People died in NO because they weren't evacuated when they should have been (according to what you posted).
About the hilited: Objectively? Really? All I see some very obvious subjective opinions.
Split Thread Michael Brown and Katrina
- Thread starter RandFan
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People died in NO because they weren't evacuated when they should have been (according to what you posted).
About the hilited: Objectively? Really? All I see some very obvious subjective opinions.
RandFan
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- It's a fact that the Bush admin ignored dire warnings about 9/11
- It's a fact that the Bush admin ignored dire warnings about Katrina from FEMA, NOA and NWS.
- It's a fact that useful idiots like Judith Warner provided fake leaked news items.
- It's a fact that the inteal that the CIA gave Bush was not the story the Bush admin released to the public.
- It's a fact that thousands died in 9/11
- It's a fact that nearly two thousand died in Katrina.
- It's a fact that there was no WMD and that thousands died because of gross incompetence and dishonesty.
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RandFan
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About as useful as giving blankets to the Indians.
That is gross incompetence.
FEMA, NWS predicted dire consequences for a Cat 5 Hurricane.
FEMA was supposed to be prepared for serious emergencies.
FEMA put a major Hurricane at the top of it's list of disasters to prepare for.
Brown was suprised that enough food and water to supply 15,000 citizens with supplies for three days was insufficient.
Why?
Let's look at that prediction.
This is FEMA'S warning.
Question, should the head of FEMA have taken the warning from his agency seriously?
Please look at that number closer.wiki said:
Katrina displaced 400,000 people.
Brown provided enough food and water for a few thousand people for a few days.
Let that sink in
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kookbreaker
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What was his excuse for all the screwups after the fact?
kookbreaker
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plague311
Great minds think...
I don't think anyone implied or even thought that NO would be back to normal immediately after getting hit by a Cat 4 hurricane. That's one of the most ridiculous straw men that I've ever seen constructed.
If you just want to willfully ignore the evidence that has been laid out, ignore the questions that Randfan has been asking, and bury your head in the sand, then go right ahead. I don't think anyone here will have a problem with it, there's one in every thread. I've even been that guy once or twice; however, I see Rand laying out a pretty good case for why a sizable portion of the blame should be laid on Bush and Brown for their actions (or lack their of) surrounding the hurricane. If all you have to contribute is straw men and fallacies, then you know what they say. If you can't say anything worth a **** then.....
davefoc
Philosopher
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kookbreaker
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All the straw you can punch, eh?
Here, let me clue you in if you are not just trolling: Nobody expected things to revert to perfection immediately, but when a politcally chosen toady is in charge of coordinating operations and he drops the ball again and again and again to the point where rescue & relief efforts are inhibited.
Brown was someone who would be stumped by a middle management position, but thanks to being a Bush-connected toad he got a job that had important duties he couldn't come close to filling, but Bush didn't give a damn and thought FEMA was just a place to put contributors.
A touch of hyperbole is useful at times.
Brownie was a political appointee. It is the career people that take care of operations.
There are way too many people to blame for the fiasco than just Bush and Brownie as was directly stated in the stuff RF posted.
It was a joint pooch screwing involving the city, state, and the feds.
Brownie was a political appointee. It is the career people that take care of operations.
There are way too many people to blame for the fiasco than just Bush and Brownie as was directly stated in the stuff RF posted.
It was a joint pooch screwing involving the city, state, and the feds.
kookbreaker
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Brownie was a hack who got his job from political connections because Bush didn't take the administration of FEMA seriously. He had no business being in that job. None.
Others certainly have blame, but none actively made the bad situation worse than Browniw.
Trying to spread the blame has been the Bush apologist party-line for years and it just doesn't wash. New Orleans' shortcomings doesn't make up for the total screwups made by FEMA management.
Most political appointees are hacks. Just look at all the idiot ambassadors around the world.
That is the reason there are career people in public service, because the political hacks aren't competent and are only in the post for a short time. What decisions did Brown actually make?
The wiki page quoted by Randfan didn't have a problem blaming...here is the quote:
Official requests for help through the proper chains of command were not forthcoming due to local and state delays in engaging FEMA for federal assistance, even after approached by such authorities.
Reading some of the other quotes, I can easily say blaming Bush has been the Democratic party line for years.
RandFan
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Bush richly deserves blame. He had lots of warnings and he did not make certain that FEMA did it's job.
"The Buck Stops Here".
Bush had a meeting with Brown prior, see link above, he was advised of the nature of the problem. He did nothing.
It was a colossal failure. Sadly it wasn't the first time Bush and co ignored warnings.
Edited by zooterkin:
<SNIP>
Edited for rule 11, removed comment that provoked a derail.
Edited for rule 11, removed comment that provoked a derail.
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gabeygoat
Master Poster
What was the point of mentioning g his race?
davefoc
Philosopher
Perhaps I am too naive, but I think that was a shot at liberals who wouldn't call out a black guy for incompetence or corruption (at least in scrut land). So I think he is accusing liberals of being hypocrites rather than attempting to make a racist comment.
Perhaps, he'll provide a little additional information so we can sort this out.
Bush was the mayor of New Orleans? The Governor? Do tell.
You tell me.
While I hesitate to climb into the vitriol, and I have no love for Mike Brown, I think he's getting a bad rap and there has been only scattered mention of the most culpable person at the federal level.
That being said, I'll start with something pulled from the testimony of COL (Ret) Jeff Smith, Deputy Director Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness - where he asked "what is the metric for success?", largely justifying the response at the state level and its performance. A lot of hay is being made about the Hurricane Pam exercise in the summer of 2004, one year prior. In that exercise, 60,000 deaths were predicted. In Louisiana, the final tally was short of 1,600 (at the time of Jeff Smith's testimony in December 2005 it was 1,100). That means actual deaths were less than 3% of predicted. If those numbers mean that someone criminally failed, then what does success look like? Those deaths may be a tragedy, but they are a fraction of 1% of the total affected Louisiana population, and even a small fraction (2%) of the non-evacuees in New Orleans. What's the metric for success?
Next, you may want to dig into the data on the deaths - I would suggest starting with "Hurricane Katrina Deaths, 2005"http://new.dhh.louisiana.gov/assets/docs/katrina/deceasedreports/KatrinaDeaths_082008.pdf . The study does not have complete data on deaths or date of death, but of the cases where they had dates of death, 81% died on the day of landfall. (650 as a number) 95% of the deaths were from Orleans, St. Bernard, or Jefferson Parish, with the majority from Orleans Parish. The parishes that did not have mandatory evacuations (or late mandatory evacuations) were Orleans and Jefferson, and St. Bernards was where St Rita's home was. A majority of the deaths were older - and some speculation is that older residents may have weathered Hurricane Betsy and tried to do the same thing. A plurality of deaths were due to drowning - the result of the levees being breached. Long and short of it, with a majority of deaths being the day of the hurricane and drowning, I fail to see how Bush or Mike Brown could have done much of anything to prevent any of those deaths. The finding of "Failure of Initiative" was that Blanco and Nagin had 56 hours of notice of the severity of Katrina, yet waited until 19 hours prior to order a mandatory evacuation. I'm not scapegoating because I'm not looking for one; mandatory evacuations are a tough call and tough to enforce. But if you are looking for someone to blame for the relatively small number of deaths compared with the predictions of the Hurricane Pam exercise, you will find more immediate culpability for the day of landfall and drowning deaths at the local level rather than the federal.
Regarding the hospitals, Memorial Hospital and Tenet Healthcare settled a lawsuit in 2011 and Pendleton Memorial Methodist Hospital settled a lawsuit in 2010 (I'm sure there were other lawsuits, but these were two of the larger ones) concerning the hospital's culpability in the deaths of their patients. The state, local, or federal government were not parties in these suits, and the plaintiffs for the families of the dead fought to exclude any evidence or defense involving them, arguing it was irrelevant to the duty a hospital has to its patients.
So who would I consider most culpable at the federal level? Chertoff. I would recommend reading COL (Ret) Jeff Smith's testimony - he highlights a lot of the problems FEMA had being rolled under DHS, something ironically that Mike Brown correctly identified as interfering with FEMA's ability to prepare. This is a big topic, so I would recommend reading the full chapter on FEMA Preparedness in "A Failure of Initiative". It's easy to blame Brown, but he fought against the removing of responsibilities and weakening of FEMA under DHS (and made some prophetic statements). Anyways, Chertoff:
- did not stand up the IIMG (Interagency Incident Management Group) prior to landfall
- did not activate the CIA (Catastrophic Incident Annex) to the NRP (National Response Plan) (in COL Smith's opinion the single biggest failure)
- appointed Mike Brown as the PFO (Primary Federal Official) who was not PFO-trained or on the approved PFO roster and then made him operational (he described Brown as his "battlefield commander")
- did not understand the distinction between PFO and FCO and tried to dual hat PFO as FCO leading to the resignation of very respected FCO Bill Carwile.
(All that being said, I would be hard pressed to ascribe deaths or a majority blame for Katrina to Chertoff - just that in sunmaster's blame progression, I would put Chertoff ahead of Bush and Brown.)
That being said, I'll start with something pulled from the testimony of COL (Ret) Jeff Smith, Deputy Director Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness - where he asked "what is the metric for success?", largely justifying the response at the state level and its performance. A lot of hay is being made about the Hurricane Pam exercise in the summer of 2004, one year prior. In that exercise, 60,000 deaths were predicted. In Louisiana, the final tally was short of 1,600 (at the time of Jeff Smith's testimony in December 2005 it was 1,100). That means actual deaths were less than 3% of predicted. If those numbers mean that someone criminally failed, then what does success look like? Those deaths may be a tragedy, but they are a fraction of 1% of the total affected Louisiana population, and even a small fraction (2%) of the non-evacuees in New Orleans. What's the metric for success?
Next, you may want to dig into the data on the deaths - I would suggest starting with "Hurricane Katrina Deaths, 2005"http://new.dhh.louisiana.gov/assets/docs/katrina/deceasedreports/KatrinaDeaths_082008.pdf . The study does not have complete data on deaths or date of death, but of the cases where they had dates of death, 81% died on the day of landfall. (650 as a number) 95% of the deaths were from Orleans, St. Bernard, or Jefferson Parish, with the majority from Orleans Parish. The parishes that did not have mandatory evacuations (or late mandatory evacuations) were Orleans and Jefferson, and St. Bernards was where St Rita's home was. A majority of the deaths were older - and some speculation is that older residents may have weathered Hurricane Betsy and tried to do the same thing. A plurality of deaths were due to drowning - the result of the levees being breached. Long and short of it, with a majority of deaths being the day of the hurricane and drowning, I fail to see how Bush or Mike Brown could have done much of anything to prevent any of those deaths. The finding of "Failure of Initiative" was that Blanco and Nagin had 56 hours of notice of the severity of Katrina, yet waited until 19 hours prior to order a mandatory evacuation. I'm not scapegoating because I'm not looking for one; mandatory evacuations are a tough call and tough to enforce. But if you are looking for someone to blame for the relatively small number of deaths compared with the predictions of the Hurricane Pam exercise, you will find more immediate culpability for the day of landfall and drowning deaths at the local level rather than the federal.
Regarding the hospitals, Memorial Hospital and Tenet Healthcare settled a lawsuit in 2011 and Pendleton Memorial Methodist Hospital settled a lawsuit in 2010 (I'm sure there were other lawsuits, but these were two of the larger ones) concerning the hospital's culpability in the deaths of their patients. The state, local, or federal government were not parties in these suits, and the plaintiffs for the families of the dead fought to exclude any evidence or defense involving them, arguing it was irrelevant to the duty a hospital has to its patients.
So who would I consider most culpable at the federal level? Chertoff. I would recommend reading COL (Ret) Jeff Smith's testimony - he highlights a lot of the problems FEMA had being rolled under DHS, something ironically that Mike Brown correctly identified as interfering with FEMA's ability to prepare. This is a big topic, so I would recommend reading the full chapter on FEMA Preparedness in "A Failure of Initiative". It's easy to blame Brown, but he fought against the removing of responsibilities and weakening of FEMA under DHS (and made some prophetic statements). Anyways, Chertoff:
- did not stand up the IIMG (Interagency Incident Management Group) prior to landfall
- did not activate the CIA (Catastrophic Incident Annex) to the NRP (National Response Plan) (in COL Smith's opinion the single biggest failure)
- appointed Mike Brown as the PFO (Primary Federal Official) who was not PFO-trained or on the approved PFO roster and then made him operational (he described Brown as his "battlefield commander")
- did not understand the distinction between PFO and FCO and tried to dual hat PFO as FCO leading to the resignation of very respected FCO Bill Carwile.
(All that being said, I would be hard pressed to ascribe deaths or a majority blame for Katrina to Chertoff - just that in sunmaster's blame progression, I would put Chertoff ahead of Bush and Brown.)
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PS An interesting article Buck Stops Here arguing that "the buck stops here" is being misused in ways Truman never would have endorsed. That the phrase was never intended to mean the President is responsible for every decision his subordinates make, but that the President would make the decisions that stopped at his level. The article is intended to defend Obama from accusations on Benghazi, but it would seem that the same logic would apply to Bush on Katrina.
BenBurch
Gatekeeper of The Left
What exactly did FEMA and Bush do to prepare for these warnings?[/QUOTE]
Bush golfed, had a couple cases of beer, and planned a vacation.
Bush golfed, had a couple cases of beer, and planned a vacation.