The Times has prepared a blistering report on the utter failure of our government to come to the aid of the Katrina victims. According to dozens of interviews, no one knew who to call to get authority to send help and/or seemed to think it was someone else's responsiblity. Trucks filled with supplies were left stranded on the side of the road awaiting paperwork. Evacuation buses were delayed. Police officers saw people dying of dehydration and heat exhaustion and could offer nothing. Firefighters from around the country were forced to spend several days in Atlanta training for community relations tasks instead of going straight to New Orleans to do what they are already trained to do: save lives. After 9/11, FEMA was subsumed under the all-important Department of Homeland Security specifically to make future disaster-relief efforts run efficiently and seamlessly. What a failure. Read this article, please.
Also, the San Antonio Express-News notes that last week, our neighbor, Mexico, sent 47 heavy-duty military vehicles across the border to help. The trucks were filled with 195 workers, including disaster specialists, as well as enough food, water, and equipment (including field kitchens, mess tents, and water treatment plants) to serve three hot meals to 7,000 people daily for 20 days. For no reason anyone can possibly discern, these trucks were told to stay in San Antonio, where there's already plenty of clean water and food for the refugees. Apparently all foreign aid comes under the jurisdiction of the State Department, but the State Department doesn't know what to do with it:
Asked by a reporter Thursday what help the Mexican convoy would provide, [State Department spokesman Shawn] McCormack replied: "As far as I know, they're part of a transportation convoy. As for how the aid gets distributed on the ground, I think the folks at [Department of Human Services] and FEMA or [Department of Defense] would be in a better position to answer that."
But wait, it was the FEMA people who said that you would handle it....
Well, if any terrorists are interested, I think it's safe to say that we are sitting ducks in the event of another disaster, of any kind. What a disgrace.
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