by hilzoy
The Red Cross has been barred from entering New Orleans. The Red Cross’ web site says this:
“The state Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.”
CNN, by contrast, reports:
“Louisiana officials rebuffed American Red Cross requests to enter New Orleans with relief supplies last week because of concerns over logistical difficulties, Red Cross and state officials said Thursday.
The Red Cross never launched its relief effort in the city.
The national president of the American Red Cross, Marsha Evans, first made the request to undertake the operation during a visit to the state on September 1, three days after Hurricane Katrina struck, a local Red Cross chapter official said.
Vic Howell, chief executive officer of the agency’s Louisiana Capital Area Chapter, said he renewed that request the next day to Col. Jay Mayeaux, the deputy director of the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
“We had adequate supplies, the people and the vehicles,” Howell said at a news conference in Baton Rouge. “It was the middle of a military rescue operation trying to save lives. We were asked not to go in, and we abided by that recommendation.”
Mayeaux, appearing at the news conference with Howell, said he had asked the Red Cross to wait 24 hours for conditions to be “set” for the operation.
“To set up a feeding station to feed a large number of people, you need space. You need to escort the personnel into position. … And we asked Mr. Howell, and he concurred, to wait 24 hours to go to set that in,” Mayeaux said.
By Saturday, however, the point became moot because the large-scale evacuation of the city was under way, Howell and Mayeaux said.
“After that point in time … their rescue operation was in full force, and they felt they had adequate supplies there to take care of it without (the Red Cross) being introduced into the situation,” Howell said. “So we did not go directly into New Orleans.””
If the Red Cross requested access on September 1 (Thursday, when people were still dying at the Convention Center), they should absolutely have been allowed in. The reason CNN cites for the decision not to allowing them in is (to my mind) completely inadequate, but it at least makes a certain amount of sense. The reason cited on the Red Cross’ web site, however, is morally appalling. People were at that time being prevented from leaving the city by National Guard troops. Many of them probably would have left had they been allowed to do so. The idea of not letting the Red Cross provide food, water, and medical assistance to people who were dying in order not to make New Orleans into some sort of magnet for the indigent is just grotesque. The people in the Louisiana State government who made that decision did the wrong thing in any case; if the Red Cross is right about their reasons, however, they made it for reasons that are morally obscene.
IANAL, but did the Red Cross give up too easily? From the Stafford Act:
Functions of Federal coordinating officer
In order to effectuate the purposes of this Act, the Federal coordinating officer, within the affected area, shall–
1. make an initial appraisal of the types of relief most urgently needed;
2. establish such field offices as he deems necessary and as are authorized by the President;
3. coordinate the administration of relief, including activities of the State and local governments, the American National Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Mennonite Disaster Service, and other relief or disaster assistance organizations, which agree to operate under his advice or direction, except that nothing contained in this Act shall limit or in any way affect the responsibilities of the American National Red Cross under the Act of January 5, 1905, as amended (33 Stat. 599) [36 U.S.C. §§ 1 et seq.]; and;
Does this mean that they can’t tell the Red Cross to go if the Red Cross wants to go?
..to not go if…
sheeesh.
If this is the state officials who are responsible for this, they should be indicted along w/ Brown, Chertoff and Bush.
Not that I want to excuse the behavior of either the Red Cross or the Louisiana State Government, but I think you’re wrong in thinking it was done to stop New Orleans being “a magnet for the indigent”.
One of the clear problems with a mass evacuation such as was necessary for New Orleans is, where do you put all these people?
The thing that I would imagine the LA state government would want to avoid is having a massive tent city setting up right beside New Orleans, with too many people in one place for effective sanitary arrangements, and generally much more difficulty feeding them and taking care of them than if they were evacuated in smaller groups into many different places.
But, given the choice, I would imagine most people who wanted out of New Orleans would prefer to stay close to home. Certainly I think it’s reasonable that the state of Louisiana should fear that to be the case.
Looked at from that angle, the turning back of individuals on foot at gunpoint, while letting people out if they were in a car, is understandable: cars would go a distance, people on foot might simply go to the nearest dry land and set up camp. (Though to my mind: it would have made just as much sense to plan on evacuating people from just outside New Orleans as from inside it.)
The refusal to supply food or potable water to the people still in the city in this scenario turns into an inhuman kind of logistics. The people still in the city are to be moved out, and must be willing to be moved to wherever the government agency wants to take them. Feed and water them in the city, and they might want to stay. Keep them starving and thirsty, and they’ll be willing to go wherever the agency sends them.
I don’t say it’s forgiveable: I don’t see how this can be forgiven. It is still morally obscene. But it less grotesque than bit wanting to make New Orleans into some sort of magnet for the indigent.
the person who ordered this decision should not just be fired, but be sued for wrongful death. also on my hit list: the mayor and sheriff of the neighboring parish who blocked refugees from going over the bridges out of the city, at gunpoint. I would imagine it might even be illegal to use guns to prevent your fellow citizens from using an interstate highway. also brown and chertoff. maybe blanco. I want to see heads roll.
Before you rush to blame Louisiana, find out who appointed Mayeaux, whose partisan and protege he has been – so far as such things are visible on the surface.
Is the state Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness under the authority of the Federal government, or not?
the mayor and sheriff of the neighboring parish who blocked refugees from going over the bridges out of the city, at gunpoint.
This is something that I’m afraid is lurking beneath the surface. It’s been 20 years since I spent any large amount of time in New Orleans, but the fact that they apparently evacuated the convention center by helicopter rather than taking people to the unflooded West Bank really seems strange to me. I realize that the river might have been difficult, but it was a storm surge rather than than river flooding, so I’m not sure that could have been such a severe problem. In fact, on the Times-Picayune weblog, there is this
In Jefferson Parish, isolated signs of life began to spread across the West Bank.
A few stores opened for business here and there west of the Harvey Canal. Three-fourths of Gretna reported it had electrical power. The sewerage treatment plant was working and the city had water, although a boil order was still in effect, said Police Chief Arthur Lawson.
Here are maps of the Louisiana parishes. As I said, my knowledge (and memory) of the area is quite dated, but looking at the map, I’m a bit bothered. There was also the emphasis of General Honore on the NG units ‘pointing their weapons down’. That was reported as Honore being a take charge sort of guy, but I now wonder why so many guardsmen had their weapons pointed up in the first place.
I also wondered what were the two offers that Mayor Nagin said were offered by Bush to Blanco. The weblog has this
Following the meeting on Air Force One, the White House sent Blanco a proposed memorandum of understanding late Friday night that she was urged to sign right away, according to the governor. The memo would have taken the rare step of putting Honore in charge of both the Guardsmen and the active-duty military units while answering to both the president and Blanco, known in the military as dual-reporting.
But Blanco, after meetings by her staff that consumed much of Friday night and Saturday morning, declined to sign the memo and opted to preserve her authority of the Guard forces, which by then numbered more than 13,000. Blanco said she did not want to undermine the authority of Maj. Gen. Bennett Landreneau, who heads the Louisiana National Guard and oversees the Guard troops who have arrived from other states.
“The problem with the offer (to federalize) was that when the question was asked, ‘How does this make things better?’ the question was never answered,” said one state official who attended meetings about the issue but asked to remain anonymous because he does not have authority to speak for the governor.
It seems that Mayeaux was appointed by Blanco, though that is not so meaningful by itself, in that New Orleans was vying for a regional Homeland Security office. This link may be of some interest
Much of the money for state and city homeland security initiatives comes from federal sources. Colonel Mayeaux gives the government high marks for making the federal Department of Homeland Security the single point of contact for initiatives, grants, and information sharing. However, he says, the way the department distributes money needs some refinement.
Ebbert, who is also responsible for coordinating with all the federal and state agencies on behalf of the city in all areas of homeland security, seconds that view. He is blunt about the funding inequities. “The biggest challenge I have on the national level is getting the political power to convince people in the Department of Homeland Security that the distribution of funds by population is a program that will ensure dollars do not go to strategically important areas of the country,” he says. (This view was also championed in a recent report from the Council on Foreign Relations.)
The issue is exemplified in the federal FY ’03 supplemental budget. Seattle received $11.28 million as part of an “urban security initiative for 30 cities and their contiguous counties…to enhance the security of urban areas with…critical infrastructure, ports, and mass transit systems,” New Orleans received $6.28 million from the same package, about half what Detroit got.
New Orleans also recently received a port security grant of more than $6 million, slightly less than that given to Miami, which ranks 61st on the list of U.S. ports by cargo volume, compared to New Orleans’ ranking of fourth.
This link
details problematic expeditures of Homeland Security grants.
These are the questions that Col. Mayeaux received at a forum at McNeese State
This page has some powerpoints from FEMA (I think) about ‘Hazard mitigation’. It’s easy to take the piss out of this sort of stuff, especially in hindsight, but when the powerpoint slide #21 says
Ineligible projects
-Communication systems
-Emergency Support equipment
-Vehicles
-most warning systems
-No levees
You have to wonder.
FEMA Camp
The site looks totally tin-foil, but the article is long, in-depth, with lots of pictures…and attitude. Take it as you will.
WTF is going on here? This is weirding me out, and I used to so stable and placid. The backwoods of Virginia? Where are the jobs gonna come from? Resettlement camps? Relocation camps? Certainly not everyone is being treated this way, we have people settling in my area, individually, small groups.
One lady near me had a three bedroom and a family of five, and offered to take 11 refugees.
WTF is going on here?
I think, just as we saw with the airport screeners, it is an opportunity for people with a vindictive streak to boss people around. That, coupled with the fact that the evacuees should be grateful because they are distributing things that other people have donated, leads to this sort of dynamic.
If we (by which I mean the US) are lucky, this massive redistribution of the population is going to affect people in the ways we look at poverty and minorities. But that luck would be far more than we deserve, I think.
idook, I think you actually left the important part of your sentence unbolded:
. . . nothing contained in this Act shall limit or in any way affect the responsibilities of the American National Red Cross under the Act of January 5, 1905, as amended (33 Stat. 599) [36 U.S.C. §§ 1 et seq.]
The first reference, 33 Stat 599, was the Act passed by Congress in 1905 chartering the Red Cross. The second, 36 USC, is the actual ARC Congressional charter and describes their organizational structure, purposes, etc.; see here. The ARC does have certain legal rights and responsibilities regarding disaster relief, but they are always at the invitation of the coordinating authority and the powers-that-be. Essentially, as I understand it, all that portion of the Stafford Act means is that, once they are invited in, ARC can not be prohibited from carrying out their chartered duties by the coordinating organization or command structure, or asked to perform duties unrelated to their charter.
Yes, there was quite a bit of screwing-up at the state and local level, wasn’t there? People were impeded from evacuation, delivery of relief supplies was impeded, and the known issue that OTO of 100k people in New Orleans simply did not have transportation was, for the most part, completely disregarded. It’s almost as if this result was the desired one; the only way this could have not resulted in misery and death is if the levees had not broken. Which, you know, wasn’t a result that anyone who knew much about the levees would have planned for.
But Bush killed babies, bob, so you really don’t need to bother with this thread at all.
And don’t even get me started on the governor’s need for 24 hours to determine what should be an obvious next step.
… governor’s need for 24 hours to determine what should be an obvious next step.
that’s such a bizzare thing for her to request, given the circumstances, that i have to assume there’s something more to the story than massive indecision on her part.
Slarti, I realize that the Bush bashing must get a bit monotonous for you, but surely it must trouble you when f’rex demonstrably false statements are made by off the record sources in a clear attempt to divert blame, not to mention Michael Brown’s ‘qualifications’ for his position.
And, as I noted previously , and later added to it just above, I do think that if the two choices was such a good idea, they should have been laid out publically. If it was the proposal above (that General Honore have two chiefs to report to) seems to be precisely the opposite of what Nagin thinks was proposed (who clearly said that he didn’t know exactly what the two proposed options were). I suppose I am close enough to the bush=babkykiller school for you to dismiss this, but I don’t trust the administration to honestly relay the content of their proposals and to come up with them in a way that designed to help rather than insulate themselves from blame.
I’m confused: isn’t homeland security a branch of the federal government? If so, what does the governor of LA have to do with anything as far as the decision not to allow the RC in is concerned? It sounds like it was made by homeland security.
A slightly off topic observation: the police in NO are seizing guns from the citizenry. Doesn’t their ability to do so suggest that the old argument that gun control will lead to a dictatorship because the government will no longer have to fear the armed citizenry is flawed? It seems that the government has no particular fear of the armed citizenry because it is better armed and can, in fact, seize the populace’s guns at will.
Off topic – meanwhile, at the so called “Freedom walk”:
Organizers of the Pentagon’s 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.
The march, sponsored by the Department of Defense, will wend its way from the Pentagon to the Mall along a route that has not been specified but will be lined with four-foot-high snow fencing to keep it closed and “sterile,” said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense.
The U.S. Park Police will have its entire Washington force of several hundred on duty and along the route, on foot, horseback and motorcycles and monitoring from above by helicopter. Officers are prepared to arrest anyone who joins the march or concert without a credential and refuses to leave, said Park Police Chief Dwight E. Pettiford.
I would not believe this if it wasn’t actually happening. A “freedom” walk where you must “register,” where, if you try to join without a “credential” you will be arrested, and where the march route will be kept “sterile.”
And this:
Pettiford said officers would patrol to keep interlopers out because the Pentagon restricted the event in its permit application. “That is what their permit called for, so we have those fences to keep the public out.”
Can’t have the public participating in freedom, mind you.
“It’s a permitted event. That means [organizers] are allowed to say who is in and who’s out,” said Sgt. Scott Fear, a Park Police spokesman.
That might be fine for a private march, but its the effing federal government.
It’s not until the 8th paragraph that the Post points out:
What’s unusual for an event on the Mall is the combination of fences, required preregistration and the threat of arrest.
No sh*t?
One restricted group will be the media, whose members will not be allowed to walk along the march route.
Must keep this “freedom” concept a secret, lest it escape and run wild through the country.
belle waring –
Re: Harry Lee, the Jeff Parish sheriff in question, he rode to reelection a couple of years ago by publicly promising to keep black people out of the Parish (which was, after all, David Duke’s old state legislature district).
My friend who works for the Jeff Parish government (well, worked; they just told him his next paycheck was his last) tells me that the local rumors now are that Harry Lee (a) personally shot five people on the Crescent City Connection last week, and (b) died of a heart attack a couple of days ago, but the deputies have not yet been told. Just more of the swirling morass of half-truths and gossip that is roiling around down there.
[the rumor has it that Harry Lee] died of a heart attack a couple of days ago, but the deputies have not yet been told.
the T-P weblog has this
Forget the rumors: Harry Lee is alive and well
Thursday, 8:15 p.m.
By Michelle Hunter
East Jefferson bureau
The rumors of Sheriff Harry Lee’s demise are greatly exaggerated.
Lee, who said Thursday that he and his staff have been inundated with calls regarding a persistent rumor that the parish’s top lawman died of a heart attack during the storm, was alive and well.
[snip]
The rumors of his death were fueled by the curious absence of the usually ever-present Lee on local media, and whispers that parish officials wanted to maintain order by keeping his death under wraps.
Lee said he’s just been busy.
David Niewert also has this post about David Duke, whose New Orleans house was destroyed and who is in Sweden hooking up with various neo-Nazi groups and provides links, if you have your hazmat suit handy.
If it is possible for the local or state government to cause so much death, destruction and suffering through its incompetence why do we have a FEMA?
If FEMA is so hamstrung by the locals then I would rather spend my tax dollars in my home state than give it to a paper tiger, Federal agency. Lucky for me I live in a pretty well of state. I feel sorry for poor states like LA and MS.
That does bother me, but since there’s no name to go with that assertion, it never carried any weight with me to begin with. How WaPo can repeatedly keep getting burned by senior administration officials is tough to figure; one would think that by now the administration would be long out of administration officials WaPo would be willing to quote, even anonymously.
So, there’s no dearth of infocrap coming out of Washington, but what that has to do with the actual situation in New Orleans is, for me, a bit of a headscratcher.
I hadn’t noticed you hopping on that bandwagon, LJ.
Yes, it is. It’s also a part of state government, at least as far as Louisiana is concerned.
That part isn’t exactly clear. However, the LA National Guard and LA DHS are under state control, not federal control.
I think there’s indication that the decision was made by the LA DHS, which…it’s unclear from their website who they answer to. Their advisory board consists of the governor and some members of the state House. This, however, seems to indicate that the LA DHS is under the LA National Guard, which in turn answers to Governor Blanco.
“If the Red Cross requested access on September 1 (Thursday, when people were still dying at the Convention Center), they should absolutely have been allowed in.”
The important question is why Blanco’s request for more NG forces, which came as early as the Saturday before the storm hit, was not answered and expedited by Monday and Tuesday. I know if I had the power of the President, I could have had Bill Richardson’s available NM contingent there. Etc.
They were deliberately held back.
If there is one thing I have gotten tired of, it is the strutting chimp telling us he is powerless and not responsible….for looting in Iraq, for the continuing insurgency, for the deficits, for just about everything that happens on his watch. While demanding our admiration as a strong decisive capable leader.
Yeah. Bush watched Geraldo crying over the baby and said:”We can blame Blanco, right Karl? Terrific.” You are doing the same, as part of the responsible crowd.
If you want to have FEMA supercede local authority, that can be part of the program, perhaps. To date, though, it hasn’t been, and it looks as if it wasn’t designed to be. You’re pretty much asking for some military authority in FEMA ranks, and you’re asking for FEMA to wrest control of the state militaries when it sees fit.
Or it could be that I’ve misunderstood you. The odds of that, based on my history, are admittedly high.
“New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state’s National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn’t come from Washington until late Thursday.”
From Charles timeline below, Charles comments “inexplicable and baffling”.
This killed the babies.
You understood me.
The first hours/days of any disaster are the most important. If FEMA has no real authority to do anything in those first hours/days it seems logical to me that we should spend our limited resources on improving the initial disaster response of local and state governments.
It wouldn’t bother me if FEMA was given real authority over state resources during a disaster. I wouldn’t care what initials were on the windbreaker of the person who saved me from drowning.
What, denying more guard troops to impede Red Cross is baby-killing?
bob, you don’t know what happened, yet. You know the result, but not the actions leading up to it. They were deliberately held back needs some support that as far as I’ve seen is lacking.
Blue, FEMA isn’t currently a first responder, or even in charge of first responders. To say FEMA currently serves no purpose isn’t accurate, but to say they don’t serve the purpose that was demanded in this instance is.
I see that once again I was being unclear:
Even I have no idea what I meant by that. Retracted, and time to visit the liquid caffeine dispenser.
And this is relevant, although I have no idea whether it’s accurate, because as I’ve said on many occasions, IANAL:
National Guard arrives on Friday
The Red Cross initially was kept out because of inadequate security. If the convention center and Superdome had been surrounded by Guard troops late Monday night or Tuesday the food and water could have been delivered. We have no evidence that Nagin or Blanco did not want those Guard troops, the evidence is overwhelming that they wanted any additional security available.
Why the Guard deployment wasn’t expedited is indeed unclear. I vaguely remember Rumsfeld was directly involved in the decision. But most of the problems came from NO having too few security forces to stabilize the situation.
“But she and other state officials balked at giving up control of the Guard as Justice Department officials said would have been required by the Insurrection Act if those combat troops were to be sent in before order was restored.”
The timeline is important here, I believe this is Friday and Saturday.
I would also guess this has to do in part with Rumsfeld’s view of how troops should be used. Including “force protection”. The idea of simply encircling a few key points, the Convention Center and Superdome, while the rest of the city was not pacified probably goes against doctrine. So Rumsfeld wanted to send in 20-50k or nothing.
There a lot of parallels to the way the war in Iraq is being waged. I don’t think Rumsfeld likes the idea of troops in a defensive posture. So they pacify Qaim, leave, come back again in a few months to do it again.
Finally, this editorial at Investor’s Business Daily talks about the historical speed of FEMA in responding. Somehow, they neglected to mention Bret:
Emphasis mine; link courtesy of Bumper Stickerist. Recall that Bret occurred in 1998, under better FEMA management.
Bob, Rumsfeld has exactly zero to do with deployment of LA NG. What he might have to do with deployment of NG interstate, I have no idea.
The LANG was in New Orleans in small numbers with supplies in the Superdome before Katrina made landfall. The most detailed timeline I’ve seen to date is here; hold your nose and read.
Finally, your suggestion that the Guard could have been deployed in greater numbers prior to landfall is noted, but a) authority for deploying them comes from Governor Blanco, and b) normally you don’t bring troops and relief IN to the path of a Cat V storm, because they have this annoying tendency to kill people and destroy equipment and supplies.
What purpose does FEMA serve? If it can only stand by and watch as local and state officials make decisions that get people killed what good is it? What has to happen before FEMA has any real authority when responding to a disaster?
I don’t expect you to be able to answer these questions, but I do expect Bush and Co. to have answers for them.
If Dubya and his proxies want to push all the blame on to the locals then they also need to push all of the resources to the locals. If my city and state has to wait four or five days for Federal assisstance then those city and state governments need to have the resources available to do that before a disaster strikes. What role does the Federal government play in making sure those resources are available? If the answer is little or none then Bush needs to make it clear to the American people that their states and cities are the only ones who can save them if a disaster strikes.
If thousands dead and a city destroyed is the price for the weakest link in the recovery chain breaking then we need to make that link stronger.
Slarti: there’s enough room here for all sorts of people to be to blame.
As I read the Stafford Act, Bush could have overridden local authority had he wished to. His administration apparently drew the same conclusion. NYT:
And:
“What he might have to do with deployment of NG interstate, I have no idea.”
I just spent a half hour at Amygdala looking for the relevant information; I found what looks like a 5-6 stage procedure for interstate NG deployment and resources which I could make little sense of. But DOD and Rummy are directly involved:”All your National Guard belong to us.”
I think Brown’s role is way overrated here, tho there do appear to be direct FEMA screwups. The idea is that the FEMA head can get on the phone and say:”This is a national emergency and I am in charge of everything. Now General, shove your all three of your stars, get those transport planes in the air in one hour on the way to Albuquerque to pick up the guard, or you will get your butt trasferred to Nome.”
If Witt ever had that kind of authority, I know Brown sure doesn’t have it now. The big decisions came from over his head.
….
Don’t try to tell me it was impossible to have NG in NOLA before Friday; the hurricane’s path wasn’t in Richardson way.
That’s a great quote, hilzoy. Aside from the obvious rejoinder that PR concerns –“How would it look . . . ?” — were at the forefront once again, the idea that Pres. Bush is suddenly worried about offending the Democrats is simply delicious.
“The Red Cross has been barred from entering New Orleans.”
This is hardly news. I pointed it out on the 3rd, and so did plenty of other people, then or since. I’m confused; if this is an issue, why wait about a week — a vital week — to object?
LJ: “….the fact that they apparently evacuated the convention center by helicopter….”
My fairly strong impression was that it was primarily by bus, but I could be wrong. Do you have a cite for this fact?
“To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Ms. Blanco would have resisted surrendering control, as Bush administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established.”
Again, this is quite late in the game, and frankly, after Friday or Saturday it didn’t matter much.
Tuesday, Wednesday, I don’t think Rumsfeld wanted large numbers of NG troops deployed if they weren’t under his control. Which I think is the main source of the delay.
Not meaning to play tag team here, but
That does bother me, but since there’s no name to go with that assertion, it never carried any weight with me to begin with.
This means that by not having any clear statement by any recognizable figure, (unlike Nagin and Blanco, as you don’t have a plethora of off the record sources describing various scenarios that played out for them), the administration is able to keep your loyalty, or at least your willingness to argue their side.
I don’t mean to color outside the lines here, (cause I think a storm is a-brewing here at ObWi) but it seems that the decision to make Mike Brown a figurehead of a gutted government bureaucracy is precisely at people like you. This is why, while I’m not on the bandwagon, I could be described as waving a flag as it goes by.
It’s on CNN International, so I don’t know if it is being seen stateside, but Bush just delivered a speech at the swearing in of Karen Hughes as undersec for public diplomacy (and questions about why this deserves a ceremony and a presidential speech aside) that thanked the assembled ambassadors for the aid that somehow was precisely the same as fighting terrorism after 9-11. Fortunately, we don’t know the name of the speechwriter, so we shouldn’t get too bent our of shape, I guess.
“FEMA Camp
The site looks totally tin-foil, but the article is long, in-depth, with lots of pictures…and attitude. Take it as you will.”
This has been much discussed for days, all over, Bob. See here and here, for instance.
I’ll repeat this link again for them what wants it. It’s a dKos diary whose author actually contacted the various agencies involved to try to figure out why the Red Cross was prevented entry into NOLA.
“I’m confused: isn’t homeland security a branch of the federal government?”
There’s the federal Department. There’s also a Louisiana Dept. of Homeland Security. Just as many states have state versions of many federal agencies.
Emphasis mine; link courtesy of Bumper Stickerist. Recall that Bret occurred in 1998, under better FEMA management.
And also before 9/11 and the reorganization that demoted FEMA from a Cabinet-level position to a subagency of DHS. So it is, unfortunately, irrelevant to the matter at hand.
“This has been much discussed for days, all over, Bob. See here and here, for instance.”
I can’t live at your site, Gary. And quite frankly, there is almost too much there. Can you find the procedures, the 5-6 stages of paperwork needed for resource deployment? Something about going to several different command centers.
There’s the federal Department. There’s also a Louisiana Dept. of Homeland Security. Just as many states have state versions of many federal agencies.
At another board I frequent, one of the members went to a retreat with a guy who turned out to be the Mississippi Department of Homeland Security. Like, all of it. I wonder whether that’s true of the Lousiana DHS (in fact, not on paper).
Also, Josh Marshall makes a cautious point about the Times article.
“Off topic – meanwhile, at the so called ‘Freedom walk'”
This is quite interesting, and I’d like to blog it, but since you’ve apparently received the message through your teeth, I can’t. Might you give a link, or a cite/URL, please?
Gary: for about a week after Katrina hit, I was a basket case. I couldn’t wrap my mind around anything but the suffering, and a few very obvious complete screw-ups. I was, frankly, in awe of people like Kevin Drum, who kept on writing regardless; I couldn’t do it. So I am having a lot of delayed reactions.
Never mind.
“So I am having a lot of delayed reactions.”
Oh, okay. I couldn’t figure out if you’d not noticed the Red Cross thing until just now, or what. Because I was shocked nearly speechless when I posted it, which is the way I’ve felt for the vast majority, or so it feels like, of post-Katrina stories I’ve posted. The more astonished and shocked I am, the less I say, because the less I feel capable of saying something. Which is why a lot of my current blogging is just information presentation, to try my best to make sure people have the information and know what’s going on; I’m more concerned with that than in telling people what to think, since the correct response to much of this stuff is, in my view, extremely clear.
My fairly strong impression was that it was primarily by bus, but I could be wrong. Do you have a cite for this fact?
I’ll try to find something, but I have to second what Hilzoy says. I’ve been looking at stuff and listening for names of people I went to school with or that I knew. I woke up from a dead sleep about 4 days ago when I realized that a dear friend who I had lost touch with married someone who was teaching at Tulane and digging though old files, I found her email and found out that her husband was on sabbatical, so she had evacuated to her hometown and her and her two children were fine. But those sorts of things keep nagging at me and school hasn’t started here, and if I went to my office, I would just be doing the same thing there.
At any rate there was just a doctor on CNN who was saying that the convention center people were being airlifted out, and also that the buses mentioned by the Duke University students were being run to the airport with no passengers (they had their home video on CNN and it was very spooky, all of these school buses going in the opposite direction, away from NO, completely empty).
Also, my impression was that the Astrodome was originally set up as a replacement for the Superdome, (hence the story about Jabbor Gibson), so the bulk of the busses left from there, which is why it got flooded and they were then redirecting people on to San Antonio and other locales.
There are logical reasons for taking them to the airport if they are flying groups of people out, just piling people into buses at the convention center with no triage (the convention center was a shelter that was set up after the Superdome reached capacity, I think) and then bussing them to neighboring states would have been a recipe for disaster.
This fox news report has this
At the convention center, people stumbled toward the helicopters, dehydrated and nearly passing out from exhaustion. Many had to be carried by National Guard troops and police on stretchers. And some were being pushed up the street on office chairs and on dollies.
Nita LaGarde, 105, was pushed down the street in her wheelchair as her nurse’s 5-year-old granddaughter, Tanisha Blevin, held her hand. The pair spent two days in an attic, two days on an interstate island and the last four days on the pavement in front of the convention center.
It also quoted Mineta that 10,000 people were airlifted out of New Orleans, which suggests that this many were taken to the airport, as I don’t think there are any other airfield facilities in NO capable of handling that kind of traffic.
On the other hand, I imagine that the first crush of convention center were bussed out,(I’ve heard that there were as many as 25,000 there, so that kind of makes a total helicopter evacuation impossible) but for those who were sick or infirm, the West Bank is just on the other side of the River, and it doesn’t make sense to take those kind of cases to the airport.
I’ve been waiting for some more firm numbers, but they are obviously difficult to find. I read that the number of evacuees at the Cajundome in Baton Rouge have dropped significantly (from 6,000 to 1,500?) as they have been able to move in with extended family in the area (again, sorry, I can’t find a link, but it was a factoid in a story about families taking in relatives, focussing on a family that had 14 or 15 people now staying at the house)
Sebastian, have you located your friends yet?
I ran across thos comment over at Brad DeLong’s. Some of it makes no sense to me, but can anyone verify the changes in the FAQ?
“I checked that “Let’s fly under the bridge” blog. They referenced the Red Cross FAQ about Katrina. The last time I looked at that they listed ten reasons they didn’t do any aid inside NOLA.
But now there are only 7 reasons on the list, the one about FEMA is gone. The ones that say the National Guard and the state Homeland Security Department didn’t want them, are still there.
Louisiana has its own Homeland Security Department, apparently they changed the name of something else when the “homeland security” name got popular. The painted sign in front of the building has between three and five different names, depending on how you count, and “Louisiana Military Department Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness” is one of them.
http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/agencyrelated/aboutagency.htm
It bothers me that the Red Cross has changed their FAQ to make it look like FEMA was not involved. Of course they have to get along with national governments in each nation they operate in. It’s more important to save lives than to tell the truth. But still….
Remember just before we invaded Iraq, the big uproar about our news media failing to report Saddam’s atrocities? Their excuse was that it let them have access.
And it occurs to me, if they’d do it for Saddam wouldn’t they do it for Bush? Bush might or might not be better than Saddam, we won’t know until we get honest reporting, but he’s at least a born american citizen. If they’d censor themselves for Saddam, for “access”, is there any plausible reason they wouldn’t do it for Bush?
And the Red Cross too.
Anyway, this blog claims that Brad DeLong was lying about why the Red Cross stayed out of NOLA, and points to the new Red Cross FAQ as his evidence.
Is there any doubt left that 1984 is the operations manual?” …j Thomas
Bush Medical
Slarti: so you really don’t need to bother with this thread at all.
FWIW: I agree that the failure to evacuate New Orleans is horrifying. (I wrote about it here, if you’re interested.)
Just as an example: Reports are coming back of residents in nursing homes being left in the path of the hurricane, when, absolutely, city and/or state (I don’t know which) should have shown up with suitable transport at the door of the nursing homes and taken all the residents (and staff) to hospitals or other nursing homes out of the
path of the hurricane. That this didn’t happen – that the presumption seemed to be that if you didn’t have a car or other means of getting out, too bad – was the first source of horror for me about New Orleans, and is still, whenever I think about it, something that enrages me. F’godsake, the state didn’t even empty the prisons
in the path of the hurricane – and prisoners, after all, don’t need to be asked permission before they’re shifted somewhere else.
I wish I could believe in an independent investigation* that would uncover all the bad decisions made, and why they were made, and ensure that nothing like it never happened again – because it was appalling. No argument there.
But equally appalling was the failure of the federal government to act.
For all I know about Louisiana, it’s possible that lack of resources prevented the mayor of New Orleans or the governor of the state from doing what should have been done: setting up fully-provisioned storm
shelters and sufficient transportation for 100 000 people, and enough National Guardsmen to make sure that everyone who wanted to get out knew that they could go and have a safe place to go to. I’m not saying that excuses their failure, but certainly, once the hurricane had struck, both the governor and the mayor seemed to be working like hell to try and get resources to the people of their state, or their city.
Whereas Bush: played guitar on Monday. Presented a birthday cake. Stood around at the airport Thursday, while babies were dying of dehydration in the Convention Center just a few miles away, cracking jokes about rebuilding Trent Lott’s house. His spin machine got busily to work redirecting any blame downwards, and Bush himself apparently feels “nothing went wrong” and his cohorts are busy telling lies and issuing media spin.
Elizabeth Marquardt at Family Scholars
Blog wrote, days ago:
*But Bush said, as I recall, that he doesn’t intend to have an independent investigation, he wants one headed by himself… which means we’re unlikely to find out, certainly not in the lifetime of this administration, precisely where the real faults lie at city, state, and federal levels.
Bob, I not only know personally a great many of the people (including key decisionmakers) who are involved in preparing Red Cross public information, fact sheets and talking points, and getting that information on the Web and out for public consumption, I sleep with one of them every night. And without me getting into things that I’m not entitled or authorized to talk about, I can tell you that you’ve crossed a line as far as ARC is concerned from idle speculation to rank offensiveness.
Bob and Jes- Outstanding posts. By the way, do you know if Libby Dole is still head of the Red Cross?
Frank, the President of the Red Cross is Marty (Marsha) Evans, a former USN Admiral and former President of the Girl Scouts. The Chairwoman is Bonnie McElveen-Hunter; I believe she was once US ambassador to Finland, and she heads a communications firm.
Absolutely.
Again, pretty much up to the Governor.
No, it doesn’t.
Translation, please. I can’t even think of what this might mean.
Let’s see: under a cabinet-level, ostensibly un-gutted agency, FEMA response was less than brisk. Relevant, methinks.
Looks like: probably not.
Slarti, Phil- Thanks. Right at the top of her bio: On June 18, 2004, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter was appointed Chairman of the American Red Cross by President George W. Bush.
I didn’t know it worked like that, huh.
Jeez, that looks familiar. In any event, invocation of the Insurrection Act, unless it’s an increasingly inaccurately named trilogy, could not have occurred until something like insurrection had manifested. Far too late, in other words, to prevent the front end of lawlessness.
By that time, though, there was something like 10k National Guard on their way to New Orleans.
Oh, Insurrection Act can be found here. Interesting reading, that.
“I can tell you that you’ve crossed a line as far as ARC is concerned from idle speculation to rank offensiveness.”
Sorry, most of that is a cut and pasted comment by “j Thomas”. Everything but the first two lines. I was simply asking for verification. Please explain. Yours was a very cryptic criticism.
I actually considered cutting the paragraph comparing Bush to Saddam. It does not reflect my own views.Are you saying the question about the FAQ is offensive?
signed:confused.
“Interesting reading, that.”
Fairly vague. I can understand why Bush would be hesitant to invoke or use it in a Southern State. There is a history that is not yet forgotten.
I also guessed that there were clauses in the act with the potential for abuse. I didn’t see anything that jumped out at me.
Bob, I didn’t see the “j thomas,” and took those for your remarks, and for that I apologize.
What I meant was that the process by which information at ARC gets developed and worked into talking points and FAQs for public consumption is complicated and always in-progress, but from my personal knowledge of the people involved, “self-censorship” or “kowtowing to the administration” is far, far down the list of criteria. Sometimes, it’s that they got something wrong the first time and needed to correct it later.
Further than that, deponent sayeth not, as I’d be getting into areas beyond my ability to discuss.
Yes, but not so vague so as to allow intervention in anticipation of a riot. But again: now and forever, IANAL.
And I apologize for not cutting the second half of thomas’s comment.
What brought it to my attention is a note somewhere on Gary’s blog that three (non-ARC) water trucks were turned back by FEMA officials at the edge of NOLA, showing that it wasn’t only local officials causing problems. There is plenty of documentation of FEMA refusing outside aid, the firefighters, for whatever reasons.
I still contend that this was policy, not incompetence, and that Mike Brown did not have the actual authority to make such policy.
And if security had been at least partially established on Tuesday and Wednesday, I still can’t say if ARC would have come in, or been allowed in. That is the question of hilzoy’s post.
Slarti, I’m curious about something. If legal issues prevented active duty troops from being deployed to New Orleans, what changed to allow them to go in when they did? As near as I can tell, the legalities of the situation didn’t change a bit, and yet by the weekend, there were troops from the 82nd Airborne patrolling New Orleans. The rather troubling conclusion that seems to follow from those facts is that legal issues were enough to prevent the deployment of active-duty troops when the situation in New Orleans was merely a matter of people dying, but not enough to prevent the deployments once it became clear that the administration was being hurt politically.
None of this excuses failures at the state and local level, but sitting out here 5000 miles or so from Louisiana, I worry more about the feds.
“At any rate there was just a doctor on CNN who was saying that the convention center people were being airlifted….”
The people, or the patients in need of medical attention? I know you already indicated you didn’t have a cite, and as I say, you may be entirely right, particularly since a) I don’t have cable tv, and b) as I blogged earlier today, I’m feeling all queasy and ill and not able to read much. I’m just wondering if possibly the doctor was talking about patients. I’m unclear how many helicopters it would take to load ~25,000 people on board, or why they would want to with a perfectly open road available, especially in light of my having read that they were being primarily evacuated by bus, but I may, as I say, be all wrong.
“Sorry, most of that is a cut and pasted comment by ‘j Thomas’. Everything but the first two lines.”
It might be helpful if you made a minor effort to format your comments to indicate clearly what is quoted material and what is your material, Bob, if I might suggest. Blockquoting is one useful style, though hardly the only one.
I know I’m not reading well at the moment, LJ, but your cite says:
It’s not clear to me from that what grounds there are to conclude that most everyone was helicoptered out.
“Blockquoting is one useful style, though hardly the only one.”
Suggestion noted. All I really wanted were the first two paragraphs, although the third has some small interest.
I could have italicized or bolded the entire thing. Always fun.
Apologies; I’ve been out for a chunk of the afternoon and I’m preparing to go out to a friend’s for dinner, so I probably won’t get to this until tomorrow (or late tonight at the earliest. By which time the answer may already have arrived.
Ah. Cursory Googling yields: the 82nd airborne is apparently doing S&R missions, logistical and medical support, and assisted evacuation. How this last is distinct from law enforcement, I have no idea, but it’d be interesting to find out. It does present an apparent inconsistency. And now I’m outta here.
bob,
Just remember to
those tags!
Well, not quite out of here after all. Looks like Hurricane Ophelia is hooking in to South Carolina, but where she’s really going is anybody’s guess. For a tiny hurricane, she sure did have a huge initial cloud cover.
Since Slarti raised the issue, I’d like to point out that two-ish weeks ago we were watching Katrina.
We’re now onto Ophelia.
We have two months of the season left.
Keep those hatches battened, men, ’cause this could get rough. Er.
I am VERY glad that we’re have a quiet hurricane season in the Pacific. But I’ve developed a new habit of checking the Central Pacific Hurricane Center’s web page every day.
It’s not clear to me from that what grounds there are to conclude that most everyone was helicoptered out.
Sorry, I guess I’m eliding the two locations. I had this memory of the interstate going right to the superdome, (obviously, it’s designed for people to drive to) while the convention center was not so close and on the river right across from the West Bank and the streets leading up to it were rather low.