It would seem someone had anticipated the breach of the levees in New Orleans and they told Bush about it. A new video tape BEFORE the hurricane showed the president, FEMA chief Michael Brown and others, including Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The meeting, held on August 28th not only did the feds know it was coming, they said they would be providing support both during and after the hurricane. The interesting thing about it all is Bush told Diane Sawyer three days later that no one had anticipated the levees would breach. It would seem the president LIED about it.

"I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm," Bush said, gesturing with both hands for emphasis on the digital recording. Neither Bush nor Hagin asked questions, however.

Then-Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael D. Brown, who joined the call from Washington, and Max Mayfield, head of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, briefed participating federal and state officials in explicit terms.

"This is, to put it mildly, the big one," Brown said. "Everyone within FEMA is now virtually on call."

Brown warned that thousands of New Orleans residents were gathering in a shelter of last resort at the Louisiana Superdome, which he said was about 12 feet below sea level.

"I don't know what the heck we're going to do for that, and I also am concerned about that roof," Brown said. "Not to be kind of gross here, but I'm concerned about [medical and mortuary disaster team] assets and their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe."

Mayfield cited the 1992 storm that inflicted $20 billion of damage on South Florida.

Now... in all fairness, the mayor of New Orleans isn't off the hook either. The city desperately needed a strong evacuation plan to move as many people out as humanly possible, which doesn't seem to have been the case, particularly with all the buses and other forms of transportation sitting empty in a parking lot. It would've gotten people out of there.

So what we have is all the leaders sitting around in a big meeting telling each other everything will be covered and not a damned one of them did anywhere near enough to help solve the problem.

Now... what should we do. There are lots of things that could be done. One thing is get someone in charge of FEMA, as they currently have no one in charge (hurricane season is just about 4 months away) and tornado season is pretty much here. We need to make sure the person in charge knows how to handle emergency management too, not just some administrator who's been given money to the cause.

Technorati Tags: Bush, Michael Brown, Hurricane Katrina, Ray Nagin, New Orleans

|