E-RESPONDER
The article is short and covers the startup of the New Orleans Emergency Operations Center a week after Katrina.
New Orleans did not have a working EOC or ICS on September 8 when Mr. Deno and others from North Carolina, New Jersy and northern Virginia Arrived. They had to assemble a working Emergency Operations Center, install equipment, train Louisiana personnel and make things happen. This was a WEEK after Katrina hit.
Positives: Good work ethic by most of the New Orleanians. NOLA managed to evacuate 300,000 people before the storm.
From a talk before the Wilson County Commissioners
Negatives: No Leadership, no one to tell them what to do. Nagin holed up in a hotel and wasn't around. The staff there had no leadership. The staff had not coordinated with other parishes. The staff didn't know how to get things. In fact, this person, handled some items for Ophelia while in NOLA and the NOLA people were surprised that he could do it with a phone call. They were amazed that North Carolina counties had a mutual assistance network that could be activated by phone calls. New Orleans, and probably Louisiana, hadn't practiced that. NOLA folks weren't familiar with their plan.
One wonders where all the money went in New Orleans, when an Emergency Director from small town and rural county in North Carolina (along with others) can walk in, set up an EOC in a large city they hadn't been to, give ICS classes, work together and become a functioning team in a couple of days when NOLA couldn't do it for years.
One other message from his talk: FEMA isn't there to do things the city and state should do. They are there to assist and provide for things that the locals don't have.
Very positive comments on Honore.
For all the negatives about FEMA, it seems that NC, VA, NJ and other states knew how the system works. LA and the media didn't. People may have died because the leadership in New Orleans and Louisiana did not do their jobs for years before Katrina.
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