Buses, Buses, Who's Got The Buses?

The debacle of FEMA under Michael Brown is still coming to light. Brown is beginning to speak up in his own defense. Unfortunately his words clearly show a lack of understand and comprehension of what his job as director of FEMA entailed.

Governor Blanco asked Bush to declare a state of emergency two days before Katrina hit. In her request she asked him for any and all aid. Bush has hedged and excused himself from sending national guard from other areas in on the pretense that Blanco didn't specifically ask for troops. It's a deceptive tactic at best but it has had some effect on zealot right wingers who want to believe Bush can do no wrong and WILL ultimately find those slippery WMD in Iraq!! However, those who waited days in Louisanna and Mississippi for help know better.
Any and All
How is that not specific enough?

Brown is choosing the same tactics. He now says Blanco didn't give him specific on what they needed.

Okay, Brownie, perhaps you missed this information while the horses were on circuit:

In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort. The new Department will also prioritize the important issue of citizen preparedness. Educating America's families on how best to prepare their homes for a disaster and tips for citizens on how to respond in a crisis will be given special attention at DHS.
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/theme_home2.jsp

Regardless of which way you look at the issue, FEMA was the organization in charge, the supposed knight on the white horse, the calvary racing to the rescue...
Instead, Michael Brown, lost in inefficency, was indecisive and inassertive. Because of his ineptness, people died, families were separated and yes, for the pet lovers out there, thousands of pets died, abandoned on roof tops and on roadways as their owners were denied the ability to take them along. (If you haven't heard the story of Snowball, don't get me started on the stupidity of FEMA's rules.)

Now Blanco, who to her credit has managed not to point fingers directly at the administration, has begun speaking out with more information than I'm sure Brown wants to see.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091805/new_blanco001.shtml

Blanco says feds pledged buses

By MICHELLE MILLHOLLONmmillhollon@theadvocate.com

Capitol news bureau Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina raged ashore, Gov. Kathleen Blanco still wants one question answered.

Where were the buses?

Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.

On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.

Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said.

During the delay, misery and mayhem mounted in the Dome, thousands gathered in desperation at the nearby convention center, and Americans watched in shock as dead and dying New Orleans residents were broadcast on national television.

The state had sent 68 school buses into the city on Monday.

Blanco took over more buses from Louisiana school systems and sent them in on Wednesday, two days after the storm. She tapped the National Guard to drive them. Each time the buses emptied an area, more people would appear, she said.

The buses took 15,728 people to safety, a Blanco aide said. But the state's fleet of school buses wasn't enough. On Wednesday, with the FEMA buses still not in sight, Blanco called the White House to talk to Bush and ended up speaking to Chief of Staff Andy Card.

"I said, 'Even if we had 500 buses, they've underestimated the magnitude of this situation, and I think I need 5,000 buses, not 500,'" Blanco recounted.

"'But, Andy, those 500 are not here,'" the governor said.

Card promised to get Blanco more buses.

Later Wednesday night, Blanco walked into the State Police Communications Center and asked if anyone knew anything about the buses.

An officer told her the buses were just entering the state.

"I said, 'Do you mean as in North Louisiana, which is another six hours from New Orleans?,'"

Blanco recalled in the interview. "He said, 'Yes, m'am.'"

It was at that point, Blanco said, that she realized she had made a critical error.
"I assumed that FEMA had staged their buses in near proximity," she said. "I expected them to be out of the storm's way but accessible in one day's time."
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Brown was the first bureaucratic casualty in the massive governmental breakdown in responding to Katrina.

He resigned last week amid criticism that he responded sluggishly to the hurricane. Brown lashed out a few days later, telling The New York Times that Blanco and her staff were "incapable of organizing a coherent state effort."

Brown said that, on the day before the storm hit, he asked Blanco and Maj. Gen. Bennett Landreneau, head of the state's National Guard, what resources they needed.
"The response was like, 'Let us find out,' and then I never received specific requests for specific things that needed doing," Brown told The New York Times last week.

Blanco said it shouldn't have been up to her to provide a list.
"Specific things, my God," she said. "(If) they didn't know that we were in the middle of search and rescue and needed to evacuate people, then they were not on the ground with us. We needed buses and helicopters."

Besides, Blanco said, she thought Brown was in control of the situation.

"I had security in the knowledge that there were 500 buses," she said. "Mike had emphasized the buses to me personally. That was not my first concern until I realized that they were not there."


One of Blanco's aides, Leonard Kleinpeter, said FEMA told him at one point that the state could stop sending school buses because the agency was going to bring in helicopters and use them instead of the commercial buses that still weren't there.
Blanco told Kleinpeter to ignore those instructions.

"She said, 'I'll be damned. You keep loading the wagons on the school buses,'" Kleinpeter said.
Kleinpeter said he now wonders if FEMA temporarily halted its buses because the agency thought helicopters would work better.

By Tuesday, the day after the hurricane, Brown was ready to cede control of state and federal relief efforts to the White House.

Two days later, President George W. Bush met with Blanco on Air Force One and asked her for control of the troops that were finally pouring into the state. Blanco asked if Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour would be under the same regime. The answer was "No."

Blanco told Bush she'd get back to him in 24 hours. The president didn't wait. That night, the White House faxed a memorandum of understanding for her to sign to cede control of the troops. Her answer was "No."

"If I thought that it was going to bring one more resource to bear, if I thought that he was denying me resource because of it, and I don't think he was, then it might have been something that I would have considered," she said.

"By that time, we were already getting the resources and commitments," the governor said.
It wasn't the response that the White House wanted. People close to the Bush administration started criticizing Blanco, saying she bungled the state response.

When Bush returned to the state a few days later, he didn't tell Blanco he was coming. The night before that second visit, Blanco learned about the visit from a news reporter and wrangled an invitation to accompany Bush on his tour.

There's more of the article on the website.

I'll just say this:
Someone hand Brownie a pooper scooper and put him behind the horse and give Dubya a golf bag and let him caddy. They should have the jobs they're best prepared to handle.