The Anchoress

The Right Wing Nuthouse has a really excellent, compelling and air-clearing timeline detailing the local, state and federal responses to Katrina. He emphasizes that printing the timeline is not about assigning blame to anyone (there’s a refreshing notion!) but to simply lay the facts out in a forthright, comprehensive manner, for all to see. A great idea. On first read it is very clear that in this circumstance NO ONE covered themselves with glory…but, as too few are willing to note, Katrina brought with her a situation which - in sheer size and scope - overwhelmed any established plans or patterns.

The thing many people keep forgetting is that Katrina became two events. The hurricane itself was bad enough, but recall that the first reports from the press and the folks at cable news was that New Orleans had “dodged the bullet” and Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi were where the serious damage occured. Until, of course, the levee broke.

Katrina Floods The Big Easy, Moves Inland\

For New Orleans — a dangerously vulnerable city because it sits mostly below sea level in a bowl-shaped depression — it was not the apocalyptic storm forecasters had feared.
…
At least five deaths were blamed on Katrina — three people killed by falling trees in Mississippi and two killed in a traffic accident in Alabama. And an untold number of other people were feared dead in flooded neighborhoods, many of which could not be reached by rescuers because of high water.

and

Katrina Fades, Destruction In Wake In New Orleans’ historic French Quarter of Napoleonic-era buildings with wrought-iron balconies, water pooled in the streets from the driving rain, but the area appeared to have escaped the catastrophic flooding that forecasters had predicted…A mandatory evacuation had been declared Sunday for the New Orleans area.

“It was exactly the right thing for the mayor and governor to do,” Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.

And another: Big Relief Effort Meets Katrina.

Even before hurricane Katrina made landfall Monday, a massive relief brigade - one that officials hoped would be an equal match for a huge Category 4 storm - was being deployed to help residents along Louisiana’s low-lying coast.
…
Such early deployment of relief is unusual in disaster-aid work. But damage projections had been so severe - and New Orleans deemed so vulnerable in its dependence on a network of levees, canals, and pumps to keep dry - that President Bush on Saturday went ahead and declared an emergency in the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to mobilize ahead of the storm.

FEMA also deployed 18 disaster medical assistance teams to staging areas in Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee. Louisiana deployed 3,500 Army National Guardsmen to help hurricane victims, and another 3,000 were on standby as of Monday morning, according to a Guard spokesman.

In case anyone has forgotten, THAT is what the first reports sounded like. Everyone was starting to talk about New Orleans as though the worst was over. I recall seeing reporters moving away from the Katrina story and back to Cindy Sheehan, and to the president meeting with others.

Until, of course, the levees broke and the fingerpointing and recrimination began.

I bring all this up to make no particular point, only to ask folks to stop and think - read the excellent timeline - and notice just how much WAS being done, was being put in place, before things went so badly out of anyone’s control. Consider how much was in place that was suddenly ineffectual. Consider what came into place as quickly as the Governor of Louisiana would allow. Consider our navy. Consider this:

Other federal and state officials pointed to Louisiana’s failure to measure up to national isaster response standards, noting that the federal plan advises state and local emergency managers not to expect federal aid for 72 to 96 hours, and base their own preparedness efforts on the need to be self-sufficient for at least that period.”“

Or…consider what Junkyard Dog is suggesting - that perhaps beyond mere incompetence, it might prove thatbookkeeping made things (and is perhaps STILL making things) more problematic than they needed to be. What was that old saying, oh yeah…follow the money. Dog is even coming around to Nagin’s charge that the feds and President Bush were (paraphrased) being fed a huge amount of misinformation by Blanco’s office in order to keep them from taking over or otherwise getting involved in “her business.” Go read JYD.

Meanwhile, here is what normal, non-news-and-politics-obsessed people think.