Katrina: lack of Bushco response looks intentional? Spread this around!

[iconoclastic cat]

Holy crap, check this out from Bob Harris and the Booman Tribune:




From Booman:

(first, Booman leads with this: )

Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana

The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.

The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn.

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent Federal funding.

Representing FEMA, Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Department of Homeland Security, named William Lokey as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Federal recovery operations in the affected area.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: FEMA [phone].

Compare and contrast with the full and specific statewide list of parishes and the services they will receive issued after the storm hit.

...

UPDATE: I've received numerous emails explaining that all of the coastal parishes were already declared disaster areas because of Tropical Storm Cindy, which struck in June. Checking with FEMA's own website... nope. Only five coastal parishes -- Jefferson, Lafourche, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, and St. Charles -- seem to be covered here, and only on a limited basis at that.

This is explicitly confirmed by the presidential authorization of August 23, as posted on the White House website.

There is more: Although not as bad as the complete inversion of Louisiana...for some unknown reason they also did not protect four counties in Mississippi:Wayne, Perry, Greene and George Does any one know anything about these counties??? Like are they Democratic???

(much more in the comments)

Here is the Bob Harris post:

Picking up on a thought bouncing around back at TMW after a Chris Floyd post, I thought I'd find out for myself exactly which Louisiana parishes were and were not included in George W. Bush's declaration of emergency effective August 26th, which you can also reach by clicking the map itself.

I checked the parish map against the White House's own press release, posted on their own site. I have tried to figure out how this is my own mistake, but I can't find it. And the results are frankly so bizarre I had to make the graphic in order to properly show you.

Welcome to upside-down-land: the areas at risk for Katrina were quite remarkably the areas not included in Bush's declaration of emergency.

What the hell?

Compare and contrast with the full and specific statewide list of parishes and the services they will receive issued after the storm hit.

Is this really what Bush authorized before the storm hit? Are they really that incompetent?


PS: Putting to rest any nightmares, the map doesn't correlate in any way I can find with demographics, income, voting patterns, campaign contributions, or the like. If I haven't made an obvious mistake, I'm just hoping now that the press release simply got the list of "emergency" and "non-emergency" parishes mixed up.

In other words, more galling incompetence in the White House, albeit trivial, is really the best-case scenario.

Otherwise, we're looking at more galling incompetence of a frighteningly non-trivial kind.


UPDATE: I've received numerous emails explaining that all of the coastal parishes were already declared disaster areas because of Tropical Storm Cindy, which struck in June. Checking with FEMA's own website... nope. Only five coastal parishes -- Jefferson, Lafourche, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, and St. Charles -- seem to be covered here, and only on a limited basis at that.

This is explicitly confirmed by the presidential authorization of August 23, as posted on the White House website.

I'm still hoping and half-expecting to find I've overlooked something. I hope so. Honestly. I do not exactly enjoy this, and I hope this is my own mistake in some way. But I've looked and looked on the White House and FEMA websites and Googled my fingers half off, and while I do find several parishes coming in line for various types of aid piecemeal at various times over the last several years, I cannot yet find anything which even comes close to accounting for the diagram above. It still appears that while northern Louisiana was covered, much of Louisiana directly in the storm's path was simply not covered by the president's declaration at the time the storm hit.

Uh, shouldn't we be plastering this info everywhere? What about our congresscritens? What about Dean? Do they know about this? Shouldn't they?

Some discussion on Daily Kos, too: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/8/121128/6965

[JuniperLea]

1. so he can play the blame game

and put the control back in the hands of locals? or is it just that he purposely left out the areas of most destruction so the gov wouldn't have to pay up in a big way?

[iconoclastic cat]

2. Posters on those threads seem to think it's retribution v. blue counties.

[applegrove]

3. Is this a dupe? I think the others were covered under "New Orleans".