Posted at 09:23 AM ET, 09/ 8/2005
Facts and Rumors: Federal Power in a State of Emergency
First, a note to all the Debaters: Ordinarily, Wednesday would mark the beginning of a new week for The Debate -- it's the day a fresh topic would be introduced for discussion until the following Tuesday. But this is no ordinary week. So we're bending the rules to make room for a few more days of Hurricane Katrina, and we'll introduce next week's issue, the Roberts nomination, on Monday -- just in time for the start of his hearings.
But for now, we're still talking about the hurricane, and all the false assertions that have been floating around with regard to who had the power to do what in Louisiana have got to be put to rest. Please allow me to use the text of federal laws and some other reputable sources in order to set the record straight. (My very basic conclusions based on those facts appear in parenthesis.)
Fact: Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco declared a State of Emergency for her state on Friday, Aug. 26. Full disclosure: The Post reported last week -- erroneously, it turned out -- that Louisiana had not issued such a declaration. A correction was published on Sept. 5.
Fact: President Bush declared a State of Emergency the next day Saturday before Hurricane Katrina hit.
Fact: Presidential declarations of emergency are made after a request from "the governor of the impacted state, based on finding that the disaster is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the ability of the state and affected local jurisdictions."
[Update: The link above doesn't seem to be working anymore, so here's a copy of the page as it appeared on Aug. 14, 2004, courtesy of archive.org's Wayback Machine. The page does not appear to have changed between when it was archived and when I looked at it yesterday.]
Fact: Blanco sent a letter dated Aug. 28 to Bush -- via the FEMA regional director -- requesting that he "declare a major disaster," and Bush responded by wisely declaring an emergency. There is a very slight difference, funding-wise, between declaring a major disaster and declaring an emergency -- the difference is explained here -- but both authorize "emergency protective measures."
[Update: Thanks to the astute anonymous reader who provided the link to the letter.]
Fact: A declaration of emergency "unleash[es] the support of any or all of 27 federal agencies. It also authorizes reimbursement of emergency work, such as debris removal and emergency protective measures."
Fact: There is a FEMA program called the National Urban Search and Rescue Response System (US&R) -- now part of the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate (EP&R) of the Department of Homeland Security. According to federal legislation, it "provides specialized lifesaving assistance during major disasters or emergencies that the President declares under the Stafford Act. US&R operational activities include locating, extricating and providing on-site medical treatment to victims trapped in collapsed structures, victims of weapons of mass destruction events, and when assigned, performing incident command or other operational activities."
Continue reading "Facts and Rumors: Federal Power in a State of Emergency"
By Emily Messner | Permalink* | Comments (98)
Posted at 09:00 AM ET, 09/ 6/2005
Dealing With Disaster: When Optimism Makes Things Worse
When President Bush said he didn't think the New Orleans levees would give way last week, White House Briefing columnist Dan Froomkin promptly pointed to several reasons why the president should have known better.
Bush's belief wasn't exactly surpising -- after all, this administration is nothing if not optimistic. (Remember the whole "Mission Accomplished" thing a couple years back?)
But while I totally dig optimism, when it comes to disasters, governments must plan for the worst. Assuming the best can endanger people, a point made in a Saturday Toronto Globe and Mail editorial.
Continue reading "Dealing With Disaster: When Optimism Makes Things Worse"
By Emily Messner | Permalink* | Comments (110)
Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 09/ 5/2005
Hurricane Katrina's Aftermath: Not the President's Finest Hour
Lots of comments this week. Some of you wrote with a sense of deep sadness, others wrote with anger, still others expressed a feeling of helplessness in the face of this overwhelming disaster.
And then there were the few readers who inexplicably felt it necessary to post their thoughts on the color of my hair. (Seriously, guys, have you nothing better to do?)
The issue that seemed to spark the most debate -- judging by my unscientific perusal of the comments -- involved the preparations for and initial response to this deadly hurricane. Because this subject is so huge, I’m going to break it up into four posts. This one takes a political perspective, jumping off from several readers’ comments that President Bush has not taken the catastrophe seriously enough. Then comes a reality check: Why optimism and disaster response planning don't mix. Next up is an examination of what went wrong in New Orleans and how things could have been handled better, and we wrap up The Debate for this week with the lessons we can learn -- must learn -- from Hurricane Katrina.
Honestly, it's hard to argue with those who feel that the president displayed a disturbingly nonchalant attitude about the hurricane, even as New Orleans was rapidly disappearing under the rising floodwaters. Observe:
Here are three photos from New Orleans taken on Tuesday, Aug. 30. Take a look at this one, then this one, and finally, this one.
Now here's a photo of the president, also from Tuesday, Aug. 30, the day before he graciously ended his summer vacation 48 hours early. The photo was taken after a speech he gave in California, and yes, he’s sharing the stage with a country music star. (Bad P.R. move, given the circumstances … was Image Enforcer Karl Rove on vacation, too?) And no, the president is not planning to take that guitar to Louisiana for use as a floatation device.
Perhaps I'm being nitpicky, but I seem to recall that back in July the president was scheduled to speak to thousands of Boy Scouts at the opening show of their national jamboree. It had been a rough time for the boys already -- four scout leaders had been killed setting up a tent two days prior. It probably didn't help the scouts' morale when hundreds of people had to be treated for heat exhaustion, dehydration and the like after waiting hours for the president, who postponed his speech at the last minute due to concerns over inclement weather.
Why would our president cancel a speech to the boy scouts over a few thundershowers, but he wouldn't cancel his speech comparing Iraq to WWII (not a stellar analogy, Mr. President) over a storm that had already displaced hundreds of thousands of people? (Not a rhetorical question. I really can’t figure out what he was thinking.)
Continue reading "Hurricane Katrina's Aftermath: Not the President's Finest Hour"
By Emily Messner | Permalink* | Comments (47)
Posted at 04:00 PM ET, 09/ 4/2005
Bloggers Kept Lines Open During Hurricane Katrina
A recent Washington Post editorial makes this observation: "In a society hooked on access to instant and overwhelming quantities of information, it was remarkable how much was unknown about the scope of the disaster wreaked by Katrina; the storm had simply destroyed much of the information network." Yes, electricity and phone lines were knocked out throughout the region, and much was and is unknown, but there were some sources of information that remained unfiltered and undeterred by damage to conventional communications. These sources were blogs.
Plenty of bloggers were following the storm from different parts of the country, but the ones that stick out in my mind were right in the middle of it. One such writer, Kaye Trammell, wrote in an op-ed in Saturday's Post about blogging through power outages while waiting out the storm in her Baton Rouge home. I admit, I had no idea that was even possible until I read her blog. It's got lots of useful tidbits, like this: Can't get through to a loved one in an emergency? Try sending a text message.
Posts like this one from Josh Britton really drive home just how vital these blogs were not only to the people reading them, but to those writing them as well. As the disaster-blogging art form develops, look for the blogs to be used more by local emergency management officials to disseminate important information about conditions.
An extensive listing of Katrina-related blogs is here, and plenty more can be found through the links on each others' sites.
By Emily Messner | Permalink* | Comments (6)
Posted at 10:58 AM ET, 09/ 4/2005
Where Is All the Foreign Aid for Us?
Far too many people have been asking -- here in The Debate, on other blogs, on cable news shows and in casual conversation -- why the rest of the world doesn't shower us with aid, "after all we've done for them."
Answer?
International organizations including the United Nations, Organization of American States and NATO, as well as dozens of nations around the world, have offered assistance. Individuals from beyond our borders are also contributing. According to Montreal's La Presse (which I was reading over breakfast this morning -- greetings from Canada, by the way), Celine Dion is contributing a million dollars of her own to the American Red Cross. Some of the tsunami-ravaged nations, having expressed their condolences, are now trying to come up with ways they could help in the effort. Even Sri Lanka has donated $25,000 to the Red Cross -- and this is a country with little if anything to spare.
German aid is coming in the form of vaccinations, airlifts and other services. France has offered tents, beds, mobile water purifying plants, generators, disaster relief and aid workers, ships and planes. Qatar has made the largest monetary offer so far: $100 million. Israel has said its search and rescue teams are ready to help. Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iceland, Spain, Colombia, the Philippines, Russia, Jordan, Armenia -- and the list goes on -- have all offered support.
And that’s just a small portion of it. Offers are also on the table from Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, although it seems unlikely the administration will accept those offers, in spite of Condoleeza Rice’s decision (relayed by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack) that "no offer that can help alleviate the suffering of the people in the afflicted area will be refused."
Next time you hear someone propagating this false notion that the rest of the world doesn't care about America, read them this (not exhaustive) list:
Portugal, Russia, Japan, Canada, France, Honduras, Germany, Venezuela, Jamaica, Australia, UK/Northern Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, China, South Korea, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Peru, Qatar, Cuba, Bahamas, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ecuador, Iceland, India, Jordan, Luxembourg, The Philippines, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Italy, Thailand and Turkey.
By Emily Messner | Permalink* | Comments (23)
Posted at 07:00 AM ET, 09/ 3/2005
$3 ($4?) a Gallon and Rising: Katrina Hits Energy Markets
Since Wednesday night, regular unleaded at the gas station across the street from my home has been going up an average of 10 cents a day, with faster price increases reported in many regions. By Friday evening, it was still rising, and I fully expect it to go up sharply, but I think it's safe to say that we as a nation have got far bigger problems on our hands.
Nonetheless, gas prices are consistently cited as a top concern of voters. Even with Bush's decision to dip into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to offset prices, serious problems still remain. It wasn't just oil drilling platforms that were shuttered during the hurricane; key refineries, pipelines and ports are out of commission. When they will be able to reopen, much less return tofull capacity, is anyone's guess.
Do you think Bush was right to open the reserve? What do you think the administration should be doing to offset the effects of the storm on energy prices? Already, gas prices have tripled in the last four years -- any thoughts on this?
By Emily Messner | Permalink* | Comments (7)
Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 09/ 2/2005
Comparing Misery
When Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway proclaimed, "This is our tsunami," I was a bit taken aback. There's no doubt that Hurricane Katrina is one of the worst natural disasters in American history. It was a catastrophe for the residents of the Gulf states, most especially the city of New Orleans, which Mayor Ray Nagin estimates will "not be functional" for the next three months or so.
Hundreds of thousands of people were able to get out of harm's way thanks to early warnings -- and their cars. Still, death tolls could run into the thousands, tens of thousands have had their homes ruined and the situation of those still trapped in the city is clearly dire.
But with Katrina firmly in the category of catastrophe, we might just have to invent a new word to describe the Indian Ocean tsunami last December. (Can anyone think of a stronger word than catastrophe? Thesaurus.com was no help.) The tsunami killed a quarter of a million people -- 150,000 in one Indonesian province alone. At least another half million people lost their homes -- among them some 40,000 pregnant women -- and even now, many are still unable to rebuild. Unlike with the hurricane, there was no warning before the tsunami swept entire villages out to sea. (The 1906 San Francisco earthquake, recalled in the Post's lead editorial on Thursday, is perhaps a more apt comparison.)
Sheer numbers aside, Greg at the Metasurface blog makes an important point: It's not helpful to try to "compare misery." Very true. Those who lost loved ones in the hurricane are suffering a great trauma, just as Southeast Asians suffered, and as San Franciscans did a hundred years ago.
Want to try to help alieviate the suffering? Craigslist is one of many good places you can find volunteer opportunities, offer shelter to hurricane victims and even seek out the missing.
By Emily Messner | Permalink* | Comments (35)
Posted at 09:00 AM ET, 09/ 1/2005
Hurricane Katrina:Terrorism! The View From Washington
If you haven't already read Eric Holdeman's op-ed in Tuesday's Post, I promise it's worth a look. I mentioned it in this week's main entry, but I think the piece raises a key issue that deserves a post of its own. America, Holdeman argues, is not well enough prepared for natural disasters because much of the funding and attention has been shifted to preparing for a terrorist attack.
He contends that things really started going downhill after 9/11 when the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security subsumed the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (Holdeman likens DHS to the Borg collective; I can't help but picture Tom Ridge, stomping from agency to agency, pointing his robotic arm at various undersecretaries and barking, "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." That's an image that won't leave me any time soon.)
At a subcommittee hearing in March of last year, when the House was debating the FY 2005 budget, members on both sides of the aisle raised concerns that our disaster preparedness was lopsided. Ohio Republican Steven Latourette pushed for guarantees from FEMA official Michael Brown that the department would follow the administration's stated policy of "all-hazards preparedness" (translation: having broad plans, for things like evacuations, that can be put in place during pretty much any disaster.) Latourette and Eleanor Holmes Norton, the delegate from Washington, D.C., questioned the sincerity of that commitment.
Norton made a prescient observation: "this balance challenge could come to hurt us in the worst way. If we have a huge natural disaster here one day, and somebody looks closely and sees that FEMA was lopsidedly into protect[ing] against terrorism ... we are left unprepared. ...Forewarned, I think, is what I am trying to get across here." (transcript)
Continue reading "Hurricane Katrina:Terrorism! The View From Washington"
By Emily Messner | Permalink* | Comments (60)
Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 09/ 1/2005
Bush Takes Time Off From Vacation to Respond to Hurricane
A quick review:
Saturday: Katrina is a Category 3 hurricane. President Bush declares a state of emergency for Louisiana.
Sunday: It's becoming clearer by the minute that this hurricane is going to be big, big trouble. It has strengthened to Category 5 and covers a big chunk of the Gulf of Mexico. Traffic is jammed for miles as residents flee the coastal areas. The word "catastrophic" is being used without any trace of hyperbole.
Monday: The hurricane hits. Homes turn to rubble. Curtains billow out of skyscrapers' shattered windows. Streets flood. Millions lose power. Approximately 10,000 people are holed up in the Superdome, which is losing chunks of roof as the storm swirls. Police report looting in Gulfport. A break is found in a New Orleans levee. At least 50 are confirmed dead in Mississippi alone and the toll is expected to rise.
Tuesday: Two levees have been breached. Floodwaters force residents to take refuge on rooftops. Helicopter rescue crews are scouring neighborhoods for survivors. Looting spreads. The Superdome now holds 20,000 storm refugees. The governor says the stadium must be evacuated, but how exactly that will be accomplished remains a mystery. Roads and bridges are impassable. Death toll climbs above 100. President Bush selflessly decides to end his vacation.
A Washington Post editorial observes that Bush, "who has maintained his weeks-long holiday schedule without regard to the bloodshed in Iraq, is breaking off his summer idyll two days early to tend to the fallout from Katrina." That's right, Bush will depart from his Crawford, Tex. ranch on Wednesday instead of Friday as originally scheduled. Pleased as I am that he'll be back in town, I can't help but wonder why he didn't return to Washington over the weekend, the moment it became obvious that even the hurricane's best-case scenario would be a large-scale tragedy. (In his White House Briefing, Dan Froomkin lists some of the key questions surrounding Bush's vacation decision and the hurricane response in general.)
What do you think of how the administraton is handling the disaster? How about Congress? And if you're from one of the hurricane-affected areas, what are you hearing from your elected representatives in Washington? Tell me how you think the federal government is doing.
By Emily Messner | Permalink* | Comments (159)
Posted at 01:00 PM ET, 08/31/2005
Hurricane Katrina: Going Overboard
One might wonder how it would be possible to go overboard in describing the devastation that could have occured had Hurricane Katrina come ashore just a few dozen miles west of where she did. Nonetheless, CNN managed the feat.
The network talked to Ivor van Heerden, identified as an expert from Louisiana State University, who actually speculated that people stranded by flooding would be eaten by fire ants. If anyone from CNN is reading this, I'd really like to know: Is this guy serious? Fire ants?? I really want to believe that at least that part was van Heerden's attempt at a joke -- albeit a morbid one -- but there is no indication in the online story that he is anything but sincere. Far be it from me to discount the danger of fire ants; they're nasty little buggers. But if my house disintegrated around me and I found myself hanging from a lightpole -- as van Heerden's scenario would have it -- I can assure you that fire ants would be just about the least of my concerns.
The Columbia Journalism Review online skewers the CNN piece, so I'll leave the rest to them.
By Emily Messner | Permalink* | Comments (33)
