There was some frooferaw over the ‘late’ arrival of the USNS Comfort, and IIRC a bit of a snit over who got moved to stay in the luxury cruise ships, and when.
Hey, the guy was talking about for-profit evacuating. Asking that question is absolutely central to the for-profit part of it, and if I were hard-hearted enough to have done Katrina evacuations for profit, I’d have been in the Garden District hauling off furniture for big $$$ than dealing with the chaos at the Convention Center or Superdome that would make squat.
And really… regardless of what the Bush administration did, the ultimate fault with the post-Katrina events lies squarely with Gov. Blanco and Ray Nagin for having absolutely inadequate and incompetent planning and preparation for such an unquestionably likely and obviously destructive event as a hurricane.
And here we are almost 5 years later, and we’re still hearing twice the whining out of New Orleans that we’re hearing out of Galveston, yet they’ve got much more money, much more press and much more time to fix their shit.
I’m personally tired of hearing about it- if they wanted to have done something, they’ve had plenty of money and time to do it- at this point, they’re asking for handouts, pure and simple.
(note: Galveston knows what devastating hurricanes are like- the 1900 storm in Galveston had 3 times the number of deaths than Katrina. And what did they do? They rebuilt the city 15 feet higher, and didn’t whine and cry about it, just like they’re not doing it now- they’re spending their time and effort rebuilding and restoring, not bitching.)
This is wrong. It all was the fault of Kathleen Blanco, Louisiana’s at the time governor. She went into a panic attack as soon as she knew what was happening and was incapable of cooperating with anyone to coordinate any kind of rescue efforts.
New Orleans didn’t flood from Hurricane Katrina. It was a full 12-24 hours later that the floodwalls failed and the water started coming in. The day after Katrina hit, the people who stayed thought that it had just been a close call. Then all hell broke loose and at that point, it was too late to do anything about it.
Everyone likes to blame the Bush administration, but everything was so screwed up down here that the Bush administration really had no way of knowing that that kind of rescue effort was even necessary until the news crews were able to show it on TV.
And that’s about when the military came in and started getting people out. Bush never told anyone NO.
What more could they have possibly done?
And there may actually have been for-profit hurricane evacuators in Katrina that you never heard about in the media. However, given the scale of a major city and a major hurricane, said evacuators might have collectively made about as much difference as pissing in a hurricane.
To have made a noticeable difference, any such for-profit organization would have to have been on a scale of, I don’t know, local/state authorities, the Coast Guard, National Guard, US military, etc.
Bottom line, in addition to the many reasons already cited, a large, private organization waiting for major hurricanes to hit major urban areas is going to have a huge, huge downtime to the point that said organization simply isn’t a feasible operation.
There were a lot of non-profit and non-profit organizations (and lots of individuals) that did get involved AFTER the hurricane…and even then, the for-profit organizations (like mine) provided services free of charge.
So, bottom line, timeliness and frequency are also huge issues.
Then again, Dunkirk might have some lessons that could have been applied. That rescue operation involved significant private resources albeit no credit card swiping involved.
Perhaps you missed this recent legal tidbit?
-No mention of the ‘total fault’ of Gov. Blanco at al.
Who was it that was in charge of the US Army this past decade?
And consider the logistical as well as judicial, legislative, and executive branch obstacles* in getting something relatively simple done…for example, getting the python in my pants orally placated…and not just from the for-profit sector but from the pubic and individual sectors? And while it is indeed a mighty Python, a spectable to behold, a once-in-a-lifetime hurricane whacking a major metropolitan area is measured in miles and not meters (like said Python).
*This shall, henceforth, be known as the “mighty Python paradox.”
I think it was also a case of a disaster that exceeded expectations as to its devastation on many orders of magnitudes that confounded rescue as well as evacuation attempts. This storm didn’t spring out of nowhere, it was widely reported how powerful it was going to be and nobody really knew if the levees were going to hold up under that magnitude of water against them.
Call it what you will, but the levees that were built by the USAR Engineer Corps were the ones they were alllowed/ordered to build given the budgetary constraints on both local and national political levels.
No excuses for Bush’s appointing of ineptitude as the head of FEMA though. Their response was leadership tied and egregious. Slow.
That may be, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Bush withholding aid to the people stranded after the area started to flood.
Everything that should’ve taken place at the state level in the hours immediately following the hurricane and then the flood was done wrong, or not at all.
There’s also a lot of people who think that a barge got loose in the Intracoastal Waterway that went through the flood wall and flooded the Lower Ninth Ward. (It’s never been proven that the barge broke through, or if the wall broke and the barge got sucked in by the rushing water.)
The main thing they’re blaming the Federal Government on is the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO or Mister Go), an artificial waterway created by the Corps, which allowed the storm surge to come in and flood St. Bernard Parish, which is downriver of New Orleans on the eastbank.
The people who are pissed off about the MRGO contend that it never should’ve been built to begin with and that it was inviting disaster by allowing the floodwaters from the Gulf to come in in the event of a major storm (not to mention saltwater intrusion messing with local wildlife and vegetation). This is something that took place 40 years before Katrina came. The most they can do is blame Bush for not having the hindsight to shut down the MRGO before the storm came. You could also blame Clinton, big Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, etc.
If you’re talking about before the hurricane hit…
I remember arguing this subject at the time and reading detailed timelines, the emergency plan, and actions taken etc but this is from memory that is several years old so it’s not very detailed…
Anyway, remember that Katrina was a bit of a surprise for New Orleans. It had crossed Florida barely qualifying as a hurricane, hit the gulf and grew to a category three. It was expected to turn north and hit Florida’s panhandle but 48 hours before landfall, they realized it wasn’t going to turn and NO would be hit. During the next 48 hours, it doubled in size and hit category 5 status the day before it hit. The government bus evacuation started during those 48 hours and continued until winds made driving buses too dangerous (yes busses were used up until that point). This was many hours before the hurricane actually hit, I want to say something like 20 hours before landfall, but my memory isn’t that great.
In short, there just wasn’t time to evacuate properly with the free busses they had in the area, let alone start a paid bus line to get involved.
As an aside, I have a family member who works for a chain of gas stations. FEMA called them while we were having dinner and asked if they could fuel up their busses at their station. They gave the ok and to this day, FEMA still hasn’t paid a penny for all that fuel. (ETA: these were the busses used a week or two later to finally get everyone out)
You seem to want to either restart that debate, or claim debatable points as fact. I’m not interested in a debate, and I don’t care to be told what’s a fact and what ain’t by some dude on the internet.
Once again, what I posted about and what you posted about in reply had absolutely nothing to do with each other. There’s nothing to debate.