Q: How many poor, black Katrina victims does it take to equal one rich 9/11 victim?

[Magiver]

@Least Original User Name Ever

well, so with that rationale, would fema just be a moneylender or just a force that organizes the national guard into action?

FEMA is a logistics agency. They have less than 3,000 employees and they don’t have any equipment, supplies or rescue workers. Their function is to coordinate the Red Cross, Coast Guard, National Guard, and any other agency with the tools needed for the job. Disaster relief is funded by Congress at the direction of the President. Post disaster relief is handled like any other federal expenditure through the political process.

@Least Original User Name Ever

having mutiple goverments (state, county, federal, municipal, etc.) is one of those debates that our country has had ever since its inception waaaaaaaay back with the federal rights vs. states’ rights. i can see an offshoot of this situation transforming itself into the newest incarnation of that debate.
can anyone do some talking for how japan handles their storm disasters or how california handles earthquakes?

You’ve brought up probably the biggest problem with disaster relief. Since it will always be a bottom-up political event it should be treated as such from the beginning. As bad as Hurricane events are they have the benefit of advance notice. Earthquakes and tsunamis are events with little or no warning. All of them require a separate plan of action. To accommodate the separation of local, state and federal powers it would be useful to establish a certification process for all agencies involved. Something like a 9001 certification only for disaster response. With such a program we may be able to streamline the process of learning from our mistakes. As a recent example, officials in Texas were pretty blunt about mandatory evacuation announcements. They came right out and told people that they would be on their own if they didn’t evacuate. The mere act of spelling it out publicly puts the burden where it belongs and raises public awareness.

@Least Original User Name Ever

by the way, this is my first major involvement in these message boards and i’m pretty impressed by the level of discussion out there. good to hear there are people that do some thinking and help to spread knowledge, not bias.

Well you started out on the right foot. You came up with a really creative name and you acknowledge when someone makes a valid point. My personal goals are to always try to take the high ground, especially when responding to criticism. I’ve found that anyone worth talking to will respond in kind even if they charged out of the gate in a brusque manner. Ultimately, I’m here to learn what others come up with and if that becomes a waste of time I always have laundry to do. Taking the high ground means using proper titles for people, President Clinton, President Bush etc… Denigrating someone I disagree with lessens my argument with the assumption of extreme prejudice.

Since you’re still in college then I would recommend taking a course in Journalism. It was one of the best courses I took in school. It tied all my classes together into an accelerated course in logic. I now question everything presented to me in the form of news. With the Internet I can now apply the basic who, what, where, when and why parameters to any subject matter.

[Least_Original_User_Name_Ever]

i had thought about journalism. political philosophy was the class that opened my eyes, though. that’s when social consciousness was really awakened. i’ve thought about journalism classes before and seeing as how i’m not entirely sure what i want to do with my life, i’m sure i’ll end up taking a journalism class in there some time or another.

that was my point though with earthquakes having little to know advance warning. resources get pooled pretty quickly and this type of situation seems not to happen.

i think that on a personal level, it’s the fact that there WAS advance warning just really makes this entire situation worse for the average jane/joe to wrap their brains around.

[Mellivora_capensis]

Apologies if the helicopter question has already been answered, but see link below.

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/africa/03/03/africa.floods.01/

Perhaps we can all learn from each other.

[Mellivora_capensis]

Drat, that’s what happens when you post in a hurry at work. What I was trying to say is that perhaps we can learn from each other and use examples from disasters in other countries to rally support. I think the question was, where would we get the helicopters from. In the Moz floods of 2000, as you can see from the link, military choppers were dispatched from South Africa and other African countries, as well as the USA and UK (amongst others). Of particular interest is the supply of private choppers and aircraft.

[Magiver]

@Mellivora capensis

Apologies if the helicopter question has already been answered, but see link below.

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/africa/03/03/africa.floods.01/

Perhaps we can all learn from each other.

Not sure what the helicopter question is but there were close to 400 helicopters used during hurricane Katrina. The Coast Guard alone used 35% of ALL their rescue helicopters. When you consider they were pulled from the East Coast that makes 67% of all the Coast Guard helicopters along the Atlantic coast.

Helicopters were never the problem. People were not evacuated to the supplies set up in away from the storm front and only 30 boats were set aside by the city of New Orleans for rescue work. It’s kind of like driving people off a cliff to avoid an earthquake. The rescue effort became exponentially harder. Instead of using a 100 boats that cost $10/hr to operate we were using helicopters that cost $1000/hr to fly.

If the people needing transportation had been sent to places like Barksdale AFB they would be away from the storm and surrounded by supplies. (Barksdale AFB was one of the staging areas for supplies and equipment and is located 6 hrs inland from New Orleans).

[Magiver]

Please excuse my typing, I hit send before reviewing it.

[GrahamWellington]

@Sequent

A: we’re still counting.

The Constitution tells us one black man is 3/5 of a white man, so if you estimate 40,000 refugees in New Orleans (99% of whom are black), we have roughly the equivalent of 24,000 white refugees. The Constitution doesn’t draw distinctions between average whites and rich whites, but apparently the government does.

Now I’d love to blame Bush, I really would. And if the shoe fits…I mean this crap has “brought to you by the creators of post-war Iraq” written all over it, if you ask me. But the scale of ineptitude is simply beyond the power of one man, even the POTUS. I mean, I don’t think Bush could have mismanaged things this badly even if it was his goal to do so. It’s simply inconceivable these people are dying like this nearly five full days after the fact.

Tuesday, I thought, it’s a major disaster. It’s going to take a day or two to get in there.

Wednesday, I thought, it’s an unprecedented disaster. But I’m sure we’ll be all over it tomorrow.

Thursday, I thought, how can it be getting worse? How can there be helicopters flying all over the city just watching these people die? National Guard troops are in the city, all right; the victims can only wave to them as they drive by.

Here we are today, and it’s not any better. The absolute outrage of it is the spin coming from the President straight on down the line about how “magnificent” the relief effort is. I saw Senator Landrieu on CNN yesterday praising the then two-hour-old results of Presidents Clinton and Bush Sr., at which point Anderson Cooper commented that it was hard to listen to politicians slapping eachother on the back while he watched a woman’s corpse being eaten by rats. Landrieu didn’t even blink. A child of New Orleans, daughter of a former mayor–how can you *NOT BE OUTRAGED? *

So I’m watching the coverage, like everyone else, and I’m noticing the one overwhelming common denominator: all these people are black, probably mostly poor. A terrorist in Afghanistan sneezes, and within 24 hours we’re dropping pamphlets in Arabic with our response. A brain-dead woman in Florida gets her feeding tube removed and Congress convenes on a Sunday night to “save” her life. But we can’t drop food and water on New Orleans??! You’re telling me that Harry Connick, Jr. can DRIVE himself into downtown New Orleans but the military can’t?

I’m not sure which conclusion is worse: that our government is inherently inept or inherently racist. Four years after 9/11, after the efforts expended in Iraq, after the efforts expended after the tsunami, I’m forced to conclude that we simply don’t value poor black people enough to put ourselves in harm’s way to save them. “Well, you can’t save people while you’re being shot at” Really? Because I thought that happened in war all the time. Or are we simply waiting for them to just kill eachother off?

One thing I am sure of: the one thing the ENTIRE Federal government can do with complete co-ordination and consistency is LIE. They’re lying to us right now. You can’t look at the pictures and then listen to their words and not conclude that they aren’t lying. You can’t call it “spin;” you can’t even call it “malicious prevarication.” When it’s politician-vs-politician, it’s spin. When it’s politician vs. reality, policitian vs. helpless dying victims, it’s lying and we should recognize that.

And the world takes note: this is what it means to be poor and black in America. To be on a rooftop surrounded by rising water. To live in squalor and crime and be left to die. And the government says they’re doing the best they can. I can only echo a sentiment I heard yesterday: this isn’t my country. This isn’t my government. I’ve never been more ashamed to be an American.

You’re exactly why I called my bank and told them to stop payment on my donation; too many spoiled and mouthy blacks for me to care any more about their supposed “oppression.”

[Mellivora_capensis]

Hello Magiver,

I had this question in mind when I posted:

jrfranchi
Now the hardest part. Where do we get the Helicopter from?

Okay, I’m stumped on this one. Out of my league and guessing that a huge number of Navy, Marine & Army Helicopters are deployed overseas.
Who can help me with rough locations of domestic helicopters that may have been available if notice went out quicker?

I interpreted this as a shortage/unavailability of helicopters. Thanks for your response, it seems my interpretation was inaccurate.

[What_Exit]

@Mellivora capensis

Hello Magiver,
I interpreted this as a shortage/unavailability of helicopters. Thanks for your response, it seems my interpretation was inaccurate.

You would have to read through 50+ post to get the complete understanding of what was being debated at that point. It was largely an attempt to provide factual support that a lot more could have been done by requesting volenteer help. I could not support an availabilty of additional helicopters but I could show where 1000 trucks was feasible. I was hoping someone else could provide some better Helo info and it sounds like from Magiver, that operating many more Helo’s may not have been feasible.

[Mellivora_capensis]

jrfranchi,

[MEBuckner]

@GrahamWellington

You’re exactly why I called my bank and told them to stop payment on my donation; too many spoiled and mouthy blacks for me to care any more about their supposed “oppression.”

Moderator’s Warning: GrahamWellington, the rule in Great Debates is to debate the other poster’s argument, not the other poster’s person. Calling another poster “spoiled and mouthy” is crossing that line; don’t do it again.

[What_Exit]

@MEBuckner

Moderator’s Warning: GrahamWellington, the rule in Great Debates is to debate the other poster’s argument, not the other poster’s person. Calling another poster “spoiled and mouthy” is crossing that line; don’t do it again.

I am glad you said something, I started to reply and realized I wasn’t in Great Debates and just canceled. Thank You.

[Magiver]

@jrfranchi

You would have to read through 50+ post to get the complete understanding of what was being debated at that point. It was largely an attempt to provide factual support that a lot more could have been done by requesting volenteer help. I could not support an availabilty of additional helicopters but I could show where 1000 trucks was feasible. I was hoping someone else could provide some better Helo info and it sounds like from Magiver, that operating many more Helo’s may not have been feasible.

Trucks wouldn’t have helped the flooded area of New Orleans except for the periphery. The people standing on their roofs were in at least 12 feet of water and that’s higher than any wheeled rescue vehicle except an amphibian (there were actually two WWII era Ducks doing rescue work). Boats were the order of the day. Since the Mayor only commissioned 30 boats it became a logistics issue to bring more in. Louisiana has a lot of lakes and rivers, which means there are a lot of private boats. If the Governor had called for volunteers there would have been an ample supply of rescue equipment. Given the fuel situation, they could have hauled their own fuel down for the operation. Once at New Orleans they would have had to move the boats from the river into the city. All this would require coordination.

Mayors, Governors, and Presidents are not supposed to do the heavy lifting but they are supposed to find people who can. Beyond the support of government agencies lies a country full of skilled labor and materials. Barring a nuclear blast, every city/state has the skill and materials needed for rescue.

Logistics is both a skill and a process. It starts from the known and progresses outward to anticipate the unknown. Nothing can happen without communication so that is the first priority. Assuming phone and cell phones will be lost alternatives are needed. If satellite phones aren’t available the next best thing are the Sat-Com systems found in most Semi’s (they allow keyboard interface via satellite). Next are ham operators, then CB radios, and then aviation transceivers. All of these are available because individuals possess them either for business or hobby.

After communication is established it is possible to recon the area of damage. Using a simple $40 mapping program you can visually compile any manner of information as it comes in. If something like a senior citizens home needs immediate rescue you can type in the address and get the precise coordinates. You can then feed that info to a Coast Guard pilot who in turn plugs it into a GPS. This allows a helicopter to navigate to within 3 feet of the building. This is old technology that is both widely available and cheap.

Airplanes, boats, trucks, trailers, generators, chain saws, tools… If you can name it then chances are it is available in the private sector because we use it in our every day lives. We have everything we need except the process. What every emergency plan lacks is the instruction set to bridge the gap between government and private citizen.