DHS | Department of Homeland Security | Emergencies & Disasters: "Emergencies & Disasters
Preparing America
In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort. The new Department will also prioritize the important issue of citizen preparedness. Educating America's families on how best to prepare their homes for a disaster and tips for citizens on how to respond in a crisis will be given special attention at DHS." ...The National Response Plan provides mechanisms for expedited and proactive Federal support to ensure critical life-saving assistance and incident containment capabilities are in place to respond quickly and efficiently to catastrophic incidents. These are high-impact, low-probability incidents, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks that result in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions...
For those who keep saying that Bush and the administratin is the last to be blamed I give you... The Dept. Of Homeland Security, which FEMA is part of. Created by Bush, it was they who should have been coordinating the response, and who do they report too, the Bush. Don't get me wrong there was failure on the local scale too, but they where stuck in the middle of the disaster and had little to no resources left to work with.
2 comments:
The mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, told people to evacuate the city, but he didn't provide the means to get them out. There are hundreds of buses mired in the flood. Instead of just ordering the evacuation, why didn't he organize it? Why didn't the mayor have disaster supplies prepositioned around the city?
State governor Kathleen Blanco, under the law, should have notified the federal government that she wanted the National Guard federalized and sent into the city. Two days before the hurricane hit, she knew there was a category five storm heading straight for her city, but she did nothing. On Friday, the federal government urged her to request aid so the National Guard could be federalized and aid could be sent. She refused. She didn't just drop the ball, she lobbed it back when it was tossed to her. It didn't take five days for federal help to arrive because she didn't declare a state of emergency until Wednesday.
I think it's truly remarkable that once the local officials got off their duffs and requested help from the federal government, that it took only five days for convoys of food, water, medicine, troops, boats, aircraft, doctors, etc to get to the city. Some came from as far away as Los Angeles.
The President is not a dictator, he can't violate the sovereignty of a state by sending in troops unrequested. Nor is he a babysitter.
Sorry lone ranger your info is incorrect. The Bush administration has admitted that the governor did declare an state of emergency on Friday, even before Katrina hit. The mandates of the Dept. of Homeland Security (FEMA)are to coordinate both local, state and federal response.
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