Friday, September 02, 2005
Well the Newsies are having a good day. Jack says that headlines don't sell papers, Newsies sell papers, but he also says that what makes a good headline are words like "nude, corpse. . .love-nest....pardon me maybe I'm saying too much." This morning my alarm went off to nude and corpse in the same sentence from NPR. All I could think was the newsies are havin' a good day. I overheard these women in an expensive shop yesterday talking about they just couldn't watch the tv any more and that they had decide to "go on the wagon." This was due to one of the liquor stores in Helen being taken out by the tornado that tore through Helen. I drove through Helen yesterday and the destruction was unbelievable. Some one asked me if Helen had power yet and I said sure it is all over the ground. Helen looks like God took a lawn mower to it. The trees are just gone. Some are split and broken, bent over and what not, but generally, they are gone. There are power guys who all I can think is that we are the lucky ones because we have power guys as opposed to the less fortunate who have been killed for what's left of their homes. There is a direct path that the tornado took. It is crazy. I had a young'n say to me that President Bush would come to help (he is a 16 year old, six four, three hundred pound line backer for Habersham Co). All I can think is why haven't they sent in the National Guard and then I realize there is no National Guard. I sure am glad that he is going to sacrafice his vacation to look at the damage. I mean looking at it doesn't mean he has to take any action. "Give me a good assasination, give me and earthquake or a war...how bout a crooked politician, hey buddy that ain't news no more!!!!"
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Sorry, but there are a lot of National Guard troops still here.
Please look at the following:
http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200509020719.asp
Particularly this quote, which talks about national availability:
"According to Lieutenant General H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, 75 percent of the Army and Air National Guard are available nationwide. In addition, the federal government has agreed since the conflict in Iraq started not to mobilize more than 50 percent of Guard assets in any given state, in order to leave sufficient resources for governors to respond to emergencies."
Also, as regards to how quick they got in:
"National Guard units were mobilized immediately; 7,500 troops from four states were on the ground within 24 hours of Katrina — a commendable response given the disruptions to the transportation infrastructure. The DOD response is well ahead of the 1992 Hurricane Andrew timetable. Back then, the support request took nine days to crawl through the bureaucracy. The reaction this time was less than three days officially, and DOD had been pre-staging assets in anticipation of the aid request from the moment Katrina hit."
I know that, according to some folks, President Bush should have personally flown down there right after the hurricane to ferry people out, and it's all his fault that it hit us in the 1st place (read what Robert Kennedy, Jr. had to say), but maybe, just maybe, the idea that some of the local government officials could have done something more be explored?
I've seen the pictures of lots of school buses underwater. Why weren't those used before the hurricane to ferry people out?
Why did the governor wait for 24 hours to declare an emergency?
Do we really want the Federal government to be the first responders in this type of emergency? Do you realize how big it would have to be to accomplish this?
You think you pay a lot in taxes now, think of what it would cost to have the federal system take care of every major and minor disaster in every city in the country. To draw up contingency plans, provide medical attention, housing, food, clothing, etc. would be an enormous undertaking.
While I do think there were some problems with the way some help was handled, I do think that more blame, as it were, should go to the local and state responses than to the federal response.
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