Some Posters are Misinformed
There is an egregious amount of misinformation in some of the posts below. It's inevitable there are questions followed by a lot of finger-pointing, all of it blessed with hindsight, of course, essentially asking "
how prepared weren't we?"
A
Knight-Ridder piece (
www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12528233.htm) focused on
the administration's apparent skimping on non-terrorism-related disaster preparedness. Federal flood control spending for southeastern Louisiana has been chopped from $69 million in 2001 to $36.5 million this year. Federal hurricane protection for the Lake Pontchartrain vicinity in the Army Corps of Engineers' budget dropped from $14.25 million in 2002 to $5.7 million this year. Local politicians had requested $27 million this year.
Last year,
the Army Corps of Engineers, facing budget cuts, stopped major work on the levee system for the first time in 37 years. The former head of the Army Corps of Engineers said the damage probably would have been much less extensive had flood-control efforts been fully funded over the years. The
Wall Street Journal says that
in 2002 the president fired the head of the Corps after the official pushed for a new flood-control program.
The
Times-Picayune once did a series looking at the lack preparation for a direct hit (
www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway); How do you suppose it read to the 280,000 people who get the paper? How do you suppose it read back then to New Orleans policy makers? How do you suppose it reads today? How does it read today to those whose decisions resulted in less money for preventive measures? Earlier this week an op-ed piece in the
Washington Post by one county director of emergency management wrote that the White House, in a "preoccupation with terrorism," is giving short shrift to natural-disaster preparedness and sticking a knife in FEMA. He wrote, in part:
"This year it was announced that FEMA is to 'officially' lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to be-come involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission. ...
"To be sure, America may well be hit by another major terrorist attack, and we must be prepared for such an event. But I can guarantee you that hurricanes like the one that ripped into Louisiana and Mississippi yesterday, along with tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, windstorms, mudslides, power outages, fires and perhaps a pandemic flu will have to be dealt with on a weekly and daily basis throughout this country. They are coming for sure, sooner or later, even as we are, to an unconscionable degree, weakening our ability to respond to them."
The Katrina disaster comes at one of the lowest points in George Bush's presidency. The latest approval rating numbers from a
CBS News poll done Thursday: a 41% approval rating, as low as it's ever been, driven down by the war in Iraq and the soaring coast of gas. Editorial pages across the nation took harsh aim: "What appeared to be a halting response Tuesday" and "a better leader would've flow straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available sort."
It doesn't help that the federal government doesn't do anything quickly. The hospital ship Comfort, mobilized out of Baltimore yesterday, won't arrive in New Orleans for about two weeks. We knew this was a bad hurricane. Could the Comfort and other resources have been pre-positioned?
We are all guilty of procrastinating --I'll fix the leaky water heater tomorrow; I know the gas guage is on "E" but I don't need to fill up, I'll make it. And so on. Perhaps in this case, we foolishly based our actions on the "we've been through hurricanes before" attitude, where infrastructure projects are awarded to the lowest possible bidder, who then builds a less than superior levee to save money. Is it laissez faire, political corruption, budget crunches that leave no choice but to settle for a lesser product?
It may be a moot point because the fact is govern-ments at every level cut corners, rob Peter to pay Paul and then keep their fingers crossed. The point is,
who is next? It's a sure bet that nine in 10
residents are not prepared for the major earthquake that will one day level the San Francisco Bay Area, but the question is,
shouldn't every level of government be prepared? The mayor of Charleston, SC, where Hurricane Hugo struck in the 90s, said Friday, "I knew looking at the Weather Channel that Gulfport was going to be destroyed. I'm the mayor of Charleston, but I knew that!" From the Weather Channel.
And then there was this stunning statement from
Michael Brown, the head of FEMA, who said on Thursday --and you're not gonna believe it, quote:
"The federal government did not know until today that the people trapped in the convention center were trapped in the convention center."
This is the agency charged with reacting to exactly this kind of natural disaster, and the head of the agency says, "we didn't know." Why not? Who screwed that up? Is this man qualified to run the agency, or is it just another friend appointed by a politician (and the president has appointed a lot of people to positions for which they are unqualified).
Who signed off on cutting budgets for FEMA? Who fired the head of the Army Corp of Engineers when he got a little too pushy about the lack of funds to take care of the levee system?
Somewhere in this country, a disaster of similar proportions will strike, be it Mother Nature or man-made.
When seaports go unguarded, when nuclear plants sit alone and vulnerable, is it fair to question how well we can expect our government to protect us in and emergency of such proportions? Or
from one? The answer may be scarier than any of us would like to know.
This will turn into a political football sooner or later --sooner if relief efforts don't shape up quickly. A Slidell resident now living in a lean-to on the side of the road had a message for the president: "If you go in Iraq with big helicopters and set stuff up for people, but you can't do this for us --c'mon Bush, you could do better than that!"
That may not be fair to the president and
there's blame enough to spread on EVERYONE in government, not just the White House. But few will question the
recently signed Federal Highway Bill and its $286 billion soaked up by Congressional representatives so they could pass out the pork to those of us back home so we could vote them into the next election.
6,000 pieces of pork, like:
--Washington, D-C: Dale Carnegie public speaking training for sanitation workers, $100,000; computerized car towing service, $300,000
--Converse, TX: a trailer to transport lawnmowers to lawnmower drag races: $3,000
--South Dakota: a paging system for the state agricultural fair: $29,995
--Montgomery County, MD: eight large-screen plasma televisions: $160,000
--Tiptonville, TN: Purchases including a Gator all-terrain vehicle and two defibrillators, one for use at high school basketball games: $183,000
--Vermont: construction of a snowmobile trail, $7.3 million
--Santa Clara County, CA: four Segway scooters to transport bomb squad personnel: $18,000
--Mason County, WA: biochemical decontamination units that have been sitting in a warehouse for more than a year with no one trained to use them: $63,000
--Prince Georges County, MD: digital camera system for mug shots: $500,000
--Newark, NJ: air-conditioned garbage trucks, $300,000; a rap song "to teach children emergency preparedness," $100,000, and for "decorative artwork, plants, kitchen appliances and fitness equipment" for the Transportation Security Administration, $500,000
--Madisonville, TX: a custom trailer for the annual October Mushroom Festival to treat individuals who need first aid: $30,000
You mean
in all that pork we couldn't find the paltry amount the Army Corp of Engineers needed to continue maintaining the levee system for a city as vulnerable as New Orleans? Wait till it hits the rest of the country. People have no idea how critical the New Orleans port is to the vitality of the country's economy.
Every corner of the nation will be paying more for nearly everything. The first estimate of economic losses from the storm are out from a risk management firm that does this sort of thing all the time.
The total economic cost: $100 billion. How wise was it to save a few million by cutting FEMA's budget 44%, or the Army Corp of Engineers budget by nearly 60%? Talk about an ounce of prevention. And let's not even think about the
environmental damage on what was already on of the most polluted stretches of water in the country, in part due to those lovely refineries we're all now desperate to have back online.
Politics is about perception --we all know about the seven minutes the president sat in a classroom after being told the country was under attack; this time he wasted four days. Look, if your administration is responsible for cuts in FEMA's budget, or firing an official who pushed for a new flood-control program, AND you made those cuts to divert money to a policy opposed by half the country and that now appears to be getting worse, it's not hard to picture the spin we'll hear from political opponents, especially with Congressional elections little more than a year away.
Hey, at least Cindy Sheehan is off the front page, and you
know someone in the White House said that with a certain sigh of relief.
Some say the president's tenure will be defined by his handling of two major disasters, but there's a risk that he'll be defined instead by how he mismanaged them. History is always the final judge but right now, it ain't lookin' too good.
You'll excuse me now, I have a leaky water heater to fix.
