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RAY DAVIES ADDS TO KATRINA RESPONSE CRITICISM
Ray Davies knows a thing or two about New Orleans, as that's where he was shot and wound up spending time there getting his health back. His criticism isn't reserved for George Bush - although there's an element of that - but for the way the city had been left to rot slowly for years before:
"Why didn't the people who are supposed to be experts on this stuff react sooner? The problem we all know by now is money. Budgets. America's preoccupation with wars overseas. Nobody cares about the poor. Etc, etc," he said.
"It was clear to me ... that something disastrous was on the cards."
During another trip, he was driven to see the pump houses, and noticed that "the whole infrastructure was very fragile".
"The levees seemed insufficient for the amount of water surrounding the city. The roads were uneven and the tap water pressure in most houses was weak," he said. "The whole system appeared improvised."
The singer, who had friends in New Orleans when Katrina struck, added that the city is no longer just an American responsibility.
He said: "Whatever we think of George W Bush, we cannot take it out on the poor and needy in Louisiana and Mississippi. He won't be there in four years. They will."
Meanwhile, there's been no evidence of a national consumer backlash against Kanye West for his NBC telethon Bush critique (or, for those of you convinced he's a moron "his rant"). Far from it, in fact: His album Late Registration has debuted at number one on the US chart; with 800,000 sales that's over double the first week take of his previous album. That's greater than 600,000 more than the second place album, Tony Yayo's Thoughts of Predicate Felon.
Which, of course, will lead to West being accused of publicity stuntage.
As the clean up slowly gets underway, more musicians are sharing their stories of what happened to them. Juvenile's St Tammany Parish house and all his possessions were lost; more grimly, many of his relatives are still missing.
Chopper, who'd been part of Puff Daddy's Making The Band reality team, lost his house; two of his school friends died:
"Two of my high school friends drowned and a couple of my homies got shot out by the police," he said. "I ain't gonna lie, it's a hurtin' feelin'. It's hard for me to cry, but I shed a tear with this one."
And 3 Doors Down - from Biloxi - have had homes destroyed and are still waiting for news of relatives. The Republican band are, like most strict Republicans, trying to move attention away from what went wrong:
"I think we should focus on salvaging the city and worry about pointing fingers later," he said. "We just need to get them out of there. It's a really difficult situation. I don't think people realize how many bridges are in the South and how many bridges go into all those cities. Biloxi, New Orleans, all of the bridges [going in] are gone. It's hard to maneuver in New Orleans anyway. It's just an old-designed city."
Ah, so it was the bridges being down that meant FEMA couldn't think of anything better to do with volunteer firemen than tell them to give out leaflets with a telephone number on or crowd around in the background of Bush's photoshoots, was it? It was the tight corners of the French Quarter that left Mayor Dayley of Chicago frustrated that nobody showed any interest in his offers of help? It was the old architecture of the city that persuaded the government it should lock people in the Conference Centre in the dark, and refuse to let people out the city - or rescuers in?
3 comments:
From ABC News:
In New Orleans, those in peril and those in power have pointed the finger squarely at the federal government for the delayed relief effort.
But experts say when natural disasters strike, it is the primary responsibility of state and local governments — not the federal government — to respond.
New Orleans' own comprehensive emergency plan raises the specter of "having large numbers of people … stranded" and promises "the city … will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas."
"Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves," the plan states.
When Hurricane Katrina hit, however, that plan was not followed completely.
Instead of sending city buses to evacuate those who could not make it out on their own, people in New Orleans were told to go to the Superdome and the Convention Center, where no one provided sufficient sustenance or security.
***
There's no question the federal government plays a major role in disaster relief. But federal officials say in order to get involved, they must first be asked to do so by state officials.
As one FEMA official told ABC News, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco failed to submit a request for help in a timely manner.
Shortly before Katrina hit, she sent President Bush a request asking for shelter and provisions, but didn't specifically ask for help with evacuations. One aide to the governor told ABC News today Blanco thought city officials were taking care of the evacuation."
Here's an academic study from last year of the response to Hurricane Ivan:
"For those without means, the medically challenged, residents without personal transportation, and the homeless, evacuation requires significant assistance. The medically challenged often rely on life support equipment and are in such fragile states of health that they can only be moved short distances to medically equipped shelters. While a large storm-resistant structure with appropriate equipment has yet to be constructed or retrofitted, the Superdome was used to shelter nonevacuees during Ivan.
Residents who did not have personal transportation were unable to evacuate even if they wanted to. Approximately 120,000 residents (51,000 housing units x 2.4 persons/unit) do not have cars. A proposal made after the evacuation for Hurricane Georges to use public transit buses to assist in their evacuation out of the city was not implemented for Ivan. If Ivan had struck New Orleans directly it is estimated that 40-60,000 residents of the area would have perished."
This year, Plaquemines Parish, where there was a mandatory evacuation 48 hours before Katrina hit, has had few fatalities.
Do I think the FEMA flier story is disgusting? I sure do. But the same story contains the following:
"'They've got people here who are search-and-rescue certified, paramedics, haz-mat certified,' said a Texas firefighter. 'We're sitting in here having a sexual-harassment class while there are still [victims] in Louisiana who haven't been contacted yet.'"
Do you think the requirement of a sexual-harassment class was a Republican idea?
I'm also disgusted by what the Red Cross reports:
"Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
"The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city."
That's Gov. Blanco keeping the Red Cross away from the Superdome after the Mayor dumped the city's poor there. And that the convention center, which wasn't a part of the plan.
BTW, Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco can't even agree on evacuation at this late date.
Even Ray Davies is pointing to problems with the entire infrastructure of the city, which is again primarily a city and state responsibility.
As for Davies' concern about budgets, there's today's Washington Post:
"In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.
Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.
***
"But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects. Strock has also said that the marsh-restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina's storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands."
I'm not for moving attention away from what went wrong, but I'm for looking at everything that went wrong, rather than simply assume it's all Bush's fault, regardless of what the facts and expert opinion show.
On the other hand, I see that Kanye has climbed 19-1 on the Hot 100. Result!
And again, Karl, I agree with you: it's not all Bush's fault. There have been failings at all levels - even at personal levels, where people have made decisions which place them at risk rather than taking the responsibility to get themselves to a place of safety. There are a whole load of butts to be kicked, and we need an independent enquiry. (That's independent, not one headed up by Bush)
But that doesn't mean Bush shouldn't be attacked for putting a man who knew about running horses in charge of FEMA; about moving the focus of crisis planning from the real and ever-present risk of natural disaster to the boogerman of international terrorists.
Maybe Louisiana did get more federal support than California. You know why that might be? Louisiana gets direct hits from hurricanes all the time and large portions of its population live below sealevel. Whereas in California, the main risk is from earthquake, which calls for a different set of solutions - not major public works, but individual buildings being constructed to the a high quality. You know what else? California is a relatively rich state, and has a larger populaton, so is able to raise a lot more of its funding locally than Louisiana is. So, that's a bit of a red herring, because at the bottom of all the figures, there's no denying that Bush cut back the levee programme just when it was needed most - just as he revoked the protection for the wetlands which led to their development and worsened the effects of the flooding.
Perhaps sexual harrassment training was a Democratic measure - although, frankly, both sides in US politics deserve to be censured for the legal-action-happy culture which makes this sort of time-waster appear. And I'm guessing the reason why the Texans were being given lessons in not touching boobies is because they didn't have anything else to do, what with being told by FEMA not to go in to the city.
And, yes, yes, yes: they could have used the public buses. (Except, of course, they would still have needed everyone to get to a central point, like the superdome - unless you think there should have been a bus driving round, street-by-street, collecting people?) But where were they meant to have gone to, if they had picked people up? Without a central decision, central leadership, why put people on a bus when you've got nowhere to take them?
The quote from the Red Cross comes from the last 24 hours, doesn't it, and so isn't really anything to do with the question of reactions in the first few days.
While Old People's Homes were deciding which half to take to safety, and which thirty old people would have to stay and drown in their beds, George Bush was attending fundraisers, doing goofy photo ops with guitars and - eventually - flying over the city in a aeroplane (His mother says that people had told her that this made them feel better - how would they even have known it was Air Force One?).
Tony Blair has apologised to the Britons who got caught up in the aftermath - even although he had no authority to do anything, even though it wasn't his personal responsiblity, even although the department who could have helped them wasn't able to, because they were being blocked by an American authority from entering the area to rescue the Britains. He apologised,. because Britains in trouble abroad expect to be assisted by their government, and although he didn't fail personally, the government he leads was unable to help them.
Has George Bush said "sorry" yet?
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