PhotoDude.com

For tales of a New Orleans resident I recommend author Poppy Z. Brite. http://www.livejournal.com/users/docbrite/

And not to minimize the problems New Orleans is facing, but Mississippi has really been ignored. One of our neighbors, her family is from Gulfport. Luckily, her parents were visiting (Marietta) when Katrina hit. Unfortunately, the house was destroyed and any neighbors who stayed behind are dead. They were only able to save less than a small U-Haul of stuff. The niece is attending high school up here because her campus was wiped off the map.

This is all beginning to remind me of what happens every Sunday as my kid watches the Falcons or UGA play football. At least six or eight times, he’ll start shouting at the TV: “YOU IDIOT!! WHY DIDN’T YOU THROW IT!?!? OH, MAN!”

Yes, it’s just that- he’s sitting there seeing the action from an overhead camera, on replay, and deciding that any reasonable person would have done it differently. Armchair quarterbacking. Watercooler experts.

Other than hard core right wing apologists who still believe the Bush administration can do no wrong, it’s the vast consensus of Americans that FEMA is a joke.

I’m far from a Bush apologist, but I do have enough experience in real, honest-to-God emergencies to know that when things to wrong, there’s only one thing you can know for sure, and that’s that you haven’t got a chance in hell of knowing what’s going to happen. On a scale the size of a Cat4 hurricane, multiply what little I’ve experienced by a factor of several million. At that point, only a fool would expect that it’s going to end all happy and huggy and perfect, and that everyone will get perfect service from everyone.

I’m wondering just what these folks expect- they were living in a place that has been touted for decades as a disaster waiting for a date. They prepared poorly (some individuals, the city surely, the state surely- the Feds were constrained by law, but arguably could have prepared, knowing that they’d be called someday). Now that it’s finally happened, it’s just like every other disaster- lots of broken stuff, and only limited resources to repair it with. The magic wand that’d be required to make everyone happy is still missing.

The big question is this- why is it the responsibility of the federal government to fix these folks’ houses? Honestly- answer that. If a tornado comes to Peachtree City and wipes out my house, who is going to blog about my woes? The answer is nobody- they’re going to say “call your insurance company and quit yammering.”

Nagin should be glad he’s only got a quarter of his population back. If they start using their brains down there, they’ll make a huge wetlands preserve out of all the below sea level areas, and build in more sensible places. Knowing they are in a hurricane likely area, they’ll build for the next flood (which WILL come) instead of ignoring the danger and whining because Daddy Government isn’t there to pick up the pieces fast enough.

The big question is this- why is it the responsibility of the federal government to fix these folks’ houses? Honestly- answer that.

We’ve paid trillions of dollars for this government, so I figure we ought to get something back for our money. Or perhaps we should just throw trillions of dollars at a government and beg it to not do anything worthwhile or substantial that might benefit us? I think I’ll start-up a business to cater to folks like yourself: You bring your car in to get it fixed, I’ll charge you an obscene amount of money, and then tell you to go fix it yourself. You’ll happily do this because you’re self-reliant and don’t need to depend on some mechanic to fix your car, but at least you’ll pay me a few hundred thousand dollars for the privelage of doing it yourself.

I do have enough experience in real, honest-to-God emergencies to know that when things to wrong, there’s only one thing you can know for sure, and that’s that you haven’t got a chance in hell of knowing what’s going to happen.

I have a fair amount of experience myself, and I know a clusterfuck when I see one. I’ve seen disasters that dwarf this one in scale handled effectively, and when you know what an effective response looks like, it’s easier to tell what an ineffective one looks like right from the start.

The NOLA response and the “strategy” in Iraq look pretty much the same because the people in charge take a wait-and-see approach to crisis management and disaster repsonse. They hope that things will turn out for the better, so they commit the least amount of resources, for reasons unknown to me.

Disaster preparedness and crisis management track with fundamental military strategy in that they both require the same basic attitude: Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. By preparing for the worst case scenario, you pretty much over-prepare and maintain operational flexibility to handle anything that comes down the pike. The reason why this President (and his Congress) has failed utterly is because he fosters an attitude of hoping for the best and preparing for the best, which leads to what we’ve seen in Iraq and NOLA: an inadequate response and a constant game of catch-up, resulting in thousands of needless deaths and a giant clusterfuck. The reason why more lives weren’t lost was due to the individual initiative and personal courage of Coast Guardsmen who, lacking any direction from above, took it upon themselves to coordinate and launch a search-and-recovery effort that saved thousands of lives. The same goes for Iraq as well: most of the successes we’ve seen over there have been in spite of official policy, not because of it. Once again, the personal inititative and courage of individuals are the only thing that have kept that enterprise from collapsing in complete and total failure. Thank God for them.

On top of that, lessons aren’t learned by this government, because these people never audit their own actions to fix mistakes and better prepare for the future; they merely blame external forces that exercise minimal control over events. As a result, the same mistakes are repeated over and over again with the same predictable results. In Iraq, they blame the media and critics for their failures. In New Orleans, they conveniently blame local Democrats for their failures. If and when the next great disaster strikes, they will once again find convenient targets to blame for their failures and nothing will be fixed. I can only hope that NOLA is the worst thing we’ll see for some time, because this government has already lost a city and it looks like it’s trying it’s damndest to lose a war. I’d hate to see something bigger come, because the people running the show right now obviously can’t handle anything more than giving the same speeches over and over again, as if saying the same thing enough times will magically make things better.

We’ve paid trillions of dollars for this government, so I figure we ought to get something back for our money.

We didn’t get those interstate highways? We didn’t get the finest armed forces on the planet? We didn’t get all those medical research grants, the space shuttle wasn’t ours?

Please- we do pay a ton of taxes, but we don’t pay it so that the feds can bail us out when we make bad decisions. The feds are there to secure our national borders, and regulate interstate commerce. Yeah, they do a lot more, but they shouldn’t- they’re not really meant to do more.

Using the federal government as a ‘free’ insurance company is wrong, and should be. I have a house that is 110 yards from the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a prime target for a hurricane to blow it completely away. If one does that, I don’t expect the government to rebuild it- I expect the insurance company I’m paying to insure it to cut a check, then I’ll pay someone else to rebuild it.

The difference here is that I feel I’m personally accountable for having a home in a high-risk area. Personal responsibilty seems to be lost, the more entitlement programs they develop, which is sad.

I’ve seen disasters that dwarf this one in scale

Oh, come now. You’ve personally been involved in disasters (note you used the plural, meaning more than one) that ‘dwarf’ a city of over 3 million people being displaced, and as a bonus, having a generous percentage of the infrastructure of that city destroyed?

Do tell.

Todd: “This is all beginning to remind me of what happens every Sunday as my kid watches the Falcons or UGA play football.”

Please. Katrina was an Act of God, and though I can’t speak for the Dawgs, the ugly fate of the Falcons was caused by a voodoo hex put on them in 1966 by an old woman whose house was torn down to build Fulton County Stadium. 40 years later, they can’t put two winning seasons back to back, and never have.

There is no government program to fix them, and none that could make them much worse, either.

Sorry, um, I appear to have veered off topic… but you had to know the rest of this was coming.

Todd: “he’s sitting there seeing the action from an overhead camera, on replay, and deciding that any reasonable person would have done it differently. Armchair quarterbacking. Watercooler experts.”

OK, if those of us who weren’t personally affected or involved are ruled as having worthless opinions, find me some folks who live/lived in New Orleans or southern Mississippi who are singing the praises of FEMA. Or saying “no thanks, I’m bootstrapping this one all on my own.”

From everything I’ve seen and read, the vast majority of those personally affected or involved have nothing positive to say about FEMA. Or their state government. Or their local government.

They are testifying before Congress today. Surely among this sea of victims there’s a substantial portion of hardy Americans with the assets and fortitude to say “shut up you whiners and pull your own weight like I’m doing.”

I just haven’t heard a single one of them. I’ve just heard that September saw the largest mass migration to or from an area that this country has seen since the late 1800’s.

Todd: “The big question is this- why is it the responsibility of the federal government to fix these folks’ houses? Honestly- answer that. If a tornado comes to Peachtree City and wipes out my house, who is going to blog about my woes? The answer is nobody- they’re going to say ‘call your insurance company and quit yammering.’”

Todd, suppose you had a home near a canal with flood walls the US Army Corps of Engineers claimed they’d built to a standard that they would hold a 14-15 foot storm surge. Along comes a big storm, and when the surge reachs about 11 feet, the walls breach. Later investigation determines the design was flawed from the beginning.

Meanwhile, your insurance company says, oh, we’ll pay for wind damage, but you’re not covered for flood damage. Only the government offers that.

The same one that claimed you were safe from the surge that wiped out your home. It’s all now documented. Oh, and your mortgage company expects you to resume payments on the home you no longer have that your insurance company won’t pay out on. Forward all correspondence to the trailer park where FEMA says they’re going to have you a spot any day Real Soon Now.

Todd: “I have a house that is 110 yards from the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a prime target for a hurricane to blow it completely away. If one does that, I don’t expect the government to rebuild it- I expect the insurance company I’m paying to insure it to cut a check, then I’ll pay someone else to rebuild it.”

Then you better hope you don’t find yourself like Clayton Cubitt and his Mom in southern Mississippi (and thousands of others). Their private home insurance policy would cover the wind damage from the hurricane, but not the flood damage from the storm surge. If you’re covered for that, it’s through the feds. And, yes, the program is nearly broke.

But let me take you basic point … let’s excise the entire month of September, and every problem of immediate reaction to a huge disaster. You seem to think that the government has no responsibility for anything post-September, that these people should rely on themselves and their insurance companies, period.

Let me ask you this: does the government have any responsibility for anything that happened before Katrina, like creating a levee system that could not even endure the category 3 storm they claimed it could, one that was incompetently flawed in its very design?

And if they do have some responsibility for that, do they also have responsibility for the aftermath of that engineering failure?

I don’t agree with your vision (and I’m not even going to get into Sarge’s), but I do believe it is what will happen. It will be left to the 1/4 of the citizens who’ve returned to New Orleans along with their broke and broken city government to try and start over again and rebuild. On their own.

And in about seven months, we can start looking for every dollar spent on rebuilding, and every bootstrappin’ man hour, to be washed away with the next category 3 storm surge that the existing levee system has proven it can’t handle.

Despite what the government said.

Oh, and according to Trent Lott’s brother-in-law, you haven’t got anything to worry about, Todd. Quote “Lawyer Dickie Scruggs says Coast homeowners without flood insurance shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for a government bailout after Katrina”

They are testifying before Congress today. Surely among this sea of victims there’s a substantial portion of hardy Americans with the assets and fortitude to say “shut up you whiners and pull your own weight like I’m doing.� I just haven’t heard a single one of them.

You won’t, either- because the people who are going to drive up to Washington and holler loud aren’t going to be the happy ones. They never are- go to a city council meeting, see if anyone shows up to not complain. It is the nature of the beast that the vocal are the unhappy. The media is feeding this, because it’s cool to have mad people on TV- it gets interest. If they had a bunch of people on TV saying “oh, everything’s great here in Atlanta” instead of “omg, my life sucks in Louisiana” you’d sleep through the news, and more importantly, the viagra ads.

Todd, suppose you had a home near a canal with flood walls the US Army Corps of Engineers claimed they’d built to a standard that they would hold a 14-15 foot storm surge.

You’re changing the subject- there probably is good cause for complaint and lawsuit by people who are affected by the faulty design, but the issue you started with is that the whole FEMA system is systematically inept. That would include a load of people not affected by the bad flood wall, like all the folks in Mississippi. FEMA didn’t cause the disaster- perhaps the Army Corps of Engineers helped make it worse, but even they didn’t cause it. When the hurricane was approaching, it was a category FIVE, not a three, and those flood walls weren’t meant for a five. Nitpick if you will, but this area was doomed to flood someday, just as Memphis is doomed to someday crumble in a magnitude 10+ earthquake. The issue is the response, and what response people feel they’re entitled to, and at what speed.

Then you better hope you don’t find yourself like Clayton Cubitt and his Mom in southern Mississippi (and thousands of others). Their private home insurance policy would cover the wind damage from the hurricane, but not the flood damage from the storm surge. If you’re covered for that, it’s through the feds.

I would count anyone with a home on a barrier island (or inland as much as two miles) an absolute fool not to check that their insurance covers flood from a surge. My property’s highest point is +4 feet ASL. That’s not a whole bunch, yet it’s 15 feet higher than many of the homes destroyed in New Orleans. Yes, I have flood insurance, and yes, it covers a storm surge. Already had one- it was from Hurricane Dennis, the surge was 12 feet, and my only damage was a swimming pool filled with salt water, sand, and sharks. I incurred some expense repairing the pool pumps, screens, and the cleanup, and no, I didn’t ask FEMA for the money.

Todd: “You’re changing the subject- there probably is good cause for complaint and lawsuit by people who are affected by the faulty design, but the issue you started with is that the whole FEMA system is systematically inept”

I’m not changing the subject, you’ve selected just one portion of what I’ve said. Yes, I’ve said FEMA has been inept. I’ve also said that local government and state government have been inept. I’ve made it clear there was a failure from top to bottom.

But if one arm of the federal government, the US Army Corp of Engineers, builds a faulty levee system, and another arm of the federal government, FEMA, ranges from ineffective to downright incompetent in its response to the levee system failing … am I really changing the subject? I don’t expect FEMA to build levees or the Army COE to create disaster preparedness plans … but they are both arms of the same body.

And FEMA is, um, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. By their very name, they’re supposed to be able to handle this the best of any branch of any government. They are now a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, but back when they were an independent agency at the beginning of Bush’s term (pre-Brownie), they identified three primary major disasters they saw as on the horizon … and that you would think they would therefore be a bit better prepared for. One was a major terrorist attack on one of our cities. Two was a major hurricane hitting and flooding New Orleans. And three was a major earthquake in Southern California.

They knew this was coming in the short term ( with a category 5 storm live in the Gulf) and the long term (the 2000 assessment), and they knew they would be the agency called on. As Paul says, they are in the business of contingency plans and planning for the worst. It’s supposed to be what they do.

And finally (for me), I don’t expect FEMA to rebuild anyone’s house, as you seem to be claiming when you say you would hire contractors to rebuild. I would also note the article linked above says Mississippi leaders are pointing out many affected homeowners there “didn’t have federal flood insurance because the government told them they didn’t need it where they lived” (meaning, up to a mile or more inland) ... and the hopes for federal help on that are nil.

I don’t even expect FEMA to give these people a check big enough to let them hire contractors to rebuild their house, nor do I think that’s what the majority of these people are asking. That’s up to Congress, if anyone, and it ain’t gonna happen. FEMA is supposed to be the federal equivalent of “first responders,” and we saw how they stacked up. And if the bottom line for any entity is how it serves its proscribed audience at its dictated task, if you could ask everyone who’s interfaced with FEMA since August 26 their opinion … do you think it would even be close? Not from what I’ve seen. Does that “end consumer opinion” count for nothing?

And it’s not just my opinion and those of the whiney victims. If you’ve read the recent releases of internal emails from FEMA members on the scene, they knew they were not doing the job at the time on the scene, and knew they were not getting the support they needed from the top layer of FEMA.

On the very same day that Michael Brown’s assistant was expressing concern about the lack of time scheduled for his lunches, one FEMA manager requested simply enough water and ice to get the people in his district of responsiblity in southern Mississippi by for one day, and when he saw the night before the amount they were actually planning to send the next day, he told them if that’s all they sent they better also send armed reinforcements because otherwise there would be riots before noon.

It’s one thing to have your plan burdened by the unexpected scale of the damage. But, in my opinion, we saw not just that, we saw a pretty scary level of ad hoc incompetence, on a par you would expect from an agency run by the fired president of the Arabian Show Horse Association.

Todd: “my only damage was a swimming pool filled with salt water, sand, and sharks. I incurred some expense repairing the pool pumps, screens, and the cleanup, and no, I didn’t ask FEMA for the money”

Nor should you, for damage to the swimming pool of a second home. But you have to at least acknowledge that’s not quite the same as having your sole home and all your possessions completely wiped out. And that your level of desperation might be quite a bit more in such circumstances three months in.

But you and I could argue about this all day. And regardless of either of our positions, the objectively clear fact is that our federal government cannot and should not be relied on for anything. Beyond those nice interstate highways you mentioned, and other simple day to day kinda stuff.

In that regard, you are completely right. And if the government were in the control of small government fiscal conservatives operating a tight but balanced budget, it would be a bit more understandable. But it isn’t. And I can only hope everyone who was personally involved or affected by this, unlike you and I, will remember it every time they step into a voting booth. If they should ever feel the motivation to do that again.

Because it is millions of people.

Oh, come now. You’ve personally been involved in disasters (note you used the plural, meaning more than one) that ‘dwarf’ a city of over 3 million people being displaced, and as a bonus, having a generous percentage of the infrastructure of that city destroyed

Do tell.

Well, I know my experiences pale in comparison to the worldly experience of a wealthy Gulf Coast resident such as yourself, but I’ll give it my best shot.

First, there was Operation Provide Comforts I & II, where we tried to feed and shelter a couple of million Kurds who had fled into the mountains of Northern Iraq after the war. They were scattered about the mountainsides, but in 48 hours, we managed to have an air bridge and a coordinated effort to collect and organize the refugees. Within a week, we had several camps with about 25,000 people each and a regular logistical schedule. Unfortunately, the Turks had a habit of bombing and strafing those trying to make their way to the camps, but that was the biggest drawback that I saw.

There were a couple of Bangladesh flood relief operations we did. One was in the early 90’s and the other was in 1998. I think the one in 1998 was the worst, as millions of people were flooded out and thousands were dying or sick with cholera and other diseases.

There was the Mississippi Floods of ‘93, where we started a prevention/relief effort. We flew in tents, supplies, and food for people flooded out all along the river, plus we helped try to shore-up levees. I wouldn’t count it as one of the best things I was involved with, but the operation ran smoothly and did what it was supposed to do.

Operation Restore Hope was a big deal at the time, and while the relief effort and logistics themselves were quickly organized, it ultimately failed because the mission changed. All the food went to the warlords and their minions, anyway, because they had the guns and in that part of the world, the men with guns rule. A truly libertarian paradise. Other than that, the planning and execution of the initial relief mission was damn near flawless.

Of course there was the Tsunami relief effort last year. India was particularly bad in its relief efforts, as were a couple of other governments, but we were there on the ground fairly quickly (after Bush finally gave the go-ahead) and helped feed and shelter thousands of people relatively quickly. While we couldn’t control their government’s efforts, I think we aquitted ourselves rather well.

There’s not been much else, just the Haitian operation, Bosnias I & II, Kosovo, a couple of Russian and Ukranian missions, Rwanda clean-up, and a couple of other places in Central America where a bunch of people died and no one really cared.

Other than that, I don’t have much experience with natural disasters, massive infrastructure destruction, or death on a mass scale.