What happened to Emergency Preparedness?

[esskreemr]

Coast Guard Chief steps up to take over the front-line response:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/09/kat...act/index.html

[L.O.A.S.]

In New Orleans, did we just see what would happen with a few well-placed nuclear bombs?

If New Orleans did get nuked, I doubt we'd have so much reporters and politicians going in for pictures and photo ops.

It's obvious that the USDHS is not even remotely capable of handling a major event.

You would think they would have their act together by now, especially with all the past experience gained from similar city leveling catastrophes.

From a National standpoint, FEMA and USDHS's reaction should be held to closer scrutiny, after all, it's not going to be the Mayor of New Orleans or the Governor of Louisiana reacting to a biological attack on New York, Miami, or Los Angelos.

Isn't it the Mayor and Governor who control the "front line troops" for these situations, namely the police, fire department, national guard, civil defense?

Are there really that many people who seem to be willing to look at this, to look at the chain of failures and say "Hey, I'm ok with this. Everybody did what they could. We don't need to change the system." If that is the case, I can honestly say for the first time that I can remember that I'm ashamed to be an American.

I don' t think there are much people that are okay with this. Of course there should be an after action review to assess the good and bad. The question is when is the appropriate time to do so, and the manner in which this takes place. Too much politics right now.

[esskreemr]

I'm sure this won't be enough for the Republican apologists, but I thought it was relevant to this particular thread:

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Nonpar...nece_0913.html
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report Tuesday afternoon asserting that Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco took the necessary and timely steps needed to secure disaster relief from the federal government, RAW STORY has learned.

The report found that:

*All necessary conditions for federal relief were met on August 28. Pursuant to Section 502 of the Stafford Act, "[t]he declaration of an emergency by the President makes Federal emergency assistance available," and the President made such a declaration on August 28. The public record indicates that several additional days passed before such assistance was actually made available to the State;

*The Governor must make a timely request for such assistance, which meets the requirements of federal law. The report states that "[e]xcept to the extent that an emergency involves primarily Federal interests, both declarations of major disaster and declarations of emergency must be triggered by a request to the President from the Governor of the affected state";

*The Governor did indeed make such a request, which was both timely and in compliance with federal law. The report finds that "Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco requested by letter dated August 27, 2005...that the President declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period from August 26, 2005 and continuing pursuant to [applicable Federal statute]" and "Governor Blanco's August 27,2005 request for an emergency declaration also included her determination...that 'the incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of disaster."

There are still more questions to be answered. This is just another piece in the puzzle.

Link to report (pdf file):
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democ...arept91205.pdf

[jeff]

Here's another cute twist: the FEMA web page citizens were supposed to go to for help was written to only be accessible via Microsoft Internet Explorer. So, if you had a Mac (or otherwise forbade IE) you were SOL. This came from one of my techie periodicals, which I've tossed so I unfortunately cannot provide links, sorry.