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Crankmas wrote:Pleez, next time someone posts something trueful pleez place a disclaimer for liberals so it doesn't screw up their small minds with facts, liberals hate facts

BWAHAHA! I agree with Crankmas. Go away, cdfpiper! We're looking for mindless whining about how awful George Bush is. If all you have is an intelligent and knowledgeable assessment of what went on, please refrain from posting.

ZSpider

I agree with Paul, and I'm not trying to attack you or the efforts of the people on the ground rescuing and so on. I'm more interested in figuring out why there seemed to be a lack of effort or ability to at least get some supplies to the people who were stuck in New Orleans.

thanks for helping cdfpiper..the rest of us are just chuffer wannabe do-gooders. we are too busy pissing on each other on here to actually help out. it is good to know there are still people of action out there. your work is appreciated.

cfdpiper, I'll chime in my gratitude as well. The situation on the Gulf Coast has really torn at my heart strings. My hat is off to you for your work down there.

While, I appreciate your insight, I have some thoughts on this issue. Does your comment above mean that FEMA has no helicopters or boats? CNN, Fox, etc were able to get in to downtown New Orleans, so why couldn't FEMA bring in some food and water for the people who "chose" to stay in New Orleans? How can anyone make a comment that it necessarily takes days to reach a disaster zone. People swarmed to the trade center in 2001 to conduct rescue efforts almost immediately. There were ways to get food and water and other necessities to the Superdome, but it still didn't happen. There appears to have been incompetence at all levels in the management of disaster relief efforts (not the people on the ground actually doing the rescuing, etc)- especially Brown of FEMA. He is qualified to run horse shows, not major disaster coordination

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FEMA does not have boats or helicopters. Traditionally, much of the water rescue has been done by local assets (fire departments) and the Coast Guard. It is foolish for FEMA to spend $$$ on redundant assets and deal with the logistical issues of getting those assets there (you just can't move hundreds of boats accross the country in one day). Air rescue (helicopters) is traditionally done by the Coast Guard and Military. If past practice held true, many of these helicopters would have been moved out of the region prior to the storm so they would not have been damaged and rendered unusable. Other air assets from other military installations were brought in, but you are looking at travel times of 12 to 24 hours for them to arrive on station (helicopters are not airplanes, it takes them longer to travel). Maybe if CNN, FOX, NBC, CBS, etc wasn't so concerned about getting the best shots or the best live feed, maybe they could have used their resources to help with the rescues (and I am not talking about the "staged" rescues they made for ratings).

The focus of air rescue is just that...RESCUE. Air crews were not going to waste their time dropping food and water when they had their hands full rescuing people who wanted to leave and should have left in the first place. Food and water was offered by FEMA and the Red Cross for the people of the Superdome, the State of Louisiana denied it because they did not want people to stay there. That is a known fact. If you called today and ordered busses for 50,000 people and said that you needed them by tomorow, they would laugh you off the phone. You can't just snap your fingers and these things appear.

Our team deployed to NYC on 9/11. It took close to 48 hours to get all the assets there that they needed. Comparing the WTC collapse vs. Hurricane Katrina, you are comparing apples and oranges. Much of the infastructure of NYC was still in place and the disaster was concentrated on one small area. Katrina affected an area of hundreds of thousands of square miles and the infastructure of entire counties was wiped out BY THE STORM. We had triple the amount of assets for Katrina than was there for 9/11. It was just spread out over a much larger area because it effected a much larger area. The area of the WTC collapse and the Pentagon would only be a pin prick on a map of the area effected by Katrina.

Time will tell if Undersecretary Brown really had an effect either way on how the response turned out. Political department heads may change, but the folks that run the day to day operations at FEMA and DHS do not. These are the folks who make most of the operational decisions and are career employees. They do not change every time someone else is elected into power. Most of these folks have successfully handled many other disasters. I've yet to see the perfect disaster and in emergency management, you can only play with the cards you are delt.

People of America should be less concerned with what happened in New Orleans and more concerned with their local and state governments and wether or not they are prepared for a major disaster in your community. They will be your first line of defense and the decisions they make before, during, and after a disaster will effect your life. I encourage everyone to contact your local politicians and EMA and ask what they are doing to prepare for a major disaster.

Don't thank me....I'm just doing my job. Thank the good folks of Mississippi and Louisiana. They really need your support and prayers right now.

http://www.thislife.org/ra/296.ram
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGE ... leansdead/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4839669


You couple of morons with your liberal v. conservative little bitty minds should just shut the fuck up. Hurricane Katrina was a massive failure on every level. And the failure continues. That's EVERY FUCKING LEVEL YOU FUCKING FOOLS. The conservatives blew this as bad as the liberals. It was a goddamned cluster fuck. And you two are just worthless pieces of shit.

I appreciate your comments cfdpiper, although I don't agree with some of your views.

Regardless, I do think that food and water should have been taken to the people outside the dome. If we can drop pamphlets and food packs into the middle east or into East Germany like we did after WWII, we can certainly do that for our own. It seems odd that there could be such a lack of preparedness for a hurricane in New Orleans or flooding. I heard several times over the past 2 weeks that FEMA/Homeland security trained for a hurricane disaster in NO at least once in the past year, but it still turned out to be a chaotic response. Last thing... Its pretty disturbing to hear Michael Brown of FEMA claim claim that FEMA didn't know people were at the convention center? Ted Koppel made the perfect point when he asked Brown if he had a radio or tv.

Great posts, cfdpiper. I appreciate you taking the time to write. Informed and refreshing.

ZSpider

Alan , thanks for posting this link-http://www.thislife.org/ra/296.ram
It's well worth listening to.

Thanks for having taken the time to write cfdpiper.
I think it's becoming clear that FEMA is not the perfect solution & is not designed to take care of all human nature's needs. Like every organization, it has its limits.
Why don't we go ask the US army for under water search and rescue?
Why don't we go ask the Cost Guards to defend themselves while rescueing someone?
Why don't we ask FEMA to perform more too?

Come on... I may be wrong here, but FEMA is not the one-stop solution that will fix all of our problems and ensure we have nice vacations at the end.

The big picture seems to show that people didn't look at the worst case scenarios, and if they did, efforts weren't coordinated properly - not good enough to the point that there was order prior to say: the arrival of coast guards.

Of course, in rescues, the first thing that people teach is:
Self Rescue

The second, is an over-emphasis of PREVENTION.

Prevention includes simplicity of spending money and getting things done - like having a cat3 levy when a cat5 levy is needed. Here, 2 other choices could have been made knowing a cat5 was coming:
1. build a cat5 levy overnight
2. brace for impact

The bracing, the prevention, and preparness (to me) was of very VERY poor choice. If someone tells me today that nothing could have been prevented, and they were as best prepared as they could... I just have to freeking laugh out loud... that until you can prove it to me - because I am gonna have a really hard time believing it.