Remember, in a disaster, people have exactly as much power as they can take. Guliani took command, he took control, and he got people moving. And he kept people focused.
That’s something, right there. You know the poem, right? If… you can keep your head when people all around you are losing theirs?
I would point out that we are looking at 3 events: The Hurricane, the flood, and the riots. The Mayor responded to the first one incorrectly (IMO) when he failed to evacuate beyond the city. That decision exponentially affected the second event. He trapped the very people he was supposed to evacuate. I can’t really address the third. There was something like 1500 to 1700 police and I have no clue what was needed for crowd control/rescue. All I heard from the Mayor was “HELP”.
I’d say that contemplation of a Katrina scenario was taken quite seriously, but not by those with the power to do anything about it.
FWIW, Hurricane Audrey hit southwest Louisiana, not New Orleans. As I have repeated many many times to my mother over the past week, Hurricane Betsy was a Category 3, and the resultant flooding was from rainfall and storm surge, not from levee breaches. Camille was probably a Cat 5 at landfall, but passed farther to the east of New Orleans than Katrina.
Gods forbid that I have to agree with Michael “Deathdealer” Brown of FEMA on this one, but it was not commonly expected that the levees to break. Most hurricane preparedness info here has focused on storm surge overtopping the levees.
Well if you agreed with him, you’d be wrong, and I wish people would quit repeating this falsehood. Read the the Southeast State Of Louisiana Emergency Operations Plan Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation And Sheltering Plan. It’s dated January 2000, and right under the heading PART II: SITUATIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS it quite clearly says:
Seems the state of Louisiana expected that the levees could fail as long as 5½+ years ago.
Here’s the link again. It’s on page 12
The problem is, there are no Red Cross-approved shelters within an adequate distance of New Orleans. There aren’t buildings outside of floodplains that are large enough and strong enough to house people. There haven’t been the same investments in infrastructure as there have been in Florida.
And let’s say the city was evacuated and hundreds of thousands of the poorest citizens were rounded up and driven to shelters 50 or 100 miles away, and Katrina hadn’t destroyed New Orleans. But a couple of school buses driven by inexperienced drivers overturned and killed people. Wouldn’t you still be asking for Nagin’s head then?
So it’s acceptable to do nothing? Seems to me a partial evacuation of those without means would be better than NONE.
Can someone tell me what the mayor and governor did after the storm to control the situation? The only thing I saw them doing on TV was screaming for the feds. But did they take charge of state and municpal organization? Did Nagin attempt to move city assets around to get get water and supplies to the Superdome or convention center? I honestly don’t know.
From what I can tell so far, the blame falls like this, in descending order:
Mayor Nagin: For not implementing his own disaster plan, for delaying a mandatory evacuation for at least a day longer than he should have, for telling people to go to the convention center and Superdome but failing to stock them with supplies, and for his general behaviour afterwards. He was not exactly the picture of calm, resolute leadership.
Governor Blanco: From what I’ve been able to tell, she’s played politics all through this thing. She had to be goaded into calling for an evacuation by President Bush. She refused to turn control of the state national guard over to the feds. Her public appearances were about as bad as the Mayor’s - dispirited, confused, deer-in-the-headlights. And she spent more time fighting turf wars than working the problem after the disaster.
FEMA - Terrible performance. Mainly the fault of the clown at the top, who is clearly way out of his depth.
President Bush - for appointing an unqualified clown to head FEMA. I know political patronage happens all the time, but those patronage appointments are supposed to be to positions where the unqualified have little chance to kill people or seriously mess things up. Putting a totally unqualified political crony in charge of emergency management showed horrible judgement on his part.
The Federal Bureaucracy in general - The Department of Homeland Security was supposed to streamline things. Hah. Instead, it just caused delays, muddied the chains of command, and made the situation worse.
What should happen now is that the situation on the ground should be stabilized, all people evacuated who can be saved, and the bodies collected. Then, heads should roll. If the head of FEMA doesn’t resign, Bush should give him his medal of freedom and kick him out the door. I don’t expect the Governor or Mayor to resign, but I hope they are punished at the polls next time around. Bush can’t be re-elected, but if this costs Republicans the Senate, they deserve to lose it. I mean, in what rational universe should 50 million be pulled from a critical project to prevent a city from flooding, while 233 million is allocated to build a bridge to an island containing 50 people in Alaska? Republicans have had years now of controlling all three branches of government, and they’ve done a lousy job.
I hope that Republicans and Democrats get beat over the head with that stupid highway bill, since both parties were for it. In fact, it would be really nice if incumbents in both parties got their asses kicked in the next election - the message being “Stop screwing around with the country and treating it like your personal poker chip set.”
Can’t breathe. Vision…going black and white. Room spinning. Find myself agreeing completely and utterly with Sam Stone. Help…please… 
You summed this up so well. I just had to say thank you.
Nice post there Sam. A lot of people accuse you of being exceedingly one-eyed and intransigent. But in that post of yours, I saw a lot of open minded magnanimity. Kudos.
As to the OP itself? I can’t say I’ve seen any footage of him on TV this past week - I’ve been pretty busy with life. But I HAVE heard him a lot on radio. My personal perception? From an aural pov, as averse to a visual one? He has often sounded quite hysterical for mine. Not at all cool and on top of the situation.
I don’t think there was a general order to go to the SD or the CC. The SD was originally set up to handle only the sick, and they were told to bring enough food for 5 days. It wasn’t until after the hurricane that people stormed into the SD and the situation became really bad. The CC was a “shelter of opportunity”, in that people where there, were told they could us it for shelter and it just more or less happened.
The more I read about this, the less I tend to blame the mayor. I wouldn’t say he was a great leader, but he was simply overwhelmed.
Good article from The BBC.
Good summary, Sam. I’d add Chertoff to the list and agree completely.
I would also add Chertoff. On Sunday alone I saw (or heard) him in no less than five different news interviews on at least three stations.
Maybe if all of them weren’t so concerned with oratory damage control after the fact they could have focused on the literal damage control as it was happening.
I understand the local and state failures in regard to New Orleans but I can’t quantify what FEMA did wrong. They had 10,000 National Guard troops stationed behind the potential path of the hurricane as well as supplies. The damage from this hurricane (and the need for additional rescue support) is exponentially greater than anything I’ve every seen.
Should the head of FEMA (a former director of an equestrian association?) assume Louisiana was behind the power curve and gone to Congress for more support the hurricane? They could probably justify a larger pre-deployment given the engineering problems in New Orleans. I assume FEMA has a budget to work with as any other agency does. Would Congress approve the money?
I’m not defending FEMA. In fact, I would love to hang FEMA out to dry but I can’t put a direct finger on a failure other than “someone should have done something”. Is FEMA a first responder ahead of State and Local municipalities or is it a support group? Other than the obvious need to separate the function of a militia, I’m not sure of the distinction. I ask this because a lot of the hard assets that FEMA brought could not be inserted on day 1 because of the hurricane (aircraft, aircraft carriers, boats, landing craft etc…). All those items are stand-off assets and would require pre-budgeted authority.
Sam Stone, that fairly well sums up my understanding of the situation as well. Great post.
And yea, Chertoff is a big joke and should be removed from office immediately. He’s another joke who is clearly out of his depth.
I’ve been having trouble keeping track of the heads of DHS and FEMA, possibly because these two guys have the same first name. So, just to remind myself as much as anything, it is:
Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
Michael D Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response, the head of FEMA
LOL and thank you.
I keep needing to remind myself of Mike D Brown, completely unqualified.
From the article:
Another Bush/House of Saud connection!
I keep seeing this, but I understood it to be Blanco pleading with people to leave by saying that Bush called. According to NOLA “Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.”
A mandatory evacuation had already been declared by the local government when this statement was made, and a state of emergency had been declared two day prior. According to this letter Blanco declared a state of emergency on Friday the 26th.