Powell on Katrina Relief: failure at all gov't levels

Duty Honor Country

Duty Honor Country

Active member
The man who I respect most in the US government finally speaks on the issue, and I agree with what he is saying. It does me good to see him as a canidate for the leader of long term relief effort

"I think there have been a lot of failures at a lot of levels _ local, state and federal. There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans. Not enough was done"

"When you look at those who weren't able to get out, it should have been a blinding flash of the obvious to everybody that when you order a mandatory evacuation, you can't expect everybody to evacuate on their own."

"I don't think advantage was taken of the time that was available to us, and I just don't know why"

"I don't think it's racism, I think it's economic,"

"These are people who don't have credit cards; only one in 10 families at that economic level in New Orleans have a car. So it wasn't a racial thing _ but poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor"

read more at Google News
 
Doody

Good post. I fully agree on Powell. He's a good man.

The thing about this disaster that irks me is that both Federal and Local agencies knew about this possibility. There was a report done in 1997 by FEMA that predicted exactly this type of scenario. The Levee system was obviously a dangerous and yet nobody did anything. Head should roll on all levels.

Im quite angry at Bush (surprise, surprise :) ), all president give cronies jobs but Bush gave this all important job to guys who had no emergency management experience.

I mean comeon! How do you give the director of FEMA to a guy whose last job was president of an Arabian Horse Breeding Association. A job he was force to resign from in disgrace at that!
 
The most disturbing thing about FEMA to my mind is that its budget has been cut under both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

I'm sorry, I live in a small state made up of a bunch of small towns. I have small town mentality I guess. But even in the smallest town with the smallest budget, the last budget you cut is the fire department. Seems to me the same should apply on the Federal level.
 
I think that the responsibility lies not just with the government, but also with the people. Many chose, and are still choosing to stay. But still, I think things were not prepared sufficently.
 
Just in case anyone doesn't get the complete picture, Brown wasn't sacked.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen will replace FEMA director Michael Brown as the on-site head of hurricane relief operations in the Gulf Coast, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced Friday afternoon.

Brown will head back to Washington from Louisiana to oversee the big picture, the official said.
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Just get him out of the hot seat!
Significantly he was replaced by a military person.
 
As an out sider looking in there seems to have been to many people and government sponsored organisations sticking there oar in. There were also to many levels of State and Federal Government pulling in different directions. What some thing like this needs is a person to come in and take charge and get every one singing from the same hymn sheet. Now the only people that really could this would be the Military, they have the man power and the equipment and know how to deal with most of this. They are quite used to dealing with large numbers of people and usually a good staff to back this up. From what I can see and I could be wrong is that all the different politicians are to worried about shifting the blame ready for the next election, than actually make some unpopular decisions and get the job done.
 
LeEnfield said:
. . . From what I can see and I could be wrong is that all the different politicians are to worried about shifting the blame ready for the next election, than actually make some unpopular decisions and get the job done.
Click to expand...


I agree. Too many chiefs and not enough indians. Having a competent person in the "hotseat" so to speak would probably have helped in the first place. Did Mr Bush really appoint him or was the appointment made by someone else?
 
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