Hurricane Katrina Devastates The Gulf Coast.

[TexasEagle]

Sunday was before the storm hit so Bush was offering federal aid and assistance before the storm hit. FEMA teams were in place and ready to go. Coast Guard was on scene the next day among others. Seems like they had some planning done already.

NG in place Sunday (only about a 1000 if that); hurricane passes Monday; city floods Monday; people die Monday through... well they're still dying. Food, water and aid begins to arrive Friday. Monday.... Friday. Monday... Friday. Well, there's a whole mess of days in there where the government did JACK shtein while people were dying. But you're right, let's not blame Big Brother while the people died, the government's not responsible for shtein except not taxing the rich. Doesn't Congress need to get right on top of that issue?

WHY DID THEY NEED FOOD, WATER, MEDS, ETC ETC? Because they didn't follow instructions. They should have had their own. When people don't follow instructions, people can die. But, this is America and we don't force people to evacuate.

It seems to me that there was enough help and information put out there but idiots chose not to listen.

Right, because it's really easy for poor people and invalids to go out and stock up on food, water and medicine, pile it in the cars (that they don't have) and drive out of the city leaving the few possessions that they do own. They don't live in squaler because they have no money, they're just cheap.

People like you are what's wrong with this country. Who the farg cares about anyone else as long as your SUV is running and you don't have to worry about anyone but yourself. Yeah the Bush admin has done a bang up job and God forbid anyone be upset with them. How's that war in iraq going? Oh, but we shouldn't talk about that either..."Stay the course", isn't that the party line these days or is it still  "We will persevere?"

[SD_Eagle5]

So...ummm...anyone catch 'Real Time with Bill Maher' lastnight? 

[SD_Eagle5]

Right, because it's really easy for poor people and invalids to go out and stock up on food, water and medicine, pile it in the cars (that they don't have) and drive out of the city leaving the few possessions that they do own. They don't live in squaler because they have no money, they're just cheap.

They had the means to leave, they just chose not to:

Louisiana disaster plan, pg 13, para 5 , dated 01/00

'The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating'...

While I'm sympathetic with the folks down there, they were told to evacuate yet chose not to. If somebody tells me 'California is about to get hit by a major Earthquake, so leave' guess what? I'm on the first plane out of here.

[Rome]

Either someone didn't get laid last night or they just got their panties in a bunch.  Who are you to tell everyone to shut the farg up?

I'm not allowed to speak, but all the finger-pointing liberals are. Makes sense.

You're perfectly entitled to your opinion.

And we're perfectly entitled to mock you for it.

[Butchers Bill]

Seems to me that there is a rather large contingent of people here and elsewhere that are willing to blame Bush for anything and everything.  The mayor of NO and gov. of LA have just as much fault (if not more) than the Federal gov't. in this mess.  Why were the buses not used to evac people?  Why wasn't more of the LA National Guard called up (something the STATE has to do in a domestic situation)?  Why did hundreds of NO cops quit/not show up/turn in the badges?

I agree with 76ers Fan in that people are simply looking to blame at this point, and for those with a political agenda its easy for them to blame Bush.

[Sgt PSN]

And who are these people to lambast Bush and everyone else? What have they done that warrants them the right to bash the government. It goes both ways.

I dunno......pay taxes? 

I prefer action over complaining but the bottom line is that no one is above criticism, epecially politicians. 

[Diomedes]

Condi was shopping for shoes while people died.  Where is meatcicle Cheney? WTF is wrong with these people?

link

Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, said that every day of delay has caused hundreds of deaths. Louisiana's junior Senator, Republican David Vitter, gave the Bush administration "an F grade" for its handling of the crisis. Senator Chuck Hagel, a leading contender for his party's nomination to succeed Mr Bush, said, "There must be some accountability."

The criticism is all the sharper because the President did nothing to alter his holiday schedule for 48 hours. Vice-President meatcicle Cheney remains on holiday in Wyoming. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, returned to Washington after being seen shopping for $7,000 shoes in Manhattan as New Orleans went under.

link

Vital measures to protect New Orleans from "catastrophic" hurricane damage were scrapped by the Bush administration to pay for its wars on terror and in Iraq, despite official warnings of impending disaster.

Funding for flood prevention was slashed by 80 per cent, work on strengthening levees to protect the city was stopped for the first time in 37 years, and planning for housing stranded citizens and evacuating refugees from the Superdome were crippled. Yet the administration had been warned repeatedly of the dangers by its own officials.

In early 2001, at the start of Mr Bush's presidency, his Government's Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) warned that a hurricane hitting New Orleans would be the deadliest of the three most likely catastrophes facing America; the others were a massive San Francisco earthquake and, prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York.

Fema's then director, the Bush appointee Joe Allbaugh, said that the warning caused him "great concern". But the President emasculated the agency, subsuming it into the Department of Homeland Security set up after the 11 September 2001 attacks, which concentrated on the terrorist threat.

...

Natural and man-made defences have long been neglected. A 10-year plan to strengthen levees after a 1965 hurricane was never completed. But the skimping has worsened since President Bush's election, particularly after 11 September. Federal spending on flood control in south-east Louisiana has been cut by almost half since 2001, from $69m (£34.5m) per year to $36.5m. Funds for work at Lake Pontchartrain, the source of the flooding, have fallen by nearly two-thirds over three years, from $14.25m to $5.7m. As a result, work on New Orleans' east bank hurricane levees stopped last summer for the first time in 37 years.

The US Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains the levees, requested $27m this year for hurricane protection around the lake. President Bush tried to cut this to $3.9m, although Congress allowed $5.7m. The President also tried to cut $78m to improve drainage and prevent flooding in the city to $30m, though Congress passed $36.5m. A $14bn longer-term project to restore marshes was cut to $570m.

[TexasEagle]

Right, because it's really easy for poor people and invalids to go out and stock up on food, water and medicine, pile it in the cars (that they don't have) and drive out of the city leaving the few possessions that they do own. They don't live in squaler because they have no money, they're just cheap.

They had the means to leave, they just chose not to:

Louisiana disaster plan, pg 13, para 5 , dated 01/00

'The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating'...

While I'm sympathetic with the folks down there, they were told to evacuate yet chose not to. If somebody tells me 'California is about to get hit by a major Earthquake, so leave' guess what? I'm on the first plane out of here.

This goes back to the government. The ENTIRE government screwed up from Bush on down. And school buses and volunteer vehicles aren't the same thing as the poor having the means to leave. If there's no one there to get them or direct them on where to get rides on buses, then they don't have the means to leave. They're dependant on the government that failed them.

If a Cat-5 hurricane or something else was heading this way that could end my life prematurely, I'd hop in my car and hightail it out of here as well. That's not the same thing as someone that has no money and no car not leaving. If no one bothers to help those people get transportation, how it their fault? Just because they're poor? I can't support that line of reasoning as it's not logical.

[TexasEagle]

Seems to me that there is a rather large contingent of people here and elsewhere that are willing to blame Bush for anything and everything. The mayor of NO and gov. of LA have just as much fault (if not more) than the Federal gov't. in this mess. Why were the buses not used to evac people? Why wasn't more of the LA National Guard called up (something the STATE has to do in a domestic situation)? Why did hundreds of NO cops quit/not show up/turn in the badges?

I agree with 76ers Fan in that people are simply looking to blame at this point, and for those with a political agenda its easy for them to blame Bush.

There's no division of blame. Bush has as much fault in this as the mayor of NOLA. The entire government failed and Bush (much to the Bush supporters detriment) is the government. So yes, he's got as much blame as anyone, and the reason why he gets more is that once news came out that the situation in NOLA was getting dire (late Monday) he took another 4 days to start whipping things into action. After Monday the State Government was unable to do anything and needed federal assistance that was WAY too late in coming. But Bush supporters tend to want to ignore that and deflect the issue, usually by saying "now's not the time to place blame" even though they want to bring up Clinton's name whenever it's convenient.

[Diomedes]

• On CNN TV: Dr. Phil on healing after Katrina, 9 p.m. ET

[Geowhizzer]

We all need some help here:



Seriously:

Even as a registered Republican, I recognize here that our governmental response to Katrina was woefully inept.  Both at the state and national level, the emergency preparation and implementation of any plan was not enough to meet the needs of those poor people in Louisiana and Mississippi.

National Guardsmen should have been on full alert BEFORE the storm hit.  There was enough time, and Katrina was obviously a large storm that there was plenty of warning that this one had the potential of killing thousands and destroying much of the delta regions of Louisiana and the Gulf coast of Mississippi. They should have been patrolling the area immediately after the storm had passed- if they had been, much of the looting and violence would have been counteracted before it had a chance to begin.

On average of at least every other year, a major hurricane hits somewhere in the continental United States- and in the past two seasons, multiple hurricanes have hit.  Judging from Charley and Ivan last year, food, water and such should have been stockpiled BEFORE the season, much less before the formation of a storm such as Katrina.  In Southwest Florida, the local weather forecasters do "hurricane seminars," to help teach residents what to do in terms of preparing for an approaching storm.  Personally, I wish that there was a way to "force" people to attend one of these, as they are real eye-openers as to how powerful and destructive hurricanes, even CAT-1s, are.

Last year, when Ivan was originally forecast to hit our area as a CAT-4 or CAT-5, my family and I evacuated from the area.  It turned out that Ivan was the one storm that didn't hit us at all, and at the time I felt a little silly (we ended up visiting my sister in Long Island, and I missed three days of school).  We left about 2 days before Ivan was scheduled to hit, and Naples ended up getting very little from the storm, as it stayed well off the west coast of Florida.    After seeing Katrina, though, I would do it again in a heartbeat if that strong of a hurricane would come at us.  My house, my belongings, I can replace.  My life, my family- as long as they are safe, that's all that matters.

The key, though, is that often you have to "get out" before there is a mandatory order to do so.  Once that order goes out, any routes out of the city are going to be clogged.  We flew out of our local international airport, and it was already clogged with people leaving the area.  We, much like New Orleans, have just one major route out of the area (I-75), and a mass evacuation would simply clog the interstate for miles.  Heck, a small accident clogs our interstate system.  The evacuation really needs to take place a good 24-48 hours before you would "definitely know" that the hurricane is heading for your area.  Take any precious commodities (pictures, jewelry, etc.) and GET THE HECK OUT ASAP!

Part of this is simply stating that there needs to be a much better plan in place, basically on all sides:

1.  Residents must be MUCH BETTER EDUCATED on hurricanes, on evacuation procedures, and on planning ahead for all hurricanes.  Be prepared AHEAD of time (I must commend Florida here- they even had a sales-tax free week in June for hurricane supplies), have whatever supplies you need.  Have a list of the essentials you would take with you in the event of an evacuation, whether it be by car or by plane.  If you don't have a car and can't afford a plane, have some sort of plan to get yourself out of harms' way.

2.  Much of the strategic planning for the hurricanes must be done on the state level, both because of Constitutionality and because of practicality.  No one should know how to prepare for a hurricane better than someone in Florida, the Gulf Coast, or the Carolinas.  Have a response plan ready for the hurricane:  Before hand, and after an area is struck.  I have to give a lot of credit to Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, here:  IMO, he did a bang-up job in terms of preparedness (lots of shelters open, needed materials ready) and in terms of response, when Charley hit.  I am not necessarily a huge supporter of Gov. Bush (mainly because of his stance on educational concerns), but he led admirably in that instance.  It seems to me that the governor of Louisiana was not as well prepared for a major hurricane. 

3.  Where I fault President Bush was his failure in this instance to foresee the possible problems.  Many will say that it was not foreseeable, but as has been stated many times before, just such a catastrophe has been predicted.  I won't blame this on just Bush:  Those levees in LA and Mississippi should have been upgraded long before, whether by the Army Corps of Engineers or by a private group.  But there should be a permanent emergency response plan for natural disasters such as this:  the military/National Guard in total readiness to move in for every hurricane, and move in even if damage at first appears minimal.  Have emergency supplies ready in advance of the storm.  There was a blessed WEEK to prepare for this storm hitting, and even three day after it's first landfall in Florida to prepare for its hitting Louisiana.  Water, non-perishable foods and other needed supplies should have been secured in advance of this storm.  Heck, it should be ready PERMANENTLY.  Stockpile it somewhere.  I know that fruits and vegetables cannot be stockpiled as such, but canned good can.  Stock it, store it, have it ready for just such an emergency.

I won't go as far as some and say that the government's lack of action was either 1) premeditated, or 2) based on class or race.  I don't believe that, in the end, it was either.  I believe that it was based on an ignorance of the power of hurricanes on both the state and national level, of a general lack of prepardness for a natural disaster, and a lack of pre-planning.

And Bush shouldn't shoulder all the blame here:  in fact, I would give more to the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans, who also were woefully unprepared for such a calamity.  But Bush must, and will, shoulder his share for the delayed response of the national government to help meet the needs of its citizens in this disaster.  It will be an indelible mark on his record, a smear on his legacy, that in a time of urgency for his own people, President Bush apparently (whether rightly or wrongly) sat on his hands for several days.

[Rome]

• On CNN TV: Dr. Phil on healing after Katrina, 9 p.m. ET

Not a big fan of Dr. Phil, huh Dio?

[Geowhizzer]

• On CNN TV: Dr. Phil on healing after Katrina, 9 p.m. ET

Not a big fan of Dr. Phil, huh Dio?

At least it isn't Dr. Ruth prescribing the "healing."

[Diomedes]

from DU, for all our resident Bush apologists, here's the memo.  make sure not to deviate.  loyalty is rewarded, as Michael Brown can attest.

"Don't criticize Bush BEFORE he screws up -- pushing massive tax cuts, ignoring counterterrorism warnings, banging war drums, vacationing during a storm -- because maybe it'll all work out fine, give it a chance, you don't have a crystal ball!"

"Don't criticize Bush DURING his screw ups, because now is not the time when we're in the middle of a crisis -- it doesn't help the people who are struggling, it undermines morale, it's divisive when we should all be pulling together!"

"Don't criticize Bush AFTER his screw ups, because we need to move on and get over it -- besides, it wasn't his fault, he didn't know, Democrats are just trying to politicize this, and we have other things to deal with right now."

[Eagles76ersFan]

Right, because it's really easy for poor people and invalids to go out and stock up on food, water and medicine, pile it in the cars (that they don't have) and drive out of the city leaving the few possessions that they do own. They don't live in squaler because they have no money, they're just cheap.

People like you are what's wrong with this country. Who the farg cares about anyone else as long as your SUV is running and you don't have to worry about anyone but yourself. Yeah the Bush admin has done a bang up job and God forbid anyone be upset with them. How's that war in iraq going? Oh, but we shouldn't talk about that either..."Stay the course", isn't that the party line these days or is it still  "We will persevere?"

Like SD said, they had the option to leave. There were public busses taking people out that didn't have a way to leave. I fail to see how the government can be blamed for this? They told the people that if you stay, you might die and that you should have food, water, and meds. Now, if you were poor and couldn't obtain food or water, then why the farg would you not leave?

No, people like me aren't what's with America. What's wrong is the bleeding-heart armchair administrators like you who criticize Bush and his administration because you and the rest of the liberal corksuckers out there think that we live in a People's State that is set up to provide omnipresent protection.