From their website:
* Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
*The state Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.
* The Red Cross has been meeting the needs of thousands of New Orleans residents in some 90 shelters throughout the state of Louisiana and elsewhere since before landfall. All told, the Red Cross is today operating 149 shelters for almost 93,000 residents.
* The Red Cross shares the nation’s anguish over the worsening situation inside the city. We will continue to work under the direction of the military, state and local authorities and to focus all our efforts on our lifesaving mission of feeding and sheltering.
* The Red Cross does not conduct search and rescue operations. We are an organization of civilian volunteers and cannot get relief aid into any location until the local authorities say it is safe and provide us with security and access.
* The original plan was to evacuate all the residents of New Orleans to safe places outside the city. With the hurricane bearing down, the city government decided to open a shelter of last resort in the Superdome downtown. We applaud this decision and believe it saved a significant number of lives.
* As the remaining people are evacuated from New Orleans, the most appropriate role for the Red Cross is to provide a safe place for people to stay and to see that their emergency needs are met. We are fully staffed and equipped to handle these individuals once they are evacuated.
A couple of notes: The LA DHS Director and Adjutant General is Major General Bennett C. Landreneau. He was appointed to his position in 1997 by former Louisiana Governor Mike Foster, a Republican, and then re-appointed by Governor Kathleen Blanco in 2003. Not that political party matters, here—he still has to answer to the Governor, which, ideally, is how it should be anyway. But for purposes of full-disclosure and all…
****
belated update: Wuzzadem has much more.
The Big Picture items that seem to be coming out are
1. At the local level, there was a fundamental breakdown of local law enforcement and worst-case-scenario planning
2. At the state level, indecision and concerns about chain of command and state responsibilities (some legitimate, though less so given the urgency of the situation)
3. At the national level, wrangling with the state over control issues, and paperwork SNAFUs.
The paperwork ones really gall me. But it’s 1 and 2 that probably contributed to the anarchy of Tuesday and Wednesday.
I hope to God our local leaders take note of this disaster.
It seems the MSM is finally picking up the ball.
I just heard this story from Major Garrett on Fox News. I quickly turned to CNN and NADA. They only showed Bush saying that no one could have forseen the levees breaking. Which they hoped to make him look foolish because everyone who knew about New Orleans knew about the levees. But a President isn’t expected to know every thing about every city.
It would seem it is more important to show who kept the food and water out of the hands of those who needed it immediately after the hurricane, but CNN was too busy I guess.
I swear. Watching CNN is like watching news in a differenct country.
I posted this on the previous thread before I realized this post was up. Updated spelling and tense.
Hugh Hewitt interviewed Major Garrett on his radio show. Garrett said that Red Cross officials told him that they attempted to bring supplies to the Superdome on the day after the storm. But LA state officials prevented them from bringing it because they didn’t want to attract people to the Superdome.
Alas rls, the journal’s editorial page isn’t really msm. I had another near drive into a tree experience today listening to CNN radio. They reported that folks in Biloxi are complaining because it’s TOO orderly there. No joke…they said “some residents” were upset that there was such a good law enforcement presence in town. CNN tried to spin that “some residents” felt that the “extra” law enforcement personnel should be doing search and rescue. Hey, whatever complaint will work I guess. And local talk radio here full of black people calling in to say New Orleans is “selective genocide” by republicans. I’m sure glad the evil Rove brigades can somehow tell a NO black person from one of those from AL or MS. I thought most waterlogged, hungry, thirsty victims of natural disasters looked kind of the same. Guess I’m not smart enough to be a member of the Rove brigade.
That is starting to be a common refrain, that the main focus after the storm was (and is) getting the people out of NO before giving them aid.
and how the Rove brigades convinced the state of LA and city of NO to herd folks together into two such convenient locations I’ll never be able to figure out. I guess Rove’s evil genius even controls white democrat governors and black democrat mayors, not to mention their Office of Emergency Management chairmen. What power!
I believe that the Red Cross statement that State Officials kept them from delivering food,water and blankets to those in the Superdome and Civic/Convention Center will put a very large hole in the “Bush let people starve” argument.
As the facts come in, we see stories like this explained as well as the Wal Mart trucks being turned away and the Virginia Doctors being turned back – all with rational explanations
The Red Cross Story is definitely gonna hurt Nagin and Blanco. The City was the one that told them to go to the Superdome and there were others that made their own way to the Convention Center. To deprive them of accessable, readily available food, water and blankets on Tuesday because they didn’t want any more people there is going to come off as pretty sallow.
Down the thread in that News Hound link is my nomination for Moonbat of the Week:
You just can’t make this shit up.
TW: all. The lefties will blame it on Chimpy, no matter how many facts y’all dig up.
At least we can agree that having 1,000 rescue workers take a sexual harrassment course was pretty dumb.
The ‘handing out fliers’ bit was also much.
I, personally, am OUTRAGED that the GOODYEAR Blimp was not pressed into service. It has a lighted message board, one with graphic capability – it can hover on station for long periods of time or do slow orbits around the city . The Blimp is HellaBig so there’d be minimal risk of collision, plus it can fly at 6-8,000 feet (or higher) to stay out of range of small arms fire.
The Blimp could also be fitted with Kevlar, uparmored, if you will, to provide additional protections, but you fly with the blimps you have.
The Goodyear Blimp is, in fact, the PERFECT means of communicating a message or instructions to a large disaster stricken area – and it was just sitting there in Ohio.
Actually, there are three Goodyear Blimps.
And they weren’t sitting,
more floating just off the ground.
While people died.
Yet one more failure of the Chimp.
You won’t get any argument from me over sexual harrassment courses—though I wonder if federal regulations didn’t constrain that eventuality.
Time to re-think that PC bullshit…
I’m still holding off on jumping back on the lop-some-heads-at-FEMA bandwagon, but jeebus- sexual harassment training for firefighters?
I’ll admit I got worked up about Browns supposed incompetence for not necessarily the right reasons, but the more that things surface the more it seems FEMA at $6 billion a year is an awful lot of money for a very diminished return.
Tman,
AS far as that goes, I agree with you. I’m not sure FEMA has been a good idea from its inception, or all of DHS for that matter. But I’m not going to say Borwn is crminally incompetent because of governments predelection for useless bureacracy. Instead I’m going to say that when this is over we need to look at how and why FEMA was built. Is it the best way to do this thing? If not what is? I’m also not buying the argument that Federal help didn’t get to NO as quickly as it possibly could have. Not without proof.
No, I’m afraid it won’t.
The meme has already hardened.
Hardened, as in the hearts that came up with this.
Fucking ghouls.
sigh. sexual harassment class. next will be the religious/non-religious sensitivity class. then the ethnic sensitivity class. all federally mandated for military personnel anyway. what a wonderful use of tax dollars!
word is want–as in I want one of those “curriculum research” jobs designing brainless but federally mandated courses. full employment forever! except i’m a microbiologist/biochemist by training. wait…microbe sensitivity! using bleach is cruel and unusual punishment!
Steve,
I’ll see your moonbat bumpersticker and raise it one frothing lunatic conspiracy-
17th street levee bombed by the Army Corps of Engineers
**WARNING** Link goes to absolute depths of human insanity.**WARNING**
corvan,
Actually, I think that FEMA was better off by itself. It seems that once it got rolled in to the DHS everything became even more complicated.
You wanna see some ghouls? Go check out the Kos asylum. They are now promoting a conspiracy theory that the levies were intentionally destroyed by the Army:
“The 17th street levee was bombed by the Army Corps of Engineers to save the more valuable real estate in the city… to keep the French Quarter protected, the ninth ward was sacrificed… people are afraid to speak out…”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/7/193317/1598
How flooding one part of the city is supposed to save a different part of the city the geniuses have not yet explained…
Wow. I was planning some witty, incisive comment, but I’m pretty fucking speechless.
Wow.
TW: Long, as in How long can the Left keep digging before they come out the other side?
Heh, beat me to it Tman
While we all agree (I think) the sexual harassment training probably wasn’t necessary, I also suspect it may not have originated in the Bush White House.
It seems to me the hubbub about the fire-fighters is more over blown moonbatitis. Firemen aren’t alot of good without working trucks, fuel, tools and hydrants. Some water can be pumped if you have pumps and it close, some can be hauled if you have tank trucks available. Most down there is being dropped by helicopters. If you already have enough fire fighters for the equipment you have, more would just be a waste of food and water.
Of course if you are still spinning on your eyebrows in full panic mode you can’t have too many firemen, God knows how many kittens are still in trees down there.
Tman, you might be right. We should look at it and see. Lord knows I was no fan of DHS to begin with. It just creates another agency over a bunch of other agencies who will now blame their incompetence on the new, overarching agency. Even though the overarching agency doesn’t have any control at all over what the agencies it was supposed to help do. Sort of like being an intelligence Czar. Or a FEMA director trying to work wiht LA authorities, maybe? Of course we don’t know that last for sure, but time will tell.
let me be the first to say…
</b>THE RED CROSS HATES BLACK PEOPLE!! AND POOR PEOPLE!!</B>
AND JEFF’S SITE HATES MY HTML TAGS!!
Scott,
You’re overlooking the obvious explanation:
THE ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS HATES BLACK PEOPLE!! AND POOR PEOPLE!!
Man, this is exhausting. How do lefties do it?
B-Moe, how did you know about my eyebrows?
(I needed lots of firemen when I saw that clock spider in the laundry room.)
<b>Like this, TallDave</b>
… nothing up my sleeves…..
American Politics for Dummies
At Powerline they’re saying it has been confirmed by the Red Cross that the Louisiana government did in fact prevent them from providing supplies to the people inside the Convention Center and Superdome because they didn’t want to “attract people” to the facilities.
Niiiiice.
<a href=”http://powerlineblog.com/archives/011594.php” target=”_blank”>
Now they are quoting a Newsweek article that say Bush could have federalized the National Guard in an “instant” like his father did for the 92 LA riots. I went and looked it up and it seems that “instant’ took 3 days, but that’s just semantics, right?
So now I guess we have to go see if it was possible and how long it would have taken. Geeze.
They. Are. Killing. Me.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it really depressing that the Democratic party has absolutely lost it….gone waaaay off the deep end.
Do you have link for that, Sparkle?
Off the top of my head, I’m gonna say the rioting = “insurrection,” and that Governor agreed. But I’d like to see the specifics of who’s claiming what.
Nagin, you should be on your way to South America…….
Before this hits the front page-
Overhead Shot of New Orleans Unflooded Busses and Clear Escape Routes on August 31st…
Via Michael King..
Unbelievable……
Folks, the Red Cross memo really doesn’t (or shouldn’t) harm neither Blanco nor Nagin. Rather is lays to waste the ubiquitous claim that the suffering inside NO was directly Bush’s fault.
And ScottFree and Tman, did those kooks happen to explain just how the Corp of Engineers got their hands on either Navy or Airforce jet capable of carrying that really frickin smart bomb that can take out a virtually submerged 2 foot wide concrete levee through hurricane force winds?
Keeping the Red Cross out of the city is a rare bit of aggressive stupidity in a disaster already burgeoning with bone-headed moves. It must be a competition of some kind. I can’t imagine how much more stupid you’d have to be to win. We’ll find out.
Reality-Bite:
fwiw, President Bush was governor of a bigass state located on the Gulf of Mexico for 8 years. So, Governor George W. Bush had some experience with FEMA, or – as it was known by the late 1990s > FEMA!.
Pres. Bush’s ‘begging’ Governor Blanco is not exactly out of line. Bush, and Clinton for that matter, as former governors can have ‘been there, did this’ conversations about disaster response.
So, one angle to consider is whether Bush, as a former Governor, had more appreciation of the role the State plays in immediate disaster response than did Blanco. Here’s one indication that Bush might have. Hurricane Brett hit Texas in 1999. Brett was a Category IV hurricane. Fortunately, Brett hit in a relatively underpopulated area.
However, as Governor, Bush was looking at this sitting out in the Gulf of Mexico:
Hurricane Brett
Local authorities ended up evacuating, laying in water reserves, bringing supplies to the police station to ‘camp out’ there during the storm and the aftermath, and coordinating local response with state and FEMA resources.
So, Bush had an appreciation of the roles of the people involved.
There’s also a question of timeliness of FEMA!’s response under James Lee Witt. Apparently, the Left thinks that FEMA! workers showed up in hours, possibly minutes, not days during the 90s.
Not so:
cite
{emphasis added}
a few days?
wtf?
Congratulations Jeff, the blogs like this one are apparently doing the investigative reporting NOT being done by the MSM.
Jeff, here is the link to the NEWSWEEK story.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179587/
I sent you this, but for everyone else, I am hearing that the former Bush nationalized the guard in the 92 riots. The article says in an “instant.” But it actually took 3 days then. As Jeff says, it does take insurrection. But why confuse people with facts?
Here is the exact page where the riots are mentioned:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179587/site/newsweek/page/5/
In ‘92, the California governor was both competent and cooperative. Gov. Blanco was neither.