Do you think the Federal relief effort is being mismanaged?

[Tim Vasquez]

Mainstream media is reporting that thousands of survivors at the New Orleans Convention Center have been without food, water, or medicine for a number of days now and that a secondary humanitarian crisis is unfolding.

This is not a biased question, thus I've put "no" first. Certainly there are issues with shootings, security for relief teams, and we don't know much about what's going on behind the scenes. What do you think?

Also note that this is not a question whether the actual men and women doing the relief work are doing a good or poor job -- this concerns the officials coordinating the effort: FEMA, DHS, the Cabinet, and so forth.

 

[Chris Sokol]

I have been involved with emergency and disaster services for the last 20 years, including Red Cross, Emergency Management, and Disastre Medical Assistance Teams. With this said, my only comment about the response to this disaster is that I am truly not impressed.

 

[Kevin Bowman]

if there was only people in the superdome then it would be easy but as reported on fox this morning, 90000 square miles has been destoryed.

i hate to say it but we all knew it would be huge, this isint 9/11 where a couple of buildings fell, there are large portions of 3 states gone.

 

[Rob_Davis]

I don't think FEMA is much more culpable for the chaos than the state agencies. After all, the plans that would actually rescue people are established and implemented by local agencies. But yes, it is definitely a failure, and FEMA deserves a large part of the blame.

 

[Scott Olson]

I voted yes because an obvious lack of coordinated leadership in the relief effort. With all the resources in this country and five days to prepare/deploy I am certainly totally blown away and the lack of coordinated infrastructure we have to deal with a catastrophe in a single metropolitan city. Personally I think from the very beginning one person or even one agency should have taken control of EVERYTHING. Including local police, EM, other firefighters from other states. Whatever they need they get no questions asked. Im sure in a couple weeks they will have everything running smoothly. Im not sure why the government didn't plan for this and if they did so it was probably on such a small scale. Hopefully when all is said and done we can start a 'Katrina Commision' and gather tropical mets, structural engineers, disaster response proffesionals, emergency management experts, etc and have the power to make changes. hopefully

-Scott Olson

 

[Kevin Bowman]

Originally posted by Scott Olson
I voted yes because an obvious lack of coordinated leadership in the relief effort. With all the resources in this country and five days to prepare/deploy I am certainly totally blown away and the lack of coordinated infrastructure we have to deal with a catastrophe in a single metropolitan city. Personally I think from the very beginning one person or even one agency should have taken control of EVERYTHING. Including local police, EM, other firefighters from other states. Whatever they need they get no questions asked. Im sure in a couple weeks they will have everything running smoothly. Im not sure why the government didn't plan for this and if they did so on such a scale?

-Scott Olson

No one planned for this. if they had planned for this on any large scale New Orleans wouldnt be flooded to the extent it is now. This was sadly needed to waken people up that these things are something you take incredibly seriously and its sad to say but a lot of people who didnt take it seriously are dead

 

[Chris Sokol]

I still think that one of the biggest "poor decisions" was waiting as long as he did for the mayor to initiate a mandatory evacuation. 24 hours earlier, and taking control of every bus, truck, and ambulance available, they could have emptied the city to a much larger extent...especially the hospitals. IMO, there was absolutely no excuse for the hospitals not being evacuated before the storm hit.

 

[Kevin Bowman]

Originally posted by Chris Sokol
I still think that one of the biggest \"poor decisions\" was waiting as long as he did for the mayor to initiate a mandatory evacuation. 24 hours earlier, and taking control of every bus, truck, and ambulance available, they could have emptied the city to a much larger extent...especially the hospitals. IMO, there was absolutely no excuse for the hospitals not being evacuated before the storm hit.

ive been saything this, as soon as Katrina was upgraded to a Cat 4 the mayor of new orleans shouldve sent out firetruck, police ect, sires blaring telling people to get out. yes it was at 1am but the extra 6 hours wouldve helped so much. They shouldve been on the emergency alert telling people to get out. Waiting the extra 6 hours proved costly

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I agree that there should have been a mandatory evacuation announcement well before it was. However, the reality of the situation is that such an evacuation would have been incredibly costly should the storm have turned northward earlier than it did. It isn't practical to do a mandatory evacuation 3-4 days ahead of time. The science of hurricane forecasting just isn't good enough to warrant such a response. We've seen mandatory evacs before only for the storm to behave or move differently than forecast. Each of these "Bust" forecasts desensitizes folks, and yields millions and milllions in financial losses. This is NOT a comment on the specific forecast (Which was nailed 60-72 hrs ahead of time), and I think the NHC and NWS did everything they could to express the dire situation that appeared imminent. And again, I do think the mandatory evac should have been given earlier. However, until we know more about the inner workings of hurricanes, our forecasts won't improve enough to provide confidence in a 60+ hr evacuation. Ivan, Lili, etc,

 

[John Farley]

I am utterly amazed at the very limited use of U.S. military resources. Sending ships that will arrive next week does nothing for the thousands stranded and in danger of dying. Air drops of food and water are needed immediately, and nobody but the U.S. military has the resources to move large numbers of people in a short time as needed for this disaster. There seems to have been no plan to do this, and when yesterday was allowed to pass with no such action undertaken, the fates of many who are trapped was, I fear, sealed. This is a national disgrace.

Yes, it is a very spread-out large-scale disaster, on an unprecedented scale, but there have been 15,000 people in need of food and water at the convention center and even this large, concentrated mass of people had received no assistance as of the last report I heard.

 

[Kevin Bowman]

Originally posted by Jeff Snyder
I agree that there should have been a mandatory evacuation announcement well before it was. However, the reality of the situation is that such an evacuation would have been incredibly costly should the storm have turned northward earlier than it did. It isn't practical to do a mandatory evacuation 3-4 days ahead of time. The science of hurricane forecasting just isn't good enough to warrant such a response. We've seen mandatory evacs before only for the storm to behave or move differently than forecast. Each of these \"Bust\" forecasts desensitizes folks, and yields millions and milllions in financial losses. This is NOT a comment on the specific forecast (Which was nailed 60-72 hrs ahead of time), and I think the NHC and NWS did everything they could to express the dire situation that appeared imminent. And again, I do think the mandatory evac should have been given earlier. However, until we know more about the inner workings of hurricanes, our forecasts won't improve enough to provide confidence in a 60+ hr evacuation. Ivan, Lili, etc,

its up to the people to choose to leave then, its their lives. eventually the big one was going to hit, no one can say they didnt know this was possible on this scale

 

[Kevin Bowman]

Originally posted by John Farley
I am utterly amazed at the very limited use of U.S. military resources. Sending ships that will arrive next week does nothing for the thousands stranded and in danger of dying. Air drops of food and water are needed immediately, and nobody but the U.S. military has the resources to move large numbers of people in a short time as needed for this disaster. There seems to have been no plan to do this, and when yesterday was allowed to pass with no such action undertaken, the fates of many who are trapped was, I fear, sealed. This is a national disgrace.

Yes, it is a very spread-out large-scale disaster, on an unprecedented scale, but there have been 15,000 people in need of food and water at the convention center and even this large, concentrated mass of people had received no assistance as of the last report I heard.

yep airdrop food and water into the middle of looters and watch people get killed by the stampede. You really think the people who need the help the most get it by air drops?

 

[Anonymous]

I live in Hawaii and have been through 2 major Hurricanes. I live on beachfront property. And in both situations police came to our home and told us to evacuate, it was mandatory. Was this done in New Orleans? How was the evacuation handled? If 20% of New Orleans live in poverty conditions, some would have no media access. How would they get that info?

 

[Edward Ballou]

Maybe it's time to circumvent our own government and plead for foreign aid.

 

[Kevin Bowman]

Originally posted by Anonymous
I live in Hawaii and have been through 2 major Hurricanes. I live on beachfront property. And in both situations police came to our home and told us to evacuate, it was mandatory. Was this done in New Orleans? How was the evacuation handled? If 20% of New Orleans live in poverty conditions, some would have no media access. How would they get that info?

Police and Fire were going around on blowhorns telling people