If my point had been that we should have spent that money to protect New Orleans, you’d be right in a number of ways. I know, just like anyone who studies these storms knows, that eventually a cat 5 will hit New Orleans. It still hasn’t happened, but it will: all you have to do is look at the tracks of Gulf storms over the past fifty years and it becomes apparent that the entire coast is one big shooting gallery for mother nature.
But I do I advocate building a huge seawall around the city? No. Just like I don’t advocate building a huge sea wall on Key Biscayne. There’s no point. We like to live in harm’s way.
So maybe we could quibble about effort going into such an undertaking as it compares to the effort to go to the moon, launch a probe that launches another probe that hits a comet dead center, sent robots to Mars…whatever you want. You might be able to convince me that making New Orleans hurricane-proof is on par with those efforts.
What you won’t convince me of is that what is apparently very possible today was so much infinitely more difficult two days ago that it makes going to the moon look easy.
But come on, Bricker. After 9/11, everyone was geared up about “securing the homeland”. That meant everything from protecting us against another 9/11 to establishing evacuation plans in case of large-scale disaster. A lot of us were comforted to see the DoHS established, even if it meant another layer of beauracracy, because at least we could rest assured that someone was thinking up all the worse case scenarios and planning for them.
We only had a few days to prepare for Hurricane Katrina, but we had full and ample time to prepare for a catastrophe on this scale.
I would be understanding if things were just half-assed. You can’t expect perfection under a situation like this and there wasn’t a whole lot of time to shift into gear. But things aren’t half-assed. They aren’t even a quarter-assed. People keep saying that officials weren’t expecting something of this magnitude, but it doesn’t seem like they were expecting anything.
I don’t know if it’s productive to blame people right now. But one thing is obvious to me: there is blame to go around.
The difference between NOW and two days ago is dramatic: 48 more hours to plan, activate, mobilize. Again, if you have no understanding of the behind-the-scenes support required to put a helicoper and crew into the air with supplies, then I not-so-respectfully suggest you’re basing your opinion on nothing except a feeling - no concrete understanding of what needs to be done.
Fine. Let’s say you’re right, I have no understanding of the situation. Let’s say the convoys that are going through the city right now could not POSSIBLY have accomplished the exact same task on Wednesday.
From your post, it’s clear though that someone had that understanding. Someone–I would imagine quite a few people–knew on Tuesday that we weren’t going to make it there until today. If there’s such a science to it, as you suggest, they would have known. Then it should have been obvious to those same people what the effect of two extra days would have been for victims in that situation. At which point a whole range of shorter-term options could have been considered and implemented to save even just a few lives.
Air drops. Food and water. I suppose you’re going to tell me the logistics of putting supplies on a plane, flying that plane over a city, and dropping those supplies out that plane requires a level of organization and planning beyond my comprehension? Sorry, I just don’t buy it.
In that case, since I only see black people looting then only black people are looting in NOLA. :eek: And the shoot on sight order only supports your claim that America is full of nothing but white racists and impoverished/neglected blacks.
From this post, as well as a few others, it is damned clear to me that you have no idea of the art of modern military logistics. And that’s what this recovery is at this point, a military logistical enterprise. Even though it’s under the guise of FEMA.
Tripler
I will not bore you with the details of planning an airdrop. But I will tell you that yours is wishful thinking.
But the failure of planning occurred in the abstract, regardless who eventually was harmed.
On the morning after Katrina blew through, all the news reports focused on Gulfport and how fortunate NO had been that it had not been struck. There was some local wade-throughg flooding in the lowest parts of the city, but no one was seriously alarmed by it. Then the first levee burst and people began to get concerned. Finally, three separate levees had been breached and we were on to a full-fledged disaster.
The decision to not support the levees occurred well over a year ago. There is no knowledge of which levess would fail. Had it been only the levee directly in front of the Central Business District, and had the generators for the pumps not failed, the “disaster” would have been almost exclusively one of economic hardship for major corporations with some additional hardships for the poor people in the lowest section of the city. The same failure of planning might have been disproportionately born by businesses and the wealthy. There really is a lot of coincidence that the disaster fell hardest on the poorest.
The basic failure–as with the WTC/Pentagon attacks, was not a matter of looking after the wealthy or of ignoring the poor, (black or white), but a failure of imagination to realize that so much devastation would occur.
I agree that had anyone at the time thought it through, the entire public transportation fleet of New Orleans should have been pressed into service to effect the evacuation. However, rolling stock is expensive and fragile and the standard way that is is treated in the face of storms is to get it secured somewhere so that it will be available when the wind dies. For all I know, the head of the NORTA is black; the mayor is. Was he being racist for not calling up the mayor to announce that he was going to send his fleet out, accompanied by police, to force everyone to leave the city?
Had he done so and the levees had not failed, would he then be criticized for encourging panic and imposing hardship on all the people he successfully moved? There are a lot of (stupid in retrospect) decisions made for less than perfect reasons. I do not believe that it is productive to announce racism as a contributing factor based only on the current statistical proportion of blacks who have suffered when small changes in events would have not caused them the same suffering.
Airdrops of food and water? The same situation applies. Katrina could have gone a bit west, wiped out any number of (wealthy) white areas without happening to have done the same thing to New Orleans and we would have the same lack of supplies ready to deliver.
Could racsim have played a role in some of these decisions? Sure. But we need evidence of actual decisions, not statistical generalities, to make that judgment.
True, I have no idea of the “art” of modern military logistics.
But really.
You’re telling me that if Bush had said, on Wednesday, “I want air drops over that city NOW,” his military advisors would have told him it’s simply not possible? “No sir, Mr. Commander-in-Chief, we can’t do that. We’ll be there Friday, though.”
Planes with supplies flew from bases here in Missouri all the way to Afghanistan during that operation, but those same planes couldn’t make it to New Orleans because of the lack of a critical 48-hour planning period? If that’s true, then I’d say our military could use a bit more logistics and bit less art.
Huh? Why drop before the storm? I think by Tuesday we had a pretty clear idea of who was in need. And if we knew, as Bricker suggests, we weren’t going to get there until Friday…why would we not choose to save lives? Why? It makes no sense. Again, I’m not blaming Bush here, but if he had said “get it done,” you honestly think his military advisors would have come back with, “well, we need two days to think about it.” Come on.
While there are a few scattered whites here and there, based on the videos shown so far of the downtown area, the footage of the people actually in the streets is at least 95% + black, and more specifically, poor black.
I’ve got credit cards, and bank accounts, and friends and vehicles, and options. I don’t think the people in the streets had a lot of PRACTICAL “get out of town” options.
I can only imagine what the rest of the world is thinking watching this bedraggled mass of the underclass begging desperately for aid. As someone proud to be an American it’s pretty damned embarrassing.
I did not suggest dropping anything before the storm. I pointed out that we do not have large caches of food and water sitting around waiting to be scooped up and flown around the country, regardless who the recipients would be.
With this post, you are assuming that supplies and material were already prepositioned and waiting to be loaded onto aircraft in response to this storm. With Afghanistan, we had months of shipping supplies to central points for loading, and them mobilization of aircraft to move those supplies. In Katrina, we had days. You do the math, and then, maybe you’ll realize it’s an “art”, not a science.
Tripler
Those planes could have made it to the Big Easy in 48 hours. But they’d be empty.
I find it hard to believe that all the MREs being passed out today were manufactured within the past 48 hours. I find it impossible to believe that putting water into bottles requires massive logistical planning. Large caches waiting to be scooped up? Maybe not enough for 50,000, or not enough for 20,000, but enough to save some lives. Which we knew would be the best we could hope for if those people were going to have to live in squalor for four days.
This is almost exactly what the director of FEMA said yesterday–that they had pre-positioned resources. But really, the hell with pre-positioning, let’s say the MREs are in Wisconsin. You’re telling me they might as well be on the moon?
I haven’t heard any of the DHS’s comments, but I will say this: Without the means to move prepositioned materials, all material is just that–pre-positioned. The Wisconsin Air Guard may be deployed somewhere else, and they may have to be moved my rail, which would take a few days anyway, and if those lines are cut by the storm. . . well, you get the idea why I call it an “art”. Even if you had supplies in place in New Orleans, specific conditions particular to this storm would prevent their widespread distribution. You fail to understand how terrain dictates the problem and the solution.
Tripler
Thankfully your heart is in the right place, but you just don’t understand the nightmare on the ground.