The fact is if you must look at who to blame, you might want to look at the City of New Orleans itself.
City of New Orleans Emergency Preparedness: Hurricanes
Section I:
The safe evacuation of threatened populations when endangered by a major catastrophic event is one of the principle reasons for developing a Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan. The thorough identification of at-risk populations, transportation and sheltering resources, evacuation routes and potential bottlenecks and choke points, and the establishment of the management team that will coordinate not only the evacuation but which will monitor and direct the sheltering and return of affected populations, are the primary tasks of evacuation planning. Due to the geography of New Orleans and the varying scales of potential disasters and their resulting emergency evacuations, different plans are in place for small-scale evacuations and for citywide relocations of whole populations.
Section II:
"The Hurricane Emergency Evacuation Standard Operating Procedure is designed to deal with all case scenarios of an evacuation in response to the approach of a major hurricane towards New Orleans. It is designed to deal with the anticipation of a direct hit from a major hurricane. This includes identifying the city's present population, its projected population, identification of at-risk populations (those living outside levee protection or in storm-surge areas, floodplains, mobile homes, etc.), in order to understand the evacuation requirements. It includes identifying the transportation network, especially the carrying-capacity of proposed evacuation routes and existing or potential traffic bottlenecks or blockages, caused either by traffic congestion or natural occurrences such as rising waters. Identification of sheltering resources and the establishment of shelters and the training of shelter staff is important, as is the provision for food and other necessities to the sheltered. This preparation function is the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Preparedness."
With all the blame going around today, specifically with Tim Russert self-implosion and public crucifixion of DHS Michael Chertoff on Meet the Press today - a despicable and uninformed display as it was, the blame for the unpreparedness lies squarely with the Office of the Mayor, and the Government of New Orleans - period. This is specifically why the Government of the United States has had to effectively relieve an ineffective and quite frankly criminally inept local government.
There was simply no excuse for those people to be in harms way. There were plenty of buses. The Federal Government told them to evaculate a full two days in advance of the Storm's approach. Mr. Mayor, why didn't you use the buses to get those people out?
The City of New Orleans failed their own people; NOT the Government of the United States. The Mayor didn't do his job. He and his staff are shifting the blame to the Government, hoping that no one notices that THEY are in fact the first stop in the fault line. Read the City of New Orleans disaster plan. Again, look at the "waiting and unused" buses and tell me, "Who screwed up?"
Are you going to tell me that the Mayor and his office were unaware of the logistics of identifying and moving those who couldn't move themselves in such a disaster?
The MSM is playing the "meme" on this, almost as if any news organization, in their current day "PC" hysteria is afraid to blame a black Mayor.
How about "tell the truth"; race doesn't matter, Nagin and his staff along with the Governor herself - SCREWED UP. Why not report that?
Mayor Nagin, you will have some explaining to do - which you will do soon and in the future.
UPDATE: Be sure to check out the heartbreaking story of the "lost children" of this disaster at Michelle Malkin. IF only those buses had been used. If only...
More also at Wizbang "spot the crime", and AJ over at Strata-Sphere breaks it down as well with this little tidbit for the MSM:
"And to the media, you get an “F’ for your work. The naive arrogance on display was stunning and embarrassing to us as a nation. Tucker Calrson and MSNBC provided the perfect example of this when they noted MSNBC was able to get their reporters in and reporting within a day - why couldn’t they feds?
Well Tucker, the feds have evacuated nearly 60,000, fed over 100,000 and rescued over 10,000 people.
How many lives did NBC save? How many people did NBC feed (besides their crews)? How many people did NBC save from their flooded homes via helicopter or boat?
Getting imbeciles into New Orleans to report on the efforts of true heroes is not all that challenging. It is saving lives as quickly as possible which is the challenge."
Tell it brother!...
Cpt Ed weighs in.
UPDATE: Protein Wisdom with more arial evidence.
UPDATE: More evidence here.
Filed under Katrina disaster relief new orleans emergency response Mayor Nagin blood on their hands
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