Wow, that’s some scary talent employed over there at the Washington Post, huh? What a crack team of reporters.
I mean, how fucking difficult is it to verify whether the governor of a state did or did not declare a state of emergency?
Just when you think liberals can’t possibly get any dumber…
But see? SHE declared a state of emergency…and therefore is a fuckup who did nothing.
However, back in Post #4 of this thread the fact that Bush declared a state of emergency is given as proof of his divine right to rule.
duh.
-Joe
She declared a state of emergency. Why didn’t she act upon and implement her own state’s evacuation plans? She was obviously aware of the danger, right? Why are 100 school buses still sitting under 6 feet of water in New Orleans, when they could have been used to move residents to higher ground?
Here’s Governor Blank-Stare’s plan for action, as far as I can tell:
Step #1: Declare state of emergency
Step #2: Snap into action and…do nothing
Step #3: Continue to do nothing
Step #4: Nothing
Step #5: Blame Bush
…they trust a conservative to tell the truth?
Daniel
New Orleans would not be in the dreadful state it is in today if someone had responded quickly and effectively to the holes in the levees.
Who was that someone supposed to be? Who controls the levee system? Why did they take 36 hours to begin responding to the holes in the levees? Were any preparations whatsoever made to pre-position men and resources so that the holes in those levees could be dealt with in a non-geological time frame? What happened to prevent a timely response to the breached levees?
Puxatawney doesn’t have the facilities for dealing with either a nuclear attack or a cat 5 hurricane. The Department of Homeland Security is supposed to assist under those circumstances. Read my posts over again, you’re obviously not getting it.
“Extrapolating beyond the text of the manual”? I’m QUOTING what’s on their site! There’s no extrapolation!
Follow the link I put in this post and see for yourself!
I’ll requote it for you just to drive the point home for the third time:
The only way I’m ‘extrapolating’ is if Katrina wouldn’t be categorized as either a “Natural disaster or large-scale emergency”. If you don’t think that it qualifies, please say so clearly so we can all laugh at you.
So why was Bush’s declaration touted by you as been a Good Thing?
Way back in Post #4 you made it sound as if his declaration was the end of his responsibility. Bish met his responsibilities by declaring an emergency. QED.
But when she does it (after you’d claimed she didn’t, IIRC) it is of no value.
Are you totally fact-blind or just stupid?
-Joe
Are those the only choices? Can we throw in intellectually dishonest? Malignantly obfuscatory?
How about Karl Rove’s bitch?
I prefer to think I don’t spend much time interacting with evil, so I’ll just stick with rock-stupid teflon-brained moron.
Because saying what I really think would be rude.
-Joe
What exactly is your point? All that quote means is that FEMA became part of DoHS on 3/1/03. Nothing else changed.
It says that DoHS will coordinate the FEFDERAL response. Get it? The FEDERAL response, as in: NOT THE LOCAL RESPONSE. The locals have primary responsibility for the overall situatoin-- the Feds come in and ASSIST in cases when the locals are overwhelmed.
Now, if you want to slam FEMA for responding too slowly to the request from the local authorities, fine. But your claim that the FEDS should step up and **run **the evacuation plan is ludicrous. No sane person would even propose that as a viable option. The feds wouldn’t have the people, equipment, or the detailed local knowledge in place to do that effectively.
All I know is:
A total evacuation before the storm was impossible. There are just too many urban poor without their own transportation. Logical response was to send those that could not leave to a very sturdy structure. That’s exactly what they did. They could have stocked it with provisions but they didn’t. Strike one for city/state. But once the city flooded, the only entity that could bring forth the magnitude of aid required was the federal government. Once it was safe to fly, the sky should have been dotted with as many helicopters as could safely fly. At the very least, we expect that in 21st century America we don’t let infants die of thirst. Yet we did. The failure to supply the Superdome and the convention center with at least water is unconscionable. Babies died needless and horrible deaths due to the incompetence of the federal government. FEMA was admitted to not knowing as much as the casual cable news viewer. To be incompetent in such a defining moment of need is not consistent with keeping your job.
Based on my reading of the National Response Plan of the Department of Homeland Security, I believe you’d be mistaken. Please see my rather long post here .
It wasn’t “failure” to supply the Superdome. They blocked one attempt after another to provide help. There have been numerous accounts of this already, here’s one:
Thank you for the cite. This is getting to be like an onion with endless layers. The more you peel into it the more you discover you need to peel.
The Feds will not, and more importantly CANNOT, implement an evacuation plan unless they are authorized to do so by the state authorities. Does it say somewhere in that document that the Feds now can just skip that step? Because that is what Leviosaurus claimed in his post that started this discussion, and that is what I am responding to (my emphasis):
That is incorrect. Absent any information about the state requesting federal aid (whch is the case in his scenario)i, the state would be expected to make evacuations happen.
And when these evacuations didn’t happen, the Federal Government’s job is to block whatever aid may be on it’s way? Because that’s what happened. The Feds told The Red Cross to stay out because they didn’t want the people in NO to feel to comfortable.
5 miles of of trucks with provisions was turned away. 500 boats with 1000 trained sailors let by a senator was turned away. All within the first 38 hours. Turned away by the federal government.
The local authorities fucked up . The federal government fucked up. Local authority’s fuck up are bad for LA. The federal government’s fuck up has implications for this whole nation.
John Mace is probably right about what the regulations are, he seldom makes a factual error in my opinion. But the problem might have been agencies that were more interested in following regulations and not doing what they weren’t supposed to do rather than getting together to see who was in position to do what. I’d like my FEMA head to get the governor and mayor on a 3 way call and have the conversation be about what needed to be done and who could do it, not what some regulations say should be the case. Maybe the city was technically supposed to provide x but the state was in better position to do it. Maybe y was the state’s responsibility but the feds could do it better. There needs to be cooperation and creativity in such a situation.
Once the Governor has declares a state of emergency, the Federal government can move in. The state of emergency was declared the day before the hurricane. Why does everyone keep forgetting this?