A Series of Mistakes

There has been a lot of talk lately about not playing the blame game with Katrina. The right wing talking heads have been trying to soften the criticism by saying that democrats are trying to politicize the situation (and I am sure they are right to a certain extent). But by doing that, the talking heads are purposefully taking the focus away from the poor disaster relief. Isn't it about time that we learned from our mistakes?

We have allowed ourselves to fall into a state of apathy, where we actually expect the government to let us down. First, we had 9-11. It was a fairly unexpected attack. Afterwards, we realized that the we missed warnings, had communiucation problems, and had intelligence gaps. The 9-11 Commission was convened to "prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks."

Also after 9-11, the government created the Department of Homeland Security to prevent and respond to catastrophic disasters. In fact, according to their website, two of their strategic goals are;

"Response -- Lead, manage and coordinate the national response to acts of terrorism, natural disasters, or other emergencies.

Recovery -- Lead national, state, local and private sector efforts to restore services and rebuild communities after acts of terrorism, natural disasters, or other emergencies"

FEMA was rolled into the Department of Homeland Security with the intent to better facilitate these goals.

We took the war against terror to Afghanistan to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban - a just and reasonable battle. But we quickly lost our focus over there, only temporarily suppressed Al Qaeda, and didn't capture or kill Bin Laden. (You could actually argue that we have done everything that Bin Laden wanted - we have abandoned the Prince Sultan Air Force Base in Saudi and also started a war in the Middle East, giving support to his belief that this is a holy war and helping with Al Qaeda's recruitment.)

Instead of completing the mission in Afghanistan, our leadership decided to start a war in Iraq. The intelligence that was developed to support going to war turned out to be poor, inaccurate, and in some cases, completely forgeries. In other words, wrong. There were no weapons of mass destruction (remember when they said weapons could be launched against us in 45 minutes) and there was no connection between Al Qaida and Iraq.

After we invaded Iraq, we completely botched the first stages of the occupation. We didn't have enough security forces, didn't give the Iraqis a stake in the government soon enough, allowed the insurgency to gain strength, and caused many people in Iraq to suffer or die. All this at a cost of $300 billion and counting. Meanwhile, we haven't done enough to secure our own borders and taken our National Guard forces away from protecting our own States.

And then we get hit with an unbelievably catastrophic disaster. An entire city and region wiped out by a hurricane. Everyone knew of the potential damage that could be caused by a Class 4 or 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans. There were mistakes made on all levels of government, but the Federal errors were particularly glaring. We have spent a great deal of time and money creating an agency designed to respond to a disaster, and it drops the ball big time.

When are we going to stop letting this happen and have some accountability? Wake up!

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By the way, here is some information on the busses. The right wing pundits have had this issue to focus on, as it is one of the other issues that deflects some of the focus from the Federal government.

In 2001, the LSU Hurricane Center issued the National Review of Hurricane Evacuation Plans and Policies. Here are a couple of interesting excerpts from it.

"The number of people without access to transportation in New Orleans, has been estimated as high as 25 to 30 percent of the population. In addition to people without vehicles, potential evacuees include the indigent, elderly, prisoners, the infirm, and tourists."

"Busing is the most common mode of transportation for low mobility groups. To transport people in busses, emergency management agencies have in the past contracted with local transit authorities, school districts, and tour operators, with varying levels of success. Many heavily populated cities do not have an adequate supply of busses to move all low-mobility evacuees."

"For example, about 250,000 residents of New Orleans' (not including tourists or special needs populations) have no means of private transportation. The total number of busses in all of New Orleans would provide only a fraction of the capacity needed to transport all of these people. Thus, Louisiana emergency management officials plan to use any available alternative means of transportation, including National Guard vehicles. They also plan to open local shelters and refuges of last resort for those not able to evacuate."

This editorial from the Washington Post also explains how this relates to Katrina.

The local government realized that it did not have the capability to evacuate the people within the time needed. Instead, they set up shelters at the Superdome and Convention Center. Now here is where one of the big mistakes came into effect. They didn't have enough food or water. But, they weren't expecting to shelter people for that long. Govenor Blanco declared a state of emergency on August 26. On Saturday morning, August 27, the Governor asked President Bush to declare a state of emergency and requested Federal Assistance "to save lives and property". They thought that assistance would be made available immediately after the emergency, as had been done for numerous disasters in the past. It wasn't.