Thoughts on Katrina

I lived in New Orleans for five years. Three of my kids were born there. I loved the town, the area and the people. The devestation to New Orleans and the Gulf coast is terrible and depressing. It is too bad that it takes a hurricane to get me off my duff and attempt to contact people I've known for years and just haven't taken the effort to communicate and keep up. Luckily, they left for safer ground before the storm.

We've been glued to the TV watching very repititious footage and reporting, in hopes that we would see if some of the places we knew and lived survived. If you didn't have a map, and all you knew was based on the media, you wouldn't know that Jefferson Parrish abuts New Orleans (that's how they get the 1.3 million people). You would hardly know that that the airport is in Kenner and you would have to guess just how much of the east bank of Jefferson Parrish is damaged. You wouldn't know that Orleans and Jefferson Parrishes extend across the Mississippi River to the West Bank and that a few hundred thousand people live over there. You wouldn't know if there is any significant flooding in Algiers, Gretna, Harvey, Marrero or Westwego. You would have no idea if any of the refineries are damaged, or just waiting for the infrastructure to be restored to the point that they can return to work. The media is doin a fine job of showing helicopter rescues and a lousy job of giving the big picture of the entire city, just as they are doing a lousy job of showing what's going on in Mississippi and Alabama. One more shot of the Hard Rock Casino and I'll scream.

I got quite angry with the sharpshooting going on the Cafferty and Aaron Brown on CNN last night. I thought the response was excellent for the first 24 hours. However, by tonight I'm becoming convinced that the governor, lieutenant governor, mayor of New Orleans and other elected leaders have been measured and found wanting. The task before them is overwhelming. Which priority would you choose with limited resources? However, they aren't doing simple things:
People are dropped off on I-10 by boats. No one is assigned to coordinate these drop-off points and record names, set up some types of rescue triage and the like. Doesn't take a massive manpower effort, but it certainly would make the process more manageable. Instead, they are dropped off and begin wandering down the road looking for something.

The looting has gotten out of hand. I couldn't blame the police last night. If they arrested a looter, what were they going to do with him?

Part of the problem is communications failures. Certainly, somewhere there is replacement communications equipment. If not, why weren't military FM radios and anttennae set up to allow some sort of communications? There has to be some signal companies in the Guard, hell, even an artillery battalion (try Washing artillery, NOLA) with generators, FM communcations gear, command vans and all that stuff. Why hasn't anyone thought of that. Where is the STARC in all this? If you have to, deploy some active duty assets. A battalion of the 82d could move in and support itself for a couple of days. Is all of the 101st off in Iraq?

How can they "forget" that Charity Hospital is trying to operate and people are now trapped in the hospital when they evacuated Tulane Hospital right across the street?

The human tragedy in New Orleans is being magnified because the City and State leaders have failed to take charge and do what they were elected to do, lead. Ms. (Send) Landrieu may be very proud of her brother the Lieutenant Governor because he has been in NOLA collecting bodies and doing rescues, but that is exactly what he shouldn't be doing. He should be actively getting the rescue efforts mobilized. Enough screaming from the governor or lieutenant governor and even FEMA would take notice.