Tag: Hurricane Katrina

Missing Persons: In the course of the largest evacuation in U.S. history, federal agencies this week have relocated some 235,000 people into 750 emergency shelters outside the sticken Gulf Coast region. But nobody knows how many refugees have actually left the region, according to a report from GovExec.com.

“We were trying to keep tabs on those numbers in the first couple of days but it’s become increasingly challenging to put precise numbers on the evacuations,” said DHS spokesman Russ Knocke.

He said federal operations still are primarily focused on saving lives and facilitating evacuations, primarily in and around New Orleans, which was the hardest-hit area.

Meanwhile, the Transportation Department is coordinating a flood of relief supplies arriving in the region by truck, plane and ships. At the same time, the department is managing the largest airlift ever conducted in the U.S. to move hurricane victims away from the affected areas.

And, lest you continue to think that Michael Chertoff is a bumbling fool, this quote will dispel any lingering doubt you may harbor about his keen grasp of the overall situation:

“I will tell you the challenges we have ahead of us are that we are going to have a lot of evacuees,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “Once we get them into temporary shelter, we have to deal with the issue of more long-term shelter, jobs, education, health care, what do we do to bring up the infrastructure again, how do we drain the city, how do we clean up any environmental hazards. There are huge tasks ahead of us.”

Duh!

Indifference: In yesterday’s Washington Post, Harold Meyerson wrote a scathing op-ed about the Bushies and their inability to a) do the right thing or b) take the blame for screwing things up:

We’re not number one. We’re not even close.

By which measures, precisely, do we lead the world? Caring for our countrymen? You jest. A first-class physical infrastructure? Tell that to New Orleans. Throwing so much money at the rich that we’ve got nothing left over to promote the general welfare? Now you’re talking.

The problem goes beyond the fact that we can’t count on our government to be there for us in catastrophes. It’s that a can’t-do spirit, a shouldn’t-do spirit, guides the men who run the nation. Consider the congressional testimony of Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign manager, who assumed the top position at FEMA in 2001. He characterized the organization as “an oversized entitlement program,” and counseled states and cities to rely instead on “faith-based organizations . . . like the Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster Service.”

Is it any surprise, then, that the administration’s response to the devastation in New Orleans is of a piece with its response to the sacking of Baghdad once our troops arrived? “Stuff happens” was the way Don Rumsfeld described the destruction of Baghdad’s hospitals, universities and museums while American soldiers stood around. Now stuff has happened in New Orleans, too, even as FEMA was turning away offers of assistance. This is the stuff-happens administration. And it’s willing, apparently, to sacrifice any claim America may have to national greatness rather than inconvenience the rich by taxing them to build a more secure nation.
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If you have a family member who happens not to be human, you will be horrified to know that RIGHT NOW in New Orleans, the government is forcing people who are rescued with their dogs, cats and other pets to abandon these family members forever when they board the buses to leave town.

This video from Oprah has a happy ending.

My feline-Americans dependents are my children. I’d rather cut off my arm – or take a bullet from a FEMA agent – than leave them behind.

This policy must be changed for future crises.

Meanwhile, volunteer groups are moving in to collect the animals left behind and take them to shelters where they can be fed and cared for and hopefully reunited with their families.

Here is a partial list of these groups who need our support immdiately:

• ASPCA
• Petfinder.com
• NOLA.com Pet Rescue
• LSU Veterinary School Resources
• Humane Society

MoveOn.org is mounting a petition to expose and stop the Bush administration’s attempts to lay the Katrina disaster at the feet of Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco. Here’s a true timeline of events:

Friday, Aug. 26: Gov. Kathleen Blanco declares a state of emergency in Louisiana and requests troop assistance.

Saturday, Aug. 27: Gov. Blanco asks for federal state of emergency. A federal emergency is declared giving federal officials the authority to get involved.

Sunday, Aug. 28: Mayor Ray Nagin orders mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. President Bush warned of levee failure by National Hurricane Center. National Weather Service predicts area will be “uninhabitable” after hurricane arrives. First reports of water toppling over the levee appear in local paper.

Monday, Aug. 29: Levee breaches and New Orleans begins to fill with water, Bush travels to Arizona and California to discuss Medicare. FEMA chief finally responds to federal emergency, dispatching employees, but giving them two days to arrive on site.

Tuesday, Aug. 30: Mass looting reported, security shortage cited in New Orleans. Pentagon says that local authorities have adequate National Guard units to handle hurricane needs despite governor’s earlier request. Bush returns to Crawford for final day of vacation. TV coverage is around-the-clock hurricane news.

Wednesday, Aug. 31: Tens of thousands trapped in New Orleans at convention center and Superdome in “medieval” conditions. President Bush finally returns to Washington to establish a task force to coordinate federal response. Local authorities run out of food and water supplies.

Thursday, Sept. 1: New Orleans descends into anarchy. New Orleans mayor issues a “Desperate SOS” to federal government. Bush claims nobody predicted the breach of the levees despite multiple warnings and his earlier briefing.

Friday, Sept. 2: Karl Rove begins Bush administration campaign to blame state and local officials — despite their repeated requests for help. Bush stages a photo-op — diverting Coast Guard helicopters and crew to act as backdrop for cameras. Levee repair work orchestrated for president’s visit and White House press corps.

Saturday, Sept. 3: Bush blames state and local officials. Senior administration official (possibly Rove) caught in a lie claiming Gov. Blanco had not declared a state of emergency or asked for help.

Monday, Sept. 5: New Orleans officials begin to collect their dead.

(Adapted from: Katrina Timeline, http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/ )

No sense of shame: There is no bottom to the depth of the corruption of the conservatives who have seized control of the United States:

The House majority leader late Tuesday tried to deflect criticism of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina by saying “the emergency response system was set up to work from the bottom up,” then announced a short time later that House hearings examining that response had been canceled.

Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said House Republican leaders instead want a joint House-Senate panel set up to conduct a “congressional review” of the issue.

Tempers flared Tuesday during a contentious closed-door meeting between House members and Cabinet secretaries in charge of directing Katrina relief efforts. A Republican representative stood up and said, “All of you deserve failing grades. The response was a disaster,” CNN was told by lawmakers emerging from the meeting.

But DeLay countered that assessment later in a news conference by saying that the onus for responding to emergencies fell to local officials.

“It’s the local officials trying to handle the problem. When they can’t handle the problem, they go to the state, and the state does what they can to, and if they need assistance from FEMA and the federal government they ask for it and it’s delivered,” DeLay said.

Update: A friend of ours makes an excellent point. These poll results do not include any of the roughly 2 million evacuees and victims of the storm.

Good news for Rove: A new CNN poll shows that Karl Rove has an excellent opportunity to change the public perception of the Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. About a quarter of respondents are still uncertain whom to blame for the calamitous response to the hurricane.

The buck never lands of the desk of President Bush, of course. So Team Rove is aggressively going after the hearts and minds of the Undecideds, targetting them with a “Spin ‘N Smear” campaign designed to reassign blame for thousands of deaths resulting from Hurricane Katrina to local Democratic officials, including New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

In the poll, 31 percent blame the president and federal agencies – however the poll split the two Republican groups apart, with 13 percent blaming President Bush and 18 percent blaming federal agencies.

State & local officials – the Democrats – were grouped together – 25 percent blamed them for poor response. And a whopping 38 percent said no one is to blame.

As proof the public enables Mr. Bush’s Teflon coating, 63 percent said they do not believe anyone at federal agencies responsible for handling emergencies should be fired as a result.

The worst news in the poll may be this: 79 percent said they believe gas companies are taking advantage of the situation and charging unfair prices to consumers as a result of the hurricane.

Millionaire huckster: For most of last week, the FEMA website featured links to just three disaster-relief organizations to which concerned citizens could send cash donations to help victims of Hurricane Katrina: the Red Cross, America’s Second Harvest (a national coalition of food banks) and Operation Blessing.

Operation Blessing is charity run by televangelist and Republican operative Pat Robertson, the multi-millionaire a co-founder of the Christian Coalition, a GOP front organization.

Perhaps the obviously clueless folks at FEMA are unaware of Robertson’s shady dealings with African dictators, and the way he has used Operation Blessing to build the fortune he has made from diamond mining:

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“You can’t let a crime scene grow cold. You’ve got to start collecting and analyzing the evidence while [it] is still fresh … And make no mistake, what we saw go down — and not go down — in New Orleans was definitely a crime… a crime that is in many ways still in progress. Sixty percent of the city remains underwater; up to 160,000 homes in the state of Louisiana have been submerged or destroyed; 60 to 90 million tons of solid waste need to cleaned up; experts warn that it make take years to fully restore clean drinking water; and an outbreak of vibrio vulnificus — a cholera-like bacterial disease — has been reported among some Katrina evacuees.”

— Arianna Huffington