"I think the terrorists already do have a pretty clear idea of how we respond to a disaster. The answer is simple - if it's in a wealthy area, or a critical swing state in an election year, we respond quickly. If it's in a poor area, not so well."

I'm sorry, but you're an idiot. Ray Nagan had the opportunity to send in the busses to get these people out and he didn't. And I'm sorry, but these people KNEW IT WAS COMING. I'm sure you believe all the media stories about people being raped and murdered in the dome too.

Hey, FEMA and the administration dropped the ball, I'll admit it. But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt about what the government does in a disaster.

Oh and here's some info in case you didn't hear it reported on NPR:

Statistics released by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals suggest that fewer than half of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were black, and that whites died at the highest rate of all races in New Orleans.

Oops, my apologies. The second sentence of my first paragraph should read,

"Somehow, I don't think it's Mr. Nagin's rear end they want to protect."

And Ray, curses for not allowing me to use the blockquote tag! :)

Cheers,
Chris

MJ: Please, keep this civil. You are free to disagree with me, and my readers, but name calling will not be allowed. If you do it again, I will delete your comment, which I do not want to do since I want to foster debate.

www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/plans/STATE%20OF%20LOUISIA...

Interesting highlights:
B.   Assumptions

         1.   The State is primarily responsible for natural and technological emergency preparedness, but has a shared responsibility with the Federal government for national security preparedness.

         2.   The State’s responsibility necessitates the development of an all-hazard plan, with functional annexes and detailed procedures, supported by parish and local emergency plans. Planning efforts are made as general as possible to insure flexibility to combat the impact of all types of hazards.


More:

B.   Responsibilities:
         The Governor has the overall responsibility for emergency management in the state and is assisted in these duties by the LOHSEP Director. Tasks for those elements listed which have been given a primary or secondary shared responsibility for emergency/ disaster situations are contained in Attachment 3, Emergency Support Function (ESF) Responsibility Chart. General responsibilities for all agencies are as follows:

....

D.   Federal

         The Federal Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has the responsibility for the coordination of federal emergency/disaster operations and resources in support of state and local government capabilities, and for directing and coordinating the delivery of federal disaster relief assistance programs. Assistance efforts are organized and coordinated according to the policies and procedures detailed in the National Response Plan (NRP), dated 2004 and the National Incident Management System (NIMS), dated 2004.



Notice that it says FEMA will work in SUPPORT, not take control.

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This is a repost of an earlier comment I left. It had to be redone because the URL posted was too long and was breaking the layout. Sorry 'bout that...
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Hi Alex,

One of the most interesting - and for a while, I thought the most compelling - talking points that the Administration used in its defense - that the Federal Government is the service of last resort in an emergency and that the federal government cannot be mobilized until the Govenor declares a state of emergency.

Now, if the govenor hadn't declared a state of emergency until after the storm hit New Orleans, then the way things played out would have made more sense (at least to me, anyways).

It turns out, however, that the Govenor Blanco declared a state of emergency on Friday, August 26, two days before the storm's major damage occurred on the 28th:

(spaces inserted in the URL for the sake of page layout)
http:// www.gov.state.la.us/ index.cfm ?md=newsroom &tmp=detail &catID=1 &articleID=776 &navID=3

(hey folks, the Govenor's web site uses ColdFusion, cool!)

Now, my understanding of the law is that once a govenor declares an emergency, the Federal Government takes over and becomes the primary agency. So in this case, FEMA was the first responder to the scene.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying that there weren't failures at the state and local levels (Corruption in New Orleans? I'm shocked, I tell ya, shocked!). What I am saying is that FEMA was the agency in charge at the time and now the White House doesn't want its officials talking to congress about it.

A Republican controlled congress, too, which I think is very strange.

Best,
Chris

I don't know why there is all this negativity here regarding Pres Bush. However, the responses that the Senate wants are to merely justify their political ends in a finger-pointing political witch hunt in order to find out who the scapegoat should be for what happened with Katrina. Which basically means that it won't happen.

As appropriately noted in Don's post above, the first responders for any disaster are first local authorities (city gov't), then State authorities, and if they can't handle it, the federal gov't. By the way, the federal government augments the state and local authorities. They (the federal gov't) don't "own" the show. Besides, take a comparison between NY and NOLA and you will see that the two handled their respective disasters in two very different ways. NY=professional. NOLA=Disastrous. Of course, everybody wants to blame Pres Bush when they should've been pointing their fingers at Blanco and Nagin, two very incompetent people who were woefully inadequate for the job. In my opinion, NOLA reminds me of a good South American country because of all the graft and corruption and the lack of someone with the cojones to take charge or responsibility for the "response" to what happened there. Besides, when you are handed a job that's been pooch-screwed and all messed up, it is often very difficult to clean up after very incompetent peoples' messes. Even so, if my memory serves me correctly, Pres Bush did warn Louisiana to do something to prepare for the hurricane and they did it in a halfassed, lackadaisical, typical mardi-grasish manner and got caught with their pants down (or in Nawlins' case with it's shirt up begging for beads). And speaking of the dikes, I really think that Louisiana should be paying back all of the federal taxpayers' money that they took and used elsewhere instead of reinforcing the dikes like they were supposed to with my tax dollars and yours too.

At least Pres Bush takes responsibility for his actions and doesn't try to hide behind anything. The bottom-line for NOLA is you can take a horse to water but you can't force it to drink. Or better suited to "stupid is as stupid does." Also, unless you've ever worked a disastrous situation in some capacity before consider your opinion duly noted. And yes, I've earned my t-shirt elsewhere and still do in the military, and no, I can't tell you where I've worked before because I would have to cut your head off and place it in a safe and declare it classified material TS/SCI/NonYerBizness not releasable until head is desiccated/mummified.
Tom

I think that the reason the reponse to Katrina was so terrible starts with the local govt. Let's take a look at the facts, the Gulf Coast gets smacked around every year by hurricanes especially Florida. Alabama got nailed a few times, not just on the coast but right through the middle of the state. Now what makes the response in those states different than the response in NOLA, one word .. leadership. I didn't see Blanco until she was touring the area with Bush, but I'll see Jeb on TV as soon as they even think a hurricane is going to pass near Florida. It doesn't matter that Blanco is a Democrat, female, etc or that Jeb is a Republican, male, brother of the President etc. What matters is how they plan for and respond to crisis situations.

Every programmer should follow the principle of "Plan your work then work your plan" and for govt. it is a must. The hard truth if the matter is that Blanco and Nagin failed to execute the plan they had in place. They chose instead to throw their hands in the air and hope the Feds would save them but unlike the unfortunate citizens stranded on top of their houses, Blanco and Nagin had a way out.

Don,
That politician also happens to be the "Patron" for the Special Operations Community and more specifically the Special Forces Training center up in Ft. Bragg after whom they named the SF Training center.

Jim,
Who said anything about bragging anyway. A security clearance is more restrictive than one would think and even more so than a NDA when you consider that it costs about $60,000 for a background investigation just to make sure the person can have a clearance before they ever hold one, and all you do with a NDA is sign a piece of paper. Besides, I'm not very worried about leaks coming from people bragging about their clearance because I know they at least understand the importance of what they are guarding. I am more worried about the Politicians and their lackeys who consistently think they are above the rules when it comes to classified material and take it out of the protected environment or let loose with loose lips and give up our secrets because they can't follow some simple rules to protect our information.

Tom