Quote:
Originally posted by Flame On+Sep 3 2005, 10:00 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Flame On @ Sep 3 2005, 10:00 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Cowperson@Sep 3 2005, 07:45 AM
Its a wonderful Churchillian moment for him# . . . . . but he's probably more responsible than anyone for a local disaster plan that appears to have consisted of one word:
"RUN!!!"
Cowperson
|
Any plan he would have come up with would not have been able to cover all the aspects of what happened. Hmmm someone should be there to step in after it gets over the heads at State and municipal levels...who's supposed to be doing that agiain? I'm drawing a blank. [/b][/quote]
I'm not surprised you're drawing a blank. It matches up with most of the rhetoric in your other posts on this topic.
Most municipalities in North America, including small towns, have local disaster plans that are relevant to the threats the local community might experience.
As an example, a small town with a railroad running through it and with knowledge that dangerous goods would be on those trains, will have - or should have - contingencies for removing those who can't move themselves in the event of derailment.
A few examples of a local disaster plan in motion:
I was somewhat surprised during the recent flooding in southern Alberta to hear the local disaster services agency in a small town had phoned the building I periodically occupy looking to ask if I was actually there or out of there. A rather stunning attention to detail.
I know the old folks apartment building my mother-in-laws occupies in Okotoks had school buses lined up outside at 4 in the morning when the town was in danger of flooding, ready for evacuation, even though they eventually weren't needed.
Those are examples of a local disaster services plan in motion, both reacting and anticipating, things that were thought of in a time of calm so they might be used in a time of panic.
That's what a local disaster plan is about. People practice it and when implemented, everyone knows their task.
In turn, that local disaster services plan would be interwoven into a regional plan.
An example of a regional plan . . . . when the tornado obliterated that campground at Pine Lake a few years ago, ambulances from Calgary and Edmonton and the local Red Deer area immediately responded while ambulances from places like Lethbridge and Medicine Hat converged on Calgary to cover those that had gone north.
As analysts observed after the fact, "the disaster plan worked."
The regional plan is then incorporated into something larger and so on.
Obviously what you have in New Orleans is far larger in scale. A genuine catastrophe.
Nevertheless, two points are obvious: 1) you had a foreseeable problem of massive flooding in New Orleans, something that was known for years to likely happen and 2) a complete lack of detailed planning and delegation of tasks of the kind I cited in the examples above.
There is absolutely no way that hospitals should sit for four or five days without an allocation of resources for evacuation or for providing food and/or power.
Locals know where the details are most critical - certainly far more than FEMA - and there was a staggering lack of planning and execution in the early hours and days.
For all his Churchillian-like rhetoric in the last day or so - aptly aimed at the chronicly slow federal response which is also a significant factor here - we did see in some of the Mayor's comments a clear failure of leadership.
As one example, the Mayor has been caught on tape advocating the use of all resources to pluck hundreds off rootops while people like myself might observe that hospitals rotted for lack of help and tens of thousands festered. It was a clear misallocation of resources and a panicked reaction, a stunning lack of prioritzation and in the early days, the Mayor was clearly one of those responsible for that.
I'm glad he was thumping the table yesterday because FEMA was clearly fumbling the ball as well - pre-positioned emergency supplies like generators, etc nearby to New Orleans have yet to be put in motion - but it all has to begin, not end, out of a local disaster plan.
There just was no base plan at the local level for anyone to build upon - as per the NORMAL examples I cited above in some of the communities you live in - and that is entirely the fault of local officials and one of the core reasons this was such an expanding cluster fata.
I hope the above helps.
Cowperson
