Well, are we doing enough fast enough to help New Orleans? If not, why? That’s a big question on the minds of Americans these days it seems.

There is one element to the debate that carries no weight with me: “We warned the people to evacuate.” This fact does not resonate. I cannot recall any instance where everyone evacutated anywhere of any size. A certain percentage cannot face the unknown and leave their homes - they are not acting rationally of course, because they are giving greater weight to their fear of the unknowns of the evacuation than their fears of the disaster to come. It’s human nature for some people to whistle in the graveyard.

And a certain percentage of people physically cannot leave.

And a certain percentage have no where to go, and they just hope for the best.

And a certain percentage have arrangements to leave, but those arrangements fall through when family or friends don’t come get them, etc.

So, a certain percent will always be left behind.

They hope for the best, but sometimes the worst happens.

So let’s not be too hard hearted at the people who were left behind - they are the statistical percentage of people who are expected to stay and suffer the most. They are mostly normal people, who just couldn’t face leaving or couldn’t pull it off. Some are idiots. Maybe some deserve to suffer rather than be helped, but most are decent common people like most of us anywhere else.

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I have an excerpt for you below that discusses way in which cuts in “Mitigation” of hurricane and flooding threats set the stage for the New Orleans disaster.

Further, the sources talk about cuts in levee funds. New Orleans exists because of levees. Levees need maintenance and periodic stengthening. We deny funds at high risk of killing New Orleans, yet we denied funds.

Federal Emergency Management is being outsourced and subcontracted more than ever, and FEMA itself was put under Homeland Security years ago. FEMA used to be a freestanding agency in order to make it more responsive, but now has layers of bureacracy above the top levels of FEMA.

So maybe there is something to all the criticism in the nation regarding the delays in mounting assault waves of intensive relief.
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The 9/11 attacks resulted in a few isolated contained areas of emergency.

The Katrina New Orleans disaster is a vastly different kind of emergency. Huge areas of heavy population are in crisis. Utilities are non-existent. Society has in some respects deteriorated into hunter gathering and looting.

Due to flooding of the area around the core emergency area, and bridges being down, it’s hard for emergency services to have access to those in need.
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This isn’t the movies and we just can’t Turn the Nation Around on a Dime and somehow get hundreds of giant choppers into New Orleans to extract people or deliver supplies. It just takes Time to mount a response that would impress people.

I have faith in the dedication of those whose job it is to deal with emergencies. They are doing everything they can and cutting through as much red tape as fast as they can, and mobilizing as fast as they can.

But the national mood seems to be turning sour. We expect our all-powerful government to be able to mount a concentrated war-like invasion of emergency services, and do it NOW!

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In this first excerpt block below, a writer at DailyKOS is talking about the national mood, as reflected in the media. It’s an interesting and thoughtful take on the mood of the nation, with minimal politics.

In the second excerpt block below, an independent reporter chronicles how, since 9/11, Federal Emergency Management has been outsourced and subordinated to Homeland Security. The article gives real examples to support its position that FEMA has suffered, and highlights testimony before Congress to that same effect.

If the stuff in the second excerpt is generally accurate, then maybe that explains why we are not at least appearing to have control of sufficent resources to mount the huge assault wave of relief that everyone expects.
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As of the present moment, I’m still of the persuasion that the US government has an adequate emergency response agency in FEMA. But if thoughtful people and real facts keep drilling the opposite into my head, I may have to change my tune.

And we might have to just accept the fact that resources devoted to overseas wars are resources not available to us at home. It’s a balancing act and it appears that New Orleans may be the biggest home loser in the balance, for now.

Here’s the first excerpt:

Left Behind

The last twelve hours of news coverage has been nearly overwhelming. Anderson Cooper, Paula Zahn, others, even unapologetic partisans like Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson — everyone is asking where the government is. (No, I haven’t turned to Fox News. I don’t have the heart, today.) Anderson Cooper lost it interviewing Sen. Mary Landrieu, countering her litany of thank-yous to a series of politicians with his own encounter with rats eating a body that had been left abandoned in the street for 48 hours. Paula Zahn boggled at FEMA director Michael Brown’s declaration that the reason about 15,000 shelter seekers at the New Orleans Convention Center have gone without food or water since the day of the hurricane is because FEMA didn’t even know the refugees were there until today.

The common televised theme is of reporters traveling to hard hit areas in New Orleans or the smaller communities, and reporting no FEMA presence, no National Guard presence, no food, no water, no help — and this is day 5. “Where is the government?” has been the predominant theme of the day. Apologists are being met with barely concealed disgust, in more and more quarters. Bush administration cuts to the levee system are being widely reported. FEMA inaction is being roundly criticized by ever-more-urgent live feeds from disheveled media figures with stunned expressions.

Here’s the second: ————————-

The Independent Weekly: Disaster in the making

In addition, the White House has pushed for privatization of essential government services, including disaster management, and merged FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security, where natural disaster programs are often sidelined by counter-terrorism programs. Along the way, morale at FEMA has plummeted, and many of the agency’s most experienced personnel have left for work in other government agencies or private corporations.

In June, Pleasant Mann, a 16-year FEMA veteran who heads the agency’s government employee union, wrote members of Congress to warn of the agency’s decay. “Over the past three-and-one-half years, FEMA has gone from being a model agency to being one where funds are being misspent, employee morale has fallen, and our nation’s emergency management capability is being eroded,” he wrote. “Our professional staff are being systematically replaced by politically connected novices and contractors.”

…
[BUSH’S HAND AT FEMA]

At FEMA, President Bush appointed a close aide, Joe Allbaugh, to be the agency’s new director. Allbaugh had served as then-Gov. Bush’s chief of staff in Texas and as manager of his 2000 presidential campaign. Along with Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, Allbaugh was known as one part of Bush’s “iron triangle” of professional handlers.

Some FEMA veterans complained that Allbaugh had little experience in managing disasters, and the new administration’s early initiatives did little to settle their concerns. The White House quickly launched a government-wide effort to privatize public services, including key elements of disaster management. Bush’s first budget director, Mitch Daniels, spelled out the philosophy in remarks at an April 2001 conference: “The general idea–that the business of government is not to provide services, but to make sure that they are provided–seems self-evident to me,” he said.

In a May 15, 2001, appearance before a Senate appropriations subcommittee, Allbaugh signaled that the new, stripped-down approach would be applied at FEMA as well. “Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management,” he said. “Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.”

…

In case Congress hasn’t gotten the message, former FEMA director James Lee Witt recently restated it in strong terms. “I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded,” he testified at a March 24, 2004, hearing on Capitol Hill. “I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared. In fact one state emergency manager told me, ‘It is like a stake has been driven into the heart of emergency management.’”

…