Tuesday, August 29, 2006
One year later
One year ago I sat at my computer all night & watched radar images of a monster storm approaching & hitting the Gulf coast. The images were alarming even to this online weather junky. I briefly wondered what the President was doing. W. is an early riser. I'd supposed that as long as he had decided to stay in Texas, he'd at least focused his attention on the unfolding catastrophe. There had been days of warning that Katrina was coming. At first, it seemed New Orleans itself had escaped the brunt & might get through it. But a wide stretch of coast from Louisiana to Alabama was being devastated.
There was good & bad in this. One could hardly select a worse city in America for a natural disaster than New Orleans. Not only was it a bowl lying mostly below sea level, it was also a poor city, its government & that of the state notoriously weak & even corrupt. Social services were mediocre in the best of times. As for the federal response, hadn't Bill Clinton built FEMA into a first rate, professionally managed agency? All Bush had to do was leave it be. Maybe Homeland Security & the crony appointees had the sense to let the pros run FEMA while they just kicked back & enjoyed the perks of their offices. Surely the coast governors were communicating with the feds, & the National Guard of those states had been summoned & strategically positioned to move quickly where they were needed. That was only logical. Hurricane Andrew had taught everyone a big lesson. The destruction & suffering in the first few days would be tough, maybe even impossible to alleviate, but if all the pieces were in place, the distressed areas would know the rest of America was coming to their rescue. There would be hope.
Then the reports from St. Louis Bay, Long Beach, Gulfport, Biloxi, Orange Grove, Slidell. Lake Ponchartrain kept rising, the surge topped levees then broke them. Mayor Nagin was losing control - he never had it under control - the evacuation of New Orleans had gone badly. Should we have been surprised by that? Governor Blanco was in meltdown. This was too much for them. The feds needed to step in immediately. What is wrong with FEMA? Who is directing the Guard? Where are the buses? The food trucks & water tankers? What is going on at the Dome & the Convention Center? Don't forget Biloxi. Who the hell is Michael Brown? Where is the President? The water is rising. Why are those people still there? This cannot be happening.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
There was good & bad in this. One could hardly select a worse city in America for a natural disaster than New Orleans. Not only was it a bowl lying mostly below sea level, it was also a poor city, its government & that of the state notoriously weak & even corrupt. Social services were mediocre in the best of times. As for the federal response, hadn't Bill Clinton built FEMA into a first rate, professionally managed agency? All Bush had to do was leave it be. Maybe Homeland Security & the crony appointees had the sense to let the pros run FEMA while they just kicked back & enjoyed the perks of their offices. Surely the coast governors were communicating with the feds, & the National Guard of those states had been summoned & strategically positioned to move quickly where they were needed. That was only logical. Hurricane Andrew had taught everyone a big lesson. The destruction & suffering in the first few days would be tough, maybe even impossible to alleviate, but if all the pieces were in place, the distressed areas would know the rest of America was coming to their rescue. There would be hope.
Then the reports from St. Louis Bay, Long Beach, Gulfport, Biloxi, Orange Grove, Slidell. Lake Ponchartrain kept rising, the surge topped levees then broke them. Mayor Nagin was losing control - he never had it under control - the evacuation of New Orleans had gone badly. Should we have been surprised by that? Governor Blanco was in meltdown. This was too much for them. The feds needed to step in immediately. What is wrong with FEMA? Who is directing the Guard? Where are the buses? The food trucks & water tankers? What is going on at the Dome & the Convention Center? Don't forget Biloxi. Who the hell is Michael Brown? Where is the President? The water is rising. Why are those people still there? This cannot be happening.
