LALARRY

Yes. Yes Brown Should Go Along with Chertoff

I noticed the 2 haven't spoken to the press lately. Expect a "Special Gulf Coast Recovery Czar" to emerge in a few days and become the public face of the recovery effort. The two bumblers will step down in a few months. The only question is whether they will  receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom to govt officials under W that totally screw up in their jobs.

Has anyone noticed the WH, Cong Repub (except Susan Collins chair of the Homeland Security Comm, talk radio, Fox News party line (with KRove' s fingers all over it). Too late to point fingers but (wink, wink) the local officials screwed up big time and had primary responsibility, the feds were all ready to help if called.

From Media Matters' David Brock's letter to the WP

I am writing to express my deep concern over the recent use of a dishonest anonymous source by The Washington Post. As you have surely become aware, on September 4, the Post printed an article titled "Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting; White House Shifts Blame to State and Local Officials." In the article, an anonymous "senior Bush official" sought to dismiss criticism of the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina by contending falsely that "[a]s of Saturday [September 3], [Louisiana Gov. Kathleen] Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency."

The Post was responsible enough to print a correction to the original article, pointing out that, in fact, Blanco declared a state of emergency on Friday, August 26 -- before the hurricane made landfall -- though the correction did not note that the error occurred because the Post relied on a "senior Bush official" who provided false information. Nonetheless, I believe this incident raises serious questions the Post needs to address.

There's also this FoxNews spin  Media Matters examines it in depth here
 

From the AP (via strongly pro Bush NYP):

he top U.S. disaster official waited hours after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast before he proposed to his boss sending at least 1,000 Homeland Security workers into the region to support rescuers, internal documents show.

Part of the mission, according to the documents obtained by The Associated Press, was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims....

...

...Acknowledging that such a move would take two days, Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29.

Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged

(DHS spokesman) Knocke said the 48-hour period indicated for the Homeland employees was to ensure they had adequate training. "They were training to help the lifesavers," Knocke said.

Employees required a supervisor's approval and at least 24 hours of disaster training in Maryland, Florida or Georgia. "You must be physically able to work in a disaster area without refrigeration for medications and have the ability to work in the outdoors all day," Brown wrote.

The same day Brown wrote Chertoff, Brown also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue effort

Oops !

Hey I couldn't make this stuff up

Right city, wrong state

FEMA accused of flying evacuees to wrong Charleston

 

Tuesday, September 6, 2005; Posted: 11:29 p.m. EDT (03:29 GMT)

Dr. Robert Ball, right, waits for evacuees to arrive Tuesday at a Charleston, South Carolina airport.

(CNN)  -- Add geography to the growing list of FEMA fumbles.

A South Carolina health official said his colleagues scrambled Tuesday when FEMA gave only a half-hour notice to prepare for the arrival of a plane carrying as many as 180 evacuees to Charleston.

But the plane, instead, landed in Charleston, West Virginia, 400 miles away.

It was not known whether arrangements have been made to care for the evacuees or transport them to the correct destination.

A call seeking comment from FEMA was not immediately returned.(FEMA Director) Brownie was too busy 'doing a great job".

Say What ???

Joe Scarborough on MSNBC:

Just seeing Rumsfeld in the area hit by Katrina makes me feel better (sic)

Michael Chertoff: Time to Resign

Do incoming Cabinet Secretaries get a special training session from Rummy/ Rove on distorting the facts to the public before moving into their offices ? Time for him to resign: he has lied to the American people and clearly shown he is not up for the task in the coming days and months. From CNN Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist However, experts for years had warned of threat to New Orleans WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur. But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years. Chertoff, fielding questions from reporters, said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans. (See the video on a local paper's prophetic warning -- 3:30 ) "That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight," Chertoff said. He called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise." But engineers say the levees preventing this below-sea-level city from being turned into a swamp were built to withstand only Category 3 hurricanes. And officials have warned for years that a Category 4 could cause the levees to fail. (See video of why the levee's breech was devastating -- 1:53) Katrina was a Category 4 hurricane when it struck the Gulf Coast on September 29. Last week, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told CNN his agency had recently planned for a Category 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans. Speaking to "Larry King Live" on August 31, in the wake of Katrina, Brown said, "That Category 4 hurricane caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated. So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we're implementing it." Brown suggested FEMA -- part of the Department of Homeland Security -- was carrying out a prepared plan, rather than having to suddenly create a new one. Chertoff argued that authorities actually had assumed that "there would be overflow from the levee, maybe a small break in the levee. The collapse of a significant portion of the levee leading to the very fast flooding of the city was not envisioned." He added: "There will be plenty of time to go back and say we should hypothesize evermore apocalyptic combinations of catastrophes. Be that as it may, I'm telling you this is what the planners had in front of them. They were confronted with a second wave that they did not have built into the plan, but using the tools they had, we have to move forward and adapt." But New Orleans, state and federal officials have long painted a very different picture. "We certainly understood the potential impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane" on New Orleans, Lt. General Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Thursday, Cox News Service reported. Reuters reported that in 2004, more than 40 state, local and volunteer organizations practiced a scenario in which a massive hurricane struck and levees were breached, allowing water to flood New Orleans. Under the simulation, called "Hurricane Pam," the officials "had to deal with an imaginary storm that destroyed more than half a million buildings in New Orleans and forced the evacuation of a million residents," the Reuters report said. In 2002 the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a five-part series exploring the vulnerability of the city. The newspaper, and other news media as well, specifically addressed the possibility of massive floods drowning residents, destroying homes and releasing toxic chemicals throughout the city. (Read: "Times-Picayune" Special Report: Washing away) Scientists long have discussed this possibility as a sort of doomsday scenario. On Sunday, a day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Ivor van Heerden, director of the Louisiana State University Public Health Research Center in Baton Rouge, said, "This is what we've been saying has been going to happen for years." "Unfortunately, it's coming true," he said, adding that New Orleans "is definitely going to flood." Also on Sunday, Placquemines Parish Sheriff Jeff Hingle referred back to Hurricane Betsy -- a Category 2 hurricane that struck in 1965 -- and said, "After Betsy these levees were designed for a Category 3." He added, "These levees will not hold the water back." But Chertoff seemed unaware of all the warnings. "This is really one which I think was breathtaking in its surprise," Chertoff said. "There has been, over the last few years, some specific planning for the possibility of a significant hurricane in New Orleans with a lot of rainfall, with water rising in the levees and water overflowing the levees," he told reporters Saturday. That alone would be "a very catastrophic scenario," Chertoff said. "And although the planning was not complete, a lot of work had been done. But there were two problems here. First of all, it's as if someone took that plan and dropped an atomic bomb simply to make it more difficult. (isn't that what Homeland Security is supposed to  prepare for !!)We didn't merely have the overflow, we actually had the break in the wall. And I will tell you that, really, that perfect storm of combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight." Chertoff also argued that authorities did not have much notice that the storm would be so powerful and could make a direct hit on New Orleans. "It wasn't until comparatively late, shortly before -- a day, maybe a day and a half, before landfall -- that it became clear that this was going to be a Category 4 or 5 hurricane headed for the New Orleans area." As far back as Friday, August 26, the National Hurricane Center was predicting the storm could be a Category 4 hurricane at landfall, with New Orleans directly in its path. Still, storms do change paths, so the possibility existed that it might not hit the city. But the National Weather Service prediction proved almost perfect. Katrina made landfall on Monday, August 29. Tens of thousands of people in New Orleans who did not or could not heed the mandatory evacuation orders issued the day before the storm made landfall were left in dire straits. "I think we have discovered over the last few days that with all the tremendous effort using the existing resources and the traditional frameworks of the National Guard, the unusual set of challenges of conducting a massive evacuation in the context of a still dangerous flood requires us to basically break the traditional model and create a new model -- one for what you might call kind of an ultracatastrophe," Chertoff said. He vowed that the United States "is going to move heaven and earth" to rescue those in need.

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/03/katrina.chertoff/index.html

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Check the box to include the list of links referenced in the article.

(semi) Great Minds Think Alike

" If we can't respond  faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days then why do we think we're prepared for a nuclear or biological attack"  - Newt Gingrich (in the FT)

If I were the Mayor of Los Angeles or San Francisco I would be quickly revising all my contingency plans for an earthquake so that they are now based on an asuumption of ZERO immediate response from Federal agencies.

A Brilliant Analysis The Long Term Impact of Katrina

The Financial Times (London) published this brilliant analysis of the potential political earthquake thay may be unleashed by the dismal government response to Katrina. It is too good to excerpt so it is here in full. I hope he is right and I will work to make people aware of his view. My bolds

Bush's policies have crippled disaster response capabilities >By Edward Alden >Published: September 3 2005 03:00 | Last updated: September 3 2005 03:00 >> For a world watching astonished as one of the US's oldest and proudest cities descended into anarchy this week after Hurricane Katrina, the enduring image will be the crowds of dark-skinned Americans pleading to the cameras with a single message: "We want help." For the past quarter century in Washington, since the Republican Ronald Reagan rode a conservative backlash all the way to the presidency, US politics has been dominated by the conviction that what was wrong with America would be solved by getting government off the people's backs. In Washington, the Republican orthodoxy that reigns at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue has dictated that taxes can go down but never up. Federal tax revenues as a percentage of the economy have dropped to the lowest levels since the early 1950s. Advocates of limited government have much on their side: the US has enjoyed higher growth rates, lower unemployment and greater economic flexibility than its more heavily taxed European rivals. Even given this week's devastation and surging petrol prices, the most pessimistic forecasts predict that only a percentage point will be shaved from gross domestic product. Ben Bernanke, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said: "I expect it's going to be absorbed easily." But that is little comfort to the tens of thousands stranded in primitive conditions in New Orleans who are begging for government help, and will face months and years of rebuilding their lives even after it comes. There are at least three reasons why the hurricane may mark a turning point in the US debate over the role of government. First, the deep tax cuts enacted in 2001 - which President George W. Bush now wants extended permanently - left no room for government initiatives that might have prevented the catastrophe and increased capacity to respond. The Louisiana Army Corps of Engineers had identified some $18bn (£9.8bn) in projects to shore up the levees and improve flood control in New Orleans after last year's vicious hurricane season. Despite warnings from local emergency officials that New Orleans would face disastrous flooding even with a category 3 hurricane (Katrina landed as a category 4), none of those projects was funded. Instead, Army Corps funds in the region have fallen by nearly half since 2001, and the Bush administration has proposed a further 20 per cent cut next year. Hurricane prevention was among dozens of domestic programmes that have been chronically underfunded as taxes have fallen and scarce revenues have been diverted to the war on terrorism. Second, despite huge increases in spending to fight the war in Iraq, the hurricane revealed how thinly the US military has been stretched. National Guard units, under the control of state governments, are supposed to be the front line for rescuing people and maintaining law and order in natural disasters. But 3,000 of Louisiana's guard troops are in Iraq, as are 4,000 from Mississippi, and many of those back home have recently finished gruelling tours in Baghdad. The hurricane forced local authorities to seek help from guard troops in nearby states, but aid has been far too slow in coming for many of those stranded. Most striking, however, has been how the storm has ruthlessly exposed the poverty that still afflicts a substantial minority of Americans, and has grown worse since Mr Bush pushed through tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited the well-to-do. The US Census Bureau reported this week that another 1.1m Americans slipped below the poverty line last year. After falling for most of a decade, since 2000 the number of Americans in poverty has grown from 11.3 per cent to 12.7 per cent of the population - a higher percentage than in the 1970s despite 30 years of generally robust economic growth. The images of those left behind told the story. While nearly 1m people evacuated the region before the hurricane, New Orleans' poor - most of them black - were left behind. Two-thirds of the city is black, and nearly one-third of those is poor, while the city's overall poverty rate is 28 per cent, more than double the national average. Those who remained were probably not any braver than their wealthier white counterparts. Instead, many did not own cars or otherwise lacked the resources to leave the city. They waited behind and hoped. Many are still waiting. Pico, a network of faith-based community organisations, says: "We are watching catastrophic failure by public officials to respond to those who are most vulnerable." The criticism is ironic - as Washington has scaled down taxpayer-funded public services, it has encouraged such faith-based charities to step into the breach. The Salvation Army was the first group to get aid into the ravaged Mississippi Gulf coast, well before any government help arrived. With the New Deal in the 1930s, helping those who could not help themselves became a mission that spawned a vast expansion of government's role. After a generation of determined effort the conservative movement has succeeded in squelching that mission. In the aftermath of Katrina, its success appears to have come at high cost. The writer is the FT's Washington bureau chief It seems like it takes a foreigner to take an objective view of our country.

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(semi) Great Minds Think Alike...

in this case unfortunately quite correctly. Rosa Brooks in today's LAT:

If a terrorist's bomb, rather than a hurricane, had destroyed a levee around Lake Pontchartrain, no one would hesitate to condemn the administration for its lackluster emergency planning and response.

And federal officials had more than a week's warning that a hurricane was on track for New Orleans — far more time than they'd likely have of a terrorist attack on critical infrastructure.

I Shudder to Think ...

... how prepared this country is to respond to a terrorist attack with biological or nuclear weapons 4 years almost to the day after 9/11

W said during his visit to the stricken zone that it looked like it has taken a direct hit from a military attack. Helllo!!! anybody home there ? Isn't that EXACTLY what  how someone would describe an area that was the target of a massive terrorist attack ? I thought we had contingency planning in place for that. Isn't that what Tom Ridge was supposed to be doing for the last 3+ years and Chertoff taking over after that ?

Yesterday Secy Chertoff told the press he was proud to work with people responsible for such an excellent response to the disaster. When a Reporter asked the good Secy about the horrible conditions in the New Orleans convention he stated he wasn't aware of the situation, Get a TV Mr. Secretary.

Is someone with absolutely no experience in government except as a prosecutor really the right man to put in charge of responding to the greatest natural disaster in at least 100 years in this country ?

Of course even the administration could carry on that ridiculous spin much longer and today the official line is that the response "so far" has been adequate.

Interesting That...

On September 14 W visited Ground Zero. He does not plan to set foot in New Orleans during his tour of the region today.

Any Ideas Why...

It seems that FoxNews coverage seems to focus far more on the inexcusable criminal looting in New Orleans than CNN which seems to concentrate on the horrific human tragedy and the pathetic lack of immediate response ?

Last night Oreilly at times basically showed a loop of the same footage of looting.

Watch the coverage on both networks Fox concentrates on lawlessness and the government "ramping up the relief effort". CNN has a bit of a different perspective.