Our Man on the Street
Monday, 12 September 2005 by Jacob TomawLewis Alexander of The Land of Alexander Blog is out on what if left of the street after Hurricane Katrina. Lewis is in the Indiana National Gaurd and has been called up to work in Operation Vigilant Relief in Mississippi. Lewis has a lot of great links you should read, a lot of which I have not been able to read yet. Lewis also posted some great comments on the post before and I wanted to move them up to the top level. Here they are unedited…
They knew from 1998 (Hurricane George) that the Superdome was not a good place to use as a shelter.They knew that and still used it. Then they denied the shipment of food because they didn’t want people to stay and USE IT AS A SHELTER.
The Mayor waited until the day before the storm hit to order the mandatory evacuation. (He had been tracking for days) It is amazing that as many people got out that did. Hurricane evacuations aren’t speedy processes. Maybe a little more time and they could have taken care of the people that had to stay behind.
And where was the Louisiana National Guard? The Governor is in command of her state’s army. She waited until two days AFTER the authorize them to commandeer school buses to evacuate people. Oops! The buses are sitting like drowned rats in New Orleans. Where was the guard for the first two days? Couldn’t they have helped with the evacuations?
There were missteps by others up the chain that failed to fill in the gaps left by the local and state governments. But make no mistake, the Mayor and Governor should be the first in line to accept responsibility for this disaster response fiasco.
September 13th, 2005 at 9:13
Just a disclaimer. These are my personal views and observations, and in no way reflects upon the positions of the Indiana National Guard, the Army, or the US Government.