Katrina

[amber]

Originally Posted by amber

I was counting on it, but this is his second term - do you think there will be an impeachment????

It's his second term. Do you think there will be an impeachment???

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by dissention

They're trying to blame Nagin and that is pissing me off big time.

Well, it makes no sense. I mean once FEMA takes control, they take control as far as I know. Also, FEMA had a plan and it executed it with success in the beginning - then it just stopped for like three days. So, it is not the state's plan that failed - it is FEMA's plan

As for the looting, FEMA admitted it did not even contemplate it - so has is that Blanco or Nagin's fault, esp. considering all available personel were, by everyone's agreement, concentrating on rescuing people. I mean stores can be restocked, but lives cannot be brought back This strategy is going to backfire on Rove and Fox - I personally cannot wait for it to happen.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by amber

It's his second term. Do you think there will be an impeachment???

They will never impeach him for this as no crime has been comiited that I can see.

The only hope for impeachment was Iraq and the D's are too complacent in that to impeach him.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by Johnny Stew

Let me put it to you this way... when the Titanic struck the iceburg, it was those in the upperclass who were taken care of first.

The lowerclass passengers were left to fend for themselves, because they were viewed as nothing more than riff-raff who had nothing to offer society the way that the upperclass passengers supposedly did.

My great uncle went down with that ship. He was coming back from visiting his family in Ireland. I guessed his age to be in his early twenties.

[dissention]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N02134169.htm
Murder and mayhem in New Orleans' miserable shelter
03 Sep 2005 00:06:26 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Mark Egan

NEW ORLEANS, Sept 2 (Reuters) - With the rotors of President George W. Bush's helicopter sounding overhead, New Orleans' poor and downtrodden recounted tales of murder, rape, death threats and near starvation since Hurricane Katrina wrecked this city.

Ending days of abandonment since the hurricane struck on Monday, the U.S. National Guard handed out military rations and a bottle of water to thousands of evacuees -- the first proper meal most had eaten in days.

But as the masses lined up outside, herded by Army troops toting machine guns, inside the convention center where these people slept since Monday was the stench of death and decay.

Leroy Fouchea, 42, waited in the sweltering heat for an hour to get his ration -- his first proper food since Monday -- and immediately handed it over to a sickly friend.

He then offered to show reporters the dead bodies of a man in a wheelchair, a young man who he said he dragged inside just hours earlier, and the limp forms of two infants, one just four months old, the other six months old.

"They died right here, in America, waiting for food," Fouchea said as he walked toward Hall D, where the bodies were put to get them out of the searing heat.

He said people were let die and left without food simply because they were poor and that the evacuation effort earlier concentrated on the French Quarter of the city. "Because that's where the money is," he spat.

A National Guardsman refused entry.

"It doesn't need to be seen, it's a make-shift morgue in there," he told a Reuters photographer. "We're not letting anyone in there anymore. If you want to take pictures of dead bodies, go to Iraq."

As rations were finally doled out here on the day President Bush visited the devastated city, an elderly white woman and her husband collapsed from the heat.

"I had to walk two blocks to get here and I have arthritis and three ruptured discs in my back," said Selma Valenti, 80, as her husband lay beside her, being revived by a policeman in riot gear. The two had eaten nothing since Wednesday.

Valenti and her husband, two of very few white people in the almost exclusively black refugee camp, said she and other whites were threatened with murder on Thursday.

"They hated us. Four young black men told us the buses were going to come last night and pick up the elderly so they were going to kill us," she said, sobbing. "They were plotting to murder us and then they sent the buses away because we would all be killed if the buses came -- that's what the people in charge told us this morning."

Other survivors recounted horrific cases of sexual assault and murder.

Sitting with her daughter and other relatives, Trolkyn Joseph, 37, said men had wandered the cavernous convention center in recent nights raping and murdering children.

She said she found a dead 14-year old girl at 5 a.m. on Friday morning, four hours after the young girl went missing from her parents inside the convention center.

"She was raped for four hours until she was dead," Joseph said through tears. "Another child, a seven-year old boy was found raped and murdered in the kitchen freezer last night."

Several others interviewed by Reuters told similar stories of the abuse and murder of children, but they could not be independently verified.

Many complained bitterly about why they received so little for so many days, and they had harsh words for Bush.

"I really don't know what to say about President Bush," said Richard Dunbar, 60, a Vietnam veteran. "He showed no lack of haste when he wanted to go to Iraq, but for his own people right here in Louisiana, we get only lip service."

One young man said he was not looking forward to another night in the convention center and wondered when conditions would improve. "It's been like a jail in there," he said. "We've got murderers, rapists, killers, thieves. We've got it all."

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I do not know the answer to that. A timeline of this indicates that prior to the hitting of the storm and once FEMA took over from the state govt. - FEMA sent in food, supplies (to the dome and other shelters) as well as some manpower were sent in prior to the storm's landfall.

Then, other than organizing the house to house search and rescue, which went by all accounts understandably slow but well, FEMA seems to have stalled for four days. I get that they were organizing the food and supplies onto the trucks - but it does not take four days to do that. FEMA can build concrete structures in two days Many people were commenting that they were able to drive into NOLA and directly up to the convention center, which was where the rescued people were dropped off with no word on help. So, FEMA cannot claim that it did not know about these people or that, prior to the storm, it should have organized the food and supplies. I mean FEMA has been planning for this for 30 years.

Something is very, very wrong with that picture.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by amber

I was counting on it, but this is his second term - do you think there will be an impeachment????

I'm not sure how it's gonna go down. It may not even be this event directly but a combination of one f*ck up after another for the last five years. The media was there. They know what went down and they are pissed.

[Dreammms]

Originally Posted by dissention

She said she found a dead 14-year old girl at 5 a.m. on Friday morning, four hours after the young girl went missing from her parents inside the convention center.
She was raped for four hours until she was dead," Joseph said through tears. "Another child, a seven-year old boy was found raped and murdered in the kitchen freezer last night.

This brought me to tears. How horrible. I can't believe this is happening here in the USA.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by dissention

. . .
He said people were let die and left without food simply because they were poor and that the evacuation effort earlier concentrated on the French Quarter of the city. "Because that's where the money is," he spat . . . .

-- those poor people

But, that quote about the 1/4 is inaccurate. The 1/4 did not flood and did not need evacuating. Moreover, many of these people are from the projects adjacent to the 1/4. But, his general point if spot on.

Finally, those poor white people. As much as things have changed for the better regarding hatred between the races, it is still vividly apparent.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Fox was already trying to spin it to Gov. Blanco - but, of course, not the GOP Gov. of MS. I cannot wait until Blanco explains that once FEMA took over, they, not her, were in charge of most of the operations and that she, and the Mayor of NOLA, asked them repeatedly for action, but got none after the initial stuff for four days.

Check it out:
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakin...09.html#076438

JP's Maestri said FEMA didn't keep its word

Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer

Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness Director Walter Maestri said Friday night that the Federal Emergency Management Agency reneged on a promise to begin relieving county emergency preparedness staffers 48 hours after Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans metropolitan area.

Maestri’s staff has been working almost around the clock since Katrina approached the Louisiana coastline on Sunday. Today, the staff is
expected to finally switch to a 12 hours on/12 hours off schedule, he said,
adding that they’re both tired and demoralized by the lack of assistance from federal officials.

“We had been told we would be on our own for 48 hours,” Maestri said.
“Prepare to survive and in 48 hours the cavalry would arrive.

“Well, where are they?” he said.
Maestri said the agreement was signed by officials with the Southeastern Louisiana Emergency Preparedness Officials Association, the state and
the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of this year’s Hurricane Pam tabletop exercise. That exercise began the process of writing a series of manuals explaining how to respond to a catastrophic disaster. Financed by FEMA, it included a variety of federal, state and local officials.


A FEMA spokesman late Friday said they couldn’t confirm or deny that
the agency signed the agreement Maestri referred to.

FEMA Director Michael Brown also raised Maestri’s ire when he said in a television interview Friday that he waited so long to respond because he didn’t want to interfere with local aid attempts, and that local officials hadn’t asked FEMA to come in.

“My response is very simple,” Maestri said in an interview on a cell phone after repeated attempts to reach his office. “We didn’t have any communications. We still don’t have outside communications.”

He said FEMA officials have now informed him the first members of a liaison team might arrive at the Emergency Operations Center this morning or Sunday.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by dissention

They're trying to blame Nagin and that is pissing me off big time.

I know. Nagin did the best he could with what he had.

[strandinthewind]

^^^^^

I wonder if O'leilly will issue a retraction

[Johnny Stew]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

As much as things have changed for the better regarding hatred between the races, it is still vividly apparent.

And I'm wondering if there will be an even deeper divide in the aftermath of this tragedy.

[Brwn_eyes0511]

Originally Posted by Johnny Stew

And I'm wondering if there will be an even deeper divide in the aftermath of this tragedy.

OH DEAR GOD...I hope not!

[amber]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

I'm not sure how it's gonna go down. It may not even be this event directly but a combination of one f*ck up after another for the last five years. The media was there. They know what went down and they are pissed.

Yes, everyone knows, and like I said before, there will be a reckoning. But with that congress, I doubt it will be impeachment. But what? There's huge race issues, and economic issues, and war/economy issues - Do you think an underclass, and everyone else, might see now that it's so serious as to warrant an uprising? Sadly, with all the devastation, I don't think that will be possible. I'd love an impeachment, but I think he's going to be there for the rest of his term. I don't see another solution that is plausible.