-- Who killed NOLA? A huge storm, the collapse of a levee, and the negligence of local officials.
-- FEMA:
Federal disaster relief, staffed by political appointees (patronage) and actually run by GS employees (difficult, if not impossible, to fire even if proved incompetent) has been around in one form or another since 1803. And any beauracracy that has managed to survive over two hundred years is bound to be a boondoggle of astronomical proportions.
In 1979, President Carter merged over a dozen agencies, including Civil Defense, into the current behemoth and renamed it FEMA. In 1993, under President Clinton, James L. Witt was named the new FEMA director. He initiated sweeping reforms that streamlined disaster relief and recovery operations, and insisted on a new emphasis regarding reparedness and mitigation programs. In 2001, FEMA was moved under the wing of the newly created Department of Homeland Security. FEMA grew and grew and grew until it was Jabba-the-Hut in size.
From the FEMA website: As it has for more than 20 years, FEMA's mission remains: to lead America to prepare for, prevent, respond to and recover from disasters with a vision of "A Nation Prepared."
Please notice that nowhere in there is there any mention of FEMA being an agency of First Response.
It was on 9/11/2001 that FEMA became the luckiest government agency in the world. Most of their honchos were already in New York City for an emergency drill when the Towers were attacked.
Nonetheless, even though the agency's top people were already in place, it took FEMA three days to get their act together just to manage the necessary logistics...as recorded by former NYC Mayor Giuliani.
For those three days, all rescue and recovery activity was performed by NYC Fire and Police personnel, who were eventually aided by similar agencies and civilians from other cities and states.
The current Director of FEMA is a political hack who has no reason beyond patronage to hold that position; nonetheless, his agency did, in fact, manage to mount FEMA's response in just under four days.
And they weren't even already there to hold a drill!
-- First Response:
In 1996, following a lunch at a place where I'll never eat again, I developed a low-grade fever accompanied by sweating, shooting pains in my left arm and a pain that I can only describe as feeling as if an elephant was standing on my chest.
I was having a heart attack.
I didn't call the President. I didn't call the Governor of Missouri, the St. Louis County Executive or the Mayor of Maryland Heights.
I called 9-1-1 and within about five minutes every emergency vehicle in Maryland Heights was dispatched to my house: police cars, fire trucks and EMS transports, along with more than a dozen trained EMS techs showed up. Within ten minutes of my call, I had an IV installed, a nitro tab under my tongue and BP and pulse and heart rates were on a screen and we were on our way to the ER.
There I was handed off to the cardiac emergency team, who diagnosed and sent me to the CCU; following their diagnosis, I wound up in the care of a thoracic surgical team who cracked my chest and performed bypass surgery.
That's how any emergency works. You start by asking for help from your local agency and then your case is moved up the line to the highest agency you need to resolve your issue...whether it's a heart attack in Maryland Heights or a flood in New Orleans. All civic and government agencies have SOP's for all kinds of events.
Both the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana have specific plans for dealing with what both considered an eventuality...the flooding of The Big Easy. I have copies of both of their emergency plans, taken directly from their respective websites immediately after the flooding began and I have read the relevant segments. I'll be happy to link them as PDF files if you'd like to read them.
Too bad neither the Mayor nor the Governor bothered to do so. Nagin and Blanko were criminally negligent in that they freelanced their citizens' protection rather than follow the carefully prepared plans that would have saved lives. If they had, nearly a thousand buses would have been available to move NOLA's citizenry to dry ground and more than 300 Louisiana Guardsmen would have been in place and that would have been just the start.
-- Timelines:
Forget the various timelines posted here, there and everywhere online...none of them converge and all of them are meant to promote a specific political niche. We may never know exactly when each event actually happened because there are so many political vultures circling what remains of New Orleans anxious to further their careers at the cost of anyone else's.
-- Conclusion:
It's way past time to forget the political divisiveness that has hampered rescue and recovery. Blaming the President is foolish and politically motivated. The real blame...and shame...belongs to local and state leaders who paniced and refused to simply follow the dots.
And one more thing:
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