Michael Barone On Blame and New Orleans

[Annie]

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/050919/19barone.htm

9/19/05
By Michael Barone
Blame Aplenty

A team of Indiana firefighters, volunteering to help rescue victims of Katrina, went to Atlanta, where Federal Emergency Management Agency staffers told them that their job was to hand out fliers and that their first task was to attend a multi-hour course on sexual harassment and equal employment opportunity. This is, astonishingly, standard operating procedure at FEMA. And in other parts of the federal government: Former CIA agent Robert Baer writes in his recent book how in Central Asia he asked headquarters to send someone who spoke Afghan languages, and Langley offered to send a four-member sexual harassment team instead. These are perhaps things to keep in mind when it comes time to assess the response to Katrina. Government is a clumsy instrument.
advertisement
Web Extras

Browse through an archive of columns by Michael Barone.

Even so, it is possible to spot some clear mistakes. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin should have ordered an evacuation on the Saturday, not the Sunday, before the hurricane, which, as predicted, came on Monday. Nagin made an even greater mistake by not following the city's emergency plan and using the 200-plus school buses to evacuate the elderly, infirm, and infants who had no other way of getting out of the city. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's state department of homeland security should not have blocked the Red Cross from bringing water, food, and sanitary facilities to the people in the Superdome. I don't doubt that Nagin and Blanco wanted to do what was best for their city and state, and I would not want to have to shoulder the responsibility they had. But, alas, they made mistakes.

Bum rap. As for President George W. Bush, he probably should have left his Texas ranch a day earlier, and he might well have made a mistake in appointing Michael Brown, a man with little previous experience in emergency management, as head of FEMA. At week's end, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff named Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, who has such experience, to take Brown's place directing the post-Katrina relief effort. The president, despite his well-known loyalty to longtime friends and aides, recognized his mistake, pulled Brown back to Washington, and put in a man who knows how to do the job.

But it's a bum rap to say that Bush left New Orleans unprepared for the flood. New Orleans has been engineered to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, as the result of decisions taken by many federal, state, and local administrations over many years; Katrina was a Category 4. But the Army Corps of Engineers hasn't been shortchanging Louisiana. As Michael Grunwald wrote in the Washington Post last week, "Over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large. Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate." So there have been mistakes all round, some made by single individuals in moments of crisis, some by many people over the course of many years.

But we should resist the notion that we can come up with some organizational solution that can prevent every mistake. Today, as we look back on World War II, we tend to think that everything worked smoothly. But that wasn't the case. Rick Atkinson's An Army at Dawn shows that U.S. commanders made many blunders in the 1942-43 North Africa campaign. There were constant complaints about bottlenecks and snafus in defense production, and President Roosevelt changed the organizational chart several times. In 2002, everyone agreed FEMA should be put under Homeland Security; now people say it should be taken out. Fortunately, we don't depend just on government. Millions of citizens have contributed $500 million, thousands are taking Katrina evacuees into their homes and schools and churches, and private companies are hurrying free supplies to those in need. Government will never be perfect, but fortunately America is more than just government.

 

[Adam's Apple]

Good article by Barone, as usual, but I don't know where he got the information that the Indiana National Guard was in Atlanta, GA. They have been in MS since early last week. See article below. I have seen nothing in the newspaper or heard nothing on TV about their being in Atlanta, GA.

Indiana National Guard Joins Hurricane Relief Efforts
Sep 6, 2005, 02:25 PM EST Email to a Friend Printer Friendly Version

The Indiana National Guard is ready to get to work. Many of the 2,300 Indiana Guardsmen and women arrived at Camp Shelby, south of Hattiesburg, Mississippi Monday.

They are setting up camp and preparing to head south to help victims of the hurricane. They are expecting a long stay, with a variety of tasks “that could be anything to helping to restore communications, anything down to passing out meals ready-to-eat, water and other food stuffs; anything we're called upon to do,” said Lt. Colonel Terry Mullins, Indiana Air National Guard.

Indiana's National Guard soldier makes up about 40 percent of the guardsmen using Camp Shelby as a base of operations
http://www.wishTV.com/Global/story.asp?S=3812053&nav=0Ra7eBng

 

[William Joyce]

A team of Indiana firefighters, volunteering to help rescue victims of Katrina, went to Atlanta, where Federal Emergency Management Agency staffers told them that their job was to hand out fliers and that their first task was to attend a multi-hour course on sexual harassment and equal employment opportunity. This is, astonishingly, standard operating procedure at FEMA.

This is the sound of a nation dying.

 

[Adam's Apple]

Sorry, apparently I misread that paragraph.

After what happened in the Superdome and Convention Center, it appears that sexual harassment training should be mandatory and given well in advance of any national emergency to all "first responders". A bit late to be giving it at the time of a disaster.

Heard an interview on British TV with two young Brits who had been vacationing in New Orleans at the time Katrina hit. They went to the Superdome as instructed and were quite appalled at what happened there. They said women could not even go to the restrooms without being attacked, and a child as young as three years old was raped. They also found dead women in the restrooms who had been raped with their throats cut. What kind of animals think about sex in the midst of the worst natural disaster ever to strike this country?

 

[Abbey Normal]

Sorry, apparently I misread that paragraph.

After what happened in the Superdome and Convention Center, it appears that sexual harassment training should be mandatory and given well in advance of any national emergency to all "first responders". A bit late to be giving it at the time of a disaster.

Heard an interview on British TV with two young Brits who had been vacationing in New Orleans at the time Katrina hit. They went to the Superdome as instructed and were quite appalled at what happened there. They said women could not even go to the restrooms without being attacked, and a child as young as three years old was raped. They also found dead women in the restrooms who had been raped with their throats cut. What kind of animals think about sex in the midst of the worst natural disaster ever to strike this country?

It is my understanding that evacuees were committing these atrocities. Are you suggesting that firefighters and other rescuers were raping women? Sexual harassment training is given to teach the people in the class to be sensitive to harassment issues, such as using sexual innuendo with an employee, etc. It has nothing to do with stopping others from actual sexual violence. That's usually best done with a gun, not a training manual.

This is a good example of what happens when the government is forced by fear of lawsuits to follow Lib policies to their (il)logical conclusions.

 

[Adam's Apple]

Are you suggesting that firefighters and other rescuers were raping women?

No, I did not intend to suggest that. My concern was that these "first responders" need to be trained to keep their eyes open for riff-raff like sexual abusers in tragedies like this.

You are totally correct that it was the "evacuees" who were responsible for the rapes. I did hear of one account, however, where a 43-year-old Red Cross volunteer was arrested for sexual harassment and hitting on women in the 'Dome. After his arrest, police discovered he had a rap sheet.

 

[Abbey Normal]

Are you suggesting that firefighters and other rescuers were raping women?

No, I did not intend to suggest that. My concern was that these "first responders" need to be trained to keep their eyes open for riff-raff like sexual abusers in tragedies like this.

You are totally correct that it was the "evacuees" who were responsible for the rapes. I did hear of one account, however, where a 43-year-old Red Cross volunteer was arrested for sexual harassment and hitting on women in the 'Dome. After his arrest, police discovered he had a rap sheet.

Just like child molesters who become coaches and boy scout leaders, this guy purposely went where there would be a large number of women ready to trust him implicitly. Jerk. :firing: