Great post by Ed Morrissey today:
When the storm reached Cat-5 status in the Gulf of Mexico, what did George Bush do? He declared the entire Gulf coast an emergency area and mobilized FEMA. Until it actually made landfall, however, he could not pinpoint the assets. Even at the last moment,the brunt of the storm hit Gulfport, not New Orleans. The levee failure came later, on Tuesday, and until then the damage to New Orleans was major, not catastrophic.
Even so, the existence of the storm off the coast of Louisiana should have prompted governments on all levels to act. What happened?The city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana asked people to evacuate, but made no preparations to assist people in that endeavor. By Friday the outbound roads clogged with people in cars looking to escape, which all did. However, an entire fleet of school buses — hundreds of them — sat in their parking lots, gathering dust. Until George Bush called Governor Blanco personally and pleaded with her to make the evacuation order mandatory on Saturday, neither Mayor Nagin nor Blanco told people they had to leave. Apparently, that order only went out over the TV and radio from their press conference; no attempt was made to direct people out of their homes and onto the road.
After the levees broke on Tuesday, the situation broke down rapidly, a drearily predictable result. The two main refugee centers, the official one at the Superdome and the ad-hoc site at the Convention Center, should have been evacuated at that point. However, even two days after landfall, New Orleans had not moved its buses to high ground to keep them ready for use in case the levees broke. Lousiana’s governor had not called out her National Guard units, only 25% of which have deployed to Iraq. With I-10 from the east completely unusable for vehicular traffic and the New Orleans PD completely absorbed by search-and-rescue functions, looting ran wild and order completely broke down. Nagin only ordered the PD to take on looting as a high priority on Thursday.
What did George Bush do? He had a wide area of devastation to manage. Mississippi has also sustained catastrophic damage, with entire towns destroyed, flooded, and unable to fend for themselves. He does not have the authority to call out anyone’s National Guard until he federalizes the units, a move usually reserved for use when governors prove recalcitrant in mobilization. Yet within three days of the levee burst and the drowning of New Orleans, Bush had 40,000 troops entering the city to take over the management from Nagin and Blanco, delivering the aid that had waited for lines of communication to get established and the order that the NOPD and Louisiana could not maintain.
We work within a federal system, where cities and states control the allocation of resources used within their borders. We do this because we recognize that, for the most part, federalism works. Local decisions about resource allocation usually create better results than top-down bureaucratic management. The main requirement for that to work is local leadership. Blaming George Bush because he delivered results within three days of the major catastrophic event while following these rules is as silly as blaming Congress for taking five days to pass an aid bill.
The main failure in New Orleans came when the local and state governments refused to recognize that the storm had a high chance to cause catastrophic damage and use its assets to get the poor and infirm out of its way. They had plenty of resources (in vehicles) with which to do that, but left them right where the floods would destroy them. All the rest of the damage would have been mere property destruction, difficult to rebuild but nonetheless easier to accept than the unbelievable hardship we’ve seen this week.
DJ Drummond also has an excellent post with chronology of Katrina.
In the end the trajedy is that the local leader’s failed these two states, and this will come out in any hearings held….much to the disappointment of the loony left.
Just take a look at another chronology put together at RedState:
August 25-26, 2005: Katrina hits South Florida.
August 26, 2005, 5:23 p.m.: Meteorologist Jeff Masters: “Threat threat of a strike on New Orleans by Katrina as a major hurricane has grown…It would be no surprise if later advisories shift the forecast track even further west and put Katrina over New Orleans.”
August 26, 2005, 11:25 a.m.: Masters: “I’m surprised they haven’t
ordered an evacuation of the city yet. While the odds of a catastropic hit that would completely flood the city of New Orleans are probably 10%, that is way too high in my opinion to justify leaving the people in the city. If I lived in the city, I would evactuate NOW! There is a very good reason that the Coroner’s office in New Orleans keeps 10,000 body bags on hand. … New Orleans needs a
full 72 hours to evacuate, and landfall is already less than 72 hours away.”
August 26, 2005, 1:57 p.m.: Brendan Loy: “At the risk of being
alarmist, we could be 3-4 days away from an unprecedented cataclysm that could kill as many as 100,000 people in New Orleans.
August 26, 2005, 9:44 p.m.: Governor declares state of emergency.
August 26, 2005, 11:22 p.m.: Loy: “[I]f I lived in New Orleans, I
would definitely leave at this point. Tonight. Barring a major change in forecast, I expect the evacuation orders to come tomorrow.” The order would not come for another 24 hours.August 27, 2005, afternoon: Mayor Nagin says “this is not a test,” “batten down the hatches” ? but evacuation is still voluntary.
August 27, 2005, 7:34 p.m. Loy: “I can’t emphasize enough what a
bad decision I think it is for New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to delay the mandatory evacuation until tomorrow morning… Will Ray Nagin go down in history as the mayor who fiddled while New Orleans drowned? Could be.”
August 27, 2005, evening: Governor Blanco interrupts Mayor Nagin
at dinner Update [2005-9-2 18:54:36 by machiavel]: after
President Bush appeals for a mandatory evacuation of the
city, telling him to call the National Hurricane Center. He
subsequently orders a mandatory evacuation for Sunday, 24 hours before landfall.
August 27, 2005, 9:16 p.m.: Masters: “New Orleans finally got
serious and ordered an evacuation, but far too late. There is no way everyone will be able to get out of the city in time…” He places New Orleans’ chances of being destroyed at 20 percent.
August 28, 2005, 4:31 p.m.: Loy says it may be too late for those
who waited for the Mayor’s order to evacuate.
August 28, 2005, 4:13 p.m. CDT: National Weather Service dispatch:
“MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS… PERHAPS LONGER… AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE… WATER
SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.”
August 29, 2005: Hurricane Katrina makes landfall.
August 30, 2005: New Orleans levees fail, flooding the city.
Check out Strata-Sphere, and Betsy’s Page for more.
See author page
