The situation in New Orleans had deteriorated to the point where rescuers were not willing to venture out without an armed escort. The Louisiana National Guard, who lost their headquarters in the flooding, were working at reduced capacity: A third of their people and gear were in Iraq.
The 82nd Airborne and elements of 101st were tasked to get in and get things working. They came in force and like any airborne element came with as much support as they could grab, steal, reallocate or creatively manage. It was loaded on big trucks and it got moving fast. The key thing the military had with them, aside from food and water was leadership from competent people who were determined to make a difference.
There is the classic clip of General Russell Honore cursing out some National Guard troops in the French Quarter, telling them to “Get that weapon down now! These are Americans. Get those goddam weapons down!” He might look like a camouflage-clad bulldog in a bad mood, but General Honore got it done.
As the military rolled in, things began to move fast. People were evacuated. Food, water, ice and support poured in, despite the streets being flooded. Order was being restored. The great migration out of Louisiana started to roll, filling Houston’s old Astrodome and the new Reliant Centre.
The Red Cross appealed for donations and the world responded with money. The US has bailed out so many other countries in the past that it was touching to see places like Kazakhstan, India, Turkey, Indonesia and even Cuba offer emergency aid. Canada had their rapid-response DART unit ready to fly on the second day of the disaster. Everyone was waiting for the invite that never came.
There is the real heartbreak behind it all. Asking for help. People and organizations asking for help and not getting a reply.
FEMA was chartered in 1979 by Jimmy Carter after a season of hurricanes that trashed much of the Gulf and Florida. Before FEMA there were, according PBS’s Frontline, close to two dozen federal agencies that could be involved in a natural disaster like a flood or hurricane. There was no overall coordination, so FEMA was designed to plan in advance and organize a timely and efficient response. One their first jobs was the Three Mile Island near-meltdown in Pennsylvania.
A data point here: Emergency Planning is not something you pick up in an afternoon at a correspondence course. Emergency Management is, frankly, a doctorate level of study combined with years of expertise as a front-line EMS, Fire, Police, Military or 911 dispatcher. The dilettantes and the unskilled are weeded out early.
There have been some notable blunders. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 saw thousands of survivors wandering around for several days in the wreckage of their Florida homes and communities, looking for someone, anyone to help. FEMA under Wallace Stickney, took it in the ear again. Not that it matters, but Stickney was pals with John Sununu, one time Bush fixer and New Hampshire Governor. James Lee Witt was head of the Arkansas Emergency Management group under Bill Clinton. Witt got to head up FEMA and was one of the first FEMA leaders who actually had Emergency Management experience.
Let’s serve up some blame now. It is time to get to the point of all these posts.
We’ll start with Blanco and Nagin. The National Hurricane Centre said it was going to be bad. Regular folks were evacuating three days before Katrina made landfall. The oil companies evacuated rigs even earlier. If those two melon-heads, Blanco and Nagin, hadn’t spent time bickering over who was in charge and who was going to get the credit, more people could have been evacuated from the area. The levees still would have failed and the city still would have been flooded, but the horrors of the Superdome and the Convention Centre might not nearly have been as long and vicious.
FEMA. If Chertoff and Brown had half of a set between them, I’d be amazed. Neither would push the State or Local idiots to get it in gear. They sat back and sent emails regarding wardrobe choices. There was no preparation beyond a cursory call down to alert people that something might happen.
After the initial hit, neither Brown nor Chertoff pushed as hard as they should or could have to get the military mobilized. It would have taken one, emphatic phone call to the White House or the Pentagon to get it moving.
The FEMA bureaucracy kicked into high gear, making sure that things were ordered and made ready, but that final step, actually doing it, was never accomplished. This way FEMA could blame Nagin and Blanco for not requesting the specific resources, but could cover their asses by saying they had it ready.
Donald Rumsfeld, as Secretary of Defence has the authority to stand up the Army for natural disasters. Rumsfeld was not watching TV that week. Neither was anyone in the Joint Operations Centre.
Dubya, being the ‘decisive war President” could order every National Guard and Reg Army person to show up and be ready to move on four hours’ notice. The Army is a natural choice as response of first resort: They have the gear, training and transport to work in primitive conditions without infrastructure for long periods of time.
Everyone was concerned with looking good and not stepping on toes. There are times when toes must be stepped on and someone has to lead. Dubya was elected to lead and he didn’t. Blanco was elected to lead: She didn’t. Nagin was elected to lead: He didn’t
The results of this lack of leadership all down the line was the complete disintegration of an American city, televised live, into our living rooms. We got to see exactly how broken the whole system was. The whole system still is broken, based on the industrial-strength screwing people are taking from insurance companies and FEMA.
On the first anniversary of Katrina, nothing much has changed.
Michael Brown got fired, but he’s back as a pundit and commentator showing no shame whatsoever.
Ray Nagin got re-elected, which proves that you can fool all of the people all of the time.
Kathleen Blanco is still the Governor of Louisiana.
Haley Barbour is still the Governor of Mississippi, but at least he called for an evacuation and had the National Guard up and helping within 24 hours of landfall. Haley is doing good and his state got hammered worse than New Orleans, except they didn’t get the media coverage.
Michael Chertoff is proving that the Department of Homeland Paranoia is run by fools, egotists and the clueless who are supposed to be protecting the public.
Then there is Dubya and his endless photo ops promising to fix things. Dubya is now a punchline to a bad joke: He has become the Jimmy Carter of the New Millennium.
Perhaps that is the nicest Hell we can devise for George “Jimmy Carter” Bush.
We know what real Hell looks like: The New Orleans Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Centre.
Louisiana and Mississippi are rebuilding, but slowly. FEMA is promising all kinds of money and assistance, but the streets are still full of rubble. Insurance companies are dodging their obligations through clever use of fine print, despite posting their best revenues ever this year. Electricity, sewer, water and phones are coming back, the crews working some mighty overtime. The Army Corps of Engineers are going around the clock to patch, then upgrade the flood control system. People are returning.
The Gulf will never be the same again. With any luck, the rest of us will never let it happen again either.
RoadDave 