Bush: “What Went Wrong With Hurricane Katrina?”
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, Hurricane Katrina, The War On TerrorismHere are the plain facts.
Bush hired a guy who didn’t have any disaster relief experience to head FEMA. His name was Joe Allbaugh. Slate explained it like this in November of 2000.
Allbaugh is George W. Bush’s campaign manager. It is often said that the Bush campaign is run by a troika of aides, two of whom–spokeswoman Karen Hughes and strategist Karl Rove–are well known to the public. The third member is the press-shy Allbaugh.
Essentially, this guy was a BIG operative in Bush’s political arsenal. No doubt he earned his position as head of the disaster relief organization as a result of his loyalty. Not uncommon.
Bush thought he could manage campaigns, so why not FEMA?
However, the inexperienced Allbaugh hired somebody who would ultimately prove very ineffectual. The man is Michael Brown and he’s the center of the scrutiny surrounding the botched relief attempt of New Orleans.
And now Bush is trying to get to the bottom of why the relief effort failed.
From MSNBC:
WASHINGTON – President Bush intends to seek as much as $40 billion to cover the next phase of relief and recovery from Hurricane Katrina, congressional officials said Tuesday as leading lawmakers and the White House pledged to investigate an initial federal response widely condemned as woefully inadequate.
Of course he is. That’s what Presidents do. They investiagate to make sure that things like this NEVER happen again. But if all fingers point to the person who appointed the people who were responsible, what is outcome of this investigation? Two degrees of separation?
More from the AP:
to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush said Tuesday he will oversee an investigation into what went wrong and why � in part to be sure the country could withstand more storms or attack.Bush also announced he is sending Vice President Dick Cheney to the Gulf Coast region on Thursday to help determine whether the government is doing all that it can.
“Bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people,” the president said after a meeting at the White House with his Cabinet on storm recovery efforts.
“What I intend to do is lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong,” Bush said. “We still live in an unsettled world. We want to make sure we can respond properly if there is a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) attack or another major storm.”
Ahh, the spectre of the WMDs…
Forgive me if I’m cynical after these crazy times, but this was a major f-up and now he’s calling terrorism into the debate? It simply seems like more rhetoric. Sure, people want to make sure they’re safe, but what does terrorism have anything to do with what has happened recently?
Thoughts are welcomed and appreciated.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 7th, 2005 and is filed under General Politics, Hurricane Katrina, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 7th, 2005 at 5:29 am
Ermmm…maybe because we reorganized the federal bureaucracy to better deal with terrorist-induced disasters, and this natural one is demonstrating some weaknesses?
September 7th, 2005 at 6:50 am
“Kiss up and kick down” seems to be the mantra for not only that hero of the “religious” right, John Bolton, but the extended Bush Administration.
Recently, I have seen vicious attacks by Tom Delay and the “no spin” “journalists” on the “fair and balanced” network directed at those whom are furthest down the food chain in Katrina’s wake. In the words of Tom Delay, the blame for this mess now rests with local officials while Fox is busy attacking the looters whom were “responsible” for preventing the Federal response. This is disgusting. American’s have never tolerated bullies no matter how clever, smart or cunning they might be. The truth will out them eventually.
September 7th, 2005 at 9:04 am
It feels like fear-mongering in this context. I’m more than willing to admit I’m wrong, but that’s just how it felt.
September 7th, 2005 at 9:45 am
Here is another fact. The New Orleans Emergency Plan was not implemented. Evacuations were supposed to start at 72 hours and they started at 24. Instead of sending city buses to evacuate those who could not make it out on their own, people in New Orleans were told to go to the Superdome and the Convention Center, where no one provided sufficient sustenance or security. The president had to call the governor and the mayor to get them to order the evacuations
Here is another fact. The area of this disaster is 90,000 square miles.
Yes there have been mistakes and errors made by the administration and by FEMA but to focus solely on them and not the total break down is a disservice.
September 7th, 2005 at 1:33 pm
I’m a volunteer first responder of long standing, currently sidelined to a desk with a knee injury. I’ve spent most of the week doing what I could by filling in for another FR in better shape who’s down in the “zone.” Some thoughts, eh? Here’s some. In normal times, FEMA is useful in supplying training materials and technical preparation assistance. In a real disaster the only thing FEMA has ever been consistently good at on its best day was passing out checks and picking up sticks. The only federal response that is ever helpful in the first day or two is the Navy and Coast Guard rescue services. The state National Guards are not federal forces.
Disaster response is keyed to the hierarchy of local, state, inter-state, and federal. IN THAT ORDER. Responsibility is not top down from the federal government. It’s bottom up from the local government. As much as I am sure we will find out that Mike Brown screwed the pooch, in terms of saving lives the feds’ influence is mostly up front, in assisting the locals in being prepared. How effective that is is mostly up to the locals. After it hits the fan, the fed’s influence in saving lives is STILL full orders of magnitude less in effectiveness than the locals, except for those Navy and CG rescue efforts.
In the immediate pre-event and aftermath of a catastrophic event, simple logistics dictates that those the closest can do the most to the greatest result. That is why 90+% of what the feds CAN do is geared towards beefing up local/state first responder networks, in assisting with planning, etc. And in passing out checks afterwards.
When handing out the blame, if you want to be realistic, as cold as it may seem, try using cost-effectiveness and you’ll see why the system is set up that way. We do not have infinite resources at any of those levels. ALL applied resources have their maximum effectiveness at the point and time of impact, or immediately before or after. And the feds simply cannot move very much in for 48 hours minimum. The standard is 72 to 96 hours before substantial material aid can possibly arrive. This is simple logistics.
Start with the locals and develop a reasonable estimate of the lives-saved/lives-lost and $$$ impact of their actions or inactions. Pay close attention to their filed disaster mgmt plans, how well and realistically constructed, and how well or not they implemented them. Move on up the ladder, doing the same thing using the appropriate expected-response timelines. When you finally hit the top in the White House, look down those columns and see what the $$$ price tags are associated at each level with saving one extra life. Compare the cost-effectiveness of response at each level along the response timeline.
Cut everyone along the line a wee bit of slack for the fact that we are talking about a massive natural disaster with a 5-day prediction window of narrowing uncertainty, and that in a massive FUBAR crisis NO amount of planning will ever give you an optimum result in the face of unbridled chaos.
Then, and only then, start figuring out how much rope you need for the gallows.
September 7th, 2005 at 2:13 pm
The rhetorical question “if we can’t handle this, which we saw coming, how could we handle a terrorist WMD attack?” was circulating almost from the moment the storm passed. Bush is just picking it up. People who historically have an antipathy to him over Iraq will feel their blood race every time he says the word “WMD.”
Tully, right on.
September 7th, 2005 at 3:45 pm
With all due respect Callimachus, I bring up WMDs because it’s an incorrect comparison.
Most of the arugments in defense of the federal government in this case is that they were last in line to help so they should not shoulder the majority of the blame. That should be shifted to the state and local governments. Legally, this IS the case. They can’t act until asked. When and at what time they were asked is a whole different discussion.
However, if somebody hit us with WMDs, it would immediately become a federal issue. No amount of “looking into it” would change that. Again, I feel this is rhetoric.
Tully, I appreciate your comment. I definitely learn more about our systems everyday, and this is a great primer. Glad you shared.
September 8th, 2005 at 1:02 pm
“However, if somebody hit us with WMDs, it would immediately become a federal issue. No amount of “looking into itâ€Â? would change that. Again, I feel this is rhetoric.”
Justin,
It may be a federal issue but the first responder is still going to be the local, then the state and then the federal government.
That is what happened in New York and Washington….. The locals are already on the scene and have to take hold of the situation until help arrives.
March 3rd, 2006 at 12:08 pm
[...] Here are my thoughts on this. It’s now apparent that Brown really was unfairly cast as the scapegoat in all of this, and that’s unfortunate. However, do I think he should have been appointed to head FEMA in the first place? No. As I detailed here, here and here, he was hardly qualified. But did he deserve the backlash he recieved after Katrina? No. Not by a long shot. [...]