09-06-2005, 10:04 PM
I still say, yes absolutely the federal government dropped the ball with funding, focusing too much training to emergency personnel on terrorism vs. anything else, depleting all resources by pushing them overseas, and just being generally incompetant. Granted. No question. No defense.
But I think the local governments are getting way too much of a pass here. As was mentioned, I think the first line of work for any type of thing like this should belong to the city, state, fed, in that order. And that's why when 9/11 came along, Guiliani was treated as a God, with Pataki as well. The senators and President got their camera time, but it was clearly Rudy and Pataki that made things happen so efficiently and effectively (and yes, NY has a lot more money both in their own right and from the government; the disaster didn't cover hundreds of acres and millions of gallons of pollution, yes; the cleanup was easier, but the work was clearly done by the locality, not the federal government.)
And the fact that New Orleans didn't have a solid evacuation plan in place really doesn't fall at the feet of the federal government and really made everything infinitely more horrible. Looking at those hundreds of city buses underwater and knowing that the Mayor did not include ANY public transportation methods of evacuation, I'd say is the #1 reason so many people died. Anything else that occured after that, was augmented by the amount of people who were still there.
From what I saw over the weekend, it was mostly the poor who had no money or no method to leave that ended up staying and dying. Surely there had to be some way to help them leave.
And I don't want to come across like so many of the other Monday Morning QBs who act like you can just snap your fingers and move billions of dollars of funding and thousands of people into action on a whim, but the buses were there. They couldn't have gotten at least a few of them some gas and some drivers, schedule a few pickups and get people out of dodge?
And I still am baffled by Hedcold's comment about why the hell the evacuation could only use the outbound lanes of traffic. Surely no one was coming IN to New Orleans. I'm sure there's some reason, but I just don't get it.
But I think the local governments are getting way too much of a pass here. As was mentioned, I think the first line of work for any type of thing like this should belong to the city, state, fed, in that order. And that's why when 9/11 came along, Guiliani was treated as a God, with Pataki as well. The senators and President got their camera time, but it was clearly Rudy and Pataki that made things happen so efficiently and effectively (and yes, NY has a lot more money both in their own right and from the government; the disaster didn't cover hundreds of acres and millions of gallons of pollution, yes; the cleanup was easier, but the work was clearly done by the locality, not the federal government.)
And the fact that New Orleans didn't have a solid evacuation plan in place really doesn't fall at the feet of the federal government and really made everything infinitely more horrible. Looking at those hundreds of city buses underwater and knowing that the Mayor did not include ANY public transportation methods of evacuation, I'd say is the #1 reason so many people died. Anything else that occured after that, was augmented by the amount of people who were still there.
From what I saw over the weekend, it was mostly the poor who had no money or no method to leave that ended up staying and dying. Surely there had to be some way to help them leave.
And I don't want to come across like so many of the other Monday Morning QBs who act like you can just snap your fingers and move billions of dollars of funding and thousands of people into action on a whim, but the buses were there. They couldn't have gotten at least a few of them some gas and some drivers, schedule a few pickups and get people out of dodge?
And I still am baffled by Hedcold's comment about why the hell the evacuation could only use the outbound lanes of traffic. Surely no one was coming IN to New Orleans. I'm sure there's some reason, but I just don't get it.