BLAME GAME

Photo from acclaimimages.com

In retrospect, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s performance has been pathetic. This is the worst case of incompetence and poor planning we have ever seen. This is what happened:

Upset and irate that his pleading, distress, and frustration about the lack of aid for hurricane victims, went unanswered, Mayor Nagin of New Orleans used some street language to cry out during media interviews. To me his pain and anguish was a relief valve for his own incompetency.

However, he was right about some things…
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) — A day after Hurricane Katrina dealt a devastating blow to the Big Easy, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Tuesday night blasted what he called a lack of coordination in relief efforts for setting behind the city’s recovery.”There is way too many fricking … cooks in the kitchen,” Nagin said in a phone interview with WAPT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi, fuming over what he said were scuttled plans to plug a 200-yard breach near the 17th Street Canal, allowing Lake Pontchartrain to spill into the central business district.


This is how he lost control:

1. President Bush declared the gulf coast area a Federal Disaster area on Saturday two days before Katrina hit.
2. That freed up FEMA resources for local and state coordinators and allowed for the pre-positioning of supplies so they could be rapidly deployed to the affected areas.
3. Mayor Nagin waited until the last minute to call for an evacuation of the city, but the poorest people could not evacuate. Surrounded by deep flood waters, no money, no cars, they live hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck and their welfare and social security checks were not due till 3 days after the hurricane, so most of them were penniless. Why, why, why, weren’t school busses used to get them out of town???
4. Mayor Nagin made the last minute decision to declare the Superdome and Convention centers as refuge relocation points, so why weren’t they stocked with water, food, bedding, generators, and fuel? Why couldn’t they use hand held, battery powered megaphones to communicate with the people inside the Superdome? Why weren’t hospitals offered additional resources by the Mayor’s office?

5. There’s plenty of blame to go around and Governor Blanco deserves her share too, but the real culprit in the aftermath here… is mayor Ray Nagin.