Re: Re: By the way, Bill

William Highfield wrote:
> There are disasters and then there are DISASTERS.  You simply can never 
> be ready for devestation on this level.  However, Louisiana could have 
> been better prepared.  I don't think they had the national guard 
> prepared at all, and yes, 30% of them are in Iraq, but plenty remained 
> and frankly, ALL OF THEM should have been at staging areas ready to move 
> in the moment the winds died down.

I have heard on more than one news source that the Governer did not have 
the authority to call up the guard, which dosen't sound exactly right to me.



> In Florida, the National Guard was ready in every hurricane after 
> Andrew.  After Charlie, I remember seeing troops in the streets of St 
> Cloud at intersections only a couple of hours after the eye passed over 
> my house.
> 
> The problem with Katrina is that the hurricane came and went and the 
> levees held.  Officials in Louisiana failed to take into account that 
> weakened levees would not handle the flow of water coming down the 
> Mississippi AFTER the hurricane.

Indeed, and how stupid is that considering that it appears that there 
was not lack of people warning them this could happen.


> FEMA will take it's lumps, no doubt about it.  But Louisiana was not 
> prepared, and the mayor of New Oreleans and governor of the state should 
> be ashamed of themselves for trying to blame everyone but themselves.

Point is, the entire country is absorbed in this, and outside of 
Lousiana, the general citizen is far more likely to disparage the 
federal government rather than the local government.

I'm really not quite sure how the convention center was allowed to 
become a focus for the failure. I mean, sure, you have your priorities, 
but one of those priorities is not to allow the media to have a poster 
child for failure. Since the roads are apparantly open, I'm not quite 
understanding how trucks are not just loaded with pallets of water and 
MRE's and just driving down streets dropping them at every intersection.



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