Criticism of government response to Hurricane Katrina
Encyclopedia
The criticism of the government response to Hurricane Katrina consisted primarily of condemnations of mismanagement and lack of preparation in the relief effort in response to Hurricane Katrina
and its aftermath. Specifically, there was a delayed response to the flooding of New Orleans, Louisiana
. (See Hurricane preparedness for New Orleans
for criticism of the failure of Federal flood protection.)
for and response to the storm. Criticism was prompted largely by televised images of visibly shaken and frustrated political leaders, and of residents who remained in New Orleans without water, food or shelter
, and the deaths of several citizens by thirst, exhaustion, and violence days after the storm itself had passed. The treatment of people who had evacuated to registered facilities such as the Superdome
was also criticized.
Criticism from politicians, activists, pundits and journalists of all stripes has been directed at the local, state and federal governments.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin
was also criticized for failing to implement his evacuation plan and for ordering residents to a shelter of last resort without any provisions for food, water, security, or sanitary conditions. Perhaps the most important criticism of Nagin is that he delayed his emergency evacuation
order until less than a day before landfall, which led to hundreds of deaths of people who (by that time) could not find any way out of the city. Adding to the criticism was the broadcast of school bus
parking lots full of yellow school buses which Mayor Nagin refused to be used in evacuation. When asked why the buses were not used to assist evacuations instead of holing up in the Superdome, Nagin cited the lack of insurance liability and shortage of bus drivers.
It has been stated in the evacuation order that, beginning at noon on August 28 and running for several hours, all city buses were redeployed to shuttle local residents to, "refuges of last resort," designated in advance, including the Louisiana Superdome
. They also said that the state had prepositioned enough food and water to supply 15,000 citizens with supplies for three days, the anticipated waiting period before FEMA would arrive in force and provide supplies for those still in the city. Later, it was found that FEMA had provided these supplies, but that FEMA Director Michael D. Brown
was greatly surprised by the much larger numbers of people who turned up seeking refuge and that the first wave of supplies were quickly depleted. The large numbers were a direct result of the insufficient mobilization and evacuation before Katrina's arrival, primarily due to city and state resistance to issuing an evacuation order and risk "crying wolf" and losing face should the hurricane had left the path of model prediction. Had contra-flow on highways been initiated sooner and more buses begun evacuating families (including the idle school buses that were not used at all) the numbers of stranded New Orleans occupants would have been significantly less making the initial wave of FEMA supplies adequate and even excessive.
10.5 billion relief package within four days of the hurricane, and ordered 7,200 active-duty troops to assist with relief efforts. However, some members of the United States Congress
charged that the relief efforts were slow because most of the affected areas were poor. There was also concern that many National Guard units were short staffed in surrounding states because some units were deployed overseas and local recruiting efforts in schools and the community had been hampered making reserves less than ideal.
Due to the slow response to the hurricane, New Orleans's top emergency management official called the effort a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly desperate city. New Orleans's emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert blamed the inadequate response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA). "This is not a FEMA operation. I haven't seen a single FEMA guy", he said. "FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."
In the early morning of September 2 mayor Ray Nagin
expressed his frustration at what he claimed were insufficient reinforcements provided by the President and federal authorities.
However, many police, fire and EMS organizations from outside the affected areas were reportedly hindered or otherwise slowed in their efforts to send help and assistance to the area. FEMA sent hundreds of firefighters who had volunteered to help rescue victims to Atlanta for 2 days of training classes on topics including sexual harassment and the history of FEMA. Official requests for help through the proper chains of command were not forthcoming due to local and state delays in engaging FEMA for federal assistance, even after approached by such authorities. Local police and other EMS workers found the situation traumatic; at least two officers committed suicide, and over 300 deserted the city after gang violence and "turf wars" erupted around the city. A report by the Appleseed Foundation
, a public policy network, found that local entities (nonprofit and local government agencies) were far more flexible and responsive than the federal government or national organizations. The federal response was often
constrained by lack of legal authority or by ill-suited eligibility and application requirements. In many instances, federal staff and national organizations did not seem to have the flexibility, training, and resources to meet demands on the ground."
commemoration ceremony at Coronado, California
while monitoring the situation with his aides and cabinet officials. 24 hours before the ceremony, storm surges began overwhelming levees and floodwalls protecting the city of New Orleans, greatly exacerbating the minimal damage from rainfall and wind when the hurricane itself veered to the East and avoided a direct hit on New Orleans. Initial reports of leaked video footage of top-level briefings held before the storm claimed that this video contradicted Bush’s earlier statements that no one anticipated the breach of the levees. Transcripts revealed that Bush was warned that the levees may overflow, as were Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin.
Bush was criticized for not returning to Washington, D.C. from his vacation in Texas until after Wednesday afternoon, more than a day after the hurricane hit on Monday. Many claimed that on the morning of August 28, the president telephoned Mayor Nagin to "plead" for a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, and further claimed that Nagin and Gov. Blanco decided to evacuate the city only in response to that request. These claims were never substantiated with any recordings, however Blanco did tell reporters the President had called and spoken with her (but not Nagin) before the press conference.
Bush overflew the devastated area from Air Force One
as he traveled from Texas
back to Washington, D.C.
, and subsequently visited the Gulf Coast on Friday and was briefed on Hurricane Katrina
. Turning to his aides during the flyover, he says: "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." Later, in a televised address from the White House, he says: "We're dealing with one of the worst national disasters in our nation's history."
"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9132021/ns/us_news-katrina_the_long_road_back/t/president-vows-massive-aid-storm-hit-area/"
Vice President
Dick Cheney
was also criticized in his role in the aftermath. On the night of August 30, and again the next morning, he personally called the manager of the Southern Pines Electric Power Association and ordered him to divert power crews to electrical substation
s in nearby Collins, Mississippi
that were essential to the operation of the Colonial Pipeline
, which carries gasoline and diesel fuel from Texas
to the Northeast
. The power crews were reportedly upset when told what the purpose of the redirection was, since they were in the process of restoring power to two local hospitals, but did so anyway.
In January 2006, the President gave his 2006 State of the Union Address:
In January 2007, the fired FEMA director Michael D. Brown
charged that partisan politics had played a role in the White House's decision to federalize emergency response to the disaster in Louisiana only rather than along the entire affected Gulf Coast region, which Brown said he had advocated. "Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,'" Brown said, speaking before a group of graduate students at the Metropolitan College of New York on January 19, 2007. "'We can't do it to Haley [Mississippi governor Haley Barbour
] because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'" The White House fervently denied Brown's charges through a spokeswoman and Brown's comments have never been substantiated.
Discussion of the recovery efforts for Hurricane Katrina took a back seat to terrorism and Iraq in his 2006 State of the Union Address
. In that speech, Bush did not mention any human suffering caused by the storm or its aftermath, and did not acknowledge any shortcomings in his administration's response. Some media sources criticized Bush for failing to mention hurricane recovery in his 2007 State of the Union Address
.
. There have been questions on who was in charge of the disaster and who had jurisdictional authority. According to many media outlets, as well as many politicians, the response to the disaster was inadequate in terms of leadership and response. Both President George W. Bush and Congress plan separate investigations into Department of Homeland Security's response to the Katrina disaster.
On September 13, 2005, a memo was leaked that indicated that Chertoff issued 36 hours after the hurricane's landfall which read, in part, "As you know, the President has established the `White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response.' He will meet with us tomorrow to launch this effort. The Department of Homeland Security, along with other Departments, will be part of the task force and will assist the Administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina." The memo activated the National Response Plan
and made Michael D. Brown
responsible for federal action. The article found:
was heavily criticized in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, primarily for its slow response and inability to coordinate its efforts with other federal agencies relief organizations. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley
(D), prominent liberal Chicago politician, said of the slow Federal response, "I was shocked. We are ready to provide considerably more help than they have requested. We are just waiting for the call. I don't want to sit here and all of a sudden we are all going to be political. Just get it done."
FEMA was accused of deliberately slowing things down, in an effort to ensure that all assistance and relief workers were coordinated properly. For example, Michael D. Brown
, the head of FEMA, on August 29, urged all fire and emergency services departments not to respond to counties and states affected by Hurricane Katrina without being requested and lawfully dispatched by state and local authorities under mutual aid agreements and the Emergency Management Assistance Compact.
FEMA also interfered in the Astor Hotel's' plans to hire 10 buses to carry approximately 500 guests to higher ground. Federal officials commandeered the buses, and told the guests to join thousands of other evacuees at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
. In other instances of FEMA asserting its authority to only ultimately make things worse, FEMA officials turned away three Wal-Mart
trailer trucks loaded with water, prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the Jefferson Parish
emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA. The Wal-Mart delivery had actually been turned away a week earlier, on Sunday, August 28, before the hurricane struck. A caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers was reported in New Orleans by September 1. Additionally, more than 50 civilian aircraft responding to separate requests for evacuations from hospitals and other agencies swarmed to the area a day after Katrina hit, but FEMA blocked their efforts. Aircraft operators complained that FEMA waved off a number of evacuation attempts, saying the rescuers were not authorized. "Many planes and helicopters simply sat idle," said Thomas Judge, president of the Assn. of Air Medical Services.
Senator
Mary Landrieu
(D-Louisiana
), was particularly critical of FEMA's efforts in a statement: "[T]he U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims—far more efficiently than buses—FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency. But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast—black and white, rich and poor, young and old—deserve far better from their national government." However, Landrieu's overflight was of the end of the single-lane roadway being built toward the breach. The "single, lonely piece of equipment" was one power shovel, a bulldozer, and two dump trucks. Video did not show the work area a few hundred feet away at the start of the roadway. USACE photos show a variety of equipment at that site the following day.
The New York Times reported that 91,000 tons of ice ordered by FEMA at a cost of over $100 million and intended for hospitals and food storage for relief efforts never made it to the disaster area. Federally contracted truck drivers instead received orders from FEMA to deliver the ice to government rented storage facilities around the country, as far north as Maine. In testimony to a House panel, FEMA director Michael D. Brown stated that "I don't think that's a federal government responsibility to provide ice to keep my hamburger meat in my freezer or refrigerator fresh."
In a September 15, 2005 New York Times opinion column about the privately owned Methodist Hospital in New Orleans, Bob Herbert
wrote, "Incredibly, when the out-of-state corporate owners of the hospital responded to the flooding by sending emergency relief supplies, they were confiscated at the airport by FEMA."
A September 16, 2005 CNN
article about Chalmette Medical Center stated, "Doctors eager to help sick and injured evacuees were handed mops by federal officials who expressed concern about legal liability... And so they mopped, while people died around them."
Michael Brown
FEMA Director, Michael Brown, was criticized when he stated that he was not aware there were refugees in the Convention Center
until September 1, three days after Hurricane Katrina hit, when Brian Williams, of NBC Nightly News, asked Mr. Brown a question about them live on the Nightly News.
On September 2, CNN
's Soledad O'Brien
asked FEMA Director Mike Brown, "How is it possible that we're getting better info than you were getting... we were showing live pictures of the people outside the Convention Center... also we'd been reporting that officials had been telling people to go to the Convention Center... I don't understand how FEMA cannot have this information." When pressed, Brown reluctantly admitted he had learned about the starving crowds at the Convention Center from news media reports. O'Brien then said to Brown, "FEMA's been on the ground four days, going into the fifth day, why no massive air drop of food and water... in Banda Aceh
, Indonesia
, they got food drops two days after the tsunami."
Once officials became aware of the conditions at the Convention Center a small amount of basic food supplies were diverted there by helicopter, but there were no large-scale deliveries until a truck convoy arrived at midday—the damage to infrastructure by the still present floodwaters and mob attacks delayed relief workers. Federal officials also underestimated the number of people converging on the convention center. Even as refugees were evacuated, more kept arriving every hour.
Later, Michael Brown admitted that he had virtually no experience in emergency management
when he was appointed to the position by President Bush two years prior to Katrina. And, in fact he had limited authority to order federal agencies into action until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm. Chertoff was the one with the authority. "http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0914-04.htm" President Bush recognized this and commended Michael Brown and gave him credit for the good work he had done, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. The FEMA Director is working 24 – they're working 24 hours a day."
On September 9, Chertoff
recalled Brown to Washington and removed him from the immediate supervision of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, and replaced him with Vice Admiral
Thad W. Allen
, chief of staff of the United States Coast Guard
. Three days later, on September 12, Brown resigned his position, stating, "As I told the president, it is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA."
Censorship
On September 6, citing a Defense Department
policy banning the photographing of flag-draped coffins of American troops, FEMA representatives stated that they did not want journalist
s to accompany rescue boats as they went out searching for victims, because, "the recovery of the victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect." The agency also asked that no photographs of the dead be published by the media as well. This policy was met with much criticism by the media, and compared to censorship. On September 9, Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré
, who oversaw the federal relief effort in New Orleans, and Terry Ebbert, Louisiana's homeland security director, said that reporters would have, "zero access," to body recovery operations, a statement which was actually misinterpreted. What was meant by that was that reporters would not be embedded with recovery teams, but would still have free access to any public area in the city. CNN
filed a lawsuit regarding the situation, and U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison issued an order preventing officials from blocking media coverage.
Lobbying contracts and FEMA
On September 7, FEMA hired a private disaster relief management company, Kenyon International, to collect bodies. Based in Houston, Texas
, Kenyon International specializes in disaster relief and had provided services in previous major disasters worldwide. Accusations of cronyism
were raised, as Kenyon International is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International
(SCI), which is owned by funeral home magnate and Bush family
friend Robert Waltrip.
Recommended charities
FEMA was criticized for giving undue prominence to Operation Blessing International
, placing it as #2 on their list of recommended charities right after the American Red Cross
. Operation Blessing is a charity founded, and still chaired by, Pat Robertson
, the television evangelist
.
FEMA Firefighters
When FEMA called for firefighters for, "community service and outreach," 2000 highly-trained firefighters showed up in a staging area in an Atlanta hotel, believing that their skills would be used, or would better be used, for search and rescue operations. The firefighters, who were all paid by FEMA for their time, found themselves undergoing training on community relations, watching videos, and attending seminars on sexual harassment in a hotel, waiting days, in some cases, to be deployed in a secretarial or public relations position. Some firefighters called it a misallocation of resources, others were simply frustrated at the delay. FEMA defended itself by saying that there was no urgency for the firefighters to arrive because they were primarily going to be involved in community relations work, not search and rescue, and their call for help stated this.
Chertoff... FEMA was 'overwhelmed'
Testifying before the Senate
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Chertoff said that FEMA was, "overwhelmed," by the scope of the disaster, and acknowledged, "many lapses," in his agency’s response to Katrina. Chertoff also disagreed with Michael Brown's earlier testimony that state and local officials were responsible for the slow response to the hurricane, saying that he had experienced no problems in dealing with state and local officials and that Brown had never informed him of any problems.
Barbara Bush
Barbara Bush
, wife of former president George H.W. Bush and mother of George W. Bush, generated criticism after comments on hurricane evacuees and a donation. While visiting a Houston relief center for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina
, Bush told the radio program Marketplace
,
The remarks generated controversy. Later, Barbara Bush also donated money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund,with some of that money being earmarked by her to go to a software company owned by her son, Neil Bush
"Mrs. Bush wanted to do something specifically for education and specifically for the thousands of students flooding into the Houston schools," said Jean Becker, former President Bush's chief of staff. "She knew that HISD was using this software program, and she's very excited about this program, so she wanted to make it possible for them to expand the use of this program."
Since then, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees."
.
(D) requested, via a letter to the National Guard Bureau on August 30, additional National Guard troops from other states to supplement the Louisiana National Guard, but approval did not occur until September 1. New Mexico
Governor Bill Richardson
had offered assistance to Blanco two days before the storm hit, but could not send his troops until approval came from the National Guard Bureau. Blanco later acknowledged that she should have called for more troops sooner, and that she should have activated a compact with other states that would have allowed her to bypass the requirement to route the request through the National Guard Bureau.
Some 40% of Louisiana's National Guard was deployed to Iraq at the time, and critics claim that use of the National Guard to boost troop numbers in Iraq left them unready to handle disasters at home.
Notably, federal troops are generally prohibited from directly enforcing state laws (e.g., controlling looting or riots) by the Posse Comitatus Act
, with some exceptions. The President can assume command of state troops under the Stafford Act, but in this "federalized", or "Title 10
" status, the federalized National Guard troops become unable to enforce laws directly, just like other federal troops. However, the Posse Comitatus Act does not apply to National Guard troops under the command of a state governor.
Shortly before midnight on Friday, September 2, the Bush administration sent Governor Blanco a request to take over command of law enforcement under the Insurrection Act
(one of the exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act), but this request was rejected by Blanco. Governor Haley Barbour
of Mississippi
also rejected a similar request.
Governor Blanco did make a request to the Federal government for additional National Guard troops (to be under her command) to supplement the 5,700 Louisiana National Guard troops available in Louisiana at the time. However, the necessary formal request through the federal National Guard Bureau was not made until Wednesday, a full two days after the hurricane hit and when much of the city was already under water; Blanco explained that she didn't understand specific types and numbers of troops needed to be requested. By comparison, on September 2, when Louisiana had only a few hundred National Guardsmen from other states, Mississippi's National Guard reports having "almost division strength (about 10,000 troops)" from other states' National Guards. Blanco also failed to activate a compact with other states that would have allowed her to bypass the National Guard Bureau in a request for additional troops.
Within the United States and as delineated in the National Response Plan
, response and planning is first and foremost a local government responsibility. When local government exhausts its resources, it then requests specific additional resources from the county level. The request process proceeds similarly from the county to the state to the federal government as additional resource needs are identified. Many of the problems that arose developed from inadequate planning and back-up communications systems at various levels. One example of this is that the City of New Orleans attempted to manage the disaster from a hotel ballroom with inadequate back-up communications plans instead of a properly staffed Emergency Operations Center
. When phone service failed, they had difficulty communicating their specific needs to the state EOC in Baton Rouge.
Press reports indicate that there were other failures at the state and local level in expediting aid and social services to the stricken area. Referring again to the federalisation of the National Guard, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin accused the governor of delaying federal rescue efforts, "I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision. It would have been great if we could have [...] told the world that we had this all worked out. It didn't happen, and more people died." A FEMA official has claimed that Gov. Blanco failed to submit a request for help in a timely manner, saying that she did send President Bush a request asking for shelter and provisions, but didn't specifically ask for help with evacuations. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service
has concluded, that Blanco did submit requests for shelter, counseling and provisions in a timely manner, but there is no mention that she requested assistance with evacuation. One aide to the governor said that Blanco thought city officials were taking care of the evacuation in accord with the city's emergency plan.
There were reports that Governor Blanco was reluctant to issue a mandatory evacuation order until President Bush called to personally ask that she give the order. However, the mandatory evacuation order was issued by Mayor Nagin, and it is unlikely the Bush call was decisive in the making of the order. At the August 28 press conference in which Nagin and Blanco ordered the evacuation of New Orleans, Blanco actually said that Bush had called, "just before we walked into this room" to share his concerns and urge that the city be evacuated.
William J. Jefferson
(D-Louisiana
) a Representative for Louisiana from the New Orleans area, was criticized when he had misused National Guard resources to check on his personal belongings and property on September 2, during the height of the rescue efforts. He used his political position to bypass military barricades and delay two heavy trucks, a helicopter, and several National Guard troops for over an hour to stop at his home and retrieve, "a laptop computer, three suitcases, and a box about the size of a small refrigerator".
On Saturday August 27, several hours after the last regularly scheduled train left New Orleans, Amtrak
ran a special train to move equipment out of the city. The train had room for several hundred passengers, and Amtrak offered these spaces to the city, but the city declined them, so the train left New Orleans at 8:30 p.m., with no passengers on board.
However, Governor Blanco has said FEMA had asked for school buses not to be used as they were not air-conditioned, and a potential risk of causing heat stroke, and that FEMA had informed them of more suitable buses that they would be providing. Concerned over the slow reaction, Blanco sent in the state's fleet of 500 buses to aid in the evacuation process. It was not until late on August 31 that Blanco learned the FEMA buses were being sent from outside the state, and could not arrive in time.
Conditions amidst the aftermath of the storm worsened, and included violent crimes, shootings, and lootings, most of which turned out to be rumors. One New Orleans police officer likened the conditions in the aftermath to Somalia
, saying, "It's a war zone, and they're not treating it like one." Officers had been giving up after working days straight with little or no support. President Bush said that saving lives should come first, but he and the local New Orleans Government also stated that they will have zero tolerance for looters. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan
affirmed that looters should not be allowed to take food, water or shoes, that they should get those things through some other way. Gov. Blanco warned that troops had orders to shoot to kill, saying, "These troops are fresh back from Iraq, well trained, experienced, battle tested and under my orders to restore order in the streets. ... They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will."
The convention center conditions were described as appalling, having become surrounded by refuse, human feces and even corpses. The downtown Charity Hospital has had a number of critically ill patients die as a result of delays in evacuations. The flooding of New Orleans occurred after the worst of Hurricane Katrina's fury had been spent and the storm itself moved further north. The destruction wrought by Katrina, and the flooding thereafter, severely damaged the roads and other infrastructure needed to deliver relief.
Officers from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office
, the Gretna City Police Department
, and the Crescent City Connection Police blocked the Crescent City Connection
to block evacuees crossing the Mississippi River
from New Orleans into their area. Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson
told UPI, "There was no food, water or shelter in Gretna City. We did not have the wherewithall [sic] to deal with these people. If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now - looted, burned and pillaged."
Later, an independent investigation of the pre-Katrina levee
s that protect New Orleans, alleged that the Levee Board had mismanaged funds and also, "paid more attention to marinas, gambling and business than to maintaining the levees.
for protection. A group of police entered the house, and when she refused to surrender her revolver, she was tackled and it was removed by force. Konie's shoulder was fractured, and she was taken into police custody for failing to surrender her firearm. Even National Guard troops, armed with assault rifle
s, were used for house to house searches, seizing firearms and attempting to get those remaining in the city to leave.
Angered citizens, backed by the National Rifle Association
and other organizations, filed protests over the constitutionality of such an order and the difficulty in tracking seizures, as paperwork was rarely filed during the searches. Wayne LaPierre
, CEO of the National Rifle Association, defended the right of affected citizens to retain firearms, saying that, "What we’ve seen in Louisiana - the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of disaster - is exactly the kind of situation where the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves." The searches received little news coverage, though reaction from groups such as the NRA, the Second Amendment Foundation, and Gun Owners of America
was immediate and heated, and a lawsuit was filed September 22 by the NRA and SAF on behalf of two firearm owners whose firearms were seized. On September 23, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana issued a restraining order
to bar further firearms confiscations.
After refusing to admit that it had any seized firearms, the city revealed in mid-March that it did have a cache of some 1000 firearms seized after the hurricane; this disclosure came after the NRA filed a motion in court to hold the city in contempt
for failure to comply with the U.S. District Court's earlier order to return all seized firearms. On April 14, 2006, it was announced that the city will begin to return seized firearms, however as of early 2008, many firearms were still in police possession, and the matter was still in court. The matter was finally settled in favor of the NRA in October 2008. Per the agreement, the city was required to relax the strict proof of ownership requirements previously used, and was to release firearms to their owners with an affidavit
claiming ownership and a background check to verify that the owner is legally able to possess a firearm.
Louisiana legislator Steve Scalise
introduced Louisiana House Bill 760, which would prohibit confiscation of firearms in a state of emergency, unless the seizure is pursuant to the investigation of a crime, or if the seizure is necessary to prevent immediate harm to the officer or another individual. On June 8, 2006, HB 760 was signed into law. 21 other states joined Louisiana in enacting similar laws. A federal law prohibiting seizure of lawfully held firearms during an emergency, the Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006
, passed in the House with a vote of 322 to 99, and in the Senate by 84-16. The bill was signed into law by President Bush on October 9, 2006.
program Good Morning America
that the United States could fend for itself, "I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars," Bush said of foreign governments.
The immediate response from many nations
was to ask to be allowed to send in self-sustaining search and rescue
teams to assist in evacuating those remaining in the city. This first to respond was Venezuela, offering tons of food, water, and a million barrels of extra petroleum. France
had a range of aircraft, two naval ships and a hospital ship standing ready in the Caribbean
. Russia offered four jets with rescuers, equipment, food and medicine, but their help was first declined before later being accepted. Germany
had offered airlifting, vaccination, water purification, medical supplies including German air force hospital planes, emergency electrical power and pumping services; their offer was noted and they received a formal request three days later. Similarly, Sweden
had been waiting for a formal request to send a military cargo plane with three complete GSM
systems, water sanitation equipment, and experts. The Netherlands offered help out of the island Aruba
in the Caribbean Sea. Cuba offered to send 1,586 doctors and 26 tons of medicine but this offer was rejected.
British Deputy Prime Minister
John Prescott
linked the global warming
issue to Katrina, criticizing the United States' lack of support for the Kyoto Protocol
, "The horrific flood of New Orleans brings home to us the concern of leaders of countries like the Maldives
, whose nations are at risk of disappearing completely. There has been resistance by the US government to Kyoto - which I believe is wrong." Ted Sluijter, press spokesman for Neeltje Jans, the public park where the Delta Works
are located, said, "I don't want to sound overly critical, but it's hard to imagine that (the damage caused by Katrina) could happen in a Western country, It seemed like plans for protection and evacuation weren't really in place, and once it happened, the coordination was poor."
In China, the Communist Party
newspaper, the People's Daily
, criticized President Bush's handling of the crisis, calling the slow response time to the unfolding events a, "negligence of duty".
An article in the April 29, 2007 Washington Post claimed that of the $854 million offered by foreign countries, whom the article dubs "allies," to the US Government, only $40 million of the funds had been spent "for disaster victims or reconstruction" as of the date of publication (less than 5%).
Additionally, a large portion of the $854 million in aid offered went uncollected, including over $400 million in oil (almost 50%).
The Executive Summary states (among other things) the following:
. In addition, New Orleans is one of America's poorest cities, with more than 25% of residents and 40% of children living at or below the poverty line. Within the city itself, the poorest, who are mostly African-American, tended to live in the lowest parts that are most vulnerable to flooding.
98% of residents in the Lower Ninth Ward, which was flooded by a catastrophic breach in the nearby Industrial Canal, are black, and more than a third live in poverty. Many of the poor depend on welfare, Social Security
, or other public assistance checks, which they receive on the first of each month, meaning that Hurricane Katrina made landfall just when many of the poor had exhausted their resources. Thus, many of the city's poor simply couldn't afford to flee the city before the hurricane struck.
Speaking at a press conference from a relief center in Lafayette
, First Lady
Laura Bush
explained that the poor are always the main victims of natural disasters. "This is what happens when there's a natural disaster of this scope," Mrs. Bush said. "The poorer people are usually in the neighborhoods that are the lowest or the most exposed or the most vulnerable. Their housing is the most vulnerable to natural disaster. And that is just always what happens."
Reverend Jesse Jackson
criticized the President and asked why he has not named African-Americans to top positions in the federal response to the disaster, particularly when the majority of victims remaining stranded in New Orleans were black: "How can blacks be locked out of the leadership, and trapped in the suffering? It is that lack of sensitivity and compassion that represents a kind of incompetence."
Fifty-one percent of Louisiana residents who were killed by Hurricane Katrina were black; 49% of victims were 75 years old or older. However, for some demographic groups in Orleans Parish (New Orleans), the death rate for African-Americans was 1.7-4 times higher than for whites; as a whole in Orleans parish, 68% of deaths (459 out of 680 total) were black people, almost exactly the same percentage of the population there as that found in the 2000 U.S. Census (which recorded 67%).
Areas of the city where the largest number of dead were found were low-lying, flood-prone areas with predominantly black populations.
claimed that racism
was a factor in the slow government response, stating that "many black people feel that their race, their property conditions and their voting patterns have been a factor in the response."
Commentator Lou Dobbs
of CNN
has claimed that local officials should bear some responsibility, saying that "the city of New Orleans is 70% black, its mayor is black, its principal power structure is black, and if there is a failure to the black Americans, who live in poverty and in the city of New Orleans, those officials have to bear much of the responsibility."
Former Mayor of Atlanta
and UN Ambassador Andrew Young
, who was born in New Orleans, had a more nuanced reaction to the disaster: "I was surprised and not surprised. It's not just a lack of preparedness. I think the easy answer is to say that these are poor people and black people and so the government doesn't give a damn... there might be some truth to that. But I think we've got to see this as a serious problem of the long-term neglect of an environmental system on which our nation depends."
On September 2, 2005, during a benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina
relief on NBC, A Concert for Hurricane Relief
, rapper Kanye West
was a featured speaker. Controversy arose when West was presenting, as he deviated from the prepared script, criticizing the slow federal response. Actor Mike Myers
, with whom West was paired to present, spoke next and continued to read the script. Once it was West's turn to speak again, he said "George Bush
doesn't care about black people." At this point, telethon producer Rick Kaplan cut off the microphone and then cut away to Chris Tucker
, who was unaware of the cut for a few seconds. Still, West's comment reached much of the United States.
" to describe someone that was displaced
by Hurricane Katrina. Many, particularly African-Americans, have argued that using the term "refugee" implies a sort of "second class" status, while others have argued that using terms such as "evacuees" or "displaced" is too clinical and not dramatic enough to portray the current situation. President Bush addressed this issue in the following statement: "The people we're talking about are not refugees. They are Americans and they need the help and love and compassion of our fellow citizens." Accordingly, most of the major media outlets in the U.S. eliminated the usage of "refugees", with a few exceptions.
In the days before the storm, Mayor Nagin was particularly blunt in regards to foreign tourists, stating, "The only thing I can say to them is I hope they have a hotel room, and it's a least on the third floor and up. Unfortunately, unless they can rent a car to get out of town, which I doubt they can at this point, they're probably in the position of riding the storm out." Hotel managers also criticised the treatment of tourists, with one noting they were treated worse than the people in the Superdome.
However, there were also some reports that portrayed the overall generosity of the American people. Some Irish tourists were touched by the "infinite kindness" shown to them by "complete strangers."
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
and its aftermath. Specifically, there was a delayed response to the flooding of New Orleans, Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
. (See Hurricane preparedness for New Orleans
Hurricane preparedness for New Orleans
Hurricane preparedness in New Orleans has been an issue since the city's early settlement because of the city's location.New Orleans was built on a delta marsh. Unlike the first two centuries of its existence, today, a little less than half of the modern city sits below sea level...
for criticism of the failure of Federal flood protection.)
Background
Within days of Katrina's August 29, 2005 landfall, public debate arose about the local, state and federal governments' role in the preparationsPreparations for Hurricane Katrina
This article covers the details of the Preparations for Hurricane Katrina, a major category 5 hurricane that devastated parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.-South Florida:...
for and response to the storm. Criticism was prompted largely by televised images of visibly shaken and frustrated political leaders, and of residents who remained in New Orleans without water, food or shelter
Emergency shelter
Emergency shelters are places for people to live temporarily when they can't live in their previous residence, similar to homeless shelters. The main difference is that an emergency shelter typically specializes in people fleeing a specific type of situation, such as natural or man-made disasters,...
, and the deaths of several citizens by thirst, exhaustion, and violence days after the storm itself had passed. The treatment of people who had evacuated to registered facilities such as the Superdome
Louisiana Superdome
The Mercedes-Benz Superdome, previously known as the Louisiana Superdome and colloquially known as the Superdome, is a sports and exhibition arena located in the Central Business District of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA...
was also criticized.
Criticism from politicians, activists, pundits and journalists of all stripes has been directed at the local, state and federal governments.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin
Ray Nagin
Clarence Ray Nagin, Jr. is a former mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Nagin gained international note in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the New Orleans area....
was also criticized for failing to implement his evacuation plan and for ordering residents to a shelter of last resort without any provisions for food, water, security, or sanitary conditions. Perhaps the most important criticism of Nagin is that he delayed his emergency evacuation
Emergency evacuation
Emergency evacuation is the immediate and rapid movement of people away from the threat or actual occurrence of a hazard. Examples range from the small scale evacuation of a building due to a bomb threat or fire to the large scale evacuation of a district because of a flood, bombardment or...
order until less than a day before landfall, which led to hundreds of deaths of people who (by that time) could not find any way out of the city. Adding to the criticism was the broadcast of school bus
School bus
A school bus is a type of bus designed and manufactured for student transport: carrying children and teenagers to and from school and school events...
parking lots full of yellow school buses which Mayor Nagin refused to be used in evacuation. When asked why the buses were not used to assist evacuations instead of holing up in the Superdome, Nagin cited the lack of insurance liability and shortage of bus drivers.
Evacuation process criticism
New Orleans was already one of the poorest metropolitan areas in the United States in 2005, with the eighth-lowest median income ($30,771). At 24.5 percent, Orleans Parish had the sixth-highest poverty rate among U.S. counties. The 2000 U.S. census revealed that 27% of New Orleans households, amounting to approximately 120,000 people, were without private mobility. Despite these factors preventing many people from being able to evacuate on their own, the mandatory evacuation called on August 28 made no provisions to evacuate homeless, low-income, or carless individuals or sick, nor the city's elderly or infirm residents. Consequentially most of those stranded in the city were the poor, the elderly, and the sick.It has been stated in the evacuation order that, beginning at noon on August 28 and running for several hours, all city buses were redeployed to shuttle local residents to, "refuges of last resort," designated in advance, including the Louisiana Superdome
Louisiana Superdome
The Mercedes-Benz Superdome, previously known as the Louisiana Superdome and colloquially known as the Superdome, is a sports and exhibition arena located in the Central Business District of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA...
. They also said that the state had prepositioned enough food and water to supply 15,000 citizens with supplies for three days, the anticipated waiting period before FEMA would arrive in force and provide supplies for those still in the city. Later, it was found that FEMA had provided these supplies, but that FEMA Director Michael D. Brown
Michael D. Brown
Michael DeWayne Brown was the first Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response , a division of the Department of Homeland Security . This position is generally referred to as the director or administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency . He was appointed in January 2003 by...
was greatly surprised by the much larger numbers of people who turned up seeking refuge and that the first wave of supplies were quickly depleted. The large numbers were a direct result of the insufficient mobilization and evacuation before Katrina's arrival, primarily due to city and state resistance to issuing an evacuation order and risk "crying wolf" and losing face should the hurricane had left the path of model prediction. Had contra-flow on highways been initiated sooner and more buses begun evacuating families (including the idle school buses that were not used at all) the numbers of stranded New Orleans occupants would have been significantly less making the initial wave of FEMA supplies adequate and even excessive.
Federal government response
President Bush signed a $United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
10.5 billion relief package within four days of the hurricane, and ordered 7,200 active-duty troops to assist with relief efforts. However, some members of the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
charged that the relief efforts were slow because most of the affected areas were poor. There was also concern that many National Guard units were short staffed in surrounding states because some units were deployed overseas and local recruiting efforts in schools and the community had been hampered making reserves less than ideal.
Due to the slow response to the hurricane, New Orleans's top emergency management official called the effort a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly desperate city. New Orleans's emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert blamed the inadequate response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency
Federal Emergency Management Agency
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, initially created by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1978 and implemented by two Executive Orders...
(FEMA). "This is not a FEMA operation. I haven't seen a single FEMA guy", he said. "FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."
In the early morning of September 2 mayor Ray Nagin
Ray Nagin
Clarence Ray Nagin, Jr. is a former mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Nagin gained international note in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the New Orleans area....
expressed his frustration at what he claimed were insufficient reinforcements provided by the President and federal authorities.
However, many police, fire and EMS organizations from outside the affected areas were reportedly hindered or otherwise slowed in their efforts to send help and assistance to the area. FEMA sent hundreds of firefighters who had volunteered to help rescue victims to Atlanta for 2 days of training classes on topics including sexual harassment and the history of FEMA. Official requests for help through the proper chains of command were not forthcoming due to local and state delays in engaging FEMA for federal assistance, even after approached by such authorities. Local police and other EMS workers found the situation traumatic; at least two officers committed suicide, and over 300 deserted the city after gang violence and "turf wars" erupted around the city. A report by the Appleseed Foundation
Appleseed Foundation
Appleseed is a non-partisan, nonprofit network of 16 public interest justice centers in the United States and Mexico.- History :...
, a public policy network, found that local entities (nonprofit and local government agencies) were far more flexible and responsive than the federal government or national organizations. The federal response was often
constrained by lack of legal authority or by ill-suited eligibility and application requirements. In many instances, federal staff and national organizations did not seem to have the flexibility, training, and resources to meet demands on the ground."
Presidential role
Early Tuesday morning, August 30, a day after the hurricane struck, President Bush attended a V-J DayVictory over Japan Day
Victory over Japan Day is a name chosen for the day on which the Surrender of Japan occurred, effectively ending World War II, and subsequent anniversaries of that event...
commemoration ceremony at Coronado, California
Coronado, California
Coronado, also known as Coronado Island, is an affluent resort city located in San Diego County, California, 5.2 miles from downtown San Diego. Its population was 24,697 at the 2010 census, up from 24,100 at the 2000 census. U.S. News and World Report lists Coronado as one of the most expensive...
while monitoring the situation with his aides and cabinet officials. 24 hours before the ceremony, storm surges began overwhelming levees and floodwalls protecting the city of New Orleans, greatly exacerbating the minimal damage from rainfall and wind when the hurricane itself veered to the East and avoided a direct hit on New Orleans. Initial reports of leaked video footage of top-level briefings held before the storm claimed that this video contradicted Bush’s earlier statements that no one anticipated the breach of the levees. Transcripts revealed that Bush was warned that the levees may overflow, as were Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin.
Bush was criticized for not returning to Washington, D.C. from his vacation in Texas until after Wednesday afternoon, more than a day after the hurricane hit on Monday. Many claimed that on the morning of August 28, the president telephoned Mayor Nagin to "plead" for a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, and further claimed that Nagin and Gov. Blanco decided to evacuate the city only in response to that request. These claims were never substantiated with any recordings, however Blanco did tell reporters the President had called and spoken with her (but not Nagin) before the press conference.
Bush overflew the devastated area from Air Force One
Air Force One
Air Force One is the official air traffic control call sign of any United States Air Force aircraft carrying the President of the United States. In common parlance the term refers to those Air Force aircraft whose primary mission is to transport the president; however, any U.S. Air Force aircraft...
as he traveled from Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
back to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, and subsequently visited the Gulf Coast on Friday and was briefed on Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
. Turning to his aides during the flyover, he says: "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." Later, in a televised address from the White House, he says: "We're dealing with one of the worst national disasters in our nation's history."
"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9132021/ns/us_news-katrina_the_long_road_back/t/president-vows-massive-aid-storm-hit-area/"
Vice President
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
was also criticized in his role in the aftermath. On the night of August 30, and again the next morning, he personally called the manager of the Southern Pines Electric Power Association and ordered him to divert power crews to electrical substation
Electrical substation
A substation is a part of an electrical generation, transmission, and distribution system. Substations transform voltage from high to low, or the reverse, or perform any of several other important functions...
s in nearby Collins, Mississippi
Collins, Mississippi
Collins is a city in Covington County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 2,761 at the 2005 census. It is the county seat of Covington County....
that were essential to the operation of the Colonial Pipeline
Colonial Pipeline
Colonial Pipeline, headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, delivers a daily average of of gasoline, home heating oil, aviation fuel and other refined petroleum products to communities and businesses throughout the South and Eastern United States. Colonial consists of more than of pipeline,...
, which carries gasoline and diesel fuel from Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
to the Northeast
Northeastern United States
The Northeastern United States is a region of the United States as defined by the United States Census Bureau.-Composition:The region comprises nine states: the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont; and the Mid-Atlantic states of New...
. The power crews were reportedly upset when told what the purpose of the redirection was, since they were in the process of restoring power to two local hospitals, but did so anyway.
In January 2006, the President gave his 2006 State of the Union Address:
As we renew the promise of our institutions, let us also show the character of America in our compassion and care for one another...
A hopeful society comes to the aid of fellow citizens in times of suffering and emergency -- and stays at it until they're back on their feet. So far the federal government has committed $85 billion to the people of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. We're removing debris and repairing highways and rebuilding stronger levees. We're providing business loans and housing assistance. Yet as we meet these immediate needs, we must also address deeper challenges that existed before the storm arrived.
In New Orleans and in other places, many of our fellow citizens have felt excluded from the promise of our country. The answer is not only temporary relief, but schools that teach every child, and job skills that bring upward mobility, and more opportunities to own a home and start a business. As we recover from a disaster, let us also work for the day when all Americans are protected by justice, equal in hope, and rich in opportunity.
In January 2007, the fired FEMA director Michael D. Brown
Michael D. Brown
Michael DeWayne Brown was the first Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response , a division of the Department of Homeland Security . This position is generally referred to as the director or administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency . He was appointed in January 2003 by...
charged that partisan politics had played a role in the White House's decision to federalize emergency response to the disaster in Louisiana only rather than along the entire affected Gulf Coast region, which Brown said he had advocated. "Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,'" Brown said, speaking before a group of graduate students at the Metropolitan College of New York on January 19, 2007. "'We can't do it to Haley [Mississippi governor Haley Barbour
Haley Barbour
Haley Reeves Barbour is an American Republican politician currently serving as the 63rd Governor of Mississippi. He gained a national spotlight in August 2005 after Mississippi was hit by Hurricane Katrina. Barbour won re-election as Governor in 2007...
] because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'" The White House fervently denied Brown's charges through a spokeswoman and Brown's comments have never been substantiated.
Discussion of the recovery efforts for Hurricane Katrina took a back seat to terrorism and Iraq in his 2006 State of the Union Address
2006 State of the Union address
The 2006 State of the Union Address was delivered by United States President George W. Bush at 9 p.m. EST on Tuesday, January 31, 2006 to a joint session of the U.S. Congress...
. In that speech, Bush did not mention any human suffering caused by the storm or its aftermath, and did not acknowledge any shortcomings in his administration's response. Some media sources criticized Bush for failing to mention hurricane recovery in his 2007 State of the Union Address
2007 State of the Union Address
The 2007 State of the Union address was a speech given by United States President George W. Bush on Tuesday, January 23, 2007, at 9:13 P.M. EST. The speech was given in front of a joint session of Congress, presided over by Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Vice President...
.
Department of Homeland Security
The recent Katrina hurricane was arguably the first major test of Department of Homeland Security after September 11September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
. There have been questions on who was in charge of the disaster and who had jurisdictional authority. According to many media outlets, as well as many politicians, the response to the disaster was inadequate in terms of leadership and response. Both President George W. Bush and Congress plan separate investigations into Department of Homeland Security's response to the Katrina disaster.
On September 13, 2005, a memo was leaked that indicated that Chertoff issued 36 hours after the hurricane's landfall which read, in part, "As you know, the President has established the `White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response.' He will meet with us tomorrow to launch this effort. The Department of Homeland Security, along with other Departments, will be part of the task force and will assist the Administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina." The memo activated the National Response Plan
National Response Plan
The National Response Plan was a United States national plan to respond to emergencies such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks. It came into effect in December 2004 , and was superseded by the National Response Framework on March 22, 2008....
and made Michael D. Brown
Michael D. Brown
Michael DeWayne Brown was the first Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response , a division of the Department of Homeland Security . This position is generally referred to as the director or administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency . He was appointed in January 2003 by...
responsible for federal action. The article found:
Federal Emergency Management Agency
The Federal Emergency Management AgencyFederal Emergency Management Agency
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, initially created by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1978 and implemented by two Executive Orders...
was heavily criticized in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, primarily for its slow response and inability to coordinate its efforts with other federal agencies relief organizations. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley
Richard M. Daley
Richard Michael Daley is a United States politician, member of the national and local Democratic Party, and former Mayor of Chicago, Illinois. He was elected mayor in 1989 and reelected in 1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007. He was the longest serving Chicago mayor, surpassing the tenure of his...
(D), prominent liberal Chicago politician, said of the slow Federal response, "I was shocked. We are ready to provide considerably more help than they have requested. We are just waiting for the call. I don't want to sit here and all of a sudden we are all going to be political. Just get it done."
FEMA was accused of deliberately slowing things down, in an effort to ensure that all assistance and relief workers were coordinated properly. For example, Michael D. Brown
Michael D. Brown
Michael DeWayne Brown was the first Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response , a division of the Department of Homeland Security . This position is generally referred to as the director or administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency . He was appointed in January 2003 by...
, the head of FEMA, on August 29, urged all fire and emergency services departments not to respond to counties and states affected by Hurricane Katrina without being requested and lawfully dispatched by state and local authorities under mutual aid agreements and the Emergency Management Assistance Compact.
FEMA also interfered in the Astor Hotel's' plans to hire 10 buses to carry approximately 500 guests to higher ground. Federal officials commandeered the buses, and told the guests to join thousands of other evacuees at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center is in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The lower end of building one is located upriver from Canal Street on the banks of the Mississippi River. It is named after former Mayor of New Orleans Ernest N. Morial...
. In other instances of FEMA asserting its authority to only ultimately make things worse, FEMA officials turned away three Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
trailer trucks loaded with water, prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the Jefferson Parish
Jefferson Parish, Louisiana
Jefferson Parish is a parish in Louisiana, United States that includes most of the suburbs of New Orleans. The seat of parish government is Gretna....
emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA. The Wal-Mart delivery had actually been turned away a week earlier, on Sunday, August 28, before the hurricane struck. A caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers was reported in New Orleans by September 1. Additionally, more than 50 civilian aircraft responding to separate requests for evacuations from hospitals and other agencies swarmed to the area a day after Katrina hit, but FEMA blocked their efforts. Aircraft operators complained that FEMA waved off a number of evacuation attempts, saying the rescuers were not authorized. "Many planes and helicopters simply sat idle," said Thomas Judge, president of the Assn. of Air Medical Services.
Senator
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
Mary Landrieu
Mary Landrieu
Mary Loretta Landrieu is the senior United States Senator from the State of Louisiana and a member of the Democratic Party.Born in Arlington, Virginia, Landrieu was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana...
(D-Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
), was particularly critical of FEMA's efforts in a statement: "[T]he U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims—far more efficiently than buses—FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency. But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast—black and white, rich and poor, young and old—deserve far better from their national government." However, Landrieu's overflight was of the end of the single-lane roadway being built toward the breach. The "single, lonely piece of equipment" was one power shovel, a bulldozer, and two dump trucks. Video did not show the work area a few hundred feet away at the start of the roadway. USACE photos show a variety of equipment at that site the following day.
The New York Times reported that 91,000 tons of ice ordered by FEMA at a cost of over $100 million and intended for hospitals and food storage for relief efforts never made it to the disaster area. Federally contracted truck drivers instead received orders from FEMA to deliver the ice to government rented storage facilities around the country, as far north as Maine. In testimony to a House panel, FEMA director Michael D. Brown stated that "I don't think that's a federal government responsibility to provide ice to keep my hamburger meat in my freezer or refrigerator fresh."
In a September 15, 2005 New York Times opinion column about the privately owned Methodist Hospital in New Orleans, Bob Herbert
Bob Herbert
Robert “Bob” Herbert is an American journalist op-ed columnist who wrote for The New York Times. His column was syndicated to other newspapers around the country. Herbert frequently writes on poverty, the Iraq war, racism and American political apathy towards race issues...
wrote, "Incredibly, when the out-of-state corporate owners of the hospital responded to the flooding by sending emergency relief supplies, they were confiscated at the airport by FEMA."
A September 16, 2005 CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
article about Chalmette Medical Center stated, "Doctors eager to help sick and injured evacuees were handed mops by federal officials who expressed concern about legal liability... And so they mopped, while people died around them."
Michael Brown
FEMA Director, Michael Brown, was criticized when he stated that he was not aware there were refugees in the Convention Center
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center is in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The lower end of building one is located upriver from Canal Street on the banks of the Mississippi River. It is named after former Mayor of New Orleans Ernest N. Morial...
until September 1, three days after Hurricane Katrina hit, when Brian Williams, of NBC Nightly News, asked Mr. Brown a question about them live on the Nightly News.
On September 2, CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
's Soledad O'Brien
Soledad O'Brien
María de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien is an American Broadcast journalist. She is currently the host of the "In America" documentary unit on CNN, and is best known for anchoring the CNN marquee morning newscast American Morning from July 2003 to April 2007, with Miles O'Brien...
asked FEMA Director Mike Brown, "How is it possible that we're getting better info than you were getting... we were showing live pictures of the people outside the Convention Center... also we'd been reporting that officials had been telling people to go to the Convention Center... I don't understand how FEMA cannot have this information." When pressed, Brown reluctantly admitted he had learned about the starving crowds at the Convention Center from news media reports. O'Brien then said to Brown, "FEMA's been on the ground four days, going into the fifth day, why no massive air drop of food and water... in Banda Aceh
Banda Aceh
Banda Aceh is the provincial capital and largest city in the province of Aceh, Indonesia, located on the island of Sumatra, with an elevation of 35 meters. The city regency covers an area of 64 square kilometres and according to the 2000 census had a population of 219,070 people...
, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, they got food drops two days after the tsunami."
Once officials became aware of the conditions at the Convention Center a small amount of basic food supplies were diverted there by helicopter, but there were no large-scale deliveries until a truck convoy arrived at midday—the damage to infrastructure by the still present floodwaters and mob attacks delayed relief workers. Federal officials also underestimated the number of people converging on the convention center. Even as refugees were evacuated, more kept arriving every hour.
Later, Michael Brown admitted that he had virtually no experience in emergency management
Emergency management
Emergency management is the generic name of an interdisciplinary field dealing with the strategic organizational management processes used to protect critical assets of an organization from hazard risks that can cause events like disasters or catastrophes and to ensure the continuance of the...
when he was appointed to the position by President Bush two years prior to Katrina. And, in fact he had limited authority to order federal agencies into action until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm. Chertoff was the one with the authority. "http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0914-04.htm" President Bush recognized this and commended Michael Brown and gave him credit for the good work he had done, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. The FEMA Director is working 24 – they're working 24 hours a day."
On September 9, Chertoff
Michael Chertoff
Michael Chertoff was the second United States Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush and co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act. He previously served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as a federal prosecutor, and as assistant U.S. Attorney...
recalled Brown to Washington and removed him from the immediate supervision of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, and replaced him with Vice Admiral
Vice Admiral
Vice admiral is a senior naval rank of a three-star flag officer, which is equivalent to lieutenant general in the other uniformed services. A vice admiral is typically senior to a rear admiral and junior to an admiral...
Thad W. Allen
Thad W. Allen
Thad William Allen is a retired United States Coast Guard admiral who served as the 23rd Commandant of the Coast Guard. Allen is best known for his widely-praised performance directing the federal response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf Coast region from September 2005 to January 2006....
, chief of staff of the United States Coast Guard
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
. Three days later, on September 12, Brown resigned his position, stating, "As I told the president, it is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA."
Censorship
On September 6, citing a Defense Department
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
policy banning the photographing of flag-draped coffins of American troops, FEMA representatives stated that they did not want journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
s to accompany rescue boats as they went out searching for victims, because, "the recovery of the victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect." The agency also asked that no photographs of the dead be published by the media as well. This policy was met with much criticism by the media, and compared to censorship. On September 9, Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré
Russel L. Honoré
Russel L. Honoré is a retired Lieutenant General who served as the 33rd commanding general of the U.S. First Army at Fort Gillem, Georgia. He is best known for serving as commander of Joint Task Force Katrina responsible for coordinating military relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina-affected areas...
, who oversaw the federal relief effort in New Orleans, and Terry Ebbert, Louisiana's homeland security director, said that reporters would have, "zero access," to body recovery operations, a statement which was actually misinterpreted. What was meant by that was that reporters would not be embedded with recovery teams, but would still have free access to any public area in the city. CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
filed a lawsuit regarding the situation, and U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison issued an order preventing officials from blocking media coverage.
Lobbying contracts and FEMA
On September 7, FEMA hired a private disaster relief management company, Kenyon International, to collect bodies. Based in Houston, Texas
Houston, Texas
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...
, Kenyon International specializes in disaster relief and had provided services in previous major disasters worldwide. Accusations of cronyism
Cronyism
Cronyism is partiality to long-standing friends, especially by appointing them to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications. Hence, cronyism is contrary in practice and principle to meritocracy....
were raised, as Kenyon International is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International
Service Corporation International
For other uses of the acronym SCI, see SCIService Corporation International is North America’s largest provider of end-of-life arrangements and services. With its headquarters in Neartown, Houston, Texas, United States, SCI operates more than 1500 funeral homes and 400 cemeteries in 43 states,...
(SCI), which is owned by funeral home magnate and Bush family
Bush family
The Bush family is a prominent American family. Along with many members who have been successful bankers and businessmen, across three generations the family includes two U.S. Senators, one Supreme Court Justice, two Governors, one Vice President and two Presidents...
friend Robert Waltrip.
Recommended charities
FEMA was criticized for giving undue prominence to Operation Blessing International
Operation Blessing International
Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation is a non-profit 501 non-profit humanitarian organization based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA and has an operation named Operation Blessing Foundation Philippines, Inc...
, placing it as #2 on their list of recommended charities right after the American Red Cross
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross , also known as the American National Red Cross, is a volunteer-led, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States. It is the designated U.S...
. Operation Blessing is a charity founded, and still chaired by, Pat Robertson
Pat Robertson
Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson is a media mogul, television evangelist, ex-Baptist minister and businessman who is politically aligned with the Christian Right in the United States....
, the television evangelist
Televangelism
Televangelism is the use of television to communicate the Christian faith. The word is a portmanteau of television and evangelism and was coined by Time magazine. A “televangelist” is a Christian minister who devotes a large portion of his ministry to television broadcasting...
.
FEMA Firefighters
When FEMA called for firefighters for, "community service and outreach," 2000 highly-trained firefighters showed up in a staging area in an Atlanta hotel, believing that their skills would be used, or would better be used, for search and rescue operations. The firefighters, who were all paid by FEMA for their time, found themselves undergoing training on community relations, watching videos, and attending seminars on sexual harassment in a hotel, waiting days, in some cases, to be deployed in a secretarial or public relations position. Some firefighters called it a misallocation of resources, others were simply frustrated at the delay. FEMA defended itself by saying that there was no urgency for the firefighters to arrive because they were primarily going to be involved in community relations work, not search and rescue, and their call for help stated this.
Chertoff... FEMA was 'overwhelmed'
Testifying before the Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Chertoff said that FEMA was, "overwhelmed," by the scope of the disaster, and acknowledged, "many lapses," in his agency’s response to Katrina. Chertoff also disagreed with Michael Brown's earlier testimony that state and local officials were responsible for the slow response to the hurricane, saying that he had experienced no problems in dealing with state and local officials and that Brown had never informed him of any problems.
Barbara Bush
Barbara Bush
Barbara Bush
Barbara Pierce Bush is the wife of the 41st President of the United States George H. W. Bush, and served as First Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993. She is the mother of the 43rd President George W. Bush and of the 43rd Governor of Florida Jeb Bush...
, wife of former president George H.W. Bush and mother of George W. Bush, generated criticism after comments on hurricane evacuees and a donation. While visiting a Houston relief center for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
, Bush told the radio program Marketplace
Marketplace (radio program)
Marketplace is a radio program that focuses on business, the economy, and events that influence them. Hosted by Kai Ryssdal, the show is produced and distributed by American Public Media, in association with the University of Southern California...
,
The remarks generated controversy. Later, Barbara Bush also donated money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund,with some of that money being earmarked by her to go to a software company owned by her son, Neil Bush
Neil Bush
Neil Mallon Bush is the fourth of six children of former President George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Bush . His five siblings are George Walker Bush, the former President of the United States; Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida; Robin Bush, who died of leukemia in 1953 at the age of...
"Mrs. Bush wanted to do something specifically for education and specifically for the thousands of students flooding into the Houston schools," said Jean Becker, former President Bush's chief of staff. "She knew that HISD was using this software program, and she's very excited about this program, so she wanted to make it possible for them to expand the use of this program."
Since then, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees."
.
National Guard
Governor Kathleen BlancoKathleen Blanco
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco was the 54th Governor of Louisiana, having served from January 2004 until January 2008. She was the first woman to be elected to the office of governor of Louisiana....
(D) requested, via a letter to the National Guard Bureau on August 30, additional National Guard troops from other states to supplement the Louisiana National Guard, but approval did not occur until September 1. New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
Governor Bill Richardson
Bill Richardson (politician)
William Blaine "Bill" Richardson III is an American politician, who served as the 30th Governor of New Mexico from 2003 to 2011. Before being elected governor, Richardson served in the Clinton administration as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Energy Secretary. Richardson has also served...
had offered assistance to Blanco two days before the storm hit, but could not send his troops until approval came from the National Guard Bureau. Blanco later acknowledged that she should have called for more troops sooner, and that she should have activated a compact with other states that would have allowed her to bypass the requirement to route the request through the National Guard Bureau.
Some 40% of Louisiana's National Guard was deployed to Iraq at the time, and critics claim that use of the National Guard to boost troop numbers in Iraq left them unready to handle disasters at home.
State and local government
Louisiana
State of Louisiana officials, including Governor Blanco and state emergency management leaders, have been widely criticized for delaying the ability of the federal government and outside agencies to provide needed relief and necessary security in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Chief among those criticisms is that state National Guard troops, under the command of Governor Blanco, were responsible for quelling civil unrest in advance of humanitarian relief efforts, yet they failed to do so in the first few days after the hurricane.Notably, federal troops are generally prohibited from directly enforcing state laws (e.g., controlling looting or riots) by the Posse Comitatus Act
Posse Comitatus Act
The Posse Comitatus Act is an often misunderstood and misquoted United States federal law passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction. Its intent was to limit the powers of local governments and law enforcement agencies from using federal military personnel to enforce the laws of...
, with some exceptions. The President can assume command of state troops under the Stafford Act, but in this "federalized", or "Title 10
Title 10 of the United States Code
Title 10 of the United States Code outlines the role of armed forces in the United States Code.It provides the legal basis for the roles, missions and organization of each of the services as well as the United States Department of Defense...
" status, the federalized National Guard troops become unable to enforce laws directly, just like other federal troops. However, the Posse Comitatus Act does not apply to National Guard troops under the command of a state governor.
Shortly before midnight on Friday, September 2, the Bush administration sent Governor Blanco a request to take over command of law enforcement under the Insurrection Act
Insurrection Act
The Insurrection Act of 1807 is the set of laws that govern the US President's ability to deploy troops within the United States to put down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion. The laws are chiefly contained in - . The general aim is to limit Presidential power as much as possible, relying on...
(one of the exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act), but this request was rejected by Blanco. Governor Haley Barbour
Haley Barbour
Haley Reeves Barbour is an American Republican politician currently serving as the 63rd Governor of Mississippi. He gained a national spotlight in August 2005 after Mississippi was hit by Hurricane Katrina. Barbour won re-election as Governor in 2007...
of Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
also rejected a similar request.
Governor Blanco did make a request to the Federal government for additional National Guard troops (to be under her command) to supplement the 5,700 Louisiana National Guard troops available in Louisiana at the time. However, the necessary formal request through the federal National Guard Bureau was not made until Wednesday, a full two days after the hurricane hit and when much of the city was already under water; Blanco explained that she didn't understand specific types and numbers of troops needed to be requested. By comparison, on September 2, when Louisiana had only a few hundred National Guardsmen from other states, Mississippi's National Guard reports having "almost division strength (about 10,000 troops)" from other states' National Guards. Blanco also failed to activate a compact with other states that would have allowed her to bypass the National Guard Bureau in a request for additional troops.
Within the United States and as delineated in the National Response Plan
National Response Plan
The National Response Plan was a United States national plan to respond to emergencies such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks. It came into effect in December 2004 , and was superseded by the National Response Framework on March 22, 2008....
, response and planning is first and foremost a local government responsibility. When local government exhausts its resources, it then requests specific additional resources from the county level. The request process proceeds similarly from the county to the state to the federal government as additional resource needs are identified. Many of the problems that arose developed from inadequate planning and back-up communications systems at various levels. One example of this is that the City of New Orleans attempted to manage the disaster from a hotel ballroom with inadequate back-up communications plans instead of a properly staffed Emergency Operations Center
Emergency operations center
An emergency operations center, or EOC, is a central command and control facility responsible for carrying out the principles of emergency preparedness and emergency management, or disaster management functions at a strategic level in an emergency situation, and ensuring the continuity of operation...
. When phone service failed, they had difficulty communicating their specific needs to the state EOC in Baton Rouge.
Press reports indicate that there were other failures at the state and local level in expediting aid and social services to the stricken area. Referring again to the federalisation of the National Guard, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin accused the governor of delaying federal rescue efforts, "I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision. It would have been great if we could have [...] told the world that we had this all worked out. It didn't happen, and more people died." A FEMA official has claimed that Gov. Blanco failed to submit a request for help in a timely manner, saying that she did send President Bush a request asking for shelter and provisions, but didn't specifically ask for help with evacuations. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service
Congressional Research Service
The Congressional Research Service , known as "Congress's think tank", is the public policy research arm of the United States Congress. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS works exclusively and directly for Members of Congress, their Committees and staff on a...
has concluded, that Blanco did submit requests for shelter, counseling and provisions in a timely manner, but there is no mention that she requested assistance with evacuation. One aide to the governor said that Blanco thought city officials were taking care of the evacuation in accord with the city's emergency plan.
There were reports that Governor Blanco was reluctant to issue a mandatory evacuation order until President Bush called to personally ask that she give the order. However, the mandatory evacuation order was issued by Mayor Nagin, and it is unlikely the Bush call was decisive in the making of the order. At the August 28 press conference in which Nagin and Blanco ordered the evacuation of New Orleans, Blanco actually said that Bush had called, "just before we walked into this room" to share his concerns and urge that the city be evacuated.
William J. Jefferson
William J. Jefferson
William Jennings "Bill" Jefferson is a former American politician, and a published author from the U.S. state of Louisiana. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for nine terms from 1991 to 2009 as a member of the Democratic Party. He represented , which includes much of the...
(D-Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
) a Representative for Louisiana from the New Orleans area, was criticized when he had misused National Guard resources to check on his personal belongings and property on September 2, during the height of the rescue efforts. He used his political position to bypass military barricades and delay two heavy trucks, a helicopter, and several National Guard troops for over an hour to stop at his home and retrieve, "a laptop computer, three suitcases, and a box about the size of a small refrigerator".
City and local response
Many have also criticized the local and state governments, who have primary responsibility for local disasters, including both Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin. Mayor Nagin was criticized for allegedly failing to execute the New Orleans disaster plan, which called for the use of the city's school buses in evacuating residents unable to leave on their own. The city never deployed the buses, which were subsequently destroyed in the flooding.On Saturday August 27, several hours after the last regularly scheduled train left New Orleans, Amtrak
Amtrak
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak , is a government-owned corporation that was organized on May 1, 1971, to provide intercity passenger train service in the United States. "Amtrak" is a portmanteau of the words "America" and "track". It is headquartered at Union...
ran a special train to move equipment out of the city. The train had room for several hundred passengers, and Amtrak offered these spaces to the city, but the city declined them, so the train left New Orleans at 8:30 p.m., with no passengers on board.
However, Governor Blanco has said FEMA had asked for school buses not to be used as they were not air-conditioned, and a potential risk of causing heat stroke, and that FEMA had informed them of more suitable buses that they would be providing. Concerned over the slow reaction, Blanco sent in the state's fleet of 500 buses to aid in the evacuation process. It was not until late on August 31 that Blanco learned the FEMA buses were being sent from outside the state, and could not arrive in time.
Conditions amidst the aftermath of the storm worsened, and included violent crimes, shootings, and lootings, most of which turned out to be rumors. One New Orleans police officer likened the conditions in the aftermath to Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
, saying, "It's a war zone, and they're not treating it like one." Officers had been giving up after working days straight with little or no support. President Bush said that saving lives should come first, but he and the local New Orleans Government also stated that they will have zero tolerance for looters. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan
Scott McClellan
Scott McClellan is a former White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush, and author of a controversial No. 1 New York Times bestseller about the Bush Administration titled What Happened. He replaced Ari Fleischer as press secretary in July 2003 and served until May 10, 2006...
affirmed that looters should not be allowed to take food, water or shoes, that they should get those things through some other way. Gov. Blanco warned that troops had orders to shoot to kill, saying, "These troops are fresh back from Iraq, well trained, experienced, battle tested and under my orders to restore order in the streets. ... They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will."
The convention center conditions were described as appalling, having become surrounded by refuse, human feces and even corpses. The downtown Charity Hospital has had a number of critically ill patients die as a result of delays in evacuations. The flooding of New Orleans occurred after the worst of Hurricane Katrina's fury had been spent and the storm itself moved further north. The destruction wrought by Katrina, and the flooding thereafter, severely damaged the roads and other infrastructure needed to deliver relief.
Officers from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office
Jefferson Parish, Louisiana
Jefferson Parish is a parish in Louisiana, United States that includes most of the suburbs of New Orleans. The seat of parish government is Gretna....
, the Gretna City Police Department
Gretna, Louisiana
The city of Gretna is the parish seat of Jefferson Parish, in the US state of Louisiana. Gretna is on the west bank of the Mississippi River, just east and across the river from uptown New Orleans. It is part of the New Orleans–Metairie–Kenner Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, and the Crescent City Connection Police blocked the Crescent City Connection
Crescent City Connection
The Crescent City Connection, abbreviated as CCC, refers to twin cantilever bridges that carry U.S. Route 90 Business over the Mississippi River in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. They are tied as the fifth-longest cantilever bridges in the world...
to block evacuees crossing the Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
from New Orleans into their area. Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson
Arthur Lawson
Arthur S. Lawson, Jr. is the chief of police of the Louisiana city of Gretna. He is primarily known for his controversial actions in preventing New Orleans residents from entering Gretna via the Crescent City Connection during and after Hurricane Katrina....
told UPI, "There was no food, water or shelter in Gretna City. We did not have the wherewithall [sic] to deal with these people. If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now - looted, burned and pillaged."
Later, an independent investigation of the pre-Katrina levee
Levee
A levee, levée, dike , embankment, floodbank or stopbank is an elongated naturally occurring ridge or artificially constructed fill or wall, which regulates water levels...
s that protect New Orleans, alleged that the Levee Board had mismanaged funds and also, "paid more attention to marinas, gambling and business than to maintaining the levees.
Confiscation of firearms
Controversy arose over a September 8 city-wide order by New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass to local police, National Guard troops, and US Marshals to confiscate all civilian-held firearms. "No one will be able to be armed," Compass said. "Guns will be taken. Only law enforcement will be allowed to have guns." Seizures were carried out without warrant, and in some cases with excessive force; one instance captured on film involved 58 year old New Orleans resident Patricia Konie. Konie stayed behind, in her well provisioned home, and had an old revolverRevolver
A revolver is a repeating firearm that has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. The first revolver ever made was built by Elisha Collier in 1818. The percussion cap revolver was invented by Samuel Colt in 1836. This weapon became known as the Colt Paterson...
for protection. A group of police entered the house, and when she refused to surrender her revolver, she was tackled and it was removed by force. Konie's shoulder was fractured, and she was taken into police custody for failing to surrender her firearm. Even National Guard troops, armed with assault rifle
Assault rifle
An assault rifle is a selective fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. Assault rifles are the standard infantry weapons in most modern armies...
s, were used for house to house searches, seizing firearms and attempting to get those remaining in the city to leave.
Angered citizens, backed by the National Rifle Association
National Rifle Association
The National Rifle Association of America is an American non-profit 501 civil rights organization which advocates for the protection of the Second Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights and the promotion of firearm ownership rights as well as marksmanship, firearm safety, and the protection...
and other organizations, filed protests over the constitutionality of such an order and the difficulty in tracking seizures, as paperwork was rarely filed during the searches. Wayne LaPierre
Wayne LaPierre
Wayne LaPierre , is an American author and Second Amendment advocate. He is best known for his position as the Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association.-Background:...
, CEO of the National Rifle Association, defended the right of affected citizens to retain firearms, saying that, "What we’ve seen in Louisiana - the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of disaster - is exactly the kind of situation where the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves." The searches received little news coverage, though reaction from groups such as the NRA, the Second Amendment Foundation, and Gun Owners of America
Gun Owners of America
Gun Owners of America is a gun rights organization in the United States with over 300,000 members. They make efforts to differentiate themselves from the larger National Rifle Association , and have publicly criticized the NRA on multiple occasions for what the GOA considers to be the selling out...
was immediate and heated, and a lawsuit was filed September 22 by the NRA and SAF on behalf of two firearm owners whose firearms were seized. On September 23, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana issued a restraining order
Restraining order
A restraining order or order of protection is a form of legal injunction that requires a party to do, or to refrain from doing, certain acts. A party that refuses to comply with an order faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
to bar further firearms confiscations.
After refusing to admit that it had any seized firearms, the city revealed in mid-March that it did have a cache of some 1000 firearms seized after the hurricane; this disclosure came after the NRA filed a motion in court to hold the city in contempt
Contempt
Contempt is an intensely negative emotion regarding a person or group of people as inferior, base, or worthless—it is similar to scorn. It is also used when people are being sarcastic. Contempt is also defined as the state of being despised or dishonored; disgrace, and an open disrespect or willful...
for failure to comply with the U.S. District Court's earlier order to return all seized firearms. On April 14, 2006, it was announced that the city will begin to return seized firearms, however as of early 2008, many firearms were still in police possession, and the matter was still in court. The matter was finally settled in favor of the NRA in October 2008. Per the agreement, the city was required to relax the strict proof of ownership requirements previously used, and was to release firearms to their owners with an affidavit
Affidavit
An affidavit is a written sworn statement of fact voluntarily made by an affiant or deponent under an oath or affirmation administered by a person authorized to do so by law. Such statement is witnessed as to the authenticity of the affiant's signature by a taker of oaths, such as a notary public...
claiming ownership and a background check to verify that the owner is legally able to possess a firearm.
Louisiana legislator Steve Scalise
Steve Scalise
Stephen Joseph "Steve" Scalise is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2008. He is a member of the Republican Party...
introduced Louisiana House Bill 760, which would prohibit confiscation of firearms in a state of emergency, unless the seizure is pursuant to the investigation of a crime, or if the seizure is necessary to prevent immediate harm to the officer or another individual. On June 8, 2006, HB 760 was signed into law. 21 other states joined Louisiana in enacting similar laws. A federal law prohibiting seizure of lawfully held firearms during an emergency, the Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006
Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006
The Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006 was a bill introduced in the United States Congress intended to prohibit the confiscation of legally possessed firearms during a disaster...
, passed in the House with a vote of 322 to 99, and in the Senate by 84-16. The bill was signed into law by President Bush on October 9, 2006.
International criticism
Several foreign leaders have expressed frustration that they couldn’t get a go-ahead from the Bush administration to administer help. President Bush said on the ABC NewsABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
program Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
that the United States could fend for itself, "I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars," Bush said of foreign governments.
The immediate response from many nations
International response to Hurricane Katrina
Many countries and international organizations offered the United States relief aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.According to the European Commission, one week after the disaster, on September 4, 2005, the United States officially asked the European Union for emergency help, asking for...
was to ask to be allowed to send in self-sustaining search and rescue
Search and rescue
Search and rescue is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger.The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, mostly based upon terrain considerations...
teams to assist in evacuating those remaining in the city. This first to respond was Venezuela, offering tons of food, water, and a million barrels of extra petroleum. France
French response to Hurricane Katrina
France was one of the first nations to offer aid to the United States in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. On August 31, French officials expressed their condolences to their American counterparts: President Jacques Chirac wrote a letter to President George W. Bush, and the Minister of Foreign...
had a range of aircraft, two naval ships and a hospital ship standing ready in the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
. Russia offered four jets with rescuers, equipment, food and medicine, but their help was first declined before later being accepted. Germany
International response to Hurricane Katrina
Many countries and international organizations offered the United States relief aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.According to the European Commission, one week after the disaster, on September 4, 2005, the United States officially asked the European Union for emergency help, asking for...
had offered airlifting, vaccination, water purification, medical supplies including German air force hospital planes, emergency electrical power and pumping services; their offer was noted and they received a formal request three days later. Similarly, Sweden
Swedish response to Hurricane Katrina
Sweden received on September 1, 2005, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a general plea for disaster aid from the United States. The Swedish Rescue Services Agency made a formal offer of help through the Swedish Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the Swedish government granted the...
had been waiting for a formal request to send a military cargo plane with three complete GSM
Global System for Mobile Communications
GSM , is a standard set developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to describe technologies for second generation digital cellular networks...
systems, water sanitation equipment, and experts. The Netherlands offered help out of the island Aruba
Aruba
Aruba is a 33 km-long island of the Lesser Antilles in the southern Caribbean Sea, located 27 km north of the coast of Venezuela and 130 km east of Guajira Peninsula...
in the Caribbean Sea. Cuba offered to send 1,586 doctors and 26 tons of medicine but this offer was rejected.
British Deputy Prime Minister
Deputy Prime Minister
A deputy prime minister or vice prime minister is, in some counties, a government minister who can take the position of acting prime minister when the prime minister is temporarily absent. The position is often likened to that of a vice president, but is significantly different, though both...
John Prescott
John Prescott
John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott is a British politician who was Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007. Born in Prestatyn, Wales, he represented Hull East as the Labour Member of Parliament from 1970 to 2010...
linked the global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
issue to Katrina, criticizing the United States' lack of support for the Kyoto Protocol
Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , aimed at fighting global warming...
, "The horrific flood of New Orleans brings home to us the concern of leaders of countries like the Maldives
Maldives
The Maldives , , officially Republic of Maldives , also referred to as the Maldive Islands, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean formed by a double chain of twenty-six atolls oriented north-south off India's Lakshadweep islands, between Minicoy Island and...
, whose nations are at risk of disappearing completely. There has been resistance by the US government to Kyoto - which I believe is wrong." Ted Sluijter, press spokesman for Neeltje Jans, the public park where the Delta Works
Delta Works
The Delta Works is a series of construction projects in the southwest of the Netherlands to protect a large area of land around the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta from the sea. The works consist of dams, sluices, locks, dikes, levees, and storm surge barriers...
are located, said, "I don't want to sound overly critical, but it's hard to imagine that (the damage caused by Katrina) could happen in a Western country, It seemed like plans for protection and evacuation weren't really in place, and once it happened, the coordination was poor."
In China, the Communist Party
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
newspaper, the People's Daily
People's Daily
The People's Daily is a daily newspaper in the People's Republic of China. The paper is an organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China , published worldwide with a circulation of 3 to 4 million. In addition to its main Chinese-language edition, it has editions in English,...
, criticized President Bush's handling of the crisis, calling the slow response time to the unfolding events a, "negligence of duty".
An article in the April 29, 2007 Washington Post claimed that of the $854 million offered by foreign countries, whom the article dubs "allies," to the US Government, only $40 million of the funds had been spent "for disaster victims or reconstruction" as of the date of publication (less than 5%).
Additionally, a large portion of the $854 million in aid offered went uncollected, including over $400 million in oil (almost 50%).
House of Representatives report
The U.S. House of Representatives created the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina. On February 15, 2006 they released their final report.The Executive Summary states (among other things) the following:
- "The Select Committee identified failures at all levels of government that significantly undermined and detracted from the heroic efforts of first responders, private individuals and organizations, faith-based groups, and others."
- "The Select Committee believes Katrina was primarily a failure of initiative."
- "The failure of local, state, and federal governments to respond more effectively to Katrina — which had been predicted in theory for many years, and forecast with startling accuracy for five days — demonstrates that whatever improvements have been made to our capacity to respond to natural or man-made disasters, four and half years after 9/11, we are still not fully prepared. Local first responders were largely overwhelmed and unable to perform their duties, and the National Response PlanNational Response PlanThe National Response Plan was a United States national plan to respond to emergencies such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks. It came into effect in December 2004 , and was superseded by the National Response Framework on March 22, 2008....
did not adequately provide a way for federal assets to quickly supplement or, if necessary, supplant first responders."
Vulnerability of the poorest residents
African-American leaders and others have expressed outrage at what they see as the apparent neglect of the poor and/or black residents of the affected region. Two-thirds of the residents of New Orleans are black, primarily attributed to decades of white flightWhite flight
White flight has been a term that originated in the United States, starting in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. It was first seen as...
. In addition, New Orleans is one of America's poorest cities, with more than 25% of residents and 40% of children living at or below the poverty line. Within the city itself, the poorest, who are mostly African-American, tended to live in the lowest parts that are most vulnerable to flooding.
98% of residents in the Lower Ninth Ward, which was flooded by a catastrophic breach in the nearby Industrial Canal, are black, and more than a third live in poverty. Many of the poor depend on welfare, Social Security
Social Security (United States)
In the United States, Social Security refers to the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program.The original Social Security Act and the current version of the Act, as amended encompass several social welfare and social insurance programs...
, or other public assistance checks, which they receive on the first of each month, meaning that Hurricane Katrina made landfall just when many of the poor had exhausted their resources. Thus, many of the city's poor simply couldn't afford to flee the city before the hurricane struck.
Speaking at a press conference from a relief center in Lafayette
Lafayette, Louisiana
Lafayette is a city in and the parish seat of Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, United States, on the Vermilion River. The population was 120,623 at the 2010 census...
, First Lady
First Lady of the United States
First Lady of the United States is the title of the hostess of the White House. Because this position is traditionally filled by the wife of the president of the United States, the title is most often applied to the wife of a sitting president. The current first lady is Michelle Obama.-Current:The...
Laura Bush
Laura Bush
Laura Lane Welch Bush is the wife of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush. She was the First Lady of the United States from January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2009. She has held a love of books and reading since childhood and her life and education have reflected that interest...
explained that the poor are always the main victims of natural disasters. "This is what happens when there's a natural disaster of this scope," Mrs. Bush said. "The poorer people are usually in the neighborhoods that are the lowest or the most exposed or the most vulnerable. Their housing is the most vulnerable to natural disaster. And that is just always what happens."
Reverend Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
criticized the President and asked why he has not named African-Americans to top positions in the federal response to the disaster, particularly when the majority of victims remaining stranded in New Orleans were black: "How can blacks be locked out of the leadership, and trapped in the suffering? It is that lack of sensitivity and compassion that represents a kind of incompetence."
Fifty-one percent of Louisiana residents who were killed by Hurricane Katrina were black; 49% of victims were 75 years old or older. However, for some demographic groups in Orleans Parish (New Orleans), the death rate for African-Americans was 1.7-4 times higher than for whites; as a whole in Orleans parish, 68% of deaths (459 out of 680 total) were black people, almost exactly the same percentage of the population there as that found in the 2000 U.S. Census (which recorded 67%).
Areas of the city where the largest number of dead were found were low-lying, flood-prone areas with predominantly black populations.
Race as a factor in the slow response
Reverend Jesse JacksonJesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
claimed that racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
was a factor in the slow government response, stating that "many black people feel that their race, their property conditions and their voting patterns have been a factor in the response."
Commentator Lou Dobbs
Lou Dobbs
Louis Carl "Lou" Dobbs is an American journalist, radio host, television host on the Fox Business Network, and author. He anchored CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight until November 2009 when he announced on the air that he would leave the 24-hour cable news television network.He was born in Texas and lived...
of CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
has claimed that local officials should bear some responsibility, saying that "the city of New Orleans is 70% black, its mayor is black, its principal power structure is black, and if there is a failure to the black Americans, who live in poverty and in the city of New Orleans, those officials have to bear much of the responsibility."
Former Mayor of Atlanta
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...
and UN Ambassador Andrew Young
Andrew Young
Andrew Jackson Young is an American politician, diplomat, activist and pastor from Georgia. He has served as Mayor of Atlanta, a Congressman from the 5th district, and United States Ambassador to the United Nations...
, who was born in New Orleans, had a more nuanced reaction to the disaster: "I was surprised and not surprised. It's not just a lack of preparedness. I think the easy answer is to say that these are poor people and black people and so the government doesn't give a damn... there might be some truth to that. But I think we've got to see this as a serious problem of the long-term neglect of an environmental system on which our nation depends."
On September 2, 2005, during a benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
relief on NBC, A Concert for Hurricane Relief
A Concert for Hurricane Relief
A Concert for Hurricane Relief was an hour-long, celebrity-driven benefit concert broadcast live. Sponsored by the NBC Universal Television Group, its purpose was to raise money, relief, and awareness in response to the loss of life and human suffering that resulted from Hurricane Katrina in five...
, rapper Kanye West
Kanye West
Kanye Omari West is an American rapper, singer, and record producer. West first rose to fame as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records, where he eventually achieved recognition for his work on Jay-Z's album The Blueprint, as well as hit singles for musical artists including Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and...
was a featured speaker. Controversy arose when West was presenting, as he deviated from the prepared script, criticizing the slow federal response. Actor Mike Myers
Mike Myers (actor)
Michael John "Mike" Myers is a Canadian actor, comedian, screenwriter, and film producer of British parentage...
, with whom West was paired to present, spoke next and continued to read the script. Once it was West's turn to speak again, he said "George Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
doesn't care about black people." At this point, telethon producer Rick Kaplan cut off the microphone and then cut away to Chris Tucker
Chris Tucker
Christopher "Chris" Tucker is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for playing the role of Detective James Carter in the Rush Hour film series.-Early life:...
, who was unaware of the cut for a few seconds. Still, West's comment reached much of the United States.
Characterization of displaced persons as "refugees"
Many media agencies in the U.S. and around the world were criticized for using the word "refugeeRefugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
" to describe someone that was displaced
Displaced person
A displaced person is a person who has been forced to leave his or her native place, a phenomenon known as forced migration.- Origin of term :...
by Hurricane Katrina. Many, particularly African-Americans, have argued that using the term "refugee" implies a sort of "second class" status, while others have argued that using terms such as "evacuees" or "displaced" is too clinical and not dramatic enough to portray the current situation. President Bush addressed this issue in the following statement: "The people we're talking about are not refugees. They are Americans and they need the help and love and compassion of our fellow citizens." Accordingly, most of the major media outlets in the U.S. eliminated the usage of "refugees", with a few exceptions.
Potential discrimination against non-U.S. citizens
There was some criticism by tourists that rescue crews were giving preferential treatment to American citizens first. For example, some British tourists trapped in a New Orleans hotel accused the authorities of preferential treatment for Americans during the evacuation as Katrina approached. Australian tourists reported a similar experience, compounded by the federal government's refusal to admit consular officers to the New Orleans area and failure to notify the Australian embassy that one missing tourist was in a correctional facility on minor charges. South African tourists also reported that tourist buses were commandeered by federal officials, and the tourists told to walk back. Later on, they were driven back by warning shots after waiting near a bridge blocked by armed forces.In the days before the storm, Mayor Nagin was particularly blunt in regards to foreign tourists, stating, "The only thing I can say to them is I hope they have a hotel room, and it's a least on the third floor and up. Unfortunately, unless they can rent a car to get out of town, which I doubt they can at this point, they're probably in the position of riding the storm out." Hotel managers also criticised the treatment of tourists, with one noting they were treated worse than the people in the Superdome.
However, there were also some reports that portrayed the overall generosity of the American people. Some Irish tourists were touched by the "infinite kindness" shown to them by "complete strangers."
See also
- 2005 New Orleans flood
- Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005
- Chocolate City speechChocolate City speechThe Chocolate City speech is the nickname that some people have given to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day speech by Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 16, 2006. The speech concerned race politics in New Orleans several months after Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the city...
- Cuba Emergency Response SystemCuba Emergency Response SystemThe Cuba Emergency Response System is warning system for potentially dangerous weather events that strike Cuba. -Hurricane Dennis and Hurricane Ivan:...
- Economic effects of Hurricane KatrinaEconomic effects of Hurricane KatrinaThe economic effects of Hurricane Katrina, which hit Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi in late August 2005, were far-reaching. As of April 2006, the Bush Administration has sought $105 billion for repairs and reconstruction in the region, making it the costliest natural disaster in US history...
- Seabrook Floodgate
- Political effects of Hurricane KatrinaPolitical effects of Hurricane KatrinaCommentators have discussed the likely effects of the disaster on a wide range of political issues.-Political controversies and electoral consequences:Political disputes have arisen over several issues:-Issues relating to the cause of the damage to New Orleans:...
- Social effects of Hurricane KatrinaSocial effects of Hurricane KatrinaHurricane Katrina had many social effects. Initially, many lives were lost, while many more were disrupted. Hurricane Katrina left hundreds of thousands without access to their homes or jobs, has separated people from relatives, and inflicted both physical and mental distress on those who suffered...
- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil works controversies (New Orleans)U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil works controversies (New Orleans)Through 19 Flood Control Acts since 1917, the United States Congress has authorized the United States Army Corps of Engineers to become involved with design and construction of flood protection and damage reduction system in the Greater New Orleans area and throughout the nation.The Flood Control...
External links
- Final Report: U.S. House of Representatives Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina
- The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned (official White House report)
- FEMA Answers – a non-FEMA-sponsored site for providing information regarding the FEMA issues of Katrina
- Orleans Parish Prison before and after Katrina from Dollars & SenseDollars & SenseDollars & Sense is a magazine dedicated to providing left-wing perspectives on economics.Published six times a year since 1974, it is edited by a collective of economists, journalists, and activists committed to the ideals of social justice and economic democracy.It was initially sponsored by the...
magazine