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All kinds of people were wrong about that one but Nagin was the one who owes those people the most and if he had ordered the evacuation on Saturday when he should have most of them would have refused to leave and had to be forced to leave.
The evacuation order WAS issued on Saturday. It and almost every other step was taken right in synch with the IEM Emergency Plan. But FEMA in particular failed to be there when they were supposed to. Even though 40% of the Louisiana National Guard was in Iraq, Blanco had gotten 4,000 troops into the city on Sunday. Knowing she was short, Gov. Richardson of New Mexico offered thousands of his own Guard troops on Sunday, and Blanco accepted. But the move had to be approved first in Washington. The approval didn't come until Wednesday. Those troops were among the ones that arrived on Thursday. Brown didn't order any FEMA staff to New Orleans until mid-day on Monday. He gave them two days to get there.
Could the city and state have performed better? Certainly. Nothing looks as good as it should have looked when seen in retrospect. But the colossal failures were all on the part of the feds. They knew what the plan was and what they were responsible for. When Bush issued the state of emergency declaration on Saturday, that was a green light to FEMA for 100% full speed ahead. Nothing happened. Oddly, books were written about how FEMA's performance during the four Florida hurricanes of 2004 had helped Bush carry that key state in the Presidential election just six weeks later. But by 2005, FEMA had forgotten it all. It was as if they simply weren't paying attention...
"Furthermore, the Corps not only knew, but admitted by 1988, that the MRGO (Mississippi Gulf-River Outlet) threatened human life... and yet it did not act in time to prevent the catastrophic disaster that ensued with the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina."
I blame people living in a low lying coastal area, the degradation of the mangrove swamps, inadequate preparedness by citizens, poor local government evacuation, poor state and federal response to the disaster.
Your depth of thought on a complex topic and absolution of personal responsibility to be well, shallow. Kanye.
The evacuation order WAS issued on Saturday. It and almost every other step was taken right in synch with the IEM Emergency Plan. But FEMA in particular failed to be there when they were supposed to. Even though 40% of the Louisiana National Guard was in Iraq, Blanco had gotten 4,000 troops into the city on Sunday. Knowing she was short, Gov. Richardson of New Mexico offered thousands of his own Guard troops on Sunday, and Blanco accepted. But the move had to be approved first in Washington. The approval didn't come until Wednesday. Those troops were among the ones that arrived on Thursday. Brown didn't order any FEMA staff to New Orleans until mid-day on Monday. He gave them two days to get there.
If Nagin ordered an evacuation on Saturday, why were those buses still sitting in their parking places on Monday. Even Nagin, trying to protect himself, said that there was no way to get them out of the flood waters. No, old Chocolate City Nagin didn't issue that order to evacuate on Saturday because he thought there was a chance the storm would abate and hunkering down as they had always got by with was the way to go.
FEMA is not supposed to be involved in evacuations, but did have all that food and water in Baton Rouge but couldn't get it in after the flood came. I guess watching CNN back then had me totally misinformed but I don't believe that at all.
Could the city and state have performed better? Certainly. Nothing looks as good as it should have looked when seen in retrospect. But the colossal failures were all on the part of the feds. They knew what the plan was and what they were responsible for. When Bush issued the state of emergency declaration on Saturday, that was a green light to FEMA for 100% full speed ahead. Nothing happened. Oddly, books were written about how FEMA's performance during the four Florida hurricanes of 2004 had helped Bush carry that key state in the Presidential election just six weeks later. But by 2005, FEMA had forgotten it all. It was as if they simply weren't paying attention...
That old crap of blaming Bush for all that sounds so much like what our present administration would do. Obama brought my governor, Kathleen Sebelius to DC to be the Secretary of HHS and she really earned that appointment.
Maybe you know about the tornado that hit Greensburg, KS in May of 2007. Well now Sebelius was in town when Bush was there on Tuesday after the storm decimated the small town. Bush couldn't have been 20 miles down the road when she came up with that all our National Guard is in Iraq. One of the worst lies of the whole time. The day before she said that my son was in the city helping retrieve what was left from his employers' farm equipment business and he said there were three solid blocks of huge dump trucks of the National Guard parked end to end. There was no real need for them because contractors and farmers from the surrounding countryside were there in such large numbers that they had to be ordered out of town by the next day after the storm so the NG trucks would be needed.
Sebelius just plain told a political lie and all those of us who live around there, I live 22 miles away, knew it and many of us were surely sorry we had voted for her twice. I was so glad to see her plucked up and taken to DC and very happy to see that she is just as good a liar as she was back then. That old National Guard crap was used by all kinds of executive Dems from states back then but was largely lies and nothing else.
Now I find the politicians guilty of the problems that led to katrina. perhaps if more focus was upon our infrastructure and less on steroids in professional sports?
Or maybe less focus on finger pointing and grand standing for political parties?
Or maybe just maybe if people looked around and asked whoa is this place a good place to live given the natural conditions of said area?
I think its pretty stupid to live in an area that gets flooded just about the same time every calandar year.
If Nagin ordered an evacuation on Saturday, why were those buses still sitting in their parking places on Monday.
It isn't a case of "if". Google any history of Katrina. The Saturday evacuation order is a simple fact that every impartial source will report. It's also a fact that the city did not own any school buses at all, and that no school buses were any part of the emergency plan. FEMA was a part of the emergency plan -- but only on paper, it turned out.
Or maybe just maybe if people looked around and asked whoa is this place a good place to live given the natural conditions of said area? I think its pretty stupid to live in an area that gets flooded just about the same time every calandar year.
People have always lived in the New Orleans area. They always will. It's a simple matter of economic geography. The area constitutes one of the major ports of the world. Not living there is not an option. All of the actual options deal with how to live there in the most reasonable and efficient way we can, given the topography and the area's typical weather patterns.
New Orleans was and is a city full of poor whites and lot of black people. Why would anyone expect the Republican administration run by the village idiot to bother rescuing people that voted Democrat?
The Corps of Engineers was aware of the possibilities of a disastrous flood, they do know and understand Old Man River, but simply could not get the Republican dominated congress to spend the money to protect the city. Money was better spent on politically connected military suppliers and mercenaries.
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