Consider me boggled.
Sep. 2nd, 2005 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deathpixieOkay, watching the SBS international news, and the Katrina aftermath footage. Particularly the stuff about people dying of dehydration and heatstroke in the streets. Can I just say one thing?
What the fuck is the government doing in terms of disaster relief? Bloody hell, after the tsunamis in December there was relief on its way within 24 hours. It's been three bloody days!
And just why aren't they evacuating people from the place and getting them to places they can get help? Oh, there's buses going out, but when you have thousands of people to move, you need more than 70 Greyhounds, people.
You see this stuff in Third World countries. You certainly don't expect it in the jewel of developed nations.
Disclaimer: I'm not aiming this at the American people as a whole, or even the various aid relief organisations like the Red Cross, although I didn't see much in the way of footage there. It's pretty much aimed at thhe government, whose job it is to deal with this sort of thing. Ye gods, Bush doesn't have the slightest clue, does he?
What the fuck is the government doing in terms of disaster relief? Bloody hell, after the tsunamis in December there was relief on its way within 24 hours. It's been three bloody days!
And just why aren't they evacuating people from the place and getting them to places they can get help? Oh, there's buses going out, but when you have thousands of people to move, you need more than 70 Greyhounds, people.
You see this stuff in Third World countries. You certainly don't expect it in the jewel of developed nations.
Disclaimer: I'm not aiming this at the American people as a whole, or even the various aid relief organisations like the Red Cross, although I didn't see much in the way of footage there. It's pretty much aimed at thhe government, whose job it is to deal with this sort of thing. Ye gods, Bush doesn't have the slightest clue, does he?
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 03:31 pm (UTC)The first is that the communication between agencies and elements directing relief is abyssmal. No one has the slightest clue who is supposed to be in charge, so instead of a directed straightfoward response, most of the efforts have been stopgap and piecemeal. In a situation like this, you need a clear set of priorities, and a focused allocation of resources in order to meet those goals. New Orleans can't be fixed in a few days, but the groups should be setting attainable hourly and daily goals. Unfortunately, in the absence of leadership, its become a question of 'what seems most important' at the time to the individual agents, and lacks an overall plan.
The second is the utter lack of preparedness amoungst agencies. They have known this was coming days. In fact, they knew and even assumed it was going to strike at a higher level and directly on the city itself. What should have been happening is an organized effort to respond as soon as the storm was passed, discussions with other governments for aid prior to the event, and the reallocation of facilities and resources so that disaster relief could start instantly. At the very least, specialized disaster relief like DART could have been moving and set up days ago to help with the efforts.
Last of course are the actual physical elements. With the range of damage, difficulty with terrain, and the ongoing evacutation issues, it is going to be more difficult to bring in relief rapidly. That will slow things, and there really isn't a way to counter that.