Katrina's Aftermath...

What has happened as a result of hurricane Katrina is beyond what anyone had anticipated. The loss of life and property is tragic and it will take years to recover. What is also terrible are all the people screaming that the Federal government failed to do their job. The governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans have been pointing the finger at everyone but themselves. For the Congressional Black Caucus to even hint that the administration delayed in getting help to New Orleans because the victims stranded there are black is beyond ridiculous. Just shut up, please!

Why didn’t the city of New Orleans have and implement an emergency plan? Why did 205 school buses and 384 city buses sit idle? Why didn’t these buses get moved to higher ground before the storm in the event they would be needed? Now almost 600 buses now sit underwater and unavailable for evacuation of victims. Conservatively if they had been available and were loaded with 50 people each, that would be almost 3000 people that could be moved for each trip. They probably could have been loaded with 100 or more.

Why didn’t the New Orleans police and fire departments have backup locations to gather? We all heard there was no communication or command structure of these essential organizations, so nothing was being done. This is a city that has been sinking for years and the chance of a levee breaking, or being breeched by a shipping accident or terrorist attack, had always been there yet the state and city had no plan in the event it did.

Why has Governor Blanco still not declared the state to be a state of emergency? Why didn’t she have the Louisiana National Guard standing by before the storm hit? Or call them up afterwards? Why did she turn down the request for a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans? She refuses to turn it over to the federal government and then screams how they abandoned them.

We have known for years that New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. The Army Corps of engineers has been working on protecting New Orleans from flooding for 40 years and had managed to construct a system that experts felt would protect the city from a Category 3 storm. But as storm prediction became more sophisticated, the Corps came to the realization that the levees it constructed might not be high enough to counter "the big one." Funding for such a project had not yet been approved in 2003. If it had, they say it would take 30 years to complete the project. It’s time to think long and hard about rebuilding New Orleans in its current location.

Yes, there have been some things that didn’t go well with the rescue operations, but I would not have wanted to be in any other country than the United States to have to go through such an event. They always tell people to have enough supplies and medicine to last 3 to 5 days for hurricanes. The reason for that is because it may take that long for help to arrive. Why then did all the people complaining think in a few hours everything would be all right again? Because the race vultures have to find a scapegoat to blame for their own failings…