Well here we go, over 5 days of warning about the hurricane, kinda like people had with Katrina , and if Dean hits a mostly black populated city it will be George Bush’s falt that they didn’t have enough warning, anybody want to take bets that he gets blamed for this?? Yet I don’t remember hearing the people in Texas screaming for goverment help when they had all their flooding this year.
I don’t think most Americans Katrina was Bush’s “falt” as you put it. The problem was the slow and inadequate response once the disaster had occurred. FEMA was a mess and the guard and reserves (and their equipment) were pulling duty overseas. Bush stayed on vacation and finally flew over the area days after Katrina hit. Dean could be a cat.4 by the time it hits the Yucatan peninsula, people will die. Thanks for taking the high road.
it’s a good thing that the HIM in Cancun is at the end of Sept - rather than the beginning. I think they actually pushed it back a few weeks this year. Regardless, if Cancun is hit by a Cat 4, I doubt there could be a race 4 weeks later. Cancun was hit really hard only 2-3 years ago, as well. Note to self: don’t move to Cancun.
I don’t think most Americans Katrina was Bush’s “falt” as you put it. The problem was the slow and inadequate response once the disaster had occurred. FEMA was a mess and the guard and reserves (and their equipment) were pulling duty overseas. Bush stayed on vacation and finally flew over the area days after Katrina hit. Dean could be a cat.4 by the time it hits the Yucatan peninsula, people will die. Thanks for taking the high road.
Rob–WADR, I think what he is saying is that when you know a train is coming and you don’t get off the tracks, you kinda gotta kick your own self in the ass, instead of complaining about what others didn’t do to help you afterwards.
I’m not so sure, his post mentions predominately black cities and Bush being blamed (by liberals and the media?). Looks like the storm track has shifted to northern Mexico for landfall, Yucatan still in the direct path and Jamaica looks doomed. Lots of these places don’t really have civil defense system/shelters etc…it will be a deadly result.
I’m not so sure, his post mentions predominately black cities and Bush being blamed (by liberals and the media?).
Please re-read–it is about warning. He says it twice.
From an AP story posted last night on MSNBC.com:
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco declared a state of emergency Friday and requested a federal declaration that would allow federal resources to flow to the state should Dean strike any part of the Louisiana coast.
I don’t think that is was so much that it was a “mostly black” city that Katrina hit, as that the people in charge in Louisiana did a miserable job of anticipating and preparing. They needed to point the finger at some one else. Lucky George. Texas learned its lesson in Galveston a while back. They have their act together.
This time around, Blanco seems to be extremely proactive, particularly in light of the fact that it is very questionable if the storm will even hit Texas at this point in time. I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks.
Haven’t heard anything about Nagin, yet. I’m wondering if he has moved those school buses yet.
Yet I don’t remember hearing the people in Texas screaming for goverment help when they had all their flooding this year.
I don’t remember a whole city the size of NO being shut down, with tens of thousands of people stranded without food or water, and with a humanitarian crisis occurring during the flooding in Texas. Maybe you remember reading something like this, but I don’t.
I don’t remember a whole city the size of NO being shut down, with tens of thousands of people stranded without food or water, and with a humanitarian crisis occurring during the flooding in Texas.
Texas has the potential for huge areas to flood from major storms. The whole point of the OP was why doesn’t the same result occur there as it did in New Orleans.
You’re looking at the outcomes. triathlete37 is addressing the causes.
Texas has the potential for huge areas to flood from major storms. The whole point of the OP was why doesn’t the same result occur there as it did in New Orleans.
When the same crisis occurs in any MAJOR Texas city, to the same extent as it occurred in New Orleans, then we can look at cause and effect. Until then, it is just another dumbass question - ie. why haven’t the people in CA asked for any federal help when they are in an earthquake zone? When the big one hits, and the whole city of SF or LA are shut down, and the Federal Government doesn’t react or respond for 3-4 days, and even though EVERYONE knows that the big one will one day hit SF or LA (how many documentaries or movies have they made about the coming earthquake?) and they should be getting out NOW, what will the Bushlubbers say? That it’s the fault of the democratic city governments that they could not get everyone out (ie people without transportation, people who cannot afford to miss even ONE day of work, people with nowhere to go, etc.). The whole discussion is just sour grapes on the part of Bushlubbers. Bush screwed up (again) and they just can’t admit that their guy is such an incompetent misfit that he cannot get anything right.
Remember: Mr. President, the country is under attack. Bush: I’ll just continue to read this childrens book for another 8 minutes.
My first impulse was to just laud your revisionist history.
However, it is clear that you have no sense of history whatsoever. I’d suggest you review the story of the Galveston hurricane. You’ll understand a lot better why you won’t see a Katrina event in Texas. Yes, you may see wide spread flooding, billions in storm damage, and homeless people afterwards. But, you won’t see wide spread incompetence, disappearing local and state authorities, and pictures of school buses sitting in flooded parking lots.
The rest of your post comes across as total jibberish. It was Bushes’ fault that people werent’ evacuated, but people wouldn’t leave anyway because they couldn’t afford to miss a day of work, even though they couldn’t work because the city was inundated, and they had either drowned, or they couldn’t get to work because they had no transportation. The rest had no where to go, even though there was an emergency evacuation plan for the city and the state that the city and the state chose to ignore, but that damn Bush let them ignore it.
Bush screwed up (again) and they just can’t admit that their guy is such an incompetent misfit that he cannot get anything right.
You don’t need to point me towards the sour grapes. I can spot these even without my glasses.
Sounds like you have it all figured out… Maybe everyone is wrong and you are right.
There’s flooding and there’s flooding. A couple years back, the Texans were asking for any help they could get when Tropical Storm Allison stalled out over the city and FEMA provided more than $1 billion in aid to governments and individuals as the city tried to recover.
Maybe everyone is wrong and you are right.
No, not everyone, just a few misguided souls.
We will see if Texas has learned a lesson from a more recent storm - Rita. Had the storm hit Galveston/Houston as originally planned, many people may have been killed because the only shelter they had was their car that was out of gas sitting on the road 10 miles out of town (because it took them almost a day to get that far).
I’m very very interested to see what happens this time around. I kind of think they will call for voluntary evacuations as early as tomorrow even if the path has not changed yet. You simply cannot get 2 million people out of anywhere in any organized and efficient fashion.
They are already asking everyone in Houston to fill up their gas tank today so the trucks can come in and refill all the stations. They have also already sent out the gas trucks meant to be on the highways to help out evacuees who have run out of gas.
In a way, a Katrina situation couldn’t happen in Houston because we are ~75 feet above sea level. Something similar, of course, happen in Galveston. However, Galveston is way smaller than N.O. and I imagine 95% of the community would find some way to get the hell out of dodge. They already have buses ready to take the elderly and others without transportation. Hopefully the people that need it will be smart enough to request assistance.
For some reason I get excited about this sort of thing - more because I’m interested to see what happens and how things are handled, and I’m also to see how many lessons they truly did learn from the Rita evacuation. I probably won’t be as excited if the storm heads towards any populated area, namely Houston (where I am now), or Beaumont (where I grew up and where they are still recovering from Rita).
I’m not so sure, his post mentions predominately black cities and Bush being blamed (by liberals and the media?).
Please re-read–it is about warning. He says it twice.
I re-read it. It’s certainly more than about just warnings. It’s that predominantly black cities don’t heed warnings or take responsibility for themselves, but Texans do. It’s a bullshit post.
"It’s that predominantly black cities don’t heed warnings or take responsibility for themselves, but Texans do. It’s a bullshit post. "
That’s not what he said at all. What he said is that if this storm hits a predominantly black city, the President will be blamed for the damage, presumably by the Presidents political opponents. It’s more about his opponents using the tragedy against Pres Bush than it is any kind of indictment about black cities.
I’m not so sure, his post mentions predominately black cities and Bush being blamed (by liberals and the media?).
Please re-read–it is about warning. He says it twice.
I re-read it. It’s certainly more than about just warnings. It’s that predominantly black cities don’t heed warnings or take responsibility for themselves, but Texans do. It’s a bullshit post.
I forgot that there are no blacks in Texas.
When a hurricane is coming, you get out of the fucking way or pay the consequences. Local government is supposed to provide guidance and support with the evacuation, not park the buses. The failure to evacuate was not the fault of federal government. The FEMA response can be criticized, but if people had gotten the fuck out of the way, the magnitude would not have been so overwhelming for government to deal with. But I suppose you are one who thinks that George Bush was too busy planting charges in the dikes to intentionally flood the city.
Yea, the Rita evacuation was pretty much a disaster. Maybe weathering the storm, stuck on the highway north of Houston would have been better than sitting in your house, who knows.
Thank goodness she didn’t actually hit. I live in Austin, and had numerous friends in Houston who were trying to evacuate and come stay with me. None made it. Some ran out of gas, stalled for a day just outside of Houston, others just turned the hell around after a half day stuck in the stand-still traffic and went back to Houston to take their chances.
Having full tanks of gas, and tankers along the highways won’t help…it is just too many damn people trying to get out of the city at once. There’s just not than many routes out of the city that go North…can’t go South, East, or West. Don’t forget that Houston is the 4th largest city in the country with +2 million people.
**I live in Austin, and had numerous friends in Houston who were trying to evacuate and come stay with me. None made it. Some ran out of gas, stalled for a day just outside of Houston, others just turned the hell around after a half day stuck in the stand-still traffic and went back to Houston to take their chances. **
A little off topic, but please help me out here, just for my own edification.
I have been to Houston a couple of times, and the Johnson Space center once. Houston, as I recall is about an hour inland. There shouldn’t be a risk of coastal flood surges from the storm that far inland, should there? I’m sure the wind and rain would still be pretty severe, but there must be plenty of structures in Houston suitable for shelter. Why evacuate that city? I thought the evacuation and resulting jam was from just the coastal areas. Your saying that is wrong, right?
I suppose the silver lining about Rita was that it was an excellent full scale emergency drill, and identified a lot of the problem areas. One thing they did, but I think was done to late, was to open up the coast direction interstates to inland traffic. Maybe next time they do this sooner. Any other critical lessons that were learned that you know of (being a local and all)?
TIA.