Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<But what if you have no car, no money, etc. What then?>> The great majority of those staying behind had options to leave but chose not to. That is not really unusual. A fairly large percentage of people frequently stay in their homes to "ride it out" because they don't want to bother with evacuation or are afraid of leaving their property vacant. It's their choice to make, but they should not make it and then blame the government when their choice ends up being really lousy.
Originally Posted By imadisneygal "The great majority of those staying behind had options to leave but chose not to." I agree that in every hurricane there are people who stay even after being warned to leave or even ordered to leave. My husband's family lives very near the Gulf in the Florida panhandle and there are always people who stay when they are ordered to leave. Having said that, are there stats on what the options were? And what percent of people just plain decided to stay? It seems to me that the story from a lot of people who made it on the news was that they had nowhere to go and no way to get there. Granted, that's WHY they were on the news - because it makes a good story. I just want to know if there are actual numbers of people who truly had no resources and nowhere to go versus people who just plain decided to ride it out.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom I'm going to interject one exception, the homeless. I really think its unfair to think that the homeless would have A) had ample opportunity to be informed of the evacuation order, B) had the resources to leave New Orleans on their own. If you don't have a radio, TV or much human contact how are you expected to be informed of an impending hurricane. Again I think that the city and/or state should have taken extrodaniry measure to inform the homeless population in NO. And then there was always all those buses. As for where to go. Our NASCAR track here in Atlanta has been a evacuation point for many people in Florida, Alabama as well as those more recently affected by Katrina.
Originally Posted By cmpaley Now, now, KT. That's not a very libertarian attitude to take on the homeless. The dogma is: The homeless are there solely by their own choice, thus don't deserve any compassion or mercy whatsoever. Let them pull themselves by their own bootstraps if they want to rejoin humanity.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom Perhaps cmpaley. I think its the New Englander is me getting through. When there is a perfect storm we ALL help each other and put everything else aside. Now had I been a "true" conservative. I would have referred to the homeless as campers.
Originally Posted By gadzuux Let's not forget about the people in hospitals and 'retirement homes'. They died too.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom Nursing Home's and Hospitals were ordered to leave just like everyone else. Nursing Home's and Hospitals ALL have evacuation plans. I really fail to understand how anyone could misintrupt everyone including state, local and federal government saying "This is the Big One". Most of the Nursing Home residents and Hospital patience were evacuated.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper Those that really had NO way to get out were failed by local government. FEMA got a lot of things wrong, but they aren't in the evacuation business. Blame the mouthy major and governor for that foul up. There were many, many folks in New Orleans after the storm that refused rescue. A friend flies for the Coast Guard. He would lower a man down to pick people off of rooftops and they would decline...opting instead for the helicopter to, "please bring back some beer." I have no compassion for those people. None.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom This from Neil Boortz today: <<A report is due out today from the House committee investigating the response to Hurricane Katrina. Blame is assigned everywhere, including to the federal government, FEMA and George W. Bush for not doing enough, fast enough in response to the disaster. But finally...blame is being assigned where it belongs: with the Democrats that run that state. According to the report, Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin waited until too late to evacuate the city. They had warnings 56 hours before landfall of what might happen, yet chose to wait until 19 hours before the hurricane hit to tell everybody to get out. So who deserves most of the blame? Blanco and Nagin. Why? First of all, because disaster response has traditionally been a state, not a federal matter. In 2004 there were about four hurricanes that hit Florida. Florida responded. That is as it should have been in Louisiana. Question: Did the failure to move trailers into the area immediately cause deaths? No. Did the failure to get food and supplies into the survivors within hours cause deaths? There's no evidence of that. The deaths were caused because people didn't get out. That's a local issue, not a federal one. Had the governor and mayor ordered the evacuation much earlier, many more people would have lived. Did anyone die because it took supplies longer to get there than it should have? Maybe a few. But nothing like the more than 1,300 people who are dead...mostly because they didn't leave the city. The media and the Democrats will push the lie that it was George Bush's fault that all those people died...but make no mistake, The lion's share of the blame rests on local politicians. That would be Blanco and Nagin.>> Kinda hard to argue the fact that the Governor and Mayor sat on their hands. Shame about all those buses too.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy Like I said, the majority of blame goies to the local democrats who had 30 years to get a plan together. I blame Bush for one thing regarding Karina... he should have pushed the govenor and the Mayor out of the way a lot sooner when it became apparent they could not handle their job. I also blame Bush for appointing Michael Brown to FEMA. Other than that, people died in N.O. because of the local democrat government who failed them.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer I think it's interesting that the report says that we are still completely unprepared to respond to another terrorist attack. How long have we been at this now?
Originally Posted By Beaumandy My plan is to have 3 days supply for my family. I also see authorities running terror attack drills all the time. But when the big one hits, it will be anyone guess to see how we handle it. Best thing to do is keep up the wiretaps, keep on killing Al Quida, keep racial profiling in order to stop the attacks. Bush said we have stopped 10 such atacks and I bet it's even higher than that.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>I also see authorities running terror attack drills all the time.<< Yep, me too. I've been part of them because of my job. We can't even communicate with the county emergency command center that is only 10 blocks away from the hospital I work in, and to raise the local FEMA command center we had to call them on the phone to find out what radio frequency they were using. We did get some Homeland Security money to get a couple of cargo trailers to use to store some emergency supplies in, but communications between hospitals and officials in this city are just pathetic. Oh, and we got some Homeland Security money to help with some landscaping and lighting, too.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom Sounds like we still have a ways to go. I for one don't want to see a repeat of 9/11 or Katrina. Maybe we should all be asking each other what needs to be done so that we can ALL move forward instead of being stuck in the past. Lets not repeat the past.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy Tom, thank you for the work your puttting in. The best plan is to stop the attacks before they happen. Kinda like stopping HIV before it happens, or getting pregnant, or preventing a car accident , or a fire.. This is exactly what Bush is doing. It's the only thing Bush is doing and it drives everything he does. The left meanwhile say Bush is being driven by revenge for his daddy, oil, Halliburtan, power, the desire to hear me talk on the phone to my wife, and on and on... One side is living in reality and the other side is living in liberal la la land.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>The best plan is to stop the attacks before they happen. << Homeland Security also took over the emergency management departments that are responsible for responding to far more than just terrorist attacks. And this Administration and DHS have failed to fix the problems with emergency response that were identified in the WTC attacks. Katrina just showed that to us in glaring detail. We can't stop disasters from happening, but we can keep ourselves from being incompetent in responding to them.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom <<Katrina just showed that to us in glaring detail.>> It did? How did Katrina do that? Perhaps you mean that the people who stayed in New Orleans were the first disaster people in history to ever go on a plunder mission instead of helping their fellow man and woman. This is what I don't understand is that Katrina effected just about every state in south eastern USA. Here in Georgia we had three tornado's that spun off of Katrina. Western North Carolina has torrential rains which washed out roads and created mudslides killing several people. FEMA did the best they could do. They had to cover and respond to hurricane victims in at least 6 states. Why are the libs focusing on New Orleans? As if New Orleans was the only place that sustained damage or victims.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom I really think that this is a clear case of selective memory on the part of the media and the "Libs". And I know why the media as well as the "Libs" focus on New Orleans. Because it was a welfare city.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy <<And I know why the media as well as the "Libs" focus on New Orleans. Because it was a welfare city>> Bingo! New Orleans is a city that has been run for YEARS by liberal democrats.. black liberal democrats even. You would think that this place would be utopia since they got to put their liberal programs into action. But what happens instead??? You get a population that has a welfare mentality, crime off the charts, and people who are so dependent on their government that they couldn't even get out of town with DAYS in advance warning. Your telling me that is a nuclear bomb was coming their way and they had 3 days notice they would have said they had no way to get out of town?? No way...
Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>FEMA did the best they could do. << Hence the problem. The best they could do is considered to be a national failure. After four years of preparing for emergency response, we should have been a lot better at this. My brother, a member of a FEMA USAR team, was loaded on a bus for a five day trip to Louisiana two days after the levee breached. A bus. Along with several physicians. That's pathetic.
