Katrina - Page 3

strandinthewind · #1 09-03-2005, 09:07 AM

commentary supplied
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September 3, 2005

Across U.S., Outrage at Response

By TODD S. PURDUM

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 - There was anger: David Vitter, Louisiana's freshman Republican senator, gave the federal government an F on Friday for its handling of the whirlwind after the storm [ I love it when they eat their own ] . And Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, declared, "We cannot allow it to be said that the difference between those who lived and those who died" amounted to "nothing more than poverty, age or skin color."

There was shock at the slow response: Joseph P. Riley Jr., the 29-year Democratic mayor of Charleston, S.C., and a veteran of Hurricane Hugo's wrath, said: "I knew in Charleston, looking at the Weather Channel, that Gulfport was going to be destroyed. I'm the mayor of Charleston, but I knew that!"

But perhaps most of all there was shame, a deep collective national disbelief that the world's sole remaining superpower could not - or at least had not - responded faster and more forcefully to a disaster that had been among its own government's worst-case possibilities for years.

"It really makes us look very much like Bangladesh or Baghdad," said David Herbert Donald, the retired Harvard historian of the Civil War and a native Mississippian, who said that Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's destructive march from Atlanta to the sea paled by comparison. "I'm 84 years old. I've been around a long time, but I've never seen anything like this."

Around the nation, and indeed the world, the reaction to Hurricane Katrina's devastation stretched beyond the usual political recriminations and swift second-guessing that so often follow calamities. In dozens of interviews and editorials, feelings deeper and more troubled bubbled to the surface in response to the flooding and looting that "humbled the most powerful nation on the planet," and showed "how quickly the thin veneer of civilization can be stripped away," as The Daily Mail of London put it.

"It's very disappointing," said Dr. Kauser Akhter, a physician from Tampa, Fla., who was attending a convention of the Islamic Society of North America outside Chicago.

"I think they were too slow to respond. Maybe the response would have been quicker if it had occurred in some other area of the country, for example in New York or California where there's more money, more people who are going to object, raise their voices," she said. "Those people are the poorest of the poor in Mississippi and Alabama, and it seems they had no access to anything."

Jonathan Williams, an architect in Hartford, originally from Uganda, said the delayed arrival of relief and aid supplies in New Orleans made him wonder about how the United States responds to disasters abroad.

"I am in utter shock," he said in an interview at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan on Friday. "There is just total disarray. This far into the cleanup and they are still understaffed? I am just so disappointed. It's just a terrible, sad situation."

But Mr. Williams added: "You cannot just blame the president, or any one person. Everyone is partly to blame. It's the whole system." [ Yea - but if I worked really well, W would be basking in it - so that sword cuts both ways and the buck stops at W ]

It was the combination of specific and systemic failures that many of those interviewed - experts and ordinary people alike - echoed.

Andrew Young, the former civil rights worker and mayor of Atlanta who was Jimmy Carter's ambassador to the United Nations, was born in New Orleans 73 years ago, walked on its levees as a boy and "was always assured by my father that the Army Corps of Engineers had done a masterful job." But, Mr. Young said, "they've been neglected for the last 20 years," along with other pillars of the nation's infrastructure, human and physical.

"I was surprised and not surprised," he said of the failures and suffering of this week.

"It's not just a lack of preparedness. I think the easy answer is to say that these are poor people and black people and so the government doesn't give a damn," he said. "That's O.K., and there might be some truth to that. But I think we've got to see this as a serious problem of the long-term neglect of an environmental system on which our nation depends. All the grain that's grown in Iowa and Illinois, and the huge industrial output of the Midwest has to come down the Mississippi River, and there has to be a port to handle it, to keep a functioning economy in the United States of America."

Mr. Riley, the Charleston mayor, whose Police Department on Monday sent 55 officers to help keep order in Gulfport, Miss., said he had long advocated creating a special military entity - perhaps under the Corps of Engineers - that could respond immediately to disasters.

"It's not the police function," he said. "It's that it's an entity that knows how to quickly restore infrastructure and the essentials of order." He said his own experience with the Federal Emergency Management Agency during Hurricane Hugo in 1989, when he had the National Guard on standby and then requested Army troops and marines, had convinced him that civilian bureaucracy was sometimes too caught up in the niceties.

"With the eye of Hugo over my City Hall, literally, I said to a FEMA official, 'What's the main bit of advice you can give me?' and he said, 'You need to make sure you're accounting for all your expenses," Mayor Riley recalled. "The tragedy of these things is the unnecessary pain in those early days, the complete destruction of normalcy."

Few suggested the challenges of this particular storm had been easy.

Priscilla Turner, 55, of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., is a registered Democrat, but she said President Bush was being saddled with some unfair blame. "There is an instinct to be so negative," Ms. Turner said, "to wish for the worst, to anticipate the worse, to glory and wallow in the worst." If Mr. Bush had sent troops to New Orleans too quickly, she said, his detractors would have portrayed him as "going in with guns blazing." [ yes, but those dead infants would be happier - plus, I do not think anyone would fault W or anyone else for acting too quickly with humanitarian aid, esp. when everyone and their dog knew it would be needed a week or more ago ]

As it is, criticism of Mr. Bush has been unsparing, especially abroad. European newspaper headlines used words like "anarchy" and "apocalypse" and some ordinary citizens in less fortunate parts of the world spoke with virtual contempt for what they saw as an American failure to live up to its professed ideals.

"I am absolutely disgusted," said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, watching a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka, according to the Reuters news agency. "After the tsunami, our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering. Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S., we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is."

There was anger closer to home, too, especially among blacks.

"Babies, the elderly are dying on the streets," said Rebecca Chalk, 60, financial aid director at Sojourner-Douglass College in Baltimore. "It doesn't speak well of America."

Ms. Chalk added: "People are desperate; they're hungry and panicky and they lost everything. The bureaucracy seems like it has to go through all these channels. They should have just gotten the people help by now."

Calvin Kelly, 40, works in a San Francisco food bank warehouse but was born in New Orleans and has been unable to reach elderly family members, including two grandmothers and a 99-year-old aunt, who still live there. "The National Guard is just now getting there," Mr. Kelly said, shaking his head. "The government should have been there when the storm first hit."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an unusual foray into domestic affairs, sharply disputed any suggestion that storm victims had somehow been overlooked because of their race. "We're all going to need to be in this together," she said in announcing offers of foreign aid. "I think everybody's very emotional. It's hard to watch pictures of any American going through this. And yes, the African-American community has obviously been very heavily affected."

But noting her own roots in Alabama, and her father's in Louisiana, Dr. Rice announced plans to visit the region this weekend and said, "That Americans would somehow in a color-affected way decide who to help and who not to help - I just don't believe it."

By no means did all the criticism come from blacks, or from Mr. Bush's political opponents.

Senator Vitter spent part of Friday touring the devastation with Mr. Bush and told reporters that he hoped a turnaround was in the offing. But earlier in the day, news agencies reported, he said the "operational effectiveness" of federal efforts to date deserved a failing grade, or lower. [ and Vitter is a total neo con ]

Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who also spent part of the day with the president and went out of his way to praise the government's response, offered a sober assessment. [ speaking of which ]

"We're going to be fine at the end of the day," Mr. Barbour said, "but the end of the day's a long way away."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Gary Gately in Baltimore, Laurie Goodstein in Chicago, Carolyn Marshall in San Francisco, and Jennifer Medina and Marek J. Fuchs in New York.

www.nytimes.com

gldstwmn · #2 09-03-2005, 01:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I do not think this was posted earlier - if so

In any event - this demonstrates the finger pointing at Gov. Blanco was inappropriate and the fault is solely FEMA's

The governor's response to that should be quite simple. Once the president declared a state of emergency and FEMA was mobilized, they were resposible for coordinating the rescue efforts.
Also, it should be noted that the head of FEMA is a Bush crony who had no formal training for the position to which he was appointed. He's an attorney (no offense Strandie).

amber · #3 09-03-2005, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

The governor's response to that should be quite simple. Once the president declared a state of emergency and FEMA was mobilized, they were resposible for coordinating the rescue efforts.
Also, it should be noted that the head of FEMA is a Bush crony who had no formal training for the position to which he was appointed. He's an attorney (no offense Strandie).

One of the articles posted said his previous training for head of FEMA was as ...Head of the Arabian Horse Society or something?

dissention · #4 09-03-2005, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

from cnn.com

Nine stockpiles of fire-and-rescue equipment strategically placed around the country to be used in the event of a catastrophe still have not been pressed into service in New Orleans, five days after Hurricane Katrina, CNN has learned.

WTF

Mercifully, there are only about 2,000 left in the dome - CNN also reported there were miscarriages in the dome in the last few days. I hope those in charge realize that innocent blood is on their hands

These mother****ers will pay for this.

dissention · #5 09-03-2005, 10:52 AM

Please write to this government to let them know how disgusted and horrified you are at the atrocities being committed. Please write to them to tell them that this is unforgivable and please donate whatever you can to help those who are suffering; money, food, clothing, anything. Let those who are suffering know that there are people out there who care about them and love them. It's our brothers and sisters who are suffering out there and we cannot allow them to lose faith in humanity and the goodness that is out there.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nypost/20050...d39sgonenuts39

'I'M TERRIFIED. I REALLY AM - I FEEL LIKE THE WORLD'S GONE NUTS.'
By JIM HINCH Sat Sep 3, 6:00 AM ET

'LET them know I'm a human being," implored Yolanda Harris.

Standing amid urine-soaked trash on the floor of the convention center and wearing two left-foot shoes, Harris recounted the horror she had seen since this city was buried under billions of gallons of water.

"I'm about to lose my mind, I saw so many dead people," she said.

She had come to the convention center Tuesday when she heard rumors that relief supplies and evacuation buses were to be sent there. Instead, she found a nightmare.

She dragged a reporter to a back garage door and pointed to bloodstains where an elderly diabetic with bleeding sores on her feet had been left to die.

"They covered her with a blanket," Harris said. "But someone cut a hole in the blanket around her head, and I could see she died smiling."

Harris had seen people cooking in the convention center kitchen — ignoring the unspeakable atrocities around them.

"They raped a 13-year-old girl," she said. "We're humans, but we're living like animals here. I am a decent human being. Let them know I'm a human being."

Hope was raised yesterday as National Guard troops poured in to restore order. But the hope soon turned to anger as soldiers herded the crowds like so much cattle and left the sick, old and dying to swelter another day under a merciless sun.

"They're treating us like we're the enemy!" roared refugee Elton Washington as armored Humvees and troop carriers rumbled by outside the convention center and moved crowds off the street to make room for a supply staging area.

Families scrambling away from the center told of a 5-year-old girl raped and her throat slit — and looters joy-riding in stolen cars through hotel ballrooms as people slept on the floor.

The stories are impossible to confirm — but it doesn't matter because the frightened masses believe them.

The rioting and looting that plagued central New Orleans earlier in the week diminished yesterday as police, bolstered by National Guard units, deployed in larger numbers.

All day long, as a burning chemical warehouse belched acrid plumes of smoke into the sky, helicopters buzzed overheard and emergency vehicles — some towing boats — raced in every direction.

But there seemed to be no centralized plan.

After National Guard troops arrived at the convention center, most milled around aimlessly. Some unloaded supply trucks. Others napped on Humvees. Many stood guard, holding back seething, shouting masses of refugees.

"I don't why I'm here. I'm just following orders," said one soldier who wouldn't give his name. "My orders are to stand right here."

All around New Orleans, the Guardsmen looked on unimaginable scenes of squalor and destitution.

Trash and sewage lay everywhere. Twisted metal lined the street. The smell of urine, feces and alcohol filled the air. People sat and gazed off into the distance, grasping random possessions like a Ken doll or a can of baby wipes.

Refugees lined the sides of freeways, running into the middle of the road to flag down emergency vehicles in a desperate quest for water or rescue. Some got lucky.

Anthony Roche and about a dozen family members were airlifted off an above-water section of Interstate 10 by a National Guard helicopter that saw them and landed to rescue them.

"We're at the end," Roche shouted tearfully above the thumping of helicopter blades. "We've been on this street five days. I don't know what we would have done."

On the outskirts of town, fearful homeowners barricaded themselves in their houses with guns and watched for looters.

In the historic — but ravaged — neighborhood of Algiers, Alexandra Boza patrolled the streets on a red Honda scooter, wearing flip-flops and clutching a .38-caliber pistol in her left hand.

Looters had been wandering the area, and her eyes were wide with fear. She stopped near a boarded-up house with graffiti that read: "Looters will be shot. Bush sucks. Where's FEMA!"

"I feel the end has come," Boza said. "The end of the world, the end of decency and integrity. I'm terrified. I really am. I feel like the whole world has gone nuts."

A parole agent was posted to guard a fire crew that helplessly watched a downtown building burn. "I can only describe it as the fall of Saigon," he said.

But there were miracles. Shalita Sam, 17, stayed awake for five straight days in the convention center — all to guard her 2 1/2-month -old baby boy, who yesterday sat in her lap drinking milk, oblivious to the chaos.

"It was through the strength of the Lord," Sam said.

Fellow refugees kept her supplied with milk, diapers and wipes they seized from stores. Kanye got sick to his stomach from the stench of dead bodies, Sam said.

"But I held my boy close and said, 'Baby, it'll be OK.' I held my baby the whole time," she said.

But Roynell Joshua said he wasn't sure he was going to make it. The rail-thin 72-year-old hadn't undergone the dialysis treatments he needs to stay alive since last week and is now so weak he can barely move.

"I'm doing OK," he said. "But I'm kind of worried. I don't know if I'll make it out of this alive."

gldstwmn · #6 09-03-2005, 01:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dissention

These mother****ers will pay for this.

Did you hear that when someone told President Clinton about Denny Hastert's remarks about bulldozing NOLA Clinton said he was glad he wasn't there to hear it because he probably would have assaulted him?

gldstwmn · #7 09-03-2005, 01:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

from cnn.com

Nine stockpiles of fire-and-rescue equipment strategically placed around the country to be used in the event of a catastrophe still have not been pressed into service in New Orleans, five days after Hurricane Katrina, CNN has learned.

WTF

They said it was because the "hadn't been asked for it." Does anyone at FEMA know how to be proactive? That excuse is getting really old, BTW.

strandinthewind · #8 09-03-2005, 01:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

They said it was because the "hadn't been asked for it." Does anyone at FEMA know how to be proactive? That excuse is getting really old, BTW.

I need to check the law to be sure, but I think once FEMA takes over, their people and plans are implements in conjunction with the state govt. - but FEMA is the head of the effort. Moreover, GOv. Blanco and May Nagin obviously publicly called for all the help they could get. Did FEMA assume that meant a few Band Aids

I mean FEMA must have known what they meant because they starteed getting it ready on Monday and W mentioned that help was on the way on Moday. My beef if the five days it took to do so. I think that is BS. These people are supposed to be the instant response people in a national emergency.