Fault and Theater

[Annie]

http://www.donaldsensing.com/index.php/2005/09/02/mayor-nagins-kate-hale-moment/

Mayor Nagin’s “Kate Hale” moment
by Donald Sensing @ 8:21 am. Filed under Current events/news, Hurricanes

Do you remember Kate Hale? She was the emergency directorof Dade County, Fla., when Hurricane Andrew struck there on Aug. 24, 1992. Hale went on live national television on August 27 with tears in her eyes and castigated the federal government. Some of her comments were:

Enough is enough. Quit playing like a bunch of kids. Where in the [snip] is the cavalry? For God’s sakes, where are they? We are going to have more casualties, because we are going to have more people dehydrated. People without water. People without food. Babies without formula. If we do not get more food into the south end of Dade County in a very short period of time, we are going to have more casualties!

We have a catastrophic disaster. We are essentially the walking wounded. We have appealed through the State to the Federal Government. We’ve had a lot of people down here for press conferences, but Dade County is on its own. Dade County is being caught in the middle of something and we are being victimized. Quit playing like a bunch of kids and get us aid! Sort out your political games afterward!

We are all about ready to drop, and the reinforcements are not getting in fast enough. We need better National Guard down here…President Bush was down here. I’d like him to follow up on the commitments he made.

President Bush almost immediately order 30,000 federal troops to south Florida.

Yesterday New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had a Kate Hale kind of moment, it seems.

He’s on the radio going of, and I do mean GOING OFF about not getting the Federal resources (specifically, military resources) he wants in New Orleans. He is LIVID and has lost his composure. He has used the phrase “Get off your [rears]” and “Get your [rears] on a plane” numerous times. He said he doesn’t want to see “any more [snip snip] press conferences” with Federal officials talking about how much they’re going to do about New Orleans until the resources are down here. He’s losing it. He is literally breaking down on the radio.

I really can’t say that I blame him, all things considered. He only said what I’ve been thinking since last night. Get the troops down here NOW, Mr. President. Mobilize an entire brigade as though the homeland has been attacked, Mr. President. Get them down here NOW. People are being beaten, robbed, raped and killed in the streets of New Orleans. It has to stop NOW.

But, as I blogged yesterday, the federal troops were already on the way and some had arrived.

Hale’s diatribe, btw, was carefully planned by county officials. While her frustration was real,it was also very staged managed; she demanded the networks carry her press conference live, for example. Was Nagin similarly staging his moment? No way to know. As for Hale, Reason’s Glenn Garvin wrote in 1993,

But there was much that Hale didn’t mention during her tearful soliloquy. First and foremost was the reason that the U.S. Army wasn’t on the scene: No one in Florida had asked for it. American presidents, with good reason, do not treat local jurisdictions like conquered territories, subject to military occupation at the whim of the White House. Even in civil disturbances, where the military’s primary skill–shooting people–is far more relevant than it is in a natural catastrophe, it’s rare to see federal troops.

Not only had Florida officials not asked for troops, they had specifically said they didn’t want any. The Florida National Guard’s hurricane log shows that on August 25, a Guard officer briefing a U.S. Army counterpart told him: “Florida has not requested any support from other states or federal agencies, nor do we project a need.”

There’s a lot more in Garvin’s piece that echoes today, worth reading and pondering in the weeks to come.

A very interesting comment at site:

# Robert Modean Says:
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:24 pm

Sorry Joel & ROE, but you guys are WAAAYYY off base in criticizing FEMA. Disaster preparedness is the responsibility of State and Local authorities – in this case LEMA (The Louisiana Emergency Management Agency). There is a state-wide director for disaster relief in every state – that person is called the Governor. There is a local director for disaster relief in every municipality – that person is called the Mayor. FEMA is a coordinating body that assists State and Local authorities in getting the resources they need. Because they are the “go to” people most folks are under the impression that they are in charge, and in fact if the State and Local authorities abdicate control over a disaster area they will take over. Typically after the initial response to a disaster the local guys do just that, leave FEMA in control. That’s because they have the experience and personnel to manage disasters of this scale.

Disclosure: I’m a volunteer coordinator for MEMA (The Missouri Emergency Management Agency), I’ve been through three major floods and a few big storms that generated enough tornado damage to get the affected counties disaster relief – believe me when I tell you what we are seeing from FEMA now is lightyears ahead of what I’ve seen from them in the past. Typically it took two to three days just to get the disaster declaration, then another two to three to get FEMA deployed – of course by then the local guys had been on the ground working around the clock for five or six days and we were more than happy to dump everything in FEMA’s lap. That’s the way the system is designed. Bush saw that and tried to skip a few steps to speed things up, he pre-declared the areas disaster areas. So what we are seeing in NO is the result of a convergence of factors:

First, the storm damage was bad, but the flooding has made relief efforts ten times harder than anything they could have imagined. Second, Mayor Nagin’s performance has been pathetic. This is the worst case of poor planning and criminal incompetence I’ve ever seen. Like I said, Bush declared the gulf coast area a Federal Disaster area on Saturday – two days before Katrina hit. That freed up FEMA resources for local and state coordinators and allowed for the pre-positioning of supplies so they could be rapidly deployed to the affected areas. Mayor Nagin waited until the last minute to call for an evacuation of the city, but the poorest people could not evacuate – why weren’t school busses used to get them out of town? Mayor Nagin made the last minute decision to declare the Superdome and COnvention centers as refuge relocation points – why weren’t they stocked with water, food, bedding, generators, and fuel? Why weren’t hospitals offered additional resources by the Mayors office? Mayor Nagin made the decision to allow looting and told the police to focus on Search and Rescue – but looting hinders S&R efforts (as we’ve seen) and no one I know could believe that decision – it’s emergency management 101, preserving order preserves life. There’s plenty of blame to go around – Blanco deserves her share too – but the real culprit in the aftermath here is Nagin.