2005

Help Is On the Way

ArchPundit September 12, 2005 4 Comments

Nagin points out continuing problems

One of the refrains about this is that Nagin is no Guiliani. The problem with that comparison is Rudy had TV cameras with him throughout the crisis–Nagin indicates that he’s only had one or two cameras seeking him out during the crisis and that most of his press was when he made himself available for an interview and that TV wasn’t present–maybe one other tv camera that came from time to time. (more video here)

His original update on Monday night was on that indicated a calm man who was doing his best to level with people about the extent of the destruction.

WBRZ has a phone call into from Nagin during the hurricane and talks about the flooding and already knows there are problems with levees though the extent isn’t clear. The 17th Street canal breach was reported during the hurricane.

WWL TV did an interview on Monday night that described initial damage. It was devastating to hear. What’s most interesting in the interview are two points–the breach in the 17th Street Levee (remember, the one that didn’t break until after this interview according to Chertoff–but that Nagin knew was a problem during the hurricane). The other issue that really tells part of the problem with FEMA is that by the time the hurricane had passed, there was little time for a visual inspection of the City, yet FEMA did an initial assessment where he got much of the information from including

1) the Twin Spans being destroyed (anchors turned white)
2) Extensive flooding in nearly all parts of the City except at the CBD, Algiers and the French Quarter (both CBD and FQ would later have some flooding)
3) expectation of electricity out for 4-6 weeks
4) no clear path in or out of the City
5) St. Benards in worst shape–total devastation

What has never changed are his three objectives

1) Save Lives
2) Evacuate people–arguing with other parishes—indicates he’s referring to the blockade on the bridge.
3) Pump out water.

The silliness of the criticisms because he was shrill on Thursday when no one would get the aid into the city that had been promised–yet you don’t see the same guy on Monday, or Tuesday or even Wednesday. How would Guiliani have acted if he hadn’t gotten help over 4 days?

Comparing the two situations where he was, by all accounts, all over the City for days, without press coverage compared to Guiliani who had press with him the entire time is a bit bizarre.

Evacuation Continues to Be Misunderstood

ArchPundit September 12, 2005 1 Comment

While it’s shocking to think that in modern America we’d leave people in a major natural disaster when we have warning, the reality is that there is virtually no method to move over 100,000 people in 72 hours.

The Trib does a decent article, and certainly better than this Florida article.

Holding up Florida as an example opens the question of what are the plans for its major cities.

The interesting question is who gets help out of their home? In all cases, the disabled, but not the average person

Miami-Dade Public transportation takes people to shelters of last resort. One big improvement is the impetus put on hotels that was lacking in New Orleans.

Tampa may have a plan to move people without cars, but the County’s website doesn’t indicate how it is done. As with Miami-Dade there is a special needs registry.

Jacksonville Same as Hillsborough County, no mention of those without cars and only a special needs registry.

And the Florida site for hurricane preparedness only discusses car evacuation.

Despite the claims, in major urban centers, there isn’t any evidence that any city can evacuate more than the special needs population without transportation.

LSU has a review of national preparedness. A few things stick out–Louisiana has a far longer period of evacuation orders than any other state included in the study.

On page 18 you see the use of public transportation doesn’t vary much amongst the states at risk. Public buses aren’t realistic and while the mention of alternatives is there, the problem comes as competing needs for the limited infrastructure are made.

Nagin made the point on Meet the Press that getting drivers is very difficult in a mandatory evacuation.

In the now famous Washing Away series, the problem of counting on buses and other means is pointed out in a bit of detail:

Click on the link below to read that section after the jump.
Read More

It’s a First Step

ArchPundit September 9, 2005 9 Comments

But does anyone really need more evidence that Michael Brown needs to go? You can argue theoretically taht changing agency heads in the middle of a crisis creates problems of continuity, but at this point, ending the continuity of Brown’s reign at FEMA seems one of the first priorities other than continuing to get people out of New Orleans.

Times-Picayune on Suffering and Semantics

ArchPundit September 9, 2005 5 Comments

EDITORIAL: Suffering and semantics

There may be no more ridiculous pairing of words than “voluntary evacuation.” Letting people know they can leave if they want to leave does nothing more than remind them that they live in a free country. But looking back at the events leading up to Hurricane Katrina, it’s clear that the phrase “mandatory evacuation” doesn’t mean anything either. At least not in New Orleans.

The phrase is meaninglessness on two levels: According to a television interview Mayor Ray Nagin gave the Saturday night before the storm, he didn’t think he had the legal authority to order a mandatory evacuation or the ability to enforce it. City attorneys were scrambling to find out whether he could order everybody out, he said, and if doing so would make him liable for the many thousands of people who had no means of escape. The next morning he issued New Orleans’ first-ever order of evacuation. Next door, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard maintained that despite his desire to do so, he didn’t have the legal authority to require his residents to leave.

To Mayor Nagin’s credit, he made it clear on that Saturday that everybody needed to get out and that citizens shouldn’t wait around to hear the word “mandatory” before deciding to leave. They might never hear it. He urged those who could to check on their neighbors, especially the elderly and infirm, and to use every conveyance possible to escape the wrath of the approaching storm.

The mayor was a voice of calm when others around him were succumbing to hysteria. But when it came time to get pushy, he did that, too. Even so, Mayor Nagin should have had his legal questions answered long before a storm was in the Gulf of Mexico. A mandatory evacuation had never been ordered, but the question of its legality should have been asked and answered years ago. What a mayor can do as a hurricane approaches should have been institutional knowledge, passed like a baton from one administration to the next.

It ought to have been passed down from governor to governor, too. The mayor’s powers may have been limited, but as the chief executive of the state, Gov. Kathleen Blanco had more muscle. State law allows her to not only “direct and compel the evacuation of all or part of the population from any stricken or threatened area within the state,” but also to utilize “all available resources of the state government and of each political subdivision of the state as reasonably necessary to cope with the disaster or emergency.”

The Friday before the storm Gov. Blanco declared a state of emergency, and that could have served as a prerequisite for more forceful action. Imagine every school bus in South Louisiana packed with evacuees and heading to higher ground. Imagine the vans, SUVs and cars owned by state and local agencies being devoted to the same purpose. In retrospect, the mayor should have used his bully pulpit to demand more action from the state. But he ultimately didn’t have the authority to take control of all those vehicles. The governor did.

Elected officials assumed that when the big one hit New Orleans, it would catch thousands upon thousands of people still in the city. Some wouldn’t be able to afford a way out. Others who could afford to do so wouldn’t either. Not a whole lot could have been done for that second group. The fact that even now there are people vowing to stay in their flooded homes is proof that some deaths were inevitable.

Louisiana was never going to be able to handle a disaster of Katrina?s scale without substantial outside help. If the federal response had not been so woefully inadequate, the storm would not have exacted such a horrific toll on New Orleans.

There are multiple things wrong with the above–not the article the actions. Broussard and Nagin both hadn’t thought through what a mandatory evacuation was and what they could do in the face of a hurricane. That should be in the ‘break in case of emergency’ kit with Standard Operating Procedures for just such an event. Asking On Saturday was too late and frankly, Broussard should have just gone ahead. But more importantly is that a state should have clear laws on exactly what local officials can do.

Given the coordination issues revolving around Contraflow out of New Orleans, it’s questionable to me as to why local leaders call for such evacuations and not the Governor.

The other thing that is fascinating is the editorial board that lived through the disaster is far more positive towards Mayor Ray Nagin than the national press. They are circumspect about Blanco and I imagine we’ll read more on their views of her soon.

(link fixed)

Normal Programming Will Resume Shortly

ArchPundit September 9, 2005 1 Comment

Yeah, I know, there’s a lot of Illinois stuff to cover and I’m hoping to catch up on it over the weekend. Now that the immediate issues surrounding Katrina are not as critical, I’ll be reducing coverage of it very soon–though it’ll certainly be an issue for some time. While this is primarily a blog that concentrates on Illinois, I always have written about some national issues and the last two weeks have diverted my attention. And for those who want to me to eat some words, you can read this post

I’m way, way behind on e-mail and some phone calls so I still have your notes, but it’ll be a bit until I can catch up.

Huh?

ArchPundit September 9, 2005 5 Comments

There’s a lot of good background in the NYT article here, but this is really the puzzler:

According to the administration’s senior domestic security officials, the plan failed to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated.

Even in a limited disaster like the WTC attack, lots and lots of first responders were killed–how the hell you can call something a plan that doesn’t account for local first responders being incapacitated is….well as stupid as having Mike Brown as head of FEMA.

The frustrating paragraph is here though:

While combat troops can conduct relief missions without the legal authority of the Insurrection Act, Pentagon and military officials say that no active-duty forces could have been sent into the chaos of New Orleans on Wednesday or Thursday without confronting law-and-order challenges.

I’m pretty sure you could drive some trucks over the Crescent City Connector, take the first exit and drop off food and water. Or if you really didn’t think that was an option, drop it off the damn bridge. I’m very aware the Louisiana National Guard could have done the same thing—but the Feds could have too….

While I’m far from convinced Chertoff had even basic control over DHS during this ordeal, this seems like a no-brainer

Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, has suggested that active-duty troops be trained and equipped to intervene if front-line emergency personnel are stricken. But the Pentagon’s leadership remains unconvinced that this plan is sound, suggesting instead that the national emergency response plans be revised to draw reinforcements initially from civilian police, firefighters, medical personnel and hazardous-waste experts in other states not affected by a disaster.

The federal government rewrote its national emergency response plan after the Sept. 11 attacks, but it relied on local officials to manage any crisis in its opening days. But Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed local “first responders,” including civilian police and the National Guard.

At a news conference on Saturday, Mr. Chertoff said, “The unusual set of challenges of conducting a massive evacuation in the context of a still dangerous flood requires us to basically break the traditional model and create a new model, one for what you might call kind of an ultra-catastrophe.””

Isn’t the above situation obvious though? 9-11 was a very limited attack in many ways–shouldn’t incapacitated local first responders be assumed in such situations?

Hey Joe, Zip It.

ArchPundit September 9, 2005 2 Comments

If Lieberman complains about Brown, please tell him to zip it after this. When you push for a Department of Homeland Security, you are actually partially responsible to oversee the political appointee hiring.

Please Stop By My House and Put a Cushion Between My Head and the Wall

ArchPundit September 9, 2005 6 Comments

Soon!

FEMA’s top three leaders — Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler — arrived with ties to President Bush’s 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska anda U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

Meanwhile, veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman — who led FEMA’s offices of response, recovery and preparedness, respectively — have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state emergency managers, according to current and former officials.

Because of the turnover, three of the five FEMA chiefs for natural-disaster-related operations and nine of 10 regional directors are working in an acting capacity, agency officials said.

I have no illusions that many agencies have twits running them regardless of the administration, I’d just like to think that the ones that involve immediate life and limb dangers are professionalized.

Damning with Faint Praise

ArchPundit September 9, 2005 1 Comment

From Time

Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA’s website, was “serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight.” The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 “overseeing the emergency services division.” In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an “assistant to the city manager” from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. “The assistant is more like an intern,” she told TIME. “Department heads did not report to him.” Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. “Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University,” recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. “Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I’d ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt.”

Emphasis mine, just in case anyone was curious.

Read the whole thing, it only gets worse.

A Small, Small Bit of Good News

ArchPundit September 8, 2005 1 Comment

Tipitina’s survived pretty much untouched.

Two days after Katrina passed, Tipitina’s, the city’s flagship music club, largely was unscathed on its swath of high, dry ground along the Mississippi River. A few blocks away, the only damage to Art Neville’s meticulously restored home was to the wooden fence that surrounds it.

But many others weren’t so lucky.

Iconic jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain lost homes in New Orleans and Bay St. Louis, Miss., as well as Casino Magic, which had become his primary venue. Fountain rode out the storm in a Mississippi Day’s Inn, and he has since sought shelter in Winnsboro.

Go here to help Musicians who lost everything in the storm No–not like Aaron Neville, but those guys who aren’t rich and famous, but make New Orleans what it is .

And Ruffins is in Baton Rouge for those other Kermit Ruffins fans out there.