Plaag wrote:
Getting supplies to a US city within a week should be easy.  Getting them to an island country that's port was ruined and most roads bottle necked due to collapsed buildings is a bit harder.  Don't compare the two.
W now is latched onto Clinton for the humanitarian aid his father used to do with Clinton.  Maybe it'll help for the history books.

ShaneG.

Hurricane.  New Orleans had (and was still having) a hurricane.

Government efforts to help people in the region began to reach them within 24 hours.  It just was not possible to reach everyone instantaneously.  

For all practical purposes New Orleans is just as far from the rest of the US as Haiti...a fact which was complicated by an ongoing hurricane.

Bush the Younger is a hero across Africa for his humanitarian efforts there.  It just was not reported in the US media.

ashmire13 wrote:
Was this accurate or were things sorted relatively quickly?

The destruction was total and complete.  There are still large areas where nothing has been done.  People left.  Just left their destroyed houses and have developed new lives in other places.  I do not think the world (outside of the US) understands how complete the destruction was.  An entire large American city was destroyed.  At last count not even half of the people have returned to New Orleans.

Government aid took some time in getting to the people and there were big mistakes made.  It is easy to say that the govenment response was not the best.  But that is to be expected in a disaster of this size.  The Bush administration took some justified criticism and some unwarrented as well.

Martin

FormCritic wrote:
Hurricane.  New Orleans had (and was still having) a hurricane.

Government efforts to help people in the region began to reach them within 24 hours.  It just was not possible to reach everyone instantaneously.  

For all practical purposes New Orleans is just as far from the rest of the US as Haiti...a fact which was complicated by an ongoing hurricane.

Bush the Younger is a hero across Africa for his humanitarian efforts there.  It just was not reported in the US media.

Katrina turned to the northwest and then north, with the center making landfall near Buras, Louisiana at 1110 UTC August 29 with maximum winds estimated at 125 mph (Category 3). Continuing northward, the hurricane made a second landfall near the Louisiana/Mississippi border at 1445 UTC with maximum winds estimated at 120 mph (Category 3). Weakening occurred as Katrina moved north-northeastward over land, but it was still a hurricane near Laurel, Mississippi. The cyclone weakened to a tropical depression over the Tennessee Valley on 30 August. Katrina became an extratropical low on August 31 and was absorbed by a frontal zone later that day over the eastern Great Lakes.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/hi ... ml#katrina

In 2 days we had military personnel in Haiti and the 3rd day (Jan 15th) we had begun to deliver food and water.

ShaneG.

ashmire13 wrote:I'm not completely sure on this, but from a programme that I saw a year after the hurricane (OK, it was Top Gear doing their American roadtrip special   ) the place was still devastated and not a great deal had been done?

Was this accurate or were things sorted relatively quickly?

What you're seeing is not government ineptitude.  You're seeing an area that is unlikely to be rebuilt any time soon due to

Those former neighborhoods are below sea level and vulnerable to future flooding...making them difficult to insure and a bad investment for anyone who might want to rebuild.   Who's going to finance a house in that area?

Government requirements to build there now include raising the level of the dwelling by quite a bit (10 feet?).

Those former neighborhoods are below sea level and vulnerable to future flooding...making them difficult to insure and a bad investment for anyone who might want to rebuild.

FormCritic wrote:
What you're seeing is not government ineptitude.  You're seeing an area that is unlikely to be rebuilt any time soon due to

Those former neighborhoods are below sea level and vulnerable to future flooding...making them difficult to insure and a bad investment for anyone who might want to rebuild.   Who's going to finance a house in that area?

Government requirements to build there now include raising the level of the dwelling by quite a bit (10 feet?).

Those former neighborhoods are below sea level and vulnerable to future flooding...making them difficult to insure and a bad investment for anyone who might want to rebuild.

People should never have been living in some of those places as it was.  The lack of quick rebuilding is actually a good thing in this case, as they are realizing some of the neighborhoods destroyed should never have existed in the first place.

Mike B.

Plaag wrote:
Getting supplies to a US city within a week should be easy.  Getting them to an island country that's port was ruined and most roads bottle necked due to collapsed buildings is a bit harder.  Don't compare the two.
W now is latched onto Clinton for the humanitarian aid his father used to do with Clinton.  Maybe it'll help for the history books.

ShaneG.

As much as people hate the dude, W didn't "latch on" to anything. He was asked personally by Obama, AFTER being recommended by Clinton (for some odd reason the Clinton/Bush families have this weirdo relationship that transcends politics...George senior has remarked he thinks of Clinton as a younger brother   ) to help in fundraising efforts.  

Failures in Katrina were on a local and state level as well as national, and are continuing long after Shrub has been gone.  Thinking there was some deliberate evil conspiracy involved is silly. Besides, if it was all his fault, why isn't it completely rebuilt now? The Dems have been in charge of the congress for three years, surely throwing billions of dollars at the problem would help, right? Mississippi and Alabama seemed to have recovered as well as can be expected.

Most of the people who left New Orleans for Texas have stayed...so many, in fact, that it has been estimated we will pick up two more seats in congress from refugee influx alone.  The truth is Louisiana (and New Orleans) is/was as close to a 3rd world nation we have in the US (except for Detroit).  People had little to leave behind after the disaster, and little reason to return (high in crime, unemployment, and corruption).  The problems with Louisiana are systemic and rooted in a corrupt political system and decades long failure for government to prepare for the levees not holding, as much as "Brownie" being an unfit pick for FEMA head.  

While Bush Younger took justified criticism for the bungled relief, IMO clowns like Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco didn't get nearly enough.

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:as much as "Brownie" being an unfit pick for FEMA head.  

And President Obama has further clarified that FEMA is not a first responder.

When the big quake happened in Seattle back in 2001, the local media joked about FEMA because they didn't even know what FEMA was.

When Katrina happened FEMA was castigated for not instantly saving people...which makes as much sense as castigating a boat for not flying.

The difference was not FEMA's response.  It was which party the President at the time happened to belong to.

I agree with all these thoughts. But that doesn't excuse the fact Brown was a political appointee that had as much business running FEMA as I do.  Part of the problem was perception at how he was handling the problem, and in politics perception may be reality. Not saying a lot of the criticism wasn't based on political partisianship, but seriously, did Brown ever seem like he knew what the hell he was doing? At least pretend you have a clue.

But yes the Katrina disaster had much more to do with a decades long neglect of New Orlean's levees by local and state officials, as well as the culture of corruption in Louisiana, than anything. No matter if the president was JFK, FDR or Reagan, people were going to die.

Mike B.

Plaag wrote:Need help from those who know Spanish, French and German.  Nothing rpg related - just some lists of books I need translated.  PM or reply here and I'll pm the relative list(s).

Thanks,
ShaneG.

I might can help with French, but have you tried this?

http://translate.google.com/#

It's not always correct, but it's close.