government bungling

[cellio]

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.

Comments

Re: and then on the other side

[cellio]

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.)