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Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Before and after
Just heard about this at the tail end of the Franken show. Before:
As the Boeing 737 landed, its wheels screeching on the ground, the passengers of Delta flight 352 erupted in thunderous applause.
A flight attendant had just announced that on board were four Utah firefighters bound for Louisiana.
...Towing sturdy backpacks, heavy hiking boots and first-aid kits, the firefighters came prepared to perform a job. What that job is exactly, they would be hard pressed to tell you.
Their official assignment: community relations for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Their real assignment: whatever needs to be done. ...
"My big concern is getting these poor people help, whatever that may be," he said. "That's what we do. People call and we help."
Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
..."They've got people here who are search-and-rescue certified, paramedics, haz-mat certified," said a Texas firefighter. "We're sitting in here having a sexual-harassment class while there are still [victims] in Louisiana who haven't been contacted yet."
...Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.
But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.
This is repugnant.
