Mayor Ray Nagin: "Get off your asses"

[Guynemer]

In early 2001, FEMA issued a report on the three most likely disaster scenarios to strike the US:

1. A terrorist attack on New York

2. A hurricane flooding New Orleans

3. An earthquake leveling San Francisco


Of those three things, #2 is the only one that we would have concrete advance warning of. We knew a couple days before landfall that Katrina was going to be big, Katrina was going to be strong, and Katrina might hit NO. We got the city mostly evacuated (thank heavens), but where was the rest of the planning?

--FEMA knew this was a relatively-likely disaster scenario

--FEMA knew that the NO levees would not endure a Cat4 or Cat5 hurricane

--FEMA knew that such a hurricane was bearing down on the NO area

--FEMA knew that despite the best efforts of local authorities, a large number of people were left behind

And FEMA did **** all about it!

What did FEMA not know?

--FEMA did not know that there were 15,000 refugees holed up in the NO Convention Center!


If this Administration is to have even a shred of credibility through 2008, people MUST be fired for this!

[Patroklos]

Patroklos, what did we say about impossible expectations? No wonder you're disappointed about Bush having failed to beam into NOLA--we don't have transporter technology yet.

But he should have, ALL BUSH'S FAULT AGAIN!!!

[Patroklos]

And FEMA did **** all about it!

Evacuate, feed, cloth, shelter, and help in hundreds of other ways 1 million people.

Bastards.

[Imran Siddiqui]

If this Administration is to have even a shred of credibility through 2008, people MUST be fired for this!

... starting with the head of FEMA. What a disgrace

[Edan]

Originally posted by Guynemer
In early 2001, FEMA issued a report on the three most likely disaster scenarios to strike the US:

1. A terrorist attack on New York

2. A hurricane flooding New Orleans

3. An earthquake leveling San Francisco


Of those three things, #2 is the only one that we would have concrete advance warning of. We knew a couple days before landfall that Katrina was going to be big, Katrina was going to be strong, and Katrina might hit NO. We got the city mostly evacuated (thank heavens), but where was the rest of the planning?

--FEMA knew this was a relatively-likely disaster scenario

--FEMA knew that the NO levees would not endure a Cat4 or Cat5 hurricane

--FEMA knew that such a hurricane was bearing down on the NO area

--FEMA knew that despite the best efforts of local authorities, a large number of people were left behind

And FEMA did **** all about it!

What did FEMA not know?

--FEMA did not know that there were 15,000 refugees holed up in the NO Convention Center!


If this Administration is to have even a shred of credibility through 2008, people MUST be fired for this!

And they even had an excercise simulating just such a catastrophe:

http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=13051

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.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

If this Administration is to have even a shred of credibility through 2008, people MUST be fired for this!

... starting with the head of FEMA. What a disgrace

Demanding the resign of a government agency CEO "to take his responsibility" is the normal spine reaction of critics, especially here in Sweden.

I'm not sure if I agree with that. How, exactly, are you taking your responsibilty by resigning after you've f*cked up, and letting SOMEONE ELSE clean up the mess YOU created? Taking your responsibility would be to stay and finish the job yourself, anything else is ESCAPING from responsibility.

[Guynemer]

Clearly we can't trust this idiot to do his job; the sooner he's out, the better.



Different issue: Do we have any pre-hurricane estimates of the number of homeless that lived in New Orleans?

[germanos]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie


Demanding the resign of a government agency CEO "to take his responsibility" is the normal spine reaction of critics, especially here in Sweden.

I'm not sure if I agree with that. How, exactly, are you taking your responsibilty by resigning after you've f*cked up, and letting SOMEONE ELSE clean up the mess YOU created? Taking your responsibility would be to stay and finish the job yourself, anything else is ESCAPING from responsibility.

Well, the idea is that the CEO is incompetent, and has no clue to clear up the mess he created. Hell, he probably doesn't even know that he created the mess.
The claim to responsability lies in the fact they should realize they are not fit for the job, and make way for somebody who is capable.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

FEMA's not the problem, though heads should roll there.

The problem is that FEMA is now a part of DHS, and DHS is the most f*cked up agency in the history of the US government.

[Drake Tungsten]

Maybe Nagin should have got off his ass and ordered the evacuation of New Orleans more than 24 hours before the storm hit. If he had, New Orleans might have been able to use its own resources to get its people to safety instead of waiting for the feds to solve all their problems after the fact.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050901/480/flpc21109012015

[PLATO]

Well, call me crazy, but I think 4 days for mobilizing the national guard (many of whom may have had their own storm damage and problems to deal with), mating them with their equipment, briefing them on their mission, and putting them on the ground in the center of a nearly inaccessable disaster area is not so bad.

It's not like you just snap your fingers and troops begin rolling.

What could have been done (with a couple of law changes i might add) is for elements of the rapid deployment forces to be on the ground within a day or two. (i.e. 82 airborne and 101st airborne).

Seems to me that the response has been fairly fast if you consider the reality of the situation...but maybe that is asking too much of some Polytubbies.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Maybe Nagin should have got off his ass and ordered the evacuation of New Orleans more than 24 hours before the storm hit.

What, do you think he's a god?

I don't think it is possible to tell if a hurricane is to hit an area more than 24 hours in advance with any accuracy at all.

[techumseh]

On our news tonight there was a fascinating story. The National Guard pushed past starving and desperate black citizens to rescue a member of the Spanish Parliament who was trapped while on vacation. As she and her husband were husltled out, he called this something that no one has been willing to say until now: "genocide".

[Theben]

Originally posted by techumseh
On our news tonight there was a fascinating story. The National Guard pushed past starving and desperate black citizens to rescue a member of the Spanish Parliament who was trapped while on vacation. As she and her husband were husltled out, he called this something that no one has been willing to say until now: "genocide".

I don't believe that, or that class distinctions were involved. It's not about class, race, or whatever else someone can come up with. No, it's a lot worse: simple incompetence, from Bush through Congress to FEMA.

Let's face it: a city was being evacuated, fer chrissakes. THAT was when the feds should've thought to themselves, "This is big. We need to prepare." SUNDAY, not ****ing Monday, or Tuesday, or later than that. They should've had Norfolk on alert and a hUGE army of engineers, aid workers, and police/guards called in from around the country and stationed well west of projected landfall, then sent in as the storm passed.

But they didn't. IMO, the entire congress and admin should be impreached. Better yet, drop them off in the middle of NO.

[GePap]

As Mayor, Nagin is probably going to get the most blame locally. He is dealing with something far worse than 9/11 in terms of how widespread the collapse of all civil order was. IN NYC all the devastation was located in a few acres, as opposed to having 80% of the City go under.

As for a few of the notions:

An extra 24 hours would have done very little extra in terms of getting people out, since I fail to see any major US city actually having the money on hand to bus out 100,000 poor people, including sick and elderly folks. No municipality has that kind of funds and vehicles lying around. So tens of thousands were going to be stuck in that City whatever happened.

From what one reads, FEMA has been cut and cut, and the Corps of Engineers has also been deeply underfunded for years. But this is part of a more widespread problem where this country's entire infrastructure is being underfunded- you see that in the electric grid, you see it everywhere-there is simply no political will to spend the necessary money to keep our infrastructure up- that is smoething that simply can;t be left to the private secotr, yet the anti-government mantra rules, so heavens not, lets not spend the cash.

Bush has been very cavalier, and the Federal government has been slow. The slow evactuation of hospitals is absurd, and the deep confusion is worse. The biggest problem to me seems to be total chaos at the top in terms of coordinating what resources were at hand. The slowness of more resources coming in is sad, but the poor handling of the resources at hand obviously made things worse.