The Alabama weather people were talking major storm surge three days before it hit. According to The Weather Channel, Galveston city officials warned that people ignoring the evacuation order would face “almost certain death”. I saw this a full day before the surge started.
Maybe 40% of the homes in Galveston don’t have a television or radio, and city officials are to blame for not going door to door? Oh, wait! According to a local station, which Direct TV made available on channel 361, they did send police and other city workers door to door.
I’m pretty sure that if you get the political BS out of this, it boils down to some people being just too stupid to leave.
Oh, no, ETF, I’m not in TX. Sorry if I gave that impression! That was what the folks in Galveston and other places were saying over the weekend - that the local stations were downplaying the storm. If they mentioned the surge it was just in passing. I was glued to the 'net, where everyone was screaming Get out! Get out! One poster likened the situation to one of those horror movies where you want to scream at the people on screen. “Don’t go in that room !!!” And feeling just as helpless.
This is copied from my post earlier. KHOU is the Houston TV station:
Shheeeeettt…Whenever a thunderstorm passes over of any meat the local media goes on how it’s the end of the world.
I think that is part of the problem. When you’ve developed a reputation for overblowing (heh) everything for so long, when something really dangerous comes along you discount it.
The local media could be screaming at the top of their lungs to run…that certain death is coming and I would discount it.
Ok, I exaggerate…but they need to cut it out because many won’t take them seriously when they should.
Part of me wonders if this had some affect on people staying and then saying ‘I didn’t know it would be so bad’.
I’ve been to Bolivar/Crystal Beach many times… same for the West end of the island.
Anyone who builds a primary residence there is a fool. Plain and simple. There was similar destruction after Alicia in 1983. Without a seawall or something, you’re just tempting fate that your house won’t be destroyed. And if you’re idiotic enough to stay in that house, well, you get what you deserve, and regardless of evacuation orders or not, it’s not the city’s fault.
This whole thing has been as much the retards who didn’t evacuate and/or didn’t store up any food/water as it’s any politician’s fault.
I grew up in Houston, and my family’s originally from Galveston and the Galveston area (La Marque), and it’s pretty much a given that everyone in the family has their hurricane supplies ready every summer.
Anyone who doesn’t do that is also a fool. They advertise disaster preparedness on grocery bags (used to, anyway), on TV, in the paper, on the web, etc…
And yet, what do you see one day later? People in line, bitching that they’re not handing out enough food, or handing it out fast enough.
Fuck 'em. If you live in an area like Houston/Galveston and you don’t have the sense to be prepared, it sucks for you, and it’s really not the government’s job to protect you or make it better.
Puh-leeze. I’m no Democrat; I’m no big fan of Ray Nagin, but this is just so much crap that I have to respond.
Nagin did not immediately blame the rest of the US for not helping him. He did have a well-publicized breakdown on WWL radio a few days after the storm about the lack of coordinated help from State and Federal sources. Why did he have the meltdown?
Governor Kathleen Blanco was inept. She’d be inept if she were a Republican, but she’s a Democrat, and she’s inept. The governance structure in the United States is such that the Chief Executive cannot unilaterally decide to deploy Federal assets in State and municipal affairs without the local leaders’ consent. Governor Blanco, in requesting Federal aid, asked for - - and I quote here - - “Everything you’ve got.” This was not specific enough to deploy Federal assets.
Had she said I need 25,000 National Guard troops, 2 mobile hospitals, 40,000 MREs, and 20,000 cases of water delivered to the Convention Center, then the Feds could have responded. When asked to clarify, she repeated “We need everything you’ve got.” So Bush requested that she allow them to federalize the rescue effort and other response since his folks were going to have to figure out who to send, with how much, where, and decide what they needed to do when they got there.
There are many who think that Bush asked mainly to politize the matter since Republican Haley Barbour was doing just fine on his own in Mississippi while Democrat Blanco was floundering in Louisiana. Others think the Democratic Party got ahold of Blanco and insisted that she not allow the Bush Administration to take over to avoid Republican hay-making. Regardless, she took 3 days to decide that no, no thank you, we’ll handle it. Three days while people camped on overpasses and sweltered in what passed for shelters in New Orleans.
It was at the end of the Wednesday - - 2 days after the storm - - that Nagin blew his fuse on WWL. Thursday morning Blanco refused to allow the federalization. Bush bent the rules and went ahead and sent in General Russell Honore and the Army on Thursday afternoon and on Friday most of the people were evacuated from New Orleans by Army and Coast Guard units with the aid of private buses.
I don’t care which party is in the White House. The President of the United States and his staff should not be making disaster response plans for large US cities. That’s what mayors do. When the mayor is overwhelmed - - as Nagin was (and it was partly his fault) - - it’s up to the governor to step in.
As for Nagin’s buses, a couple of years ago I posted here on this aspect of the fiasco. I can no longer get that thread, but you’re welcome to look. My numbers may be a bit off, but here goes.
The total population of New Orleans that did not have access to cars was well above 50,000 people. The number of buses that Nagin could have used - - school and city - - were around 150 or so. A school bus will hold about 60 kids; figure fewer adults with their suitcases. Let’s figure the city bus will hold about the same number of people as a school bus, and let’s say that for an evacuation the average is 40 people. In short - - the buses could have carried out 6,000 people.
It would have taken 9 or 10 trips to get folks out. The buses might not have been able to return after 1 trip, though, as the interstates had been converted to contraflow at that point. As for the buses on hand after the storm - - all were flooded.
For Gustav, city staging points were arranged that used city buses to take people to points where they could get on charter buses or Amtrak trains. It took lots and lots of trips to get those people out, and they were fewer than Katrina.
This not to say that Nagin should be blameless, but the bus issue is just such a relatively minor thing to hang on him. Looting, crime, recovery, apathy, self-delusion, corruption. Hang those on him. Not using buses he didn’t have drivers for that wound up being a drop in the bucket? Please.
Personally, I don’t like it when Americans use catastrophic events to whet their political axes. Real people died in Katrina, Rita, Ike, and other disasters. Governments did not respond perfectly. Republicans and Democrats have roughly an equal success rate at managing disaster.
Wouldn’t our time be better spent working together to improve everyone’s response rather than cursing out each other on message boards while making political hay with shared tragedy?
