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Mon. Sep 05, 2005

Katrina's Collateral Damage

OK, please move the children away from your computer screen, because I’m going to … go … off. I’ve already appropriated funds for hitting Katrina’s Cuss Jar afterwards, but if I don’t let this out, my head will surely explode. And I’m closing the comments on this one, too, which is highly irregular for me. But it’s certainly my right. Essentially, my brain needs this to be an “EXIT ONLY” kind of thing.

If you’re a worker in the growing industry of defending partisan interests, not only do I have less than zero interest in hearing it, you surely won’t like what I have to say in response. So let’s not even go there. Just go back to your blindered red or blue world where you only hear what you want to hear. I promise, you won’t like it here.

I hardly know how to begin to express what I’ve been feeling over the past week. So I’ll just start in an odd place, and let the torrent flow.

When the plans for the invasion of Iraq were made, one of the reasons we went in so “light” was that Pentagon planners were reluctant to include a large call-up of the National Guard, for fear of the disruption it would cause on the home front. Of course, they got over that. Today, about 40% of the forces in Iraq are those very forces they didn’t want to call up at the beginning.

Too late.

In New Orleans earlier this week, the government said they did not want to bring in regular military forces that could be quickly deployed, like the 82nd Airborne. Of course, they got over that. Today, those forces plus the Marines are on the way.

Too late.

Do you see a behavioral trend there?

There’s always things we’d really prefer not to do, and therefore put off. But when an urgent situation arises, we have to bite the bullet and do them anyway. When we cut corners, or hesitate at first to do what we eventually are forced to do, or “go in light” ... sometimes people die.

There’s nothing partisan about that. It is a simple logistical fact, one that does not change with administrations, nor does it depend on their political affiliation.

Another simple logistical fact: what about all those buses we saw finally ferrying tens of thousands out of New Orleans? It was a large and difficult task, one we’d really prefer not to do, but it had to be done. So … why didn’t city and state officials bite the bullet and make that a part of their mandatory evacuation plans, when it was going to have to be done eventually anyway? Why didn’t every school bus in that state get put to good use last weekend? There’s 7,725 of them. Do the math: 7,725 buses times 30 people per bus equals 231,750 live evacuees.

There’s a story out there about an 18 year old young man who had enough sense to take a school bus he found in a flooded area of the abandoned city, drive around and pick up 60 strangers, and then drive it seven hours to the Houston Astrodome (more here and here). I watched another story on CNN about a man who got a shopping cart, and looted. He “looted” diapers of all sizes, Pediacare, baby formula, water, baby wipes, and anything else that could help a mother stranded at the Convention Center with an infant. Then he went and searched out those mothers. There’s no telling how many young lives he saved with that simple act.

So, clearly, my deep fury right now is pretty non-partisan. This isn’t about a Republican or Democratic failure. It isn’t about a failure of the government workers of various types busting their asses 18-20 hours a day in dangerous circumstances in New Orleans and southern Mississippi. Like the two citizens in the above paragraph, they are the heroes of this, on the ground in the middle of it, doing what they can with what’s at hand.

It’s not about them. In my mind, this is about a complete failure of leadership at all levels of government, by people of all political persuasions.

And I appear to be in the minority in that belief. Some actually think the response was acceptable. Many seemed convinced it has to be solely the fault of the Democratic state and local officials, or solely the fault of the Republican federal officials. That’s the way it’s being played out all over the place, but you know what? Your personal opinion does not matter. Because, already, the official blame game has begun. Not the one on weblogs, the one waged by government officials in the media.

Damage control has moved from the city of New Orleans to the state of political reputations. Let’s go ahead and begin the call and response, though you’ll have grown sick of it when it’s still going on months from now. In an article subtitled “White House shifts blame for Katrina response” ...

Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country’s emergency management.

[FEMA Director Michael] Brown, a frequent target of New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s wrath, said Saturday that “the mayor can order an evacuation and try to evacuate the city, but if the mayor does not have the resources to get the poor, elderly, the disabled, those who cannot, out, or if he does not even have police capacity to enforce the mandatory evacuation, to make people leave, then you end up with the kind of situation we have right now in New Orleans.”

Washington Post: Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting

Now, this is the same FEMA Director who said “I think the death toll may go into the thousands. And unfortunately, that’s going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the evacuation warnings. And I don’t make judgments about why people choose not to evacuate. But, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. And to find people still there is just heart wrenching to me because the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there.”

So, first he says the high death toll is attributable to those poor people who “chose” not to leave, yet back in July officials had already said this was going to happen, and those poor people would be on their own: “City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans’ poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you’re on your own.”

And when the White House starts shifting the blame to local and state officials, can you guess how they’re going to respond? Here’s a taste from New Orleans Deputy Police Chief W.S. Riley: “My biggest disappointment is with the federal government and the National Guard. The guard arrived 48 hours after the hurricane with 40 trucks. They drove their trucks in and went to sleep. For 72 hours this police department and the fire department and handful of citizens were alone rescuing people. We have people who died while the National Guard sat and played cards.”

You think the domestic fight over Iraq has been ugly? You ain’t seen nothin’. After showing George Stephanopoulos the flooded jail and how the sheriffs had to evacuate the prisoners one-by-one through several blocks of floodwater, I heard Senator Mary Landrieu say that if George Bush criticized local law enforcement one more time, she was gonna have to punch him.

Yep, she did. I about swallowed my tongue when I heard it. I believe that’s a rhetorical felony. But it’s blaringly indicative of the knock down drag out fight that’s to come.

In legal terms, I guess we’re now in the discovery phase:

Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard: Sir, they were told like me, every single day, “The cavalry’s coming,” on a federal level, “The cavalry’s coming, the cavalry’s coming, the cavalry’s coming.” I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry. The cavalry’s still not here yet, but I’ve begun to hear the hoofs, and we’re almost a week out.

Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA — we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, “Come get the fuel right away.” When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. “FEMA says don’t give you the fuel.” Yesterday — yesterday — FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, “No one is getting near these lines.” Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America — American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn’t be in this crisis.

The guy who runs this building I’m in, emergency management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?” And he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you. Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday.” And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.

MSNBC: Transcript for September 4 – Meet the Press

And you can be sure there’s at least one snarling and angry media bulldog on the case, one who warned this was coming in a prize winning 5 part series in 2002. One that is just now getting back to limited print publication, but used one of their precious 16 pages to send “An Open Letter to the President.”

Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, “We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day.”

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

News Orleans Time-Picayune: An Open Letter to the President

And that’s just a taste of what’s to come in the blame game.

And I can play. Because like Senator Mary Landrieu, there’s a couple of guys I’d purely love to deck.

I simply have to say, Michael Chertoff is an Ostrich and/or an Asshat. As the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, he not only instills zero sense of faith or even authority, he appears to either have his head in the sand and/or up his ass.

His every statement sounds like out-of-touch spin, and I am simply going to destroy my TV if I have to again listen to his whiney voice tell us how this was not just one disaster, that we had the hurricane, and that was one disaster, and then we had the levee break, which was an entirely separate and completely unexpected second disaster, and then we had a third disaster, when water surprisingly came through those levee breaks.

Yeah, right. And then we had a fourth disaster … the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security got involved. But you know, to me, it all seems like one big clusterfuck disaster. Unless you’re trying to spin it, then it helps to break it down into smaller parts.

Perhaps the FEMA forms refugees have to fill out to get their relief will ask things like, “were you affected by the first disaster, or the second one?” “Was your loved one killed by the winds of the hurricane, or by flooding from the levee breach?” Because these distinctions are important.

Here’s what you’ve accomplished with your defensive laundry list behavior, Ostrich Chertoff. In the future, when you speak, if I can bear to listen to your scratchy nasal voice that carries no calm of authority at all, my first instinct will be to view you as a reverse barometer. Because I’ve seen in the past week that what you say is happening … isn’t. What you say was never foretold … was.

And if I ever need someone to be my stiff and defensive PR stonewall, I’ll be calling Michael Brown, current director of FEMA. But if I’m in a pinch, I wouldn’t rely on you two guys to change my flat tire. One of you would say there was no way to anticipate this flat tire, while the other would say lie that no one had told them anything about a flat tire, but they’d been pumping air into it for several days.

But now the thrust of the spin today was that they’d turned the corner on this disaster, because the people trapped at the Superdome and the Convention Center had finally been evacuated. “Mission Accomplished,” eh?

We haven’t “turned the corner,” we’ve finally started the damn car so we can drive to the corner and think about turning. Now portions of the city will have to be retaken block by block, according to Brig. Gen. Gary Jones: “This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control”

Already the police had to kill five or six people who fired on them as they escorted contractors into the city for relief efforts. And it’s just now, after the primary evacuations, that we hear the 82nd Airborne and the Marines are being brought in. We very well may see the US military engage in urban combat to retake an American city.

Won’t that be pleasant, and calm the shitstorm we’ve already seen?

And then, after the city is secure enough, there’s another block to block effort to be made. House by house, the dead have to be found, retrieved, and dealt with in some as yet unknown but sure to be gruesome way. We’re hearing some scary numbers from the few who are willing to make an estimate. And while we should also remember that the estimated death toll on 9/11 was initially off by a factor of two or three, the number of bloated corpses of dead Americans is sure to be in the thousands.

And then, after you’ve retaken the city, after you’ve taken care of the dead, after we know just what the toll of lives really was … then you can say “we’ve turned the corner.”

And what’s around it? Fights over how and whether to rebuild. And, of course, more blame game. That’s ongoing from this day.

Who knows where that will “end.” But I’m pretty sure the answer isn’t “productively.” While I have no doubt some will make an unbiased effort to assess what went wrong, in the blogs and in the media the noise will be predominantly partisan. And that’s where you’ll see the strongest “leadership” from our various elected representatives and their minions at all levels. They will surely crank out the talking points in reams to address this catastrophe and distribute them to the needy where they can do the most good.

It’s the least they can do. The very least.

So now, between making this a few thousand words long, and by likely pissing off a bunch of people along the way, there’s probably few enough left reading this that I can tell you how I really feel.

Hopeless.

Our government and institutions have failed us, at every level, after four years of supposed rededication and rebuilding of their capabilities to face a disaster. More than that, some of the public criticism and most of the governmental media response has had the tone of a really bad company-customer relationship. The tone of a customer dealing with a big utility like the phone company or cable company. They’re very angry that they are not getting the service they feel they’ve paid for, and the “company” responds with monolithic boilerplate, and lists of what they plan to do, that mean absolutely nothing to that customer and their lack of service.

And that company-customer tone incenses me, because we own the damn place! We The Freakin’ People! And when I own something that clearly no longer works, I ignore it. It’s defective. It just collects dust from then on.

As I’ve said, you’re on your own.

It seems obvious that any coming “investigation” is going to be about “winning,” politically. It won’t be about the lives at risk if this tri-level bungling occurs again the next time, it will be about the political reputations at risk. There will be a knock down drag out “debate” about who is left right and who is right wrong, and then we’ll get them to admit it! When that happens, on the way back, stop by my grave and leave some flowers, because I’ll be long dead by then.

And when we leave the governmental level, frankly, I feel even worse. Because I’ve long accepted government services often range from grossly inefficient to downright incompetent. But I’m losing my faith in people, too. If we look around at weblogs, even as an admittedly non-representative sampling, there’s a disturbingly high percentage on both flanks who appear to have lost their soul to partisanship. And I use those words carefully, after thinking them for a very long time. They would reflexively defend the gutting of a kitten, if it was done by a political ally.

I once had a fair amount of hope for the potential of the “personal web” in the political arena. But a large portion of the blogosphere has become a ghetto to me, a dark and ugly place I avoid. It displays no value that I can recognize. It often appears cancerous.

In a lot of ways, I feel like I’ve seen every hope I ever had for this country after 9/11 drowned in the attic of a shotgun shack in New Orleans.

Some said after 9/11 that it was a real character test, macro and micro. And it seemed to me that the majority of our institutions … and people … passed that test, some in astonishing ways. Four years later, with all that experience and knowledge under our belt, we got another character test. And the majority failed that test.

Some in astonishing ways.

So what am I going to do? Other than hit the cuss jar again, I’m preparing a list. It’s concrete things I can do and ways I can better prepare and protect my loved ones in the event of a disaster.

Because nobody else will.