CNN is now reporting

Last night I described the "increasingly apocalyptic situation in New Orleans." Today, CNN says it's getting much worse:

While there are still thousands of people on rooftops in New Orleans' parishes, rescuers have stopped operated in some neighborhoods because they've been  attacked.   

  Those who have been rescued are being brought to the convention center, where there is no food, no water, and no authority. And by the way, after engaging in Hurricane porn for a few days, CNN is asking some tough questions, namely: where is the federal government?

Let me swing over to Marc Cooper:

I don’t expect miracles from the government. Nor am I looking for cheap ways to somehow blame the Bush administration for the devastation of a natural disaster.

But, sorry, the unavoidable impression is that this administration has its head congenitally up its rear. So far it’s showing as little capacity to respond to the emergency on the ground in New Orleans and surrounding areas as it did in squelching the initial chaos in Baghdad.

I will make this note: the Mexican party PRI that held a monopoly on government for seventy years eventually lost power because of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. It took fifteen years for the process to culminate with the 2000 election. But the seeds of the PRI’s collapse were sown in its inability to fully respond to the deadly 1985 shaker.

I'm slightly more sympathetic than Marc to the trevails of providing aid.  Just take a look at this map--almost all roads into New Orleans are impassable. The larger problem isn't what may or may not be the administration's slow-footed response. It's that the administration has been undermining the very institutions that we as a society created to respond.  The must-read  timeline Kevin Drum has created:

• January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.

• April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."

• 2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country."

• December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy, Michael Brown, who, like Allbaugh, has no previous experience in disaster management.

• March 2003: FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position and folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is refocused on fighting acts of terrorism.

• 2003: Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's preparation and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of Preparedness and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and recovery.

• Summer 2004: FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."

• June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay."

• June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.

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Comments

[Kim]

The government is NOT doing enough or fast enough, people are dying every minute. It is mass chaos. Go to the WWLTV.com and listen for just a few minutes and you will hear the horror stories about hospitals and shootings and the governments inuability to save people these people. I am ashamed of our governing bodies.