Wednesday, September 07, 2005

 

Blame for the post-Katrina disaster

Both the mayor of New Orleans, the Governor of Louisianna and numerous celebrities and politicians have been quick to assign the blame for the awful conditions in New Orleans after Kratrina blew through the city on the President and the federal government and it's "slow" response, it is clear that most of the blame actually rests squarely on the mayor and governors shoulders. The Wall Street Journal has a very insightful article which lays out the case against these two apparently incompetent public officials. They apaprently didn't even impliment the city and states plans for evacuation and also did not learn from disaster drills carried out long before Katrina approached the city. From previous experience and from these drills, it was apparent long before the storm hit that evacuating to the Superdome was asking for a huminatitarian disaster with a lack of basic living needs for any duration. And failing to evacuate the poor from a city that lies below sea level, forcing many folks to fend for themselves during and after the storm was an issue that had been well identified in the past. Mayor Nagin failed these people, many of whom died in the storm and resulting floods, by not deploying the cities buses and school buses to the task of evacuating those who could not transport themselves out of the danger areas. Gov. Blanco also failed to initiate the call for complete evacuation until prompted by the President himself who also declared an emergency for the area before the order was issued that would have allowed for substantial federal assistence, free for the asking.

Trying to deflect blame to the federal government is obviously an attempt to keep the public from recognizing who we really ought to blame for the disasterous aftermath of Katrina. While we cannot stop a hurricane from impacting an area, there are procedures at the city and state level which can minimize the deaths and post-storm disaster and many of those procedures were not implimented in this case and we are seeing exactly what many pre-Katrina warnings predicted coming true in a very unfortunate way.

And by the way, who was the idiot who decided to build a city below sea level?!

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