Here you go, Carrera

Even Bush admitted the response to the hurricane was below standard. There are all sorts of negative implications involved here. What has really shocked people is the sight of impoverished refugees in a country as rich as the U.S. The hurricane has brought out the inequality and gap between rich and poor.
But I do think if such a hurricane struck over here, the response wouldn't have been any better.
It was a big mistake when Bush refused to be landed in New Orleans. In his place I would have gone in and taken the risk of a hostile reception. I'd have taken the criticism like a man and promised to get things moving fast. Otherwise you can't survive in office.

Wurm said:

You posited in another thread that the gov't couldn't have/didn't see the monster storm coming. You were wrong, as I said. If this isn't evidence of criminal negligence, I don't know what is.

By Ed Naha

In July, 2004, Hurricane Pam brought sustained winds of 120 mph, 20 inches of rain in parts of southeast Louisiana and a storm surge that topped levees in the New Orleans area. A million people were evacuated. The Big Easy was under water. 500,000-600,000 buildings were destroyed. 50,000 citizens were dead. The reason you've never heard of this disaster is that Pam was an artificial hurricane created during a ten-day exercise held at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge.

More than 50 federal, state and local agencies were part of the drill, spear-headed by Louisiana State University's Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes and FEMA. Also in attendance, an unnamed White House staffer.

So much for king of compassion Bush, Homeland Security's professional mourner-in-chief Michael Chertoff and FEMA's Mike "Brownie" Brown insisting nobody saw this kind of storm coming and Chertoff dead-panning that Katrina was "breathtaking in its surprise."

Now that Katrina has come and gone, a very frustrated Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of LSU's Hurricane Center is making the rounds on the airwaves, telling anyone who will listen: The Federal government didn't take the exercise seriously.

"What bothers me the most is all the people who've died unnecessarily," he says.

"Those FEMA officials wouldn't listen to me. Those Corps of Engineers people giggled in the back of the room when we tried to present information."

One recommendation from the exercise: Tent cities should be prepared for the homeless. "Their response to me was: 'Americans don't live in tents,' and that was about it," he recalls.

In an interview on MSNBC, Saturday, van Heerden said he personally gave a CD version of the study as well as the report itself to the White House representative. In fact, every participant got that package. Presumably, they are all sitting at the bottom of Chertoff's or Brown's sock drawer.

So as Chertoff and Brown do a duet on Sergeant Shultz's famous "I know nussink, NUSSINK," aria, here's the actual press release that FEMA put out on July 23, 2004, release number: R6-04-093, entitled "HURRICANE PAM EXERCISE CONCLUDES."

"BATON ROUGE, La. -- Hurricane Pam brought sustained winds of 120 mph, up to 20 inches of rain in parts of southeast Louisiana and storm surge that topped levees in the New Orleans area. More than one million residents evacuated and Hurricane Pam destroyed 500,000-600,000 buildings. Emergency officials from 50 parish, state, federal and volunteer organizations faced this scenario during a five-day exercise held this week at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge.

The exercise used realistic weather and damage information developed by the National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the LSU Hurricane Center and other state and federal agencies to help officials develop joint response plans for a catastrophic hurricane in Louisiana.

'We made great progress this week in our preparedness efforts,' said Ron Castleman, FEMA Regional Director. 'Disaster response teams developed action plans in critical areas such as search and rescue, medical care, sheltering, temporary housing, school restoration and debris management. These plans are essential for quick response to a hurricane but will also help in other emergencies.'

'Hurricane planning in Louisiana will continue,' said Colonel Michael L. Brown, Deputy Director for Emergency Preparedness, Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. 'Over the next 60 days, we will polish the action plans developed during the Hurricane Pam exercise. We have also determined where to focus our efforts in the future.'

A partial summary of action plans follows:

Debris

* The debris team estimates that a storm like Hurricane Pam would result in 30 million cubic yards of debris and 237,000 cubic yards of household hazardous waste

* The team identified existing landfills that have available storage space and locations of hazardous waste disposal sites. The debris plan also outlines priorities for debris removal.

Sheltering

* The interagency shelter group identified the need for about 1,000 shelters for a catastrophic disaster. The shelter team identified 784 shelters and has developed plans for locating the remaining shelters.

* In a storm like Hurricane Pam, shelters will likely remain open for 100 days. The group identified the resources necessary to support 1000 shelters for 100 days. They planned for staff augmentation and how to include shelterees in shelter management.

* State resources are adequate to operate shelters for the first 3-5 days. The group planned how federal and other resources will replenish supplies at shelters.

Search and Rescue

* The search and rescue group developed a transportation plan for getting stranded residents out of harm's way.

* Planners identified lead and support agencies for search and rescue and established a command structure that will include four areas with up to 800 searchers.

Medical

* The medical care group reviewed and enhanced existing plans. The group determined how to implement existing immunization plans rapidly for tetanus, influenza and other diseases likely to be present after a major hurricane.

* The group determined how to re-supply hospitals around the state that would face heavy patient loads.

* The medical action plan includes patient movement details and identifies probable locations, such as state university campuses, where individuals would receive care and then be transported to hospitals, special needs shelters or regular shelters as necessary.

Schools

* The school group determined that 13,000-15,000 teachers and administrators would be needed to support affected schools. The group acknowledged the role of local school boards and developed strategies for use by local school officials.

* Staffing strategies include the use of displaced teachers, retired teachers, emergency certified teachers and others eligible for emergency certification. Displaced paraprofessionals would also be recruited to fill essential school positions.

* The group discussed facility options for increasing student population at undamaged schools and prioritizing repairs to buildings with less damage to assist in normalizing operations

* The school plan also calls for placement or development of temporary schools near temporary housing communities built for hurricane victims.

The Hurricane Pam scenario focused on 13 parishes in southeast Louisiana-Ascension, Assumption, Jefferson, Lafourche, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, St. John, St. Tammany Tangipahoa, Terrebonne. Representatives from outside the primary parishes participated since hurricane evacuation and sheltering involve communities throughout the state and into Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas.

On March 1, 2003, FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. FEMA's continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates proactive mitigation activities, trains first responders, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration."

Interestingly enough, the FEMA press release left out a few details included in the original report. Such as:

* there would be flooding, seventeen to twenty feet in some areas, that would leave 300,000 people trapped in New Orleans, many of whom would not have private transportation for evacuation.

* Levee failure was a possibility.

* 50,000 American citizens would die.

* thousands who survived the flood would perish from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued.

* it would take two months to pump the city of New Orleans dry.

* after draining, New Orleans would be covered with a toxic sludge.

* Pam would be considered the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

Gee, I wonder why FEMA didn't overly publicize those facts? And, I wonder why, a little over a year following this exercise, nobody at FEMA or Homeland Security seems to, uhhh, remember it?

Well, part of the problem is that George W. Bush has been trying to whittle down FEMA into a blunted tool of Homeland Security.

For years an independent agency, FEMA floundered under the first Bush Administration but roared back to life under Clinton and the leadership of James Lee Witt. However, when Bush II was anointed, it quickly went down the toilet. Bush appointed Joe Allbaugh, a Texas crony with no experience to head the agency.

He was the kind of humanitarian who, during the Iowa floods of '01, asked: "How many times will the American taxpayer have to step in and take care of this flooding, which could be easily prevented by building levees and dikes?"

He also opined, in a May 15, 2001, appearance before a Senate appropriations subcommittee that FEMA was going to change. "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management," he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."

Mother Theresa he wasn't.

Allbaugh's stint at the agency would be a quickie. In December 2002, he announced he would leave his post. While political observers expected Allbaugh to join the Bush re-election effort, instead he set about creating a string of lobbying firms, including New Bridge Strategies, which helps U.S. companies cash in on reconstruction contracts in Iraq. Man, ain't war great?

Current FEMA honcho Michael Brown is also a piece of work. His credentials for taking the reigns? He was Allbaugh's college room-mate. The Republican lawyer had been canned from his last job at the International Arabian Horse Association, according to the Boston Herald, "after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures."

Perfect, huh?

Under Brown's leadership, FEMA has slowly crumbled. The once independent FEMA was folded into the flat-footed behemoth called the Department of Homeland Security. (I always want to goose-step when I see that title.)

In June of 2004, Pleasant Mann, a 16-year FEMA veteran who heads the agency's government employee union, wrote members of Congress to warn of the agency's decay. "Over the past three-and-one-half years, FEMA has gone from being a model agency to being one where funds are being misspent, employee morale has fallen, and our nation's emergency management capability is being eroded. Our professional staff are being systematically replaced by politically connected novices and contractors."

Mitigation, the measures taken to minimize the damage caused by natural disasters beforehand, was FEMA's biggest ace-in-the-hole during the Clinton years. Under Bush, most of FEMA's mitigation programs have either been eliminated or slashed forcing communities to now compete for pre-disaster dollars. More of the financial burden is being lobbed at state and local governments, already under stress because of Bush's countless unfunded mandates. In Bush's eyes, FEMA is considered expendable because it's not designed to fight terrorism.

William Waugh, a disaster expert at Georgia State University who has written training programs for FEMA, warns that the rise of a "consultant culture" has not served emergency programs well. "It's part of a widespread problem of government contracting out capabilities," he says. "Pretty soon governments can't do things because they've given up those capabilities to the private sector. And private corporations don't necessarily maintain those capabilities."

Adds Pleasant Mann: "Before, we reported straight to the White House, and now we've got this elaborate bureaucracy on top of us, and a lot of this bureaucracy doesn't think what we're doing is that important, because terrorism isn't our number one. The biggest frustration here is that we at FEMA have responded to disasters like Oklahoma City and 9/11, and here are people who haven't responded to a kitchen fire telling us how to deal with terrorism. You know, there were a lot of people who fell down on the job on 9/11, but it wasn't us."

In February 2004, the American Federation of Government Employees surveyed 84 FEMA personnel about the state of things at the agency. The results showed morale sinking like the Titanic: 80 percent said FEMA has become "a poorer agency" under DHS, and 60 percent said that, given the chance to move to another agency and make the same salary, they'd jump.

Alarm bells should have been going off but, predictably, weren't in Bush's terrorism-land. Former FEMA director James Lee Witt testified to Congress in March 2004: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded.

"I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared. In fact one state emergency manager told me, 'It is like a stake has been driven into the heart of emergency management."

And, now, Katrina has come and gone and all our Federal representatives are "shocked" at the Keystone Cops response. How could this have happened? (Well, for one thing Bush wants FEMA to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation.)

It couldn't have been the Federal government's fault! Enter Karl Rove. In Karl's view? It was Louisiana Governor Blanco's fault. She didn't alert the government in time! (Uh, actually, she did, but no matter.) Nobody in D.C. knew how serious this was! (Uh, it was a category 5 hurricane, weasel. That's the hurricane equivalent of "number one with a bullet."😉 Um, it was that uppity Mayor of New Orleans's fault. You know, the guy who dissed the Feds? Who told them to get off their asses? Ray Nig, uh, Nagin? Yeah, let's pin it on him...the only Mayor in New Orleans history to order a mandatory evacuation.

Just watch. In the next week or so, Rove's smear campaign will try to affix the blame on everyone but Bush's dog, Barney. Hmmmm. That just might work. Nah. Never mind.

So, the Bush Administration will do what it does best. Deny any culpability. Let's see how well they spin the poor, the savaged, the dead.

Last week, on a nationally televised flood telethon, rapper Kanye West caused hundreds of NBC staffers to stain themselves when he went off script, went into a highly justified emotional rant and concluded with "George Bush doesn't care about black people!"

I disagree, Mr. West.

George Bush doesn't care about ANY people...who aren't super-rich.

Carrera said:

Even Bush admitted the response to the hurricane was below standard. There are all sorts of negative implications involved here. What has really shocked people is the sight of impoverished refugees in a country as rich as the U.S. The hurricane has brought out the inequality and gap between rich and poor.
But I do think if such a hurricane struck over here, the response wouldn't have been any better.
It was a big mistake when Bush refused to be landed in New Orleans. In his place I would have gone in and taken the risk of a hostile reception. I'd have taken the criticism like a man and promised to get things moving fast. Otherwise you can't survive in office.

Sadly the mishandling of the situation continues. My parents forwarded this story to me and asked that it be shared. It talks about the fire fighters and rescue workers from other states sent to help in Louisiana who have been assigned to such vital life saving roles as handing out flyers......

sltrib.comci 3004197Open ↗

Wurm said:

You posited in another thread that the gov't couldn't have/didn't see the monster storm coming. You were wrong, as I said. If this isn't evidence of criminal negligence, I don't know what is.

Ok, I would probaby be the last person to defend crapera but you never cease to amaze me. If a tornado came from nowhere and took out an entire city, you would still blame it on Bush..We here know that..You, lim, booger, peabody ARE clones....

The bottom line is..... start with the Mayor, then to the Governor...

What if, the Mayor had made arrangements to bus all those people out who had no means of transportation???

Who directed those citizens to the dome?

Who DIDN'T make arrangements to get those people out? If the President knew about the possible catastrophic outcome form a cat 4 then surely the MAYOR should have known....RIGHT?

Ok, I would probaby be the last person to defend crapera 🙂 🙂
"DIDN'T....MAYOR........RIGHT? transportation???"
There you go again, getting into a flap 🙂 Tranquildad, hombre. 🙂
Seriously, though. What I said is that I think we in the U.K. would have been in a similar crisis had Katrina hit us. I recall how badly they handled a simple snowfall in my own area with cars sliding all over the road and chaos.
I do think George Bush owed it to the people of New Orleans, though, to get into that city and look the people in the eye. It may have been very dangerous to do so, his security people may have had a fit but it would have maybe saved his political skin.
I guess Bush is now in the same boat as Putin after Kursk and Beslan. In fact, the people of Belslan simply blame Putin for the entire situation related to the school crisis.

but you never cease to amaze me. If a tornado came from nowhere and took out an entire city, you would still blame it on Bush..We here know that..You, lim, booger, peabody ARE clones....

The bottom line is..... start with the Mayor, then to the Governor...

What if, the Mayor had made arrangements to bus all those people out who had no means of transportation???

Who directed those citizens to the dome?

Who DIDN'T make arrangements to get those people out? If the President knew about the possible catastrophic outcome form a cat 4 then surely the MAYOR should have known....RIGHT?

zapper said:

Ok, I would probaby be the last person to defend crapera but you never cease to amaze me. If a tornado came from nowhere and took out an entire city, you would still blame it on Bush..We here know that..You, lim, booger, peabody ARE clones....

The bottom line is..... start with the Mayor, then to the Governor...

What if, the Mayor had made arrangements to bus all those people out who had no means of transportation???

Who directed those citizens to the dome?

Who DIDN'T make arrangements to get those people out? If the President knew about the possible catastrophic outcome form a cat 4 then surely the MAYOR should have known....RIGHT?

Carrera said:

Even Bush admitted the response to the hurricane was below standard.

Wow! "Below standard"! A scathing self-critique? More like the understatement of the decade.

Quoted post said:

It was a big mistake when Bush refused to be landed in New Orleans.

The FIRST big mistake the [censored] committed was continuing his fund-raising campaign for 2 days after the storm had passed. How convenient that you didn't mention that.

Meanwhile, people were suffering and dying. After all that time had gone by, THEN he didn't land in N.O.

as for [censored] chaney (pronounced "ChEEney"😉 he was not on deck as he was, undaunted, purchasing real estate during this time...

wanting for another understatement?

"mistakes were made"

Wurm said:

Wow! "Below standard"! A scathing self-critique? More like the understatement of the decade.

The FIRST big mistake the [censored] committed was continuing his fund-raising campaign for 2 days after the storm had passed. How convenient that you didn't mention that.

Meanwhile, people were suffering and dying. After all that time had gone by, THEN he didn't land in N.O.

...and KindaSleazy Rice was shopping for expensive shoes in NYC. When someone in the store had the temerity to ask her why she wasn't doing more to help the Katrina victims, she had the person ejected from the store.

One conclusion I have drawn is that, although Bush is a poor president, he's not quite as "bad" as I originally imagined. That is, I no longer rate him along with Stalin (as I once did).
The way Stalin handled such situations as Bush now finds himself in was to pass the buck to someone else. Let me give you an example:
When Germany attacked Russia in the second world war, it was down to Stalin's incompetance. Firstly Stalin refused to believe [censored] would ever invade, despite repeated warnings by his security staff that invasion was imminent. So, when [censored] attacked he managed to wipe out a vast proportion of the Red Army.
So, what did Stalin do? Basically he found people to blame, held show trials where people were forced to confess to treason or secret pacts with [censored]. Ironically, Stalin came out of his incompetance as a hero of the Soviet Union and great war leader. Even Churchill was fooled by it.
Bush I think is going to face up to his mistakes and I doubt he'll be running any show trials or finding heads to role in his place of his own.
I think that now I'm beginning to see Bush as a friend of mine in L.A. described him a long time ago. He's a man of average ability who had a lot of help to get where he is today. He's been pushed in certain directions by the likes of Blair (who seems to get off the hook these days) and Rumsfeld or other neo-cons). It's odd how he ever made it to office.
I just think Bush has been very bad for the U.S. but not specifically evil like Stalin was. I don't see him being around much longer so maybe the democrats will salvage the situation.

Wurm said:

Wow! "Below standard"! A scathing self-critique? More like the understatement of the decade.

The FIRST big mistake the [censored] committed was continuing his fund-raising campaign for 2 days after the storm had passed. How convenient that you didn't mention that.

Meanwhile, people were suffering and dying. After all that time had gone by, THEN he didn't land in N.O.

Carrera said:

One conclusion I have drawn is that, although Bush is a poor president, he's not quite as "bad" as I originally imagined.

I think you should reserve judgment until the real story about 9/11 comes out, which will probably be after these thugs are out of office.

Try Michael C. Ruppert's "Crossing the Rubicon". I doubt you'll need much more evidence than that.

Wurm said:

I think you should reserve judgment until the real story about 9/11 comes out, which will probably be after these thugs are out of office.

Try Michael C. Ruppert's "Crossing the Rubicon". I doubt you'll need much more evidence than that.

I have not been posting in the box because I have not really had the strength to pose arguments like I used to, but I do log in everyday and read what you guys are posting because it calms me down and frankly makes me laugh sometimes. I am only posting this because I want you all to understand something about what is going on. Bush sucks, no doubt, but your anger really needs to be directed towards Blanco (Our pathetic Gov) and Nagen the City's pathetic mayor. In Bush's defense he declared the area a disaster area before the storm hit. The government can not go into a disaster area until the individual states witin that area ask the government for federal assistance and in order for the states to request federal assistance the government has to declare the area a disaster zone. Miss. and Ala. 's govs both immediately applied for and received federal aid immediately following landfal, Louisiana did not because Blanco DID NOT file for federal aid until Tuesday almost 24 full hours after landfall. Bush is not without blame but Blanco is sliding under and avoiding her share of the blame for the delayed response.

I urge all of you to NOT believe everything you are reading/seeing in the media. They are just not getting it right and unfortunately the rest of the country and the world for that matter is being shown things in such a way that is just not true. 🙁

The fact is, the news reports ARE true. Blame Bush for not showing up for days, and not ordering immediate action even though lip service is cheap: declaring Disaster Area status but nothing got done. Very similar to his No Child Left Behind fiasco, in which no or very little funding was given to implement the program.

The governor & major had to go back into the area after it was devastated. I would imagine doing that after they had evacuated, and getting a skeleton crew in the state/local gov't together wasn't easy, and may have taken some time - 1 day doesn't strike me as negligent in that scenario. Bush on the other hand was in other states, comparing himself and the Iraq conflict in propaganda speeches to FDR and WWII, in order to shore up his pathetic poll numbers.

:puke:

"Federal Government Attempts to Block Press Access To New Orleans
In New Orleans the federal government is being accused of trying to censor the images coming out of the devastated city. The Reuters news agency is reporting that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is now rejecting requests by journalists to accompany rescue boats searching for storm victims. In addition journalists are being asked not to photograph any dead bodies in the region. Critics of FEMA's request compared the policy to the Pentagon's policy that bars reporters from taking photographs of the caskets of soldiers killed in Iraq. NBC News Anchor Brian Williams is reporting that police officers have been seen aiming their weapons at members of the media. And a blogger named Bob Brigham has written a widely read dispatch that the National Guard in Jefferson County are under orders to turn all journalists away. Brigham writes QUIOTE "Bush is now censoring all reporting from New Orleans Louisiana. The First Amendment sank with the city."

Fascism at it's finest, eh?

democracynow.orgarticle.plOpen ↗

jaguar75 said:

I have not been posting in the box because I have not really had the strength to pose arguments like I used to, but I do log in everyday and read what you guys are posting because it calms me down and frankly makes me laugh sometimes. I am only posting this because I want you all to understand something about what is going on. Bush sucks, no doubt, but your anger really needs to be directed towards Blanco (Our pathetic Gov) and Nagen the City's pathetic mayor. In Bush's defense he declared the area a disaster area before the storm hit. The government can not go into a disaster area until the individual states witin that area ask the government for federal assistance and in order for the states to request federal assistance the government has to declare the area a disaster zone. Miss. and Ala. 's govs both immediately applied for and received federal aid immediately following landfal, Louisiana did not because Blanco DID NOT file for federal aid until Tuesday almost 24 full hours after landfall. Bush is not without blame but Blanco is sliding under and avoiding her share of the blame for the delayed response.

I urge all of you to NOT believe everything you are reading/seeing in the media. They are just not getting it right and unfortunately the rest of the country and the world for that matter is being shown things in such a way that is just not true. 🙁

Well, all the [censored] and media spin aside, I am glad to know that you are alive and kicking.
I hope you came through with out too much damage.

I'm sure you know more than all of us being from the area. But we're all glad to see you're O.K. and still posting. I'm glad that, if nothing else, we all seem to be cheering you up since New Orleans has been a real tragedy all around.

jaguar75 said:

I have not been posting in the box because I have not really had the strength to pose arguments like I used to, but I do log in everyday and read what you guys are posting because it calms me down and frankly makes me laugh sometimes. I am only posting this because I want you all to understand something about what is going on. Bush sucks, no doubt, but your anger really needs to be directed towards Blanco (Our pathetic Gov) and Nagen the City's pathetic mayor. In Bush's defense he declared the area a disaster area before the storm hit. The government can not go into a disaster area until the individual states witin that area ask the government for federal assistance and in order for the states to request federal assistance the government has to declare the area a disaster zone. Miss. and Ala. 's govs both immediately applied for and received federal aid immediately following landfal, Louisiana did not because Blanco DID NOT file for federal aid until Tuesday almost 24 full hours after landfall. Bush is not without blame but Blanco is sliding under and avoiding her share of the blame for the delayed response.

I urge all of you to NOT believe everything you are reading/seeing in the media. They are just not getting it right and unfortunately the rest of the country and the world for that matter is being shown things in such a way that is just not true. 🙁

I was watching ABC last night and, as you know, ABC don't exactly support George Bush. But they did report that George Bush had been informed Katrina could be a devastating hurricane and Bush had asked whether his agencies could cope with such a crisis. Bush was informed that, yes, they were ready.
It may well be the case Bush was duped.
I do blame Bush for Iraq and his flawed foreign policy, disregard for human rights, lack of common sense and what have you. But I don't think Bush is purely to blame for New Orleans.
The BBC just showed footage of government agencies walking around New Orleans taking souvenir snaps. The BBC reporters were outraged that nobody was removing the dead bodies or showing such respect to those who lost their lives. That's hardly Bush's fault, on this occasion.
It seems to me there are a whole bunch of agencies who are at fault or not doing their job.
But it cheered me up to hear about the woman from Arizona who came down to New Orleans to try and resuce all those stranded pets. So far she saved about 50 and some owners have been reunited with their pooches.

Wurm said:

The fact is, the news reports ARE true. Blame Bush for not showing up for days, and not ordering immediate action even though lip service is cheap: declaring Disaster Area status but nothing got done. Very similar to his No Child Left Behind fiasco, in which no or very little funding was given to implement the program.

The governor & major had to go back into the area after it was devastated. I would imagine doing that after they had evacuated, and getting a skeleton crew in the state/local gov't together wasn't easy, and may have taken some time - 1 day doesn't strike me as negligent in that scenario. Bush on the other hand was in other states, comparing himself and the Iraq conflict in propaganda speeches to FDR and WWII, in order to shore up his pathetic poll numbers.

:puke:

"Federal Government Attempts to Block Press Access To New Orleans
In New Orleans the federal government is being accused of trying to censor the images coming out of the devastated city. The Reuters news agency is reporting that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is now rejecting requests by journalists to accompany rescue boats searching for storm victims. In addition journalists are being asked not to photograph any dead bodies in the region. Critics of FEMA's request compared the policy to the Pentagon's policy that bars reporters from taking photographs of the caskets of soldiers killed in Iraq. NBC News Anchor Brian Williams is reporting that police officers have been seen aiming their weapons at members of the media. And a blogger named Bob Brigham has written a widely read dispatch that the National Guard in Jefferson County are under orders to turn all journalists away. Brigham writes QUIOTE "Bush is now censoring all reporting from New Orleans Louisiana. The First Amendment sank with the city."

Fascism at it's finest, eh?

democracynow.orgarticle.plOpen ↗

It's also amazing how history repeats itself always. Has anyone ever seen Quo Vadis? The film is based on real history.
What you had was a bad Roman emperor who was even worse than Bush since Nero murdered his own mother and bumped off all his enemies. He even poisoned Claudius with mushrooms.
At any rate, there was a huge fire in Rome that destroyed 3 quarters of the city and created thousands of refugees. It would have been maybe worse than hurricane Katrina.
So, the masses blamed Nero and concluded he had actually set fire to the city himself. There were conspiracy theories.
The only way Nero could get himself off the hook was by blaming the Christians. He spread the view that they had set fire to Rome in order to speed up the second coming so he had them rounded up and thrown to lions for public entertainment.

Carrera said:

It may well be the case Bush was duped.

...and it also may well be that Elvis is still living in Graceland...

Your excuses for Bush never cease, do they Carrera?

I think I made it clear from day one I think George W was the wrong alternative to John Kerry. He may well turn out to be America's version of Michael Gorbachev and end up bankrupting his country through bad policy. There are all kinds of things you can throw at him such as prisoner abuse in Guantanamo, tax breaks for the rich, growth in poverty e.t.c.
But all I've been trying to get across is that Katrina is a slightly different issue. It was a huge natural disaster and it was handled badly on all sides. And I also want to stress I think such a catastrophe would have caught us off guard in the U.K. too.
I'm not making excuses for Bush as, like I said, I think he was the wrong choice of president. The only thing, though, is I did alter my former view that Bush is evil in the same way as [censored] or Stalin. I don't think he's any more evil than Blair who seemed to yearn for the Iraq war even more than Bush, yet nothing is said. I see Bush as being in well over his head and easily misled by neo extremists.

Wurm said:

...and it also may well be that Elvis is still living in Graceland...

Your excuses for Bush never cease, do they Carrera?

Carrera said:

I think I made it clear from day one I think George W was the wrong alternative to John Kerry. He may well turn out to be America's version of Michael Gorbachev and end up bankrupting his country through bad policy. There are all kinds of things you can throw at him such as prisoner abuse in Guantanamo, tax breaks for the rich, growth in poverty e.t.c.
But all I've been trying to get across is that Katrina is a slightly different issue. It was a huge natural disaster and it was handled badly on all sides. And I also want to stress I think such a catastrophe would have caught us off guard in the U.K. too.
I'm not making excuses for Bush as, like I said, I think he was the wrong choice of president. The only thing, though, is I did alter my former view that Bush is evil in the same way as [censored] or Stalin. I don't think he's any more evil than Blair who seemed to yearn for the Iraq war even more than Bush, yet nothing is said. I see Bush as being in well over his head and easily misled by neo extremists.

If you think Poor George is simply being "misled" by the Neo-Cons, then you are quite naive. You should look up his history as governor of TX. Molly Ivins has a good book or two on that. You might be disgusted by what you learn.

No, GWB (and Karl "Goebbels" Rove) is planning and executing every move he makes of his own volition, albeit with a little help from his friends.

Wurm said:

You posited in another thread that the gov't couldn't have/didn't see the monster storm coming. You were wrong, as I said. If this isn't evidence of criminal negligence, I don't know what is.

By Ed Naha

In July, 2004, Hurricane Pam brought sustained winds of 120 mph, 20 inches of rain in parts of southeast Louisiana and a storm surge that topped levees in the New Orleans area. A million people were evacuated. The Big Easy was under water. 500,000-600,000 buildings were destroyed. 50,000 citizens were dead. The reason you've never heard of this disaster is that Pam was an artificial hurricane created during a ten-day exercise held at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge.

More than 50 federal, state and local agencies were part of the drill, spear-headed by Louisiana State University's Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes and FEMA. Also in attendance, an unnamed White House staffer.

So much for king of compassion Bush, Homeland Security's professional mourner-in-chief Michael Chertoff and FEMA's Mike "Brownie" Brown insisting nobody saw this kind of storm coming and Chertoff dead-panning that Katrina was "breathtaking in its surprise."

Now that Katrina has come and gone, a very frustrated Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of LSU's Hurricane Center is making the rounds on the airwaves, telling anyone who will listen: The Federal government didn't take the exercise seriously.

"What bothers me the most is all the people who've died unnecessarily," he says.

"Those FEMA officials wouldn't listen to me. Those Corps of Engineers people giggled in the back of the room when we tried to present information."

One recommendation from the exercise: Tent cities should be prepared for the homeless. "Their response to me was: 'Americans don't live in tents,' and that was about it," he recalls.

In an interview on MSNBC, Saturday, van Heerden said he personally gave a CD version of the study as well as the report itself to the White House representative. In fact, every participant got that package. Presumably, they are all sitting at the bottom of Chertoff's or Brown's sock drawer.

So as Chertoff and Brown do a duet on Sergeant Shultz's famous "I know nussink, NUSSINK," aria, here's the actual press release that FEMA put out on July 23, 2004, release number: R6-04-093, entitled "HURRICANE PAM EXERCISE CONCLUDES."

"BATON ROUGE, La. -- Hurricane Pam brought sustained winds of 120 mph, up to 20 inches of rain in parts of southeast Louisiana and storm surge that topped levees in the New Orleans area. More than one million residents evacuated and Hurricane Pam destroyed 500,000-600,000 buildings. Emergency officials from 50 parish, state, federal and volunteer organizations faced this scenario during a five-day exercise held this week at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge.

The exercise used realistic weather and damage information developed by the National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the LSU Hurricane Center and other state and federal agencies to help officials develop joint response plans for a catastrophic hurricane in Louisiana.

'We made great progress this week in our preparedness efforts,' said Ron Castleman, FEMA Regional Director. 'Disaster response teams developed action plans in critical areas such as search and rescue, medical care, sheltering, temporary housing, school restoration and debris management. These plans are essential for quick response to a hurricane but will also help in other emergencies.'

'Hurricane planning in Louisiana will continue,' said Colonel Michael L. Brown, Deputy Director for Emergency Preparedness, Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. 'Over the next 60 days, we will polish the action plans developed during the Hurricane Pam exercise. We have also determined where to focus our efforts in the future.'

A partial summary of action plans follows:

Debris

* The debris team estimates that a storm like Hurricane Pam would result in 30 million cubic yards of debris and 237,000 cubic yards of household hazardous waste

* The team identified existing landfills that have available storage space and locations of hazardous waste disposal sites. The debris plan also outlines priorities for debris removal.

Sheltering

* The interagency shelter group identified the need for about 1,000 shelters for a catastrophic disaster. The shelter team identified 784 shelters and has developed plans for locating the remaining shelters.

* In a storm like Hurricane Pam, shelters will likely remain open for 100 days. The group identified the resources necessary to support 1000 shelters for 100 days. They planned for staff augmentation and how to include shelterees in shelter management.

* State resources are adequate to operate shelters for the first 3-5 days. The group planned how federal and other resources will replenish supplies at shelters.

Search and Rescue

* The search and rescue group developed a transportation plan for getting stranded residents out of harm's way.

* Planners identified lead and support agencies for search and rescue and established a command structure that will include four areas with up to 800 searchers.

Medical

* The medical care group reviewed and enhanced existing plans. The group determined how to implement existing immunization plans rapidly for tetanus, influenza and other diseases likely to be present after a major hurricane.

* The group determined how to re-supply hospitals around the state that would face heavy patient loads.

* The medical action plan includes patient movement details and identifies probable locations, such as state university campuses, where individuals would receive care and then be transported to hospitals, special needs shelters or regular shelters as necessary.

Schools

* The school group determined that 13,000-15,000 teachers and administrators would be needed to support affected schools. The group acknowledged the role of local school boards and developed strategies for use by local school officials.

* Staffing strategies include the use of displaced teachers, retired teachers, emergency certified teachers and others eligible for emergency certification. Displaced paraprofessionals would also be recruited to fill essential school positions.

* The group discussed facility options for increasing student population at undamaged schools and prioritizing repairs to buildings with less damage to assist in normalizing operations

* The school plan also calls for placement or development of temporary schools near temporary housing communities built for hurricane victims.

The Hurricane Pam scenario focused on 13 parishes in southeast Louisiana-Ascension, Assumption, Jefferson, Lafourche, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, St. John, St. Tammany Tangipahoa, Terrebonne. Representatives from outside the primary parishes participated since hurricane evacuation and sheltering involve communities throughout the state and into Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas.

On March 1, 2003, FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. FEMA's continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates proactive mitigation activities, trains first responders, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration."

Interestingly enough, the FEMA press release left out a few details included in the original report. Such as:

* there would be flooding, seventeen to twenty feet in some areas, that would leave 300,000 people trapped in New Orleans, many of whom would not have private transportation for evacuation.

* Levee failure was a possibility.

* 50,000 American citizens would die.

* thousands who survived the flood would perish from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued.

* it would take two months to pump the city of New Orleans dry.

* after draining, New Orleans would be covered with a toxic sludge.

* Pam would be considered the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

Gee, I wonder why FEMA didn't overly publicize those facts? And, I wonder why, a little over a year following this exercise, nobody at FEMA or Homeland Security seems to, uhhh, remember it?

Well, part of the problem is that George W. Bush has been trying to whittle down FEMA into a blunted tool of Homeland Security.

For years an independent agency, FEMA floundered under the first Bush Administration but roared back to life under Clinton and the leadership of James Lee Witt. However, when Bush II was anointed, it quickly went down the toilet. Bush appointed Joe Allbaugh, a Texas crony with no experience to head the agency.

He was the kind of humanitarian who, during the Iowa floods of '01, asked: "How many times will the American taxpayer have to step in and take care of this flooding, which could be easily prevented by building levees and dikes?"

He also opined, in a May 15, 2001, appearance before a Senate appropriations subcommittee that FEMA was going to change. "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management," he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."

Mother Theresa he wasn't.

Allbaugh's stint at the agency would be a quickie. In December 2002, he announced he would leave his post. While political observers expected Allbaugh to join the Bush re-election effort, instead he set about creating a string of lobbying firms, including New Bridge Strategies, which helps U.S. companies cash in on reconstruction contracts in Iraq. Man, ain't war great?

Current FEMA honcho Michael Brown is also a piece of work. His credentials for taking the reigns? He was Allbaugh's college room-mate. The Republican lawyer had been canned from his last job at the International Arabian Horse Association, according to the Boston Herald, "after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures."

Perfect, huh?

Under Brown's leadership, FEMA has slowly crumbled. The once independent FEMA was folded into the flat-footed behemoth called the Department of Homeland Security. (I always want to goose-step when I see that title.)

In June of 2004, Pleasant Mann, a 16-year FEMA veteran who heads the agency's government employee union, wrote members of Congress to warn of the agency's decay. "Over the past three-and-one-half years, FEMA has gone from being a model agency to being one where funds are being misspent, employee morale has fallen, and our nation's emergency management capability is being eroded. Our professional staff are being systematically replaced by politically connected novices and contractors."

Mitigation, the measures taken to minimize the damage caused by natural disasters beforehand, was FEMA's biggest ace-in-the-hole during the Clinton years. Under Bush, most of FEMA's mitigation programs have either been eliminated or slashed forcing communities to now compete for pre-disaster dollars. More of the financial burden is being lobbed at state and local governments, already under stress because of Bush's countless unfunded mandates. In Bush's eyes, FEMA is considered expendable because it's not designed to fight terrorism.

William Waugh, a disaster expert at Georgia State University who has written training programs for FEMA, warns that the rise of a "consultant culture" has not served emergency programs well. "It's part of a widespread problem of government contracting out capabilities," he says. "Pretty soon governments can't do things because they've given up those capabilities to the private sector. And private corporations don't necessarily maintain those capabilities."

Adds Pleasant Mann: "Before, we reported straight to the White House, and now we've got this elaborate bureaucracy on top of us, and a lot of this bureaucracy doesn't think what we're doing is that important, because terrorism isn't our number one. The biggest frustration here is that we at FEMA have responded to disasters like Oklahoma City and 9/11, and here are people who haven't responded to a kitchen fire telling us how to deal with terrorism. You know, there were a lot of people who fell down on the job on 9/11, but it wasn't us."

In February 2004, the American Federation of Government Employees surveyed 84 FEMA personnel about the state of things at the agency. The results showed morale sinking like the Titanic: 80 percent said FEMA has become "a poorer agency" under DHS, and 60 percent said that, given the chance to move to another agency and make the same salary, they'd jump.

Alarm bells should have been going off but, predictably, weren't in Bush's terrorism-land. Former FEMA director James Lee Witt testified to Congress in March 2004: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded.

"I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared. In fact one state emergency manager told me, 'It is like a stake has been driven into the heart of emergency management."

And, now, Katrina has come and gone and all our Federal representatives are "shocked" at the Keystone Cops response. How could this have happened? (Well, for one thing Bush wants FEMA to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation.)

It couldn't have been the Federal government's fault! Enter Karl Rove. In Karl's view? It was Louisiana Governor Blanco's fault. She didn't alert the government in time! (Uh, actually, she did, but no matter.) Nobody in D.C. knew how serious this was! (Uh, it was a category 5 hurricane, weasel. That's the hurricane equivalent of "number one with a bullet."😉 Um, it was that uppity Mayor of New Orleans's fault. You know, the guy who dissed the Feds? Who told them to get off their asses? Ray Nig, uh, Nagin? Yeah, let's pin it on him...the only Mayor in New Orleans history to order a mandatory evacuation.

Just watch. In the next week or so, Rove's smear campaign will try to affix the blame on everyone but Bush's dog, Barney. Hmmmm. That just might work. Nah. Never mind.

So, the Bush Administration will do what it does best. Deny any culpability. Let's see how well they spin the poor, the savaged, the dead.

Last week, on a nationally televised flood telethon, rapper Kanye West caused hundreds of NBC staffers to stain themselves when he went off script, went into a highly justified emotional rant and concluded with "George Bush doesn't care about black people!"

I disagree, Mr. West.

George Bush doesn't care about ANY people...who aren't super-rich.

I'll agree. It has been all over the news that the levees were built to sustain a category 3 hurricane, not a 5.