Nbadan
09-26-2005, 01:14 PM
By Jonathan S. Landay, Seth Borenstein and Alison Young, Knight Ridder Newspapers
Sun Sep 25, 8:18 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The speed with which the federal government marshaled significant military and other resources to evacuate, rescue and care for victims of Hurricane Rita raises new questions about why Washington was so slow to respond to Hurricane Katrina less than four weeks earlier.
The Bush administration says it's researching whether the federal government needs to have greater authority to respond to disasters - and whether the military should be in charge.
The response to Rita, however, suggests that the government had plenty of authority to respond to Katrina and that what was lacking during Katrina was an understanding of when to use that authority.
"The atmosphere here is very, very different than it was in the days following Katrina," said John Pine, Louisiana State University Disaster Science and Management director. Pine was in Louisiana's emergency operations center in Baton Rouge on Sunday and said that nearly as many federal officials were present as those from state and local agencies.
A day after Katrina, "it was all on the shoulders of state and locals," Pine said. "There was a lot more staging of a lot more operations in place for the second storm. ... I think you see a huge difference.
*sic*
"By comparison, the Pentagon did not activate its Katrina task force until two days after Katrina struck and active-duty military units were not used in any major way until at least three days after. The first major deployment of active-duty ground troops did not occur until five days after Katrina struck.
Perhaps the most startling difference was the military's role in evacuating thousands of nursing home residents, hospital patients and other frail people ahead of Rita. During Katrina, hundreds of such patients languished for days in water-surrounded facilities.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the military conducted the evacuations at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services, a request Whitman acknowledged was "a bit outside the chain of command." Under the federal government's National Response Plan, such a request would normally come from FEMA.
Northern Command's preparations for Hurricane Rita also included placing on alert five two-man teams to set up long-range communications in the hardest-hit areas if requested by federal disaster relief officials. The teams were equipped with satellite telephones and fax machines. "
Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/_wea_storms_response)
The Comparisons don't just stop in the FEDs handling of the two disasters.
In the lead up to and during Hurricane Rita. The Press got wind of W's San Antonio "photo-op" and embarrassed W into canceling it so he "wouldn't get in the way". So W instead hunkered in a bunker in Colorado and was a total "hands on" CEO type of guy and directed every aspect of the operation. No mention that Rita did 1/10 the damage of Katrina and he had all the mistakes from Katrina to learn from. His PR machine expected us to swoon over his handling of Rita, but it's like comparing apples and oranges. The devastation from Rita paled in comparison to that of Katrina, but we're supposed to forget all about that and give him a medal for his bravery.
Right....... People will never forget those images of the dead and dying, and people who were treated worse than animals in the Superdome and Convention Center.
Sun Sep 25, 8:18 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The speed with which the federal government marshaled significant military and other resources to evacuate, rescue and care for victims of Hurricane Rita raises new questions about why Washington was so slow to respond to Hurricane Katrina less than four weeks earlier.
The Bush administration says it's researching whether the federal government needs to have greater authority to respond to disasters - and whether the military should be in charge.
The response to Rita, however, suggests that the government had plenty of authority to respond to Katrina and that what was lacking during Katrina was an understanding of when to use that authority.
"The atmosphere here is very, very different than it was in the days following Katrina," said John Pine, Louisiana State University Disaster Science and Management director. Pine was in Louisiana's emergency operations center in Baton Rouge on Sunday and said that nearly as many federal officials were present as those from state and local agencies.
A day after Katrina, "it was all on the shoulders of state and locals," Pine said. "There was a lot more staging of a lot more operations in place for the second storm. ... I think you see a huge difference.
*sic*
"By comparison, the Pentagon did not activate its Katrina task force until two days after Katrina struck and active-duty military units were not used in any major way until at least three days after. The first major deployment of active-duty ground troops did not occur until five days after Katrina struck.
Perhaps the most startling difference was the military's role in evacuating thousands of nursing home residents, hospital patients and other frail people ahead of Rita. During Katrina, hundreds of such patients languished for days in water-surrounded facilities.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the military conducted the evacuations at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services, a request Whitman acknowledged was "a bit outside the chain of command." Under the federal government's National Response Plan, such a request would normally come from FEMA.
Northern Command's preparations for Hurricane Rita also included placing on alert five two-man teams to set up long-range communications in the hardest-hit areas if requested by federal disaster relief officials. The teams were equipped with satellite telephones and fax machines. "
Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/_wea_storms_response)
The Comparisons don't just stop in the FEDs handling of the two disasters.
In the lead up to and during Hurricane Rita. The Press got wind of W's San Antonio "photo-op" and embarrassed W into canceling it so he "wouldn't get in the way". So W instead hunkered in a bunker in Colorado and was a total "hands on" CEO type of guy and directed every aspect of the operation. No mention that Rita did 1/10 the damage of Katrina and he had all the mistakes from Katrina to learn from. His PR machine expected us to swoon over his handling of Rita, but it's like comparing apples and oranges. The devastation from Rita paled in comparison to that of Katrina, but we're supposed to forget all about that and give him a medal for his bravery.
Right....... People will never forget those images of the dead and dying, and people who were treated worse than animals in the Superdome and Convention Center.