It's been a few weeks since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast states. The facts are starting to roll in on what the mainstream media initially reported and their criticism of our President was false. Initially CNN and other media outlets played clips of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin telling the world that babies were being raped and that tens of thousands of people were dead. These claims have been shown to be false. Unlike CNN, we waited before jumping to erroneous conclusions. Now we know of other facts that have come to light. So what are these claims? Some of the facts are: 1) Scientists and engineers at Louisiana University's Hurricane Center claim that the levees should have withstood the flood waters created by Katrina (Minneapolis Star Tribune, 09/21/2005). The experts also claim that the levees should have withstood flood waters greater than Katrina. The experts claim that the levees were poorly built and should have sustained those water levels. So maybe the contractors who built the levees are partly to blame. We will have to wait until further investigations are performed. If this is true then maybe FEMA and the federal government could have expected the levees to hold. They would have been forced to play catch-up, which we all know was too late. Maybe CNN and other mainstream news agencies were too quick to point the finger. They usually do this, rather then waiting for the facts to come to light. We believe that CNN also has a vendetta against conservatives, so it's no surprise that they wouldn't wait for the facts to be gathered. 2) City and state governments of the gulf states in particular, the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana were not prepared to handle a major emergency. Their plans weren't existent and they were not equipped to handle Katrina. The Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana are particularly culpable. They were the first responders and they had no plan. Louisiana and other Gulf states had been warned that a catastrophic hurricane was possible. Where were their plans? It is alleged that the city of New Orleans buses were stored and locked in a place that wasn't accesible when needed because they were buried by water when the levees broke. Those buses could have been used to evacuate the sick, elderly and poor. While accounts vary about how many buses were improperly stored for an emergency (384 to 2000), buses should have been at the cities disposal for this emergency. So how was that Bush's or FEMA's fault. We don't know but I guess they make good scapegoats. 3) Katrina picked up steam - Katrina initially died down and then caught everyone, even weather experts off guard. Experts were relieved and thought they had dodged a bullet. This information was passed on to FEMA and other federal officials who relied on that information. I guess that was the President's fault as well. This is nonsense. The fact is that everyone was caught off guard. There are many people who are to blame but we should all learn a lesson from this disaster. The federal government needs to come up with a national disaster and emergency plan. It needs to implement those guidelines and demand that local and state governments adhere to those plans. The federal government needs to implement an emergency response plan that also includes funding for relief efforts in emergency situations. The bureaucracy surrounding emergency response needs to be eliminated. |
