More than two years after the 145-mile-an-hour Hurricane Katrina ripped through Louisiana and the southeast leaving one million people homeless, killing 1,600 and causing close to $25.3 billion in damage, New Orleans and its neighboring cities are a far cry from normal again.
Katrina, the costliest and arguably the most catastrophic natural disaster ever to hit the United States, has illuminated the true resilience of human beings and also made clear the shortcomings of the current Bush bureaucracy. Officials claimed that they were “fully prepared” for the calamity that was approaching, but apparently they were fatally slow to realize that they didn’t have the necessary resources in place to deal with such an unparalleled disaster.
Multiple sources have confirmed that the appropriate officials of the Bush Administration were notified of the calamity that was about to clobber the Gulf Coast, including Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and the President himself. Various Homeland Security officials admitted that they were “blinded by the fog of war” -a war that this administration has been involved in longer than necessary, but that is a topic for a different day.
A suitable response to such a catastrophic and fatal occurrence? This president has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of foresight and appropriate responses on variety of issues, yet I am still surprised by his reaction to this situation. Neglecting those in need, oblivious to their struggle and we just wait, inert until the next misfortune.
While conditions are far better than they were a year ago, displaced persons throughout Louisiana and Mississippi are forced to relocate and seek help from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA was established to coordinate the response to a disaster occurring in the United States that cannot be dealt with by local and state authorities. The director of FEMA at the time was Michael Brown, who was appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate.
Those who were displaced were then forced to apply for aid and housing from FEMA. A judge ruled the application was so “convoluted and confusing” and therefore “unconstitutional.”
Currently, the conditions in FEMA camps are intolerable and destitute. People are plagued by crime, drugs and murder. They are experiencing residual psychological and emotional problems, with no access to psychiatric help.
The general public is unaware of these conditions in part because FEMA prohibits free access to victims living in the camps journalists from having unsupervised interviews with theses victims.
Rachel Rodi, a FEMA spokesperson, said that the media “has to be escorted by a FEMA representative who sits in on the interview, that’s just policy.”
This appears to be another breach of our First Amendment rights by an administration trying to promote its own image at our cost. What will this administration come up with next?
