[extropy-chat] Getting AId to people in need

[Samantha Atkins]

On Sep 1, 2005, at 11:32 PM, J. Andrew Rogers wrote:

>
> A few points that you may have missed:
>
> 1) The Federal government has very limited jurisdiction in this  
> case, and
> the Feds have been very proactive to the extent they could be; they
> pre-positioned most of their assets a couple days before the  
> storm.  The
> truly grotesque failure of leadership and planning falls squarely  
> on the
> State of Louisiana, which not only shows clear evidence of having  
> no plan
> whatsoever but also is sitting on their asses rather than pushing the
> necessary buttons required to get more Federal resources in there.
> Remember, the State of Louisiana is a sovereign entity, and the  
> Federal
> government has very limited ability to act in their jurisdiction  
> without
> official permission by the governor.  Unfortunately, the governor  
> is WAY out
> of her league, and clearly lost.
>

As I understand it it is very much the job of FEMA and the National  
Guard to coordinate large scale crisis response.  What is in the way  
of that happening?  I don't think they are waiting on some missing  
local permission.  So what has broken down there?  Surely it cant' be  
that hard to evacuate the rest of New Orleans and get the people  
water and food in the meantime.   I see no real justification for  
your casting blame on the Louisiana leadership.  In any case I am not  
real interested in casting blame right now.  I just want the rest of  
the people evacuated and their needs taken care of NOW.   This  
sovereignty argument seems like  a bad joke of an excuse.  The Feds  
have been running roughshod over state's rights.  FEMA has a mandate  
to supersede and coordinate local efforts in an emergency anyway as I  
understand it.  There is no reason whatsoever to believe the governor  
would do less than beg for all possible help in any case.

> 2) The logistical infrastructure has been so thoroughly destroyed  
> that there
> is extremely limited ability to deliver support.  Dropping water  
> and MREs
> does not do much good if half the place is under a few meters of  
> water.
> Can't drive in, can't boat in, and can't fly in, for a country- 
> sized region.
> They are using what logistical assets they can reasonably mobilize  
> under the
> circumstances.  Anybody expecting more has utterly unrealistic  
> notions about
> the nature of logistics under the circumstances.

Are you saying that we do not have the means to lower pallets of  
goods from military helicopters exactly where we want them?  We  
surely can fly in and we can boat most of the way in.  Are you saying  
that marines can't manage to get into a disaster zone in America but  
can kick bitt anywhere and everywhere else in the world?   I do not  
believe this.  Besides. A lot of the people are in very packed and  
accessible places.  Even they are not being remotely taken care of.   
What is the excuse for that?

>
> 3) What transportation elements can operate in this environment  
> have a very
> low carrying capacity that is entirely inadequate for the sheer  
> number of
> people the have to support.  If there were only thousands of people  
> left
> behind, it would have been less of an issue, but there are hundreds of
> thousands of people spread over a vast area.  Massive airdrops are not
> granular enough, as there is no distribution channel within the  
> city once
> you drop a pallet somewhere.

They are a start and a lot better than sitting back and letting the  
people go berserk on top of all their other losses.  Dropping a  
pallet with some easy way to find it at least puts resources on the  
ground and is an improvement.

>
> 4)  As further evidence, the disparities in competence and reaction  
> between
> affected States, notably Mississippi and Louisiana, is stark.   
> Mississippi
> is just about the poorest State in the country and took the  
> hurricane head
> on, thoroughly annihilating a fair portion of that State, but the
> authorities took charge of the situation very quickly.  Louisiana  
> did not
> prepare ahead of time, and then sat around with a thumb up their  
> ass after
> the fact.  Looting in Mississippi was squashed with extreme  
> prejudice early
> on.

New Orleans is a very different beast than most of Mississippi.  It  
is basically a bowl protected from its lake and the Ocean by the  
sides of the bowl.  In a major storm surge or breach the bowl can  
start filling with water flooding much of the city.  I do not know of  
an equally fragile large metropolitan area in Mississippi that faces  
the same challenges.

>
>
> The biggest villains in this whole mess is the State of Louisiana,  
> and its
> leaders.  Criminal incompetence and negligence, amplified by a genuine
> crisis.  Heads are going to roll in the that State when this is all  
> over.

I wish we would stop looking for who to blame and get on with saving  
lives.   I wish we would study all the things that went wrong to  
build better safeguards and procedures for the next crises.  And it  
is certainly true that all the states have received a lot less  
federal dollars.  Their budgets are seriously strained.   
Infrastructure needs are being slighted all over the country.   And  
yes some of that is the fault of this federal administration and the  
asinine war on terror and especially the war in Iraq.

- samantha