Mark Steyns column nails it. Theres plenty of blame to go around, but the people supervising the first responders clearly let them down, not to mention the people they were supposed to protect and serve. Heres the conclusion:
Those levees broke; they failed. And you think about Chicago and San Francisco and Boston and you wonder whats waiting to fail there. The assumption was that after 9/11, big towns and small took stock and identified their weak points. Thats what they told us they were doing, and thats what they were getting big bucks to do. But in New Orleans no one had a plan that addressed levee failure, and no one had a plan for the large percentage of vehicleless citizens whod be unable to evacuate, and no one had a plan to deal with widespread looting. Given that all these local factors are widely known -- New Orleans is a below-sea-level city with high crime and a low rate of automobile ownership -- it makes you wonder how the city would cope with something truly surprising -- like, say, a biological attack.
Oh, well, maybe the 9/11 commission can rename themselves the Katrina Kommission. Back in the real world, Americas enemies will draw many useful lessons from the events of this last week. Will America?
I guess Mary Landrieu will now have to punch Steyn (and, I guess, me).
Steyn is on-target as always. I guess the Democrats in LA were a bit too busy passing out political favors and graft to actually take care of fundamental business. Besides, its so easy to push everything off on Satan-Bush when the crap hits the blower, why worry?
According to the news report whose URL I post below, the Louisiana state government and the New Orleans city government have received three-quarters of a billion dollars in federal emergency-preparedness and terrorism-preparedness grants over the last four years.
Am I the only one wondering what in the world they did with all that money? THREE-QUARTERS OF A BILLION DOLLARS. And the (Democrat) mayor and (Democrat) governor are now whining about "the feds this" and "the feds that." Please.
https://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050905091809990022&ncid=NWS00010000000001
I have been the victim of 2 major hurricanes, the eyes of both Fran and Floyd made landfall literally on my house at the tip of Cape Fear. My take on the Federal response is that it is much better this time around. We have to stop assuming that there is blame to spread around -- in fact, there is no doubt that the blame is centered on the absolute collapse of local and state institutions. My opinion is that the Feds have done a great job and we need to stop assuming otherwise unless proven otherwise; and this is a testable hypothesis. Calculate the amount of personnel, tons of assets, etc, moved in a period of time after State provides authorization. Compare Katrina, with Andrew, Fran, and the Florida hurricanes. If, in fact, the Feds lagged in these statistics, then we can move some of the blame to the Feds, but until then I see nothing but praise for the Federal response