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Maybe I'm not very well informed about these things but I thought FEMA was a post-disaster agency.
How much blame shoud we assign to FEMA for the gross negligence of the local authorities? I'm not defending FEMA and think Brown's appt to head it up was a colossally stupid decision typical of Bush's appointees but why is FEMA being blamed at all? What was FEMA supposed to do that New Orleans couldn't do themselves?
This kind of situation is exactly why I advocate a smaller role for the Feds and a bigger role for the local governments. The local government sits on its thumbs as Katrina approached - they had 72 hours to prepare and they did virtually nothing. How is it then that a post-disaster agency 1,500 miles away is more to blame? Either I don't get it or this whole blame the Fed thing is just a way for NO to shift the spotlight off their own incompetence.
I wish I had someone to blame and someone to compensate me every time I make a stupid mistake. And I'm dead set against giving credence to platforms constructed on assumptions as transparent as the Emporor's new clothes. I don't recall FEMA doing anything different during hurricane Andrew or hurricane Iniki. I lived through Iniki. In Hawaii, there's nowhere to evacuate to - you just grit your teeth, hide under a mattress and pray. I at least had the sense to double-wrap my computer in Hefty sacs. I saw a video just yesterday of a NO house where the computer was covered in mud. What were these people doing before the storm hit???
The sad fact is that too many people in NO sat on their backside as the storm aproached because their leaders sat on theirs. Any responsible person would have gotten the hell out of dodge 48 hours before the storm hit. The most striking photo of the post Katrina damage was that parking lot full of busses in six feet of water.
That pic told the story in its entirety.
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