Partisan blamemanship.
Frankly, I found the recent wave of finger pointing by partisan politicians about the response to Hurricane Katrina to be sad and depressing when peoples’ lives were still at stake and a unified rescue mission should have been the priority of the day.
Certainly there were hundreds of dedicated public servants and volunteers who worked tirelessly without the necessary support after the storm and I applaud their efforts and hope you share that belief. I’ll even give Sean Penn credit for putting his life at risk to help others.
Frankly, I feel guilty writing this rebuke of our government agencies while sitting in the cool and dry confines of my home office as others are still rolling up their sleeves in the Gulf Coast heat and are becoming part of the solution rather than being part of the chorus of partisan hacks playing the blame game.
Writing checks to the American Red Cross, Humane Society of the United States, the BushClinton Relief Fund, and other entities makes me feel a little less guilty. I hope you have given generously also.
Nevertheless, I want to go on the record to opine about how the local, state, and federal governments each failed to perform up to even minimal standards before and after Hurricane Katrina destroyed hundreds of miles of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
In the event of a natural disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, our federal government should have been ready on a moment’s notice to deploy machinery, equipment, and personnel to participate in rescue missions. I was deeply disappointed, disheartened, and disgusted to see any citizen begging for the basics of food, water, and other necessities at their time of need regardless if they had made poor decisions to stay in town.
The fact that FEMA and other federal government agencies delayed or prevented donations of water filtration equipment, communication systems, and personnel from countries around the world is embarrassing at best and criminal at worst.
I understand that our division of government requires that the state or local governments first request assistance from the federal government before help can legally commence. In most cases, this protocol makes sense. But when it is obvious that the local and state politicos and governments are incapable of caring for their own, our federal government should do first and ask later.
When it is obvious that a local Mayor in New Orleans cannot command or control his fleet of 1,000 school and city buses to evacuate his at-risk citizens and those without cars, and cannot find one third of his police force once the storm hits, the federal government must act without waiting for permission. Seeing all those buses under water was pitiful.
When it is clear that a Governor and her Homeland Security staff make ridiculous decisions to bar the American Red Cross and Salvation Army from providing aid to those waiting in the New Orleans Superdome and along roofs and dry portions of I-10 because the order of the day was to evacuate them out of town rather than feed them, the federal government needs to act.
When it is apparent that local city and parish emergency preparedness officials are ignoring the recommendations of the head of the National Hurricane Center to evacuate well in advance of a deadly Category 5 storm and only make that decision with hours to spare, the federal government should be ready to deploy.
When the entire Louisiana Congressional delegation would rather each seek separate federal pork barrel funding projects for roads and buildings rather than unite behind a singular request for repairing a levee system known to be in need of enhancement, the federal government should have the foresight to plan for the inevitable rescue of a flooded community.
Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from this deadly and incredibly expensive natural disaster is that we citizens should first prepare and take care of ourselves and not expect any government agency to efficiently and effectively look out for our best interests.
This disaster also shines more focus on the need for local community organizations, churches, and neighborhood associations to look out for their own. In the Town of Davie, Hurricane Katrina not only cut power and phones for thousands, it also destroyed dozens of manufactured homes and trailers.
Fortunately, several of Davie’s elected officials and community activists quickly put together a relief fund called www.DavieHurricaneRelief.org to serve as a mechanism to quickly raise funds to help our community neighbors get back on their feet. I urge you to visit this website and find out how you can help.
Hopefully our area will be spared from catastrophic damage from hurricanes which are bound to hit our area in the years to come. That said, I hope that our local, state, and federal officials learn from the pitiful mistakes made in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina.
Finally, I hope that the US Military – including the National Guard – is given a more prominent role in directing future responses. Their performance during the storm relief was commendable. And I believe that FEMA should become a cabinet level agency so that it gets its own budget to prepare for natural disasters while Homeland Security focuses on defense of the homeland and responses to possible terrorist strikes.
