I’ve resisted assigning blame for the Hurricane Katrina disaster because I don’t believe kneejerk and partisan responses, especially after a tragedy, are appropriate. I question the humanity of imbeciles who, within a day of Katrina’s assault, used the devastation and death to make political points against President George W. Bush and the United States. Basic decency says we help the victims of a cataclysm and pay respects to the dead before thinking of how to blame our political opponents.
Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, though, I believe we can soberly and fairly assess the responses of local, state, and federal governments to the crisis. Reason, not partisanship, will be our guide.
Clearly, no government at any level responded as it should have. Let’s start from the bottom:
- The media has lionized New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, but he shares responsibility for what happened in his city. His government knew thousands of people wouldn’t have financial or logistical means to evacuate New Orleans. Yet he didn’t use dozens of available school buses to help evacuate people, so they sat empty on their lots. Instead, Nagin arranged for the Superdome to become “a shelter of last resort,” without first adequately stocking it with food and supplies. Also, even though New Orleans knew one day wasn’t enough time for an evacuation, Nagin didn’t issue an evacuation order until the day before the storm hit. In addition, Amtrak offered its last train out of New Orleans, with room for several hundred passengers, to the city for evacuation efforts. Incredibly, Nagin’s government rejected the offer.
- Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco waited a few days before agreeing to an evacuation order. Also, after Hurricane Katrina struck, Blanco didn’t call in the National Guard for a day. Blanco obstructed relief efforts, too, by refusing to allow the feds to take command in New Orleans. She feared an effort by Republicans to portray the action as an admission her government bore responsibility for the catastrophe in New Orleans.
- Of course, the federal government under the command of President Bush deserves blame. For nearly a week after Katrina, the federal government had no personnel in New Orleans. The absence of FEMA workers and military forces during that time permitted starvation and chaos. If a government can’t take care of its citizens, it surrenders its legitimacy. The government of the United States has dangerously approached that point vis-a-vis New Orleans. Rank incompetence from our government officials has exacerbated public anger over the slow response. For instance, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, didn’t know refugees were suffering and dying in a New Orleans convention center, after the networks had been covering that situation incessantly. The (now thankfully former) director of FEMA, Michael Brown, overshadows Chertoff’s idiocy, though. He, too, had no idea about the conditions in the convention center. He wasn’t cognizant of the flooding in New Orleans. And, after the dreadful response of his agency to Katrina, Brown professed not even to know why anyone had a problem with him! I guess, however, we couldn’t expect anything more from a former horse breeder… who was fired. Bush makes much ado about his ability to delegate. His delegation of authority to unqualified boobs who supported his campaign instead of intelligent administrators with decades of experience should indeed earn the attention of the American public. They should punish Bush and his supporters for it in the midterm 2006 elections.
- Attempting to defend the performance of his department, Chertoff raised a good point: FEMA was designed to work with local government personnel after a disaster. It wasn’t set up for a calamity in which local governmental infrastructure has collapsed. That doesn’t excuse the national government’s five day delay in reaching New Orleans. But it raises the important question, just why wasn’t FEMA prepared to handle a disaster so massive, it might have to work on its own? During the reorganization of the federal government after September 11, 2001, the Congress and the President should have taken their time to make the Department of Homeland Security more efficient, and FEMA itself more robust. After all, what if terrorists pulverized a region with an atomic strike? Or, what if a natural phenomenon destroyed an area, which has actually happened? The federal government had an excellent opportunity to strengthen FEMA for such catastrophes, but neither the Congress nor the President took advantage of it. Their short-sightedness haunts us now.
I can’t believe the myopia of partisan commentators who insist either the federal government or the local/state governments bear complete responsibility for what Katrina’s aftereffects have wrought. Anyone with the slightest ounce of objectivity could see this constitutes failure of government at all levels.
About the Author
I'm Jason Vines, a web developer at a research institution in Washington, DC. I graduated from George Washington University with a bachelor's degree in political science, with a minor in journalism. I enjoy philosophy and web scripting, as well as reading, writing, history, video games, travel, and photography.
