Katrina Timeline and Why FEMA Failed
by Caroline Vernon
Timeline excerpts from thinkprogress.org
Why FEMA Failed from Salon.com
I
just heard on Air America that FEMA Director Michael Brown has been
removed from his position overseeing recovery efforts post-Katrina.
Although Brown has finally been demoted, the spin machine has embarked
on promulgating their latest sound-bytes also known as the “blame
game”. Check out the following audio file at www.salon.com
and pay particular attention to what O-Reilly has to say. To further
demonstrate this rare brand of compassionate conservatism, according to
the progressreport.org and the Wallstreet Journal, Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) of Baton Rouge was overhead telling lobbyists: “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” These guys have no shame whatsoever!
It is important that the Bush administration not get away with shifting
their responsibility to local officials. Here is the timeline of what
actually happened. One case in point is the fact that Bush himself was
previously warned of levee failure by the National Hurricane Center on
August 28th, yet he stated, “no one could have anticipated that the
levees would collapse.” Liar, liar, pants on fire! Yeah, he’s in the hot seat all right.
Timeline:
Friday, Aug. 26: Gov. Kathleen Blanco declares a state of emergency in Louisiana and requests troop assistance.
Saturday, Aug. 27:
Gov. Blanco asks for federal state of emergency. A federal emergency is
declared by Bush giving federal officials the authority to get
involved.
Sunday, Aug. 28:
Mayor Ray Nagin orders mandatory evacuation of New Orleans.
Bush warned of Levee failure by National Hurricane Center. National
Weather Service predicts area will be uninhabitable after
Hurricane arrives. First reports of water toppling over the levee
appear in local paper.
Monday, Aug. 29:
Levee breaches and New Orleans begins to fill with water, Bush travels
to Arizona and California to discuss Medicare. FEMA chief finally
responds to federal emergency, dispatching employees but giving them
two days to arrive on site.
Tuesday, Aug. 30:
Mass looting reported, security shortage cited in New Orleans. Pentagon
says that local authorities have adequate National Guard units to
handle hurricane needs despite governor's earlier request. Bush returns
to Crawford for final day of vacation. TV coverage is around-the-clock
Hurricane news.
Wednesday, Aug. 31:
Tens of thousands trapped in New Orleans including at Convention Center
and Superdome in medieval conditions. Bush
finally returns to Washington to establish a task force to coordinate
federal response. Local authorities run out of food and water supplies.
Thursday, Sept. 1:
New Orleans descends into anarchy. New Orleans Mayor issues a
Desperate SOS to federal government. Bush claims nobody predicted
the breach of the levees despite multiple warnings and his earlier
briefing.
Friday, Sept. 2:
Karl Rove begins Bush administration campaign to blame state and local
officials — despite their repeated requests for help. Bush stages a
photo-op — diverting Coast Guard helicopters and crew to act as backdrop
for cameras. Levee repair work orchestrated for Bush's visit and
White House press corps.
Saturday, Sept. 3:
Bush blames state and local officials. Senior administration official
(possibly Rove) caught in a lie claiming Gov. Blanco had not declared a
state of emergency or asked for help.
Monday, Sept. 5: New Orleans officials begin to collect their dead.
(Adapted from: Katrina Timeline, http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/)
Those are the facts. State and local officials BEGGED for help as
people in their city suffered. The Bush administration didn't get the
job done and when their failure became an embarrassment they attacked
those asking for help.
The New York Times recently reported that Karl Rove and White House
communications director Dan Bartlett rolled out a plan… to contain the
political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane
Katrina. The core of the strategy is to shift the blame away from
the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana.
This is the same pattern of smearing that the Bush political machine
has used for a decade. John McCain and John Kerry had their war records
smeared. The CIA cover of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was blown
after he criticized the Bush Iraq policy. Now, Hurricane victims are
attacked when the Bush administration failed to do their duty to help
them.
It
isn't just the Bush administration. Republican Senator Rick Santorum
blamed victims in a TV interview and House Speaker Dennis Hastert
suggested New Orleans should not be rebuilt.
Why FEMA Failed
By Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com
Ideologically
opposed to a strong federal role in disaster relief and obsessed with
terrorism, the Bush administration let a once-admired agency fall
apart.
Days
before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, the city of Chicago
drew up a list of resources it was willing to make available for relief
efforts in areas that might be hit by the storm. Chicago told the
Federal Emergency Management Agency that in the event of disaster, 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. These teams,
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley told federal officials, could work in
affected areas independently, bringing their own food, water and other
supplies with them. But FEMA apparently wasn't interested. Despite the
host of resources Chicago offered, and despite the televised lack of
resources in New Orleans, as of late last week, FEMA had requested only
one thing from Chicago – a single tanker truck. I was
shocked, Daley said at a news conference on Friday. We are
ready to provide considerably more help than they have requested. We
are just waiting for a call.
Daley 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. Citing security
concerns, the Department of Homeland Security barred the American Red
Cross from entering New Orleans with food. Five hundred Floridian
airboaters were ready to rescue people stranded in inundated homes, but
FEMA turned them down. Twenty sheriff's deputies from Loudoun County,
Va., suffered a similar fate. And Aaron Broussard, the president of
Jefferson Parish, La., said on Meet the Press on Sunday
that FEMA declined to let him accept three tanker trucks of water
donated by Wal-Mart, as well as 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel stored in
a Coast Guard vessel docked in his district.
During the 1990s, FEMA was routinely praised as one of the best-
functioning federal agencies. Its response to the Midwestern floods of
1993, the Northridge earthquake of 1994, and 1995's Oklahoma City
terrorist attack are considered models of emergency response. By
contrast, its performance during Katrina is almost universally
acknowledged to have been abysmally poor. At first, FEMA's post-
Katrina failure appears baffling: What happened to the once-great FEMA?
But George Haddow, who served as the deputy chief of staff at FEMA
under James Lee Witt, Bill Clinton's FEMA director, thinks that FEMA's
current flaws are all too understandable – and are a direct consequence
of the Bush administration's decision to pull the federal government
out of the natural disaster-relief business and turn over more power to
state and local officials.
To read the rest of the article, click here:
Blog For Iowa 
This boomerang of fingerpointing that the current pitiful, pathetic administration has throw will come back to knock them out. It's only a matter of time.
It is unfortunate that they don't even realize their own incompetence…
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The request for troop assistance was not made by Governor Blanco. There is no need to dissect this timeline for further inaccuracies as the apparent intentional error in the second phrase sets up a distorted picture throughout the post.
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