It seems to me this crisis is being totally mismanaged. Perhaps the most rousing attack I have heard was by the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, in a radio interview. This is a must-listen piece of audio. Click here to listen.
I would be very interested in any comments on the situation from American readers of this blog. Use the comments link below to let me know what you think. Thanks. I really hope they get this sorted out ASAP.
Rob
3 Sep 05 at 4:50 pm
Hello from Kansas, USA. All in all, I think response has been too slow. It is completely normal and understandable for people in an emergency to complain when response is not instant.
However, the flooding of New Orleans has been predicted for years. Our Homeland Security Agency is supposed to have created plans to deal with this very emergency.
Tom
4 Sep 05 at 12:54 am
It took entirely too long to get the begin getting at least basic necessities like water into the area. Troops should have been brought in much more rapidly as well to at least lend some sense of order.
One thing I think most people don’t realize is that the temperature in that area right now is approaching 100 degrees (F). To survive without clean water for 5 days in that kind of sweltering heat and humidity, and without basic sanitation, is unimaginable.
That said, it’s really hard to comprehend the sheer size of the area that has been devastated by this tragedy. I believe the president compared it today to an area roughly the size of all of great britain. The damage extends far beyond New Orleans… over 100 miles of coastline suffered extreme damage. Many smaller towns were completely obliterated. And the tragedy continues as fires have begun to break out, and oil from large tanks has begun leaking into the Gulf.
This is a tragedy that will take decades to fully recover from.
philip
4 Sep 05 at 6:19 pm
I blame New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.
He should have had a plan. Period.
There were dozens of school busses not used in New Orleans, I have seen pictures of them. -
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050901/480/flpc21109012015
why didn’t he have a plan to use school busses to bus out the poor.
It’s the corrupt New Orleans politicians that are to blame.
Philip
Jackson, MS. US.
Michelle
4 Sep 05 at 7:56 pm
I think that there’s no one person/agency to blame. Part of the issue is our form of government – federal and state. The federal government cannot step in and do certain things until they are given permission by the state (certainly they can if they really want to but the repercussions could be very high). I think that’s a lot of where the lack of leadership is coming from. So, one of the thing’s that makes our country great is also causing this terrible issue.
I do believe that these are not excuses and that someone should have figured out a plan. Katrina was a Category 4 storm and the levees were only built to withstand a Category 3 storm. Therefore, it was obvious that the chance was high that something terrible like this was going to happen. It was not a surprise like President Bush said.
For context, I currently live in Alexandria, VA just outside of Washington, DC but grew up in a rural town in South Georgia – not far from where the devastation took place.
Ben
4 Sep 05 at 9:53 pm
It seems to me that as soon as they knew the scale of the disaster, and the number of people left on the ground, and taking into account the temperatures, they should have sent in every helicopter, bus, plane and bottle of water within a 1000 miles, and evacuated everyone as soon as was humanly possible. There is no excuse for hanging around in these circumstances, no matter what the scale of the disaster.
Tom
5 Sep 05 at 7:00 am
Probably the most disturbing thing i’ve heard reported on the news so far is that just about a year ago FEMA held a disaster drill in new orleans to figure out exactly what would happen in just this type of situation. They realized at that time, amongst other things, just how many people were likely to stay behind and what a problem that would become.
That, and the fact that after 9/11 the government supposedly organized all these disaster relief packages around the country that were supposed to be ready for rapid deployment, makes the entire thing seem entirely mishandled.
To tie this all back to Spain, I just read somewhere that a contingent of the Spanish Red Cross is set to meet with its American counterpart this week to determine how Spain might best be able to assist. Not sure where the article is now, but here’s a similar one: http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/04/news/aid.php
I recall after 9/11 occurred, there was some negative world reaction to the US turning down most offers of aid, so I’m curious what the reaction will be now that we are saying yes. Will it be a good or a bad thing for the world to see us flash a moment of weakness?
One final thought… with the government passing legislation to provide over $10 billion as an immediate “down-payment” with much more to come, it seems somewhat strange how frequent the calls for monetary donations from citizens has been. Not that I think it’s bad to donate or to ask for donations, it just seems like a very passive, capitalistic reaction to a crisis. I suppose it’s just natural for everyone to want to feel like they’re able to assist in someway, but the attachment of dollar signs so quickly just felt rather cold and sterile. I suppose part of my negative reaction comes from the result of the similar outpouring of donations after 9/11, which in the end left families squabbling over how much payment they were entitled to.
Ben
5 Sep 05 at 4:20 pm
Yes, I find it strange that ordinary citizens were asked for cash so soon. I think it’s fine for people to help out too, but you expect that kind of response in Tsunami type situations where the countries really are too poor to help themselves. I think if the Bush Administration had been a bit quicker to help out in the first place it may not have seemed so odd to hear requests for Red Cross donations, foriegn aid etc… What a mess.
Philip
5 Sep 05 at 5:24 pm
I live in Jackson, Mississippi, about 140 miles north of the gulf coast -
and I can tell you that our recovery issues have went allot smoother than that of New Orleans…
Even though we took a more direct hit…
There has been very little looting on the Mississippi gulf coast, and things have been orderly & CIVILIZED.
I think it’s safe to say Mississippi residence are more self reliant, and less dependent on the government for a hand out.
(Though they no doubt need the help now)
But it is no surprise to anyone here of the confusion & mismanagement in Louisiana & new orleans…
New Orleans was the heart of a very corrupt & crooked state…
And now it’s underbelly is showing.
It’s all very sad….
jtskip
6 Sep 05 at 5:35 am
Great discussion,
I tend to agree with Philip’s assesment of the situation, It is so easy for people to jump and blame Bush for the slow response, but once Bush got involved at a “federal” level things really started to happen. After 9/11, the federal government (Bush admin) realized that home land security and disaster response had to be decentralized under the auspices of FEMA, Billions of dollars have been spent for large cities to beef up thier “plans”. While it is true, that this very scenario has been mentioned often because it is probably one of the more likely ones, I think after the recovery effort ends and congress starts to examine what went wrong as opposed to what went right (political blame game), they will have to examine what the City of NO did with all that tax payer money that should have been spent on disaster recovery?
I also find it strange that people tend to give so much money to disaster relief, here in Texas we have opened our doors to our easterly neighbor and took so many of them in, we are now working to find jobs, and more permanent housing for them. We have organized and sent lots of diapers, clothes and other essentials, afterall many people have lost everything. The size of the affected area is roughly 90,000 square miles… the flooding of the city occurred slowly, and N.O. only accounts for a small area, some areas of Miss where hit by the storm surge (more like a tsunami wave) that just wipe some places off the face of the earth.
just some of my humble thoughts, regards
Ben
6 Sep 05 at 9:22 am
Thanks for all your comments so far. I think it has been hard to guage the scale of this problem from over here. I imagine that if an area the size of the UK, or say half of Spain, was hit in this way, these countries would also have a lot of trouble getting relief operations underway.
Rob
6 Sep 05 at 3:31 pm
Ben, I think the reason people are being “asked for cash” is to give them an outlet for their natural tendencies in a disaster. It’s either tell people money is the most important thing to send or have hundreds or thousands of people load their vehicles with supplies and head to the disaster area.
David
6 Sep 05 at 3:38 pm
I think there are way too many people frivolously passing blame around. Just because something horrible happens, doesn’t mean that it’s any ONE person’s fault. I, personally, am not a fan of our “illustrious” President Bush (in fact, I despise what his politics have done to our nation)….however, I do not feel at leisure to blame him completely for the aftermath of this catastrophe. It was the result of a series of poor ecomonic and political decisions since the founding of this horribly placed city. It was only compounded by the Bush administration’s pulling of funding for flooding improvements earlier in his term. A good video explaining the history can be found here:
http://www.weather.com/multimedia/index.html?clip=2653&collection=topstory
Regardless of what you believe, there have been several people involved with both the relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunamis. They have all said that things are going much more smoothly this time than they did in Asia back in December. The efforts are only coming off as incompetent because people are complaining and have a readily available outlet (US media) at every possible corner in New Orleans. As in typical American fashion, if we don’t get what we want when we want it (a.k.a. NOW/IMMEDIATELY), we will complain. Here in America, we never want the government in our business. But look at what happens when the government isn’t there….lawlessness, rape, murder, looting. Quite frankly, it’s disgraceful. Going through a horrible event like this is no excuse for heathen-like behavior. Although, Mayor Nagin would have you believe all of these crimes are being committed by drug addicts who don’t have access to drugs anymore…..EXCUSE ME????
David
Cincinnati, OH, USA
Ben
6 Sep 05 at 4:12 pm
Rob, I agree, people need to be able to give cash as a means of providing solidarity and help for the victims, and that’s fine. There’s an interesting story on these issues here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4215336.stm