OT: New Hurricane Thread

[infinity5]

I'm in the middle of watching a little 20/20 speical on the situation down there. I'm no fan of ABC news, and 20/20 isn't even a real news program....

but... this is making me sick of my stomach.

I've been off at school in a dorm without a TV or newspapers for over a week, and i'm just now getting fully filled in.

It's mind blowing how long its taken to get help for anyone down there.

Does anyone else want to grab the people responsible for this (and particularly Bush), and lock them in a room to die in filth without food or water, like so many of the people down there have been doing? maybe like them there, oh, say 5 days before comming back?

Is my anger misdirected? does anyone know anything else about the structure of descision making conserning military aid, etc?

[winfred]

it's not as bad as they make it out to be on the supply efforts, theres a couple hundred thousand people effected, stuff started heading down there the next day on a local level but had to deal with massive flooding and all of the mess that comes with a 30' wall of water, almost all of the roads into N O are raised and go over swamp/marsh land or lake ponchatrain, some of those have been knocked off their pilings by the surge and can't handle traffic. some of the first stuff comming in by air was greated with gunfire, that kinda slows things down. they rolled on downtown with serious supplys and support which takes time to gather and fly into the nearest field that can handle it, they are going in with something like 30,000 troops which take a little while to scare up in war time, the **** hit the fan monday and the major effort got there mid day today friday, faster would be better but i am not sure it would be possible without a absurdly large force standing by at all times supplyed for a hundred or so thousand people, id guess that'd shave a day and a half off the serious responce time

[winfred]

ps the locals are and have been going down with their personal equipment all week and getting mugged and shot at, the manager at my shop was planning on taking a boat down and helping but through direct info not the hearsay that's running around said hell no

[Johntee540]

Camille. Its nice to try to explain away the Why it took so long. But the fact of the matter - the administration knew this storm was coming for 4 days before it hit.

They knew it was a killer storm. They ordered the evacuation and left those that could not leave there to die.

Let me pose this question. What has the Dept of Homeland Security been doing the last 4 years? Think about it. What if this had been a dirty bomb gone off due to some terrorist? Would we have to wait in our homes for 4 days before someone in Washington decided to mount a rescue effort? Or would the DHS have a plan to evacuate the city really really quickly - Hundreds of thousands of people.

Sound like a plan they couldve used in this situation? I am betting they dont have a plan like that ready or they wouldve used it here.

I think the arrival of National Guard Convoys today and the subsequent visit by the president is co-incidental. Photo-ops and Press Conferences is what this president does best. Leadership is where he has issues. - JT

[PhilipJCaputo]

Soo.... what your saying is that it "could" have been faster, but not much faster??


--EDIT--

This thread needs to be moved....



it's not as bad as they make it out to be on the supply efforts, theres a couple hundred thousand people effected, stuff started heading down there the next day on a local level but had to deal with massive flooding and all of the mess that comes with a 30' wall of water, almost all of the roads into N O are raised and go over swamp/marsh land or lake ponchatrain, some of those have been knocked off their pilings by the surge and can't handle traffic. some of the first stuff comming in by air was greated with gunfire, that kinda slows things down. they rolled on downtown with serious supplys and support which takes time to gather and fly into the nearest field that can handle it, they are going in with something like 30,000 troops which take a little while to scare up in war time, the **** hit the fan monday and the major effort got there mid day today friday, faster would be better but i am not sure it would be possible without a absurdly large force standing by at all times supplyed for a hundred or so thousand people, id guess that'd shave a day and a half off the serious responce time

[PhilipJCaputo]

I'm sure its been in some thread... what city do you live in??

I was gonna google map it and check your proximity to the city



ps the locals are and have been going down with their personal equipment all week and getting mugged and shot at, the manager at my shop was planning on taking a boat down and helping but through direct info not the hearsay that's running around said hell no

[winfred]

i am real close to baton rouge which didn't get much worse then some lost power (i lost power for 8 hours on monday, my boss only just got his back today) and a few squashed houses from trees, id suspect that they were tooling up as the storm revealed how powerful it was, id like to think they weren't sitting around with their thumbs in their asses till monday when it hit, most of these guys have done this before, just not to this scale

[winfred]

ps btr is 60-70 miles from N O

[Gayle]

Here is what my newshound husband is telling me.

Bush begged for the governor to issue an evacuation order on Sunday. He can't do it. Goverenor finally agreed. The Mayor also issued an evacuation order. Problem was there was no evacuation plan in place. The attitude of the whole city was "what me worry."

The people who could get out on their own did. They sent elderly and homeless to places like the superdome and convention center but didn't bother to tell anyone they were there. Instead of using the resources they had and actually getting people out of town, they let them fracking sit there.

Check this picture of school buses underwater. If they had loaded them up, on Sunday or Monday before the levies broke they could have gotten all those people out of there in about 4 trips.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050901/480/flpc21109012015

http://www.brendanloy.com/2005/09/its-busses-stupid.html

No amount of federal government intervention can overcome local stupidity.