Superb Work, Thank You!

Superb Work
Disaster Response Teams
A Big Thank You From America

As long as I read, hear or see, the MSM indulging in misinformation about the response of the Federal Government to Hurricane Katrina, I will keep hammering back with the truth.

If you were vacationing in a resort town on the ocean somewhere and a hurricane was predicted to make landfall in 48 hours, who would you rather have overseeing the evacuation and preparation for the disaster? The choices are below in bold font.

Please choose only one of these two choices.

New Orleans Mayor, C. Ray Nagin in concert with Louisiana Governor of Kathleen Babineaux Blanco?
Biloxi Mayor, A. J. Holloway in concert with Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour?


The preparation and response to hurricane Katrina was not the same by these two states.

Mississippi we now find out, was where most of the physical damage, and human damage was done by ‘Katrina 2005’. New Orleans was the center of attention by the MSM for over a week. In the mean time Mississippi was putting it all back together. While fingers were still being pointed by those in New Orleans, (Bush didn’t, racists, slow, stupid, and more) which suffered less, from the hurricane, Mississippians were sweating to put there ravaged cities back together.
Yes, New Orleans suffered greatly in the aftermath of the Hurricane. About a day after the hurricane roared through the coastal region of New Orleans, devastation on a large scale happened when the levees protecting the Party City built below sea level gave way. Can you say, “Hadn’t the city and state been aware of what would happen if a category 4 or 5 hurricane visited New Orleans? The damage that occurred after Katrina can be attributed to 60 years of Democratic Rule, and the neglect of the one biggest threats to the state.
The federal government spent more money on flood control in Louisiana, than it did in any other state. Go check out the annual budgets of the Army Corps of Engineers. Not too much before this tragedy, the Louisiana State Dept. of Homeland Defense had been accused of diverting federal money into the pockets of Local Democratic Politicians.

If you want to get a complete picture of Hurricane Katrina, before and after…do a little research.

Google the following 4 names; but read more than the first few results, which are always managed by GoogleInc. Read through 3 or 4 pages of hits, you’ll come to the same conclusion as I did.

New Orleans Mayor, C. Ray Nagin
Louisiana Governor of Kathleen Babineaux Blanco
Biloxi Mayor, A. J. Holloway
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour

I am reprinting this article, it needs to be read.

Jack Kelly: No shame

The federal response to Katrina was not as portrayed

Sunday, September 11, 2005

It is settled wisdom among journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow.
"Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever during a dire national emergency," wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in a somewhat more strident expression of the conventional wisdom.
But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth.
Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:
"The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne."
For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.
Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.
So they libel as a "national disgrace" the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.
I write this column a week and a day after the main levee protecting New Orleans breached. In the course of that week:

*More than 32,000 people have been rescued, many plucked from rooftops by Coast Guard helicopters.
*The Army Corps of Engineers has all but repaired the breaches and begun pumping water out of New Orleans.
*Shelter, food and medical care have been provided to more than 180,000 refugees.

Journalists complain that it took a whole week to do this. A former Air Force logistics officer had some words of advice for us in the Fourth Estate on his blog, Moltenthought:
"We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on 'Star Trek' in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grown-ups actually engaged in the recovery effort were studying engineering.
"The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network.
"You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets (in the affected areas) since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region.
"No amount of yelling, crying and mustering of moral indignation will change any of the facts above."
"You cannot just snap your fingers and make the military appear somewhere," van Steenwyk said.
Guardsmen need to receive mobilization orders; report to their armories; draw equipment; receive orders and convoy to the disaster area. Guardsmen driving down from Pennsylvania or Navy ships sailing from Norfolk can't be on the scene immediately.
Relief efforts must be planned. Other than prepositioning supplies near the area likely to be afflicted (which was done quite efficiently), this cannot be done until the hurricane has struck and a damage assessment can be made. There must be a route reconnaissance to determine if roads are open, and bridges along the way can bear the weight of heavily laden trucks.
And federal troops and Guardsmen from other states cannot be sent to a disaster area until their presence has been requested by the governors of the afflicted states.
Exhibit A on the bill of indictment of federal sluggishness is that it took four days before most people were evacuated from the Louisiana Superdome.
The levee broke Tuesday morning. Buses had to be rounded up and driven from Houston to New Orleans across debris-strewn roads. The first ones arrived Wednesday evening. That seems pretty fast to me.
A better question -- which few journalists ask -- is why weren't the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck?

Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1476).

Great Article, and I now take my truck driving hat off to all those that responded to this disaster. I am sick of the so called journalists covering this disaster. Negative, negative, and more negative reports.

When will some smart businessman or businesswoman realize that America needs, and is ready to embrace real Journalism? If I was a millionaire, I’d be giving America what it really needs, the truth in Journalism. And I'd get even richer, because America wants to have fair and honest journalism to read. If a national newspaper (along the USAToday style, but without the liberal baggage) could capture a readership equal to the amount of cancelled newspaper subscriptions of the last 6 years, it would be an overnight success. And I would subscribe to it.