I anticipate knowledgeable, if furious, responses from the great round-up of guests on NBC’s MTP with Tim Russert today. I note Tim hasn’t signed on any FEMA apologists:
Update [2005-9-11 15:30:8 by susanhu]: Here’s the full transcript of this morning’s MTP. Have at it!
RAY NAGIN
Mayor of New Orleans
JOHN M. BARRY
Author, “Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America”
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN
Director, Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes
Deputy Director, L.S.U. Hurricane Center
Susan’s Note: I woke up at 3am PT — it was the damn pinched nerve in my knee — and Van Heerden was interviewed on MSNBC. He is one pissed-off scientist who knows his shit. He spoke at the only two simulation seminars held by FEMA last year on hurricanes. Hundreds of other preparedness FEMA seminars last year all focused exclusively on terrorist attacks.
Even for the two seminars on hurricanes, MSNBC said on air, the focus became on how a terrorist attack would affect government response during a hurricane.
He recalled that, as he spoke during the one of two FEMA hurricane simlulations last year, Van Heerden could hear members of the Army Corps of Engineers snickering in the audience.
By the way, that intensive simulation last year — dubbed “Hurricane Pam” — correctly predicted the major events that did occur during/after Katrina.
Are you still snickering at Dr. van Heerden, you know-it-alls in the Corps of Engineers?
SEN. ARLEN SPECTER (R – PA)
Chairman, Judiciary Committee
TOPICS:
Hurricane Katrina: The Recovery Continues. We will get an update on the very latest developments in an exclusive interview with the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin.
What will the lessons of Katrina mean for future disaster planning and evacuations and has poverty reemerged as a critical issue in American politics? We’ll explore the many facets of this disaster with part-time New Orleans resident John M. Barry, author of “Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America;” and the man who repeatedly warned officials at all levels of government about the catastrophic effects of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans, Dr. Ivor van Heerden, Director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes and the Deputy Director of L.S.U.’s Hurricane Center. (Emphases mine.)
Then, we turn to the future of the Supreme Court. In an exclusive interview, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), will preview the Supreme Court chief justice confirmation hearings of Judge John Roberts that he will call to order on Monday morning.
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◊ by suspect device @dKos
Originally posted ◊ at Suspect Device Blog
You may have seen mention of the “Hurricane Pam” exercise in press coverage of Louisiana’s emergency preparedness, or lack thereof. I used to work for IEM and was at the Hurricane Pam exercise.
As with most IEM projects, the Hurricane Pam exercise was put together at the last minute, in a blind animal panic with no time for refinement, testing, or subtlety, but it still was a remarkable and bold idea.
[…] So: Louisiana did have a hurricane plan (pdf file), but was devising a new one, to be based on recommendation from the people who would actually be doing the work. The need to evacuate people from impact areas, including those without transportation or the means to obtain it, was discussed, despite media assertions to the contrary.
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FEMA Region VI related contract firms ::
Established in 1956, Dewberry is a multidisciplinary planning, engineering, and design firm, employing more than 1,600 individuals. As FEMA’s largest contractor
URS Corporation provides planning, engineering, architecture and applied science to hundreds of government agencies and private industrial and commercial companies worldwide. The company has more than 26,000 employees.
▼ ▼ ▼ Could also try my diary ▼ ▼ ▼
In line with all you say, here it is almost 2 full weeks after the storm hit and not one single national news organization has even mentioned the Dept. of Homeland Security’s “National Response Plan”,(link here,pdf.), let alone ask the question of Chertoff or Brown or Bush; “Why didn’t DHS/FEMA follow their own damn plan?”
The aggresive dereliction of duty demonstrated by the MSM plays a huge part in the destruction of our society and the undermining of the basic principles upon which the country was founded.
What I really want to know is where the hell are our Dem leaders? MIA…they should be participating on every GD talk show this morning.
democratic leader..I’m starting to think that’s an oxymoron…along the lines of military intelligence, waffle iron, etc…
I would vote for a (Democratic) waffle iron if it was running in a primary against almost any one of our so-called “Democratic leaders”.
Barack Obama is supposed to be on “This Week with George S.”–and I hope Howard will be turning up somewhere . . .
When Larry King interviewed singer Macy Gray last nite, who is helping out at the Astrodome by adopting families and setting them up in apartments w/ furniture etc, she was wearing this beautiful, black “Barack Obama 2008” t shirt.
I asked this question a week ago. The dems seem to really are MIA…they are simply sitting back except for a few voices here and there. In my opinion they all should be out there in the media and screaming the gosple!!!! It is shameful of them all to be so silent.
I really hope that before long they voice their opinions, for if they dont they all need not be in our government. As far as I am concerned, they have been quite for way toooooo long on many issues.
When are we going to finally open our eyes to see that this party has been co opted by the Republicans.
Democrats can not get ahead… not because we don’t go to church as much as Republicans, or that we believe in the right for women to make their own medical descions or that we are against an immoral war…
Democrats can not get ahead because we have to many backstabbing Republicans in Democratic clothing weaking the party from inside… ie DLC and NDN.
This is why no one is covering the security issue… because it would actual “hurt” the Republicans….mustn’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Political ambition, the appetite for power and money, leaves precious little room for principle. The DLC gang have learned the Repub strategy for exploiting the system, selling out the public interest and national interest for the sake of funding. This is why they’re silent. They’re counting money and potential votes that money can buy. They put themselves first, far ahead of what’s good for the country.
And as for the real Dems, except for Dean they don’t get invited onto the talking head shows. Anyone speaking about issues from a fact-based perspective is excluded from the talking head gasbag circuit.
We need to dump them all.
JOHN M. BARRY was disappointing on MTP…and he lied. Saying that both disasters in NOLA tore down the barriers between Blacks and whites…when in fact.
We see the same thing happening:
NOLA 1927:
NOLA 2005:
“We shut down the bridge,” Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International.
….”If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged.”
[According to an eyewitness account from a pair of San Francisco paramedics who tried to leave the city], As they made their way to the bridge in order to leave the city “armed Gretna sheriffs (sic) formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads.”
Members of the group nonetheless approached the police lines, and “questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge … They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City.
“These were code words,” the paramedics wrote, “for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.”
It is clear from Russert that the federal gov wants to federalize the reparations in the worse way … I think that is where Breaux will come in …. another Republican in Democratic clothing.
I was dissappointed that Nagin would not back lanco…because they are really on the same side. This administration is very good at playing divide and conquer.
Nagin is a corporate millionaire Republican who changed party affiliation prior to winning the Mayoral election. He publicly supported Blanco’s repub opponent in the governor’s race and evidently has some sort of grudge against Blanco.
Nagin is an opportunistic backstabber.
He’s worse than a DINO. He’s not a Democrat at all.
What he did to Blanco this morning was inexcusable for any Democrat of any stripe.
Yes! He’s headed into the Joe Lieberman/Zell Miller category of fraudulent shitbird Dems.
He only switched to the Dem party to become mayor. He worked on Bush’s campaign in 2000 … he loathed having to work on Kerry’s campaign (well, so did I, but at least I have a Democratic voting track record). He campaigned AGAINST Blanco’s run for governor. Fuck him.
Russert didn’t need any DHS/FEMA apologists. He did the job for them, grilling Nagin about his putative failures while raising no serious challenges or specific questions about DHS/FEMA incompetence and failures.
I’m no particular fan of Nagin, and I imagine he could have exercised more focus and effort in advance of this storm, but the fact remains that the prtocols for major disasters such as this elevate DHS/FEMA to the position of overall responsibility for disasters such as this as soon as they’re notified and empowered by the president after the state’s request is submitted. Russert displayed no interest in pointing this simple fact out at all, and Nagin didn’t do a particularly good job of bringing it up either.
Ultimately the Russert/Nagin dialogue will do more harm than good. It helps empower the Feds in their effort to cast all the blame on the locals, and helps stifle any other voices of reason who might come forward to challenge that position.
Russert is a stooge. I had no confidence in him that he’d address this all in a responsible way, and sadly I was confirmed in my belief.
I have to agree… they pulled Russert back on the reservation…