What will come next from our string of failures, and I say our since we are all culpable to some level; from the level of actually enabling (i.e. voting in) this administration to not being prepared for our own potential disaster (are you ready for your disaster?).
This is a sad path that we have walked before with an incompetent government agency stuffed with political ideologues who can consume resources without delivering anything. (Thanks to "concerned" for following the posted links)
(the rest, and I am wordy and long be warned, is below)
(How Slick Willy the Hated made a failing agency actually work and become what it should have been)
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0509.franklin.html
History repeats once again;
"Rarely had the failure of the federal government been so apparent and so acute.
Well until now with this, another Republican administration, that is. FEMA was created by Carter who saw a need for government to step in for national disasters where the local, county, state resources were just not enough to meet the needs of "We The People"; all it took was several Republican administrations to destroy it (The Party Prez and his sidekick the Wow a scanner Prez). Stuffed shirt political cronies were the order of those years not to be altered until another Democratic president put a competent person with "Disaster/emergency experience and mitigation" in charge.
Yet, for the first three days, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is responsible for coordinating federal disaster relief, was nowhere to be found.
Sounds familiar, incompetence thy name is Republican political appointee; an agency charged with coordinating disaster relief across varied political, departmental, and professional boundaries cannot afford incompetents.....or people will die.
Clinton (the evil one) of course brought on board Witt (a man both experienced in civil defense, disaster management, and politics) who also encouraged and brought in other competent professionals who transformed the agency from a joke to a respected organization which was know for responding not in days but in hours. This ability to show that government could not only fill a need, with skill and competence, and do it with a reasonable budget (less than $1 billions dollars....what we spend in less than a week in our Mess in Mess-of-the-POTUS-amia) in all likelihood doomed it. The opposing party ideology is that "government cannot work and fulfill the public's needs"; when elected they work diligently to make sure this prophecy is fulfilled......filling their and their cronies pockets at the public expense in most cases.
"summer of 1993: Weeks of unrelenting rainfall had driven the level of the Mississippi River.....FEMA's response earned nothing but praise...... Congressman Norman Mineta;"FEMA has delivered finally on its promise to stand with the American people when floods or hurricanes or earthquakes devastate their communities."
Doomed....doomed this agency that worked was, how could the party of "smaller government" (note they never said smaller budgets) allow such a success to survive? Well they didn't.
(How our Cardboard Cowboy President and his "Government cannot work" cronies destroyed it)
http://salon.com/news/feature/2005/09/07/fema/index.html
"Ideologically opposed to a strong federal role in disaster relief and obsessed with terrorism, the Bush administration let a once-admired agency fall apart."
Need anything else be said? Really do we need to examine why the party of "Government cannot work" would want to endanger its own citizens and dismantle an agency which "worked"?
Well maybe a little;
"Chicago drew up a list of resources it was willing to make available for relief efforts.....it could spare more than 100 Chicago police officers, 36 Fire Department personnel, eight emergency medical experts, more than 130 staff from Chicago's Department of Public Health, 140 staff from the Department of Streets & Sanitation, dozens of trucks and two boats......FEMA apparently wasn't interested"
Perhaps Mr. Brown of FEMA would have been interested if it had involved Arabian Horses, campaign contributions, or estate planning; those are areas he appears to know a minimum about....disaster planning appears outside his realm though. The "new" FEMA appears to have such a massive amount of resources and ability that they turned all away (after all government just doesn't work you know).
"Daley (of Chicago) wasn't the only generous donor to be rebuffed. Throughout last week, various local and state governments, corporations and nonprofit organizations across the nation attempted to help in the relief effort, only to be snubbed by federal officials -- officials who were themselves providing precious little aid to those in need."
All those resources turned away, all the volunteers with boats across the region turned away, fire bombers and water choppers from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho were mobilized and ready to go with experienced people who have years of experience in organizing over entire regions to attack fires and other emergencies. These fire personnel have years of experience in responding quickly and with every resource at hand to a situation; they even have folks who will jump out of planes with a hundred pounds of equipment and parachute into flaming forest fires.....I am unsure, yet suspect, that a few rifle shots would not deter these guys....or the Borade Bomber pilots who would most likely just dump the load onto anyone foolish enough to shoot at them (I have a picture of a water bomber skimming just above live power lines to put out a range fire in our foothills which indicates that they would say "Cheney You" and get the job done).
http://www.nifc.gov/hurricane_news_release.pdf
http://www.nifc.gov/
All these resources and FEMA once again is back to 1992 and again full of political ideologues who care more about perception than actually getting the job done (Reagan Redux where perception control was always job #1).
"Indeed, the White House's new response to the political disaster prompted by Katrina -- one in which officials are attempting to blame authorities in Louisiana, rather than in Washington, for the slow aid -- underscores the Bush philosophy. "
"But there's a problem with the White House's excuse: It's patently false. As Josh Marshall points out, Blanco declared a state of emergency on Aug. 26 -- a day before Bush declared a federal emergency in Louisiana."
The article from Salon points out that communications were the keystone; one which has been removed by this, again Republican, administration.
"Close coordination with state officials was key to the Clinton administration's capacity to act quickly in the heat of a disaster, Haddow says. "We had a really solid partnership, so we received solid, timely information from the ground. Then we managed that information and turned it into a mission assignment." In other words, when people on the ground needed something, they knew who in the federal government to ask, and when the federal government had extra resources at the ready -- cops from Chicago, say, or water from Wal-Mart -- it would know where to send them. Contrast that situation to what happened after Katrina, when both Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, and Michael Brown, the FEMA director, admitted to several reporters that they had no idea that people were starving at the New Orleans Convention Center, even though the grim scene there had been played and replayed on television all day."
Clueless again....but the photo ops perception control machine is now in full swing (FEMA no want photos of dead folks) and things if not actually getting better will appear to be better; perception is reality for those without any real skill at being "problem solvers".
"as Joe Allbaugh, Bush's first FEMA dirctor, told a congressional panel in 2001, Bush wanted to pull the federal government out of the disaster-relief business and aimed to "restore the predominant role of state and local response to most disasters.""
This is insane.....I have some resources in an emergency, not all though....my community has more but not enough....my country has a large resource base but in a regional disaster would still be overwhelmed....my state has not much more since I live in the state capital, our largest city and most of the states resources are here...our nation as a whole has the most resources to respond with.
In the event of a regional disaster, and this counts as a regional disaster the national emergency response must be swift, complete, and land with every national resource we have.....the states/region affected will be in disarray and will not be able to handle the situation. This is what a nation; a national community is for after all.
And this was not an unexpected event; no it has been known and predicted for years if not decades;
(What we all should have known and can still learn from)
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway/
We knew it would happen, just not when.
If we can prepare for the illusionary event of terrorists launching a nuclear missile, er excuse me nook-u-lar, which is one of the touted reasons for the faux missile defense system and spend over $100 Billion on it why can we not plan for a real world event such as a class 4/5 hurricane, a earthquake, or even a potential accident such as a chemical spill from our unprotected and ever more unsupervised chemical factories?
And what will come next?
Well the folks at NOAA are watching, waiting, and probably dreading the next Katrina.
(Those who watch and wait for the next perfect storm)
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
The storm season is not over and we will have more events like this....is FEMA going to change in time to be able to respond?
Maybe if it Jeb's house in danger I suppose...otherwise I suspect the party which says government doesn't work and then makes sure it cannot will continue to stonewall real reform, will continue to enable the Dry Drunk Coward from Crawford, and will blindly lead us into more disasters which the real world will throw at us; irregardless of our illusions of safety.
What can we do?
Well as the Boy Scouts say; Be Prepared.....for what you say....well anything that could happen.
Be prepared for the natural calamities that could occur in your area, and will be exacerbated by the party of "personal responsibility". Be prepared to help yourself, your neighbor (even if you don't like em), your community, your state, your region, your nation, even your world. We are all but grains of sand on the scales of our world but each grain on the balance helps to tip it towards being a more considerate, a more humane, and human world.
Prepare a family emergency plan, prepare emergency supplies, take the time to learn first aid and CPR, get to know your neighbors.
Prepare your community by forcing your elected leaders to have plans, to be prepared, to have the resources available for the coming problems.
Prepare your state in a similar way, do not allow your elected representatives to coast through their time, force them to do "the hard work". Or vote them out.
Become involved in your community to know it better and understand its problems. Work to make it a better one; I help with river cleanups (to try to keep our river healthy), with paint the town (we paint the homes of those no longer able to), I attend city council meetings (which range from boring to flame fests), I volunteer time to groups needing my help.....I also spend the time and money to be certified as a First Aid and CPR provider.
And work to replace the faux leaders who cannot lead, start at the local level, move to the state level, and then tackle the national level. I care not about party but about skill, it is just a sad real world fact that the GOP is now a party of little skill, no vision beyond the hollowing out of America, and corrupt in so many ways.
We will need to prepare for the next natural or man-made disaster, it will happen, our responsibility is to prepare as best we can and demand that our government, of the people, by the people, for the people also be prepared to step in and help.
We are a community, no person, no community, no city, no state is an island unto itself; we all depend on each other in ways small and large and need to care for all our citizens.
I will repeat here something I wrote several days ago because I truly believe it;
A question that comes to the forefront of my mind at this time; are we a nation, a community which cares for all of our members the rich and the poor, the healthy and the afflicted, the famous and the forgotten.
Or are we just a for profit corporation nation, caring only for the profit margin, caring only to increase cash flow at the expense of anything; clean air, clean water, a healthy populace, a caring human race. Are all expendable in the name of profit, the religion of free market, the mantra of social Darwinism gone mad, and the quest for power both political and personal.
Have we now abandoned the Constitution with its mandates of;
"We the People"
Not just the wealthiest, not just the powerful, not just the famous,
of the United States,
a community of many, not a few or one,
in Order to form a more perfect Union,
an imperfect one which should strive every decade, every year, even every day to become better and to provide a better world for all this varied community,
establish Justice,
a justice which cares and demands fairness regardless of race, religion, sex, wealth, or social standing
insure domestic Tranquility,
a life in daily fear of others who have power or wealth or weapons or even our own government is no true life,
provide for the common defence,
defense not offense, not invasion, not greed to obtain others resources, defense,
promote the general Welfare,
and if helping the people, all of them, in the event of natural or manmade disaster such as this is not promoting the general Welfare then this nation's government deserves neither respect or allegiance
and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
Liberty which not an empty sound bite, or political rhetoric; Liberty of our lives which entails freedom from fear, freedom from manipulation of those with wealth and power and the opportunity to excel within a level and fair society to the full extent of our ability
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
A United nation, not a red vs blue, not a rural vs urban, not a Democrat vs Republican, a nation united, a community for all of us, one which can proudly read the other words of hope written for a gift given to us by another nation;
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
-Emma Lazarus