Life Is Not Purgatory
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Billion Dollar Boondoggle (Part 1 of ?)
Canadians used this descriptor for the HRDC fiasco a few years back… but as wasteful and disgraceful as that bureaucratic monstrosity was is nothing compared to the utter ineptitude and gross negligence displayed by the US Department of Homeland Security and more specifically the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the preparation for and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
I’ll start this off by saying this is not intended to diminish in any way the Herculean efforts by the thousands of NGO aid workers, police officers, soldiers, firemen, etc who are working tirelessly to evacuate the stranded, save the injured and recover the thousands of dead… this is aimed squarely at the bureaucrats responsible for the operation of FEMA and the politicians whom possess oversight duties over them.
While FEMA is not solely to blame for this catastrophic misjudgment it is also important to remember that Hurricane Katrina was only a Category 4 tropical cyclone and therefore a full order of magnitude weaker than what could have flattened the all but destroyed New Orleans… how much worse could it have been?
Then Louisiana National Guard took days to arrive, bringing in fresh water and food for the impoverished masses stranded in either the New Orleans Convention Center or the Louisiana Superdome… days longer than the rescue operations from the worlds only superpower should have taken, especially for a disaster that was not only predicted but forecast days in advance! Which begs the question, if this is how the US responds to a massive disaster it obstensibly prepared for… how is it ever going to respond to the next man made cataclysm?
As we sit in our homes and watch as the spectacle unravels before our eyes, the politicians and bureaucrats are already finger pointing at each other, while thousands of corpses either lie floating in the streets, or trapped amongst the ruins of demolished homes.
Canadians used this descriptor for the HRDC fiasco a few years back… but as wasteful and disgraceful as that bureaucratic monstrosity was is nothing compared to the utter ineptitude and gross negligence displayed by the US Department of Homeland Security and more specifically the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the preparation for and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
I’ll start this off by saying this is not intended to diminish in any way the Herculean efforts by the thousands of NGO aid workers, police officers, soldiers, firemen, etc who are working tirelessly to evacuate the stranded, save the injured and recover the thousands of dead… this is aimed squarely at the bureaucrats responsible for the operation of FEMA and the politicians whom possess oversight duties over them.
While FEMA is not solely to blame for this catastrophic misjudgment it is also important to remember that Hurricane Katrina was only a Category 4 tropical cyclone and therefore a full order of magnitude weaker than what could have flattened the all but destroyed New Orleans… how much worse could it have been?
Then Louisiana National Guard took days to arrive, bringing in fresh water and food for the impoverished masses stranded in either the New Orleans Convention Center or the Louisiana Superdome… days longer than the rescue operations from the worlds only superpower should have taken, especially for a disaster that was not only predicted but forecast days in advance! Which begs the question, if this is how the US responds to a massive disaster it obstensibly prepared for… how is it ever going to respond to the next man made cataclysm?
As we sit in our homes and watch as the spectacle unravels before our eyes, the politicians and bureaucrats are already finger pointing at each other, while thousands of corpses either lie floating in the streets, or trapped amongst the ruins of demolished homes.
