After four days away from this board, I’m astounded at the sheer number of threads and posts criticising the hurricane Katrina response. While I’m sure that some posters have a relevant background in emergency response and incident command, the balance have pulled their opinions from where their heads reside.
Unpleasant as they are, some facts regarding emergencies exist:
Tabletop exercises (Hurricane Pam) are limited by the imagination of the participants. Mother Nature has many wildcards, and may choose to play a hand of them at once, including ones that weren’t thought of.
It is not possible to cover all bases at all times under all circumstances. A good plan may not be executable owing to unanticipated factors. (See #1)
People don’t do what you think they’ll do, what they’re urged to do or ordered to do. It’s a wonder we’re not extinct owing to our own stupidity.
Time is bendable. The amount of time to prevent a problem or escape a problem stretches infinitely, but shrinks to negative levels when one expects an outside agency to fix the now ugly situation.
After years of courses at a local, state and national level, I’ve learned that what you learn in the classroom is only prep for what the real deal throws your way, and that life didn’t read the text.
Folks directly impacted are frustrated, angry, and much more, and I’m sympathetic to their feelings. Heaping derision on responders/POTUS solves nothing. Volunteer or enlist-learn about what it takes to pull a response together for an incident of this magnitude, and until then, please shut up.
“Now, because we have faced challenges with resolve, we have historic goals within our reach, and greatness in our future. We will build a safer world and a more hopeful America and nothing will hold us back.” —George W. Bush at the Republican convention.
It remains a fact that Bush runned on the promise and the perception that he and the Republicans were better at National security and in protecting our nation:
See, it’s much more easy to just whine and complain on a message board than to actually do something. Especially when a mob mentality forms. Then you get this nice little echo chamber where you can work yourself up into a lather of self-righteous indignation.
It feels good, pretending that you know more about how to handle a disaster than POTUS/FEMA, or any of the other responders. It’s deluded thinking, to be sure, and I can’t imagine it’s healthy to walk around with so much hate, but those who insist on pointing the finger aren’t worthy of being pitted.
So…what was the point of FEMA and DHS, again? We’ve been told, at least for the last 4 years, that Our Government (Hallowed Be Thy Name) is prepared and planning for a disaster of this magnituted. They’ve failed their first live test. Failed miserably. It took days to mobilize troops, food, and water for a disaster they saw coming from at least 24 hours out. Yet you’re complaining that we’re armchair-quarterbacking?! “Gee, at least they’re doing something” doesn’t cut it. Hell yes, I expected more and better from organizations who’s sole reason for existing is emergency management (as in Federal Emergency Management Agency)
You’re telling me we spent billions on a lack of imagination? That failed levees weren’t predictable? You’re not appalled by apparent lack of any coordinated plan? You’re OK with the pathetic number of troops we’ve commited to our own city under martial law after a horrific disaster; compared to the numbers we’ve committed to Iraq?
I’m not saying I’d do a better job of managing a crisis. But then again, I’m not Federal Emergency Management Jim with millions (or billions) of taxpayer dollars at my disposal.
Frankly, I think it’s you whos experiencing the cranial-rectal inversion.
And to the guys on the ground, doing what they can with what they have I say: Thank you, and keep up the good work!
Here in Chicago we had a porch collapse kill dozens a year or so ago. It came out that enforcement of safety codes had been lax. Fingers were pointed right away. People who were not building engineers, just citizens, got upset that the peple who were supposed to do their jobs didn’t. But the upshot is that codes are now better enforced. Maybe all those deluded people who were upset that negligence caused deaths should’ve just kept their mouths shut? Why whine afterall just because people died needlessly?
In New York, back in 1911, there was a major fire in a shirt factory that killed about one hundred. Turned out workers were locked in. Public outcry. Ooops. Lots of armchair quarterbacks whined. Result. Reforms for worker safety.
Damn whiners. Not worth pitting. Well that is true, actually, they are not worth pitting. They are worth praising. There were major fuck-ups here. Those who fail to be angry about it and who fail to demand that we correct all the aspects of where this ball was dropped (from the top down, and from specific planning/preparations to long term policies) are very pathetic apologists indeed.
Something good must come of this. We need to establish an emergency response plan that really works. The next big test might be “the big one” in LA. Or a tsunami on the West Coast. The only way to improve is to criticize the existing system. It sucked big time in this case. Maybe in 2008 we’ll be comparing the candidates on this rather than their Vietnam records.
I have to agree with the other posters who point out that “whining” in protest is often what gets things changed. And in between the wailing and knashing of teeth, I’ve seen a few really good suuggestions (one which stands out is arranging with school bus owners to use the busses as emergency evacuation vehicles, instead of leaving them there to be destroyed by the water).
The reason I’m surprised that a better contingency plan wasn’t in place by the feds is that, frankly, a levee protecting an important cultural, historic city which is also a location for refineries and a major port seems to little old uneducated me to be a perfect taget for those terrorists Bushco have been saying they’re keeping us safe from. If a terrorist bomb had put a hole in the levee, we’d be in the same position, and I’m therefore surprised that this wasn’t already addressed in a think-tank.
Doesn’t make me feel too safe around all these high-rises in Chicago to know there may be no plan in place for my ass, either. The simple fact is that this has (further) eroded trust in the government to be our nanny. If there’s no plan, tell me there’s no plan, and I’ll muddle my way through as best I can. But don’t keep telling me i’m safer than ever if you can’t back it up when something bad happens.
The situation in NO would have been much more catastrophic if that were the scenario. The city would have had at least ten times the population it had on the day after Katrina. Hundreds of thousands of people stuck on roofs and drowning in attics.
I find it amazing that there wasn’t a plan in place for this. If FEMA or DoHS didn’t see this as worth having a plan for, then we are the laughing stock of the world. If anyone is willing to toe the line and give a pass to this administration over this, you are one brainwashed muthafucker.
Sometimes fuckups are so great, they are apparent to even the most armchair of quarterbacks. This is such a circumstance.
Furthermore, as an example: Although I am neither a police officer, attorney, judge or politician, if I were concerned about a high rate of murder in my city, I would hope you would allow me to comment on the failures of the system.
In addition, we have a perfect ABA study of a phenomenon. We have FEMA under Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. I’ll give you a hint: in condition B, FEMA won bipartisan praise. In the second trial of condition A, FEMA was cut, folded and spindled. Many of us feel it quite appropriate to point the effects of this out.
Finally, your analysis suggests you are fairly ignorant of the process as well, which is surprising given your purported expertise. (Particularly point 2, since it isn’t so much that they are faulted for not doing everything possible, but for clearly not doing specific things that were previously identified as necessary).
But don’t let us diminish your desire to fellate your leader.
By the way, you’ve got a touch of spooje just there, on the corner of your mouth. Here’s a tissue.
No, I’m spitting with rage is what I’m doing. The mayor of NO pleading with the President to act or to give him the authority to act 4 days ago. The Red Cross not allowed into New Orleans because the administration doesn’t want people to feel “too comfortable”.
And you know what? I’m NOT HELPING WITH RELIEF EFFORTS. I’m sitting at home recovering from a little surgery. Sitting on my fat ass and bitching at what a fucked up, busted and lethal job this man of action has done in New Orleans, you willing moron.
And I’d also say I agree with everything DWC said…well almost everything. It’s absolutely true that we can’t know what a disaster will bring. Even one as realitively well anticipated as Kartrina. And sniping at people when it doesn’t go as well as planned is pointless and…tacky.
But at the same time, questioning WHY it didn’t go as we might have hoped is very much what we should be doing (yes, keeping in mind everything that DWC said about the why being a matter of circumstance…but it isn’t always).
But the bigger why is a very good question and I think we are right to do it…and , I hope, not attacking the people who are actually doing something in the process.
We have every right to be angry and disappointed with the federal government’s response. They work for the people, and we are paying them to plan for the situation. All they had to do was to read the Louisiana newspaper that a had a huge article a couple a years ago about what would happen if the Big One hit (the reporter who wrote the piece was on CNN last night).
They (DHS, FEMA) should have known the poor people would not a means to escape, the elderly would be too feeble to escape, and that thousands of people would not be able to evacuate for lack of transportation. They should have known this by reading the Census Bureau’s reports.
It does not take imagination to come up with a plan. They could have taken bids from bus companies in every state for emergency evacuations years ago. Disaster is not limited to one region, so having contracts in place across the nation is reasonable IMHO.
They should have already know which places will be turned into shelters(or even have contracts in place with hotels) in every state.
Every state has a homeland security department. This is what they should have been planning for these past 4 years (the transportation and shelter isses) with the federal homeland security people.
I understand they can’t look into the future and predict everything, but they can look to the past. They can read the statistics that are published by the Census Bureau to learn were our needy live. They could look at other nations to see what they do. They (the federal people) are getting paid very well, probably GS 11 salaries or higher, to come up with a plan. We cannot let this happen again. It should not have happen in the first place. They should have bused those people out of there on August 28th and 29th. They may not have been able to get everyone out, but at least they could have made the effort.
As has been pointed out numerous times, it is entirely possible to both bitch and do something to help.
In the meantime Republicans are kidding themselves if they believe we’re not going to hold Bush’s feet to the very hot fire for his inaction and indifference to the situation in NO.
They had several days warning. From where I sit it sure looks to me that the mayor, governor, FEMA and DHS all never got past the first four words of #1.
Yes it takes time to spool up a disaster response; this is why when you a couple of days warning, you get started then, not when the water is up to your ass. As the saying goes, when you are up to your ass in alligators it is often hard to recall that you were sent there to drain the swamp.
Some examples of a little prior planning would be:
We have to evacuate the city, what will we use for shelters?
Well we can use the Superdome, and the convention center. [Now here is where it fell down]
Cool we can hold lots of people there.
[Instead the conversation should have gone on with]
How many people can we house there?
How are we going to feed them?
Where are we getting the food?
Who is going to do the cooking? (Cooking for 10,000 is a little different than dinner for 8)
Can we get a National Guard / Army field kitchen? Red Cross?
The water supply will probably go to hell, and we will need drinking water, where do we get it?
If the city floods, the sanitation system will most likely fail. All of those people are going to need a place to go. We had better line up every porta potty and honey wagon in the area and get them to the Superdome, and the Convention Center.
How are we going to supply security for all of these people? In a group that large there is bound to be some bad apples.
Now some of these questions needed to be answered in the years, and months before the hurricane hit. It appears that not only were these questions not answered, in many cases they were not even asked.
See dances this ain’t brain surgery, if the people in charge could bother to see beyond the end of their nose. Instead it looks like they sent all the people to the Superdome and the Convention Center and they acted shocked when the concession stands weren’t feeding them. :wally
However in the middle of all of this ball dropping there is one group that has been out there handling the mission Why are the coasties able to handle the mission, and everybody else is in FUBAR mode? Simple, the coasties have planed and trained for this. Over and over again. They follow what I said at the beginning of this post:
Hope for the best, but always plan for the worst.
Murphy is always one step ahead of you
Have a plan
Don’t forget Murphy
5.Have a backup plan in case your plan doesn’t work
Have a contingency plan in case your backup goes to hell
Give some thought to what will happen if your contingency plan fails.
8.Have I mentioned Murphy?
I wish I could edit this to remove the word “all” from that last sentence. I know there is more to planning than that. I was just trying to point out that reseach indicated this could happen years ago.
We - through our taxes - fund FEMA and DHS. Both agencies failed miserably in doing what they are being paid to do. What are they doing? Putting babies on no-fly lists? How can the existence of these agencies be justified? They sat on their hands before Katrina, even when they knew it was Cat 5 and would hit somewhere in the Gulf. They dropped the ball, then kicked it out of reach.
Whining? I’m not whining. I’m fucking roaring! And I will be even more pissed if Almighty Can Do No Wrong Bush doesn’t take his cronies to task for their massive failure in this. But he won’t - they will keep the high-paying jobs (or get transfered to a less-visible but just as high-paying post) and the people in NO they failed to help will still be dead.
Thank you for reminding me of what promises the POTUS runned on. I might have forgotted otherwise. Minor observation that the context of those remarks seems to be aimed at military or terrorist threats, but why deal with trifles such as those? :wally yourself.
Some of you are missing my point. I never said that the response was stellar. I do believe in waiting until the event has passed and a critique has been had before passing judgement. When we extinguish a fire by allowing all fuel to be consumed, we meet afterwards to determine how we permitted the clusterfuck and how to avoid it next time. When planes crash, the NTSB investigates and issues a report along with recommendations which will hopefully make flying safer.
I’m merely reserving comment until all the facts are known. At that juncture we’ll identify the failures and hopefully learn from them. That measure of restraint exceeds the capacity of some, though.
Hentor, having thought of various responses, I’ve settled on the short version: go fuck yourself. If you want to call it Bush fellating, be my guest, pinhead. I call it patience and observation. There will be plenty of time for blame casting down the road, but you can take the shortcut.
