How about instead of criticising
you help out :tisk:

I've been involved with the emergency services here ( Western Australia )
and it doesn't take a very big event to turn
all disaster planning upside down
you really have no idea of the logistics and planning involved
difficulties with communications
difficulties with supply

For example
my wife used to be a nurse in a city of about 800,000
a car crash involving 10 casulties was considered
a disaster by the authorities, because of the logistics involved

its all too easy to say why dont they do this or that
anybody can do that
better to be part of the solution than part of the problem

floppy

Too right about plans going wrong..!

But to equate the chaos of an 'accident' as u describe, which
is totally random and unexpected, with what has happened
in the case of the situation in New Orleans....

C'mon mate.

I've been involved with disaster planning
and command & control
mostly on the radio side of things

One exercise we did
was to evacuate a town of a couple of thousand
it was a real eye opener
you just have no idea of the logistics involved
and that assumes you have a co-operative population

And usually the population is not co-operative
and from watching the TV tonight
armed gangs going around shooting and raping
doesnt look like a very friendly bunch

And I stand by my example
I didn't equate the two - please don't misquote me
I used the example to demonstrate that
it takes very little to overwhelm the emergency services
and a disaster of this magnitude
will take weeks to bring under operational control

and I stand by the main point of my post
any body can criticise from the sidelines
if anyone believes they can do the job better
maybe they should step up and volunteer

floppy

although its about cuba , a smaller country and a poorer one , but theres certain kind of "capital" that people might have left out , a kind of "civil denfence" , much affect the lower strata of any given society , i guess in the US case right now , definately those so-called "thugs on the streets" are among them ...
had heard about the evacuation and the "close off" and the moving in of troops , "watchout for the comming bloody red sky my friends , with gun and breads in your hands , stay on tight to your brother's wife and his kids " , sincerely hope that these wont happen at all means ...

QUOTE ::

Katrina: anecdote on civil defense in Cuba

Ned Sublette says:
I just spoke to Nelson Valdes, a walking encyclopedia of knowledge about cuba, and asked him how civil defense is conducted in cuba. he ticked it off while i listened with my left hand and typed with my right. here are the notes i took:

* * *

less than 2 months ago, cuba was able to move 1.7 people on short notice.

the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. people know ahead of time where they are to go.

they come to your door and knock, and tell you, evacuation is coming, then they come and tell you, now.

if no electricity, they have runners who communicate from a headquarters to central locations what is to be done.

the country's leaders go on TV and take charge. but not only the leaders are speaking. the TV weatherpeople are knowledgeable. and the population is well educated about hurricanes.

they not only evacuate. it's arranged beforehand where they will go, who has family where. not only pickup is organized, delivery of people is organized.

merely sticking them in a stadium is unthinkable. shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. they have family doctors in cuba (!), who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know who, for example, needs insulin.

if they evacuate to a countryside high school -- a last resort -- they have dormitories there.

they also have veterinarians and they evacuate animals. they begin evacuating immediately, and also evacuate TV sets and refrigerators, so that people aren't relucatant to leave because people might steal their stuff.

it's not throwing money at the problem. it's not financial capital, it's social capital. the u.s. in this sense has zero social capital.

dealing with hurricanes in cuba, as compared with how it's done in the u.s., is similar to the differences in how they deal with medicine. it's not reactive; it's proactive. they act as early as possible. the u.s. doesn't have civil defense, it has civil *reaction.*

//END QUOTE

source :: http://boingboing.net/

its also a different government and a much smaller country. In cuba they can be like "Government demands that you all move and we are going to use federal troops to do it." In the US you cannot do that. We have armed gangs on the street because everyone was busy rescueing people instead of keeping order.

And the for the most part Florida which gets hit hard every year its very rare now to see a high death toll or any death at all from a result of a hurricane nor do you see them talking about armed gangs and what not in florida as well.

This case IMO is simply the exception. Anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.

quote :: "Anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong."

yup , thats a fact we have to accept , for the good or for the bad , although countries and states are different in themselves , even among the "similar" kind , as long as things arent "get in the way" before or "just happenning" during a crisis , take china during the sars out break , well functioning hospitals were erected within weeks on the "outskirt" of villages , towns and cities ,with an army of contractors , workers , enginneers from the civilian side , hope that in the US right now , those from the top dont just spinning while others are dying or are "trapped" into that "Anything that could have gone wrong" felony ...

"work hard and strive for your living and you will be successfull"

I was very shocked to see the pictures on the TV following the New Orleans disaster - but I was more shocked to see the reactions of the people there.

One of the nice things about living in Wales is that we don't get any kind of extreme natural disasters, although we do get a bit of flooding now and again.

What shocked me about the NO event is the whole looting thing - what kind of society has the resources to send guards to prevent crime, but no medical help to give to the survivors?

I know if I was in their shoes, I would have left the city and found another to recover in. The way its being shown on TV, it makes the survivors look like lemmings, not getting any help, but not proactivley helping themselves.

Before you angrly post back without your thinkiing heads on - I am 6000 miles away, I can only comment on what I have seen on TV - but this is my impression.

I hope the US government realises that if they can't even look after their own people, they should think twice before deciding that their role is to protect the population of the world from Evil!

For the benefit of non-USAians perhaps unfamiliar with the US and the National Guard--the US armed forces have several branches, one of which is "The National Guard". The nominal role of the National Guard is to protect the US from military invasion. However, since the US hasn't been invaded in a while, its role has evolved into one of primarily providing disaster relief (within the US). In recent decades, they have done an amazing job of providing swift and efficient disaster relief.

Unfortunately, for the last couple years, the National Guard has largely been deployed in Iraq, for reasons which I hope are relatively obvious. This is NOT a normal function of the National Guard, which is supposed to operate within the nation.

For example, a few decades ago during Vietnam, joining the National Guard was essentially a way of avoiding the draft (i.e. conscription). Thus, someone joining, say, the Air National Guard, was guaranteed not to be sent overseas to Vietnam.

Very keen observations, Olli, very keen.

What those trapped people needed most from the outset, was strong leadership. Not food and water. If thier mayor, or police chief - SOMEONE known to them as a person of authority would have taken firm control (yes, and risked thier life, perhaps) of the situation, things would've been decidedly different. I've been in situations where things have become similarly chaotic; (nothing close to what happened there, though.).. I've seen people panic, and that panic becomes self-cycling and grows so fast. But i've also seen what can happen if a strong personality calmly puts things into perspective and organizes people to tasks, putting them to work at positive, constructive things. People will naturally find purpose and stop breeding fear - and actually stop the 'every man for himself' mentality that gripped the city early on. There's so many things that could have been done - separation of men from women and children for example. Forming teams to gather supplies and attempt to gain communication, information, etc. Getting capable men and women to form protection barriers against thugs. All kinds of things.

Your perception from the television of people doing nothing for themselves was spot-on. I don't claim to know what prevailed at the superdome or the convention center but it sure looked like nothing close to a 'leader' emerged in any of the venues that people had been told to use as shelters.

Shame on the Mayor and the police. To simply run about in squads, and hide in the Police station. To fear the night and run from thugs. To simply hope and wait for help to come; leave bodies in the street and defecate all over the place. My god, they made their own hell. No wonder things got so bad.

Don't u think there was enough food and drink available in that city early on to keep 50,000 people alive and comfortable for three days if someone, ANYONE would have stepped up?


However, regarding your last point; i think you're out of line on that, and that will be proven out.

Those are just terrible misperceptions and mischaracterizations of what the New Orleans Police have been doing. They have been doing their very best from the start to concentrate on SAVING LIVES, not enforcing laws or running away from thugs. It's only when the lawlessness started to disrupt the rescue efforts that the Mayor was forced to transfer some cops to law enforcement duties.

The real tragedy is simply the lack of sufficient resources in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. When it comes to rescue and relief efforts for floods and hurricanes, the Louisiana National Guard is the BEST IN THE WORLD. They've proven it time and time again. Unfortunately, most of them are in Iraq, instead of here at home where they could have gone in and gotten the job done pronto.

Now that the National Guard has arrived on the scene, "The cavalry has arrived", so to speak. They're bringing oodles of vehicles that can handle the terrain and trained personel who can get the job done. They won't be disrupted by some two-bit thugs--right now they're used to dealing with plenty worse! But they could have been here days ago, if it weren't for unfortunate circumstances...

These so-called "leaders" should stop being the stupid actors they are and ease matters so the proper things can be done. Politicians should be restricted from appearing in the media so they and prove that they do it right on the real life. They waste so much time on problems that aren't that problems and things happen and all they worry is about their stupid public image.

I agree with F0ul_Olli above. It is the people that should be saved in the first place. Law can't enforced by shoot-to-kill. I can't understand why these folks aren't being spit and taken out of the way

This article makes interesting reading

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...42805#continue

floppy

Let's take a look at how things work for a minute though..

The responsibility to be prepared for and to manage disasters is *AT THE LOCAL LEVEL*, not at the federal level.

For many years, Louisiana and New Orleans officials have said that they have emergency preparedness plans in place, including plans for full evacuation of the city. What the media is not telling you is that 75% of the population left before the hurricane hit. The other 25% would not or could not evacuate. The question that needs to be asked of the mayor of New Orleans (if he would shut his hole for just 1 minute) is why did they not put these emergency plans into effect and evacuate this relatively small amount of people? I would also pose that question to the governor of Louisiana if she would stop crying for the cameras.

Now I'll be the first to admit that Pres Bush has looked like a deer in the headlights (until today) but in his defense I don't think he was prepared for the utter lack of action by the local officials. Let's get real for a moment shall we? The Feds have had to play a lot of catch-up.

I am just amazed at the images coming from New Orleans and I cannot fathom all these people yelling for help as they are looting TV sets from the local Walmarts.

My next question is for the media. As you are sitting in your confortable TV studio feigning angst for ratings, what are you actually doing to help the situation? Absolutely nothing.

It's curious to me why these people looting TV sets think they need it.
It's surreal even on TV.

Any way, the material infrastructure comes 2nd. It's almost the same as the tsunamis last year where governments were busy counting/burying the dead instead of saving the living specially if replicas were expected.

Local government is the hardest. The federal government is supposed to channel resources efectively in a nation and it's about priorities.

Only to a certain extent. Some disasters are so large that they are honestly national level problems. If any disaster qualifies, then this one surely does!

I don't know what media you're referring to, but all of the news media I've listened to/watched has made the facts abundantly clear. Most of the population left due to the MANDATORY evacuation order. The remaining population for the most part had no means to leave. The existing plans assumed that most people would have their own transportation. This was a flaw in the plans.

And the remaining number of people is not a "relatively small amount". In a city of half a million, the remaining population who didn't have the means to evacuate themselves was still over a hundred thousand people. That's an incredible challenge to evacuate, especially given the short amount of time there was available.

Oh, I get it. Defend Bush and attack all Democrats at any cost, never mind how much sense it may or may not make.

The local officials have been doing a lot--it may not have been enough and there may have been mistakes, but by no means can it be reasonably called "lack of action".

Now this just infuriates me. You know the thousands of people suffering and dying in 3rd world conditions in the New Orlean's Convention Center? The media ****ing SAVED THEIR LIVES. Actual press reporters actually on the ground reported first hand on their appaling conditions. Without those constant reports the officials and organizations involved in the relief/rescue effort wouldn't have done anything about it--I hear them being interviewed and as late as yesterday they were still utterly clueless about the critical situation. It took badgering by hardnosed media interviewers to get them off their *sses and divert some food/water from the Superdome to the Convention Center (just 10 blocks away--within walking distance!).

In case you hadn't noticed, there was a massive communications problem in the area. Rescuers with cell phones weren't able to communicate with each other. There were massive gaps in coverage on the ground as a result. A lot of the time, in a lot of places, the media was the only source of information! These are reporters who have covered disasters in other parts of the world; reporters who have been in warzones, armed with nothing more than a camera. I bet they could teach you a thing or two about bravery.

Now that the National Guard has entered the ground in force, the communications situation will quickly change. They have far better command&control structure and use military communications equipment which can operate regardless of infrastructure breakdown. But the media is still going to be there, helping and doing their part.