VERY OT: the US govt's (well FEMA) response to the tornadoes..

I'm with you all the way on this one. Remember back during the Clinton administration when FEMA was the best run and managed government agency? I remember back after the Northridge quake in 1994 how local FEMA folks were on the ground doing preliminary damage assessments within hours of the quake. We get no warning about quakes - okay, there's about a second when you can sense it coming before it hits, but that's it (I had enough time to wake up and say, "Earthquake", before the shaking started) - yet there they were within hours, helping folks dig out and getting things going. Of course, Clinton had seen what the Bush 41 administration's response to Hurricane Andrew was, and that's when he decided to make sure that his FEMA director had emergency relief experience, and he gave us James Lee Witt. This man was on the ground 3 days before Hurricane Brett made landfall, to start making arrangements to provide food and water and get things in place so when Brett did his thing and left the clean up could start ASAP.

This current administration knew about Katrina days before she made landfall, yet nothing was done even after the federal government accepted the declaration of disaster two days prior. In fact, in the federal declaration of disaster the parishes most affected by Katrina were somehow omitted, which is funny since the state's request listed only those parishes as those that would need assistance. Then there was no way to get all the people out of the affected areas. This was a true group effort, though, since neither the state nor local officials had any evacuation plans in place, and I guess sending Amtrak trains in to get people out would have been asking too much. Then you have the fact that no preliminary plans were made to bring in food, water, and other supplies until days after she hit. By then folks were looting and doing what they could to survive.

Once FEMA finally got over to the affected areas they still ignored a bunch of places, focusing only on the tourist parts of NOLA, Trent Lott's house in Mississippi, and the riverboat casinos that were lost (for the most part; I'm sure the other wealthy areas were taken care of, too). Folks had to take matters into their own hands if they were able to come back and clean up. I hear people saying that the reason the Lower 9th Ward is still a huge mess is because the people there are waiting for handouts, but what these people fail to recognize is that many of these residents, who may have had as their only possession the houses they lived in, were moved elsewhere and likely can't afford to come home and start cleaning up the mess.

Now we have these tornado survivors getting jerked around, like they asked for a tornado to wipe out their towns.

I've heard it said that Dubya believes government can do no good so he made sure of it when he got in charge of the government. That sure seems to be the case when it comes to disasters. I'm just glad we haven't had any real big shakers out here because there's no way we could count on any help; we went strongly for Gore and Kerry in the elections, and Dubya does like to punish those he sees as "against him".

Okay, rant over for now.

The Other Kim kimagreenfieldatyahoodotcom

"YarnWright" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@newsgate.x-privat.org...

The Other Kim spun a FINE 'yarn':

WELL said, WELL put, Kim :D Noreen