The WSJ has a piece on how misinformation hampered the federal response to Hurricane Katrina:
For the Federal Emergency Management Agency, rumors of lawlessness simply delayed on-the-ground relief efforts and turned even routine errands into a cumbersome exercise. One official, who was posted at the Superdome, said federal rescuers and doctors were required to secure armed escorts even for short trips across the street.
To be sure, the situation in New Orleans did appear dire at times and looting was common, gunshots rang out in the city and bands of dazed survivors did spill out in the streets looking for food and shelter. A handful of people died at the Convention Center and the Superdome and at least one or two of those deaths appear to have been murders.
But some of the most spectacular looting — the sacking of the Wal-Mart in the lower Garden District and the summary emptying of the Office Depot Uptown, appear to have been initiated not by organized bands of thieves but police and City Hall bureaucrats intent on securing supplies.
Moreover, while confusion reigned in many areas of the city, some places were more tranquil. New Orleans Coroner Frank Minyard, whose forensic team has conducted scores of autopsies on the 650 or so bodies recovered from New Orleans says he has run across only seven gunshot victims. “Seven gunshots isn’t even a good Saturday night in New Orleans,” Dr. Minyard says.
The media’s hysterical overreaction to events in New Orleans severely hampered rescue efforts and sent rescue personnel off to deal with nonexistent threats. The local officials in New Orleans were utterly incompetent, and the city’s utterly dysfunctional bureaucracy ensured that what disaster plans that existed weren’t followed.
President Bush’s idea of further federalizing disaster response is a mistake. Federal authorities can provide valuable resources, but they are not first responders. First responders need to know the area, they need to know the threats, they need to know what resources they have, and they need to know the people in charge. The 82nd Airborne can’t just swoop in and expect to know what resources to put where. That’s not their job. That is the job of local authorities, and unlike New Orleans, most local authorities are better equipped to deal with disaster situations. That’s what they’re trained and equipped to do.
A one-size fits all approach won’t work. In fact, it will make things worse. The response of FEMA to the disaster in New Orleans wasn’t adequate, but given the incredible challenges faced, it was hardly a signal that our entire disaster preparedness system was broken.
The Right Way And The Wrong Way
Further federalizing disaster response is a grave mistake. A Washington-based bureaucracy can’t respond with the agility of local government, nor do they have the relevant knowledge and specialization. Further federalizing disaster response will only encourage the kind of sloppy preparedness that led to the problems in New Orleans.
For instance, Florida’s hurricane response protocols should be a national model. Begun under former Gov. Lawton Chiles and continued under Gov. Bush, Florida’s emergency management system is second-to-none in dealing with the frequent threat of hurricanes. The state provides detailed training to local officials, takes immediate control of media resources to get accurate information to the people, and encourages a culture of responsiveness at all levels of government. In last year’s spate of hurricanes, Florida’s disaster response protocols worked flawlessly to minimize the damage and help the state recover from the second the storm ended.
Plans like those utilized in Florida for hurricanes and New York City for terrorism and other disasters should be used as models for municipal disaster planning. The elements of a successful disaster plan are fairly basic:
- Training: Cities need to actively train first responders to deal with disasters. In 1989, the Sioux City, Iowa had recently undertaken an extensive training effort to get local officials prepared in the event of an air disaster. When United Airlines Flight 232 had a major flight emergency and crashed at the local airport, local officials did a brilliant job of coordinating a rapid response that saved many lives. They had a triage system in place. They had ambulance pre-positioned. Proper training at all levels of government is crucial to a disaster response – and local governments must assume that federal help will not come within the crucial first 48 hours of a disaster, especially a wide scale disaster like a hurricane..
- Coordination: Municipal, county, and state officials need to have a clearly-defined chain of command, clearly defined roles, and must be able to work seamlessly together. Each agency of local government needs to know precisely what they need to do what who they need to coordinate with to achieve that objective. A disaster is no time for turf struggles or mixed messages.
- Public Information: Local governments need to have precise and exact instructions for what to do in case of a disaster. Those messages need to be simple, and they need to send people to places where there has been adequate pre-planning. The idiotic decision to send New Orleans residents to “shelters” where there had been no prior planning for taking in evacuees was a major mistake. The media confusion over what to do led to further problems. If the disaster plan says that buses will run 48 hours before a hurricane to evacuate residents, then those buses need to be there 48 hours before exactly where the plan says they’re to be. Hospitals, nursing homes, and other facilities need to have concrete disaster plans, and each employee should be trained in executing those plans. The public needs accurate information about what to do, or chaos will result. Local government must not make promises and then not fulfill them.
The wrong way is to assume that the federal calvary will ride in to the rescue and make everything go away. It’s not their jobs, and even the most efficient federal response can’t by nature be a first-response role. President Bush needs to make it very clear that local authorities who do not engage in proper disaster response training run the risk of losing federal funds until they do. FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security should work together in having local officials who have demonstrated knowledge in disaster response train other local officials to do the same.
In a disaster, preparedness is key. New Orleans was not prepared for disaster, and the mistakes they made cost lives and made the already difficult task of dealing with a hurricane and major flooding even more difficult. However, learning the wrong set of lessons from these mistakes would only compound them. Federalizing disaster response is a massive cop-out. The military is stretched thin enough as it is without the strain of being a disaster response team – and the legal issues of a larger military role are troubling at best. Local governments need to understand that they bear the burden of first response, and the only way to prevent the chaos we saw in New Orleans is for them to do their jobs.
“The media’s hysterical overreaction to events in New Orleans”
What a sickening, but all too common, attempt by the “party of personal responsibility” to deflect blame for their own party’s wholesale fuck-up onto the backs of everybody but their fourth grade teacher. Just another example why today’s conservatives make me physically ill. The real “hysterical overreaction” came from the FEMA employees aimlessly running around the Department of Homeland Security building trying to figure out who their boss was while water did to New Orleans what fire did to Atlanta.
“The wrong way is to assume that the federal calvary will ride in to the rescue and make everything go away. It’s not their jobs,”
The hell it isn’t! We pay taxes to FEMA for emergency relief services, not to provide jobs to Bush administration hacks with padded resumes and backgrounds in horse shows. Unless you’re advocating that we eliminate FEMA altogether, your statement is a travesty of unconscionable stupidity. There is no way Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco, even under the best of circumstances, could have handled an emergency of this magnitude without a federal government takeover.
We’re really gonna get a taste of the ugly reality Bush has created for this country in the Health and Human Services sector if this “bird flu” makes it to our shores. While Europe has worked furiously to secure vaccines to protect their people from this pandemic, Bush has worked furiously to protect his people from the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Only now, following months of insistence by HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, are we starting to move in the direction of ordering more vaccines that the drop-in-the-bucket six million we have now. The really scary part is that until the Jay Redings of this world are flat on their back with the “bird flu” we can expect them to blame Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco for “ineffective planning” when we start filling thousands of bodybags with bird flu victims. After all, emergency relief and protection “is not the federal government’s job.” What unimaginably disgusting people you are!
Cut the self-righteous bullshit.
The former Chief of Police for New Orleans said the exact same thing. If the media did its job, where were the “30-40” bodies in the cooler at the Convention Center? The media misreported events on the ground, which caused the police to try to react to things that weren’t there. The media didn’t get the word out.
The only thing you partisan hacks care about is putting this all in the hands of the Bush Administration. That’s it. You don’t give a damn about actually improving homeland security, this is just another partisan bludgeon to you.
FEMA IS NOT DESIGNED TO BE A FIRST RESPONDER. IT NEVER WAS. Not under Clinton, not under Bush 41, not ever. FEMA’s job is a supporting role to help local governments clean up afterwards.
And if FEMA is to blame, why is New Orleans the only place that seemed to have these problems? The storm effected an area the size of England, and yet New Orleans was one of the few places where the response was completely fucked up at nearly all levels – despite the fact that the levees didn’t break until after the storm had passed.
Bullshit. Pure and total bullshit. If local authorities can’t do their jobs, then they need to be replaced. Again, FEMA was never designed as a first-response agency.
Which I never said. Which is a complete and utter misreading of my piece. The federal government is not a first responder. They’re not set up that way, and they don’t have the logistical ability to do so. Even in the case of a hurricane, you can only pre-position supplies so much unless you want your food aid floating in the Gulf and your rescue workers in dire need of rescue.
No, instead we get Mark the Armchair General who doesn’t have a lick of experience in disaster preparedness and training. (And yes, before you ask, I do) trying to dictate how the federal government should magically be able to respond to everything and anything rather than the local officials who are already there, know the area, and whose job it is to deal with these problems.
Jesus, you’re smarter than this, or at least so I thought.
“If the media did its job, where were the “30-40″ bodies in the cooler at the Convention Center? ”
This is such a stupid charge. The media was merely echoing reports of the violence going on in the Superdome and Convention Center and I never heard any direct claims by John Roberts that 40 corpses were lying in the halls of the Superdome, only “reported” claims. Should the media have not said anything about the reported violence out of fear they’d be overstating it? That’s a curious suggestion coming from the same group of people who invaded a country based on reported WMD’s that were proven never to exist. Perhaps next time, the media should not report on administration claims of a foreign power’s possible weapons program. After all, it may very well prove to be “overstated” just like the body count in the Superdome.
“The only thing you partisan hacks care about is putting this all in the hands of the Bush Administration”
Right from the beginning, when everyone was blaming Bush, my first post on this board recognized that every level of government screwed this up. Two weeks ago, it appeared as though the right was gonna face up to that fact as well. Shoulda known better though….now they’re playing their usual games of deflection, laying disproportionate heaps of the blame on everybody but the administration. But to twist and weave a scenario where the media is to blame for the post-Katrina meltdown should be an embarrassment even to you guys’ already impossibly clunky standards.
“FEMA’s job is a supporting role to help local governments clean up afterwards”
Yet there doesn’t seem to be anybody satisfied with their performance even at doing that, except of course Michael Brown…and apparently you. As for FEMA not designed to be a first responder, James Lee Witt took a very intensive and pre-emptive role during the Grand Forks floods eight years and is widely credited for minimizing the impact of that disaster. Considering the Feds knew exactly what was gonna happen to New Orleans if a major hurricane hit, the same should have been done there. In your mind, however, I suspect you believe Witt should be in prison right now for stepping out of the bounds of FEMA’s mandate and saving Grand Forks from becoming what New Orleans has become.
“why is New Orleans the only place that seemed to have these problems?”
Gee, that’s a tough one. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that it’s a major city situated in a hole next to the ocean and has more than 100,000 dirt-poor people with no means to get out of town. On the other hand, Trent Lott’s neighbors on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi’s biggest concern was whether to drive away from the storm in their Lexus or their Cadillac.
The rest of the Gulf Coast is above sea level and hurricane waters receded….they didn’t combine with gas mains and sewer lines because they’re below sea level. After a full month of news reports about this topic, I would have at least thought you’d understand the geography of the region. Guess you were too preoccupied thinking of ways to save the Bush administration’s poll numbers.
“the local officials who are already there, know the area, and whose job it is to deal with these problems.”
If local and state officials in some of the poorest places in the country are expected to single-handedly deal with a crisis of Katrina magnitude for a week until FEMA is able to find the road into town, you’re gonna have a damn hard time finding anybody willing to take on the thankless responsibility of public service in these areas. Any wonder why this region of the country has the most corrupt local and state government in the country?
I never said I was.
No doubt Witt did a good job (and I’d be all for him returning as head of FEMA), but the magnitude of New Orleans was much greater. For instance, Grand Forks wasn’t in the middle of an area of devastation hundreds of miles wide.
Planes and helicopters couldn’t get to the area until the storm passed. Heavy airlift can’t happen on a runway that’s covered with debris. Sea-launched aircraft have to be brought in range, and that takes time. They couldn’t be pre-positioned without putting the ships in danger from the storm. Boats can’t get through waters that are covered with debris. Trucks can’t get through highways with downed power lines and trees covering them.
New Orleans was cut off to any major logistical movement. Had the city followed its own plan and used the dozens of city buses they said they would, many people who ended up stranded could have been brought out of the city.
As I’ve said a million times before, FEMA didn’t do a great job. New Orelans and Louisiana state governments didn’t do their jobs at all. If you think that’s protecting the Bush Administration, then you’re completely and utterly wrong. Those are the facts. If you don’t like them, too bloody bad.
They had a means of getting out of town. But the incompetence of local city officials ensured that the means for their escape sat and flooded rather than being used, as their own plan dictated.
That’s their job. If they can’t do their job, then they need to be replaced. The government can’t usually get any significant amount of material support until 24-48 hours. In the case of Katrina, that support did come within 24-48 hours, but it came very slowly due to a combination of logistical problems and bureaucracy. The bureaucracy can be fixed. The logistics can’t, unless you know of someone who’s evented a transporter to beam supplies down.
Maybe because Blanco’s a Democratic partisan hack, and New Orleans has been run by a corrupt Democratic political machine since the days of Andrew Jackson? Although Nagin made a few steps to try to clean up the city, two centuries of Democratic mismanagement, incompetence, and theft have probably doomed the city.
One more thing about FEMA “not being a first responder.” Even after James Lee Witt, they had no problem securing everything Florida needed (and often more) before their four hurricanes last year. Isn’t it crazy how much more efficient an organization can be in a key swing state governed by the President’s brother in a hotly-contested election year???
“Had the city followed its own plan and used the dozens of city buses they said they would, many people who ended up stranded could have been brought out of the city.”
The key word in that sentence is “many”. Dozens of buses….100,000 poor people. The math doesn’t add up. Nagin’s inability to even get the ball rolling on the evacuation plan is inexcusable, but the idea that the city could have been successfully evacuated with the resources on hand is also a pipe dream. At best, half of the remaining residents would have been evacuated, but a much broader resistance would have likely ensued by stubborn holdouts, creating a sense of lawlessness in the streets the day before the hurricane hit that Nagin would have also been blamed for.
“They had a means of getting out of town.”
They had a means to get SOME out of town….and they should have….just like FEMA should have pre-positioned supplies there the same way they did with Florida the year before.
“That’s their job. If they can’t do their job, then they need to be replaced. ”
Even the most loyal state or local resident is gonna be remiss to govern a city or state located in a region at such a high-risk for natural disasters when the right-wing ideologues running the Federal government are telling them they’re on their own. Louisiana and Mississippi’s biggest mistake is their predictable political allegiance in national elections. If Bush didn’t know his party had a lock on their votes in 2006 and 2008, I’m pretty sure they would have gotten the Florida treatment circa 2004.
“Maybe because Blanco’s a Democratic partisan hack,”
She’s a conservative Democrat. “Democratic partisan hacks” haven’t gotten elected in Louisiana in quite some time.
And let’s not forget that as corrupt as Louisiana government is (they rank third nationally as the most corrupt state), Mississippi is worst, ranking first in the nation for political corruption. The current GOP assertion that they can and should expect even less federal aid for inevitable future disasters will make it even more difficult to attract good people to government, creating one of those fascinating self-fulfilling prophecies where you can once again revel in their incompetence and corruption when the next disaster strikes and FEMA’s nowhere to be seen.
Florida also had a competent disaster management program in place. Had you bothered to read the original piece, you would have known that.
Which doesn’t even remotely excuse the complete lack of trying, now does it?
FEMA did pre-position supplies. But when there are no roads, navigable waterways, or working airports it’s a little damn hard to get those supplies to where they need to go. Never mind the fact that placing those supplies in the path of the storm would be a massive mistake, unless you want those supplies to be wrapped around a tree somewhere.
If they have so much as a clue, they already know that. Again, I never said that the federal government can’t or shouldn’t help. It’s that federal aid can’t get to an area in the first 24-48 hours when there’s a hurricane the likes of Katrina.
This pissant asinine partisan crap is exactly why the Democrats do not deserve political power at this moment. As bad as FEMAs response was, the only thing you give a damn about is a bunch of stupid little ad hominem attacks against Republicans.
Perhaps you should let the adults talk about adult things and you go sit in the corner with your Al Franken and whine all you want about those big mean Republicans…
Now, I don’t want to put the blame on Bush, but David Brin posted an interesting comparison between the way four presidents (Nixon, Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43) handled hurricane relief efforts during their respective presidencies (I’ll crosspost it here):
President: Nixon Category 5 Hurricane *Camille* (August 1969) Area: About the same area as that affected by Katrina
Response: Nixon prepared the National Guard in advance, ordering rescue ships from Tampa, FL and Houston, TX to stand waiting along with over a thousand regular military, 24+ helicopters to assist the Coast Guard and National Guard about as soon as the hurricane passed.
—
President: Bush 41 Category 5 Hurricane *Andrew* (August 1992) Area: Florida
Response: In the middle of a re-election campaign, Bush ceased campaigning the day before the hurricane, went to Washington, and assembled one of the largest military forces ever mustered on U.S. soil. 7,000 National Guard And 22,000 regular military were sent in with the necessary equipment shortly after the hurricane passed through.
—
President: Clinton Category 3 Hurricane *Floyd* (September 1999) Area: Virginia and Carolinas
Response: Meeting with China’s president Jiang in New Zealand, Clinton immediately declared the hurricane-affected areas as federal disasters, allowing the military and National Guard to move in and help. Clinton flew home immediately, one day before the hurricane hit, to help coordinate the rescue.
—
President: Bush 43 Category 5 Hurricane *Katrina* (August 2005) Area: Gulf Coast
Response: National Guard troops are down about 8,000 members because they are in Iraq with much of the needed rescue equipment. Bush was on vacation, riding his bike for two hours the day before the hurricane landed. On that day, Bush attended a birthday party for John McCain and played golf. The levees began to crack. While emergency 1.5-ton sandbags were ready to be placed to strengthen the levee and exclude water, there were insufficient helicopters and pilots to set them before the levees broke. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded for federal-level assistance and got none. Bush Went to San Diego to play guitar with a country singer and end his vacation early– but not until the next day, because he had tickets to a San Diego Padres game.
Bush was asleep at the wheel. While he’s not to blame for the storm, or the levees not being reinforced, it just shows that he’s incompetent. If Nixon could coordinate a millitary relief effort at the height of Vietnam, if Clinton could cut short a meeting with the second most powerful man in the world, if Bush Sr. could muster 30,000 relief troops before the storm hit and coordinate the relief effort from Washington, Bush could have done a better job.
All I want in 2008 is a COMPETENT ADULT in the White House. Republican, Democrat, I don’t really care as long as we get a competent, honorable, managerial wonk in Washington. I’m sick of this guy.
Thats why i read you Jay.
There were more than enough National Guard troops in the area, and there was plenty of equipment around. That particular myth has been well debunked elsewhere.
I agree Bush should have done more personally, and that was a major political mistake. He looked like he was completely out of touch, and a politician should never, never, never do that. Bush’s sinking poll numbers are in large part due to his lack of response, and it’s hard to argue it was going to be any other way.
The federal government made a few mistakes, mainly that Bush should have realized that Blanco was an idiot and federalized the response. The left would have crucified him anyway, and the legality would have been dubious, but he should have done it regardless. Blanco dithered for days before she had a competent response.
FEMA’s bureaucracy was appalling. Making firefighters take sexual harrassment courses? What idiotic idea was that? Brown was caught with his pants down, and while he did get scapegoated, he deserved to get the boot. I will admit that James Lee Witt did a good job with FEMA in the 1990s, and Bush needs someone of his calibre now.
The problem with Katrina is that we’ve never had a storm like that before. We’ve had other Cat 5’s but never hitting New Orleans. Once those levees broke, New Orleans was cut off. The city’s disaster response was abysmal, and that made things all the much worse.
The only person who comes out of this looking good is Lt. Gen. Honore. Something tells me that if he’d been in charge from the beginning, the bureaucrats in Louisiana and Washington who’d been “stuck on stupid” for days wouldn’t have been able to do as much damage as they did.
In 2002, California Governor Gray Davis warned residents of his state about terrorist threats against Bay Area bridges. When the threats never eventuated, partisan attacks ensued about Davis’ warnings. Had Nagin went forward with ambitious evacuation plans, which would have inevitably resulted in violence, and the storm damage was less than expected, Republicans would have piled on him like opposition linemen. That’s no excuse for his lackluster response, but probably factored into his decision. It’s also highly reflective of the endless potential for serious consequences in these extreme partisan times where every action is viewed through a lens of party affiliation.
As Nicq pointed out, federal disaster relief was handled more effectively under both parties in the past than it was under the Bush-43 regime. Every step of the way the federal response was a costly embarrassment.
“the only thing you give a damn about is a bunch of stupid little ad hominem attacks against Republicans.”
I have criticized the performance of Nagin and Blanco. This isn’t about partisanship with me. It is about partisanship with this administration…..from the distribution of disaster relief in accordance with the afflicted region’s political climate to the ascension of loyal campaign contributors to virtually every management position in the federal government, even if they’re woefully unqualified.
“Perhaps you should let the adults talk about adult things and you go sit in the corner with your Al Franken and whine all you want about those big mean Republicans…”
Every argument you’ve made in this thread has been hinged around sugar-coating the countless mistakes by your side while enhancing the level of blame on everybody from the New Orleans City Council to Brian Williams. You blame the media for overstating the level of violence in the Superdome while defending your government (and the media’s) decision to go to war based on overstated intelligence. That makes you real bright!
The most glaring example of blind partisan stupidity that came from your keyboard in this thread is your description of conservative Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco as a “Democratic partisan hack.” Care to qualify that insipid remark with some examples or should we just dismiss it as the empty rhetoric of an overzealous blogger determined to find a partisan angle with which to discredit everybody who doesn’t have an (R) next to their name.
I agree, you had the same response from the feds for most of those events sited by Nicq. They had people wandering down there for five days in Fla with Andrew before FEMA got up and active. Even now in Texas they have reports of people living like “cavemen”, even after all the staging planning and such. Do we want the role of the federal gov’t to supersede that of the states ? Will we agree to more invasive legislation for the federal government to make the call that the local offical is incompetant. Because once you allow the feds into the role its almost a certain event that they will not allow their bacon to be fried by the “potential” incompetence of the local officals. Peremptive authority transfer. Why were there limits on that stuff in the first place, why has it been that the Feds can only take over local control for the national guard only in times of insurrection ? Should we then have all disasters be a federal matter, I just don’t think its tenable.
Your going to have people who just want it taken care of like Nicq, and I can empathize with that view, but what happens when the fed gets in there and it becomes a boondoogle. I mean aside from the military what gov’t agency are you most proud of. The most effective in times of emergency are all non-government organization; Red Cross NGO, Salvation Army NGO, Catholic Charities NGO, the various churches and civics organizations who have all the refugees, non-governemnt. When the fed fails to prove competant at 1st responses then what? We deploy the 82nd airborne ? The civil libertarians are going to have a fit with that. And further, since Florida and New York seem competant in their disaster response do we throw those systems out for a new shiney FEMA program ?
“Do we want the role of the federal gov’t to supersede that of the states ?”
When a disaster of the magnitude of a Category 5 hurricane hitting the vulnerable city of New Orleans like we knew Katrina would do three days before it hit, HELL YES!!!
“I mean aside from the military what gov’t agency are you most proud of. ”
Under this administration, where every agency is chock full of unqualified “friends of the administration,” none. But it’s curious that you exempt the military from your list of government functions that are “better handled by the private sector.” If you really want to outsource government functions to private enterprise, shouldn’t a private mercenary military be an option rather than a federally-funded armed forces? Why should national defense be the only government function that gets to be held harmless from the conservative ideology of dependence on the private sector to handle all of our society’s needs?
Because a military is proscribed in the constitution, and the use of mercenaries is not.
Unlike your love of gov’t and your contempt of private sector, I have a fear of an overreaching gov’t and not a overreaching private sector. Government can use the power of taxation, of eminent domain, of various police powers that really leave the individual with little or no recourse other than the courts. So who then has the deeper pockets when your in the courts, you the individual or the governement. In the private sector you don’t like the product, politics or agenda of a private entity you can go to another private entity (usually) for your goods or services. Don’t like Halliburten get’em out, don’t like Motor Vehicles tough poop, you need to register your car don’t you, or they will take it. You need to pay your taxes ot the will foreclose. The idea that you would give unlimited power to the gov’t is scary Mark. Do you know why the constitution or the Amendments or the bill of rights, it is there to put limits on government. Not on us but limits on the power of government over the governed.
You make it seem like the nepatism or cronism occurs only under Bush, all part of that “culture of corruption” talking point. Who do you think gets all the Ambassatorships, hmm. What was the entire Travelgate scandal during the first Clinton term, if not rife cronism. And again the abuse of the governement powers to put that head of the travel office (whats his name Bill Dale?) through the abuse of the IRS and FBI ? Spare me the wide eyed “culture of corruption” lecture.
As far as the Cat 5 hitting as a automatic trigger, wasn’t it the levees breaking a few days after that caught everyone by suprise and not necessarily Katrina itself., and since we haven’t heard from the other states are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater ?