Blaming the Mayor
This op-ed, arguing that "FEMA is not a first responder," makes the case that Mayor Nagin should have taken control of the situation and that we should let FEMA off the hook.
It seems that the mayor of New Orleans is leading the effort in not taking responsibility for his actions. The emergency managers for the state of Louisiana do not have much to say either. The failure in the first 48 hours to provide direction for survivors is theirs to live with. When FEMA was able to take over, it started out behind and had to develop its plan on the fly. Now the federal government has established priorities -- rescue the stranded, evacuate the city, flow in resources and fix the levee. It appears that now there is a plan and it is being systematically executed.
I have several responses.
1) What city government?
2) What police force?
3) What fire department?
4) What method of communication could Nagin use to alert or coordinate anything?
In other words, this guy Craig Martelle wants us to believe that Nagin had some tools at his disposal with which to act.
He seems to ignore the fact that 80 percent of the city was under water. This is why we have FEMA and the National Guard. Local officials are often overwhelmed by disasters. In a localized event like 9/11 or a fire, local officials have plenty of tools at their disposal. But it's simply stupid to think that Nagin had any tools at all.
Let's not forget that the design of every city in America is the product (or victim) of federal policies, one way or another. No city governs itself. Mayors in the South, in particular, have no power at all. They are weak by design. They have no influence over county or parrish sheriff departments. They don't control hospitals. They don't control schools or school districts (or their buses). They don't control dams, nuclear power plants, levees, airports, sea ports, or highways. They don't control the National Guard.
Nagin inherited a broke city and an acutely low-paid, corrupt, and untrained police department. And that was when the city was dry and livable. Once the city flooded, one third of the police force quit on the spot. Those who remained had no useful radios or cell phones. They had few boats. They had no water or food. Most had no homes.
So what the hell was Nagin supposed to do, exactly? Every time I hear somebody blame Nagin, I ask this question. They never seem to have an answer.
I am sure Nagin would have loved to order the National Guard in immediately, instruct his citizens to report to designated relief shelters, coordinate a massive water and food drop to the Superdome and Convention Center, protect the hospitals from looters, evacuate the critical patients from hospitals, fix the damaged levees, pump the water out of the streets, shoot the snipers, and instill confidence and civic pride.
But this is a painful truth: there was only one person in America capable of doing all that. And that person did not care enough to do any of it until five days after the levees broke and more than a week after Governor Blanco declared a State of Emergency.
Only after Nagin got on the radio and told us all how federal officials had been promising relief for days and failing to deliver, and conveniently on cue with W's silly visit to the area, did the federal government snap into action. Even since Friday, there have been too many horror stories about FEMA incompetence.
I just don't get it. We have a federal government for several important reasons. One of the biggest is -- repeat after me -- HOMELAND SECURITY.
If terrorists had blown up the levees just as many people would have died. We weren't even prepared for that, after all this time and money spent on supposedly keeping us safe.