Disaster goof up

It is my opinion that our Federal government and the States hit by hurricane katrina layed a big egg when it came to preparedness. As one poster on a forum titled a thread " Three days to get a bottle of water to the victims?" That pretty much sums up my opinion.

The Gulf states live year to year with a gun pointed at them in the name of hurricanes. Much of the coastal area is swamps and low lying ground at or below sea level. A series of canals, rivers, streams all feed into the gulf---when the tide is out. Once while visiting a place off West Causeway in west New orleans/Metarie , I was reminded that the toilets did not flush during high tide.

There are levies that are designed to hold out water from New Orleans and these levies obviously were in disrepair or they would not have failed. Or--somebody who said they were ok needs to do some explaining.

The mayor of New Orleans waited way too long to order a manditory evacuation--and then lacked the National Guard troop strength necessary to enforce it.They are stationed in Iraq-- leaving only a couple thousand for homeland duty. Not enough.

We can send cement to Iraq, troops to Iraq, supplies to Iraqi refugees--but lack the same mission when it comes to protecting American soil from disasters. Sadly the hurricane season still has several months to go and maybe a couple of more hurricanes yet unnamed will crash into this same area. Who's to know?

We have 25% of our nations gas supplies dependant on the Gulf region ports, refineries, and oil fields--and yet it was not considered strategic enough to muster the resources to properly handle a crisis like the flooding, levies, emergency equipment, and troop strength.

Today it was announced that Border Patrol agents were being dispatched from the pourous borders of Arizona to the Gulf for disaster relief. So now we not only have ill prepared Federal agents being used in a job they are not trained for--but illegal's have a free ride through the abandoned patrol stations left empty by these re-assigned agents.

And finally--over 30 years after the first Middle East oil crisis--we are still dependant on oil as out primary source of powering trucks, cars, boats, airplanes,and mopeds!! Not to mention the houses still dependant on oil for heat. Winter is just around the corner so folks with oil heat will need to sell off their first born to fill up the tank. Heating oil will be worth more than gold.

I feel better about venting this now after it is all out on the screen. But I would feel a lot better if I knew there was a different crew in charge at the Federal and State levels for the pending clean-up and rebuild job at hand.

Yodi won't even wag his tail at this post. He too is astounded.