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Friday, September 02, 2005
Fury
AP:Cox News Service:New Orleans descended into near-anarchy yesterday, as bodies lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out, and storm survivors battled for seats on the buses that would carry them away from the city. The tired and hungry seethed, saying they had been forsaken.
...New Orleans' top emergency-management official called the efforts a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would reach the increasingly lawless city.
...As he watched a line snaking for blocks through ankle-deep water, Terry Ebbett, the head of New Orleans' emergency operations, blamed the inadequate response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "This is not a FEMA operation. I haven't seen a single FEMA guy," he said. "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."
FEMA officials said that some operations had to be suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out.
..."I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this - whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud," Bush said. "And I've made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together."
President Bush hit the airwaves twice on Thursday in an effort to calm a nation shaken by the 90,000-square-mile disaster area left by Hurricane Katrina, a scene of increasing hopelessness and desperation that he will see first-hand today.
..."This recovery is going to be a long process," said Bush, who will go to the Gulf Coast today. "It's going to take a lot of hard work and patience and resolve. ... I know this is an agonizing time, or we all know this is an agonizing time for the people of the Gulf Coast. I ask their continued patience as recovery operations unfold."
.."We've got the resources necessary to do two separate things," he said, noting that 22,000 Guard members are headed to the storm-ravaged areas. "And if they need more Guard, there will be more Guard."
Here's the only blame I'm willing to lay on Bush so far: he doesn't get it. Thankfully, few of the people whose patience he begs will hear his broadcast statements. Clearly, more help, more authority, more presence is needed in New Orleans. It shouldn't take 5 days to get 22,000 members of the National Guard to New Orleans. With the advance warning of this storm, the first boots should have hit the ground within 5 hours of the breach of the levee.
There are a handful of apocryphal stories circulating -- that projects to shore up the levee system to protect the city were systematically drained of funds to pay for tax cuts and the war in Iraq; that Bush has stocked FEMA with political appointees better known for the campaign contributions than their technical skill; that in the hours after the levees broke no effective action was taken to stop the breach or save lives. All these stories are worth following up on.
But the story, to me, is what's happening right now. Who is the person in charge? Where is the accountability? Bush ought not be calling for patience. He should be apologizing. He doesn't need to admit the obvious -- that his patronage system that fucked up the CPA is now fucking up the Gulf Coast -- but he should simply report to the country that the wrong people were in charge of the relief efforts. He needs to tell the people in the Superdome that the right people are in place now to get people to safety and water out of the streets.
Here's your test. Any administrator who can't find buses and people to drive them a week or two before school starts is not up to the task. (I'm glad Gov. Blanco has ordered the use of school buses now, but she's late.) Need a place for people to stay? How about college dormitories? Trust me, the freshman class won't mind starting the semester a week late. A warm shower, a place to sleep, a door to close, maybe even a meal in a cafeteria -- these are the simple things that will start to defuse the boiling mass of anger.
2 Comments:
Great post, Hammer. I think many people feel the same way--I know I do. What is taking them so long? I hope this isn't yet another instance of gross negligence on the part of this disastrous Administration. This is the continental United States! I know they want to get people out of the city, but why aren't they making air drops with food etc? These people need to eat and drink--they are starving and going crazy. This is going to get ugly; hope it doesn't culminate in an all-out race riot.
By 
, at
9:16 AM
How can we not? This is the United States of America -- we've defeated fascism and communism, cured disease, put men on the moon, and built an arsenal capable of destroying the planet. How can we not find a way to save some lives? How can we not be fixing this? How can we not start making this tragedy better?
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