Aftermath
1. New Orleans has had an evacuation plan for years.
The evacuation plan.
"Under the direction of the Mayor, the Office of Emergency Preparedness will coordinate activities in accordance with the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan to assure the coordination of training programs for all planning, support, and response agencies. Departments, authorities, agencies, municipalities, and all private response organizations bear the responsibility of ensuring their personnel are sufficiently trained."
"Under the direction of the Mayor?" Exactly. Mr. Ray Nagin is responsible.
"V. TASKS
A. Mayor
* Initiate the evacuation.
* Retain overall control of all evacuation procedures via EOC operations.
* Authorize return to evacuated areas."
2. Why didn't people help sooner!? They were turned away.
"Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
* Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
* The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city."
Commentary:
Digest this: government turned away one of the world's most skilled and experienced agencies from bringing relief to starving, thristy, dying New Orleanians. Why? Why? Why???
Judging from the Red Cross's explanation (above), government apparently feared that the Red Cross would deliver relief with too much success. Why else would people choose not to leave a destroyed city, and even want to return to it?
So, government decided that letting people die was a better course than risking any success that the Red Cross would likely have at providing disaster relief.
According to this Knight-Ridder report, the Red Cross isn't alone among well-respected private relief organizations kept, by government, from saving lives in New Orleans. The Salvation Army was stopped from carrying out a planned rescue operation. Here's the key part of the report:
As federal officials tried to get some control over the deteriorating situation in New Orleans, chaos was being replaced with bureaucratic rules that inhibited private relief organizations' efforts.
"We've tried desperately to rescue 250 people trapped in a Salvation Army facility. They've been trapped in there since the flood came in. Many are on dialysis machines," said Maj. George Hood, national communications secretary for the relief organization.
"Yesterday we rented big fan boats to pull them out and the National Guard would not let us enter the city," he said. The reason: a new plan to evacuate the embattled city grid by grid - and the Salvation Army's facility didn't fall in the right grid that day, Hood said in a telephone interview from Jackson, Miss.
"No, it doesn't make sense," he said.
Source.
3. Now to the charges of racism. "They weren't helped because they were black!" Some people blaim the president etc. Fact is, the mayor is black. Much of the cities elected officals are. Local officials are responsible for evacuations and immediate relief.
(Once again, I refer you to the evacuation plan under point 1.)
The Mayor told people to go to the Superdome. After a few days that turned chaotic. People waited outside for days and days on the i10 overpass with no food, no water, and no help. They were exactly where they were told to be.
The mayor told people to go to the civic center. They waited there FOUR DAYS with no help. Only after Geraldo Riviera reported from there did people start getting help.
Watch the video here.
4. You might ask,"Why didn't the president do something sooner?"
Technically President Bush cannot force a governor to act in a natural disaster. He must first be invited to send in Federal troops.
"Posse Comitatus Act
From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section And any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment."
Source.
Commentary:
"The law, was championed by far-sighted Southern lawmakers in 1878. They had experienced a fifteen year military occupation by the US Army in post-Civil War law enforcement. They understood the heel of a jackboot.
In a nutshell, this act bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the act."
The Louisiana National Guard that turned people away was under state control, not FEMA government control. Just to clarify, The Guard only does what its ordered to; that was not their personal choice.
[Had to clarifty that so people wouldn't be tempted to blaim the national guard. They do what they are ordered to do.]
5. Could a large group of buses be arranged to get the people out?
Yes. When it was voting time and Mary Landrieu was trailing badly in her race with Woody Jenkins for the Senate, a large group of busses took people to the polls.
"'Within 45 minutes, we arranged a motorcade,' Tucker says.'We found Mary and Marc [former Mayor Marc Morial], got school buses for workers and sound trucks with music and put on a parade to flush out our voters. Mary and Marc were in Norma Jane Sabiston's little red convertible. (Sabiston was Landrieu's campaign manager.) It was a tight fit for Marc, big as he is, but they were both up there waving. We moved them into the major housing project areas blowing horns and playing New Orleans music. We were doing what we do best in New Orleans, having a parade.' The phone bank was operating at another location. Workers were calling voters asking them to get to the polls and asking them if they needed a bus. Surge time was 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. when large numbers of voters get off work and go to the places. There were more parades in key areas." - New Orleans Times Picayune of November 9th, 1996
I guess, when you need to save lives its "impossible" to find buses quickly. But when you need votes, they magically appear!
The evacuation plan.
"Under the direction of the Mayor, the Office of Emergency Preparedness will coordinate activities in accordance with the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan to assure the coordination of training programs for all planning, support, and response agencies. Departments, authorities, agencies, municipalities, and all private response organizations bear the responsibility of ensuring their personnel are sufficiently trained."
"Under the direction of the Mayor?" Exactly. Mr. Ray Nagin is responsible.
"V. TASKS
A. Mayor
* Initiate the evacuation.
* Retain overall control of all evacuation procedures via EOC operations.
* Authorize return to evacuated areas."
2. Why didn't people help sooner!? They were turned away.
"Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
* Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
* The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city."
Commentary:
Digest this: government turned away one of the world's most skilled and experienced agencies from bringing relief to starving, thristy, dying New Orleanians. Why? Why? Why???
Judging from the Red Cross's explanation (above), government apparently feared that the Red Cross would deliver relief with too much success. Why else would people choose not to leave a destroyed city, and even want to return to it?
So, government decided that letting people die was a better course than risking any success that the Red Cross would likely have at providing disaster relief.
According to this Knight-Ridder report, the Red Cross isn't alone among well-respected private relief organizations kept, by government, from saving lives in New Orleans. The Salvation Army was stopped from carrying out a planned rescue operation. Here's the key part of the report:
As federal officials tried to get some control over the deteriorating situation in New Orleans, chaos was being replaced with bureaucratic rules that inhibited private relief organizations' efforts.
"We've tried desperately to rescue 250 people trapped in a Salvation Army facility. They've been trapped in there since the flood came in. Many are on dialysis machines," said Maj. George Hood, national communications secretary for the relief organization.
"Yesterday we rented big fan boats to pull them out and the National Guard would not let us enter the city," he said. The reason: a new plan to evacuate the embattled city grid by grid - and the Salvation Army's facility didn't fall in the right grid that day, Hood said in a telephone interview from Jackson, Miss.
"No, it doesn't make sense," he said.
Source.
3. Now to the charges of racism. "They weren't helped because they were black!" Some people blaim the president etc. Fact is, the mayor is black. Much of the cities elected officals are. Local officials are responsible for evacuations and immediate relief.
(Once again, I refer you to the evacuation plan under point 1.)
The Mayor told people to go to the Superdome. After a few days that turned chaotic. People waited outside for days and days on the i10 overpass with no food, no water, and no help. They were exactly where they were told to be.
The mayor told people to go to the civic center. They waited there FOUR DAYS with no help. Only after Geraldo Riviera reported from there did people start getting help.
Watch the video here.
4. You might ask,"Why didn't the president do something sooner?"
Technically President Bush cannot force a governor to act in a natural disaster. He must first be invited to send in Federal troops.
"Posse Comitatus Act
From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section And any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment."
Source.
Commentary:
"The law, was championed by far-sighted Southern lawmakers in 1878. They had experienced a fifteen year military occupation by the US Army in post-Civil War law enforcement. They understood the heel of a jackboot.
In a nutshell, this act bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the act."
The Louisiana National Guard that turned people away was under state control, not FEMA government control. Just to clarify, The Guard only does what its ordered to; that was not their personal choice.
[Had to clarifty that so people wouldn't be tempted to blaim the national guard. They do what they are ordered to do.]
5. Could a large group of buses be arranged to get the people out?
Yes. When it was voting time and Mary Landrieu was trailing badly in her race with Woody Jenkins for the Senate, a large group of busses took people to the polls.
"'Within 45 minutes, we arranged a motorcade,' Tucker says.'We found Mary and Marc [former Mayor Marc Morial], got school buses for workers and sound trucks with music and put on a parade to flush out our voters. Mary and Marc were in Norma Jane Sabiston's little red convertible. (Sabiston was Landrieu's campaign manager.) It was a tight fit for Marc, big as he is, but they were both up there waving. We moved them into the major housing project areas blowing horns and playing New Orleans music. We were doing what we do best in New Orleans, having a parade.' The phone bank was operating at another location. Workers were calling voters asking them to get to the polls and asking them if they needed a bus. Surge time was 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. when large numbers of voters get off work and go to the places. There were more parades in key areas." - New Orleans Times Picayune of November 9th, 1996
I guess, when you need to save lives its "impossible" to find buses quickly. But when you need votes, they magically appear!
posted by Tom at 8:34 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home