It’s beyond words…
I’ve just seen a rerun of the interview of Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish, in which he breaks down and tells the horrible story of an aide’s mother that drowned Friday night, four days after the storm.
“I want to give you one last story and I’ll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me.
“The guy who runs this building I’m in, Emergency Management, he’s responsible for everything.
“His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?†and he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you.â€
“Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday.
“Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday.
“Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday.
“Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday… and she drowned Friday night.
“She drowned Friday night! [Sobbing]
“Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us…
More quotes from the interview, detailing how FEMA actively worsened their situation and accusing the federal goverment of murder can be found here.
As for the effect Bush is having on the disaster’s aftermath, well… there have been accusations that his visit on Friday was set to a completely fake back-drop of rescue efforts, levee repairs, and equipment that was in critical shortage in the city proper. The most damning thing I have yet seen is this one, however, again found via Eschaton:
ZDF (German TV) showed how , once Bush was done speaking and the American news cameras were off the air, the food distribution center was dissassembled, and the victims in that area were left to fend for themselves once more.
This is simply obscene.
Comment by James — September 4, 2005 at 21:22
I have never felt more ashamed to be an American then right now. Between Iraq, the tax cuts for the wealthy and now this obscene federal response to the Katrina response I can’t take it anymore.
Comment by Mathieu — September 4, 2005 at 21:27
It’s enough to make anyone ashamed of being human, James.
Comment by ddj — September 4, 2005 at 22:36
The feds find themselves in one hell of a position. They were completely disregarded by local and state officials in the three days prior to the storm, and are now expected to take the brunt of the anger. As of the Friday prior, the feds wanted to take over the process; they were rebuffed by the Governor who didn’t want to cede control. Nagin didn’t call for a full evac until Sunday despite two days worth of protestations.
There is plenty of blame to go around. Sure, I fully agree that a lot of the blame falls on the feds for poor action post-strike. But some also belongs to the lionized locals who could have made the situation afterwards quite a bit easier to manage. Each city in this country – through the legal authority of the state, not the feds – gets to write and execute its own evac plan. That there were still hundreds of thousands in the city when the storm struck was not the fault of FEMA. Now the feds have to clean up two messes instead of one.
Comment by ddj — September 4, 2005 at 22:47
Gosh…sorry for venting. It’s just that I was in FL for a bad hurricane once and was ordered to evacuate well ahead of time…and was literally swearing at the TV on the Friday prior because there wasn’t an evac. I guess you could say I’ve been angry for 10 days now…
Comment by Mathieu — September 5, 2005 at 9:52
DDJ, the whole mess is sickening.
The fact that evacuation plans for NoLa didn’t take into consideration the fact that 25% of the population was below the poverty line and would have to rely on someone else providing the means to escape is at least partly the city’s fault.
The incredible lack of coordination since then between city, state and federal levels is clearly everyone’s responsibility, although the coordination role is explicitly FEMA’s, and therefore Homeland Security’s.
The personal behaviour of President Bush, and his cabinet, is particularly distressing, tho, uncaring, disconnected and arrogant,
In the UK, we would already have at least one or two resignations amongst them, simply for taking so long to react personally!
Comment by GPV — September 11, 2005 at 20:23
German medias are pretty smart, I’m wondering how they got the idea to wait until shrub has finished throwing up on the mike. Accidente!!!
That’s parallelic history alright.
Comment by Mathieu — September 12, 2005 at 1:35
Funny how it wasn’t reported here, too.