WARNING: I am about to play "The Blame Game" only I call it "Governmental Accountability" (and yes these days that is an oxymoron).
None of the the people listed below are responsible for this disaster. Nature is what it is but response is everything when you are dealing with the lives of people you have been charged with protecting.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Mayor Ray Nagin
Mayor Nagin faced aging population of people who have grown very accustomed to waiting out storms. In the simplest terms many people could have left and choose not to leave in order to stay with an elderly parent who would not leave. My great-grandmother in Baton Rouge is the exact same way. She refuses to leave when storms are coming. The mandatory evacuation was announced. After that, it became a statewide issue because once the storm hit, all communication was wiped out. It would have been impossible for ANY local government to handle a disaster of this magnitude and scope (Consider the possibility of the entire local chain of command being dead--would we stil be waiting for people to be rescued?). The mayor asked for help. More help should have come faster. Period. The moment the storm hit and flooded the city this became a State and Federal problem.
What ELSE could Nagin have done?:
He could have provided buses to transport citizens who wanted to leave and could not afford it or lacked personal transportation on the day he declared a mandatory evacuation.
None of the the people listed below are responsible for this disaster. Nature is what it is but response is everything when you are dealing with the lives of people you have been charged with protecting.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Mayor Ray Nagin
Mayor Nagin faced aging population of people who have grown very accustomed to waiting out storms. In the simplest terms many people could have left and choose not to leave in order to stay with an elderly parent who would not leave. My great-grandmother in Baton Rouge is the exact same way. She refuses to leave when storms are coming. The mandatory evacuation was announced. After that, it became a statewide issue because once the storm hit, all communication was wiped out. It would have been impossible for ANY local government to handle a disaster of this magnitude and scope (Consider the possibility of the entire local chain of command being dead--would we stil be waiting for people to be rescued?). The mayor asked for help. More help should have come faster. Period. The moment the storm hit and flooded the city this became a State and Federal problem.
What ELSE could Nagin have done?:
He could have provided buses to transport citizens who wanted to leave and could not afford it or lacked personal transportation on the day he declared a mandatory evacuation.
STATE GOVERNMENT
Governor Kathleen Blanco
I feel the most regret for the middle-woman in this tragedy. She is female governor amongst men, a democrat among republicans and is less charismatic and spotlight oriented than her male counterparts. Her status as a Democrat made her the official scapegoat of federal administration for their lack of response (although the exact same things happened in Mississippi). Haley Barbour, Mississippi’s Governor has been both protected and held at bay by the same administration. Blanco declared a state of emergency and asked for Federal intervention days before the storm.
It has recently come out that Governor Blanco asked FEMA Director Brown for busses, on the day of the storm so that they could to be dispatched to the superdome to bring the people there to inland shelters. As Brown said, “I asked for it and it just fell into a black hole.” It was Thursday when the buses arrived. Brown has further admitted that Blanco had the appropriate paperwork completed and submitted before the storm hit and provided information obtained by her office to him immediately after the storm(although informaiton was skewed in some cases because of the breakdoen of technology). As a governor, her main job was to declaare the emergency and secure and submit the correct paperwork to enable the federal government to the BIG job that partially obliterated states probaly can't do. BUT she also mobilized her troops, the national guard, (and borrowed a few from other states) and got them to New Orleans in short order. Sadly the majority of Louisianas Army reserves were deployed in the middle east (and that has never really been discussed). Governor Blanco has done many great things for the state of Louisiana before and after Hurricane Katrina and I think when history judges this time in history she will be placed in a favorable light. If this were a greek tragedy, Governor Blanco would be Antigone (charged with seeing to the honor of her state and being bullied by Creon--President Bush).
Governor Kathleen Blanco
I feel the most regret for the middle-woman in this tragedy. She is female governor amongst men, a democrat among republicans and is less charismatic and spotlight oriented than her male counterparts. Her status as a Democrat made her the official scapegoat of federal administration for their lack of response (although the exact same things happened in Mississippi). Haley Barbour, Mississippi’s Governor has been both protected and held at bay by the same administration. Blanco declared a state of emergency and asked for Federal intervention days before the storm.
It has recently come out that Governor Blanco asked FEMA Director Brown for busses, on the day of the storm so that they could to be dispatched to the superdome to bring the people there to inland shelters. As Brown said, “I asked for it and it just fell into a black hole.” It was Thursday when the buses arrived. Brown has further admitted that Blanco had the appropriate paperwork completed and submitted before the storm hit and provided information obtained by her office to him immediately after the storm(although informaiton was skewed in some cases because of the breakdoen of technology). As a governor, her main job was to declaare the emergency and secure and submit the correct paperwork to enable the federal government to the BIG job that partially obliterated states probaly can't do. BUT she also mobilized her troops, the national guard, (and borrowed a few from other states) and got them to New Orleans in short order. Sadly the majority of Louisianas Army reserves were deployed in the middle east (and that has never really been discussed). Governor Blanco has done many great things for the state of Louisiana before and after Hurricane Katrina and I think when history judges this time in history she will be placed in a favorable light. If this were a greek tragedy, Governor Blanco would be Antigone (charged with seeing to the honor of her state and being bullied by Creon--President Bush).
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
President Bush
Homeland Security & FEMA
For the federal response I have a keyword : Incompetent
I could just put the keyword in big bold letters and conclude my appraisal of the federal response but that wouldn't be my style.
Mr. President, incompetent describes your reaction to Katrina. Incompetent also describes your decision to continue your schedule while a natural disaster was taking place in your country. The “fly over” the gulf-coast was un-presidential. Okay, so President Bush is no statesman, big deal. Not everyone has the same gifts. I can live with that. Here’s what I can’t live with: the lies. Better yet, my president glad-handing political cronies when he should have been tending to our country. Appointing unqualified people is despicable in general but appointing them to such necessary and important posts is inexcusable. People died because of your lack of response. Deal with it. Above all, the most despicable act was playing the blame game in lieu of assuming responsibility for your overwhelmingly sluggish response. As a president who ran his first campaign on restoring honor to the presidency, you have been quite the disappointment in that particular area.
Moving on, incompetent also describes what the W. Bush administration turned FEMA into. I remember when FEMA was the shining star of the federal cabinets (yes, it was once treated as a cabinet). Remember, if you can, the work of FEMA during the Clinton administration. Before FEMA was placed under the bureaucracy of homeland security, it was a very useful department. If you do nothing else Mr. President please remove FEMA from Homeland Security. Give them their own cabinet seat, how about, “The Department of Homeland Response”? At least then everyone will be clear that the job is to respond.
In closing:
What happened at the superdome (and convention center); A hot, wet environment where people were packed in together in the dark without food or water, being prayed upon by less moral people. All the while awaiting shipment to other places was the visual equivalent of slavery to my psyche. My mind could not help but draw the comparison. I saw the superdome as a slave ship. What hurts so much is to know that my people are always the recipients of this kind of treatment. I have always believed in the beauty of the process of this government (I even became a Political Scientist to preserve and make it better) but watching the photo ops after Katrina and going home to view the damage I was left with one realization, in times of crisis we only have ourselves. Mississippi was obliterated. It does not get as many sound bytes as Louisiana does but be clear the American gulf coast was reduced to a third world nation and the federal government of the richest country in the world stood by and watched. It was shameful. In light of that, we need to build stronger city and state governments and prepare to help ourselves more. The veil of false security about federal disaster response has been thrown off and cast aside. We should act accordingly.
So say the polity,
-A
President Bush
Homeland Security & FEMA
For the federal response I have a keyword : Incompetent
I could just put the keyword in big bold letters and conclude my appraisal of the federal response but that wouldn't be my style.
Mr. President, incompetent describes your reaction to Katrina. Incompetent also describes your decision to continue your schedule while a natural disaster was taking place in your country. The “fly over” the gulf-coast was un-presidential. Okay, so President Bush is no statesman, big deal. Not everyone has the same gifts. I can live with that. Here’s what I can’t live with: the lies. Better yet, my president glad-handing political cronies when he should have been tending to our country. Appointing unqualified people is despicable in general but appointing them to such necessary and important posts is inexcusable. People died because of your lack of response. Deal with it. Above all, the most despicable act was playing the blame game in lieu of assuming responsibility for your overwhelmingly sluggish response. As a president who ran his first campaign on restoring honor to the presidency, you have been quite the disappointment in that particular area.
Moving on, incompetent also describes what the W. Bush administration turned FEMA into. I remember when FEMA was the shining star of the federal cabinets (yes, it was once treated as a cabinet). Remember, if you can, the work of FEMA during the Clinton administration. Before FEMA was placed under the bureaucracy of homeland security, it was a very useful department. If you do nothing else Mr. President please remove FEMA from Homeland Security. Give them their own cabinet seat, how about, “The Department of Homeland Response”? At least then everyone will be clear that the job is to respond.
In closing:
What happened at the superdome (and convention center); A hot, wet environment where people were packed in together in the dark without food or water, being prayed upon by less moral people. All the while awaiting shipment to other places was the visual equivalent of slavery to my psyche. My mind could not help but draw the comparison. I saw the superdome as a slave ship. What hurts so much is to know that my people are always the recipients of this kind of treatment. I have always believed in the beauty of the process of this government (I even became a Political Scientist to preserve and make it better) but watching the photo ops after Katrina and going home to view the damage I was left with one realization, in times of crisis we only have ourselves. Mississippi was obliterated. It does not get as many sound bytes as Louisiana does but be clear the American gulf coast was reduced to a third world nation and the federal government of the richest country in the world stood by and watched. It was shameful. In light of that, we need to build stronger city and state governments and prepare to help ourselves more. The veil of false security about federal disaster response has been thrown off and cast aside. We should act accordingly.
So say the polity,
-A
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