With the mayor and governor inept at best, he at least had a plan to follow and was following it. Given he was the onsite FEMA rep for four 2004 Florida hurricanes, it safe to assume LA officials did not follow protocol, did not know protocol and did not care what the protocol was.

As he said in his press conference, no solid chain of command existed in LA.

I would’ve suggested proofreaders, but when you’re dealing with the likes of legislation and regulations you need the heavy guns.

This, by the way, from someone who supported Brown’s ouster. We should, IMO, adopt vis-a-vis bureaucrats the now-discarded British policy regarding admirals, that is, one should be shot occasionally pour ecourager les autres.

As for the niggling regulations and CYA bureaucratese, curb your ACLU, sir. I expect, sometime next week at the latest, a major, above the fold, just-after-the-lead-ads story castigating the Bush Administration because some Guardsman shot a looter, and the guy survived and bitterly complains about it. Major embarrassment for Bush, which is the point — but the side effect will be that, in a future situation, the Guard will stand by until the looters are done picking over the wreckage, and a lot of non-looters will die during the wait; that’s how most of those nitpicking regs and assbackwards policies arose in the first place. If you aren’t going to oppose sexual harassment suits arising from when some rescuer grabbed the wrong part of someone’s anatomy while trying to arrange the helicopter sling, you’ve got no business snarking about “cultural awareness class” requirements.

Regards,
Ric

It is my belief, (and hope & prayer) that within a reasonable period of time most victims will be taken care of. Our Government will live to fight another day. That steps will be taken to correct our response time to such a disaster. That new and better leaders with new and better ideas will be elected. After all this is the American way, to learn from our mistakes and move on. I also believe that in some way we are all responsible to the aftermath of this tragedy, What are our own plans for disaster in our own homes? in our own communities? Are we scouring the internet to find out what the evacuation plans, the relief efforts, the chain of commands will be if something like this would happen to us? Would we not be negligent if we were to allow such a tragedy to occur again in our own backyard?

Many of lifes most important lessons are taught through our greatest losses.

I pay taxes so the fire department will come put out the fire, but honestly, I know that if the whole town goes up in flames there’s no one who will rescue me. It’s just too big.