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WPCNR NEWS COMMENTARY. By John F. Bailey. September 25, 2005: “The evacuations worked,” the new talking head of FEMA said today. We are getting supplies in tonight, and President Bush assures us within 24 hours of his bailing out of Texas and heading to the NORAD bunker in Colorado Springs that the Federales handled the emergency efficiently this time. (Like Sergeant Garcia in the Old Zorro movies.)
The pathetic scramble to repair President Bush’s sorry image as a leader has begun. Photo ops in Austin Saturday, where he said we are going to help rebuild your lives. How about rebuilding one?
Look for more video of the President tastelessly pointing to monitors as he watches the government handling of Rita. Look for commentators to in earnest tones, say how the President’s hands-on talking to have galvanized FEMA into action and how it worked better this week.
But, were they better?
1. Contrary to the FEMA head’s observation that “The evacuations worked,” any damn fool watching television Thursday could tell you nobody in Texas knows how to do an evacuation, let alone FEMA.
The Texas Governor said everyone should get out of town. Some plan! They didn’t stagger the evacuation by areas, license plate sequence, or times, so every one hit the road at once, and if Rita had sped up you might have cars swamped in the rains that are now arriving. As it was, cars ran out of gas, and got stranded. It was like Westchester hitting the Tappan Zee on Friday night. That was idiotic, uncontrolled, unthoughtout. Not that a jam would not result, but it could have been better, had anybody thought about it.
On Sunday, the Texas Governor patted himself on the back saying they had evacuated 2-1/2 million people with relatively little problems. As one evacuee said, “It was CHAOS!” How can reporters let these bureaucrats get away with statements like that?
Actually you probably could have riddn a horse or driven a buckboard wagon to Dallas faster than you could drive it.
2. They are reporting no deaths due to the storm. Nuts! That’s a lie. The crowing about how well the Bush Administration has responded has begun. Have we forgotten the bus explosion killing those poor elderly because they were evacuated in a bus that screeched to a stop, its wheels locking up and causing a fire?
3. They are claiming relief is being sped to persons in shelters. That is what they said three weeks ago, too. We shall see.
Now, it is Sunday night and the Associated Press reports a General in charge of the Rita situation asks President Bush for a National Disaster Plan. Unless I miss my guess, I thought that was what the Department of Homeland Security was in charge of creating the last four years!!!!
4. There are reports of looting along the Louisiana coasts, and other communities. Where is the national guard — again?
5. The New Orleans Levees broke again. The first thing the head of the Army Corps of Engineers did was make an excuse that the levees were not high enough and that is why the levee was overflowed again. How many times does it have to take to realize the levees were not high enough? Brilliant analysis.
Perhaps, maybe, the Corps of Engineers should have kept on piling sandbags to prevent or slow down any overflow…pour quick concrete..whatever to keep an overflow from happening form a normal heavy rain.
It went over the top, guys! You had two and a half weeks of dry weather to keep on piling on sandbags and thinking what would happen if you had 3 inches of rain, which is what you got plus the tide sweep. Actually according to precipitation reports, you had only received about 2 inches in New Orleans Friday when they broke.
You pumped out instead of building higher. Your call. It once again indicates the Army Corps of Engineers — and particularly the Fema Fumblers were not thinking — gee, what if we get one of those southern soakers. This from a dumb reporter who doesn’t know anything, talking, but I do know that one of the things you do to prevent rising water from going over the top of something was to build something higher. Tonight the Army Corps of Engineers told CNN, they were going to build the levies up to the height they were before Katrina by June 1. Unless I miss my guess, I’d build them higher than that? But what guarantee do we have they will hold?
You would think with all the supposed government “know-how” at the Army Corps of Engineers with three weeks of dry weather to play with, they might have come up with something different. Now according to news reports Saturday they are repairing their repair, doing the same thing.
It is now Sunday night. The Louisiana Hurricane Center points out the Army Corps of Engineers used limestone to fill the dykes which has high erosion characteristics. The Louisiana Hurrincane Center is saying the levee walls, canal walls were undermined from underneath and the storm surge was less than expected, pointing the fingers at the Army Corps of Engineers for not knowing what it was doing. Thank you!
Please, could we get someone in here who knows something about dykes?
6. Crack communications Police were seen giving tickets to cars who had heard on the radio the southbound lanes were now open to go north evacuating Houston. I kid you not. Now that’s communication.
7. Planes left Houston half empty because the Department of Homeland Security’s loyal security guards did not show up for work, and instead of waiving airport security checks, they held people up and the planes half full left on time so as not to disrupt the precious bankrupt airlines schedules.
Again — where is the thinking here? Wand ’em and move them out. Have some bomb-sniffing dogs snif the carry-ons and the luggage, and get them on the planes, please! Where was the thinking here FEMA?
And, please, now that so many airlines are declaring bankruptcy they could at least hold the planes until they were filled, instead of pocketing the cash when tickets sold did not show. Where was the order from the FAA or FEMA to the airlines to hold on until fully loaded on this one?
8. Could we wait just a couple of days before we check into how well the oil refineries are? What a misplaced sense of priorities.
9. Are the temporary shelters available for the destroyed homes in the new sections of Louisiana and northeast Texas available? Let’s wait and see.
10. Where is the “management” of what to do with the new flooding in New Orleans? To develop a solution to perpetual pump outs? They have had three weeks to think about this! Let’s see some security thinking for our $35 billion a year?!?
That is part of this disaster too! What is the plan: just plug the leak again and pump out some more? What? Perhaps they should bring in someone from Holland who knows something about dykes — just maybe? The Army Corps of Engineers has failed twice in three weeks — not being prepared for a levee break, and executing a stopgap repair that failed. And, we are listening to them again?
It is incredible to me how quickly the new FEMA head wants to pat himself on the back, and how our President is quickly patting his government on the back. It is amazing to me the news media are letting them get away with this. And speaking of the Pres, the spin is “he does not want to get in the way:” Translation: “he is getting out of the way.”
So, take comfort that our ludicrous Department of Homeland Security which has sucked up roughly $120 Billion in three years and has finally got it right so quickly.
11. Where is FEMA’s Plan to rebuild housing and provide it for the newly displaced from three weeks ago? We have heard nothing about this. They are FROZEN in inaction! What is the plan? Well, there is no plan.
Seeing the devastation in Beaumont, the Louisiana Bayou country from Rita, just compounds the misery. There are no jobs. No electricity. Why is the media not grrrrrriiiiiiiiiiilllllling these geniuses on how the recovery is proceeding? What comes next? What’s your plan. Yeah, they’re doing such a good job.
First, as Donald Trump told The O’Reilly Factor, and disclosed exclusively to the CitizeNetReporter last week, the government is talking to him about getting involved in the redevelopment efforts.
What’s there to talk about? Sign the Trumpster up! He, Martin Ginsburg, Louis Cappelli, Forest City Ratner, the big time developers (other than Cheney’s developer pets), have got to be called in to devise any rebuilding plan and temporary housing for the folk down there and execute it. Heck, it has taken 3 years to start 59 units in White Plains, for crying out loud.
Well, what’s there to talk about?
Pull in Trump and let him take charge and come up with a plan for temporary housing or alternatives for restoring New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama and now the Beaumont area that makes sense. The media is not thinking here these last few weeks. Reporting news is not pointing a camera and looking pained. It’s reaming the questions at these incompetants and asking what is the plan for this area?
We have to start thinking about it with the nation’s best brains instead of its worst: the federal government on mass — and that includes all you congressman and senators out there. Demand a plan for American Relief, and demand it by October 15. Shake this group of managerial clowns up.
12. Who is doing the rescuing? It ain’t FEMA and the feds. It is folk in boats streaming in, trailing their boats to flooded bayou areas. It is local sheriffs. Local citizens: Americans rescuing Americans. The new FEMA guy has a helluva nerve patting himself and his agency on the back. How about some facts on what you are doing now? The Airborne is going in tomorrow (Sunday), I hear. Why do not the media report who is conducting the rescues and their affiliation? Well that would be the truth.
13. What is the death toll?
14. Where are the 2,000 missing children, Mr. New FEMA Talking Head?
FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security should get the hell out of the way because they cannot do it. Neither can the President. The last thing this country needs is a President who does not want to get in the way.
14. How about one scintilla of the courage the displaced, suffering, hard working rescuers are showing being shown in our President?
The President once again cut and ran from Texas, his home state, so fast it was as if he were a jackrabbit with a cougar on his tail and his tail was between his legs. He said he had to see how the system works in Colorado Springs. Right. Whatever happened to Air Force One communications where he supposedly monitors everything?
Come on, Mr. President. Perhaps you should have found that out how government works in emergencies after 9/11/2001, not this weekend.
Perhaps the persons I saw on MSNBC late Saturday evening walking around in the water of New Orleans and the bayous, still think your government is capable. I do not.
The only thing this government does well is creating phoney images and spins with the worst possible sense of timing.
Looking good in a photo op is not leadership.
