Some federal officials have sought to blame state and local officials for being unprepared to cope with the disaster.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record), D-La., welcomed Bush's conciliatory remarks. "Accountability at every level is critical, and leadership begins at the top," she said.
Other Democrats were less charitable.
but (From the WSJ):
A year ago, as Hurricane Ivan approached, New Orleans ordered an evacuation but did not use city or school buses to help people evacuate. As a result many of the poorest citizens were unable to evacuate. Fortunately, the hurricane changed course and did not hit New Orleans, but both Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin acknowledged the need for a better evacuation plan. Again, they did not take corrective actions. In 1998, during a threat by Hurricane George, 14,000 people were sent to the Superdome and theft and vandalism were rampant due to inadequate security. Again, these problems were not corrected.
[...]
The primary responsibility for dealing with emergencies does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to local and state officials who are charged by law with the management of the crucial first response to disasters. First response should be carried out by local and state emergency personnel under the supervision of the state governor and his emergency operations center.
It is not the Federal government’s responsibility to deal with a local disaster, sure they can lend help, but it comes down to the local government for response.
And the fact is that President Bush ordered an evacuation of the city, and it took a long time for the city officials to actually order the evacuation. And during the evacuation local officials did not use the busses properly to evacuate the low income members of the city. The city officials knew of the inadequacies in the plans, and did not correct them, and now they are blaming Pres. Bush for their own faults, when the Federal governments have little responsibility in (that part) of the ordeal.
This is not acceptable, and if we are to blame some one let's not blame the federal authorities, but the local ones, i.e. the people who were actually responsible for the poor performance.
4 comments:
I definitely agree that a majority of the fault lies on local government, but let's say that days 1-2 after the storm the local government is completely responsible for the awful planning. Why didn't the federal government come to the aid of the obviously failing local government until day 5? Bush ordered supplies to Thailand within two days. Regardless of who made the initial mistakes, Bush is responsible for not doing something about the mistakes and taking action to correct them more quickly.
The federal gov. can only come in when they are requested by the state officials. I do not know if the state officials requested them earlier than when they did arrive, but they should have arrived right away once requested, since it was quite obvious that the area was a major disaster.
I think that everyone did have a part in dropping the ball, but I think the majority of the blame should be on state and local officials, not President Bush.
If the state is clearly failing though, is it not the responsibility of the federal government to take over. Let's use an analogy here. You are a doctor doing heart surgery. You are supposed to do the surgery alone, but the head physician of the hospital is in the room. You cut an artery and the man is obviously bleeding to death. Sure you as the surgeon are at fault for cutting the artery, but if the head physician does not jump in to help correct your mistake he is also responsible for the death of the patient. It is the federal government's responsibility to protect its citizens. They could have jumped in and saved lives and asked questions about the procedures for getting federal aid later. Furthermore, from what I read, the federal aid came 2-3 days after requested.
Yeah but say this head physician has 14 other patients? sure they may not all have artery's cut, but he can't just drop all of them. And besides, once an atery's cut, it's kind of hard to repair the damages that have already been done. the least he could do was send supplies to thai patient...help someone out. ha and as much sense as i'm sure that didn't make, i still heart my president.
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