Hurricane Irony

FEMA director Michael Brown has now been relieved of his oversight of the Gulf coast recovery effort. The move comes after mounting criticism of Brown's performance in the hours and days after Katrina hit. It also comes the day after Time magazine uncovered serious discrepancies in his resume.

Asked by reporters if he felt he was being made a scapegoat, Brown replied "By the press, yes. By the president, no."

Yes, it does seem Brown is being made a scapegoat, and that's an unfortunate shame. The simple truth is that the man most responsible for embarrassing the United States in the eyes of the international community, and increasing the scope of the tragedy not only in New Orleans but all along that stretch of the Gulf coast is the guy at the top: George W. Bush. It is his ENTIRE Administration that is responsible for this fiasco, and it was his sworn duty to protect the lives of ALL Americans by making absolutely certain the people under him were on top of the situation.

Bush's defenders argue that the President can't control the weather. Well, that's true. And it's also true that the people making that argument are morons. Bush may not control the weather, but he can certainly control the response to catastrophic weather events. And when the storm is predicted days ahead of time, he can certainly insure that the necessary personnel and supplies are assembled and ready to start to moving the very moment the rain stops.

In this regard he not only failed miserably but betrayed his citizens as well.

---------------From an Email by Tuan

For Bush or anyone else to say that the catastrophe was unexpected is nothing short of a baldfaced lie. First of all, Katrina did not materialize in the Gulf of Mexico overnight and unexpectedly come ashore that fateful Monday morning.

Forecasters had known for two days beforehand that Katrina had begun to intensify in the Gulf and would soon turn northward. Then on Sunday afternoon, the storm became a strong category five hurricane aimed squarely at New Orleans. By then everyone in the media was talking about what was going to happen to the city in the following 24 hours. It was NOT a secret. All Bush, or Brown, or anyone else had to do was turn on a damn TV to get an idea of the calamity that was about to unfold. Besides, Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew didn't happen all that long ago, and the memories of those storms should have been fresh in the minds of everyone in charge.

And for anyone in this administration to suggest that no one could have foreseen the levees being breached is either another outright lie, or a sign of gross incompetence.

The fact is that last summer FEMA and a host of other state and federal agencies conducted a week long simulation of a category 3 storm striking New Orleans. The exercise involving the fictitious Hurricane Pam came up with results frighteningly similar to what happened with Katrina:

* Flood waters would surge over levees, creating "a catastrophic mass casualty/mass evacuation" and leaving drainage pumps crippled for up to six months. "It will take over one year to re-enter areas most heavily impacted."

* More than 600,000 houses and 6,000 businesses would be affected, more than two-thirds of them destroyed. Nearly a quarter-million children would be out of school. "All 40 medical facilities in the impacted area (are) isolated and useless."

* Local officials would be quickly overwhelmed with the five-digit death toll, 187,862 people injured and 196,395 falling ill. A half million people would be homeless.

* The report calls evacuees "refugees"--a term now derided by the Bush administration--and says they could be housed at college campuses, military barracks, hotels, travel trailers, recreational vehicles, private homes, cottages, churches, Boy Scout camps and cruise ships.

The Hurricane Pam project also predicted over 61,000 dead, a forecast which is not likely to come true.

No one could have foreseen what happened? Give me a freakin' break.