a Democrat who is mulling a presidential bid in 2008. "What I would blame is the bureaucratic red tape throughout the system that is out of control with little credibility and way too turf-conscience. Rather than point fingers in blame, the state and the federal governments need to develop a new emergency system."
Why isn't one already in place? It's been nearly four years since the Sept. 11 attacks, which buoyed Bush in political terms and temporarily united both parties behind a promise to protect the nation from the next calamity. Together, Democrats and Republicans created the Homeland Security Department — an enormous, clumsy bureaucracy responsible for handling natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
"What is potentially harmful about this whole situation is that people lose faith in the fact that the government can be a protector," said Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat. "I'm hopeful that we can use this as an opportunity to demand more of government."
Taking a lesson from New Orleans, Sebelius ordered state emergency planners to identify residents of Kansas' major cities who would be unable to evacuate after a terrorist strike or natural disaster, whether due to a physical handicap or lack of transportation.
Republican Gov. Matt Blunt of Missouri said it's a good time to review how state and federal governments would coordinate emergency efforts in the wake of an earthquake along the New Madrid fault, a looming danger that draws little attention outside the region. Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, raised a rare partisan note, taking a soft jab at the Bush administration. "Some anguish could have been avoided and I think it's the job of the federal government to make sure this never happens again," he said.
Nobody got the job done. While Bush and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani showed true leadership four years ago, several governors said, Katrina's deadly winds produced no political heroes.
"However it was supposed to work, it didn't," Manchin said from West Virginia. "I don't know if it's a territorial thing, which we all deal with as governors; everybody hunkers down and protects their turf, and somebody has to cut through that for the people's sake."
"Clearly, nobody did that on Katrina," he said. "Nobody led."
___
Tom V., I think that anything that puts a fire under the state governors is a good thing. Should they have begun these sorts of inquiries 5 years ago? Sure. But I note that no governor has lost his or her seat for inadequate disaster planning. Perhaps if Gov. Blanco loses hers it may “encourage the others”.
And what the Kansas governor sees as a bad thing I see as a positive good. Bureaucracies are slow-moving, inefficient, and their costs tend to accelerate with time. These are intrinsic qualities not extrinsic. It's the nature of the beast. That limits the ability of government to “be a protector”. People actually may have to look after themselves for a day or two. It's good to be reminded of it.
It's a tragedy for those whom government at all levels has failed. We should either live up to the expectations that people have been given however unreasonable or people should be told clearly that they're on their own.
I don't understand, Tom. Are you saying that your misstatements were intentional partisan misstatements ... or that you make mistakes?
Which of the two would make you unfit for employment by FEMA, Tom?
Robin,
I am saying that I made a mistake in claiming that the Bataan was a "hospital ship" when in reality it is a ship with 600 hospital beds and 6 operating theatres, which is intended for amphibious assault support. The mistake was not intentional, although I am quite partisan and a hard-working Democrat (capital D).
As the article I excerpted above notes, partisan issues aside, the working relationship between the states and FEMA is dysfunctional and needs to be fixed before thousands of additional people die avoidable deaths.
Neither mistakes or partisanship would disqualify me for working for FEMA, as Brown's tenure as director proves.
I expect Brown to be replaced and FEMA to be re-structured in the near future, unless repealing the estate tax takes political priority. Bush's plan to investigate himself is unlikely to result in the fundamental change required Bush launches inquiry and puts himself in charge of it From the article "Mr Bush tried to distance himself from the blame game already in progress. "I'll lead an investigation of what went right and what went wrong," he insisted.
Even so, the President faces an uphill climb at best. Even before the hurricane struck, his approval ratings had slumped to under 45 per cent, the lowest of his presidency. New polls show that two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government, which he heads, was at fault, both before and after the disaster."
I realize that most of us have long wrotten off Tom Volckhausen as a partisan troll who comes here just to disrupt threads but there is one part of his screed that bears addressing:
Mikewas over at Redstate contacted Wal-Mart regarding the “Meet the Press” story from that FEMA supposedly turned away trucks containing water were turned away by FEMA:
Source:
http://www.redstate.org/story/2005/9/6/114926/3369
We might for a moment before assigning responsibility. Massive flooding started while Katrina was transiting New Orleans on Monday morning (link worth reading). It just took a long time for people (other than those fighting for their lives) to realize it. In the din of InfoTainment Grand-Spectacle-Style coverage, it's still not known to most Americans.
New Orleans had emergency plans for Categories 3-5 hurricane strikes and near misses. They were terribly inadequate, which in the event was irrelevant: they were not implemented.
Local and state officials knew it would take about 72 hours for Federal aid to arrive. It was factored into their plans.
Blame the Army Corps of Engineers, Congress, and Eisenhower to Bush 43 for the levees, or at least the part funded and controlled by the feds. After understanding how severe the problems actually are, and how no workable 50-year plan has yet been identified. (article cited in #16 above)
FEMA, Homeland Security, DoD, and evil BusHitler deserve a share of the blame for what's gone wrong once those 72 hours elapsed. The scope of the disaster was fully - 100% - anticipatable and anticipated, so telescope that to 48 hours after Tuesday. Not to worry, there's a lot of Federal bungling on display there.
But too much of what passes for Informed Comment is being spread by journalists and others who are guided, or blinded, by a Narrative and an Agenda. They are unaware of, or indifferent to, their own ignorance of the subjects they so authoritatively discuss.
Yes, Tom, you are convinced that FEMA is incompetent based on events that keep turning out to be myths.
And yet, as myth after myth is debunked, your opinon doesn't change. What does that tell us?
"I realize that most of us have long wrotten off Tom Volckhausen as a partisan troll who comes here just to disrupt threads but there is one part of his screed that bears addressing:"
Actually, I just enjoy discussion. Is that not what this site is about? Would WOC be better if it was just an echo room where everyone agreed? Are you less partisan than I am?
Is anyone who does not exhibit Bush Adoration Syndrome (BAS) a troll?
Not a marshal, but I tend to disagree with the characterization of Tom as a troll. Civility, not the strength or intensity of one's opinions, is usually one of the barometers in such instances. I say this as someone who disagrees with at least a substantial portion of what he's written post-Katrina.
You want to see a real troll and BDS afflictee that I inadvertently fed, look at the idiot who was spamming the comment threads a couple of nights ago.
SPQR,
I will turn the question around. Is the death of thousands of US citizens from drowning, dehydration, and failure of aging infrastructure acceptable to you? Given that individuals have responsibility also, do you see no possibility for improving government response at all levels, Federal included?
The failure of FEMA is no myth, as even the sainted Bush called their performance "unacceptable". To repost from #20 above (AP) "No strangers to bureaucratic bungling and turf wars, the nation's governors watched in horror as government agencies handled Hurricane Katrina with glaring incompetence — and now worry that the next disaster could deal their states the same ugly fate.
The fear is bipartisan. *Republican and Democratic governors agree that the response to Katrina was deplorable, and many ordered reviews of their own state emergency strategies to root out problems they're witnessing in the Gulf Coast.
Their top priority: Avoid the bureaucratic red tape that tripped up state, local and federal authorities at every step of the Gulf Coast crisis.* Thousands of lives may be at stake after the next natural disaster or terrorist strike."
If Meet The Press made an error certainly I will accept and adapt to the new information, but 600 empty beds on a ship offshore while people died onshore is no myth, as my link showed. 5 minutes with google will give you 20 stories of incompetent and inefficient FEMA actions.For example from military.com There is no question that the Homeland Security Department, which absorbed FEMA, was grossly inefficient. The absence of effective management in a federal agency is inexcusable and needs to be addressed.
From the Palm Beach Post"Start on Katrina relief by firing FEMA's Brown
Palm Beach Post Editorial
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Before he began working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown spent a decade enforcing rules for the International Arabian Horse Association. And people wonder why FEMA did so poorly last year in Florida and last week on the Gulf Coast. Along with the rebuilding of that region must come the rebuilding of FEMA, and that must begin with the firing of Michael Brown.
How incompetent is Mr. Brown? Last Thursday, he said FEMA hadn't known that people were stranded at the New Orleans convention center, even though CNN had had the story on the air Wednesday. We know Mr. Bush doesn't read newspapers, but can't someone watch TV every now and then? This, though, is what happens when you put an unqualified political appointee into an important job and keep him there.
Mr. Brown got to FEMA not because he knew anything about disaster relief. He was a friend of Joe Allbaugh, who with Karl Rove and Karen Hughes formed the troika that ran President Bush's 2000 campaign. Mr. Bush put Mr. Allbaugh, who also had no relevant experience, in charge of FEMA, and Mr. Allbaugh hired Mr. Brown as general counsel. In March 2003, Mr. Allbaugh formed a consulting company to help clients "evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq." President Bush then let Mr. Brown start running FEMA."
From Yahoo/AP "But as the enormity of the Gulf Coast damage gradually came into clearer focus, Brown did not help his case with a number of comments seen as insensitive or ill-advised. For example, he acknowledged last week that he didn't know there were some 20,000 evacuees enduring heinous conditions at the New Orleans convention center until a day after their difficulties had been widely reported in the news.
ABC's Ted Koppel was incredulous as he asked Brown, "Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio?"
Is having the FEMA director learn about 20,000 evacuees 24 hours after CNN and the rest of the US acceptable to you?
OK, I drop the discussion, because I am convinced that the Bush diehards believe they are perfect, all allegations of problems or failures are "myths", and no improvement is possible. The future will show what sticking to that "party line" brings.
I see a lot of blame and finger pointing in the threads at FEMA and the Feds. There is no doubt that there have been mistakes made and things could have been done better and that Brown is an overpaid a$$hat. But we are talking about a government bureacracy here and Brown is the political figure, the spokesman dangling in the breeze, the dumb guy in front of the TV cameras. The career professional bureaucrats are running the show with their playbooks which have been around for decades and get reviewed and updated after every major disaster.
Most of the blame and finger pointing concerns Lousiana. Has anyone considered or contrasted the Louisiana experience with what has taken place in Mississippi and Alabama? We took the direct hit. Hell most of the buildings in Lousiana ,while very wet, are still standing. Entire Cities and Towns in Mississippi and Alabama are gone!
I know most of you enlightened ones have disparaged us and our local goverments for decades. In Alabama we have a saying "Thank God for Mississippi!" With Mississippi around we are not dead last for every major important metric concerning quality of life. However our local boys and girls came off of the bench and put the ball into play and we are very proud of them.
The response and results to the disaster in Mississippi and Alabama has been far different than what we have seen in Lousiana. The difference is the response of the local and State Governments. While the Mayor of NO and Governor of Loisiana were dithering and holding their fingers in the air with their dust covered emergency plans still on the shelves, the Mayors of Biloxi, Mobile, Gulfport, Bayou la Batre, Gulf Shores, etc. and the Govenors of Alabama and Mississippi opened up their plans, ordered everyone to get the hell out, made sure the emergency shelters were provisioned and staffed and sent around fire, police, ambulances, sherriffs, dogcatchers, schoolbuses etc. to insure everyone in vulnerable flood prone areas were warned and evacuated. Baton Rouge is looking very good and competent as well, proving that not all of Louisiana is a basket case.
While the mayor of NO and the Governor of Louisiana were crying and blaming everyone but themselves and far god sakes arguing over power sharing, the Mayors and Governors in Mississippi and Alabama were rolling up their sleeves and taking care of business. We have been fairly happy with FEMA's response.
We and our cousins in Florida took four hurricanes last year and complained about the slowness of FEMA then but we have been satisfied with the results.
I was in the line of cars you saw last year evacuating up I-65 ahead of Ivan. We learned a lesson with Ivan. Our evacuation was begun sooner and more people bugged out as Katrina approached. Our post hurricane response was better and we were better prepared. So was FEMA. FEMA's response to Katrina was significantly swifter and larger than any of the four stikes we had last year and Ivan was a large and destructive storm.
My god people we have over 6.5 million Americans affected by this storm in an area of devastation the size of England! Of course their are going to be glitches and idiocies, we are talking about the Government here after all. I especially love the one about the 1000 trained firefighters and rescue personnel sitting in Atlanta taking FEMA sexual harrasment classes and training to distribute flyers with FEMA's hotline number in an area with no working phones or electricity. Lets put these guys to work doing what they are trained to do and hire 1000 of our fellow newly displaced citizens to pass out the flyers. They could use the job and can relate better to those who have lost their homes and livelihoods.
So what have we learned to date? It is real important to have competent people managing your emergency plans, to have a plan to begin with, to follow your plan, to train and run simulations of your plan, to listen to your experts when they tell you that there is a problem with your plan (hello NO 2004!), to issue timely evacuations, to insure that resources and staffing are available, to ditch the power sharing and blame game until after things have been sorted out, to listen to your engineers when they tell you your levee system is going to fail, and that living below sea level between a major river and lake in a hurricane prone area is not a good idea.
Tom, only you could see a situation where the Louisiana state government and New Orleans city government had completely lost track of 20,000 people and blame FEMA.
But Tom, you have ducked the basic question. Why is it that as your stories are shown to be myths, your opinion doesn't change? You keep claiming that we are "Bush diehards". What does that make you, Tom?
The answer is obvious to everyone. You do not actually have any interest in the reality of the events. Only in feeding your own Bush Derangement Syndrome and name calling of others who do not share your obsession.
Allen, not only are the local governments in Mississippi and Alabama more competent than Louisiana, but your populations are not as pathological as New Orleans'. Very few people in Mississippi and Alabama are sitting on their butts, unable to even organize the digging of latrines, whining about their lack of comforts. The people of Mississippi, Alabama, ( and a lot of Louisiana ) are picking themselves up and starting to clean up their communities.
Tom Volckhausen #27:
Quoting an earlier comment,
FWIW I don't write you off as a troll.
No.
Judging from tone and over-the-top language as much as content, I hope I'm less partisan. To me, a credible overview of the Federal response to Katrina is:
Is this really Bush Adoration Syndrome (BAS)?
To repeat, what sticks my craw is that many journalists are accompanying their gripping images with commentary that is steeped in ignorance--and that so many talking heads are blind or indifferent to their own lack of perspective. The Narrative and the Agenda rule.
Alas, this thread and my comment are far afield from Cicero's main point: the weakening of community that Katrina seems to have laid bare. And the ways in which neighbors and family are not replaceable by our modern substitutes, be they online discussions, iPods, wide-screen TVs, or IM buddies.
There has always been a tradeoff between City and Country, though the merits of each have changed drastically over the past hundred years, and again over the past decade, with the explosion in communication possibilities for most First-World citizens. In some respects, the contrast in stories between New Orleans and the Mississippi coast is about weaknesses in urban living coming to the foreground. Cities, and suburbs, offer the prospect of Anonymity in a way that towns do not. When the fabric frays, anonymity is an accellerant for antisocial behavior for some proportion of people. In that regard, New Orleans is qualitatively no different from any other American city.
AMAC,
Given that I "dropped the discussion" last night, as far as convincing anyone of FEMA's mistakes, I still want to add that I basically agree with your analysis.
As far as my opinion changing, certainly new information about Katrina has affected my opinions (with some of that info coming on WOC and Belmont). I would assign more responsibility to NO city government now than I did initially.
In particular, the failure to use transit and school buses to evacuate the carless population is unconscionable. My hope is that one positive result from Katrina will be a requirement that every major city has a transit-based evacuation plan to handle the logistics in advance, especially given the gridlock that auto-based evacuations tend to generate.
As an old fashioned liberal, I clearly would place more emphasis on government solutions, both in planning/prevention and in disaster response, than many on WOC. Community is important and irreplaceable, but barrier island protection, levee construction/maintenance, pumping station design/protection, emergency medical assistance and a host of other problems are best handled by government rather than ad-hoc community level.
Fixing the coordination of all levels of government is probably the biggest need coming out of Katrina. If another terrorist attack occurs in the US, are we willing to tolerate another response like Katrina's?
Hilary Clinton's suggestion of bipartisan commision to learn from Katrina could generate good results, or in the current political climate it could degenerate into finger-pointing and CYA.
Tom Volkhausen #34,
Thanks for your note. I agree with many of the points you raise in this comment.
From long-ago smalltown disaster planning, I can echo what many have said, at Instapundit and elsewhere. Disaster plans have to be clear and simple. The "Master Document" has to be short and widely distributed so that people will actually read it when the need abruptly arises. Regular, repeated practice of all parts of the protocol has to be a part of the plan. The plan has to assume failure of key components, particulary communication.
In some drills, the Referees would get together ahead of time and decide on "take-outs." Then, mid drill, we would "tap" the lead responders and say, "you've been disabled!" so that others would suddenly have to scramble. We'd reach into a vehicle and tape over the radio, "the battery just died." The cascade of "surprises" in the course of this disaster make me doubt that drills were undertaken with the necessary commitment.
Katrina should force each of us to wonder about our own preparedness, and prompt questions about our communities' planning efforts, how they are practiced, what the after-action debriefs look like. Tragically, the citizenry and its (our) agents failed to oversee Southern Louisiana governments' efforts. You're certainly right, many of our governments elsewhere have done no better. Perhaps this awful experience will be the prod for belated improvements.
Tom, I'm not a military logistician, but I have my doubts about your repeated invocation of "600 beds" on the Bataan as a criticism of Bush, FEMA, or whomever might be responsible.
What we have here is a massive triage situation. What will save more lives? Moving all the Bataan's doctors and nurses onshore with basic kits? Or flying the most severly wounded/sick in need of hospitalization back to the ship alone or in small groups, to suck up a disproportionate share of the medical resources?
I have a small amount of disaster medical training (from FEMA, no less), and we were taught to split people into 3 groups: those who don't need (immediate) help, those who are beyond help, and those you can help. Needing only basic CPR is enough to put someone into the "beyond help" catagory and have them written off in a disaster. Needing to fly back to a ship, receive extensive surgery in one of those operating theaters, and then occupy a hospital bed under 24-hour care is several steps beyond that.
As I said, I'm not really qualified to comment. But if I were in charge, those beds would stay empty (and people who need them would die) so that the medical staff could attend to the vastly greater numbers of people who need less, but still life-saving, care.
Hopefully, another beneficial outcome of the Katrina catastrophe will be a greater awareness of the actual structure and nature of our government and perhaps a nationwide discussion of the issue. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be what's emerging.
If I'm not mistaken it is beyond the power of the federal government to order city governments to do this.
Directly, yes. But since the Feds dole out huge handouts to state and local governments, they can easily say: "No money for you until we see your disaster plan."
I'm not endorsing that necessarily, but they can easily do it.
Maybe.
I'd have to go back and look at the enabling legislation for that funding.
Most mass transit funds are allocated in the context of 2 and 5 yr omnibus dept of transportation budgets and capital plans.
As a part of that, ONE consideration in transit planning has been the creation of emergency control centers that integrate transit with law enforcement, medical and fire fighting to deal with disasters. That got great impetus after the 93 attacks on the World Trade Center, enabled by digital radio technology, geographical information systems and other products.
12 years later, New Orleans had NONE of that in place despite receiving a fair amount of transit funding -- as I know from personal experience with them in the mid 90s.
Realize, tho, that transportation funding and planning is not primarily about disasters and that's where the funding flows through ... not FEMA.
Federal funding takes many forms, from education to trasportation to...disaster preparedness. I don't know what the current laws say about disaster planning, and I don't have an opinion on what they should say.
My point was just that Congress could make it happen if they really wanted to.
The hurricane was an Act of G*d. It takes a certain amount of hubris to lay blame, particularly since a number of the steps taken to protect New Orleans from floods exacerbated its vulnerability to hurricanes. As AMac said, its a "wicked" problem.
I disagree with a number of comparisons made with other cities or states. New Orleans is not like any other city; it was born particularly vulnerable to water, surrounded by river, swamp, lake and ocean. New Orleans needed to do far more than Biloxi or Mobile or Minneapolis.
Which is why it also strikes me as mistaken to expect too much from the federal government. First, federal emergency response is likely to be of the lowest common denominator variety and not deal sufficiently with the unique characteristics of New Orleans. Second, there appears to be a lot of people in this country ambivalent about whether New Orleans continues to exist. (And in New Orleans' defense, some of these people served in the Lousiana legislature). And since Louisiana already gets more federal dollars than 2/3rds of other states, I am not sure how much more generousity can be expected.
That said, the 2050 plan sounds good and should receive significant federal support on the condition that the parishes of Southern Louisiana place a moratorium on constructing on wetlands, including a moratorium on that airport New Orleans keeps wanting to build on the Lake.
Now that rescue operations have pretty much abated we can get down to the particulars where people are beginning to realize what needs to be accomplished.
Is mass transit evacuation in highly populated areas a viable solution? Who should be responsible for the logistics of crowd movement? These are two questions that arise out of the I want and failure to deliver scenario's that keep popping up in this thread and many others.
Where do cities mass transit structures go? In and around the city. Few go out with the exception of airports, bus stations and railways. Talk about school buses is useless. Why? Who is going to drive them? City school bus employees? Did the city make plans to evacuate employee families or is that left to the employee? The routes they take are neighborhood designed. The seats are for students from a multitude of families that go to and from local area schools. They are not meant to transport entire neighborhoods. Once it leaves the neighborhood where does it go? To the bus station, airport or railway? How many airplanes can you get into the airport at any given time? Where will they go once people are boarded? How many trains are available? Where will they go once filled? How many public buses are available? Where will they go once filled. The events of 9/11 and evacuation of city blocks doesn't compare to the massive destruction and displacement that has just been witnessed by this nation. What about taxi cabs could they be used? The same logistics for drivers and destinations apply. How many people in the city own cars? Cities such as Chicago and New York have inherent traffic problems but how many people who actually live and work in the city own cars? Chances are most do not and it isn't just the poor that don't own them. City life makes it difficult to own your own transportation. In fact most are penalized with parking fess and other expenses because they own cars.
Who comes first the city or my family? Easy choice if you ask me.
Although there is plenty of finger pointing concerning he didn't, she didn't, we didn't do, it seems to me no one is asking the most important questions of all? Few here realize the scope of such an operation concerning evacuating a city. The coordination and execution of such operations requires a controlled response of people on a massive scale. The items I've just mentioned are but the tip of the iceberg. Determinations still need to be made as to who / whom to evacuate first and why? Family safety is one of the few things high ranking government officials need not worry about. They already have plans for there families safety at tax payer expense. Supposedly this is so they can act and lead concerted efforts on behalf of populace they are sworn to protect and serve. I'm talking simple logistics here people and we haven't even touched the costs or mitigation factors that involved.
And where does this money they dole out come from?
Yeah! I just wanted to let you know how happy I am to see everyone get past the name calling and start talking about how to fix the next problem.... Now if only we had a position of authority to kick butts in gear...
Now that rescue operations have pretty much abated we can get down to the particulars where people are beginning to realize what needs to be accomplished.
Amen.
By focussing on infrasture issues though, we are focussing only on those catastrophees where there is time to evacuate before the infrasture is destroyed or damaged. I believe this is why New Orleans discussed an inner levy system (around the French Quarter and Central Business District) to protect economically vital areas of the city and give a place for people to evacuate to if there is not enough time to leave the city. Whether or not that was a good idea, it was too morbid to implement as public policy. Though what in fact occurred seems somewhat close to an unprepared version of this plan.
And then, of course, there is the problem of those not wanting to leave, good infrasture or not . . .