FEMA’s efforts may not have been sufficient
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New Orleans has arguably seen the worst of it: Katrina, the most expensive natural disaster to ever hit the U.S., a Category 3 storm that rampaged the now infamous levees and flooded 80 percent of the city.
Critics at the national level blamed both local and federal response as unsatisfactory, as well as lambasted the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for making seemingly every mistake possible.
With the continued onslaught of hurricanes, the Gulf Coast has been cyclically spewing out and welcoming back its coastal city populaces. Now three years have passed since Hurricane Katrina, and New Orleans, at two-thirds the population size it was before, was evacuated again as part of the preparations for Gustav. FEMA, which has been working in the city of New Orleans since 2005, claimed complete readiness, and while the process was still extremely hurried, it was mostly able to cope with a Category 2 storm like Gustav. That said, management of supplies and food, which have still not reached everyone, leave room for further improvement.
But while FEMA now admits there is “still a lot of work with Gustav,” we expect they will be working hard to make sure every family is happily reunited to the FEMA trailer they have called home since Katrina, munching on snacks from their post-Gustav food stamps.
And this was, by landfall, only a Category 2 storm. Had it been stronger, would the response have been sufficient? After the lack of destruction that Gustav will now be remembered for, will residents refuse to evacuate next season, or in just a few years when the next big one comes? Or will they forget to return at all, with each new hurricane threat chopping off another bit of a dwindling city’s population?
While we certainly don’t want to point to the occurrence of storms as an example of, say, larger changes in the climactic patterns around the planet, we believe that FEMA and the Gulf Coast need to seriously continue to push for preparedness as these storms continue to chew up the country.
While Gustav, for all the excitement it stirred up, was, in the media’s eyes at least, a bust, we can consider it a warning for the larger disasters that the future will present us with.
During the last two Hurricanes that affected the East Coast, Ohio, Louisiana, and Texas I think FEMA has improved upon the performance of First Responders to New Orleans.
It's good that the GOP convention toned down the first night to allow the candidates to visit the Weather Bureau, and that the White House stayed on stand-by. Also on a related crisis mode, it's good that President Bush elected to pass on the fundraiser diner engagements and stayed in Washington, D.C. to address Wall Street's meltdown, and the Fanny Mae and Fanny Mac bailouts.
But, if political capital was the motive, apparently, the GOP has lost part of the post Convention "bounce" since Gov. Pailin has lost 10% approval rating, and Obama is at a 48% to 43% approval comparison between himself and Sen. McCain. Granted just a 5% margin of error is no comfort zone. At least in his birth place of Hawaii his approval rating is at a high 60% while Sen. McCain's approval rating is down to a low 30%.
Political fortunes and how responders answer surveys and questionnaires are no sure quarantees of the final outcome on General Election night. Locally, in Hawaii, some absentee walk-in satellite city hall locations are offering only electronic balloting methods as opposed to being a combination of screen touch, paper ballot, and operation of a high-tech electronic method. It took a brief visit by a voter recently to Campus Center poll location at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, Honolulu, when she saw a sign that said only electronic ballots available. Ever since the integrity of the election machine process and lack of a paper trail became a problem in Hawaii during the 1998 election for Governor and State House contests, and the 2000 and 2004 fiasco in Florida and Ohio, veterans of the political process prefer the old fashioned paper ballot method. It is highly satisfaing and reassuring.
Finally, let me say that I am more impressed with the FEMA response this year than during the Katrina incident but my sympathy goes to the 55 dead during Hurricane Ike. I also hope that the Wall Street & other finance major "hiccups" can be cured by this "scare". Our deferred compensation and retirement funds depend on this...and the coming election can affect the Social Security funds' stability, as well.
Good luck in Penn!
Aloha,
Arvid T. Youngquist
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