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Jewish World Review Sept. 13, 2005 / 9 Elul, 5765 Questions about Katrina By Rich Lowry
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The Bush administration is excoriating what it calls "the blame
game." If the alacrity with which Bush critics began their Katrina
criticisms was unseemly, a vigorous "blame game" is still the only
way to keep government failures from being conveniently ignored. But
if Democrats and media get their way, recriminations will swing only
one way — at President Bush and the feds.
Consider Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who has informally been
designated as Washington's spokeswoman for the victims of Katrina.
She has called the federal response to the storm "incompetent and
insulting." But asked on Fox News Sunday about the failure to
evacuate the city prior to Katrina's landfall by state and local
officials, Landrieu averred, "I am not going to level criticism at
the local level," and suddenly insisted "now is not the time for
finger-pointing." Landrieu's finger, in other words, can only point
in one direction.
In the interest of balance, here are some questions that should
be put to state and local officials:
There is a document called the "City of New Orleans
Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan," which is a detailed
strategy for a looming catastrophe like Katrina. City officials have
now made it clear that they never had any intention of putting it
fully into operation. So why did they write it in the first place?
The mayor wasted precious time prior to the storm having his
lawyers investigate whether he had the authority to issue a
mandatory evacuation, when the city's own plan says that he can. Did
anyone even bother to read the plan?
The plan said about 100,000 people wouldn't make it out of the
city. Didn't that fact weigh on city officials' minds in the years
they had to prepare for a killer storm?
Why was a fleet of several hundred buses, which could have been
used by an energetic and imaginative government to evacuate people
prior to the storm, left in a parking lot to be flooded?
Evacuating hospitals and nursing homes should have been the
first priority of the city. How could they just have been left to
fend for themselves? More than 30 people died in the floodwaters in
St. Rita's nursing home alone.
Why did the city fail to take advantage of what Amtrak says was
its offer to take a couple hundred passengers on its last train out
of New Orleans?
How difficult would it have been to stock food and water at the
Superdome? Wouldn't that have been a sounder approach rather than
tell people to "eat a full meal before arriving" and bring their own
food and water?
Was it a good idea to try, in effect, to starve out the evacuees
at the Superdome and the convention center? Local officials hammered
the feds for not getting desperate evacuees at those spots food and
water. But the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security explicitly
prevented the Red Cross from delivering supplies on the theory that
that would only encourage people to stay in New Orleans.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco didn't specifically request from
the federal government what her state needed until the Thursday
after the storm hit. Couldn't she have done that a little sooner?
The governor has control of the National Guard. Why didn't she
send more troops immediately after the storm? According to Mayor Ray
Nagin, in the initial days "we fought and held that city together
with only 200 state National Guard."
What kind of city police force has as much as 20 percent of its
personnel go AWOL when it is needed most?
If the governor wanted active-duty military patrolling in New
Orleans during the chaos, why didn't she accept the federalization
of the National Guard that Justice Department officials say would
have been necessary to make it happen?
If funding for the levees protecting New Orleans was so
inadequate, how could Louisiana Congressional representatives waste,
as The Washington Post put it, "hundreds of millions of dollars" on
"unrelated water projects"?
Let the recriminations begin.
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© 2005 King Features Syndicate |
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