Is the FEMA director living on Mars?

[Alex Lamers]

Originally posted by rdale
The same mayor who rejected FEMA/NHC's request for an evacuation 24 hours earlier?

Bingo.

...Alex Lamers...

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Ya know, the more I hear about what the FEMA director is saying, the more I think of the public spokesman for Saddam's regime in Iraq, when his news addresses would state the the Iraqi army was squashing the American troops, despite the fact that the troops were advancing into the city. I'm not likening NO to Iraq (!), I'm just relating the degree of seperation from reality seems unimagineable.

From the Washington Times:

Despite pleas from two public hospital administrators that they were running out of food, FEMA administrator Mike Brown said there is no truth to reports food is scarce in New Orleans.
\"The state has requested five trailer loads of MREs and water to be delivered today. Those are en route. There was plenty of food to feed last night in the Superdome. There was plenty of food to feed this morning. And there will be plenty of food to feed this evening,\" Mr. Brown said. \"So, any reports to the contrary are just incorrect.\"
Mr. Brown also called the security situation in New Orleans \"pretty darn good.\"

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20...8001r_page2.htm

So, unless every single media report out of New Orleans is incorrect, the idea that there is "plenty" of food in and near the Superdome is invalid in all regards. That shows a massive disconnect between what he thinks and what is really happening in the city. You'd really have to believe in a conspiracy to think that this isn't the case. You can say some media outlets are liberal and are trying to jab at the admin, but I have yet to see a SINGLE report that confirms Mr. Brown's opinion that the security situation is "pretty darn good". As was just mentioned by Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, this is the first time the NBC has had to hire private security guards to protect their reports and reporting teams across much of the affected areas. Yes, things are slowly starting to get better, but I can't believe he asserts that security in NO is "pretty darn good".

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Ugh, I've got to stop reading this stuff. Every time I do my blood pressure starts to rise. You could almost see the CNN reporters today trying to throttle the FEMA guy through the tube, and part of me wished it were possible.

 

[Anonymous]

Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Secretary, totally bungled this and should resign as soon as possible.

Thinking about it now I have no idea how this man is in anyway qualified to be the Homeland Security Secretary. His entire career was basically spent prosecuting white collar criminals. He was a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, an attorney in private practice, and briefly served as a federal appellate judge.

His appointment strikes me as pure political patronage. It makes sense to me why Bush appointed Tom Ridge as the first ever Secretary of Homeland Security. He was the governor of a major state and knew how to marshal resources and get things done from an executive branch perspective. Chertoff is a talking head that spouts empty platitudes at press conferences.

 

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Alex Lamers+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alex Lamers)</div>

<!--QuoteBegin-rdale

The same mayor who rejected FEMA/NHC's request for an evacuation 24 hours earlier?

Bingo.

...Alex Lamers...[/b]

FEMA and the federal government is just now getting around to sending the vehicles needed to transport people out of the city.

Do you actually think they could have evacuated the whole populace of the city (that couldn't drive) in that time span? Moroever, it's partially irrelevant as they cannot physically force people to leave their homes.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

At least the mayor is stressing his extreme frustration and anger with the lack of speed of the federal response. I still can't even believe what the FEMA director has said, and that's after hours of sleep... [shakes head]

 

[HAltschule]

(From another forum I posted on)

I'm usually not this harsh but after watching the news coverage of what's been happening (or not happening really) and hearing the mayor of New Orleans and other State Reps. pleading for help, I have become extremely disturbed and disappointed with our country's leaders. I really feel for the people of New Orleans (and surrounding areas) and wish there were something we could do that would bring immediate help to save lives. I can't for the life of me understand why our government took so long to send major aid, personnel and supplies to this ravished region. We should have sent at a minimum, 10,000-20,000 army and/or marine troops there on Monday to assist with rescue. With all of the looting that has been going on, that should have been the other wake up call to send these numbers of troops to keep the peace while rescue efforts were underway. People shooting at our helicopters that are trying to evacuate vicitims from a hospital?? Hell, we'll show you, I'm going to send in 20,000 troops to kick your Arss if you try that again? That would have been my response. I cannot believe that our President and federal commanders did not order these massive numbers to deploy to this region. It is unbelievable.

And now with the article below saying that the federal gov't will step in and "bolster" the rescue effort b/c it is unsatisfactory is just the icing on the cake. The ENTIRE nation knew that this needed to be done 5 days ago!!! Not 6 days after the event. Our President dropped the ball again in a huge way and reinforces my opinion that he is very unqualified to be our leader. I leave you with this: Where is the money, troops and aid that we've sent overseas now that this occurred in our own backyard? I feel for the people of New Orleans (and surrounding areas) and pray that god creates many, many miracles, because our incompetent President surely isn't doing much to help!!! And he is ultimately responsible for his administration. It is a chain of command and he has been failing to recognized a complete drop of the ball while he vacations in Texas for 1 month. Has George W. been watching any of the news stations lately??
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9157866/

 

[Rob_Davis]

You can blame a lot of this on 9/11. Just as I predicted at the time, the formation of the DHS bureaucracy has resulted in a worsening of our ability to deal with disaster, not an improvement. There were so much trouble with coordination at the WTC that the entire public safety community -- and especially FEMA -- have put an overemphasis on ICS and NIMS. The result is that in FEMA and DHS, the talkers considerably outnumber the doers. You can't get a roll of toilet paper without filling out the correct form and submitting it through the proper channels 72 hours in advance. Listen to the scanner! Everytime somebody requests something, they get told that it's not available or that it's somebody else's responsibility. For the last four years, this mentality has been drummed hardcore into every agency from the military on down to the dog catchers. DHS, which the President originally opposed, but finally gave in on to shut the libs up, has created such a deeply entrenched bureaucracy of management that the actual responders have been crippled.

So why is aid so late? Because the right people didn't submit the proper requests through the appropriate channels on the right forms. And every man on down the chain is scared to death to make a move without that form because of the strict policies enforcing this system. Consequently, everybody sits in their office and watches their television wondering, "I wonder why they haven't asked us for help yet?" instead of proactively making things happen.

Yep. Cherthoff is a useless tool. So was Ridge. So is the entire DHS. But regardless, the mayor is still the one who caused this situation to become unmanageable in the first place.

The Iraqi Information Minister analogy is awesome! :lol:

 

[HAltschule]

'Nuff Said.[/img]

 

[Jeff Snyder]

To further show that FEMA is a disaster in itself...

3:14 P.M. - St. Bernard Parish officials say that FEMA has not called them yet...five days after the storm.

3:07 P.M. - BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- U.S. Sen. David Vitter said FEMA's efforts to deal with the hurricane have been completely ineffective, and he called the federal government's response a failure.

"I think FEMA has been completely dysfunctional and is completely overwhelmed, and I don't know why. This situation was utterly predictable," said Vitter, R-Metairie. "It seems like there was no coherent plan, which I don't understand because this precise scenario has been predicted for 20 years," he said.

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG...OG.ac3fcea.html

While everyone is talking about New Orleans, the same cries for help are coming from coastal Mississippi and other areas of southeastern LA out of New Orleans. I'm THRILLED to see MREs and water being distributed in relatively mass quantities today. I'm still floored by the incredibly slow response, but now that it's hear, I'm happy folks are finally able to eat and drink.

It should be noted that conditions in places other than the Superdome are still horrendous by many accounts.

 

[Ben Cotton]

http://www.snopes.com/photos/binoculars.asp

Come on...

 

[Alex Lamers]

The same mayor who rejected FEMA/NHC's request for an evacuation 24 hours earlier?

Bingo.

...Alex Lamers...

FEMA and the federal government is just now getting around to sending the vehicles needed to transport people out of the city.

Do you actually think they could have evacuated the whole populace of the city (that couldn't drive) in that time span? Moroever, it's partially irrelevant as they cannot physically force people to leave their homes.

My point with the bingo is that the sooner the evacuation became mandatory the better. There were callers on CNN who said they would have caught a flight if they could but they were overbooked/cancelled.

I've said all along...it takes 60-72 hours to fully evacuate New Orleans. Let's work that out...

Figure that all evacs stopped on 05Z Mon...so 24 hrs would be 05z Sun (mandatories were Sun AM)...48 hrs would be 05Z Sat and 60 hrs would be 17Z Fri...or about noon CDT Friday.

Now, given that models showed their shift on the 12z runs it is probably not plausible that they could have ordered the evac by noon on Friday. That said, they became extremely consistent AND had narrowed down their focus area to very near New Orleans with the eye passing either just west or just east (big winds or big flood respectively) by 00Z runs and even really on the 18z runs.

Thus there could have easily been an additional 24-36 hrs onto the evac which would have been plenty of time to not only evacuate the out-of-towners but also perhaps the hospitals.

But what has been done has been done and that cannot be erased. All we can do is try to fix the problems we have now and I daresay fingerpointing doesn't help. What happened to uniting to confront a problem like this (as in 9/11)?

...Alex Lamers...

 

[J West]

http://www.snopes.com/photos/binoculars.asp

Come on...

Whew...I was going to look there, so thanks for posting that.

It looks like some on the board like posting things just to provoke others.

 

[Chris Hayes]

'Nuff Said.

What really happend there was he lifted up the binoculars to look through them, saw they were capped and then took the caps off. It is a legit photo, but you need to see the regular video clip.