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RE: [RC] News from Louisiana - VERY OT - Jerry & Susan MilamActually, it all starts with local government people. They
are the first response authority in all of this and the governmental higher ups
respond to their calls and requests. My guess is that most people on this
list were not aware of the condition of those levees nor did they have reason to
care before this tragic event. The points of this tragedy is myriad in
it's implication. The buck starts with the Mayor and aldermanic city government
of New Orleans who have known since at least 2001 that the levee system was in
need of major repair. This local government is also tasked with developing and
training on a disaster preparedness plan that will fit each individual cities
particular contingency plan's needs.
For years when I was wearing my Air Force blue suit in
Biloxi MS at Keesler AFB, I was in charge of a moulage team that trained
with local communities for distaer training. We made up disaster victims with
" makeup" to simulate different contingency scenarios. We did travel
to Mobile on a few occasions to help Mobile do realistic disaster training.
Every major city has a disaster preparedness plan they are responsible to create
and to keep up to date and detailing and planning for each specific need.
All major cities are expected to take care of their own for 2-3 days before the
federal help arrives. It's a personal responsibility issue and it's nothing new.
Hindsight is always 20/20 or in this case it's
10/10. NO ONE...not even the President of the United
States foresaw the devastation of this storm. He has the best information
system in the world, bar none. Before we start blaming our President for
the ineptitude of the local government of NO, understand there is no
realistic contingency to preempt the devastation of poor local government
planning and execution. It starts with personal responsibility at
the very basic level; personal, family, city, county, state and then
federal.
Instead of finger pointing, why don't we try to help
in some way with relief efforts there.
JMHO
In His Hands, Fly Bye & Oskar D'Grouch From:
ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Chris Paus
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 12:00 PM To: Dyane Smith; ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [RC] News from Louisiana - VERY OT A friend of mine is married to a tv cameraman, who has been down in LA
all week. He brought up a good point. If hundreds of journalists can get down
there to do stories and take photos, why couldnt' the rescue folks get
through?
Seems to me this whole thing was a blunder from the get go. We have a
leader. For better or worse, Gw was elected. The buck stops there. He should
have been in cabinet meetings preparing for such a disaster instead of
vacationing. He should have had regular army troops ready and waiting to be
deployed.
We have navy hospital ships, air force hospital planes, army engineers who
can build bridges in a few hours. We've got the manpower and know how to deal
with these things! today CNN reports that Bush is sending in 7000 troops to
help. Well, why weren't they there on Monday night or Tuesday morning? Better to
have them on alert and ready for mobilization and not need them, than piddle
around and waste nearly a week of action!
Doesn't matter if the people who stayed behind are poor or rich, black or
white or Hispanic. How many people have died needlessly because of poor
leadership all around. What kind of example does this set for the rest of the
world. How do we look to other nations when we can't take care of our own, yet
we want to tell the rest of the world how to live.
And there's another issue no one has talked about. How vulnerable are we to
attack now? Where has homeland security been in all of this? Now half our
military is on the other side of the world, a lot of them will be down south.
That leaves a pretty big chunk of the US with no protection.
And as for gas, our local tv cameraman said it's still in the $2 range in
Louisiana... so why is it skyrocketing elsewhere? I think there's a lot of
hard questions that need to be asked.
chris
Dyane Smith <sunibey@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.
Louisa May Alcott
Chris Paus
BayRab Acres http://pages.prodigy.net/paus
Lake Region SWA
http://lakeregionswa.fws1.com
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