Blaming the victims:
Bush tries to shift responsibility
I suppose this was inevitable, but I don't think it will work. I believe that local government should have done a better job of evacuating the city. But once the tragedy struck, the federal government clearly had the responsibility, and it failed miserably.
From The Washington Post:
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 -- 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. . .
Bush, who has been criticized, even by supporters, for the delayed response to the disaster, used his weekly radio address to put responsibility for the failure on lower levels of government.
posted by xoff @ 9:38 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Mayor Nagin didn’t order a mandatory (forcible) evacuation until Sunday morning – just before the hurricane reached land. At least 100,000 chose to stay and by the time the evacuation became mandatory there were very few ways for people to leave the city.
The evacuation plan was recently updated to include providing busses for the poor who had no other means to evacuate. That didn’t happen either. There was no plan for evacuating the sick, disabled, or hospitalized. They merely received a mandatory order to leave – at nearly the last minute.
He failed to have a sufficient stockpile of emergency supplies, food and water. He even failed to deliver those supplies according to the emergency plan the city had for exactly this disaster. The Superdome and the convention center were supposed to be the planned evacuation centers for the 20-30,000 people who refused or were unable to evacuate. There were no supplies there.
After the Katrina hit, emergency government failed to establish any kind of command and control. They apparently didn’t even have satellite phones or any way of communicating and coordinating emergency activities. The few police who even dared to go into these areas were shot at and were left without a plan or orders.
As for Governor Blanco, she stood like a deer in the headlights in front of the camera on Tuesday trying to figure out what was even going on. The state of Louisiana also failed to provide support for the evacuation and emergency food and supplies and she bungled the mobilization of the National Guard – although even that is problematic because where should they be deployed ahead of the storm? They have to be located away from the imminent landfall or risk being stranded as well.
One official at the federal level has admitted that the response and mobilization has been a failure. George W. Bush. The mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana refused to do that. They can only finger point. In the meantime the suffering continues.
But everything comes back to politics – isn’t that right?
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