electric mist

oooooooo Toni........I don't think you should hold back hon, just let it all out and tell us how you really feel ;)

Get a mayor who can follow his city's hurricane evacuation plan and not be afraid to actually enforce it.

If everyone else in the state had the ABILITY to get a different mayor for New Orleans, we would have. We have no choice, our hands are tied. So at that point, when things are horribly screwed up and it's clear that the mayor can't find his way out of a paper bag, so-called Homeland security should have stepped in to *save lives.*

In addition, where were all of the people who were told to evacuate... supposed to go? The day of the evacuation, there was NO place set up outside of New Orleans. New Orleans can't set that up -- no matter WHAT kind of evacuation plan they had come up with, it would take the coordination and cooperation of other cities and other states. And if they had evacuated and gone to, say, the Astrodome, who was going to pay for that if the hurricane changed course? These things cannot be dealt with on a city level, which is what the original burden was. Nor could it be dealt entirely on a state level, though there should have been a helluva a lot more done on that level than was done. But ultimately, there was no place designated for people to evacuate to, and when you're talking about at least a 100K people who are among the poorest in the nation, you've got to have a place for them to go because they're not going to have the money to pay for a hotel. (Arguing economics as to why they don't have the money is useless when a disaster is bearing down. It's just going to have to be a plan that is a multi-state plan.)

>If everyone else in the state had the ABILITY to get a different mayor for New Orleans, we would have. We have no choice, our hands are tied.>

And so because N.O. has a bad leader who is in charge of executing the evacuation plan (which would have saved most of the lives that were lost, btw), but fails to do so, your response is to shift the blame to someone else? Why when it’s his responsibility? Have you actually read the evacuation plan? It would have worked as written. Literally.

Compare the leadership skills of Rudy after 9/11 to Ray (School Bus) Nagin before and after the hurricane. It was Rudy coordinating the city resources after the surprise attack because he was there doing what great mayors should do....leading. Effectively. School Bus Nagin had days to react, and clearly showed bad leadership skills, which resulted in the conditions the whole country witnessed.

Just because you got bad Local and State leaders, it doesn't make it the Federal government’s fault. Nor can the federal government just invade your state even if lives are being lost. It's unconstitutional (unless the President declares it a national emergency, which he did after the levees broke, I hear). It sounds like you're mad because they didn't invade your state fast enough for not realizing what boobs are running your state.

Every major level of failure which resulted in people dying can (and will be) traced back to the local and state government. You seem to be under the impression that FEMA’s purpose is to conduct search and rescue. This is simply not the case.

So let me get this straight... all of the times that FEMA was supposed to be places and they weren't, and there was no food, no water (and the places where food and water had been stockpiled by New Orleans had been destroyed or rendered inaccessible)... that wasn't FEMA's fault? And the fact that FEMA trucks passed people who were stranded on the overpass and didn't bother to slow down, and didn't communicate with anyone else... not their job? So that makes it all okay?

I completely agree that Nagin and the Governor had a lot of fault. But they *did* call in FEMA and they *did* authorize to have the troops come in and they *did* ask for Federal help, which did not come. Look, Corey, you weren't here. You have no way of knowing what was going on at the local level as far as people trying to coordinate with FEMA. You didn't see what I saw, which was a gross waste of time and effort. I saw FEMA people standing around joking at one place and even though I told them about another place where no one from FEMA had arrived, and they said that it was their job to be there, they still didn't show up for another seven days. That made 13 and in some cases 14 or 15 days that they didn't show up. When there were extra troops standing around in other places where they weren't needed (here in Baton Rouge).

Also, the evacuation plan really wouldn't have worked. I don't know where you're reading something that would have worked, but everyone I've talked to said that it needed to be revamped, and something better needed to be figured out... but it wasn't. When they did the mock hurricane last year, they realized there was a greater gap for how they were going to handle the volume of people who were poor and couldn't leave, and they were in the process of trying to get the funds together to regroup on that plan, to fix some of the problems, but Katrina hit before that could be put into place.

And, since both the Governor AND the Mayor had asked for FEMA help and FEMA was folded under Homeland Security, these agencies should have stepped up and at least done their job. In the beginning, they didn't.

I'm impressed with Rudy. I think Nagin's an idiot. That doesn't mean that just because he didn't do everything right, the Federal Government is off the hook. The help from the Federal Government was requested, and asked for early. There were news descrepencies as to when it was requested, but it was definitely requested early -- I saw the local airing of the mayor's and the governor's news conference (which you weren't getting nationally). Michael Brown had no clue how big the situation was. He claimed not to even know there were people at the Convention Center, when it was all over the news for four days by that point. Chertoff claimed everything was "going fine" at that same point -- when CNN and FOX newscasters were aghast at the lack of Federal response at the Convention Center. Are you telling me the head of Homeland Security doesn't know as much as to watch CNN like I do? That I can be better informed as to the state of a national emergency?

Yes, Chertoff had his head up his ass. He didn't realize the magnitude of the situation. He's admitted it, Michale Brown's admitted it, the whole nation knows it. I don't buy into this "if only Nagin had followed," etc. The Federal Government had been asked to come in. They came, unprepared, without a good plan, without good communcation and without good leadership, which compounded the already bad leadership here.

I hope we can get rid of Nagin as well as Blanco. They were horrible. But a *lot* of FEMA experts have talked about how being folded under Homeland security cut the legs out from under the organization. The ER trauma doctor who stayed with us for a week has worked with FEMA through several other disasters (including the Northridge Quake), and he said that when FEMA got folded under Homeland Security, there wre dire warnings from within that this sort of disaster was going to happen because the bureacracy was going to end up screwing up the response time -- which is exactly what happened.

Deep breaths doll, deep breaths.

Find your happy place.......

There ya go.

Big hugs!

I meant to add on that last post....

When I told ya not to hold back, I didn't realize you were going to take me literally!

Again, big hugs to ya!