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From: Jasper
Date: 08 Sep 2005
Time: 03:30:17 PM
Taz, …….Hold on a minute. The governor of Louisiana called in her National Guard on Wednesday because the President of the United States did nothing on Tuesday but fly over the devastated city of New Orleans and give a speech. The helicopters everyone expected to rescue people in distress after that speech didn’t come until a conservative television personality got on the phone that Thursdays with someone in New Orleans and use his influence to get the ball rolling. Don’t you think that’s just a little bit scary? ……..The only way to insure that an evacuation plan for a major city will work is to give it a dress rehearsal. Nothing on this scale every works according to plan. ……..The World War II invasion of Normandy, France was planned in great detail. Key aspects of the invasion were rehearsed. The allies had all of the equipment they needed and men trained to use what they had. Yet, an entire combat division landed on the wrong beach, a division of airborne assault troops landed in the wrong drop zone and a battalion of rangers scaled a cliff to knock out guns that weren’t there. Our Navel guns hit the wrong targets and our airplanes strafed and bombed our own men. And this was an event that everyone involved in the planning and execution knew was coming. ………State, county and city officials with the initial responsibility of planning for disasters and their after effects have other responsibilities that occupy their daily routines. They wrestle with budgets and revenues, promote tourism, maintain roads and bridges, provide schooling, police and fire protection, garbage collection, etc. An event that takes out a whole city causes all of these functions to break down. Some contingency plans on all of these levels work and some don’t because of unforeseen bottlenecks in the interlaced theaters of State, county and local responsibility. Whether a plan doesn’t work because it was ill-conceived, poorly designed or poorly executed at any level of government the next highest level has the responsibility of getting the job done. ………Individual opportunism and altruistic initiative always assert themselves in massive chaotic situations as they did in the ’92 LA. riots with the beating of Reginald Denny, the people who beat him and the people who rescued him. But people acting on their own for the good of their fellow human beings rarely have what Denny had in the effective coordination of their efforts, while chaos itself works to the advantage of criminals. The only way to keep the bad guys from taking whatever they can take in the streets or the executive boardrooms is to act quickly with a large enough trained, equipped and coordinated force to do what individual good guys can’t do. ………The scope of Katrina’s destruction and the chaos that would inevitably follow should have triggered a massive military response with the National Guard of several states plus personnel and equipment from the regular Armed Forces. The only governmental entity that can do this is the federal government. No constructive purpose can be served by dissecting what the governor of Louisiana, the county authority, the mayor of New Orleans and Mr. Smith on Wabash Street did wrong in their preparation and response to Katrina. To get it right the next time you have to start at the top. –Jasper