WILLisms.com: Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 164 -- Katrina Rescue Efforts.

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Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 164 -- Katrina Rescue Efforts.

Government Rescue Efforts: An Admirable Response-

I wish everyone would stop wondering who is to blame for the "poor, slow response" to Katrina. I don't agree that it was a poor-- or slow-- response. Not at all. It was a hurricane that decimated an area the size of Great Britain. It knocked out water, power, communications, transportation, and just about everything else anyone would need to rescue and relocate hundreds of thousands of people. That the response from the federal government has been so thorough, so swift, and so overwhelming is a miracle. Call me a shill or a Bush apologist, but this goes beyond this president or that president, this FEMA administrator or that. In a free society, government can only do so much to prevent, mitigate, or react to a crisis. We like it that way. Our country has sacrificed for, and benefited from, limited and decentralized powers in our federal/state/local system.

But helicopters and people in boats were rescuing people almost immediately following the break of the levee. The "they waited 5 days" nonsense is just infuriating, given that so many people were working so hard to find and rescue people trapped by flood waters.

Indeed, the government relief efforts have produced admirable, tangible results:

- Federal disaster declarations are covering 90,000 square miles of affected areas.
- 71,100 unified federal personnel have been deployed

- 47,089 lives have been saved and rescued

- 35,000 evacuations have been made from New Orleans

- Commodities delivered to date include:

* 11.6 million MREs

* 19.6 million liters of water

* 1.7 million pounds of ice

* 32 tons of basic first aid supplies

* More than 600 buses to transport evacuees

- 736 shelters with a population of 234,646. This number fluctuates daily.

- The United States Coast Guard saved more than 9,500 lives in the wake of Katrina, nearly double the total number of lives saved by the Coast Guard in all of 2003.

Imagine that. You mean, they weren't "doing nothing"?

If anything, the federal government (and Bush administration) failed to respond adequately to the immediate and coordinated partisan attacks, because the federal government was too busy saving lives and otherwise acting like adults.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: New Orleans, Decaying Prior To Katrina.

Posted by Will Franklin · 9 September 2005 07:34 PM

Comments

Many people refused to leave and had to be forced! Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the ones who bother me! They remind me of immature children who say I don't want to play if they can't get their own way!... It is pathetic that they are LEADERS...

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at September 9, 2005 08:08 PM

Hey Will, Would you be so kind as to put Bullwinkle on your blogroll thing for me?...I always agree with him and his blog is pretty darn good too! If it's not to much trouble? I know you are super duper busy! Thanks Man!...

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at September 9, 2005 09:26 PM

I like Am I A Pundit Now and what he has about Louisiana... It goes something like this!... Half the State is Under water. The other half is under indictment! ... HA! ...

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at September 10, 2005 08:26 PM

It is very sad the liberals feel compelled to play politics with this disaster. There is a time and place for politics and this is not it. Most disasters bring Americans together. Katrina should have been one of those times. Too bad for our country we have to listen to the LIBERAL politicians attack the efforts of our President and individuals who have woeked tirelessly from the moment they learned of Katrina and it's devastation. The truth is coming out and the liberal jabber is becoming more distant and obvious as each day passes.

Posted by: Sue at September 10, 2005 08:53 PM

You're a shill and a Bush apologist. It's gotta hurt that while you're still spinning it that the feds did nothing wrong, you're God on Earth Bush is taking responsibility (sort of) for the the things that went wrong. The American people are beginnings to notice that the far-right is made up of idiots and liars.

Posted by: Phaedrus at September 16, 2005 10:00 AM