Steph,
I couldn't agree more with you on most points. However, having the education that I have in just this type of emergency, I can see a few things in a different light.
To put things into prospective. Alabama is basically the central hub in the US for training and education on such things including emergency preparedness, hazardous materials events, incident command and incident management, biochemical events, and much more. the state of Alabama offers almost all of its training and education free to every other state government and emergency reponders in the country. Since it is a neighboring state of LA. I know that LA. has had the opportunity to be ready for this. In reality, they should not have even needed FEMA for things like evacuating people and providing food and water and shelter. Those are basic essentials that are available for even a state to have ready for an event like this.
The fact is that there are two problems here now. One is that even with warning, people simply did not listen and evacuate, and the second is the lack of effective help once the damage was done. I am not talking about the handful of people that could not afford the gas to leave, or simply just did not have the means to leave. I am talking about the majority of those people that didn't leave because they were either too stubborn to do so, or they just thought they new more about the weather that the Weather Channel. these people stayed in that city, when every reliable resource told them to get out because it would be a "death trap." Now, these people are calling on us as taxpayers, and our governement to bail them out for their stupidity. Not only that, they are mad at everyone else for not helping them immediately.
Don't get me wrong. The efforts of the state and federal governemnt, to get these people out now, have been pretty pathetic. The people that are stranded on that highway overpass now for 5 days, and being kept there at gunpoint because the government will not even allow them to walk out. Armed guards prevent them from even walking out of the city. I received a bulletin from our Indiana State Emergency Commission yesterday. It stated that it is forbidden for any municiple or emergency entity to attempt to go down and provide assistance for people. the bulletin stated that anyone attempting to do so would be turned away, along with any goods that they brought for those people.
Now I could understand this philosophy if there was an organized and working effort ongoing that was actually doing something effectively. However that is not the case. the fact is that the state level help is pretty much non-existant, and the Federal Aid is just now beginning to take hold. I can understand why it takes a while to mobilize Federal help, but it is the duty of the state to be the "First Responders" in such an event and that just did not happen. So in light of the pathetic effort of relief for these people trapped there, why not allow other states that know how to handle the situation send help? Why wait on the Federal help, when you know it is days away?
Help is there now, and thankfully those people can begin to see some light at the end of the tunnel. But, it is now too late. The people stranded there lived in misery, and horror, and many died because of the lack of response.
As far as the looting, let them have it all. Why waste valuable resources on such petty things? My wife is an insurance adjuster for a major insurance carrier. She says that it is all going to be considered contaminated and burned or thrown away anyway. Let those people take what they want. After all, what are they going to do with it now anyway? They cant carry out a big screen to houston. They cant leave it along side the road. They can't stay in New Orleans with it. They are going to have to lose it anyway. Leave them alone and focus on the higher crimes like murder and rape, and rescue those people from it all, by getting them out of there.
I guess I dont understand why every bus from every school, every available bussing company, and every type of shuttle available was not lined up on the highway by the second day. All it would have taken was a phone call. We built tent cities for our soldiers to live in overseas. Why were they not built for our own citizens? And why were they not set up by the second or third day to receive all of those people?
Ok, i am done with my rant. Sigh!
Thanks for listening and I hope I don't offend anyone.