Katrina Response Mismanagement

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Originally Posted by wendybeth

One of my co-workers has a husband who is a firefighter. He volunteered to go down to the South with a contingent of Spokane area firefighters, and his reports from the field are pretty unpleasant.

Your mention of firefighters reminded me of this story.

ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.
On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.

-snip-

"They've got people here who are search-and-rescue certified, paramedics, haz-mat certified," said a Texas firefighter. "We're sitting in here having a sexual-harassment class while there are still [victims] in Louisiana who haven't been contacted yet."

-snip-

Roy Fire Chief Jon Ritchie said his crews would be a "little frustrated" if they were assigned to hand out phone numbers at an evacuee center in Texas rather than find and treat victims of the disaster.
Also of concern to some of the firefighters is the cost borne by their municipalities in the wake of their absence. Cities are picking up the tab to fill the firefighters' vacancies while they work 30 days for the federal government.
"There are all of these guys with all of this training and we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter said. "They [the hurricane victims] are screaming for help and this day [of FEMA training] was a waste."
Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.
But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

[Scrooge McSam]

I understand now. Thanks!

Originally Posted by Morrigoon

Am I likely to be satisfied with any of the candidates in the next election? I'm not holding my breath, let's put it that way.

Sister, you said a mouthful there.

[wendybeth]

Holy crap, MBC- I'll have to check if Bill was in that group! He left while I was on vacation, so it's quite possible. He doesn't have a lot of patience with that sort of thing- it would truly suck if he went all the way down there to help out and had to go through the stuff described in that article.

[Gemini Cricket]

Bush approval at lowest level of his presidency

Moreover, fewer than half those surveyed approve of the way in which Bush has dealt with the hurricane, and a whopping three-fourths believe the United States is not prepared for a nuclear, biological or chemical attack.

Me thinks we'll be catching Bin Laden any day now...

[innerSpaceman]

From today's New York Times:

[concerning 34 seniors citizens found dead inside St. Rita's Nursing Home in New Orleans] "At St. Rita's, 34 seniors fought to live with what little strength they had as the lights went out and the water rose over their legs, over their shoulders, over their mouths. As Gardiner Harris wrote in The Times, the failed defenses included a table nailed against a window and a couch pushed against a door.

Several electric wheelchairs were gathered near the front entrance, maybe by patients who dreamed of evacuating. Their drowned bodies were found swollen and unrecognizable one week later, as Mr. Harris reported, 'draped over a wheelchair, wrapped in a shower curtain, lying on a floor in several inches of muck.'

As Louisiana's death toll spiked to 423 yesterday, the state charged St. Rita's owners with multiple counts of negligent homicide, accusing them of not responding to warnings about the hurricane. 'In effect,' State Attorney General Charles Foti, Jr. said, 'I think that their inactions resulted in the death of these people.' "


Lest we reserve our ire for Brown, Blanco, Bush and Nagin (hey, how did a name starting with "N" get in there?), there are tons of other disgraceful elements of blame to go around for decades to come. There's going to have to be a new and separate circle of hell created especially.

[Gemini Cricket]

If I thought like a Republican, I'd say Bush should be impeached. They impeached other presidents for less...

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

Me thinks we'll be catching Bin Laden any day now...

Coincidence that all of a sudden there are reports that he's been seeking medical attention for some undisclosed ailment?

[Name]

guess his dialysis machine isn't working as well anymore. or maybe he got "the call" from the white house staff; but not from bush himself, must maintain plausible deniability.

[Gn2Dlnd]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

At St. Rita's, 34 seniors fought to live with what little strength they had as the lights went out and the water rose over their legs, over their shoulders, over their mouths. As Gardiner Harris wrote in The Times, the failed defenses included a table nailed against a window and a couch pushed against a door.

Goddamn.

[Gn2Dlnd]

According to Knight-Ridder:

The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12637172.htm