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Tragic Ineptitudethe government was forewarned |
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Six Months After Katrina: What’s Life Like?
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Too little, too late...Also Sunday, the top Democrat on the House Department of Homeland Security Committee blasted the federal government for its response. "It was too little, too late," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat. "We missed the mark." Thompson said the blame can be traced to the merger of the Federal Emergency Management Agency with the Homeland Security Department, when domestic preparedness "took a back seat" to preparing for terrorist attacks. More recovery assets should have been stationed in a region where they could have been moved in to the affected area as soon as the storm had passed, he said."At the end of the day, somebody has to be held accountable," Thompson said. Rep. John D. Dingell said he will introduce legislation Tuesday that would remove FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and make it, instead, an independent agency headed by a Cabinet-level executive reporting directly to the president. "While listening to the wounded, broken souls who have emerged from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, I can clearly see that FEMA has lost its way," the Democrat from Michigan said in a written statement. |
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FEMA's New Orleans hurricane scenariofrom Houston Chronicle 12/01/01 2001 - Earlier this year the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most castastrophic disasters facing this country. [The other two? A massive earthquake in San Francisco, and, almost prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York City. The New Orleans hurricane scenario may be the deadliest of all.] FEMA has been warning the powers that be in this country for YEARS of such an incident. In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness. On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us." |
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SELA - at least $250 million in crucial projects remainedfrom Editor and Publisher full article > New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA. Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside. Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars. |
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Bush's vacation cut short out of heartfelt misery for the victims?read on...
Shamed once again into action, Bush decided to "cut" his vacation by 6 hours, to address the situation...Or so we were told. In fact, he headed out to California, to deliver another "Yay, War" speech, followed by a round or two of golf in Arizona. explanation: |
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 PredictionsIn 2002, the New Orleans Times Picayune published a five-part series on "The Big One" examining what might happen if they did. "[the disaster was not a] surprise to the Army Corps of Engineers. They knew how risky this whole levee system has been and is," "New Orleans Times-Picayune" reporter John McQuaid told CNN on Friday. McQuaid, who wrote the five-part, award-winning series on the vulnerability of the levee system, says "there was sort of a cross-your-fingers mentality." |
The
memory is still fresh of Bush interrupting his vacation to sign the "Terry
Schiavo Bill." ...
This time (hurricane katerina), he sat in his air-conditioned ranch,
for 48 hours, after hurricane landfall, while reports of tradgedy poured
in.