Our Government is Incompetent
My wife and I were watching the various news coverage of what is going on in New Orleans and the surrounding area, i.e. ground zero of the Katrina calamity. She was absolutely flabbergasted that it has been four days and “the calvary” wasn’t there yet to evacuate people or at least provide basic supplies like food and water.
For the straight poop on what’s going on, check out The Interdictor, which is managing to keep a data center going in New Orleans and blogging about what’s going on despite the fact all hell has broken loose around them. That’s one dedicated team of people, let me tell you, and speaks to the fact that when all else fails, the Internet works. 
Here are a few random thoughts:
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When I first saw the pictures of what was going on a couple of days ago, my thought was “damn, that looks like it’s happening in some third-world country.” The reporters at NBC thought the same thing: “When we get back to the States… hey wait a minute, we are in the States…” In addition to the sheer amount of damage caused by the storm, our inability to cope with it is making us look like we are a third-world country.
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FEMA screwed the pooch on this one. Big time. We knew the hurricane was coming. We had a good idea of where and when it was going to hit. Instead of having the resources prepared nearby, but a safe distance away, we didn’t do squat for several days. And we’re still not doing squat. The TV reporters are all over the place, but the government can’t get people in to provide supplies. Martial Law is alive and well in New Orleans, but when people don’t even have the basic necessities, who cares? People will do whatever they gotta do to survive, which includes looting.
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My wife pointed out that unlike most of the other hurricanes that have blown through and caused damage, nobody being interviewed on TV is talking about rebuilding after this one, except for government officials. Everyone is figuring out some other place to live far away from New Orleans. Maybe it’s because it will take months to restore New Orleans to any sort of functional order, or maybe it’s because people figured out that living somewhere right next to the ocean below sea level in an area where hurricanes are a given was not a wise idea to begin with.
