"Laissez-faire" - ha - excellent example. See, the thing about weather is that nobody really knows what's going to happen until it happens. It's anybody's guess, and anybody's decision what to do about it. I've been through several hurricanes and they're scary as hell - smart people prepare ahead.

I've noticed the media coverage has been tip-toeing around the race issue as well. There's one sociological point that no one wants to raise - and Jame you're free to stab me in the back and call me a racist for pointing it out - namely that in the U.S. black families tend to be more localized than white families. The family resources of blacks tend to be more focused than whites.

I heard one interview on the radio with a white family that had lost everything, but the husband has family in Virginia, so that's where they went and that's likely where he'll be looking for work. They'll be living with relatives for the time being.

Blacks in America tend not to have family ties spread out as widely. So where nearly every white family in New Orleans likely has family somewhere else, a much smaller percentage of black families have that advantage. My sister told me she saw an interview on TV with a black family - 50 family members caravaning on some interstate highway in 8 or ten cars, but with no firm destination in mind and no homes to return to. I think many black families in the affected area literally have nowhere to go. This isn't anyone's fault, it's just the way it is. So the question is, where are they going to live now? What can we do for them?

During the Balkan crisis the U.S. Gov't resettled refugees on mothballed military bases like Fort Dix and relied on churches and other local groups to find local sponsors and host families. A bunch wound up in my home town in NJ. Say hypothetically we're looking at 200,000 fully displaced Americans - the approach used for the Balkan refugees might also be made to work in this situation.

It's the closest thing to a laissez-faire solution.

I think your relocation idea is good sterling

Sterling! Welcome back!

But your point about "anybody's decision what to do about it" kinda misses the point. If there's an official evacuation, but the city doesn't actually give people without cars etc the means to evacuate, then that's a failure of the city and of the evacuation -- not a failure of the people who had no way of evacuating.

I don't know what "official evacuation" means.

I suspect that traffic likely left the evacuation area at a walking pace, which is (in case you missed it) the speed at which people walk. People stayed not because they couldn't leave, but because they chose not to leave. That was their decision; I have made the same one on several occasions. I actually chose to go boogie boarding the day before Gloria hit the Jersey Shore and Long Island in 1985 - the waves were really great, but in hindsight it seems pretty goddamned stupid. In my defense I was 15 at the time.

We live in a materially abundant society - I'd be very surprised if any of those houses with people stuck on the roof lacked a submerged color television. Prior to inundation such a TV probably was valued about as much as three or four of these.

You can tell me that hindsight is 20/20 - that's true. But when I worked in Manhattan (which after all is an island just barely above sea level) I kept a similar item at the bottom of a drawer in my credenza.

I don't want to be insensitive and I don't want to speak ill of the dead - but everyone who is in that zone, dead or alive, is there because they made a series of bad decisions or is the minor child of someone who made a series of bad decisions. Those decisions can't be undone and there's really no sense in even raising it for discussion. They fucked up. It's done. Let it go.

There is currently an emergency issue about getting people out of the disaster zone. Public discussion on this is meaningless because massive resources are being brought to bear by actual experts, sans policy discussion.

The political issue now is what to do about the people who are outside the disaster zone who have no place to go. My suggestion is to reopen shuttered military bases and turn to local organizations, governments and churches to find host families or sponsors for them. You may be surprised to find that a surprising number of landlords would be willing to provide free housing for six months or so, or that small business owners might be willing to employ whole families at a loss for some period if their minister or priest suggested it would be a Christian thing for them to do.

I wonder how your ankles would fare in that situation. Perhaps we could ask the people who 'evacuated' Manhattan after 9/11, and see if there are any that walked further than 10 miles (most everyone I know who left town, did so via train). You want me to draw a map Sterling? Teh causeway over Pontchartrain is 25 miles long. I love it -- a hurricane, moving at 10-12 mph, somewhere between 30 and 60 miles across, with winds in that zone ranging from 60-120mph, and you solution is to, um, walk out if its way? Jesus, Sterling, typically you cant has at least a scrim of vicious rationality, but this is extra special stupid. All we need is Sage7 to claim it's Biblical (Oct 5 isn't that far off), so we can wash our hands of those perched on roof tops, or trapped in attics.

I just asked a friend, who knows someone living [sic] in Jefferson Parish. She had a car, and she evacuated to her husband's family home, in... Mississippi.

An acquaintance of mine pointed out to me after the Asian tsunamis that, in a sense, there is no such thing as a "natural disaster": weather is only disastrous for the vulnerable, and vulnerability is socioeconomic.

I agree, Sterling (nice to see you're back), that the issue is not how the city evacuated people but how prepared people were. But the preparedness of individuals is societal issue. The relative localization of black families compared to white families is not "just the way it is"; it's a consequence of a system in which large poor families have to stick together because their individual members can't achieve economic independence.

Your idea to house people on old military bases sounds interesting. I wasn't aware of its use for Balkan refugees.

I think this bOINGbOING post is very telling.

I guess LA and MS arent very high on G Dubby's list of priorities, maybe they should steal him some elections, they might've gotten a quicker response. Or maybe next time they will think twice about voting for such scumbags as Bush/Dick, especially since it is now coming out that LA has been begging this adiministration for money to restore the levees and coastline, only to get a "fuck off, pay for it yourselves". It seems like getting into Iraq was more important than protecting the largest oil distribution hub in the entire fucking country. Makes a lot of sense.

Sterling writes:
"There's one sociological point that no one wants to raise - and Jame you're free to stab me in the back and call me a racist for pointing it out - namely that in the U.S. black families tend to be more localized than white families. The family resources of blacks tend to be more focused than whites."

Assuming this is true, does anyone know why?

Simon - I don't see the connection. So Gore cares more than Bush? Kerry cares more than Bush? That's your argument? Do you have an argument?

Al Gore, for the record, kept tenants on his family's estate in Tennessee in a state of unbelievable squalor. Their indoor plumbing barely functioned, etc, and Gore refused to make repairs. Several family members were handicapped. And then he evicted them when he decided to run for president, to prevent them from showing up on TV.

John Kerry is famous for cutting in line in stores and at sporting events, and then telling those who object, "Do you know who I am?"

Bush is doing what he can. Any president would. Please shut up.

New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004

"It appears that the money has been moved in the presidentís budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose thatís the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees canít be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana

From today's Chicago Tribune:

"I'm not saying it wouldn't still be flooded, but I do feel that if it had been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have," said Michael Parker, a former Republican Mississippi congressman who headed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from October 2001 until March 2002, when he was ousted after publicly criticizing a Bush administration proposal to cut the corps' budget.

Before so many silly acusations are made, keep in mind:
1. 67 percent of New Orleans are black folks
2. The poor don't have cars and in cities don't need them. Except for escaping hurricanes.
3. the levees were expected to protect the city and many felt safe.
4. there is no evidence of a plan to drowqn a portion of the population.
5. before condemning compare with other places in area hit by Katrina...
6. The Dome was expecte4d to offer last ditch protection but failed.

The only two segments of the population in the US that doesn't have cars are the poor and New Yorkers. I am wondering if those of you living on Manhattan have an escape plan that doesn't involve vehicles -- Is everyone going to walk to Yonkers?

In the US even most of the poor have cars. The most serious problems with poverty in the U.S. aren't lack of material prosperity, but social ills.

There's a story in the Washington Post this morning about a black family that's managed to get out. They spent two days on the roof of their house after deciding that their car might get stuck in the rising water if they used it. Probably the right decision.

One thing that's become obvious is that a Federal-organized emergency relief effort takes too long to get going and has too many points of failure to be an immediate solution. Much of this is structural - for example all the airports in the New Orleans area were badly damaged or flooded, making it difficult to get materials and supplies into the city.

The U.S. needs to start looking at reviving the old Civil Defense structure, so that cities are capable of mobilizing their own citizenry in the event of a disaster. The only people in place to evacuate the city immediately following the order to evacuate were the people of New Orleans themselves.

While many lessons are being learned from this disaster, not all of them correct, there seems to be the perception, not least in Sri Lanka and elsewhere where the Tsunami hit, that while their response was cooperation ("Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged"), the response by the inhabitants of New Orleans was to engage in widespead looting.

Is the reason for that that the victims of Katarina feel justifiably entitled, as citizens of the world's richest country, to immediate rescue aid? Or has civic society been so run down by the evident wealth discrepancy in American society that a temporary absence of law enforcement now leads to anarchy?

Everyone, go read this now. The mainstream media are slowly coming round as well. This is a major fuckup by the federal government, no two ways about it.

Stefan, just a couple of points, not to make an argument. It's not clear the looting--meaning, stealing stuff like TVs and jewelery that won't help much in the survival stakes--is widespread. Watching TV here the reports are pretty conflicting. Also, the idea that nothing bad happened to Tsunami survivors is preposterous.

And Felix, read the mainstream media before you get on your digital high horse. The WSJ front page had a story saying exactly that yeserday. In fact, given the power of the TV pictures, I'd say media coverage has been spectacular, one of those rare times where the power and importance of a professional and independent media is clearly apparent.

Whatever else it is, it's not a fuckup by the federal government. And yes I'd say the same thing if Clinton was still in charge.

There is a maximum speed at which the federal government can move. It has been moving at about that speed since the levee broke. Do you realize there are no functioning airports in the vicinity of New Orleans, and many of the roads into the city are gone or flooded?

The reason the levee was not reliable, and the reason there was only one levee wall protecting New Orleans, and the reason there was not better diaster planning is the Louisiana state government. Trying to blame Bush because the Louisiana delegation didn't get their multi-million dollar boondoggle is silly - every state looks for funds like that, they very rarely get them. It's called "pork barrel." Besides, they were asking for money to RAISE the levee - there was no information indicating it was structurally unsound.

Federalism has its upside and its downside - it makes national corruption less likely but local corruption more likely. It is up to the governments of Louisiana and Lousiana's cities to protect people from weather effects and flooding. I grew up in a coastal township in New Jersey that usually gets smacked by one or two hurricanes a decade and one or two bad nor'easters a decade. The storm drain system that mitigates flash flooding was designed by an engineering firm in the pay of the township, built by the township (with oversight from the county and state governments) and paid for by the township through general obligation water and sewer municipal bonds. Geographically, the township is about half the size of Orleans Parish, and about half the settled part of the township is just a whisker above sea level.

That's the way it works in the U.S. If the municipality and state government of Louisiana are SO corrupt that neither can competently manage this process, the blame lies with those governments and with the local citizenry.

SECONDLY, no one is trying to commit a genocide against blacks, certainly not Bush or the Republican Party. Louisiana is, like Maryland, Massachusetts and Hawaii, all but ruled by a corrupt Democrat Party machine apparatus. That apparatus lost control of the situation almost immediately following the levee breach; Bush is sending in troops to regain control. Get your facts straight.

Sterling, the levees were built and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, which is a federal institution. The Federal government took far too long to do far too little in a situation where the state government was, to all intents and purposes, nonexistent. It's a monumental fuckup, and I agree with Matthew that the media is doing a pretty good job of reporting it. But it's interesting to me to see that the sentiments which were yesterday confined to the editorial page of the NYT are now making their way onto the front page. Over the past couple of days, reporters have decided that they have a duty to report that this is a fuckup as well as a natural disaster. Good for them.

Ironic that this ironic thread - kicked off by Sterling's ironic pre-empting of the "blame game" with an effective if jab to the Kennedies - should now suffer a declension as the non-ironic Belgians and so forth pile in with their NYT links ("Bush makes a bad speech" is the article in the NYT..) to make heavyhanded, meanminded party political points. I'll go along with almost any attempt to head off this sick Belgian pontificating.

Go read this guy if you think the looting isn't widespread. He's been holed up in an office building in downtown NO, and his webcam and written reports detail massive looting. Also, it's gripping reading.

When Ivan hit florida last year, Bush deployed troops and declared an emergency immediately. Troops were deployed in one day. It has now been a week, and the national guard is just now arriving. There is an obvious double standard, it is disgusting and despicable. Not just in the cold shoulder given to NOLA in preparedness from the Feds, but in the reaction after the fact. To deny that is a willful ignorance of the facts.

Virtually everything that has happened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models, so emergency management specialists wonder why authorities were so unprepared.

[...]

On Thursday, President George W. Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Link

All I can think about is what it looked like here on 9/12. Who remembers standing on the West Side Highway and cheering the absolutlely overwhelming army of relief, construction and rescue vehicles and volunteers that streamed by? That was 18 hours after the worst emergency in the history of New York, before we had an idea we needed to be prepared for such things, before Homeland Security. And withing 24 hours, voluteers were being turned away because they had too many, and the crucial shortages (water, masks and gloves) last only a day and a half. I remember being downtown two days later and seeing an entire block covered by Poland Springs flats taller than me. The scale in many ways was the inverse of the horror of the day before. It was uplifting, and amazing. We are also a more populus region, and capable of amazing feats of infrastructure response due to our relative wealth and density.

But if we had moblized 2,000 buses on Monday, nationwide, they would be there, now, yesterday, two days ago, to pick up stranded passengers. And it's not about access or roads, the mayor said it quite clearly: the don't have transporation. They don't know where they can send refugees? Um, isn't Texas the biggest state in the nation? Over 11,000 hotel rooms in the downtown core of Houston (8 mi radius) and Dallas (4mi radius -- which means together they have likely 30-35,000 rooms). And refugees are being turned away from the Astrodome. Sanitation is already becoming a problem, one day after it was opened. It's been said once, it's been said a thousant times -- Bush's signal failure is to misunderestimate the significance of leadership as a symbolic activity. This will likely end up as the biggest non-wartime tragedy in our country's history. Coverage, response and his role should omnipresent. People are starving to death on rooftops in our country. It's been FOUR DAYS.

Instant snap judgments. Kneejerk attitudinising.

You link with approval to an article saying the New Orleans devastation may not be genocide, but it's a Holocaust. A Holocaust.

Lack of imagination. Failure of sympathy. Wish to lash out and blame anyone. Desire to expunge any possibility of helplessness.

Fools. Sickoes. Self-congratulatory handwringers. A curse on your reactions, signs of sad inadequacy.

You are such an asshole its bewildering. I think it's possible that you are worse than Sterling.

I don't think the civilian relief efforts of 9/11 and Katrina can be compared. On 9/11, a few city blocks were directly effected, but the rest of the city was able to pitch in as they were not left homeless and drowning. With Katrina, the entire city is helpless, as is much of the surrounding region. Therefore, it is left to the federal gov't to pick up the slack, which it has failed to do miserably.

sac: I'm not saying they should, but someonemanaged to coordinate an monumental, complex relief effort in about 12 hours. Can we find them, send them to NO, and empower them in the same way? I don't care what they have to do. People are dying. There have to be 2,000 available school buses in the region that can be commandeered for 10 days.

Also. Dubya loves to talk about humility. But there's only hubris, no humility, in the smug and possibly lethal way in which he refused all offers of foreign assistance. (Does anybody remember the Kursk?) Other countries might not have been able to make a huge difference. But might they have been able to help at all? Surely.

President Bush said today that relief efforts to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina are "not acceptable," a rare admission that his administration has not coped effectively in a crisis.

Still sticking to your guns, Sterling/Claude/etc?

Claude, I agree, every time this blog gets good again, a disaster of historic proportions rids me of my ironic inclinations and MemeFirst visitors suffer for months. Not just New Orleans, but before that the Tsunami, and before that, the Bush re-election.

Oh Matthew, your attempts to defend your adopted land are touching. But I get the beeb, ZDF, FrogTV, SwissTV, CNN and CNBC here, and there is a very clear acceptance by all of them that, indeed as Stefan said, looting and crime is widespread. And appalling things happened to the Tsunami survivors after the Tsunami, but they did not do it to each other, as they have in this case.

Me, I wonder what on earth is wrong with the US, that civil society is so very fragile, that at the slightest provocation you all start killing each other. You may not see it, living there permanently, it is too gradual. But I see the US periodically, as one sees motion through a stroboscope, and it is very very clear to me that something has gone very wrong there. I don't know what exactly it is, though. Claude, you write:

"Lack of imagination. Failure of sympathy. Wish to lash out and blame anyone. Desire to expunge any possibility of helplessness.

Fools. Sickoes. Self-congratulatory handwringers. A curse on your reactions, signs of sad inadequacy."

Welcome to Memefirst, this is what we are and what we do.

Felix -

The Army Corps of Engineers did not build those levees and floodwalls. It designed them and partly or mostly financed them with federal grant money authority. The ACoE also oversees construction, but you will find that the work is put out to bid in Louisiana under the authority of the state and local governments. And that is where the mischief usually gets into the mix, especially in Louisiana.

Here is the page concerned with the Pontchartrain flood walls. Also, if you look at the amount of time it takes for these projects to be completed - it's decades in many cases. There's a magic little sentence on that page, "Overall project completion is scheduled for 2015." Bush only started cutting funding last year, so it's obvious that his budget moves had nothing to do with the break.

The flood wall was designed to withstand a strong category 3 hurricane, but Katrina was a category 4 hurricane. But even at that, engineers usually overestimate rather than underestimate stress, so it should have held. The decision to build to category 3 was apparently made some years ago - probably during the term of Clinton or Bush's father - possibly even Reagan or Carter.

But that doesn't mean the blame goes on an earlier administration, either. When this is over I'm guessing we're going to find out that part of that wall consisted of mislabled, substandard materials used by a politically connected contractor to widen his margin, and that a big chunk of change went into kickbacks to Orleans Parish Democrats.

When a big engineering project like this fails so spectacularly, after the plans have been looked over by dozens of engineers in thorough audits, it's almost always because of corruption in the bid process. Basically, the wall they designed wasn't the wall that was built.

Felix Geens sneers: "Still sticking to your guns, Sterling/Claude/etc?"

Felix, noone has denied Katrina is a tragic disaster and that relief efforts have been unacceptable. All we are suggesting is that we should try to understand before we judge. What is repulsive in your reaction is not that you point out the awfulness, but that you turn this tragedy into a pulpit for heavyhanded, stale, reheated pontifications.

Your narrative? "Evil rightwingers failed to build proper levies: it was an evil yet incompetent plan to ensure that a hurricane would cause flooding and lead to a "Holocaust" of poor black people, the only ones who couldn't escape because of no cars, whilst the Fed Government stood back and did nothing until it was too late."

Maybe it's just a matter of taste and breeding, rather than of left- versus right-wing blame-trading. Whilst the dead float by, you casually murmur, "Of course it's all W/the Fed Gov/the local Reps' fault." Er, maybe, maybe not.

Then again, to rush to judgment before the details are known will lead to faulty conclusions - mere confirmations of prejudice.

Eurof, as a neo-Hayekian you should be the first to see that judgments, such as that inevitable "Holocaust" comparison, would have more force and accuracy if they arose out of observation (as per sac's link and many other bloggers, describing the scene as it happens) rather than prejudice. You observe the weird gun battles and horrible violence as being more striking to an outsider than to the Yanks themselves. I agree with that, also that it is difficult to put a finger on why it should be so. The Belgians would seize on this with delight, as instant confirmation that rightwing Christians have destroyed US neighborliness etc. That is what makes their remarks so dispiriting and is why they let down themselves and memefirst.

Claude said: "You link with approval to an article saying the New Orleans devastation may not be genocide, but it's a Holocaust. A Holocaust."

Correction: the article the Belgians linked to said "it would not be inaccurate to describe it as genocide."

So Felix and Stefan believe this has been both genocide and Holocaust, not a mere Holocaust, as I mistakenly thought.

Simon, why don't you stick to unmasking Nazis? They're seldom far to seek when Holocausts and genocide are the order of play. Ole Prescott set this one in motion, I'll warrant, that old Jew-hating sonofabitch. And if we can get his head to roll, Felix might loosen his purse-strings too, and deign to help the victims..

Let me make this clear: I don't think this monumental fuckup is the work of evil right-wingers. Yes, the federal response has been dreadful. But I've been equally critical of local government (it was the Democrats running New Orleans who simply announced an evacuation without stopping to think how the poor and the weak would get out) as well as Democrats on a national level like Landrieu and Bill Clinton. And I'm critical as well of the Red Cross. I link to people who are angry, not because they're right, but because they're angry -- like most of the country. The bloggers and the journalists on the ground and the people reading and watching them get angry. While the politicians and the Red Cross woman keep on telling us that things are getting better, help is on the way, etc etc. They just don't get it. And neither do you, Claude. As for Sterling, with his whole it's-not-the-right-it's-the-left schtick, he's even worse.

Felix - Fury is understandable, fury can be healthy. But when its leads people to talk crap, to make wild, tired claims, to close their eyes to what is going on, it should be confronted. Let's stop fighting over the moral high ground, it's been swept away anyhow... nobody wants to minimise the disaster. S. made some good points about the FF insurance, about the way today's insistent TV coverage alters the way we "judge" events such as these, there's lots to be learned over and beyond the blame game.

I haven't blamed the left for the hurricane or the response or anything at all. I've suggested that we'll probably find that corruption of New Orleans Democrats was responsible for at least part of the suffering. I don't fault the Orleans Parish Democratic organizations for their leftism in this instance, but for their corruption.

I am hardly the first person to note that Louisiana is an astonishingly corrupt state.

And if I am describing the corrupt Louisiana officials as "Democrats" a bit too often, it is only to give pause to the myriad leftists who do want to somehow pin all this on Bush. They were blaming him before it ever happened. They are blaming him for contradictory things. They are blaming him for things that haven't happened. They would blame him regardless of what he does or did or will do, because that's the only way they know to make themselves feel important.

And I think they should shut the fuck up.

Actually I feel a bit bad about my darker mutterings about the fragility of civil society in the US. It is now pretty clear that this was a massive guvmint failure, rather than a lack of civility on the part of the locally resident septics. And in the absence of food and water I would go off and raid a vacant 7-11 for whatever i could get my hands on too.

Personally I have long complained that the current US administration are a bunch of ideologically blinkered arrogant dickheads I am ashamed to associate with conservatism. Dubya has shifted his tone from reminiscences about his student follies in Nawlins and fantasising about the non-alchoholic mint-juleps he will sip on the porch that Trent Lott will rebuild on the site of his destroyed mansion (while 20 km away starving blacks trudge wearily from that Stadium onto school buses leaving the bodies behind), to a more solemn, 9/11 tone, smirklessly intoning in the Rose garden about how serious the whole situation is. This shows me that Sterling is wrong and at least Dubya knows something is not right in the state of Denmark, and even if it isn't true, everyone IS going to think it is his fault, therefore it is anyway.

They blame him coz in the olden times presidents had a sign on their desks saying "the buck stops here". So unlike the home life of our own dear president, whose desktop mottoes are "don't worry, we are making progress", and "stuff happens".

By the way, Claude, you are right, this whole holocaust and or genocide similie or metaphor is a pint of runny poo. The people in the Superastrodome or whatever are primarily poor before they are black. Still, it is a shameful thing for the Americans, and a terrible spectacle for us all.

I take back my comments on US society, they are OK really. I feel quite magnanimous after my michelin starred meal overlooking Lake Geneva tonight. Really, I should feel quite bad, considering. But please -- in my mind it is almost impossible to let down memefirst, expectations should be very very low. Have you not read the archives??

Here lies the problem in this crisis - lack of the following...:

"My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you: Ask what you can do for your country."

Or how about this one?:

"There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it."

I am not attempting to make a racial statement rather one of a socioeconomic statement. Why is it that so many people had no way out - BEFORE THE STORM? Where were the busses BEFORE THE STORM? Where were the water and food rations at the superdome BEFORE THE STORM? What was the evacuation plan for the city of New Orleans BEFORE THE STORM?

I guess what I am saying is that getting the hell out of harms way - is not the responsibility of the federal government - if I am living on the train tracks and the train runs my ass over because I didn't have a plan to get out of it's way - how is that someone elses fault?

Yes, Sterling, it is the Fed's fuckup. I've seen some amazing double talk from you in the face of evidence. Have a go at this:

(via Atrios):

Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana
Office of the Press Secretary
August 27, 2005

The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.

The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn.

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent Federal funding.

Representing FEMA, Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Department of Homeland Security, named William Lokey as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Federal recovery operations in the affected area.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: FEMA (202) 646-4600.

For numbers on what this authority has provided in the past, see this post:

http://billmon.org/archives/002125.html

How one cannot term the failures of the past week as anything other than criminal is beyond me. Anger? Frustration? Not just on the left Sterling:

David Brooks:

Sheperd Smith & Geraldo:
Does this mean that Fox is now part of the liberal MSM conspiracy?

So the president declared a state of emergency the day before the hurricane hit. OK... Do you have an argument?

I have read all these posts and everyone is trying to either blame the Bush administration or the corrupt Deomocratic government of La. This is all disturbing! the bottom line is that American citizens are dying and the government (whether it be the local government or the federal government) did not do enough in a timely manner to help the situation! This is a time for the political bickering to stop and for us to help our fellow Americans. As a country the United States has traditionally taken a stand to support human rights in the face of oppression or disaters, but when we are faced with a situation within our own borders we start bickering and pointing fingers.
Whether this is a political or a race issue is irrelevant. However, I will point out that after Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida in `92 (which until Katrina was the worst hurricane to hit the US from a financial view) the National Guard rolled into the devasted area with supplies the very next day while it has taken four to five days to get a similar response in NO. The difference? Andrew hit a very affluent area!
Nevertheless, this is not a time to try and blame someone, this is a time that we as a country need to move beyond these issues and help our fellow citizens!

Um, haven't you been saying it is the fault of local and state offcials for not asking for help? Doesn't the press release state rather explicitly that FEMA did not require state or local requests to act? Doesn't this prove definitively that as of the 27th, the Federal government had clear legal right to begin preparing relief operations, regardless of state or local requests? And that a solid week later, then head of FEMA was claiming on national television that he was not aware of needs that were being broadcast hourly on multiple networks? I mean, your an asshole and all, and I don't actually mind that, but you aren't an idiot, right? Right?

"...the National Guard rolled into the devasted area with supplies the very next day while it has taken four to five days to get a similar response in NO. The difference? Andrew hit a very affluent area!
Nevertheless, this is not a time to try and blame someone..."

You just did.

99 - I don't know what you're saying. Are you suggesting that FEMA didn't do what it was supposed to do? What do you think FEMA is supposed to do? How many days do you suppose FEMA is supposed to take to do it? Make an argument.

I don't need to "make" an argument. It has been said, and I agree, that one major Federal agency, the head of that agency and his boss (the man who pushed for it's creation), failed miserably in acting prudently and expeditiously -- and more to the point, failing to do their job at all.

You had said earlier -- honestly, though, I'm not combing these threads, and I've seen too many wing nut arguments that are similar, so I don't know you stated this specifically -- that the state and local officials did not request help quickly enough and that is what delayed the response (compared to preparations in advance of storms in FLA).

The press release indicates that before the storm hit, FEMA had the federal authority (regardless of what state or local officials were doing or not) to act. And there was, after all, a full scale evacuation on Saturday the 27th (the date of the order), so regardless of what FEMA expected the levees to do, they were aware there would be massive displacement -- that being the whole of NO -- and there is scant evidence of their preparing for it, evidence by Brown's assertion that he wasn't aware that there were people in need of relief supplies on the 2nd, a fact that most Americans were aware of, given that it was on the news 24 hours a day.

You goddamn well DO need to make an argument. What is the proper response time? What about in situations where two states - and thousands of square miles of settled land - are affected? What is FEMA's mission?

You can't answer any of these questions because you are not focusing on specifics. You see a bad thing and you're upset about the bad thing and so you're looking for someone to blame. The fact is that it unreasonable to expect the federal government to respond to something like this in less than three or four days - until then local first responders have to make do. The fact is that this hurricane gave only about two days' warning that it was even heading toward the Mississippi Delta area.

In all my responses here I've dealt with specifics. You need to also.

FEMA's mission is apparently to promote the good work they are doing [sic], which apparently means waiting until Thursday to ask if the airlines could help with relief operations.

So, if you read the above story, here's a specific. FEMA did not begin mobilization until after landfall of the storm, even though that contradicts previous efforts, which they themselves promoted via press releases (links up thread). So compared to previous events, they failed in their mission. We can not establish causation at this stage as to whether or not those failures lead to deaths, but any sense of dignity or responsibility would result in Brown's (and Chernoff's) resignation.

I don't understand why you keep arguing that an agency (let us pause to note their full name: Federal Emergency Management Agency) charged with "Agency of the US government tasked with Disaster Mitigation, Preparedness, Response & Recovery planning" (as per their website) should not be expected to have a same day response at the very least in the case of, I don't know, disasters. What is it you think they do? In case you don't know, here is their formal mission statement:

As it has for more than 20 years, FEMA's mission remains: to lead America to prepare for, prevent, respond to and recover from disasters with a vision of "A Nation Prepared." At no time in its history has this vision been more important to the country than in the aftermath of Sept. 11th. [emphasis added]

Same day response. OK, good, you finally showed some balls and got out in front of an argument. Congratulations.

That said, to expect same day response is absurd and stupid. Are you a fucking moron?

You are incomprehensible. Really. Don't give directions to a bar, cause you'll send people into the Cheasapeake.

FEMA has on it's website how it was able to move almost a million MRE's into Jacksonville two days before landfall for a previous storm, and here it began a response after landfall, almost two full days after a full scale evac was issued. Are you unable to see the inherent failure in that? They didn't actually mount a response on the day of landfall, they started talking about it.

Forget search and rescue, shelters, comms, the stuff they should be good at. No, a million MRE's would feed the evacuees for one day, two at most. Why didn't FEMA order MRE's on Saturday when the evacuation was ordered? The city was being emptied. People would likely need assistance even if the storm went down to Category Two, if only because of traffic and haste. I assume that six days later, on Thursday, when Brown was saying he just found out that people where stranded at the convention center, that no supplies had been ordered for them. Does that strike you as failure? It does me.

Friday, Aug. 26: Gov. Kathleen Blanco declares a state of emergency in Louisiana and requests troop assistance.

Saturday, Aug. 27: Gov. Blanco asks for federal state of emergency. A federal emergency is declared giving federal officials the authority to get involved.

Sunday, Aug. 28: Mayor Ray Nagin orders mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. President Bush warned of Levee failure by National Hurricane Center. National Weather Service predicts area will be "uninhabitable" after Hurricane arrives. First reports of water toppling over the levee appear in local paper.

Monday, Aug. 29: Levee breaches and New Orleans begins to fill with water, Bush travels to Arizona and California to discuss Medicare. FEMA chief finally responds to federal emergency, dispatching employees but giving them two days to arrive on site.

Tuesday, Aug. 30: Mass looting reported, security shortage cited in New Orleans. Pentagon says that local authorities have adequate National Guard units to handle hurricane needs despite governor's earlier request. Bush returns to Crawford for final day of vacation. TV coverage is around-the-clock Hurricane news.

Wednesday, Aug. 31: Tens of thousands trapped in New Orleans including at Convention Center and Superdome in "medieval" conditions. President Bush finally returns to Washington to establish a task force to coordinate federal response. Local authorities run out of food and water supplies.

Thursday, Sept. 1: New Orleans descends into anarchy. New Orleans Mayor issues a "Desperate SOS" to federal government. Bush claims nobody predicted the breach of the levees despite multiple warnings and his earlier briefing.

Friday, Sept. 2: Karl Rove begins Bush administration campaign to blame state and local officialsódespite their repeated requests for help. Bush stages a photo-opódiverting Coast Guard helicopters and crew to act as backdrop for cameras. Levee repair work orchestrated for president's visit and White House press corps.

Saturday, Sept. 3: Bush blames state and local officials. Senior administration official (possibly Rove) caught in a lie claiming Gov. Blanco had not declared a state of emergency or asked for help.

Monday, Sept. 5: New Orleans officials begin to collect their dead.

Those are the facts. State and local officials BEGGED for help as people in their city suffered. The Bush administration didn't get the job done and when their failure became an embarrassment they attacked those asking for help.

The New York Times reported on Friday that Karl Rove and White House communications director Dan Bartlett "rolled out a plan...to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina." The core of the strategy is "to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana."

This is the same pattern of smearing that the Bush political machine has used for a decade. John McCain and John Kerry had their war records smeared. The CIA cover of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was blown after he criticized the Bush Iraq policy. Now, Hurricane victims are attacked when the Bush administration failed to do their duty to help them.

It isn't just the Bush administration. Republican Senator Rick Santorum blamed victims in a TV interview and House Speaker Dennis Hastert suggested New Orleans should not be rebuilt.

I understand Fema was absorbed into the new Homeland department after 9/11 and saw much of its resources gouged to pay for unrelated Homeland activities. Fema's response was very slow and poor because the agency has been disembowled.

That's a credible point. So we fire Chernoff. Doesn't matter to me. Substitute DHS for FEMA. It's not like they did any better.

No but I don't think DHS has really been trained for natural disasters. I only hope that DHS has used its time and resources wisely and has trained for an ABC attack that, had it occurred, would have been met with a far swifter and better coordinated response.

Excuse me, a pig just flew past my window.

Unfortunately, I assume this will be only the first of far too many accounts of our inhumanity.

Oh, hey, look, FEMA/DHS is really on the job now. 13 days later? Water purification system? Better to not 'let it rot on the runway'. The nola.com weblog is still listing numerous stranded -- is 13 days enough to consider them 'abandoned' citizen. Has FEMA actually started field operations yet? I keep hearing about the Red Cross. But there's a good question: find evidence that FEMA is actually doing field work on site.

Oh, wait, FEMA is one the case. Sorry. My bad.

Lloyd Grove is reporting (via Mediabistro) that Dick Cheney was on vacation until Thursday. Thursday. FEMA claims to not have known about conditions at the Superdome or Convention Center until Thursday. My question is: what did the goverment do on Wednesday. Real exact-like. What was considered more important than getting intel on Katrina? What pressing issues presented themselves that kept everyone out of the loop until Thursday? I can't myself recall because every single press outlet I had access to was presenting wall-to-wall Kartina coverage.

Duh, the ceremonial guitar acceptance ceremony was much more important.

It seems logical to me that DHS should be UNDER the FEMA umbrella, not vice versa like it is now, as the word "emergency" could apply to ANY type of urgent situation, be it natural or a human attack; whereas "homeland defense" applies specifically to an attack. Don't know if that would do any good, but perhaps funds would be allocated according to need. Ha! Who am I kidding?

this is on boingboing today:

"What everyone fails to understand about the Bush Administration response to Katrina is the underlying reasoning. My wife (who is an Evangelical Christian) explained to me that this is the beginning of the 'End Times'. Katrina is just one of the portents. Bush et al are just marking time until Rapture. God smote the modern Sodom as a sign of his might (on this Dr. Dobson and Bin Laden agree). This event in just another sign of the Second Coming. By controlling the press, freedom of movement, etc. Bush is help people to get ready for the Rapture. None of the problems are the fault of Bush, they are controlled by God. So do not blame Bush, it is not his fault, God made him do it."

I wnder what Sage7's opinion of all this might be.

Simon

"My wife", eh?

If my wife came out with such a lod of bollox I'm afraid it'd be off to the stables on bread and water rations for the rest of the month.

Good God, Simon, will you at least TRY and get a grip - it's all very well being a snotnosed leftie yourself, but do you have to bring the purported "wives" of other lefties onto this group discussion blog?

Sage7 will probably treat your question with kid gloves, he's a noble soul. We - all of us - have much to learn from sage, but the snotnosed antagonisms of cheeky chappies like you have broken his heart, and we probably won't be seeing him here again after October 4th or whenever the Rapture is.

See ya there! Try and cheer up a bit in the meantime.

I didnt write the post, moron. Bush claims to be a born-again-Christian who gets his marching orders straight from the Big Man himself. The Rapture-ists are not a small minority in this country, nor are they on the fringes of political power, so I have no problem believing in the authenticity of the sentiment, if not the post itself. I am curious to know what an avowed Evangelical's opinion of this would be. Now go to bed, you drunk shit-assed righty.

That is excellent advice!