don't miss the part about the mounties arriving before FEMA!
Friends,We're back in the New Orleans area. We woke up early Wednesday morning and drove back to Metairie so my wife can go back to work. I'm living here at her work with her (in an office and sleeping on an inflatable mattress) until electricity is restored at my house. I'm cautiously optimistic that electricity will be restored soon--maybe this week.My house in Algiers did really well--we have one tree that is down in the back yard and a few shingles blown off of the roof. In fact, my house is messier on the inside than on the outside right now because of our hasty evacuation and cleaning out yucky refrigerators once we got back. However, I know of lots of people that have lost everything to flooding--for instance, I'm told that some houses here in Metairie have flooding up to their gutters.The damage is incredible to behold. Driving back through Mississippi revealed the real destructive power of the storm as there were more trees down than were standing. My church in Algiers (just a couple of miles away from my house) had the roof blown off of the two-story education building and it is a complete loss on the inside. I'm still getting paid for now, so I've been volunteering at a hospital here in Metairie to pass the time.
I got to talking to some of the DMAT folks here from Rhode Island and one lady said they received no direction from FEMA at all. The Rhode Island DMAT folks came down on their own and arrived in the area the night before the storm hit and rode out the storm in Baton Rouge. I heard the president of St. Bernard parish say on WWL radio that the Canadian Mounted Royal police showed up before FEMA. The storm was disaster enough, but FEMA's lack of response was a disaster as well. Don't blame New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin or Governor Blanco for the mess here--they were telling people to get out and they didn't listen. I talked to one lady that lived on an overpass for 5 days waiting to be rescued. Her story was incredible. Anyway, I asked her that if she had it to do over again, would she leave, and her response was an emphatic, "No."John SitaNew Orleans
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Hundreds of buses weren't mobilized, even though NO had a written plan to do so before the flood.
FEMA and the army can't come marching right in, see Posse Comitatus. The early responders have to be the locals, and the locals didn't get ahead of the disaster.
Nagin and Blanco should be ran out on a rail, just like Brown was.
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