From the AP (thanks Russell LaCour)...Nation's newspapers editorialize on the Katrina disaster, federal response New Orleans Times-Picayune, Sept. 4. Dear Mr. President:
We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we're going to make it right.³
Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism. ...
Despite the cityµs multiple points of entry, our nationµs bureaucrats spent days after last weekµs hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the cityµs stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies. ...
Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.
In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadnµt known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, ²Weµve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that theyµve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day.³
Lies donµt get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.
Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You're doing a heck of a job."
That's unbelievable.
We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. Weµre no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.
San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, Sept. 4 If the government canµt respond effectively to a natural disaster visible days ahead on the weather radar, what faith can Americans have that it is poised to respond to another
major terrorist attack? ...
The nation needs to know: If the Katrina response is indicative of how well-prepared FEMA is for the inevitable, what is it going to do in the event of the unexpected?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sept. 4 Shame on the public officials who reacted slowly to the cries for help from New Orleans. Shame on the criminals wandering the streets, preying on the poor and helpless. Shame on those who didnµt heed the warnings about the vulnerability of New Orleans.
Shame on all of us.
The people of New Orleans, many of them lacking the wherewithal to evacuate on their own, were left stranded without enough food or water to survive. For days, their pitiful pleas largely went unanswered.
By midweek, bodies began piling up at the Superdome, while bloated corpses were seen floating down still-flooded city streets. How could this happen in the United States?
News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Sept. 5 Without delay, the system of levees built to "protect" New Orleans from flooding must be repaired, to return the water-stricken city to normality. But it's those very levees that set the city up for the one-two punch that started with Hurricane Katrina last weekend. The old saw that one shouldnµt try to bamboozle Mother Nature proved true again. Sadly for the communities that ring the Gulf of Mexico, Katrinaµs rains and the breached levees will wash tons of chemicals, poisons and petroleum products into the Gulf. Itµs clear that national policy, in New Orleans and other low-lying coastal regions, needs to change.
The Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y., Sept. 4 As horrendous as the death and devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was to the Gulf Coast, the impact was magnified by the incredibly slow and inept response of
government agencies at all levels to the disaster. Most glaring was the lack of leadership from the White House. At a time of national emergency, no public official offered a confident, reassuring message that help was on the way to victims and would be there soon. Thatµs because it wasn't. ...
It was as if no one in the White House bothered to look at the 24-hour TV footage of New Orleans drowning and the rest of the Gulf Coast flattened.
The Democrat & Chronicle of Rochester, N.Y., Sept. 3 And then the stunning, sickening realization: This is not another country. This is New Orleans. These are Americans left dead and dying in the street. For now, as Bush said, the job is to save lives and turn anarchy into order. The federal government must apply every measure of its expertise and logistical power to keep this tragedy from worsening. Support from the private sector and ordinary Americans is pouring in.
But the questions shouldn't fade as the post-storm crisis eases. How did this happen? And what must be done to ensure it never happens again?
New York Daily News, Sept. 5 "We will not allow bureaucracy to get in the way of saving lives," President Bush vowed, but bureaucracy has already done exactly that, and bureaucracy continues to lumber along blindly. Yesterday, for example, dozens of volunteer physicians from all over the country were cooling their heels in the Mississippi flood zone, come to donate their efforts and energies to the relief operations ' and were bogged down in utterly mindless Department of Health and Human Services red tape, unable to admit desperate moms and crying babies into their mobile infirmaries.
We will not allow bureaucracy to get in the way of saving lives. If the President means that, he will give a good swift kick to his clumsy federal machine and put into place professional mechanics who know how to make the thing work.
New York Post, Sept. 4 The sums needed to rebuild the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will be staggering. Surely, America, being America, will find some way to manage the job ' though it may take quite a few years.
It's too soon to start planning that process, of course, with flood waters still drowning New Orleans, and masses still in urgent need of immediate attention. But itµs not too soon to start thinking about these critical issues.
And showing due respect for the limits nature will impose, in the process.
The Tulsa (Okla.) World, Sept. 2 Citizens who did not evacuate the water-logged and wind-whipped city last weekend are out of patience. And who could blame them? For days, they have been without food, water and shelter, with many perched on rooftops or waiting on urban islands surrounded by fetid floodwater. ...
New Orleans and coastal areas of Mississippi and Alabama are suffering mightily. Americans elsewhere, already on edge about the effects of Hurricane Katrina and rising gasoline prices on the economy, have every right to be asking why help is not on the way.
Miami Herald, Sept. 3 By now everyone who has been glued to the television knows that the inundation of New Orleans was a disaster that had been predicted on computer models and in emergency practice drills for decades. Yet New Orleans and Louisiana officials were still underprepared. While the city offered free transport out of the area to poor residents once the evacuation order became mandatory Sunday, it isnµt likely that a lot of those who stayed understood what could happen if a 15-foot storm surge hit ' or if the lake breached the levees. But officials knew; they were in those practice drills.
Likewise, Congresses past and present and White House administrations of both parties have failed to deliver the funding needed to strengthen the levees against storms bigger than Category 3 and build anti-flooding structures to keep Lake Pontchartrain from overflowing into the city. The Army Corps of Engineers, responsible for the levees, has never received full funding from Congress or the White House to meet its mandate to protect New Orleans.
Citrus County (Fla.) Chronicle, Sept. 4 Clearly, individuals must also take responsibility for what is under their control. What will it take for people to take evacuation warnings seriously?
What is it about 175 mph winds that normal people just donµt understand? The warnings are communicated and the tragic stories are told and there is still an element of people who foolishly want to ride out the storm. Those who can get out
should get out and take someone who canµt afford to leave with them.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Sept. 3. Whoµs to blame? Take your pick. Start with Mayor Ray Nagin, who angrily blames the federal government, but who mindlessly directed thousands of people to the Superdome and the convention center with no plan to get them out or even care for them. Gov. Kathleen Blanco also failed to anticipate the scope of a catastrophe that many people saw coming.
Where is the Federal Emergency Management Agency? The incompetence of FEMA director Michael Brown is on display again. The agency not only is failing miserably in New Orleans, but is refusing to help legitimate South Florida victims of the same storm after throwing away more than $30 million last year on relief for a storm that didnµt even hit the region.
And then there is President Bush, our minister of vacations. As early as last Sunday morning, the whole world knew a catastrophe was bearing down on the Gulf Coast. Yet our 'leader' remained at his Texas ranch, no doubt 'clearing brush.' On Tuesday, two days after the catastrophe was anticipated and one day after it actually occurred, Bush was in California, strumming a guitar to celebrate the 60th anniversary of V-J Day.
The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, Sept. 3 Washingtonµs snail-like response to the collapse of New Orleans indicates that giving the Department of Homeland Security control over national disasters has itself been a disaster. Granted, the breaching of the levees after the hurricane caught everyone off guard. But the prospect of a major hurricane swamping the city was well-known. And it's now clear the federal emergency officials were either woefully unprepared or have bungled the relief effort. ...
Agencies are most effective when their focus is narrow. Homeland Securityµs priority is rightly terrorism attacks, not natural disasters. Giving FEMA a secondary role has proved a horrible mistake. President Bush should learn from this debacle and quickly restore FEMA's separate charge.
The Bangor (Maine) Daily News, Sept. 3 It is estimated that nearly a quarter of New Orleans residents have no transportation. For these people, a mandatory evacuation order, which was issued Sunday, is meaningless. How were these people supposed to leave the city? Where were they supposed to go? Leaving behind a home to likely be consumed by floodwater or flattened by the wind is hard for anyone. But, middle-class families can load into their car, head away and pay for food, lodging and other necessities with their credit cards. For thousands of poor in New Orleans, this was not an option.
Why were hundreds of buses not mobilized to move the poor, elderly and sick out of the city? Why were temporary shelters ' even simple military tents ' not set up on dry land around the city? With hurricane season just begun, these are not merely
retrospective questions.
The Washington Post, Sept. 5 Some glimmers of good news are finally beginning to emerge from the rubble and despair of New Orleans and the other areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina. But the infuriating, unmistakable and unnerving lesson of the continuing tragedy is the fundamental failure of government at all levels to protect its citizens, the most vulnerable chief among them. Granted, the ²ultra-catastrophe³ of Katrina, as Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff put it ' the devastation of an entire city, its communications, power, transportation and other infrastructure; the dislocation of hundreds of thousands of people ' is beyond anything the nation has ever dealt with. Still, coming four years and tens of billions of dollars in preparedness spending after the Sept. 11 attacks, it suggests that the countryµs readiness to cope with a major disaster is woefully lacking.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Sept. 3 As people in Wisconsin and elsewhere step forward to help those in need, there is still room to ask necessary questions. Indeed, itµs vital.
"The results are not acceptable," President Bush admitted on Friday. He's right, but why was that? And what does it say for the nationµs ability to cope with this and other disasters?
Bush most of all needs to answer those questions. Hereµs why.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich -- someone with whom we
don't often find ourselves in agreement -- asked the right question: "I think it puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the gulf for days, then why do we think weµre prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"
Gingrich is wrong about one thing, though. Officials -- federal, state and local -- didn't have just days of warning. They had years of warning.
The Modesto (Calif.) Bee, Sept. 4 That the overwhelming majority of those left to face this storm were black is a bleak testament to the nature of poverty in America. Who can blame people of color for seeing racism when they look at the frantic faces of people begging from sidewalks in New Orleans? ...
The Department of Homeland Security was created after Sept. 11. It absorbed, and some say weakened, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Four years later, with plenty of warning, the department failed in its first major test. This experience does not inspire the confidence of Americans anywhere.
Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, Sept. 3 On Friday, before he left to tour the Gulf Coast, President George W. Bush said that Washingtonµs response to Hurricane Katrina was "not acceptable."
It was the least the president needed to say. Too much went wrong in the first days after the disaster for anyone to pretend that the federal government has been at its best.
There are explanations -- some of them reasonable -- about why the relief effort was hampered. ...
President Bush can reach out and talk about all the help thatµs coming, but many reasonable people still are going to be appalled that help wasnµt better organized and quicker to come.
Lives surely have been lost as a result.
Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald, Sept. 4 It's said that when everyone is to blame, no one is to blame. But few individuals and agencies, including President Bush, were particularly inspiring in the first few days of the crisis.
Corrupt and inefficient federal, state and local governments, flawed disaster planning, hesitation and a prior neglect of the Mississippi River levees contributed to the damage and loss of life.
If the various levels of government canµt do any better than this on a predictable natural disaster, and if individuals are as undependable in an emergency as these, an even more troubling issue arises: What confidence can Americans reasonably have about their ability to deal with a genuine ²homeland security³ disaster?
Republican-American, Waterbury, Conn., Sept. 3 Our Aug. 31 editorial "Is New Orleans worth reclaiming?" has drawn many angry retorts and a handful of compliments from Connecticut readers and from places as far-flung as Chicago, Texas and New Orleans itself.
We said Louisiana and the nation should consider alternatives to reconstruction, given that experts have been warning for years that it was just a matter of time until New Orleans was inundated. Many scientists warn of rising sea levels and fiercer storms. New Orleans is sinking, and itµs surrounded by water that is kept at bay by levees. We advocated measuring the risks and rewards of reconstruction in this context, not on the basis of emotion.
We regret having articulated this position when we did.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who expressed a similar point of view the day after the editorial appeared, undoubtedly feels the same way. Had we foreseen the failure of state and federal relief efforts that have contributed to a level of human suffering well outside the experience of most Americans, we would have saved the editorial for another day.
St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, Sept. 3 There have been many individual acts of heroism, and the National Guard finally arrived on Friday with a large convoy of trucks with food. Eventually, order will be restored, but it took too long and allowed too much suffering. When it counted, no one was in charge of rescuing New Orleans from a predictable fate. Not the mayor, not the governor, not the engineering experts or the agencies created to answer such calls for help.
Not even the president of the United States rushed to take charge of this tragedy, and that is a pitiful state of affairs.
