An Ounce of Prevention...

[mallorys_camera]

I'm no good with the Big Picture. I'm too suggestible. I lack the necessary intellectual stamina for scrolling through endless secondary sources.

So I gravitate away from analysis and towards primary sources.

A photograph of a weeping woman holding a stunned child. Bloated bodies floating face-down in a river that once was a street. (The LA Times took that one off the website quick enough!) Desperados in a supermarket. Knee-high human garbage inside the Superdome. (And it's wrong of me, I know, to be amused by the fact that ESPN is now running hurricane victim coverage – I suppose their rationale is that it's happening inside a sports stadium so hey! it must be sports.)

But my eyes glaze over when confronted with endless, seemingly identical news stories and timelines. Someone's gotta take the fall. Who should it be? Mayor Nagin, admittedly easy on the eyes but a former cable executive for God's sake which argues little in the way of executive administrative experience: on the 27th of August he issues a voluntary order of evacuation (presumably because a mandatory order would have involved foresight and planning that was never carried out.) That same day, Governor Kathleen Blanco – a Democrat – puts in an early request for disaster relief; mysteriously the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and Plaquemines do not make it onto President Bush's list though by any reckoning, these are the parishes most at risk. His declaration of emergency contains these words: "I have determined that this incident will be of such severity and magnitude that effective response will be beyond the capabilities of the State and the affected local governments," thus effectively elevating the Feds to First Responders here. Somewhere in the sea of words I think I remember FEMA's mission statement floating past me – something about coordination and management. But then there is the fact that FEMA has apparently been the clearing house for Bush administration sinecures, lo these four years past, the place where all those guys who raised the big campaign bucks for reelection – Michael Brown! White courtesy telephone! – are put out to graze and grow fat.

Anyway, very interesting piece in today's New York Times today about why the National Guard was deployed instead active-duty troops in New Orleans – apparently the President would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, a quaint piece of legislation designed to quell a state in revolt. Now I am wondering now how many of last week's scare headlines – Looters Take To Streets! Martial Law Declared! – were masterminded by the administration's Roving band of mediaistas, the groundwork necessary to manipulate popular support for for a military invasion on home soil. Why air-lift those boys to Iraq to die in a war we can't win when you can send them to Louisiana?

This is why I don't read newspaper stories: they make me paranoid.

Because already I'm thinking, when the Big One hits here in sunny, la-la-LA California, it would be wise to have a generator, 2 weeks of provisions and a big fat rifle to protect me against the Federal government's rescue attempts.

Comments

[cat-herder.livejournal.com]

They call them looters, I call them people sitting across the street, thirsty, hungry and in sewage infused clothing. Some looters had beer, but quite a few had baby diapers and clean clothes.

As for me, when the big one hits, I fill a backpack, stuff the pets in carriers, put the carriers on the handtruck and start walking. All those years as a Sierra Club hiker taught me how the trails cut through to the other side of the hills. They can have my TV. Most of my assets are either the land my house sits on or are in various computerized accounts.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Don't know about the trails over the hills, m'dear. Closest way out for you is the Strawberry Canyon fire trail which goes right over one of the major fault lines if I'm remembering correctly. Though I like to think of you pushing the cats and the bunnies in a wheel barrel!

[usedmonsters.livejournal.com]

This whole thing is developing a new stink to me, the smell of opportunists clearing out & relocating whole neighborhoods beside their ocean front prime real estate to capitalize on it in the very near future.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. What a cooincidence that immediate contracts were awarded to construction & energy firms with close ties to the present administration, huh?

[wailaki.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the Itty Bitty Book Light and LOTS of batteries, a pile of genre paperback mystery novels and a year's worth of brown rice and coffee. Oh, and a water filter.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oooooh, good catch! Must stock up on serial killer novels.

[wailaki.livejournal.com]

My little local thrift store has a great deal on paperbacks. For $2, you can get a plastic grocery bag and fill it up with all the Cornwalls, Kellermans, Grishams etc. you can squeeze in there. Books I would never buy, or even check out of the library, I somehow find myself glued to in the middle of the night when LIFE has kept me from sleeping. Then I take them back and get more. I hide them like dope or booze.

[jdquintette.livejournal.com]

Mayor Nagin, admittedly easy on the eyes but a former cable executive for God's sake which argues little in the way of executive administrative experience: on the 27th of August he issues a voluntary order of evacuation (presumably because a mandatory order would have involved foresight and planning that was never carried out.)

God knows I don't want to be the one to defend mayor coo coo bananas, but he did indeed order a mandatory evacuation on sunday morning about 30 hours before the storm hit.( on the 27th the storm was still forecast to hit well east of us). Plus he'd been on tv for days stating in pretty unambiguous terms to GET THE FUCK OUT! NOW!.

The evacuation of New Orleans pre-Katrina was actually one of the most well-executed evacs in the history of the country, given the circumstances. To get 90 percent of the populace out of a major American city in under 36 hours is quite an accomplishment. It was certainly carried out better than Houston's evac for Rita, which left literally millions stranded on the freeways either out of gas or stuck in gridlock. If Rita had hit Houston, the death toll would have been astronomical.

I know people like to talk about there being "plenty of blame to go around," and to a certain extent that's true, but the big screwups belong to the feds. The joint federal-state evacuaton plan, that Bush himself signed off on the year before, dictated that FEMA would get to the shelter of last resort (the Superdome) with food, water and transpo within 48 hours, not dither and fuck up and prevent other agencies from getting in (with stories of negroes run amok) for over a week.

And yes, as you point out elsewhere, what if this had been a terrorist attack? These are the same bunch of swingin dicks who'd just won an election by tubthumping their ability to "keep us safe."

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Were you living in New Orleans during Katrina? (So odd to reread stuff I wrote three years ago!)

[jdquintette.livejournal.com]

Yes. I moved here in the fall of 2003.