It was implemented. There is a difference between a mandatory evacuation and a forced one. I could be wrong, but I don’t think there has ever been a forced evacuation in the face of a hurricane before.
Seriously, though, this argument has no merit. There is no way a fleet of buses was going to go door to door and round up 50,000 people and whisk them off to safety. First, most people wouldn’t go, secondly, you don’t have enough time, and thirdly, where do you put them? You can’t set up a tent city when a Cat 5 hurricane is approaching. And what would happen if, as is common, the hurricane changed course and damage was minimal? Round everyone up again and bus them back and hope you didn’t leave anyone behind?
So it seems like there were around 100,000 residents who had no means to evacuate the city during a mandatory evacuation…and there was no way the authorities could’ve gotten them out anyway, even if they’d wanted to.
In other words, those people were toast. Totally at the mercy of the storm.
Well, I hope you’re right. Maybe one bright spot in this horrible tragedy is that people will take future hurricanes much more seriously.
But the question is… what percentage of posters on a message board like this one have to be actively spreading and believing conspiracy threories and wild accusations in order to fill up a message board? What percentage of the American Left has to be blind and idiotic kneejerk bush-haters in order to generate enough mindless anti-Bush screeds to keep any paranoid right-wingers convinced that their paranoia is justified?
It’s only been a week, so it ialmost a “fog of war” situation in termas of information. But there is one thing for certain. When the committee’s start on this, there is going to be a lot of blame for EVERY level of governement. I guess I am just shocked that a major city like NO, that is also very suseptible to something horrible happening was not better prepared. I don’t know who’s fault that is, but it just seems to me that there should have been something BETTER in place just on general principle.
I don’t think he should be impeached. As I said, the priority right now should be that we get the President we need in these times. Bush’s career covering his political ass is over. Haliburton, yadda yadda yadda, I agree.
But the photo op… that’s precisely WHY the staged photo-op stuff is so disturbing. Because if there’s even a sliver of truth in it, then it’s just business as usual. A massive and professional coordination of media spin instead of a massive rethinking and re-evaluation and soul searching.
The evacuation of NOLA was likely to be a clusterfuck, and flaws with that plan were already known, because they’d had the opportunity to try it with a smaller storm back in 1998.
One problem with disaster plans is that they aren’t used. How proficient would the local fire department be if there was only one or two fires per year, and they never went out and drilled with hoselines, ladders, rescue tools and the like? Most fire companies strive for competency and they do practice, aided by the stupidity of John Q. Public who regularly sets shit on fire. Not so with many emergency plans. They’re written up, there’s a picture on page 19 of the Buttcrack Herald with all the participants, and then the big honking binders sit on a shelf to gather dust.
Years later, when the fertilizer is meeting the air distribution mechanism, people don’t know what they’re supposed to do, what chain of command to follow, half the people who put the plan together aren’t around anymore, and those who are vaguely remember the dusty book, but not until the polished execution of the disaster plan more closely resembles 17 monkeys fucking a football.
But this is the fault of President. Yeah, right. :rolleyes:
That is not the plan. The official plan provides for public transportation to be made available at staging points (like the Superdome or convention center) and bus people from there. All your people need to do is get to the staging area, just like they went there to ride out the storm, except they go someplace safe instead.
This quote is from the “precautionary/voluntary evacuation” rules.
Bosda, the “local plan” was supposed to be implemented before landfall, so it didn’t matter at all whether it was a force 5 or a light breeze. The plan provided for mass transportation being made available for the sizable population without personal transport. That transportation was, to my knowledge, not made available AT ALL. If you didn’t have your own car, your local gov’t (who is charged with this responsibility) left you in the crosshairs.
I was really sickened to hear the mayor on 60 Minutes bashing the federal response when his own response to the disaster was to leave so many people behind.
Maybe my statements here will be proven wrong when more information comes to light, but as of today, no level of government is looking too shiny to me.
Just because someone wrote it in a plan doesn’t mean it is actually going to happen. Plans like that, especially government ones, are pie-in-the-sky rosy scenarios that have little relation to what happens in real life. Most places can’t even stage a fire drill properly.
I am not making excuses - there is plenty of blame to go around. If you think that that plan was actually going to happen as written in that document, then you are delusional.
Oh piss off. It’s hardly delusional to expect our elected officials to actually follow their own damn guidelines and plans. ESPECIALLY in an area where this kind of plan is so critical and ALWAYS in the forefront of every goddamn political thing they do. It’s what we HIRED them for! New Orleans is a critical port city that is below sea level. You’re damn straight I expect the fucking Governor to not only HAVE a plan, but to fucking EXECUTE IT TO THE LETTER. She has that OBLIGATION to the citizens she’s sworn to serve and protect. When she, and the local city Mayor(s) don’t do what they’re fucking SUPPOSED to do in the event of an emergency, you bet your sweet ass I will point the finger directly at them for such a colossal fuckup.
And for the record, I point the rest of my fingers at FEMA, DHS and the fucking President who were all completely asleep at the wheel and utterly, utterly incompetent and derelict in their duties, as well.
FEMA responds to floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and other assorted disasters almost every year. It should have experience in responding to natural disasters. Certainly a plan to respond to a national disaster shouldn’t be collecting dust on some shelf.
I cut New Orleans and the State of Louisiana some slack for a couple of reasons. First, this was possibly the worst natural disaster to ever hit this country, and it was far above the ablity of a city or small state to respond to - any other city in the country would be similarly overwhelmed. Second, a city/state has other jobs to do - running police and fire departments, hospitals and schools, picking up the trash, etc. On the other hand you have FEMA, who has only one job. Responding to emergencies is their raison d’etre. As far as I know, there were no other disasters ongoing that distracted them from New Orleans. They got the call that only comes a couiple of times a year, and they blew it. They are deserving of all the criticism coming their way.
FEMA does have experience in disaster response, but what most folks in this and other threads are missing is that they act in a support role. FEMA doesn’t arrive and assume command. The responsibility for establishment of an IC structure starts with the local emergency manager(s). It’s not practical to expect the Feds to keep track of local resources, critical infrastructure, and revise those emergency plans based upon logistical hurdles.
The local emergency plans should contain detailed information on evacuation routes and means, staging areas, and dozens of other issues, as well as some fallback contingencies when your original plan begins turning to shit. FEMA isn’t responsible for devising or implementing that plan-it’s up to the locals. Beyond offering training for plan development and review to help make sure bases are covered, they don’t dictate contents.
I haven’t seen NOLA’s plan to determine if it was revised after 1998, but it sure doesn’t look that way, and when a local official doesn’t know what he’s in charge of, that further suggests my dusty book theory is valid.
Oh for Og’s sake, get real. The city of New Orleans was hardly going about “business as usual” on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. They were PREPARING for a hurricane. The Governor said so, herself. She even wrote an impassioned letter to the President on Friday, delcaring Louisiana to be in a State of Emergency and asking for his help. To then “cut her some slack” because she was supposedly too busy having trash picked up and running schools is stunningly idiotic. She has a damn PLAN! She knows about this plan. Yet she didn’t fully execute this plan, leaving tens of thousands of her citizens stranded in the path of a Category 5 fucking hurricane!
Outrageous!
And again, I’m not saying that mitigates the Federal Government’s responsibilities one iota. Yes, they too are deserving of all the criticism coming their way. But so are the State and local schmucks.
Sam Stone your post really rang true to me. I agree with you, the blame is about 50/50. Nagin himself couldn’t answer NBC’s direct question about any planning on the part of his office.
But it also reminds me of Chicagoans and snow. When we first moved there, we were surprised that the Mayor went on TV every time there was a heavy snow, explaining what had been done so far and how it would be handled. His Streets & Sanitation head was all over the television as well, I began to feel like I knew the guy.
Well, come to find out, back in '78 (?) there was a huge blizzard that incapacitated the city and cost a previous mayor re-election.
So ever since then, snow removal is Priority #1.
Pre-9/11, people would’ve cut the President more slack, and placed more blame on the locals. But now public safety is supposed to be Priority #1. It doesn’t matter what the threat is - this kind of thing, on that kind of scale, isn’t supposed to happen. We’ve paid people to anticipate big problems and find ways of dealing with them.
I think that’s part of the fury around here, more than partisanship.
And thanks to whoever clarified which Friday they were referring to - I’d read it as day before yesterday, not Friday of last week. Makes a big difference.
