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September 12, 2005

Quick Katrina Comparisons and Reference Points

Courtesy of Jack Kelly.

1.

Exhibit A on the bill of indictment of federal sluggishness is that it took four days before most people were evacuated from the Louisiana Superdome.

The levee broke Tuesday morning. Buses had to be rounded up and driven from Houston to New Orleans across debris-strewn roads. The first ones arrived Wednesday evening. That seems pretty fast to me.

Pretty fast to us, too.

2.

"The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne."

For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.

3.

Journalists...have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.

So they libel as a "national disgrace" the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.

4.

...a week and a day after the main levee protecting New Orleans breached:

~ More than 32,000 people have been rescued, many plucked from rooftops by Coast Guard helicopters.

~ The Army Corps of Engineers has all but repaired the breaches and begun pumping water out of New Orleans.

~ Shelter, food and medical care have been provided to more than 180,000 refugees.


Posted by tree hugging sister at September 12, 2005 03:10 PM

Comments

Yes, exactly. The media went crazy before we had a chance to get any perspective on the disaster. Although every death is to be regretted, the death toll from Katrina shows no indication of being anywhere near the purported figure of 10,000 that was flogged around the media in the first few days after the storm. I hope that when we look at the total number of people who were threatened by the storm and evacuated versus the number of attributable deaths, it will be remarkable to see how successful the evacuation and rescues really were.

Posted by: NJ Sue at September 12, 2005 08:59 PM

Well, judging on how that Lancet "study" so-called estimate of 100,000 casualties is still quoted by leftie idiots, we'll hear the "10,000" number quoted for generations to come, along with a conspiritorial [nudge wink] and the comment, "And if CNN hadn't sued to video remains recovery operations......."

Posted by: The Real JeffS at September 13, 2005 06:23 AM

To be fair (and it hurts), if the officials hadn't pulled a number of any magnitude out dey butts, MSM and the left would just as quickly say "It's a conspiracy to hide the blah dee blahblahblah." Happened here with Ivan. Rumors of hundreds of body bags and semis with cooler units hold to this day, because the Sheriff's Dept. and the county wanted hard numbers before they gave any out, not just stories of X amount of corpses in a tree. Not ONE of these morons who still spread them bother to:

a) notice the amount of purported dead in no way reflect, is in fact about three TIMES, the amount of people who actually LIVED in Grand Lagoon before Ivan.

b) wonder where the exponential numbers of outraged relatives who should then be LOOKING for said dead people are.

Take our Bangla-cola microcosm, multiply times hundreds of thousands and you can see what would happen. ANY number is better and easier to live with than waiting for a real one.

Posted by: tree hugging sister at September 13, 2005 11:45 AM