MeanMrMustard's Musings

Anger Overload

Bill Wattenburg, a consultant for the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and one of the designers of the earlier food drop programs, said that he has lobbied the administration and the military to immediately begin something similar. He said he was told that the military was prepared to begin, but that it was awaiting a request from FEMA.

"We know very well how to do this, and it's just incomprehensible that we're not," Wattenburg said.

A US Navy hospital ship didn't leave Baltimore for the region until Friday.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard on Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.

The Red Cross says it's not being allowed into New Orleans to offer food, comfort and medical assistance because, in essence, we need to starve everyone out.

The evacuation is apparently prioritizing evacuees by either race or wealth; you make the call:

At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses pulled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line — much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the Superdome since last Sunday.

"How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?" exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.

The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome. The Hyatt was severely damaged by the storm. Every pane of glass on the riverside wall was blown out.

There are so many more of these stories that I don't have the heart to list them all. And this was a disaster we knew for years was coming, and we knew for days in advance was probably imminent. Imagine how well this administration would handle another unexpected catastrophe.

posted by MeanMrMustard @ 8:44 AM