These two articles were sent to me while I was away (thought I’d have a PC to write on, but unfortunately it was busted) – and they detail exactally how the Mayor and Governor screwed the pooch in terms of pre-storm preventative action. I’ll let you read them and then comment afterwards.
Blame Amid the Tragedy
By BOB WILLIAMS
September 6, 2005; Page A28As the devastation of Hurricane Katrina continues to shock and sadden the nation, the question on many lips is, Who is to blame for the inadequate response?
As a former state legislator who represented the legislative district most impacted by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, I can fully understand and empathize with the people and public officials over the loss of life and property.
Many in the media are turning their eyes toward the federal government, rather than considering the culpability of city and state officials. I am fully aware of the challenges of having a quick and responsive emergency response to a major disaster. And there is definitely a time for accountability; but what isn’t fair is to dump on the federal officials and avoid those most responsible — local and state officials who failed to do their job as the first responders. The plain fact is, lives were needlessly lost in New Orleans due to the failure of Louisiana’s governor, Kathleen Blanco, and the city’s mayor, Ray Nagin.
The primary responsibility for dealing with emergencies does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to local and state officials who are charged by law with the management of the crucial first response to disasters. First response should be carried out by local and state emergency personnel under the supervision of the state governor and his/her emergency operations center.
The actions and inactions of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin are a national disgrace due to their failure to implement the previously established evacuation plans of the state and city. Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin cannot claim that they were surprised by the extent of the damage and the need to evacuate so many people. Detailed written plans were already in place to evacuate more than a million people. The plans projected that 300,000 people would need transportation in the event of a hurricane like Katrina. If the plans had been implemented, thousands of lives would likely have been saved.
In addition to the plans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill 13 months ago, in which widespread flooding supposedly trapped 300,000 people inside New Orleans. The exercise simulated the evacuation of more than a million residents. The problems identified in the simulation apparently were not solved.
A year ago, as Hurricane Ivan approached, New Orleans ordered an evacuation but did not use city or school buses to help people evacuate. As a result many of the poorest citizens were unable to evacuate. Fortunately, the hurricane changed course and did not hit New Orleans, but both Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin acknowledged the need for a better evacuation plan. Again, they did not take corrective actions. In 1998, during a threat by Hurricane George, 14,000 people were sent to the Superdome and theft and vandalism were rampant due to inadequate security. Again, these problems were not corrected.
The New Orleans contingency plan is still, as of this writing, on the city’s Web site, and states: “The safe evacuation of threatened populations is one of the principle [sic] reasons for developing a Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan.” But the plan was apparently ignored.
Mayor Nagin was responsible for giving the order for mandatory evacuation and supervising the actual evacuation: His office of Emergency Preparedness (not the federal government) must coordinate with the state on elements of evacuation and assist in directing the transportation of evacuees to staging areas. Mayor Nagin had to be encouraged by the governor to contact the National Hurricane Center before he finally, belatedly, issued the order for mandatory evacuation. And sadly, it apparently took a personal call from the president to urge the governor to order the mandatory evacuation.
The city’s evacuation plan states: “The city of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas.” But even though the city has enough school and transit buses to evacuate 12,000 citizens per fleet run, the mayor did not use them. To compound the problem, the buses were not moved to high ground and were flooded. The plan also states that “special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific lifesaving assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedures as needed.” This was not done.
The evacuation plan warned that “if an evacuation order is issued without the mechanisms needed to disseminate the information to the affected persons, then we face the possibility of having large numbers of people either stranded and left to the mercy of a storm, or left in an area impacted by toxic materials.” That is precisely what happened because of the mayor’s failure.
Instead of evacuating the people, the mayor ordered the refugees to the Superdome and Convention Center without adequate security and no provisions for food, water and sanitary conditions. As a result people died, and there was even rape committed, in these facilities. Mayor Nagin failed in his responsibility to provide public safety and to manage the orderly evacuation of the citizens of New Orleans. Now he wants to blame Gov. Blanco and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In an emergency the first requirement is for the city’s emergency center to be linked to the state emergency operations center. This was not done.
The federal government does not have the authority to intervene in a state emergency without the request of a governor. President Bush declared an emergency prior to Katrina hitting New Orleans, so the only action needed for federal assistance was for Gov. Blanco to request the specific type of assistance she needed. She failed to send a timely request for specific aid.
In addition, unlike the governors of New York, Oklahoma and California in past disasters, Gov. Blanco failed to take charge of the situation and ensure that the state emergency operation facility was in constant contact with Mayor Nagin and FEMA. It is likely that thousands of people died because of the failure of Gov. Blanco to implement the state plan, which mentions the possible need to evacuate up to one million people. The plan clearly gives the governor the authority for declaring an emergency, sending in state resources to the disaster area and requesting necessary federal assistance.
State legislators and governors nationwide need to update their contingency plans and the operation procedures for state emergency centers. Hurricane Katrina had been forecast for days, but that will not always be the case with a disaster (think of terrorist attacks). It must be made clear that the governor and locally elected officials are in charge of the “first response.”
I am not attempting to excuse some of the delays in FEMA’s response. Congress and the president need to take corrective action there, also. However, if citizens expect FEMA to be a first responder to terrorist attacks or other local emergencies (earthquakes, forest fires, volcanoes), they will be disappointed. The federal government’s role is to offer aid upon request.
The Louisiana Legislature should conduct an immediate investigation into the failures of state and local officials to implement the written emergency plans. The tragedy is not over, and real leadership in the state and local government are essential in the months to come. More importantly, the hurricane season is still upon us, and local and state officials must stay focused on the jobs for which they were elected — and not on the deadly game of passing the emergency buck.
Mr. Williams is president of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a free market public policy research organization in Olympia, Wash.
Article #2
Don’t blame only feds
Crime rate, inept pols leveled New Orleans before the storm
Let’s take a break from the joy of Bush bashing to reveal the dirty little secret of New Orleans: Its local government deserves an F for its planning and response to Katrina. And one other thing: The New Orleans police force would be a joke if it weren’t a disgrace.
Yes, I know it’s impolitic to say such things while the suffering in the Big Easy is fresh and many cops risked their lives to save others. But now is the time to blow the whistle on the story line being repeated by rote across America: That the federal government ignored New Orleans because most of its residents are black and poor.That narrative has all the accuracy of a historic novel: it takes two undisputed facts – the feds were slow and New Orleans is largely black and poor – and weaves in pure fiction to make the desired link.
The charge of racism-inspired foot-dragging isn’t just nonsense. It’s pernicious nonsense, as in destructive and malicious. You know that’s a fact because loony Howard Dean, the Democratic Party boss, is now peddling it. He’s joined by Jesse Jackson, who said the squalor in New Orleans “looks like the hull of a slave ship.” Oh, please.
If even a smidgen of the racism charges are true, President Bush should be shot. But before we give him his blindfold, let’s look at New Orleans before Katrina.
Start with crime. That looters ran unchecked after the hurricane isn’t surprising when you consider that criminals have had the run of the city for years.
It is a perennial contender for Murder Capital. The 264 homicides last year were a drop of only 11 from 2003 – and the first decline in five years.
New Orleans, with fewer than 500,000 people, had almost half the murders of New York, which had 570 homicides last year in a city of more than 8 million. Put another way, if New York had New Orleans’ murder rate, we would have more than 4,200 murders a year.
That the New Orleans police are hardly the Finest was proven by a shocking report yesterday: Nearly a third of New Orleans cops – some 500 of the 1,600 – are now unaccounted for. The department says some quit, but it doesn’t know where most of them are.
The top cop, Eddie Compass, has responded by offering all officers paid vacations to Las Vegas and Atlanta. Yes, that’s right – he is pulling all cops off the street, even while bodies lie in the open. Never in New York.
Then there’s Mayor Ray Nagin, a Democrat, who has blamed everybody but himself. Maybe he has forgotten his plans for dealing with Katrina.
Last July, his office prepared DVDs warning that, if the city ever had to be evacuated, residents were on their own. According toa July 24 article in The Times-Picayune (spotted by the Web’s Drudge Report), “Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm’s way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation.”
“You’re responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you,” one official said of the message.
And how’s this for preparation? Cops were told not to work on the day Katrina hit, one officer told The New York Times, but “to come in the next day, to save money on their budget.”
By all means, let’s investigate what went wrong in New Orleans. Let’s start in City Hall.
Source
The worst thing we can do now is pretend that there weren’t massive failures on the part of the city and state government as well as the federal. I jumped into this while face to face with the harsh reality that there were thousands of people down there who were left to fend for themselves. The city was a concentrated pit of crime and poverty, not unlike other cities across the country. This fact should not shame only the officials who worked in that state.
What’s happening right now is one side is blaming the low-end, while the other is blaming the high-end. Ignoring either would be wrong. We all pay state and federal taxes, which goes for the military and all those Washington DC suits whose job it is to look out for us. Anyone arguing it was none of the federal government’s business based on prior written procedure is championing an incredibly flimsy argument. There was a before and after, so let’s not pretend there was only one and not the other.
The military has been working the situation for the past week or so, and the results are incredible. In terms of efficiency, courage and work-ethic, these people represent what makes me proud to be an American. What happened in the leadup to the hurricane and in the days after do not. The disparity of justice between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ was on display for all of us to see. Who among us would chose to deny a lesson to be learned here that has nothing to do with levees or MREs?
I have been saying all along that the Mayor and the Governor have a big share of the blame here! However people love to blame GWB for everything!
Instead of patronizing you Chris, I would like to praise your level headed analysis, and believe shared blame on local and federal level, is something we can all agree on.
Thanks Michael – I had a lot of time to think this over without the distraction of a couple news cycles. Coming back into the fray, the thing really has seperated – on the radio especially. Sad day…
Chris I do congratulate you on being objective here !
and believe shared blame on local and federal level, is something we can all agree on.
I don’t know. Had the local and State government followed the plan and didn’t completely colapse then there probably wouldn’t be any blame becuase the transition would have been seemless.
We are blaming the Feds for not doing the Mayor’s and Governor’s jobs for them. How could we have known, aside from them being Democrats, that they were completely and utterly incompetant?
If this is true it makes me want to puke:
By Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
Sep. 9, 2005 at 10:48AM
Police from surrounding jurisdictions shut down several access points to one of the only ways out of New Orleans last week, effectively trapping victims of Hurricane Katrina in the flooded and devastated city.
An eyewitness account from two San Francisco paramedics posted on an internet site for Emergency Medical Services specialists says, “Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot.”
“We shut down the bridge,” Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been “a closed and secure location” since before the storm hit.
“All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down,” he said.
The bridge in question — the Crescent City Connection — is the major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.
Lawson said that once the storm itself had passed Monday, police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river.
He added that the small town, which he called “a bedroom community” for the city of New Orleans, would have been overwhelmed by the influx.
“There was no food, water or shelter” in Gretna City, Lawson said. “We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people.
“If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged.”
But — in an example of the chaos that continued to beset survivors of the storm long after it had passed — even as Lawson’s men were closing the bridge, authorities in New Orleans were telling people that it was only way out of the city.
“The only way people can leave the city of New Orleans is to get on (the) Crescent City Connection … authorities said,” reads a Tuesday morning posting on the Web site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, which kept reporting through the storm and the ruinous flooding that followed.
Similar announcements appeared on the Web site of local radio station WDSU and other local news sources.
“Evidently, someone on the ground (in New Orleans) was telling people there was transport here, or food or shelter,” said Lawson. “There wasn’t.”
“We were not contacted by anyone” about the instructions being given to survivors to use the bridge to get out of town, he said.
The two paramedics, who were trapped in the city while attending a convention, joined a group of people who had been turned out by the hotels that they were staying in on Wednesday. When the group attempted to get to the Superdome — designated by city authorities as a shelter for those unable to evacuate — they were turned away by the National Guard.
“Quite naturally, we asked … ‘What was our alternative?’ The guards told us that that was our problem, and no, they did not have extra water to give to us.
“This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile law enforcement.”
As they made their way to the bridge in order to leave the city “armed Gretna sheriffs (sic) formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads.”
Members of the group nonetheless approached the police lines, and “questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge … They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City.
“These were code words,” the paramedics wrote, “for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.”
The authors say that during the course of that day, they saw “other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated.”
Efforts to contact the authors of the Internet posting were unsuccessful, but UPI was able to confirm that individuals with their names are employed as paramedics in San Francisco.
Lawson says that his officers “acted in the manner they were instructed to” and defends the order to close the bridge as “the right decision.”
He said that in addition to his security concerns, an unmoored vessel on the river “raised the threat that it might crash into and breach the levee, which would have flooded Gretna.”
He says that his officers did assist about 4000 people who “arrived at the doorstep of (Gretna City)” either by crossing the bridge before it was closed or approaching from another route.
“We commandeered public transit buses and we took them to higher and safer ground” at the junction of Interstate-10 and Causeway Boulevard where “there was food and shelter,” he said.
I had pondered what I would have done if I were stuck down there and honestly believed I would have been able to walk out. If someone had stoped me from crossing that bridge, you might as well have considered me an ‘insurgent’ at that point.
When Phish had their final concert up in the Northern Kingdom of Vermont (Coventry), the camping area was too muddy to house everyone. I ended up walking over ten miles to and from the venue…it’s baffling to me that in America people could have chosen to ditch their cars and humped it into the show, but you didn’t have the right to walk out of New Orleans!
Blano and Nagin need to face some serious prison time for this. What sucks is there was a disaster plan for them to follow that they completely ignored!!!!
Right – don’t tell me you’re going to chastise those two for their faults, yet leave the federales off the hook completely.
Let me point this one thing out…large organizations like FEMA don’t just ‘get better’ overnight. Their incompetence will show itself in the weeks and months to come as it already has. You can’t just ignore every instance of it as we hear of it, can you?
I’m quite sure that radio and some talking heads on FoxNews will do just that…
Blaming does not help. It is hard to find solutions when you’re blaming others. It seems to me that we need to decide:
1. How strong does the flood protection in New Orleans need to be? Can our country afford to take the risk of another flooded New Orleans?
2. What can we do to minimize the risks of other disasters (terrorist, flood, earthquake, etc.)?
3. Are our evacuation plans adequate? Where are we going to shelter people? How many people will likely need shelter? How are we getting them there? Do we have a plan for evacuating nursing homes, hospitals, prisons, and other institutions where inhabitants will need special assistance, and has it been practiced?? How do we communicate in a power failure? Do we need additional first responders, and who is going to direct them? Has the plan been practiced, have weak points been corrected, and the plan retested?
4. Do we as individuals have an evacuation plan of our own? There is a great checklist on the Red Cross’s website of what stuff you should have ready to grab at a moment’s notice, along with lots of other helpful info.
I’m sure there are other things that need thinking about and solutions.
I see it differently. America is a Republic, and the folks that need to ponder the contents of the list you posted are not you and I, but the representatives we elected in the government.
It is my job to ferret out instances where we as Americans didn’t get the bang for our buck…as a ‘concerned citizen’, I cannot just walk into a government office and say, “OK – I’m in charge now”.
The soft/neutral statement has been that it’s not a time for finger pointing, but if we only focus on how to protect ourselves from nature in the aftermath of this hurricane, we’ll never get around to the task of protecting ourselves from incompetent politicians.
chris – if we never get to calling out these numbskulls, they’ll never get any better at doing their jobs!
Right – don’t tell me you’re going to chastise those two for their faults, yet leave the federales off the hook completely.
That is all I’ve heard, the Feds have taken the rap for the local official’s failures. The feds never had a chance bacause the locals fell apart, the NYPD didn’t abandon their posts after 9/11.
This is 90% failure on the local level and 10% the Feds fault for trusting the locals.
Right, compare what happened here with how the federal government responded to the hurricanes in Florida last year and there’s no way you can deny the ball was droped on the fed’s level.
Are you saying right here that having the top three officials in FEMA be individuals with no disaster experience was a smart thing for President Bush to do? Compare the personel at the top now compared with Clinton’s appointments and the disparity in competence and experience is startling.
The 82d airborne can get to anywhere in the world in under 18 hours. Mull that over for a while. Along with the fact that two days after the Superdome became what it was…two days of media coverage right there, Brown had no idea of what was happening. He claimed that the federal government found out 48 hours later than you or I.
That’s not anyone’s fault but their own. Pretending this type of incompetence is acceptable based on the failures of the mayor and governor is ridiculous.
Right:
If the polls are correct the time for finger pointing is over, most americans have made up their mind. Although, I am sure that in no time the GOP will blame the entire incident on Joe Smith who lived on canal street.
Hurricane Katrina showed that the US is underprepared and our institutions are falling apart. The party that can figure out a way to repair the crumbling US pride will be the big winner.
Chris:Right, compare what happened here with how the federal government responded to the hurricanes in Florida last year and there’s no way you can deny the ball was droped on the fed’s level.
Thats a completely bogus statement, it actually supports and opposing view of the one you were trying to convey. What changed between last years hurricane and this years? Nothing except where they hit…the fact that Florida is the most prepared state in the nation to handle hurricanes on the local level is why the federal government was able to respond so well to hurricanes in florida…and conversly the fact that the local and state government of LA was the most ill prepared for such hurricanes, despite the known threats posed by being below sea level, proves that it had everything to do with how the local government prepared, and worked with the national goverment. Communications and bureaucracy got in the way of effective leadership, and responsibility lies in a major way on the shoulders of the mayor and governor, and partially on FEMA and the president, for not going around the governor when her incompetence was so evident.
and partially on FEMA and the president, for not going around the governor when her incompetence was so evident.
I am amazed, you do remember that the constitution prohibits the Fed from removing democratically elected officials from office, don’t you??? Hell, why stop there, let’s get all liberal governors out of office before their incompetence gets anyone else killed.
It’s Bush’s fault he didn’t bypass the rightful leader of the state of Louisianna? That is amazing? Are you looking for civil war????
The problem with the whole republican, “I know you are but what am I” strategy is that it ruins peoples faith in their government. Just once I would like to see someone do what Richard Clarke did after 9/11 and admit a mistake. Accountability, try it.
Just once I would like to see someone do what Richard Clarke did after 9/11 and admit a mistake.
Who the hell is Richard Clarke? Doesn’t sound islamic.
I got this from the bullmooseblog.com:
Some Democrats believe that their day of salvation has arrived – they think that the scales have fallen from the eyes of the American people and they will flock to put the party back in party. Clearly they are disgusted with the abysmal performance of the Bushies. But, truth be told they are increasingly fed up with all of the folks they have entrusted with leadership – Democratic favorables have not exactly skyrocketed lately.
This is an independent moment – not that there is going to be a third party that is going to emerge. Rather, this is a time that begs for assertive, innovative, unifying and non-ideological leadership.
Neither the right nor the left should take solace in the disgust of the American people. The leadership class of this country appears abysmal at the moment. They truly need to get their act together.
He sums up the problem well, the leadership is failing and it is time for someone to step up.
The first step to solving a problem is addmitting that you have one:
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
President Bush said Tuesday that “I take responsibility” for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and said the disaster raised broader questions about the government’s ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terror attacks.
“Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government,” Bush said at joint White House news conference with the president of Iraq.
“To the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility,” Bush said.
The president was asked whether people should be worried about the government’s ability to handle another terrorist attack given failures in responding to Katrina.
“Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That’s a very important question and it’s in the national interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond,” Bush replied.
He said he wanted to know both what went wrong and what went right.
As for blunders in the federal response, “I’m not going to defend the process going in,” Bush said. “I am going to defend the people saving lives.”
He praised relief workers at all levels. “I want people in America to understand how hard people worked to save lives down there,” he said.
Bush spoke after R. David Paulison, the new acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, pledged to intensify efforts to find more permanent housing for the tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina survivors now in shelters.
Maybe the president gets it.
Everytime I think Bush might be getting it I find out he was forced into doing the right thing:
John Byrne
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report Tuesday afternoon asserting that Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco took the necessary and timely steps needed to secure disaster relief from the federal government, RAW STORY has learned.
The report, which comes after a request by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to review the law and legal accountability relating to Federal action in response to Hurricane Katrina, unequivocally concludes that she did.
“This report closes the book on the Bush Administration’s attempts to evade accountability,” Conyers said in a statement. “The Bush Administration was caught napping at a critical time.”
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The report found that:
All necessary conditions for federal relief were met on August 28. Pursuant to Section 502 of the Stafford Act, “[t]he declaration of an emergency by the President makes Federal emergency assistance available,” and the President made such a declaration on August 28. The public record indicates that several additional days passed before such assistance was actually made available to the State;
The Governor must make a timely request for such assistance, which meets the requirements of federal law. The report states that “[e]xcept to the extent that an emergency involves primarily Federal interests, both declarations of major disaster and declarations of emergency must be triggered by a request to the President from the Governor of the affected state”;
The Governor did indeed make such a request, which was both timely and in compliance with federal law. The report finds that “Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco requested by letter dated August 27, 2005…that the President declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period from August 26, 2005 and continuing pursuant to [applicable Federal statute]” and “Governor Blanco’s August 27,2005 request for an emergency declaration also included her determination…that ‘the incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of disaster.”
The full report will be available soon on the House Democrats’ Judiciary website.
If this is true then he is just trying to stop the fighting before his lies get exposed.