Sandy vs Katrina

Krugman states the obvious:

The point is that after Katrina the government seemed to have no idea what it was doing; this time it did. And that’s no accident: the federal government’s ability to respond effectively to disaster always collapses when antigovernment Republicans hold the White House, and always recovers when Democrats take it back. 

Consider, in particular, the history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

Under President George H. W. Bush, FEMA became a dumping ground for unqualified political hacks. Faced with a major test in the form of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the agency failed completely. 

Then Bill Clinton came in, put FEMA under professional management, and saw the agency’s reputation restored. Given this experience, you might have expected George W. Bush to preserve Mr. Clinton’s gains. But no: he appointed his campaign manager, Joe Allbaugh, to head the agency, and Mr. Allbaugh immediately signaled his intention both to devolve disaster relief to the state and local level and to downgrade the whole effort, declaring, “Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.” After Mr. Allbaugh left for the private sector, he was replaced with Michael “heckuva job” Brown, and the rest is history. 

Like Mr. Clinton, President Obama restored FEMA’s professionalism, effectiveness, and reputation. But would Mitt Romney destroy the agency again? Yes, he would. As everyone now knows — despite the Romney campaign’s efforts to Etch A Sketch the issue away — during the primary Mr. Romney used language almost identical to Mr. Allbaugh’s, declaring that disaster relief should be turned back to the states and to the private sector. 

The best line on this, I have to admit, comes from Stephen Colbert: “Who better to respond to what’s going on inside its own borders than the state whose infrastructure has just been swept out to sea?” 

Look, Republicans love to quote Ronald Reagan’s old joke that the most dangerous words you can hear are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Of course they’ll do their best, whenever they’re in power, to destroy an agency whose job is to say exactly that. And yes, it’s hypocritical that the right-wing news media are now attacking Mr. Obama for, they say, not helping enough people.

Screaming and running in circles works too...

What to do Before and During a Tsunami

The following are guidelines for what you should do if a tsunami is likely in your area:

Turn on your radio to learn if there is a tsunami warning if an earthquake occurs and you are in a coastal area.

Move inland to higher ground immediately and stay there.

Stay away from the beach. Never go down to the beach to watch a tsunami come in. If you can see the wave you are too close to escape it.

CAUTION - If there is noticeable recession in water away from the shoreline this is nature's tsunami warning and it should be heeded. You should move away immediately.

THIS is how you deal with a disaster, Georgie.

Not that you ever cared. President Obama didn't even tell us to go shopping....



Thank you, Mr. President.

What the end of the world could look like

If we aren't prepared.

Three years ago

Sometimes jokes

Expose the truth faster than any rant...



And cats are always the purrfect vehicle...

Gassing the poor and the helpless

No, not Saddam, George Bush:

Hope, Arkansas (AHN) - The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that there were high levels of formaldehyde in travel trailers and mobile homes that were used by victims of hurricane Katrina and Rita as emergency housing.

FEMA officials said that the residents of these trailers will be transferred as quickly as possible into hotels and apartments because exposing them to formaldehyde makes them sick. They said that transferring them will be beneficial for those who already have symptoms of respiratory illnesses such as the children, elderly persons or occupants.

Formaldehyde is a gas at room temperature. When exposed to this, it can cause burning eyes and/or nose, coughing and difficulty breathing. It is also shown to be carcinogenic - causing nasal and nasopharyngeal cancer and possibly leukemia also.

CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding said that higher temperatures may cause formaldehyde levels to go up. She also added that the high levels were found in December and January and that the people should be relocated before summer.

Heckovajob, Georgie!

crossposted at SteveAudio.

Even natural disasters are politicized in Georgie's world

He'd probably have sorted the passengers of the Titanic by party: (my bold)

Bush takes shot at Blanco while touring wildfires.

BATON ROUGE --As the California wildfires continued to rage Thursday, so too did the political feud between President Bush and Gov. Kathleen Blanco that has smoldered since the federal government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina.

The latest flare-up came when Bush, while touring the California disaster area, took an apparent swipe at Blanco's post-Katrina leadership as he complimented California
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"It makes a significant difference when you have somebody in the statehouse willing to take the lead," Bush said, according to the Associated Press.

The president's statement, coming from a White House that seems determined to avoid a repeat in California of the public-relations disaster that followed Katrina, brought a swift response from Blanco.

In a statement forwarded by her press office, Blanco noted that it took federal forces nearly a week to arrive in Louisiana after the storm. "I was the only game in town, leading for nearly a week without the president's help," Blanco said.

"Of all the lessons learned from Katrina now being put into place in California, I would hope the one he would remember is that politics has no place in any disaster," she added, before taking a shot at the slow manner in which promised federal aid has been delivered.

"While the promise of help from Washington is being extended, Gov. Schwarzenegger will have to work hard to make it a reality. In the meantime, Louisiana stands by ready to help with anything they may need," she said.

Asked to compare the two disasters, Bush said it's a job better left to historians.

Oh, tell us how wonderful and mighty you are, FEMA

Because your manly muscles make us feel so safe....

Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat pops the bubble. FEMA employees disguise themselves as reporters to interview.... FEMA.

How odd. I wonder why they are so scared of answering questions....

If FEMA is going to be gutted

And have all its powers taken away, could we just hire a boyscout to give us the color coded terrorist warnings and have done with it?:

WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers and Bush administration officials are considering stripping the Federal Emergency Management Agency of its responsibility for long-term recovery efforts following a terrorist attack or natural disaster, the latest fallout from the agency's lackluster response to the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005.

Under a proposal by Senator Mary Landrieu, FEMA would still run the initial response to future catastrophes -- getting victims shelter, blankets, and food. But oversight of recovery efforts, which can go on for years, would become the responsibility of other federal agencies with expertise in specific areas: rebuilding housing, fixing roads, cleaning up hazardous spills, and supervising an area's economic revitalization.

"FEMA wasn't built to lead the recovery from a catastrophic disaster and it is a wholly inadequate tool for that kind of situation," said Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana. "FEMA should stabilize the situation -- i.e., establish shelters and get people into them. But at some point, say 50 to 90 days after the disaster, [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] should take over housing. Why? Because they do housing."

Landrieu, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Disaster Recovery Subcommittee, has been conducting a series of hearings about problems in the recovery efforts from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the twin storms that devastated the Gulf Coast and flooded New Orleans in 2005.

[snip]

Some allies of the Bush administration have publicly applauded the idea of handing off FEMA's long-term recovery duties to other agencies. James Carafano, a homeland security specialist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, urged Congress to extend Landrieu's proposal by removing FEMA from a disaster zone within weeks instead of months.

"There is all kind of expertise in the government on recovery issues," Carafano said. "It's redundant to have FEMA involved in it, and a distraction from their core mission."

But some skeptics doubt the proposal would make long-term disaster recovery more efficient. Drew Sachs, a crisis management and preparedness consultant who worked for FEMA from 1991 to 1999, said that such a handoff would be disruptive and confuse disaster victims, forcing them to navigate a new set of bureaucracies.

Sachs said that he agreed that specialists from other parts of the government should be more involved in disaster recovery efforts. But, he said, someone will still need to coordinate the effort -- a job FEMA already has experience doing. And regardless of who runs an emergency housing program, he warned, there will always be problems.

We've seen when FEMA was made a cabinet level position under Clinton. We've seen what FEMA could do in an emergency and how well it could be run. Bush is doing to FEMA what he has been so good at in everything else, take a functional business or system, run it into the ground and break it, then wait for somebody else to bail him out. You can just hear the guys at the Heritage Foundation salivating over privatizing disaster and emergency assistance.

Remember what Josh Marshall said way back in 2005:

Of all the sad tales of cronyism and ineptitude emerging out of the Katrina catastrophe, probably none is more telling than the history of FEMA under the oversight and management of President Bush.

So let’s review the outlines of the story, beginning with the president’s inauguration in January 2001. Like everything in the second Bush White House, the surest clue to how the administration would proceed was to find what the Clinton White House had done and then expect the opposite.

President Clinton had appointed the first FEMA director with actual emergency-management experience, James Lee Witt. And Witt had gone on to reshape the organization into what was considered a model government agency. Clinton even gave FEMA Cabinet-level status.

Bush demoted the agency’s status and put it in the hands of his chief political fixer, Joe Allbaugh, who went about dismantling much of what Witt had built. As he told Congress in May 2001: “Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management. Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.”

Uh huh. And we see what happens when you privatize disaster relief. Toxic trailers made by Bush cronies anyone?

Hey, FEMA

This is how you help people deal with flooding, you tell them the perils and try to help:

Terry Standing, chief fire officer in the county, told thisisgloucestershire.co.uk: "It is a real tragedy that we have suffered two fatalities in the past 24 hours which were most likely due to people attempting to remove flood water."

He urged the public to think "safety first" when trying to pump out floodwaters

Despite widespread devastation, there have been few flood-related deaths so far.

[snip]

News of the deaths came as thousands of Britons already hard-hit by the worst flooding for decades faced more downpours today in the wettest early summer on record.

The Met Office confirmed that the period from May to July was the soggiest since records began in 1766 - even before July has ended. According to the Met, 387.6mm (16 inches) of rain has already fallen across England and Wales, double the average.

The worst of the day's heavy rain was expected to fall south of the areas currently worst affected. But flood-hit communities in Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire also faced heavy spells.

However, the Met Office said this spell of rain should pass through relatively quickly in most places.

Even as Oxfordshire fire and rescue service confirmed that waters in Oxford had begun to subside, experts warned of the dangers of disease from the muck left behind.

A floods expert, Professor Ian Cluckie, told reporters: "People need to realise this is raw sewage they are walking around in. I've seen pictures of kids walking around in the flood water. For God's sake don't let them."

The health and protection agency said: "The floodwater affecting your home or other property may have been contaminated with sewage, animal waste and other contaminants. However infection problems arising from floods in the UK are actually rare."

The agency also advised people to avoid contact with the floodwaters. A spokeswoman said: "We would discourage people from walking around in the murky waters. They won't be able to see obstacles in the water, which could cause injury, and there's a risk of contamination from untreated sewage."

[snip]

In Gloucestershire, officials were still struggling to distribute water supplies to 350,000 people left without running tap water.

Bowsers, or street tanks known, set up in almost 1,000 locations, were beginning to run dry in some places as Severn Trent Water said there had been difficulties filling them up as regularly as planned."We have had 34 tankers on the road to refill bowsers. We do know there are problems trying to achieve the four or five fills that are our target," David Wickens, Severn Trent's environmental manager, told BBC radio.

He said the issue had arisen because large tankers were struggling to navigate small streets while there was a lack of smaller tankers or qualified tanker lorry drivers.

The Red Cross, which has raised £500,000 through its national floods appeal, will also deliver 400 food parcels to the most vulnerable people affected.

There goes FEMA's plan

Of gassing the poor to death:


(photo taken from article.)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency since early 2006 has suppressed warnings from its own field workers about health problems experienced by hurricane victims living in government-provided trailers with levels of a toxic chemical 75 times the recommended maximum for U.S. workers, congressional lawmakers said yesterday.

A trail of e-mails obtained by investigators shows that the agency's lawyers rejected a proposal for systematic testing of the levels of potentially cancer-causing formaldehyde gas in the trailers, out of concern that the agency would be legally liable for any hazards or health problems. As many as 120,000 families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita lived in the suspect trailers, and hundreds have complained of ill effects.

[snip]

FEMA tested new trailers last September and October after rejecting more stringent standards suggested by the Environmental Protection Agency, Waxman said. In May, the agency reported finding formaldehyde in those trailers at 1.2 parts per million, but it said levels dropped to 0.3 parts per million after four days of ventilation.

FEMA said that met a standard used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for its manufactured homes. But Paulison said yesterday that FEMA now recognizes that ventilating trailers is impractical during the Gulf Coast's summer heat and humidity. Lawmakers noted that FEMA issued the advice at the beginning of last summer.

Mary C. DeVany, an occupational health and safety engineer advising the Sierra Club, testified that the exposure limit of 0.3 parts per million is 400 times the normal limit for year-round exposure set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. DeVany called the move a "misapplication and skewing of scientific results . . . to minimize adverse health effects."

Who made money on this deal? Follow the money and you'll find one of Bush's fat cronies. Make him pay it back. All of it.

Update: Eli of Multi Medium has more on why FEMA decided not to test for formaldehyde in the trailers.

Gonu killed 15

And badly flooded areas:

MUSCAT, Oman — Semi-trucks were trapped in flooded highways here Thursday after Cyclone Gonu battered Oman's coast on its path toward the world's most important crude oil tanker route. At least 15 storm-related deaths were reported.

But as the cyclone — a rarity in the Middle East — headed from Oman to the southeastern Iranian coast, it continued to lose steam, dropping off to tropical storm strength early Thursday, according to the U.S. military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

The center predicted Gonu would make landfall on the southeastern Iranian coast late Thursday. But it was likely to spare Iran's offshore oil installations that lie more than 120 miles to the west, the center and oil officials said.

But look at this:

At least 12 people were killed from the storm in Oman, including members of police rescue squads, and others were reported missing, said Oman Royal Police spokesman Abdullah al-Harthi. He did not provide further details.

POLICE RESCUE squads. Are you listening, FEMA? Oman shows us how to work during a hurricane.

Iran's state broadcasting company said on its website that some small villages in Sistan and Baluchistan province, on the Gulf of Oman, were still encircled by floods and authorities used helicopters to drop emergency supplies to them.

The storm affected power and telephone lines elsewhere in the province, but caused no major damage, provincial governor Habibollah Dehmardeh told the official IRNA news agency.

Even Iran has helicopters dropping supplies to cutoff cities.

[Gonu] is believed to be the strongest cyclone here since record-keeping started in 1945.

Even though these countries haven't dealt with such an unusual threat, look at how they worked to contain the damage. Maybe Bush will learn.... nah, forget it. We gotta wait until his Category 5 administration is out of office before we can clean up the mess.

(Updating from this post.)

The Compassionator flies in

To put his comfort on folks:

GREENSBURG, Kan., May 9 President Bush flew to Kansas Wednesday to survey tornado damage and buoy victims' spirits.

The president said the reality on the ground in Greensburg, Kan., far surpassed what people see in pictures of the devastation. The Friday night storm claimed a dozen lives and leveled 95 percent of the town's housing, CNN reported.

Bush said fortunately most people found shelter and "lived to see another day." "Unfortunately, too many died, and we offer our prayers and condolences," he said. The president lauded the "strength of character of the people who live on the plains." "They are people who refuse to have their spirit affected by this storm; as a matter of fact are willing to do what it takes to do it in a better way," he said. "Our role as government officials is to work with the state and local folks to get whatever help is appropriate here. My mission today though is to lift people's spirits as best as I can."

No mention of monetary assistance, is there, Georgie?

Did Georgie just tell Kansas

That they're going to get FEMA'd?

US President George W Bush has declared parts of Kansas a disaster area and has pledged federal aid for reconstruction.

"I'm confident this community will be rebuilt, to the extent we can help, we will.

"The most important thing now is for our citizens to ask for the good Lord to comfort those who were hurt," the president said after attending church in Washington on Sunday.

So, it's not the Deciderer, nor the Commander Guy, but the Compassionator! No money, but here comes Georgie to lay some comfort on the unfortunate folks!

We were told about Walter Reed two years ago

But then, no one was listening. Now with a Democratic Congress and Bush death-spiraling in the polls, we suddenly have a media who will print the story.

Paul Krugman: (my bold)

When Salon, the online magazine, reported on mistreatment of veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center two years ago, officials simply denied that there were any problems. And they initially tried to brush off last month’s exposé in The Washington Post.

But this time, with President Bush’s approval at 29 percent, Democrats in control of Congress, and Donald Rumsfeld no longer defense secretary — Robert Gates, his successor, appears genuinely distressed at the situation — the whitewash didn’t stick.

Yet even now it’s not clear whether the public will be told the full story, which is that the horrors of Walter Reed’s outpatient unit are no aberration. For all its cries of “support the troops,” the Bush administration has treated veterans’ medical care the same way it treats everything else: nickel-and-diming the needy, protecting the incompetent and privatizing everything it can.

What makes this a particular shame is that in the Clinton years, veterans’ health care — like the Federal Emergency Management Agency — became a shining example of how good leadership can revitalize a troubled government program. By the early years of this decade the Veterans Health Administration was, by many measures, providing the highest-quality health care in America. (It probably still is: Walter Reed is a military facility, not run by the V.H.A.)

But as with FEMA, the Bush administration has done all it can to undermine that achievement. And the Walter Reed scandal is another Hurricane Katrina: the moment when the administration’s misgovernment became obvious to everyone.

Update: Crooks and Liars has the video of Waxman and Shays listening to Staff Sgt. John Shannon tell it like it is.

What Al Gore did during Katrina

Was extremely presidential even though FEMA tried to BLOCK him several times:

Award-winning vice-Prez Al Gore chartered a plane in Sept. 2005 and flew with it for 2 roundtrips to New Orleans to rescue and medEvac 100s of patients from Charity Hospital and bring them to Tennessee. The VP declined interviews while he was shuttling the evacuees that Saturday September 3 and for a 2nd return flight he made the next day, but the doctors who flew with him talked about the experience.

Gore had to work around a sequential blockade by FEMA, which naturally denied his team permissions, repeatedly.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP)- Al Gore helped airlift some 270 Katrina evacuees on two private charters from New Orleans, acting at the urging of a doctor who saved the life of the former vice president's son.

... [Gore] refused to be interviewed about the mercy missions he financed and flew last Saturday and Sunday. . . .

Compare and contrast:

Does anybody reading this live near a levee?

You might want to find out what condition it's in.

From First Draft:

The Army Corps of Engineers has identified 146 levees in the US that "pose an unacceptable risk of failing in a major flood."

But they aren't going to tell you which 146:

Spokesman Pete Pierce says the corps does not want to release the list of the 146 places where levees have been identified as inadequate until all levees are inspected and all communities with faulty levees are notified. USA TODAY has filed a request for that list under the Freedom of Information Act.

I'd suggest getting one of those inflatable raft things....

Well, duh!

Title of article: 'Brown: Politics played role in Katrina.' Ya think?

"Party politics played a role in decisions over whether to take federal control of Louisiana and other areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, former FEMA director Michael Brown said Friday.

Some in the White House suggested only Louisiana should be federalized because it was run by a Democrat, Gov. Kathleen Blanco, Brown told a group of graduate students at a lecture on politics and emergency management at Metropolitan College of New York.

Brown said he had recommended to President Bush that all 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast affected by the hurricane be federalized, making the federal government in charge of all agencies responding to the disaster.

"Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor and we have a chance to rub her nose in it," he said."

Taking Stock explains the mysteries

of FEMA under the Bush administration.

Teaching us to not rely on the government to actually ... you know... govern and assist people when in need. So why do Bush and his friends believe government is for?

To go to war and to make money.

They've drained the treasury, started two unwinnable wars and they have two years left to take care of Iran! Their job is almost done!