Disaster Planning

Bloggers and civic leaders might want to take a lesson from the debacle in New Orleans and check whether their local community has anything resembling sensible plans for different disaster scenarios - a dirty bomb, a nuclear plant containment breach, earthquake, fire, flood - the usual menu, adjusted by locality (and yes, earthquakes *can* hit New York City).

Of course, committed statists can simply wait to elect Hilary in 2008, so that she and her planners can handle everything.  But those with a more federalist view might want to put their local and state officials on the spot.

Comments

[richard mcenroe]

New Orleans had a disaster plan . You tell me if they even read it.

[Jim E.]

That's totally awesome that you would make a needless dig at Hillary in a post related to the debacle in New Orleans.

[richard mcenroe]

Rehnquist just died.

[boris]

They did have a plan, and they had warning, but in the home of jazz they decided to play it by ear. Unfortunately their ears were tin their notes were off key and when the cacophony turned from disaster to catastrophe the jam turned to a nasty rap.

[cathyf]

If you want a concrete suggestion, here's my opinion. Most of the disaster planning in this country is done by a private charity, the Red Cross. Which has suffered from bruising negative publicity when they have used donated money to do disaster planning and preparedness.

So, gang, you get what you pay for. Or in this case, you don't get the things that you convinced yourselves and your neighbors not to pay for.

If you go to www.redcross.org to donate, the first catagory says "2005 Hurricane Fund" while the second one says "Disaster Relief Fund." Nobody knows how much money people will donate in the next weeks or months, so we have no idea whether there will be money left over when the Katrina relief operations end. If you want any leftover money to get spent on disaster planning, training of volunteers and staff, hiring of staff to run preparedness and training programs, etc., then select the "Disaster Relief Fund" not the "2005 Hurricane Fund".

cathy :-)

[syn]

I live in NYC, after 9/11 I stocked my emergency system to the hilt, however, after the level crime exhibited in NO I plan on going through the process of hopefully obtaining a gun permit and learning how to shoot. Problem is, NY is one of the hardest places of obtain a gun permit.

I'm hoping the NY legistation, Governor, the NYC mayor, city council and NYC populace will learn from the mistakes made in NO's and come to their senses by changing the gun laws in the city of NY allowing for single females such as myself the ability to defend ourselves if lawless hell breaks out.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

It's pretty obvious from today's Meet the Press that New Orlean's has the politicians it deserves. Of all the blithering idiots who've appeared on camera, Aaron Broussard--apparently a parish (county) official--came with a prepared speech that he had to look down and read from in order to get in his digs at Bush. Designed to shift attention away from himself.

And he still ended up crying like a four year old. Not a Giulianni kinda guy.

[TexasToast]

Patrick Sullivan

I don't cuss online - but that comment makes me want to. Its obvious that you really don't give a rat's behind about the suffering these people are going through - its all about protecting GWB so he can protect the rest of us from insurance fraud.

[richard mcenroe]

TexasToast — You have ignored every piece of information I've seen posted on every board you've been at. Your obsession with Bush borders on something clinical.

[TexasToast]

I haven't ignored anything - I see it all too well. I'm watching our government lie to shift the blame somewhere - anywhere - else.

I have read your posts - I learned something about guard deployment I didn't know - and I thank you for that. I have also read the statements of government officials whose job is homeland security - and I don't feel very secure if this is the response I can expect from my government if someone decides that my hometown is a nice place to "make a statement".

What wins a football game? - defense. We have been focused the last 4 years on offense and the other team can score every time they get the ball. Its time we drafted a middle linebacker - not a converted placekicker.

[TexasToast]

From page 43 (page 61 of the PDF) of the National Response Plan of HSD.

Guiding Principles for Proactive Federal Response

Guiding principles for proactive Federal response include the following:
■ The primary mission is to save lives; protect critical infrastructure, property, and the environment; contain the event; and preserve national security.
■ Standard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of
catastrophic magnitude.
■ Identified Federal response resources will deploy and begin necessary operations as required to commence life-safety activities.
■ Notification and full coordination with States will occur, but the coordination process must not delay or impede the rapid deployment and use of critical resources. States are urged to notify and coordinate with local governments regarding a proactive Federal response.
■ State and local governments are encouraged to conduct collaborative planning with the Federal Government as a part of "steady-state" preparedness for catastrophic incidents.

They don’t and didn’t have to wait for the state to ask – although Louisiana and NO asked repeatedly.

[syn]

I can only imagine that if the President of the United States susperseded LA State government and taken contral of LA State WITHOUT THE GOVERNOR'S AUTHORIZATION, the very first words spoken by LA State (who are ALSO are elected to serve their populace) would be "Bush is a Dictator, he superceded our power!".

THe Exempt Media will carry forth that message by showing images of suffering children and dying eldery, sick & fragile living in decay,wreck and ruin using perfectly perfect reporters sobbing speeches about why The Federal Government superceded LA State Government powers, why the Federal military is rounding up victims (are they being taken to a secret concentration camp), has the Dictator President executed Mayor Nagins?

I am at a loss as to why some Americans have forgetten how sacred to our existance is that separation of State Power and Federal Power. This separation can never be violated, even in the most extreme of situations, it is what prevents despotism from overtaking our populace.

We must insure that all Governors learn from the disasterous mistakes made by the LA Governor. We must not allow Governors the opportunity to renege their duty to safeguarding the United States.

[syn]

Texas Toast
It does not state anywhere that the Federal Government can procede without authorization from the Governor.

The "standard procedures regarding requests can be expedited, or under extreme circumstance, suspended in the immediate aftermath etc.." means that the Governor authorization will be expedited faster but should an extreme situation arise in which she cannot or was unable to authorize then the Federal government could move in.

THe Feds and the President were on the phone with the Governor imploring her to she issue authorization, which she finally did on Wed and now, look at how rapidly the situation improved.

Look at it this way, the Governor actually performs tasks much like the President performs tasks, only on a smaller scale. LA State is a mini-State which, combined with a bunch of other mini-State forms into the United States of America. The Federal Government is simply a tool to assist and defend help all the mini-states which are in the control of Governor. The power of the Governor GIVES AUTHORIZATION FOR to the Federal government, not the Federal government giving power to the States. This prevents America from becoming a totalitarian Dictatorship.

Of course, Leftists have been madly working towards insuring that the Federal Government assume all power by wiping out State power. Stalin is their guy.

OT: One of the reasons why abortion continues to remain a hot topic of concern is because Federal power overtook States power and the American people in all the mini-States were denied a voice (just like a Totalitarian Dictatorship).

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

TT, New Orleans has roving gangs shooting at the people trying to help them. 200 N.O. cops resigned rather than try to deal with that. I've seen video of uniformed N.O. police officers looting a Wal Mart.

Louisiana and New Orleans have been notoriously corrupt for generations. The public safety organizations don't exist to protect the public as much as for self-aggrandizement. And their leaders are overly-emotional nincompoops. Think Rudy Giuliani would have thrown a public tantrum instead of doing his job?

[Etienne]

Good idea, syn, get a gun. The fact that Louisiana is the most heavily armed state in the nation surely had nothing to do with their problems down there.

I thank God every day I live in this magnificent liberal section of the country where we have meaningful gun control and - guess what! - a low murder rate, especially a low gun homicide rate. Gee, I wonder if there's any connection!

Funny I was discussing this just recently on this board, the Southern gun love and all the death it creates. Now syn wants to get in on the fun. Unfortunately, she'll just have to go on living in a city where her safety receives excellent 24/7 protection from her excellent well funded government. Poor syn, dreaming of conservative paradise, while reaping all the benefits of a liberal reality.

[Etienne]

Patrick, I think if we are going to compare Giuliani's job to that of Nagrin (?), we'd first have to see how Giuliani would have done if the entire tristate area was inundated with 20 feet of water within 24 hours of 9/11.

Comparisons of these two events is ridiculous.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Etienne, Nagin isn't responsible for a 'tri-state area', but he is responsible for his little burg of a mere 450,000 people. Giuliani had control of 8,000,000 people and pulled off his rescue--without much, if any, help from FEMA--with grace and dignity. Nagin had several days warning, Giuliani, zero.

New Orleans murder rate is 10 times the national average, and only 1 in 4 who are arrested for murder are ever convicted. Which is why people were shooting at rescuers, they're criminals to begin with, and they're on the streets.

New Orleans didn't even have an emergency radio network for police and fire to communicate with one another. Nor to communicate with FEMA. The people closest to the problems are the ones who have to solve them, and they failed massively.

[Etienne]

It is utterly asinine to compare 9/11 to this hurricane. Giuliani had an INTACT infrastructure to deal with - water, electricity, hospitals, not to mention the finest emergency response team on the planet, paid for by the tax dollars of a hardworking, liberal minded citizenry that respects and trusts its government. Rightfuly so. Good government is transparent, accountable and worth every damn penny it costs.

Maybe the rest of America will start to understand that.

[Etienne]

Patrick, this is tongue in cheek, but might put it in a bit of perspective: It's Giuliani's Fault

A little taste: Why?  Because the response by the City of New York on 9-11 was so good that it masked the corrosive ineptitude and contempt for governmental competence that, in the absence of the best emergency response and crisis management system in America, is so bad that people die for lack of water, basic medical care or a bus ride. 

Does anyone have any doubt that if the response in NYC to 9-11--an on-the-ground response that was almost entirely local--does anyone doubt that if the response to the WTC attacks was anywhere near as bad as the response to Katrina, that Bush would never have been able to soar in the polls, launch the cynical and evil fearmongering that morphed into warmongering, and eventually his reelection last November?

We here in NYC didn't need the Incompetent Prince to pretend to lead us - luckily for us. But the people in New Orleans did need him to take charge and lead, instead of golfing partying and makeing speeches comparing himself to Winston Churchill.

All this buck passing by Repubs is only making them look like cowards on top of their demonstrated incompetence and negligence.

[Jim E.]

syn wrote: "Some Americans have forgetten how sacred to our existance is that separation of State Power and Federal Power. This separation can never be violated, even in the most extreme of situations."

Never? Do you think President Lincoln was a horrible despot? Just curious.

[Jor]

Drum has interesting remarks on FEMA under Bush. Iraq repeated in New Orleans. I'm not sure who this is a surprise for.

[Jor]

The incompetence, mendacity, and disregard for other americans is so clear here -- im eager to see links to appologias. Even the national review and Fox have caved. This is what happens when you put an idiot in charge.

[richard mcenroe]

Jor — Don't call Mayor Nagin an idiot. It upsets Etienne and Texastoast.

But hey, New Orleans is okay, now, folks! Sean Penn has arrived!

[Mescalero]

Since when will Hillary fix things like this? We all know from the Able Danger fiasco that the Clintons were more concerned about attacks from the Stalino-Fascist ACLU than the Islamo-Fascist Al-Queda!

[MaDr]

Definitely Bush's fault. Prevention or defense is 90% of the battle. That dumbass Bush first wrote the most shortsighted emergency procedures for NO and LA. Then he compounded it by not following the plan. You know - evacuating the 100,000 "recognized" citizens in need of transportation by bus. Sending citizens to two structures (Superdome and Convention Center) that were NOT shelters and hence didn't have stocks of food and water. Then he didn't violate the constitution by calling up the LA National Guard and requesting that the other state's governors send help from their Guards. The blithering idiot should have realized by Wed when the LA governor still hadn't acted, that he had only one choice - invade LA.

[Harry Arthur]

decision-making at the mayoral level in New Orleans.

more decision-making in New Orleans.

205 unused buses submerged in water.

New Orleans compared to anywhere else in the country where we’ve experienced hurricanes.

New Orleans business as usual?

I guess my most pressing question is: When did the governor of LA actually request federal help and how long did it take to get it to her? There seems to be some ambiguity on that. Several sources seem to suggest that it was as late as mid-week. I've also read several posts that it was requested and denied by the WH. Doesn't seem to pass the common sense test to me given that Bush declared the area a disaster area at least a few days prior to landfall, and requested that the LA Guard be activated, but of course I could be wrong.

Another question: What is and/or should be the federal government's role in drafting local disaster response plans? Or in assessing the adequacy of local disaster response plans?

If the federal government determines that the local and state government has not produced a competent plan, and elects to impose an appropriate plan on the local government, what should the federal role be in ensuring they are read, comprehended and practiced. Training and equipping are whose responsibility?

It's clear that at least NO was not ready for a major disaster. I can't help but think that the results would have been similar, or worse, had this been a dirty bomb or bio attack as Etienne has accurately suggested elsewhere and with which Newt Gingrich strongly aggrees.

Are there other large cities that are in similar shape? Perhaps not an excellent parallel, though probably more apt than NYC on 9/11, but I don't recall San Francisco experiencing anywhere near these problems when the last major earthquake decimated their infrastructure. My recollection is that their local and state response was adequate to the initial tasks of search and rescue, evacuation, and peace keeping.

If the federal government is ultimately responsible for a significant role in the aftermath, it would seem to me that "all" a terrorist organization would need to do would be to create several simultaneous emergencies in say, San Francisco, Los Angeles, NYC, Chicago, Washington DC, and Miami and the federal government would be immediately overwhelmed. Unless the local and state agencies are ready at a level far above that in NO and LA, my estimation is that a meaningful response is not possible. Just a thought.

My problem with the NO response was that they had something like 5-7 days to implement their disaster plan and in the end it appears their plan was part of the disaster.

I'm not a Bush apologist on this, just trying to get to the bottom of some of the rhetoric. The fact that local and state officials were poor decision-makers doesn't for one minute excuse poor or delayed decisions by the Bush WH. That, for me, remains a largely unanswered question that ultimately begs resolution.

[Harry Arthur]

TT, a snarky side note: What wins a football game? - defense. You might want to select a better metaphor (I'm no English major so don't actually know if that's a metaphor), everyone knows a good offense wins football games. Of course, it's actually both.

I am curious about your statement that Louisiana and NO asked repeatedly for federal help. I understand your assertion, and if true, I share your criticism of the federal government and ultimately Bush, but I'm just not seeing the evidence that the WH ignored repeated requests for assistance.

Quite the contrary, the evidence I see has the WH repeatedly asking NO and the state to take action that wasn't taken, at least not in a timely manner, and I would submit that there was plenty of time to act, especially given that this was expected to be a CAT 5 storm that was on a direct collision course with NO.

I'm willing to discuss the assertion if you can point me to one or more reliable sources.

[Harry Arthur]

ET, Good government is transparent, accountable and worth every damn penny it costs. As a social and fiscal conservative, I couldn't agree more.

Rich Lowry in his recent article in NRO suggests the following:

To the extent that it has been made especially dangerous to be black in New Orleans, it is a product of a culture of governmental corruption and incompetence, including rotten policing, that goes deeper than any simplistic racial demagoguery can capture. Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans is black. He has been a reformer, but it would take more reform than one mayor is capable of to change New Orleans. Nagin’s predecessor, Marc Morial, was black too, and a business-as-usual politician. This summer, aides, friends, and an uncle of the former mayor were indicted on corruption charges.

[Harry Arthur]

More in this article from Sunday's WaPo. Please pardon the extensive quote but the context is important - I've tried not to be selective.

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.

A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.

Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.

"The federal government stands ready to work with state and local officials to secure New Orleans and the state of Louisiana," White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said. "The president will not let any form of bureaucracy get in the way of protecting the citizens of Louisiana."

Blanco made two moves Saturday that protected her independence from the federal government: She created a philanthropic fund for the state's victims and hired James Lee Witt, Federal Emergency Management Agency director in the Clinton administration, to advise her on the relief effort.

Bush, who has been criticized, even by supporters, for the delayed response to the disaster, used his weekly radio address to put responsibility for the failure on lower levels of government. The magnitude of the crisis "has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities," he said. "The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable."

In a Washington briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said one reason federal assets were not used more quickly was "because our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor."

Chertoff planned to fly overnight to the New Orleans area to take charge of deploying the expanded federal and military assets for several days, he said. He said he has "full confidence" in FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, the DHS undersecretary and federal officer in charge of the Katrina response.

Brown, a frequent target of New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin's wrath, said Saturday that "the mayor can order an evacuation and try to evacuate the city, but if the mayor does not have the resources to get the poor, elderly, the disabled, those who cannot, out, or if he does not even have police capacity to enforce the mandatory evacuation, to make people leave, then you end up with the kind of situation we have right now in New Orleans."

New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas acknowledged that the city was surprised by the number of refugees left behind, but he said FEMA should have been prepared to assist.

"Everybody shares the blame here," said Thomas. "But when you talk about the mightiest government in the world, that's a ludicrous and lame excuse. You're FEMA, and you're the big dog. And you weren't prepared either."

In Baton Rouge, Blanco acknowledged Saturday: "We did not have enough resources here to do it all. . . . The magnitude is overwhelming."

State officials had planned to turn to neighboring states for help with troops, transportation and equipment in a major hurricane. But in Katrina's case, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida were also overwhelmed, said Denise Bottcher, a Blanco spokesman.

Of course the WaPo has their take, as the LA governor's office has theirs, and the WH has theirs. This may be the point that syn has been trying to make.

It seems to me the revealing point in the article is: Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.

Still looking for any reluctance on the part of the WH to provide federal aid and assistance. The lack of decision-making at the state level is more than troubling. Not sure what conclusions we may yet draw from any of this information.

[kim]

Well, hurricane destruction alone would not have created an unmanagable catastrophe of this magnitude. What turned this monumental was the flooding from Lake Pontchartrain. Had New Orleans not been under sea level we would be dealing with an Andrew like mess. The irony of this situation is that New Orleans was in a unique predicament. It should have accurred to any number of people that it would need a unique disaster plan in case of flooding. They had what, a century or two to come up with one? No true planning genius arose for the Confederacy of Dunces to denounce?

Or has there been? I'd not be the least surprised to find archived plans that might have been very helpful last week. They'll emerge over the next few months. It will be most instructive to see why they were ignored.
==============================================

[Etienne]

This is a complex question,and the drastic political consequences on both sides is not making truth finding any easier.

However, I am reading the following AP article, Congress Likely to Probe Guard Response , and the following things jump out at me:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.

and this...

Because the agreement that was already in existence for states to contribute Guard troops to Louisiana did not include a provision on their use in law enforcement, Blum said, Gov. Blanco had to get separate written agreements authorizing Guardsmen to do police-type duty.

and this...

Bush had the legal authority to order the National Guard to the disaster area himself, as he did after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks . But the troops four years ago were deployed for national security protection, and presidents of both parties traditionally defer to governors to deploy their own National Guardsmen and request help from other states when it comes to natural disasters.

In addition to Guard help, the federal government could have activated, but did not, a major air support plan under a pre-existing contract with airlines. The program, called Civilian Reserve Air Fleet, lets the government quickly put private cargo and passenger planes into service.

The CRAF provision has been activated twice, once for the Persian Gulf War and again for the Iraq war.

What has been frightening to most of the people I've spoken to is the feeling that for all these years, we had been assuming government emergency response was being fine tuned and modernized to deal with terrorism. Now that we have a natural disaster, we find that all we have is the same old unimaginative, inflexible bureaucratic nightmare (basically business as usual four years after 9/11). Now this was not a national security disaster, but is there one intelligent person who now thinks we have efficient contingency plans in place for dealing with that either. Clearly, if evacuation and response plans had been developed to deal with a terrorist attack, and if we had a bold imaginative leader in the presidency, then those plans could have been converted in a flash to be used in this case. Lesson: There are no such plans. We are all sitting ducks.

I have been considering all the levels of this disaster on the political level, but I think they can all be summed up by the concept that we are reaping the rewards of negligence to domestic policy by this "government", and passing the buck off to underfunded state governments is not going to be the honorable or acceptable response of the strongest country in the world.

[kim]

Hey, the sun shone on water and heated up a hurricane. All your shining of political energy on this problem is just heating up a political storm to cause massive destruction to all of us. I told you earlier it is tacky to make political points out of this NATURAL disaster. All we should do is draw lessons, and learn. Frankly, it's bad karma for you to blame those not resposible.
==============================================

[Etienne]

I guess you think it's tacky then to have the < a href = "http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05bush.html?oref=login"> White House being blatantly political then.

I mean, Condi yukking it up on Broadway and spending thousands on new shoes while American citizens floated dead in the streets of New Orleans....there's no political questions there, i'm sure.

We had a natural disaster followed by a failure of leadership. Two stories. One not preventable. One a disgrace.

[Etienne]

< a href = "http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05bush.html?oref=login">Fixed the link.

[Etienne]

Sorry. Guess it doesn't want to be fixed.

[kim]

I'll reluctantly admit that failure to plan for the eventual flooding of New Orleans was both preventable and a disgrace. I'll also argue that the local leadership failed far more spectacularly than did national leadership.
============================================

[boris]

See ... the connection between Condi buying shoes and hundreds of poor folk drowning in their attics is pure moonbattery. Putting that into a discussion is as relevant as barking at the moon. But then .... that's what moonbats are for I guess.

In a more perfect world fed boots might have arrived on Thursday instead of Friday. The degree of betterment would be slight compared to the greater loss since most died on Tuesday. The moonbats would nevertheless be barking just as loud even so.

On the other hand had local boots been more perfect the betterment would have been significant.

[kim]

Moon bats mad for man boots?
=============================

[kim]

Had there been boots, had they prevented this, they'd have been jackboots.

The left half of the Democratic Party is now displaying symptoms reminiscent of those of a Borderline Personality, the old Sociopath. Kerry is iconically so.
===============================================

[kim]

Don't knock boots.

Oh God, I can't stand it.
==================

[Etienne]

No, boris, it's not moonbattery. It's significant as an image of negligence and apathy. Images are how most Americans absorb their news. They don't like to read. You should know this. Your party's media machine has exploited it to great effect.

I would say that at the least Condi's behavior sealed the deal on her never running for elective office, had she planned to. But on a larger scale, it is a symbol of the kind of people that Bush has staffed our "government" with, and that is going to continue to be significant. Any spin on why he hired a lawyer for an Arabian Horse Association to run FEMA, especially since the Arabian Horse people fired him? How carefully do you think Bush vetted Brown's credentials for this critical job? How much do you think he gave a shit about FEMA, or any government agency, since he despises government and is part of the conservative movement to destroy it? My guess is that government under Bush has now become nothing but a patronage system, a place for old friends and cronies to do some looting prior to their magnificent tax payed retirements.

[kim]

Aren't the Arabian Horse people kinda jumpy?
=========================================

[Etienne]

Harry, you might want to take note that the Washington Post has issued a retraction of the article you posted:

A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26.

In fact there is copious documentation of her letter to Bush onAug. 26, declaring a state of emergency and requesting all federal assistance "Under the provisions of [the relevant federal law], I request that you declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period beginning August 26, 2005, and continuing ... In response to the situation I have taken appropriate action under State law and directed the execution of the State Emergency Plan on August 26, 2005 in accordance with Section 501 (a) of the Stafford Act. A State of Emergency has been issued for the State in order to support the evacuations of the coastal areas in accordance with our State Evacuation Plan ... Pursuant to 44 CFR § 206.35, I have determined that this 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 a disaster..."

So you might want to stop peddling that lie. You might also note who is coordinating the response at the WH, none other than Turdblossom himself. Not that any of this is political of course. Ask kim. That would be both bad karma and bad taste.

[kim]

Are you, Etienne, figuring out how to prevent a recurrence, or are you just interested in trampling on the victims in order to have a platform for protest.
=================================================

[boris]

symbol of the kind of people that Bush has staffed our "government" with

Clearly, based on your own screed, either Condi is a clueless idiot poltroon or you are a moonbat.

Hmmm ... so tough to decide ... let's see ... Condi, brilliant musician, genius level acedemic and advisor, effective diplomat in the war on terror ...

versus what ???

Racist depictions of her by leftwing moonbats? How are such hateful attacks justified? There's nothing evil or incompetent about this person at all.

It's one thing to disagree with someone's philosophy or politics, but the spewing of vilest poison at every perceived opportunity is simply pathological.

[boris]

So you might want to stop peddling that lie.

Proving once again that any error made in good faith by non moonbat commenters is considered a lie.

[Etienne]

I can't figure out how to prevent a recurrence, kim, that's not my job. My job - and yours- as citizens is to find out why our tax dollars are so misused by this incompetent government we have, and why the proper qualified individuals have not been upgrading our emergency responses in the FOUR YEARS since 9/11.

In addition, in our new alternate media, our job is to prevent Spin Meisters like Karl Rove from continuing to pull the wool over the eyes of his employers - we, the people. The man lied to the Washington Post. They printed it. Now Harry and conservative bloggers everywhere are running with the lie.

Time for that shit to stop once and for all.

[Etienne]

Racist depictions of Condi Rice by lefties? WTF? This only confirms the suspicion that Repubs appoint minorities to important positions to immunize them from legitimate criticism.

No one mentioned Rice's skin color. They mentioned her insenstive behavior as a senior administration official. Does being black mean she is not accountable to the people?

We can see in every sad photograph out of the Gulf where the racism lies. It is institutional and profound and no one looking at it can question whether we continue to be a shamefully racist society.

[kim]

OK, don't figure out how to prevent a recurrence. That bell tolling for you is falling on deafened ears.
===================================================

[Aaron]

The Mayor and Governor bear 95% of the responsibility - sure the Dems can misdirect all they want but the PROOF was found - buses rotting in water and not being used all the meanwhile the mayor is crying about buses.

You can cry all you want about building super strong levees that can withstand anything, etc., etc., but when you see the price-tag, you might blink. Same with getting a city ready for a 7.0 magnitude quake that hits it head on - there isn't much you could do except design one story concrete homes with no windows.

good luck.