Criticism of Gov't Response

[Winchester]

The new FEMA chief is supposed to have been a firefighter, once.

[M.SIGGA]

From the pov of someone who evacuated and is from the metro area, everyone is just a little bit off in this argument. the view of your news outside Louisiana, including the national news, is really skewed and most of this argument is based on bits and pieces of news combined with media sensationalism of angry people crying, screaming, etc on television.

I don't think many of you know that the broken levees were in fact brand new and large areas of New Orleans that never flooded before became deep underwater when the 17th St. Canal breeched; for instance my house only had about 4 feet of water from the street after the storm ended, which was about 1 ft in the house, and once the canal breeched the next day it rose to 10 feet up to the second floor. The city was mostly fine until the canals breeched after the storm was over, which was totally unexpected, and it's been sighted by locals in Lakeview that it was in fact a barge that broke loose from a construction site near Lake Ponchartrain and actually broke the canal's wall.

With the race question, there are also a lot of white people in the situation too, but the media just hasn't been showing anything other than Superdome evacuees where a lot of inner city people went for the hurricane. Chalmette and Lakeview are both totally flooded and almost totally white areas where a lot of people didn't evacuate, or evacuated to school building, churches, etc and are trapped/ dead on roofs and in attics.

Also evacuating New Orleans is not easy; the city is an island with very limited access into and out the city, and at the height of the evacuation it would have been extremely dangerous for people to be walking across those bridges, I was run off the road once myself during the evacuation. I gave a girl from school a ride to Baton Rouge that Saturday because the bus she was scheduled to take out the city was cancelled that morning and she was stranded on the West Bank.

I am really proud of president bush and mayor nagin for recently owning up to thier shortcommings on the federal and local level for the sake of progress. Our governor is an idiot, but the mayor is awesome so don't be dissin on him. Given the extreme short notice, and the unreliable FEMA and Gov. Blanco, I think he did a good job along with Senators Landrieu and Vitter.

[Don John of Austria]

[quote name='M.SIGGA' date='Sep 14 2005, 01:04 AM']From the pov of someone who evacuated and is from the metro area, everyone is just a little bit off in this argument. the view of your news outside Louisiana, including the national news, is really skewed and most of this argument is based on bits and pieces of news combined with media sensationalism of angry people crying, screaming, etc on television.

I don't think many of you know that the broken levees were in fact brand new  and large areas of New Orleans that never flooded before became deep underwater when the 17th St. Canal breeched; for instance my house only had about 4 feet of water from the street after the storm ended, which was about 1 ft in the house, and once the canal breeched the next day it rose to 10 feet up to the second floor. The city was mostly fine until the canals breeched after the storm was over, which was totally unexpected, and it's been sighted by locals in Lakeview that it was in fact a barge that broke loose from a construction site near Lake Ponchartrain and actually broke the canal's wall.

With the race question, there are also a lot of white people in the situation too, but the media just hasn't been showing anything other than Superdome evacuees where a lot of inner city people went for the hurricane. Chalmette and Lakeview are both totally flooded and almost totally white areas where a lot of people didn't evacuate, or evacuated to school building, churches, etc and are trapped/ dead on roofs and in attics.

Also evacuating New Orleans is not easy; the city is an island with very limited access into and out the city, and at the height of the evacuation it would have been extremely dangerous for people to be walking across those bridges, I was run off the road once myself during the evacuation. I gave a girl from school a ride to Baton Rouge that Saturday because the bus she was scheduled to take out the city was cancelled that morning and she was stranded on the West Bank.

I am really proud of president bush and mayor nagin for recently owning up to thier shortcommings on the federal and local level for the sake of progress. Our governor is an idiot, but the mayor is awesome so don't be dissin on him. Given the extreme short notice, and the unreliable FEMA and Gov. Blanco, I think he did a good job along with Senators Landrieu and Vitter.
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Well I don't think the levys breaing was totally unexpected. Neil Frank ( the CBS weather man here in Houston) said he thought it was going to happen on Sunday night, right on the air.

[M.SIGGA]

[quote name='Don John of Austria' date='Sep 14 2005, 07:21 AM']Well I don't think the levys breaing was totally unexpected. Neil Frank ( the CBS weather man here in Houston) said he thought it was going to happen on Sunday night, right on the air.
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which levee was he refering to? I could agree with a few of the smaller ones, like the London Ave Canal that breeched in Gentilly, but the massive 17th St. which flooded most of the city including downtown caught officials by surprise.

[Don John of Austria]

He was unspecific but he said he believed that several levies would break and was "very worried" about the consequinces to N.O.

[hierochloe]

[quote name='Don John of Austria' date='Sep 14 2005, 10:00 AM']He was unspecific but he said he believed that several levies would break and was "very worried" about the consequinces to N.O.
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There was also extensice commentary regarding the possibility of breached levies and a submerged New Orleans on the Weather Channel well before the storm made landfall.

I think the idea of the whole city flooded was just too much for a lot of people to get their mind around and so was not handled seriously. Nature sure took care of that problem.

I still grade the handling of the whole situation at all levels, from local levels right up to the man himself, with a big fat F. Granted I don't know all the intricacies of what decisions were made in the hours immediately following the storm's passing, and those are the most critical ones.

[Winchester]

The big problem is everyone keeps mentioning FEMA. FEMA does not exist to develop action plans for incompetent local authorites. The initial evacuations should have been overseen by local authorities. They were inadequate for the situation. Resources were underutilized, and a public official got on television and shouted like a lunatic about the federal government not acting quickly enough.


It looks to me that at the task level, things were done quite well, so let's reserve the grades to incident command--the strategic level. Even that remains to be seen, as I've yet to see an actual time line as matched to response guidelines.

[hierochloe]

[quote name='Winchester' date='Sep 16 2005, 12:39 AM']It looks to me that at the task level, things were done quite well, so let's reserve the grades to incident command--the strategic level. Even that remains to be seen, as I've yet to see an actual time line as matched to response guidelines.
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Indeed, I should have clarified. It's the IC level I'm referring to. Seems like when it became obvious that the local level had failed, that the next level would have stepped up and took control of the situation, but I didn't see that. It wasn't until [i]48 hours[/i] after the storm passed that someone took hold of the reins and got things moving in an even remotely effective manner on a large scale. That's at least 36 hours too long imo.

Also, a lot of similar problems that occurred during 9/11 recurred in this catastrophe. I'm thinking mainly of communication here - both intra- and inter-agency levels. In 9/11, EMS and law enforcement were crippled by overloaded cell facilities. Apparently the solution to this major downfall was to reserve resources in these facilities for emergency responder use. Of course, that's downright useless when the facility itself is knocked out, as in a hurricaine. So it was proven a mickey-mouse solution. How much of my tax dollars go to Homaland Security, an agency created to solve these issues specifically?

I dunno. This all makes me very negative. I look forward to hearing the rest of the story as it comes out.

[White Knight]

New Orleans is opening back up soon, hopefully we'll find out more news thats fairly accurate from the people.

[Winchester]

Solving airspace/communication problems is logistical nightmare. With new incident command procedures being developed, some standardization is coming in, but it's a long road that involves plenty of retraining.

[hierochloe]

This guy is my hero.
[b][url="http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/honore.profile/"]Lt. Gen. Honore[/url][/b]
[quote]"He came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving"[/quote]
I heard an interview with him on NPR. "I am totally unconfused." Finally. He also highlights as a lesson learned the need for coms immediately after the storm.

[Winchester]

Field radios like in WWII?

We're likely going to lose communications during the storm. cell phones might work. Fact is, in extreme weather, emergency response will shut dow completely.

[hierochloe]

WWII Field radios? Who said field radios?

And he said [i]after[/i] the storm, not during the storm. :

Hey, if I can watch some dork reporter on video phone or whatever before, during, and after the storm, then FEMA and other agencies can sure work something out.

[Winchester]

Do you want accuracy in your emergency services on par with the accuracy of the news? They can't get a simple house fire right!

Interagency is a total mess. The sheer volume of communication is staggering in regular operations.

[hierochloe]

Lol, of course not. Still, the technology is there. Totally agree, interagency is a mess, [i]still[/i]. What is Homeland Security spending our money on again?