[tambourine-man]

Originally Posted by Repo

There is a lot to be learnt from Hurricane Katrina, first and foremost is you better have enough supplies and plans ready for the next disaster...

Or rather, you'd better get your shit together when a Cat 5 storm is heading to your city and every single fucking expert is predicting an unmitigated disaster. More specifically, if you have no method of transportation, you'd better hope that the city you live in has a disaster plan/emergency protocol that has been fully-thought through, agreed by all parties and clear in it's requirements (in other words, it says who's supposed to do what, when and where with no exceptions). Even better, you'd better hope that the person in charge of declaring and executing this plan, has the balls to do so and has the capacity of resources to make it work.

Originally Posted by Repo

whether natural or one due to terrorism because the Department of Homeland Security is slow and inept and if you rely on them you are sure to die...

Confusing a terrorist event with little warning and a natural disaster that everyone saw coming is a canard.

Originally Posted by Repo

The big elephant in the room is the National Guard. The National Guard is trained to handle disasters, if the National Guard and their equipment is overseas fighting in foreign wars; they can't help the very people they were trained to help. Some will say that they can bring in National Guard units from other states, which may be true, but people die in the time it takes to get those out of state units into the disaster area and they are unfamiliar with the region. Time is crucial in disaster relief and waiting for another state's National Guard is deadly; men, women, children and babies died in Louisiana and Mississippi because their National Guard is deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Perhaps. Remember though that the Mayor of NO had days... DAYS to request this support. Everyone knew it was on the way, but no-one demanded the influx of the Guard. That's not surprising though, because nobody was demanding the mandatory evacuation of civilians in those same days preceding the storm.

Originally Posted by Repo

It is criminal to hijack a state's National Guard to use overseas and deny the residents of Louisiana and Mississippi the people that trained to rescue them in times of an emergency. Congress needs to pass a law making it illegal effective immediately to deploy state National Guard units outside of the United States or it's territories. If the regular army isn't big enough to fight its wars then enlarge it but don't be stealing the National Guard from it's own citizens.

Blah, blah, blah. Yes, it stinks - but put aside the Anti-Bush agenda for 30 seconds and realise that there's more to this disaster than a depleted National Guard. There's plenty of other mistakes and ineptitudes (far earlier in the timeline) that made the scale of human suffering so great.

Originally Posted by Repo

Katrina proved that not having first responders immediately available to keep law and order results in chaos. The National Guard is more important in a disaster than many people realize. When Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida the Homestead police were at each other’s throats in revolt.

So by your own admission, there is a precedent set for how civil unrest occurs in times like these, yet there were no early requests by Nagin et al for out-of-state guardsmen to be moved in to the area?

Originally Posted by Repo

Many Homestead police left the force to be with their families in their time of need. Reports on television said that about 50% of the New Orleans police deserted after Katrina hit. When police flea, it leaves the remaining officers with an impossible task to keep order, only the National Guard can help and they have to be deployed immediately not days later...

Or brought into the region prior to the predicted disaster, and deployed immediately?

Originally Posted by Repo

When will officials understand that when emergencies strike communications systems fail? Communications failed in 9/11 and television reports said communications failed after Katrina struck. Maybe it is time the Department of Homeland Security comes up with a communication system especially devised to work after a disaster, of course that could prove difficult because as we have all seen the Department of Homeland Security doesn't work after a disaster...

No comment.

Originally Posted by Repo

After seeing the pathetic job the Department of Homeland Security has done following Hurricane Katrina in regards to keeping civil order, evacuating residents and caring for them, just imagine if you will the Department of Homeland Security after a terrorist detonates a nuclear bomb in a major U.S. city. It would probably be pretty much the same chaos experienced in New Orleans with the added pleasure of radiation poisoning causing all the people to lay in their own diarrhea while choking on their own vomit. The Department of Homeland Security knew Hurricane Katrina was on the way, they knew the levies could not take a major category 4 hurricane, they knew there would be massive flooding but yet they never had a plan to deal with the consequences. We now know how the Department of Homeland Security works when they know a disaster is on the way; one can only imagine how they would handle a disaster they didn't expect...

Am I the only one who thinks that the city officials should have got their arses in gear and done it themselves? Why on earth do people believe that the natonal/Federal Government is going to come to the rescue? In the UK, it's up to each authority, council or regional body to have their plans figured out - including the requisition of private resources to ensure the public's safety. Yes, the national Government will be involved, but the immediate planning, preparation and execution is a regional responsibility... surely?

Originally Posted by Repo

About the only thing the Department of Homeland Security can do good is give a press conference. I've seen them they are very good. They are great at spinning words too. I thought the press conference/photo-op in the aircraft hangar of President Bush, FEMA head Michael Brown, Alabama Governor Riley and Mississippi Governor Barbour was so nicely done it looked like an old Dockers commercial. Nice to see the boys dropped the suits for some casual wear during the disaster...

Look, I'm no fan of Bush, and I agree the conferences were horribly orchestrated, but to me, they seemed like a begrudging reaction to the vacuous shrieks about how the President "wasn't in touch with the public mood"... A simple action-reaction situation: people scream about Bush not saying the correct type of bullshit, then suddenly, cue schmaltzy press conferences and camera shots. The irony was that in flying into NO, the vital airspace has to be shut down for presidential security!

Originally Posted by Repo

The Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and his gopher Michael Brown did an unbelievably poor job and we have learned from past experiences that can only mean one thing, President Bush will give Chertoff and Brown medals just like he gave all the other people that bungled their government jobs...

Probably. But what's your point? Bush is a bone-chewing idiot, but he isn't entirely to blame for the poor reaction in New Orleans. Yes, the Federal response was slow... but fucking hell, the city/state reaction was abysmal.