Blame game

[jhetley]

I'm not sure why some people seem to think Bush is more to blame for the planning and aid catastrophe than, say, the mayor of New Orleans or the governor of Louisiana. The latter two are "on the ground" and should have seen impending disaster long before Katrina started swirling -- hell, I could see it from over a thousand miles away. Public television saw it years ago and broadcast it on national TV.

The governor, and to a much greater extent the mayor, are directly responsible to exactly those people at risk. Those two don't have their attention spread over fifty states and assorted territories, as well as international questions. Don't know about Louisiana, but Maine has its own emergency management agency. We have a county agency, and one for our city. I think our city stirred up more emergency storm shelters for our last hurricane than New Orleans did, with less than a tenth the population and far lower threat.

And as far as national policy goes, any disaster plan formed for New Orleans under the Clinton administration would still be valid. Hell, one laid out under _Kennedy_ would still cover the major points -- those levees have been too low and weak for generations.

So yes, blame Bush and his evil henchmen. But don't let the mayor and the governor off the hook. One reason why they are screaming and pointing is so you won't look at _them_.

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

The same can be said for BushCo; in fact, the very TERM "blame game" has Rove written all over it, and you bit. The more they can get decent people arguing over "who's to blame", the less any of the culpability is likely to stick to them.

This is no game, and there's more than enough responsibility to go around.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Oh, f**k off on Rove. Your post is the same political game as his, just the opposite side of the board.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I can shed more light, and less heat, on this. Appreciate that I'm looking at it from the position of someone in a volunteer emergency management position myself.

I have no quarrel with the claim that Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco both could have done better, and by doing better might have reduced the amount of suffering and misery. But, even if they had done everything absolutely perfectly, the bulk of what has gone wrong remains at FEMA's doorstep. Since FEMA is a federal agency, headed by a presidential appointee, it's the president's responsibility. The president could have acted decisively to break through the bureaucratic red tape by an executive order, just as he issued an executive order allowing contractors to pay less than prevailing wage, but he didn't do that. He let the situation get worse, and worse, and worse.

Do you remember when the Marine barracks in Beirut was bombed, and Ronald Reagan went on TV the next day to say, "This was my fault," and then spent the next several days focused on changing the rules to insure it didn't happen again? This entire situation would have benefited greatly from that attitude.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Dunno about Maryland or Louisiana, but I've hung around the edges of "emergency management" here in Maine for years, emergency communications (ham radio) and such. Things like evacuation plans and designating/stocking 300 shelters for 100 people each rather than one for 30,000 come under local planning. Around here, FEMA plays a backup role to MEMA and local actors, as demonstrated in our tangle with a region-wide ice storm a few years ago. Power was out for about a week in the heart of a Maine winter, and the most visible federal presence was Al Gore playing lineman without a license. That response was also fucked. I think it comes with the federal territory.

But, as Ms. Billings says, there's plenty of blame to go around. I'm not interested in letting Bush & Co. off the hook, just keeping the local honchos firmly _on_ it.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I do agree with that.

I have seen rumblings that suggest there are people who think they can maybe make the federal mishaps fade away from the public consciousness if they focus on the local screwups... that worries me.

But yes, there are plenty of screwups, and everyone should step forward and take responsibility.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

It's a matter of public record that the Governors, when everyone was briefed on the impending hurricane, stepped forward and admitted that they were not prepared for something on this scale, and requested federal assistance. The response was "we'll take care of it." I don't think that absolves them of any responsibility, but it does show me that they understood their limitations and sought help in managing the situation.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Yeah, dropping the fate of a million or so people in Big Brother's lap a couple of days before the shit hits the fan really qualifies as upstanding leadership.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Well, to be fair, they were all briefed at the same time on what was predicted to happen. Since they turned to him immediately, it does indicate that they were at least being proactive about it. Everything I've seen in the media indicates that the local governments of the affected areas were in the trenches at the time, actually making the attempt. I certainly think their long range disaster planning was terribly poor, at least in comparison to the local government planning I see in my town.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

"I certainly think their long range disaster planning was terribly poor, at least in comparison to the local government planning I see in my town."

Ayuh. What set me off was a TV snippet of some local official ("parish" something-or-other) bitching about how FEMA wouldn't let his folks unload a flatbed trailer of generators until a FEMA flunky inspected them. Said they had hospitals without power....

Okay. Around here, hospitals and nursing homes and such _have_ to have permanent generator backup power. Hell, our city effing _library_ has a backup generator. I've designed a number of schools with backup power. One of them, off by the New Brunswick border, ran on generator power for two weeks straight after the Great Ice Storm. Emergency storm shelter, Maine style.