<p>I think Bobby Jindal and the Bush Administration are going to do everything in their power to keep Gustav from turning into Katrina reloaded during the Republican convention. It could really hurt them if footage from Gustav coming out of NOLA resemble those of the humanitarian horror that was Katrina.</p>
<p>One could hope that the situation will be different with a different cast of characters in charge, and a population that has learned from its past refusal to evacuate when it had the chance. </p>
<p>However, without an integrated plan for New Orleans and Louisiana, it’s only a matter of time before the Big One obliterates the entire town.</p>
<p>I don’t like to get involved in political debates, but having done the majority of my graduate research in the development of emergency disaster plans and having worked with several emergency management agencies, emergency plans are intended to be developed, and only work if they are developed, at the LOCAL level. I like our current big cheese even less than the next person, but most of the blame for mismanagement of natural disasters ought to go to local and state governments rather than the feds.</p>
<p>First, all individuals that don’t have physical, mental, developmental, or financial limitations have to be able to fend for themselves for a certain period of time, typically several days. Each and every one of us in hurricane country should know what we ought to do in the event of a hurricane. We also need to take responsibility to evacuate ourselves if the order comes in to evacuate. If we do have limitations or if we are responsible for people with limitations, then we need to have plans for them, and we need to know what we must do to aid ourselves or to aid those for whom we are responsible in the event of a disaster. If there are no resources available to us, we need to contact our local governments and ask what we should do ahead of time.</p>
<p>Beyond the individual level, local governments need to have resources set aside and have plans laid out for what happens in the event of an emergency-- at least enough resources to tide their citizens over for a few weeks. Local and state governments are where this needs to happen. The good news is that most state and local governments are prepared. I have seen manual after manual after manual, at multiple state and local levels, spelling out very specifically what needs to happen in the event of a natural disaster, and going so far as to give names and cell phone or satellite phone numbers for those responsible for different facets of the immediate disaster relief operations, locations of supply caches, and where immediate funding comes from if the need arises. There are more contingencies laid out for most municipalities and states that I’ve worked with than you’d believe that they’d possibly need.</p>
<p>The only thing that the federal government is set up to do immediately is to deploy funding to local areas, and to begin to send relief to those areas. The states and local governments are aware of this, but it’s easy to flake out and point at a guy higher on the ladder than you are, and claim that it’s that guy’s fault that all this is going on… nobody likes to be caught with their trousers around their ankles.</p>
<p>In Katrina, tons of things went wrong, but from everything I’ve seen and based upon my experience with disaster relief plans, the plurality, and perhaps even the majority, of the blame goes to local governments.</p>
<p>Also, if you’re ever in a hurricane-prone area and one comes along and you are ordered to evacuate, LEAVE! Similarly, if you’re in an area where natural disasters are a risk, please educate yourselves as to what you should do and what you should have on hand in case of each applicable natural disaster. When I moved to Los Angeles, the first thing I did was to bracket and bolt all my bookcases into wall studs, and to check that the water heater restraints were installed properly, among other things. When I moved to Houston, I bought enough bottled water for my household for several days and put it in the back of a closet, and I keep the cat carriers at ready and at least one car with a full tank during hurricane season, and I have a standing invitation with family and friends far inland whenever I need to evacuate.</p>
<p>There is plenty of well-placed blame to go around for the government officials who fail to help the citizens that truly need help in a natural disaster, but those of us who <em>can</em> do things to help ourselves, <em>need</em> to do things to help ourselves. If any of you all are looking for emergency preparedness resources for any natural disasters in particular, I can help you out with that, just let me know.</p>
<p>I agree that failure occurred all along the accountability ladder. Every time I saw Ray Nagel’s face on TV during that time, I wanted to slap him. It’s so obvious that he dropped the ball when it came to coordinating evacuation for residents who were unable to make those arrangements for themselves—the elderly, the hospitalized, the infirm, the poor who were without transportation and the funds to pay for emergency provisions, much less a way out of town. There were no adequate shelters for the stranded, and no mechanisms in place to quickly supply water and food in the days that followed. The Governor and the mayor of NOLA pointed fingers at one another, while the Head of Homeland security twiddled his thumbs. The emergency response in the aftermath of the storm was inexcusable, from the local level clear up to the federal level. But, something tells me things will be different next time. God knows I hope so.:rolleyes:</p>
<p>From all indications in news down here in the south, plans are in place and today is Thursday. I would be very surprised if a repeat of inadequacy for human life occurred again, even as Ray Nagin has been re-elected! I don’t think there will be a repeat; too many different players this time and many, many people learned from those mistakes!! Let’s hope for the best~</p>
<p>Fortunately they have the same contraflow plan in place that Blanco and Haley Barbour used during Katrina when both the La. and Miss. state police worked together to evacuate 2 million people in 24 hours. That contraflow plan worked very well. Unfortunately, 30,000 people stayed behind and we all know what happened when the floodwalls collapsed. Had the floodwalls on the canals not fallen over there would be no Katrina story today.</p>
<p>I heard that Cherthof (sp?) is already in La., arrived this afternoon. No more Brownie stories this time, I bet.</p>
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Yet, inexplicably, the mayor was re-elected after completely failing his constituents. Maybe someone who understands the politics of NOLA can explain this.</p>
<p>The answer to why they re-elected Nagin is basically the Republicans hate the Landrieus. First you had people like my mom’s friends who voted against Mitch Landrieu because as much as they hated Nagin they hated the Landrieus more. One of my mom’s friends told my mom that she (the friend) would “rather have 4 more years of Nagin than 8 years of Landrieu”. Funny how that assumes Mitch would get re-elected if he became mayor.</p>
<p>Second, Rove went down there and told the local Republican mucky mucks they had to get Nagin re-elected cause if Mitch won mayor it would strengthen Mary’s power base and they needed to weaken it so as to get her out of the Senate. If they didn’t go along with the plan they wouldn’t get any hurricane recovery money out of W. Heard that one from a stockbroker I know.</p>
<p>Third, the late Harry Lee, sheriff of Jefferson Parish got in a fight with one of the nola elected officials who was supporting Mitch Landrieu about the Jefferson Sheriff’s Office preventing nola residents from crossing the bridge to get out of the flooded downtown post storm and somehow that resulted in Lee getting all the people in one of the precincts near the Jefferson parish line to vote for Nagin to oppose Mitch. I don’t remember all the details of how that worked exactly, but that’s the genl idea. Got that from an article online (I think).</p>
<p>So basically they shot themselves in the foot to get rid of the Landrieus. Or maybe they shot themselves in the brain, take your pick.</p>
<p>Usually mayoral elections have more than two choices and with two candidates as undesirable as you paint these two, it seems that there would have been other more viable candidates. </p>
<p>
This doesn’t sound credible.</p>
<p>I didn’t think that I’d painted Mitch Landrieu as undesirable. Just because the Republicans hate someone doesn’t make them undesireable. Mitch Landrieu would have made an excellent mayor. Mary Landrieu is an excellent Senator. There was a third candidate that I remember, Ron Forman (sp?), the head of the Audubon Zoo. I’m not sure I would have been too enthused about electing the Zoo director to be mayor. If you don’t believe W and Cheney would have held back recovery money as punishment, suit yourself. Cheney wanted to spend as little as possible to fix the levees cause it would “set a bad precedent”. I didn’t understand that at the time, but now that I know there are levees all over the country, from Sacramento to St Louis and in Oklahoma and elsewhere, all in dire need of upgrades, I see his point. Rove is capable of anything, and I have it on pretty good authority from more than one source that this occurred. But if it makes you feel better to believe it’s not true, fine with me.</p>
<p>The reason I focus on Landrieu and Nagin is they got the most votes. Landrieu came very close to beating Nagin.</p>
<p>aibarr yes! yes! yes! I can remember watching the weather channel and fearing for peoples lives as Nagin was saying don’t panic we’ll be fine. I got a pit in my stomach when I heard that and watched in horror as the predictions came true. Does anyone remember the school buses floating afterwords that could have transported thousands who didn’t have the means to get out on their own. How about Amtrac that sent a train with 1,000 seats and said load them up and Nagin said no thanks. I don"t agree with hardly anything Bush says or does, but my blood boils when people say the aftermath of Katrina was his failure. We have bottled water, batteries, a weather radio, and canned goods on hand at all times and we only get blizzards. It starts with ourselves and our neighbors and goes right up the line with the federal level being last. If I recall correctly the feds weren’t asked to step in for days while the mayor and governor argued who was at fault as people were dying horrible deaths. Yes the feds have to be asked to help, they can’t just go charging in.</p>
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<p>The head of Homeland Security has no jurisdiction unless his help is requested by local officials, unfortunately.</p>
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<p>I certainly do! In fact, that image of all those thousands of school buses in flood water up to their roof lines kept flashing in my mind whenever Ray Nagin showed his mug on television, claiming he’d done the best he could do. I was so angry at him I could barely speak coherently.</p>
<p>" If I recall correctly the feds weren’t asked to step in for days while the mayor and governor argued who was at fault as people were dying horrible deaths."</p>
<p>Well, you do not recall correctly. Blanco issued a prestorm disaster declaration and state of emergency on Saturday, or perhaps it was Friday, when landfall was predicted for Monday. This set in action all the protocols under the federal act governing such emergencies post 9/11 and in addition she spent Saturday on the phone with the General (not sure of rank) in charge of the National Guard in DC, as well as the White House and Homeland Security, following up in writing, faxed to the offices where documentation needed to go, following both Stafford Act procedures as well their verbal instructions on how to proceed so as to secure necessary manpower and provisions. Disaster drills from the summer before had secured assurances from the feds that there would be a maximum of 3 days post landfall before the “troops” would arrive and La. needed to be able to take care of itself for 3 days. I have a relative who took part in those drills who knows this to be the case. That was the timeline. Yes, there was fighting between Blanco and Nagin, and there was a huge fight on Airforce One on the tarmac at the nola airport. But make no mistake, all necessary requests were in place 2 to 3 days before Katrina made landfall. Your mistaken recollections are the result of a massive PR campaign by the Bush administration to coverup their malice and ineptitude.</p>
<p>In Nagin’s defense, the school bus issue is bogus. I forget the exact numbers, but there were only enough buses to get maybe a one or two thousand people max out of the city. Just like the train could only take 1,000. So maybe 3,000 out of 30,000. Who decides which ones get to leave? </p>
<p>NOLA doesn’t own that many school buses, and all the bus drivers had evacuated. One problem with contraflow is it’s one way only and that is OUT. You cannot go back for more people once you’ve left town. These people were told to get out and they didn’t. They were told that the Superdome would not have either food or water and they were to bring their own if they chose to go there. They didn’t.</p>
<p>This time they are getting 1,000 of those big tour buses to go down there and line up at pick up spots outside city limits. People are to go to one of 17 locations for RTA buses to take them to the big buses. There is a 311 number for them to use for info and maybe to register for pickup. It is a major improvement and it will be undertaken at huge expense, perhaps, God willing, for nothing. No one in that city EVER wants to go through that again. But that city and that state got over TWO MILLION people out of a three or four county area in 24 HOURS. Yes, 30,000 were left behind, but tell me where else in this country could a city or state have pulled off something similar. It was like evacuating the entire state of Mississippi, which they didn’t have to do because their entire state’s population doesn’t live in Biloxi.</p>
<p>And as far as the old and infirm, that is a very tricky issue. A good friend of mine’s mother was in a nursing home that decided to shelter in place. They had a 2 week provision of food and medicine plus generator strength. They had no flooding as they were near Audubon Park, and they had no wind damage. The National Guard forced them to leave in the second week due to security concerns as well as the realization it would be months before they could get electricity, etc. The home arranged for transport of all residents to another nursing home in Houston. My friend’s mother died after arriving in Houston as she was too frail to survive the trip.</p>
<p>My mother had a neighbor who’s wheelchair bound mother lived with her and her husband. They obviously took her mother with them when they left town and her mother also died shortly after they arrived at their evacuation location. She, too, was too frail to survive. I am not saying that you shouldn’t try to evacuate these people but there are many complicated issues involved. Do not forget the nursing home residents from Houston who died on the interstate when their van exploded due to issues with an oxygen tank. These things are far more complicated than people who have never been through them realize.</p>
<p>mercymom:</p>
<p>I should have said ‘your post painted’ rather than you personally painted them as undesirable. I said this based on the following in your post -
I don’t know enough about Landrieu to have an opinion on him.</p>
<p>And I guess we just have different opinions on what Rove or W or Cheney could or would do in this situation.</p>
<p>Fair enough. My understanding of what a lot of nola republicans don’t like about Mitch and Mary has to do with their father, who was mayor of nola at one time. They feel that Moon Landrieu helped issue in a set of politicans they feel helped ruin the city. It’s really a rather ugly set of feelings actually. Nagin initially got elected pre Katrina in part cause he was originally a Republican who switched to Democrat and these people still thought of him as really a republican and pro business and all that. Little did they know he’d fall apart in a natural disaster.</p>
<p>As for the Bush/Cheney/Rove crowd, their agenda has more to do with getting the numbers they want in Congress. It’s all about maintaining or regaining a republican majority in Congress, so they need to get Mary Landrieu out of the Senate. And if that means sticking it to nola, then so be it. Feel free to diagree. I don’t need to convince you. It is what it is.</p>