Split Thread Michael Brown and Katrina

[Augustine]

Whether you move on or not is your choice. You have gotten a far more in-depth answer to your question, and you don’t like it? You insist on direct answers to your questions while you either don’t answer or evade mine? If you want to have a conversation, then start participating in it equally. Don’t insist.

Really? I am asking questions that have been answered over and over again?
If you read COL (Ret) Jeff Smith's testimony, he was clearly surprised at the numbers at the Superdome and Convention Center as well. Is he incompetent or obfuscating as well? Unwilling to give a direct answer.
Do you hold Johnny Bradberry at all responsible? Unwilling to give a direct answer.
Who are "Nagin and others"? Never answered.
Who are "Bush and his cronies"? Never answered.
Who do you hold responsible and why (specifics, not general bumper sticker statements)? Never answered.
Who at the city level besides Nagin? Why? What did they do or fail to do (again specifically, in terms of their emergency management responsibility)? Never answered.
Who at the state level? (Johnny Bradberry? Jeff Smith? Blanco? Other officials?) Again, why (specifically)? Never answered.
Who at the federal level? Did you read my earlier criticism of Chertoff where I listed specific actions? Can you do something similar - specific actions supported by actual reference to roles as spelled out in National Response Plan, not simplistic assertions? Never answered.
Do you blame anyone at the Corps of Engineers? Who, specifically? Never answered.
Do you blame the FEMA guys on the ground - in Louisiana, it was Bill Lokey, FCO, Scott Wells, Deputy FCO, and Phil Parr, with the emergency response advance team? Never answered.
Do you blame any of the other government agencies with ESF responsibilities? Never answered.
Can you explain at all what ESF you think Department of State failed to support? Never answered.
Have you ever stopped to notice that all your emergency services are at the city/county level? Why do you think fire, rescue, police, emergency medical services are all local in this manner? When was the last time you called a federal agency as a first responder? Never answered.

I will briefly touch on the two questions you have been evading.

In your post, you referred to Brown’s surprise as evidence that he was incompetent or obfuscating. If you read COL (Ret) Jeff Smith's testimony, he was clearly surprised at the numbers at the Superdome and Convention Center as well. I have asked you if you believe he is incompetent or obfuscating as well. You are unwilling to give a direct answer.

If the answer is yes, that you think anyone who was surprised at the numbers of evacuees at the Superdome was incompetent or obfuscating, then you are admitting that the GAR for Louisiana was incompetent or obfuscating. If this is the case, then it is a question of how you apportion responsibility for the failures during Katrina. If you believe that blame falls on state level appointees, and by extension the official who appointed them, that is at least consistent with your stance on federal appointees and officials. Similarly, if your standards for criminal negligence are the same for state and federal appointees, then I may differ from you in what rises to the level of criminal negligence, but at least you are internally consistent. If however, you judge criminal negligence differently for officials based on the level they operated at, then you need to make that argument and justify it.

If your answer is no, you think COL (Ret) Jeff Smith was competent and honest when he was surprised at the number of evacuees at the Superdome, yet you posted that Brown was incompetent and obfuscating for being surprised, then your entire post was irrelevant – I believe you call that a red herring? Ironic that the only one in this thread that has been pedantic about red herrings is you, yet yours are so numerous – 9/11 (red herring); Condi Rice (red herring); a quote from Barbara Bush (relevance to the thread topic?). Perhaps the idiom you should keep in mind is “physician, heal thyself”.

The question of Johnny Bradberry also goes to your consistency in terms of applying standards at the state and federal level. If you hold that Johnny Bradberry is criminally negligent, and consequently the person who appointed him negligent, then we can discuss your standard of criminal negligence. If you hold that Johnny Bradberry is not criminally negligent, and the person who appointed him not negligent, then we can discuss why you hold the standard for criminal negligence differently for state and federal officials.

One more different standard, and one more question that I don’t expect to see an answer for:

When Bush said ““I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” you accused him of lying and trotted out the old “Bush lied, people died”, etc.

Yet from Governor Blanco’s December 2, 2005, response to Congress: “The Governor was well aware of Ivor van Heerden's well publicized warnings and predictions that storm surge from a Cat 4 or Cat 5 hurricane would cause overtopping of the levees, which would result in massive flooding in the City of New Orleans. No one expected, or predicted, that the levees would fail in the manner which occurred after Hurricane Katrina.”

Is she lying? Will you now chant “Blanco lied, people died”?

 

[RandFan]

This was good advice, yet unheeded.

Let me make something perfectly clear. You guys don't even understand the scope of the problem.

Brown failed long before Katrina was a storm.

Let me repeat that.

Brown's (and FEMA's) Incompetence was known long before Katrina was a storm. It doesn't even mater if FEMA was wrong about the mechanics. It only matters that FEMA was supposed to be prepared for the storm. It wasn't.

 

[DavidJames]

Seems like most of Augustine's questions are nothing more then a Gish Gallop with little to do with the very specific subject of the thread.

 

[RandFan]

• Brown/FEMA failed the entire year before Katrina even became a storm.
• Brown/FEMA exacerbated his failure when the storm became a CAT 5 and there were no plans to begin moving food and supplies and all they could come up with was a pitiful amount of food for a small number for a few days.
• Brown/FEMA exacerbated the failure further when the storm hit and they didn't have any contingency plans.

Bush didn't even know what to tell Gov. Blanco. No one did. There were no serious plans for a destructive storm in New Orleans. No preparations were put into place for large scale destruction and lack of clean water and transportation.

 

[sunmaster14]

If only the flood waters in New Orleans had been as shallow as RandFan's arguments, there wouldn't have been anything to discuss. On second thought, he might right now be accusing FEMA of ignoring the threat of the ensuing drought.

 

[sunmaster14]

Seems like most of Augustine's questions are nothing more then a Gish Gallop with little to do with the very specific subject of the thread.

Yes, it might seem that way to some. In the same way that a sufficiently primitive society cannot distinguish modern technology from magic.

 

[RandFan]

Everyone was surprised, especially FEMA...

... never mind that FEMA had warned FEMA.

 

[carlitos]

Let me make something perfectly clear. You guys don't even understand the scope of the problem.

Brown failed long before Katrina was a storm.

Let me repeat that.

Brown's (and FEMA's) Incompetence was known long before Katrina was a storm. It doesn't even mater if FEMA was wrong about the mechanics. It only matters that FEMA was supposed to be prepared for the storm. It wasn't.

Brown had two years at FEMA before the Hurricane. The stuff you linked earlier as a "warning" was from a simulated exercise one year before the disaster. Are you even suggesting that the US federal government / army corps of engineers / state, parish and city governments could have all agreed on a plan and shored up the levies to improve the fail rate from 80% to 20% during that time? In my experience, engineering projects take decades, not months.

Again, most people died from drowning, not from lack of food and supplies. What contingency plans should Brown have had in place and how would they have helped the drowning victims?

 

[RandFan]

Brown had two years at FEMA before the Hurricane. The stuff you linked earlier as a "warning" was from a simulated exercise one year before the disaster. Are you even suggesting that the US federal government / army corps of engineers / state, parish and city governments could have all agreed on a plan and shored up the levies to improve the fail rate from 80% to 20% during that time? In my experience, engineering projects take decades, not months.

Again, most people died from drowning, not from lack of food and supplies. What contingency plans should Brown have had in place and how would they have helped the drowning victims?

I'm suggesting they didn't do anything substantive to save lives. I'm suggesting that this notion of "nobody could have known" is a load of nonsense. I'm suggesting that there were many failures prior to, during and after Katrina that caused immense suffering and even death.

For arguments sake I'm happy to say that there is nothing Brown could have done to reduce casualties to zero. I'm willing for arguments sake to say that the locals also failed.

 

[carlitos]

Sigh. You're doing it again. How can we have a discussion if you won't engage?

I'm suggesting they didn't do anything substantive to save lives.

I didn't ask you that. I asked a yes or no question, based on how most people died after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. Here it is again:

Are you even suggesting that the US federal government / army corps of engineers / state, parish and city governments could have all agreed on a plan and shored up the levies to improve the fail rate from 80% to 20% during that time?

Could either answer yes / no, or explain why not?

I'm suggesting that this notion of "nobody could have known" is a load of nonsense.

OK. I didn't suggest that "nobody could have known" (known what, exactly?) though.

I'm suggesting that there were many failures prior to, during and after Katrina that caused immense suffering and even death.

OK. On this we agree. Who bears the responsibility before, during and after are 3 different questions, and blaming Brown and Bush is way oversimplifying things.

For arguments sake I'm happy to say that there is nothing Brown could have done to reduce casualties to zero.

No one mentioned "zero" casualties though, did they? That's a straw man argument, and I'll ignore it.

I'm willing for arguments sake to say that the locals also failed.

For arguments sake? You're not willing to concede that any locals failed in the real, actual world? Seriously?

 

[Augustine]

I was just getting ready to comment on that. "For arguments sake"? It's a conversation, just say what you believe. Why add qualifiers on everything to hide your actual beliefs?

 

[RandFan]

OK. On this we agree. Who bears the responsibility before, during and after are 3 different questions, and blaming Brown and Bush is way oversimplifying things.

The topic of the thread is Brown and Katrina. More specifically I have asked if Brown is criminally negligent.

I've provided an argument in support of that proposition. The rest (locals etc.,) is a red herring. The culpability of the locals which I made clear from my second or third post does not address Brown's culpability (and by extension GWB).

 

[RandFan]

I was just getting ready to comment on that. "For arguments sake"? It's a conversation, just say what you believe. Why add qualifiers on everything to hide your actual beliefs?

It's a means to stipulate a potentially controversial and wide ranging proposition. There are many locals and many jurisdictions. I try to avoid blanket statements but grant premises to move the discussion forward.

 

[Augustine]

Okay, so what do you believe?

 

[sunmaster14]

I'm suggesting they didn't do anything substantive to save lives.

And yet you have suggested nothing substantive that they could have done but didn't do. You've just waved your arms around about this, as if it were easy to save 200,000 poor, unevacuated inhabitants from a monster hurricane bearing down on a city surrounded on all sides by bodies of water well above ground level.

I'm suggesting that this notion of "nobody could have known" is a load of nonsense.

Nobody could reasonably foresee that the levees would collapse. They're not actually supposed to do that you know. The reason that the levees were not expected to withstand a Cat 5 hurricane was not that they weren't strong enough to keep standing; it was that they weren't high enough to prevent water flooding in over the top. As it turns out, there were serious flaws in the design of the levees and in their construction. There were found out only after the fact, but the fact that these flaws existed and were fatal is undisputed.

I'm suggesting that there were many failures prior to, during and after Katrina that caused immense suffering and even death.

Indeed, but probably nothing material that was the responsibility of either Brown or Bush. I have not seen any confirmation that anyone died because Federally requisitioned buses didn't begin to arrive at the Superdome and Convention Center on Tuesday, August 30, rather than on Friday, September 2. Federal officials were actually urging Blanco and Nagin to order mandatory evacuations much earlier than they actually did. Nagin did not order a mandatory evacuation until 9:30am, Sunday, August 28. The delay, for which he alone was responsible, was probably the key reason that the governmental response to Katrina was considered inadequate in the minds of most uninformed people. Now, in fairness to Nagin, the trajectory of the storm was still highly uncertain, and a mandatory evacuation is a difficult thing to order. No doubt the very act of evacuating causes dozens of deaths that might not otherwise have happened. It's always going to be a tough call.

For arguments sake I'm happy to say that there is nothing Brown could have done to reduce casualties to zero. I'm willing for arguments sake to say that the locals also failed.

You should be conceding these points not just for argument's sake, but because they're manifestly true. There simply is no reasonable dispute about those points.

 

[RandFan]

Okay, so what do you believe?

Let's start with the OP and keep it simple.

I believe:

1. That FEMA identified a serious risk to this nation.
2. That FEMA did little or nothing to prepare for this potential disaster.
3. Michael Brown was incompetent to head the FEMA.
4. A compelling argument (IMO) can be made that Michael Brown was criminally negligent.
5. Katrina, for whatever reason, resulted in the consequences FEMA warned us about but we were ill prepared to address.

 

[Augustine]

what do you believe about state and local failures? Not "for arguments sake", what do you personally believe? Why are you afraid to engage in discussion or conversation?

 

[carlitos]

The topic of the thread is Brown and Katrina. More specifically I have asked if Brown is criminally negligent.

So you still want to talk about Brown and Bush, but you won't answer my question about what the feds et al could have done to fix the levees, during the tenure of messrs. Brown and Bush.

If, for whatever reason, you won't answer that question, might you at least state why? As always there is NO RUSH! Take your time and think it out.

 

[sunmaster14]

Let's start with the OP and keep it simple.

I believe:

1. That FEMA identified a serious risk to this nation.
2. That FEMA did little or nothing to prepare for this potential disaster.
3. Michael Brown was incompetent to head the FEMA.
4. A compelling argument (IMO) can be made that Michael Brown was criminally negligent.
5. Katrina, for whatever reason, resulted in the consequences FEMA warned us about but we were ill prepared to address.

Your 2nd, 3rd and 4th bullet points are actually contradicted by your own references to the Hurricane Pam Exercise.

Hurricane Pam was a hypothetical hurricane used as a disaster scenario to drive planning for a 13-parish area in Southeastern Louisiana, including the city of New Orleans, in 2004.[8][9] Developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security, Emergency Preparedness, the National Weather Service, and Innovative Emergency Management, Inc., the mock hurricane scenario and its projected consequences were the focal point of an eight-day exercise held at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge in July 2004. Hurricane Pam was a slow-moving Category 3 storm with sustained winds of 120 mph. It brought with it up to 20 inches (510 mm) of rain to some parts of southeastern Louisiana and caused levee-topping storm surge. The consequence assessment for Hurricane Pam indicated that more than one million people would be displaced and that 600,000 buildings would be damaged, with some completely destroyed. 60,000 people would be killed. The report on the simulation, TIME reported, warned that transportation would be a major problem in any storm situation paralleling the fictional "Hurricane Pam."[10]

Note that these exercises and workshops were developed and organized by FEMA while Michael Brown was running the show. He clearly was trying to do something about the threat. In fact, the simulation showed that 60,000 people would be killed. In the event, only 1,800 died, even though Katrina was more powerful than the simulated hurricane, and the levees were breached due to design flaws. Judging by the number of people killed in the actual event versus the number projected to be killed, the only reasonable conclusion is that FEMA's planning had a significant positive effect. Perhaps instead of advocating that Brown be indicted for criminal negligence, you should be advocating that he be awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

 

[Augustine]

No doubt the very act of evacuating causes dozens of deaths that might not otherwise have happened. It's always going to be a tough call.

Great point. There was an article in Esquire about St. Rita's, I think the title was "The Loved Ones" that does discuss some of the difficulties in evacuating elderly patients, and the tough calls. The world is not heroes and villains. Sometimes good people make difficult calls in tragic circumstances, and it's easy to judge from the comfort of a message board.