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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Here Comes the Power Grab

Here Comes the Power Grab

by John Cole|  September 28, 200510:57 am| 10 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics

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Here we go:

The morning Hurricane Katrina thundered ashore, Louisiana National Guard commanders thought they were prepared to save their state. But when 15-foot floodwaters swept into their headquarters, cut their communications and disabled their high-water trucks, they had their hands full just saving themselves.

For a crucial 24 hours after landfall on Aug. 29, Guard officers said, they were preoccupied with protecting their nerve center from the waves topping the windows at Jackson Barracks and rescuing soldiers who could not swim. The next morning, they had to evacuate their entire headquarters force of 375 guardsmen by boat and helicopter to the Superdome.

It was an inauspicious start to the National Guard’s hurricane response, which fell so short that it has set off a national debate about whether in the future the Pentagon should take charge immediately after catastrophes. President Bush has asked Congress to study the question, and top Defense Department and Guard officials are scheduled to testify on the response before a House panel today.

Personally, I take this as more evidence that FEMA and the Pentagon should have pre-positioned more troops in the path of the storm.

In all seriousness, though, themagnitude of this storm just overwhelmed everything at every level, and the appropriate response is not to simply federalize everything. But they will try.

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Reader Interactions

10Comments

  1. 1.

    Mr Furious

    September 28, 2005 at 11:13 am

    The biggest thing I just got out of that is that swimming lessons are not part of basic training.

  2. 2.

    Lines

    September 28, 2005 at 11:17 am

    Federalize everything, then fail, proving that federalization of everything is a bad idea.

    And yet again, we American’s will be the winners, at least if by “winning” I’m saying “fucking losers”

  3. 3.

    Defense Guy

    September 28, 2005 at 11:46 am

    It’s a mistake to base new federal policy on the actions in ONE state. Florida does just fine, as does Texas and Alabama, and Mississippi, and the Carolinas. Louisiana and New Orleans in particular, are just special cases and basing anything on their screw-ups and specific geography is a bad idea.

  4. 4.

    Veeshir

    September 28, 2005 at 11:59 am

    I like the proposal but wouldn’t want to see it implemented.
    Merely proposing this shows that the people who blamed Bush for everything actually are blaming him for following the laws. Even the MSM can’t hide that unless they just don’t report on this.

  5. 5.

    guyermo

    September 28, 2005 at 1:52 pm

    which they?
    the republicans in power or the democrats in louisiana who are complaining?

  6. 6.

    Steven D

    September 28, 2005 at 2:21 pm

    In all seriousness, though, the magnitude of this storm just overwhelmed everything at every level,

    This is the absolute, essential truth about Katrina. Everything at the local level was overwhelmed and no existing plan survived the breaching of the levees. That lesson should be a given in any large scale disaster. What is required then is for effective leadership, flexible response and communication among all levels of government. That is what was completely missing in the first days following Katrina. The political leaders (Nagin, Blanco, Chertoff, Bush) were not effective in communicating the magnitude of the problem and were completely unable to deal with the initial emergencies created in the chaos. They actually were reasonably effective at creating a new longer term response plan to the disaster on the ground.

    It is completely unfair to compare the “planning” in Texas for Rita with NO for Katrina. First, we have no idea how many people didn’t leave Houston. If Houston had suffered the catastrophic flooding that NO encountered, we have no idea how that scenario would have played out. Second, because of Katrina, people were sensitized to the effects of the hurricane and were more receptive to evacuation orders. Had Rita come first, it would have been interesting to see how the Houston evacuation would have played out.

    I am afraid that the wrong lessons will be learned from both Katrina and Rita. More federal control would in all likelihood not have prevented or ameliorated the problems in NO. Even if mandatory evac had been ordered 72 hours ahead of the storm, it is highly likely that most of the people who stayed would have stayed anyway. And remember, this was a disaster where there was at least four days notice. How would a greater federal involvement do any good in the event of an unanticipated calamity, such as a major earthquake or a dirty bomb attack? I think what needs to be done is to recognize that local authorities are the best first responder and to provide the local authorities with disaster recovery infrastructure that can hopefully survive the disaster. Couple that with the knowledge that in a true catastrophic situation it is likely that the local authorities will be overwhelmed and ineffective, and provide a federal response capability that can act as soon as it is apparent that the locals are overwhelmed.

  7. 7.

    Kimmitt

    September 28, 2005 at 2:26 pm

    I think the pretty obvious conclusion is that there are things that state and local folks can handle pretty well, and there are things that require a promotion to the next level up.

    We did send in the US military after the San Francisco earthquake in ’06, after all.

  8. 8.

    KC

    September 28, 2005 at 2:26 pm

    I totally agree with you Defense Guy. I’m really worried that our country could be take a dramatically wrong turn on this one.

  9. 9.

    tyree

    September 28, 2005 at 4:22 pm

    Someone said:
    They are called major disasters because they cannot be managed. If we could manage them we would call them minor inconveniences.

    About sums it up.

  10. 10.

    jobiuspublius

    September 28, 2005 at 10:14 pm

    From the difficulty of 375 LA Nat. Guard a call for more fed power is derived. Talk about making a mountain out of a mole hill.

    Personally, I take this as more evidence that FEMA and the Pentagon should have pre-positioned more troops in the path of the storm.

    I take it as evidance that the LA Nat. Guard should have been home as opposed to being in Iraq.

    We can have a peace corp. to serve over seas, but, we can’t have a civilian disaster corp? It could be something paterned on the military, but, for rescue purposes. That’s one way to help young people out of poverty and make people conscious of disaster preparedness.

    But, what do I know. I think privatization is a scam, part of the power grab. Scams, like mercenary companies that poach military personel, trained on our dime, and awarded tax payer funded contracts to guard Generals and bases. Things the military was able to do for less.

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