Blitz...
Sorry in advance for the long post, but theres some good stuff pertaining to your paper here.
You may or may not consider some of these references valid, but I think if you crossreference the stories, you'll find the corroboration you need.
The most striking Id say, are Fema cutting the communication Towers of the Parish Police Departments, and turning back the 500 boat citizen flotilla, who tried to go in on the second day to start rescuing people.
Some of these plain turned my stomach.
While no doubt there were failures at that level, fact is, once the hurricane hit, they thought theywere off the hook. They did not think they were going to have quite the catastrophe becuase the levees had not breached yet, therefore the relief was pulled back a bit. They thought they dodged the bullet.
That said, there were some amssive failures at the federal level, most notably FEMA. Yes the president is responsible here, but in their bid to consolidate control, FEMA will be the organizationt that should shoulder most of the blame.
Here is a PARTIAL list of their failures...and the almost criminal failures they perpetrated.
I personlly will be devastated if these failures are not punished.
One that missed the list was Femas commandeering the diesel fuel that the parishes had bought for the generators for punps and basic electricty. ..AND they cut the FuCKING COMMUNICATION TOWERS for the local law enforcement agencies...
Someone should fucking fry for these.
And if they dont, when its all over, these people wil ahve to answer to a higher power for their failures.
FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e..
FEMA turns away experienced firefighters
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/105538/7048 FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec..
FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec..
FEMA won't let Red Cross deliver food
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15147862&BRD=...
FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/3/171718/0826 FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509..
FEMA to Chicago: Send just one truck
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050902dale..
FEMA turns away generators
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html FEMA: "First Responders Urged Not To Respond"
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470 That last one is real -- not satire but straight from FEMA
Also a short snippet from an interview on MEET THE PRESS with Aaron Broussard (sherrif of Jefferson Parrish)
"""The president of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans, Aaron Broussard, just issued an emotional appeal on NBC’s Meet the Press. By the end, he was completely broken down, sobbing uncontrollably:
Broussard then discussed the difficulties local authorities had with FEMA, including one case where they actually posted armed guards to keep FEMA from cutting their communications lines:
Three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA, we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. When we got there with our trucks, FEMA says don’t give you the fuel. Yesterday — yesterday — FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards and said no one is getting near these lines…"""""
And I had to post the article, becuase i was unable to Find it in the PicayuneItem.com (95.05) newspaper....sorry.
""PicayuneItem.com
9-5-5
BATON ROUGE, La. - Volunteer physicians are pouring in to care for the sick, but red tape is keeping hundreds of others from caring for Hurricane Katrina survivors even as health officials worry about potential outbreaks.
Among the doctors stymied from helping out are 100 surgeons and paramedics in a state-of-the-art mobile hospital marooned in rural Mississippi.
"We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here," said one of the frustrated surgeons, Dr. Preston "Chip" Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That government officials can't straighten out the mess and get them assigned to a relief effort now that they're just a few miles away "is just mind-boggling," he said in a phone interview.
While the North Carolina doctors waited Sunday, the first predictable signs of disease from contaminated water emerged on Saturday: A Mississippi shelter was closed after 20 residents got sick with dysentery, probably from drinking contaminated water.
However, the country's leading health official told The Associated Press in an interview at a triage center Sunday that her biggest concerns are tetanus and childhood diseases.
"Tetanus is something we'd be especially concerned about," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tetanus lives in soil and can enter the body easily through a scratch, and many flood survivors have endured filthy conditions.
Gerberding also urged health care workers in the growing multitude of refugee shelters to try to find out a child's shot history and, "If you can't establish that a child has been vaccinated, then vaccinate. We can't take chances."
Diseases such as measles and whooping cough could rapidly spread in the cramped quarters, thousands of flood victims are now sharing.
So far, there have been relatively few cases of diarrhea and infections, Gerberding said, but "we're early in the process."
The CDC chief, who traveled to Louisiana with Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona and other top health officials, spoke with the AP after visiting an impressive triage center on the basketball court at Pete Marovich Center at Louisiana State University.
Next door in Mississippi, the North Carolina mobile hospital waiting to help also offered impressive state-of-the-art medical care. It was developed with millions of tax dollars through the Office of Homeland Security after 9-11. With capacity for 113 beds, it is designed to handle disasters and mass casualties.
Equipment includes ultrasound, digital radiology, satellite Internet, and a full pharmacy, enabling doctors to do most types of surgery in the field, including open-chest and abdominal operations.
It travels in a convoy that includes two 53-foot trailers, which on Sunday afternoon was parked on a gravel lot 70 miles north of New Orleans because Louisiana officials for several days would not let them deploy to the flooded city, Rich said.
Yet plans to use the facility and its 100 health professionals were hatched days before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, doctors in the caravan said.
Other doctors also complained that their offers of help were turned away. A primary care physician from Ohio called and e-mailed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after seeing a notice on the American Medical Association's Web site about volunteer doctors being needed.
An e-mail reply told him to watch CNN that night where HHS Secretary Leavitt was to announce a Web address for doctors to enter their names in a database.
"How crazy is that?" he complained in an e-mail to his daughter.
Dr. Jeffrey Guy, a trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University who has been in contact with the mobile hospital doctors, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, "There are entire hospitals that are contacting me, saying, 'We need to take on patients,'" but they can't get through the bureaucracy.
"The crime of this story is, you've got millions of dollars in assets and it's not deployed," he said. "We mount a better response in a Third World country."
Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of health affairs for the Defense Department, acknowledged there were problems and said it's a priority "to get the medical community at work and up and operating as soon as possible."
Many other doctors have been able to volunteer, and were arriving in large numbers Sunday in Baton Rouge. Several said they worked it out through Louisiana state officials.
ABSOLUTELY APALLING. good luck with your paper.
