cellio | government bungling

I am angry with my government. It's been a slow burn over the last week and a half, with not-infrequent stories of bungling in Katrina's wake by (mostly) Homeland Security and/or FEMA, but reading these two first-hand stories today pushed me over the edge.

The first describes how a group of refugees tried to leave New Orleans peacefully, only to be robbed and threatened by law-enforcement agents. They finally got out after getting some media attention. Lots more people could have been out much earlier if there hadn't been guards posted at the borders keeping refugees in and relief supplies out.

That was largely a problem of local authorities (aggrivated by lack of federal response). But FEMA itself is no better. The owners of a private camp that is being used for refugees were not allowed to bring in food and clothing for those refugees. They have been kicked off of their own property; meanwhile, according to this article, the refugees, once they arrive, are not allowed to leave. What gives?

My city volunteered a week ago to take in hundreds of refugees if they want to come. We have buses ready to drive down and get them. All we need is permission from FEMA. So far, no go. FEMA says no one wants to come, but I find that difficult to believe.

I no longer have the links for stories I've seen in the last few days about rescue workers sitting around in hotels waiting to be allowed to do something, and of the truckloads of water and food that were stopped at the border, or of the various private efforts that have been hindered from the get-go, or of how FEMA foresaw this problem years ago and did nothing. But that's ok; you probably saw them too. This ineptitude is not news to anyone, I suspect.

I am certainly no fan of large government. I think our federal government, in particular, is bloated and inefficient and often does not have the best interests of its citizens as priorities. But so long as we have this level of government, it is unconscionable that this disaster has been managed so badly. "Unconscionable" is mild; dare I say instead "grossly negligent"?

I am not among those who routinely criticizes the current government. I'm not a fan by any means, but I haven't gotten as worked up as many others I know. But it seems that the folks running the Katrina effort have done just about everything in their power to make the situation worse. How is it that we could get aid to tsunami victims more quickly than we could to Katrina victims? The blood of everyone who's died down there in the last week is on their hands.

Now, finally, stuff is starting to happen -- almost two weeks late. That better not be deemed good enough when Congress gets around to looking at what happened. And it won't be good enough if they just sack the head of FEMA and make no other changes. He may be an incompetent twat, but one incompetent twat can't single-handedly screw up this badly. There must be structural problems too.

(Thanks to magid and brokengoose for the links.)

Edited to add: This just in from siderea: timeline of the 1906 San-Francisco earthquake, for comparison.

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When they finally add up the body count, I hope they figure out how many died from the initial flood and how many died from incompetance.

I think it was the president of Jefferson Parrish who coined the phrase "murdered by bureaucracy" ... a large number of those people are not victims of Katrina, they're victims of their own government. :(

When they finally add up the body count, I hope they figure out how many died from the initial flood and how many died from incompetance.

I think by then it will be -- conveniently -- impossible to tell the difference.

I think we probably have the forensic technology to handle it on a case-by-case situation, but with this many bodies, I doubt they'll even try to sort it all out. :\

I don't think it's feasible to do in detail, especially if you count those who died because of a poor evacuation plan as part of those killed by negligance. In many cases, it won't be possible to tell whether a given person would have left if they'd had the opportunity.

In many cases, it will be possible to tell, and it should be possible to make a reasonable estimate of the proportions for those you aren't sure of.

On the other hand, it should be easy enough to tell who died of deprivation in the Superdome.

near as I can tell the only folks doing a good job is the US Coast Guard. From what I heard as soon as the sky over NOLA cleared there were orange helicopters up and working. The problem is that the Coast Guard is a smallish agency and ofcourse they can't bring all of what they have to NOLA as they need to keep some of it on stand by around the rest of the country.

Also Israel has offered to send an army medical unit, and we were told "NO thanks just send stuff".

I've read news stories of other international aid that has apparently been offered without response, too. I hadn't heard about this one.

the people around me are horrified by the fact that when helicopters were coming to bring aid to the superdome, they were being shot at.

I believe one person said "WTF? They should have shot back" On being told the aid helicopters were unarmed he said "then they should have gone back and gotten marines. Yes, that would have been a few less people that could have been taken each trip, but those shooters would have learned to leave the aid helicopters alone"

Shooting at the relief helicoptors is stupid. Mind-numbingly stupid. So stupid that I have to ask whether we got the whole story there. (I haven't seen any videos, just text stories.)

More generally, even if only 0.1% of the population is violent crackpots, that's still enough people -- when talking about hundreds of thousands -- to cause some trouble. Don't we know how to protect against that sort of thing without punishing the 99.9%? (Ok, I'm making up these numbers, but you get the idea.)

According to the CBC, the "shooting at helicopters" remains unconfirmed. They haven't been able to track down anyone in a helicopter that was actually shot at.

I grow suspicious that this is an Urban Legend about mean nasty ghetto people.

Have sent a request to those from whom I heard this information for more details as to source.

See akitrom's commment. And then please watch this, especially the part at the end:

http://www.wafb.com/Global/SearchResults.asp?qu=charmaine+neville&x=13&y=10

I can't get the right software to load in order to watch the clip. What's it about?

It's a first-person account by a black female refugee. Hers is but one of many accounts of helicopters refusing to stop to pick anyone up, at least, anyone black. She mentions that she believes some refugees tried shooting, not at helicopters, but in the air to try to get their attention, in the hope that they would hear what, apparently, they could not see.

I read an account from the Superdome where it was claimed that the security personnel amused themselves by throwing glass bottles at the crowd, but I don't remember which one it was. I think it was the Montreal tourist one.

As far as paranoid goes: I've started wondering if FEMA wasn't designed to fuck up this way, so that people will start thinking, "Government aid sucks -- let's gut the Federal bureaucracy."

My mother's even more paranoid: she's wondering if this wasn't a real convenient way to get rid of a whole bunch of poor black folk.

But Barak Obama probably has the right of it: this is simply the result of the government simply not considering, or caring, about folks who didn't have the ability to load up their comfy SUV with $100 of gas, and drive to a hotel that they could pay with on their credit card.

Do you have a source for the Obama quote? I'm not asking because I disagree...

http://obama.senate.gov/statement/050906-statement_of_senator_barack_obama_on_hurricane_katrina_relief_efforts/

Not much argument here. What happened to my beloved New Orleans and the other affected areas of the Gulf Coast is first and foremost reflective of the failure of state and local officials. However, the federal government and its agencies (especially FEMA, which I firmly believe is unconstitutional and oughtn't exist) covered themselves in, well, something other than glory.

The bottom line is heartbreakingly simple. Thousands of people are dead through no fault of their own.

Getting "connection refused" on the FEMA link. Perhaps it's become so widely cited that the server is overloaded.

And, gee, The Red Cross was prohibited from going into the city to do rescue work, and now Dubya is contracting The Salvation Army to do things that The Red Cross could do better - gee, think there's an angenda at work here to make people acept faith-based initiatives as the norm they can count on?

government bungling

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