The Federal Response to Katrina - The Disaster Continues

[Andrew Mayer]

The Washington Post (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9379133/):

It'a harder to blame the locals when the problems are happening nation-wide.


Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck, red tape and poor planning have left thousands of evacuees without basic services, according to local and state officials, public policy experts and survivors themselves.

...

* In Houston, some housing shelters have been located so far from the center of town that it has become difficult for evacuees to find jobs.
* In Mississippi, people waiting for promised housing in the form of mobile homes or trailers found themselves in a Catch-22 situation: Even as local officials said they were waiting for FEMA to provide the shelters, officials at the federal agency said they were waiting for local officials to provide the right locations.
* In Mobile, Ala., careful plans by school administrators to cope with a certain number of evacuee children from Mississippi and Louisiana were disrupted when a fax last week gave officials 48 hours' notice that hundreds of additional evacuees were on the way.
* Some services have not reached their targets: At the Dallas convention center free legal resources for evacuees were hardly being used, partly because no one had told survivors how to think through what their legal needs might be.
* Public assistance programs for evacuees are going to vary widely, depending on welfare policies in individual states, meaning that evacuees who happened to be transported to one state are likely to receive very different benefits than those in others.

"I don't see much evidence of overall planning and guidance," said Richard Murray, a public policy expert in Houston, which is hosting thousands of evacuees.

In an e-mail, Murray, who is director of the University of Houston's Center for Public Policy, wrote: "Couple a multi-state disaster of Katrina's magnitude, (including some of the poorer and less well-governed states in the union), add on a dysfunctional federal bureaucracy that had deteriorated in recent years, and a chief executive whose motto seemed to be, until yesterday, the buck stops there, and we get a helluva mess."

I'm seeing a ton of this stuff, and there are plenty of reports of people in the Gulf who still haven't seen a FEMA rep.

But at least they turned on the lights for half an hour when Bush drove through on Thursday night.

[wildpokerman]

Hey keep your liberal WAPO stuff in the P&R forums! Keep this zone free for those of us who love sex, minivans and baseball.

Edit: Dammit maybe I should make sure I clicked the right link before I spew my venom onto the page.

[russellmz00]

Hey keep your liberal WAPO stuff in the P&R forums! Keep this zone free for those of us who love sex, minivans and baseball.

Edit: Dammit maybe I should make sure I clicked the right link before I spew my venom onto the page.

nah, spewing venom before confirming information sounds about right for p&r.

[CindySue22]

"The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne."

For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.

Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.

http://users.boardnation.com/~kctv/index.php?board=7;action=display;threadid=3870

Of course, let's not let facts get in the way of Bush/Fed Gov't bashing.

[Andrew Mayer]

Saying something doesn't make it a fact. Also the response time didn't matter much since so much of the support that did arrive ended up sitting on their collecitve asses waiting for someone to actually use them.

But that has nothing to do with this topic, which deals with the fact that things are still FUBAR weeks after the incident.

[CindySue22]

Oh, never mind then. :roll:

[Brian Rucker]

Here's what the FEMA guy in charge of the response to Floyd has to say about Katrina:

John Copenhaver, a former FEMA regional director during the Clinton administration who led the response to Hurricane Floyd in 1999, said he was bewildered by the slow FEMA response.

It had been standard practice for FEMA to position supplies ahead of time, and the agency did pre-position drinking water and tarps to cover damaged roofs near where they would be needed. In addition, FEMA has coordinated its plans with state and local officials and let the Defense Department know beforehand what type of military assistance would be needed.

"I'm a little confused as to why it took so long to get the military presence running convoys into downtown New Orleans," Copenhaver said.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/12549282.htm

Edit: Try this cached page if you don't want to subscribe.

http://tinyurl.com/cw6aq

So I don't know what to think. Believe facts tossed at me by a conservative editorialist as quoted on a message board or the words of a professional who was at the center of events back then. Decisions, decisions.

[CindySue22]

I don't know who to believe, either.

John Copenhaver, a former FEMA regional director during the Clinton administration

" a professional who was at the center of events back then" Center of events? He is active in the Katrina situation?

Politics, politics. I'll see your quote, and raise you mine.

Did you read, and think about, the link I provided? Especially the part about "no teleportation"?

Granted that we all wish the response could have been better, but was it really so bad (considering "real world" logistics), and was it Bush's fault if it did not live up to your, perhaps, unrealistic expectations?

I honest to God /god think that sometimes the majority of posters on this forum live in a fantasy world, one where "if only the government was competent", there would be no problems, the gov't would take care of all our needs.

[Case]

I don't know who to believe, either.

John Copenhaver, a former FEMA regional director during the Clinton administration

" a professional who was at the center of events back then" Center of events? He is active in the Katrina situation?


Let's trade highlights, shall we? Here's a little detail you conveniently left out:

John Copenhaver, a former FEMA regional director during the Clinton administration who led the response to Hurricane Floyd in 1999

I think Copenhaver's certainly qualified to comment on what he observed in the FEMA response to Katrina, versus his own experiences with Floyd. Amazing how you have blinders of your own, isn't it?

[CindySue22]

Blinders? Hardly, I see with the clarity of God's Chosen Few, I Pray that you may See the Light also, and journey into the Sunlit Uplands .

[Midnight Son]

Blinders? Hardly, I see with the clarity of God's Chosen Few, I Pray that you may See the Light also, and journey into the Sunlit Uplands .

Where's your cult located? What are the membership requirements?

[Shmtur]

Blinders? Hardly, I see with the clarity of God's Chosen Few, I Pray that you may See the Light also, and journey into the Sunlit Uplands .

Where's your cult located? What are the membership requirements?

I have to agree with this statement.

[Jeremy Johnsen]

The Sunlit Uplands sounds like someplace from a Tolkien book.

[Andrew Mayer]

All "uplands" would be sunlit, unless they are underground uplands lit by kleig lights.

[MatthewF]

Blinders? Hardly, I see with the clarity of God's Chosen Few, I Pray that you may See the Light also, and journey into the Sunlit Uplands .
The reason we love you so much is because you're so unbelievably batshit insane. Snuggles!

[Andrew Mayer]

So... about school buses (http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091805/new_blanco001.shtml):

On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.

Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said.

During the delay, misery and mayhem mounted in the Dome, thousands gathered in desperation at the nearby convention center, and Americans watched in shock as dead and dying New Orleans residents were broadcast on national television.

The state had sent 68 school buses into the city on Monday.

Blanco took over more buses from Louisiana school systems and sent them in on Wednesday, two days after the storm. She tapped the National Guard to drive them. Each time the buses emptied an area, more people would appear, she said.

The buses took 15,728 people to safety, a Blanco aide said. But the state's fleet of school buses wasn't enough. On Wednesday, with the FEMA buses still not in sight, Blanco called the White House to talk to Bush and ended up speaking to Chief of Staff Andy Card.

"I said, 'Even if we had 500 buses, they've underestimated the magnitude of this situation, and I think I need 5,000 buses, not 500,'" Blanco recounted.

"'But, Andy, those 500 are not here,'" the governor said.

Card promised to get Blanco more buses.

Later Wednesday night, Blanco walked into the State Police Communications Center and asked if anyone knew anything about the buses.

An officer told her the buses were just entering the state.

"I said, 'Do you mean as in North Louisiana, which is another six hours from New Orleans?,'" Blanco recalled in the interview. "He said, 'Yes, m'am.'"

It was at that point, Blanco said, that she realized she had made a critical error.

"I assumed that FEMA had staged their buses in near proximity," she said. "I expected them to be out of the storm's way but accessible in one day's time."

It was late Wednesday. The buses wouldn't get to New Orleans until Thursday. By then, many of the sickest and the weakest were dead or dying.

[Jason McCullough]

Well. That bus thing turned out unexpectedly.

[awdougherty]

So, hopefully the locals learned what happens when we ass-u-me... at least I can rest knowing that Brown has been vindicated 120%.

[Jason McCullough]

I can't tell what's a joke around here anymore.

[Midnight Son]

I know what you mean.....

[Brian Rucker]

Here's a funny for you. Or it'll make you cry.

The Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal reached into the White House yesterday, picking off President Bush's top procurement official -- who just barely had time to resign before being arrested.

The federal charges against David Safavian stem from his tenure as chief of staff of the General Services Administration, predating his arrival at the White House a year ago. But his arrest nonetheless draws renewed attention to the ongoing corruption and influence-peddling inquiry swirling around Abramoff, a lobbyist well known for his connections to conservative Republicans in the White House and Congress.

And for a White House so desperate to build public confidence in its ability to respond to the Gulf Coast disaster, it doesn't exactly help that the man who up until Friday was overseeing contracting policy for the multi-billion dollar relief effort has now been charged with lying and obstructing a criminal investigation.

R. Jeffrey Smith and Susan Schmidt write in The Washington Post: "The Bush administration's top federal procurement official resigned Friday and was arrested yesterday, accused of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. It was the first criminal complaint filed against a government official in the ongoing corruption probe related to Abramoff's activities in Washington.

"The complaint, filed by the FBI, alleges that David H. Safavian, 38, a White House procurement official involved until last week in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, made repeated false statements to government officials and investigators about a golf trip with Abramoff to Scotland in 2002."

Philip Shenon and Anne E. Kornblut write in the New York Times: "The White House said in a statement that Mr. Safavian had resigned on Friday and that 'we, of course, will cooperate fully with the Justice Department in this investigation.' A spokesman said the White House would have no further comment on the arrest. . . .

"His wife, Jennifer Safavian, is chief counsel for oversight and investigations on the House Government Reform Committee, which is responsible for overseeing government procurement and is, among other things, expected to conduct the Congressional investigation into missteps after Hurricane Katrina."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html

[awdougherty]

I can't tell what's a joke around here anymore.

Mine was a joke. I somehow hope that Katrina at least illustrates the power of utter bullshit and cowardice in a beauracracy. It turns out those things can actually kill people under certain circumstances. Brown, Bush, Chertoff, Nagin, and whoever else should feel deeply ashamed... not that that really means much I guess.

[Moore]

pffft, why be ashamed of a heckuva job?

[awdougherty]

touché

[Brian Rucker]

BATON ROUGE, La., Nov. 18 - Less than three months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, relief legislation remains dormant in Washington and despair is growing among officials here who fear that Congress and the Bush administration are losing interest in their plight.

As evidence, the state and local officials cite an array of stalled bills and policy changes they say are crucial to rebuilding the city and persuading some of its hundreds of thousands of evacuated residents to return, including measures to finance long-term hurricane protection, revive small businesses and compensate the uninsured.

"There is a real concern that we will lose the nation's attention the longer this takes," said Representative Bobby Jindal, a Republican from Metairie, just west of New Orleans. "People are making decisions now about whether to come back. And every day that passes, it will be a little harder to get things done."
In some cases the administration is even blocking action sought by Louisiana officials, those officials assert. The most significant of those measures, lawmakers from both parties say, is a bipartisan Senate bill that would authorize $450 million in bridge loans and grants to hurricane-damaged businesses.

The bill, whose sponsors include Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, would also allow businesses to defer payments on federal loans and would increase the size of disaster loans.

Though a similar package of benefits was approved after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Small Business Administration has opposed the new Senate bill as too costly. Mr. Isaacson said the bill would not pass without White House intervention. "The winds have shifted against us," he said.

Ms. Snowe, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, has also chastised the S.B.A. for the slow processing of 250,000 disaster loan applications, which has created a four-month backlog. The agency said it was trying to hire 1,000 new processors, but Ms. Snowe called its response "sluggish" and "confused."

"They'll tell you it is an unprecedented disaster, but they won't muster an unprecedented response," she said. "We should have moved heaven and earth to get this done."

Louisiana officials have also complained about opposition from the Bush administration to proposals to dedicate a stream of money for restoring coastal wetlands and constructing levees capable of withstanding Category 5 hurricanes.

Though that work will take years to complete, a federal commitment to provide money - more than $20 billion - is needed soon to encourage insurance companies, businesses and homeowners to invest in the region, state officials say.

But the Bush administration has objected to a bipartisan proposal that would give the state up to 40 percent of the more than $5 billion in annual federal revenues generated by Louisiana's offshore oil and gas industries. The state now receives only a small portion of those royalties.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/national/nationalspecial/22louisiana.html