A few thoughts on Irene

That was it...? after all that?


We'll admit to hitting our saturation point, "Irene fatigue" if you will, by Thursday of last week.


So, why was this perhaps the most hyped natural disaster ever? It was a perfect storm of instances that when added all up could not help but be the most talked about, covered, analyzed and dissected natural happenstance in history.

Before we look at the hows and whys, here's our blog buddy Harrsion on all the hype:

Every news station had wall-to-wall hurricane coverage even as Internet reports were saying Irene was barely a hurricane. Fox News even had “Hurricane Irene” listed on DirecTV all weekend for its schedule. How many ways could Shepard Smith warn people? One reporter at Washington’s Fox affiliate WTTG (where Maury Povich, Connie Chung, and Steve Doocy got their starts) was drenched in green foam/sewage to make things look dramatic.

I hope he got his shots beforehand.

The weather reports kept emphasizing it was a “Category 1 storm” as if that was the most dangerous kind. The weaker the storm got the louder “Category 1″ was yelled.

With NYC’s total shutdown of the subway and airports I was expecting Morgan Freeman to reprise his role as President of the United State in Deep Impact and tell us we were all going to die so we could have a little morality play.

OK, back to the hows and whys:

1. It's August. Always the slowest news month on the calendar. It's the "almost" month. School's almost here. Football's almost here. Congress is almost back in session. Nothing really happening at the moment but you gotta fill up that dead air time.

2. It was potentially going to wipe out New York City and lord knows how much New Yorkers love to talk about themselves and their importance to the rest of us. With all the major news networks (except CNN) based in New York, the narcissism simply couldn't be helped.

3. After what happened 6 years ago, no one... repeat, no one was going to be left holding the Katrina bag.

4. Ergo, every pol and official was going to make sure they did everything they could to order people around and they made damn sure everybody saw and heard them ordering people around.

Here's George Will putting a nice, neat bow on things Sunday.

Lessons Learned?

The news from Sunday:

Face to face with the legions of homeless and the bereaved, President Barack Obama on Sunday toured the apocalyptic landscape left by Missouri's killer tornado, consoled the community and committed the government to helping rebuild shattered lives.

"We're not going to stop `til Joplin's back on its feet," Obama vowed. A memorial service where Obama spoke punctuated a day of remembrance one week after the disaster, as authorities pressed on with the task of identifying the victims and volunteers combed through wreckage of neighborhoods where nothing was left whole.

What is happening in Joplin, Missouri right now and indeed for many places in the Mississippi River Valley and the South reminded us of our own experiences in disaster relief and those of others close to us and how, hopefully, lessons learned from previous experiences may be applied to these current situations.

The following was pulled from a post of a couple of years back as it related to the Harris and Witch Creek wild fires that roared through the San Diego back country in the fall of 2007:

We liberated from the comments section of our post yesterday, these thoughts from the voice of reason in BwD Nation and a man who has extensive experience in community organizing and disaster relief (being a husband and father of five will do that). Pops wrote the following:

Our experience with the Red Cross bureaucracy would probably not be much different from dealing with the government bureaucracy. About ten years ago, our church wanted to offer our church gym as an emergency shelter location. The gym would have been perfect; the large gym floor for cots, adjacent rest rooms with showers and a large kitchen. We had a meeting with the Red Cross and got the official word on Separation of Church and State and other bureaucratic regs. Our thoughts were “We are a church and these people would be guests on our property. We don’t take the cross down.” Obviously, the gym did not become a shelter.

Our Katrina experience was no better. We have group called Friends Disaster Service. We have an equipment trailer and a crew of folks ready to go, many being experienced construction types. We tried to work with the Red Cross to no avail. The concept of working with a semi-independent organized unit was outside their bureaucratic thinking and something that they would not consider. We would have to volunteer as individuals assigned by them. If one of our group lived across the line in LA county, he would be assigned to an LA unit. Our own equipment trailer was also alien to their thinking. Several people from our church but not in the FDS group took the Red Cross training but were never called.

Our solution was to find a town that was hard hit but far enough from coast that heavy equipment was not needed. We contacted the pastor there and asked what was needed. He said to come with all the chain saws that we could find. The FDS group was there quickly and spent about 5 days clearing fallen trees. We made a least 6 more trips on subsequent aid projects and formed a strong bond with Wiggins MS with no bureaucratic assistance. When the tornado hit Greenberg KS, we didn’t bother connecting to the Red Cross or FEMA, we just went. Dad.

(Emphasis, ours)

The intent of this is not to slam the good intentions of the Red Cross or even any of the good work that they or any other large charity/relief organization does, governmental or otherwise.

It is to point out that sometimes (many times?), relief efforts are best stood up independently and organically outside the normally recognized boundaries of Big Relief.

Recall our friends, San Diego private citizens Angelo and Diane, waking up on a morning when the October ’07 San Diego wild fires were ablaze and deciding that they could make a difference. They drove to a Target shopping center near the fires and set up what is now the international symbol for domestic disaster relief coordination, the camping canopy, and began doing business.

That canopy became a node for the acceptance and dispersal of relief aid and, as importantly, a node for collection and dissemination of information… who needed what and where.

It was to the point that even the Red Cross, Salvation Army, KFC and Subway were dropping stuff off at Angelo and Diane’s canopy. And it seemed that the majority of the volunteers helping Angelo and Diane did not even know them before that day.

And I’ll defer to Mongo but we’ve noticed a drop in graffiti in our ‘hood once we decided the San Diego graffiti abatement hotline was neither and we just started cleaning-up the graffiti on our own as quickly as humanly possible once it showed up.

Small, independent, quick acting/reacting seems to be the way to go in our not-so-humble opinion.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people whose lives have been radically altered by the freakish weather that has hit the middle and south of our country this spring.

What? (UPDATED)

The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (P.L. 66-261) is a United States Federal statute that regulates maritime commerce in U.S. waters and between U.S. ports.

Section 27, also known as the Jones Act, deals with cabotage (i.e., coastal shipping) and requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flag ships, constructed in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed by U.S. citizens and U.S. permanent residents. The purpose of the law is to support the U.S. merchant marine industry, but agricultural interests generally oppose it because, they contend, it raises the cost of shipping their goods, making them less competitive with foreign sources.

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We learned a simple thing this week: that the BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones Act. This is a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation, that requires all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed.

So while, for instance, the U.S. Coast Guard can accept such help as three kilometres of containment boom from Canada, they can't accept, and therefore don't ask for, the assistance of high-tech European vessels specifically designed for the task in hand.

Now, an exemption can be granted even to the Jones Act: by executive order, all the way to the top. This was granted, promptly, by the Bush administration, when it was organizing the rescue arrangements that responsible local authorities had failed to provide, at the time of Hurricane Katrina. Which was, incidentally, a vastly larger environmental catastrophe than the piddling oil leak that now commands the news.

This is almost too horrible to check. Standard variety faculty lounge bungling is one thing but if we're refusing foreign assistance including Belgian and Dutch skimmers containing the technology and capacity that we do not currently possess, as a sop to the unions, then isn't that fringing on criminal negligence?


H/T: Carpe Diem


(UPDATE #1):

Competence.

Four weeks after the nation's worst environmental disaster, the Obama administration saw no need to accept offers of state-of-the-art skimmers, miles of boom or technical assistance from nations around the globe with experience fighting oil spills.

"We'll let BP decide on what expertise they do need," State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters on May 19. "We are keeping an eye on what supplies we do need. And as we see that our supplies are running low, it may be at that point in time to accept offers from particular governments."

That time has come.

In the past week, the United States submitted its second request to the European Union for any specialized equipment to contain the oil now seeping onto the Gulf of Mexico's marshes and beaches, and it accepted Canada's offer of 9,842 feet of boom. The government is soliciting additional boom and skimmers from nearly two dozen countries and international organizations.

In late May, the administration accepted Mexico's offer of two skimmers and 13,779 feet of boom; a Dutch offer of three sets of Koseq sweeping arms, which attach to the sides of ships and gather oil; and eight skimming systems offered by Norway.

For possessing the smartest people in the world, this administration has failed to heed perhaps the largest domestic lesson learned from the previous administration and which derailed the Bush presidency to the degree that he was, by proxy, voted out of office when the Democrats won back the House and Senate some 14 months later in November of '06.

We don't like to get into arm-chair quarterbacking because often times it makes people appear smarter than they really are, so, instead we'll armchair quarterback on behalf of people who really are smarter than us. With that: Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot? How the hell could this have happened? The biggest domestic take-away from the Bush administration was totally and completely lost on them.

One would think that at the mere mention of "oil spill", particularly in that region of the country, the smartest people in the world would've immediately gone all hands on deck and would've employed the environmental equivalent of the Powell doctrine, meeting the encroaching oil slick with overwhelming force.

Our initial assessment of this disaster was that the slow response was due as much to overcoming the inertia of the federal government as it was to whomever was in the Oval Office at the time. This latest revelation, however, may alter forever how we view this.

We're real sorry the administration has to deal with tedious and mundane crap like saving the entire Gulf Coast while they're busy transforming America, but sometimes you have to stoop to literal clean-up duty every once in a while.

So this is really what it's like to be governed by a bunch of left-wing academics.

Awesome.

Misplaced priorities

We think we've been pretty good about containing ourselves, not piling on and going Katrina on Obama over the Gulf spill disaster, don't you? The administration and the federal government can't be expected to to plug the damn hole! - and with respect to the clean-up effort, any slow start out of the blocks and conflicting direction given to BP and state and local officials speaks as much to the layers and inertia inherent to a highly bureaucratized entity like the federal government than it does to whether a Republican or Democrat is in office.

However... the President is making things awfully hard on himself. His recent "whose ass to kick" comment has to be about the most shameless bit of pandering we have heard in quite some time. It's obvious the criticism regarding his emotional detachment has been internalized by the administration and by the president himself and the rolling out of his passion offensive sounds downright Bushian and, unfortunately, because he is the anti-Bush, totally unconvincing. Nothing is as wince-inducing as a public figure trying to be somebody they are not. Regardless, America is still left to wonder just how it is that kicking some body's ass is going to aid in the spill clean-up effort.

Ditto for the miserable hack that runs the Justice Department and his peoples' efforts to bring criminal charges against BP, the same BP that was going to be bestowed a safety award by the Obama administration. Everyone can agree that the responsible people need to be held accountable but reasonable people can agree that these efforts by Justice is putting the cart before the horse.

This is criminal prosecution as fishing expedition — scouring the federal code to find anything that might possibly work to provide criminal penalties. That’s counterproductive to the number-one priority, which must be stopping and containing the oil spill. Announcing criminal investigations to score political points or stave off political damage is an abuse of one of the most awesome powers of the state, the power to deprive an individual of his or her personal liberty.

We're sure that BP will be that much more diligent in their efforts and that much more cooperative with the federal government in containing this spill with the threat of criminal prosecution hanging over their head. Works every time. When the top priority and focus of our leaders should be containing and cleaning up the oil spill, we instead get the CinC going locker room slang to desperately try to demonstrate his alpha dog status and the Justice Department turned hanging party.

We're in the best of hands.

Inevitable

Former theater critic and current fringe journalist, Frank Rich: Yeah, things are pretty bad down in the Gulf right now... but let's talk about Bush and Katrina.

You're doin' a heckuva job, Fugate.....

Fugate...? Fugate...?

Press secretaries for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would not disclose the whereabouts of FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate as of Friday afternoon.

The FEMA announced one day after President Barack Obama signed a disaster declaration on Tuesday for Rhode Island, which is facing the worst flooding in 200 years, that Fugate would be traveling to Orlando, Fla., to give a speech on Wednesday.

Fugate, who formerly served as director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management and has a home with his wife in Gainesville, gave a speech on Wednesday afternoon at the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando. The weather there this week has been sunny, with temperatures in the 80s, according to the National Weather Service.

FEMA Press Secretary Brad Carroll did not respond to requests on Friday from CNSNews.com asking where Fugate was on Thursday and Friday. DHS Press Secretary Clark Stevens also did not respond to the same questions. Both men also did not answer whether Fugate was on vacation this week.

To date, no one in the Obama administration has disclosed where Fugate has been since making a speech on Wednesday afternoon -- a phone call made by CNSNews.com on Thursday confirmed that Fugate was not registered at the Orlando Hilton, where the hurricane convention was held.

Fugate has not issued any statements on the rainstorms and flooding in the Northeast since Wednesday, when FEMA announced that Fugate had named Craig. A. Gilbert as the federal coordinating officer for the federal recovery operation in the region.

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

Haiti is Obama's Katrina

Nonsense.

We don’t know quite when this meme got started but we’ve been hearing more and more of it lately and frankly, we think it’s shameful.

There is no shortage of things in which to criticize the President and his administration’s decisions and policies but his “handling” (whatever that is supposed to mean) of Haiti is definitely no one of them.

We’ve been hearing stories coming out of Haiti regarding the bottleneck at the airport, the lack of security, the looting, the inability to get needed medical supplies and food and water to where it’s needed but for the life of us we cannot figure out what the hell President Obama is supposed to do about that.

This just in: Haiti was a train wreck before that train wreck was visited by a 7.0 earthquake.

This just in Pt. II: Haiti is a sovereign nation. As such, we have to ask permission in order to help. We have to ask permission to do a lot of things down there. We are taking heat as it is from the international set for a perceived military take-over of Haiti but regardless of how weak, ineffectual and corrupt Haiti’s government is, we must respect the nation’s sovereignty and if that results in delays and hang-ups, that is on the Haitian government.

Are there possibly competing agendas among international aid agencies and governments and even among U.S. government agencies down there right now? Bet on it but what is the President supposed to do about entrenched bureaucrats thousands of miles away trying to offer help in the most trying and difficult of circumstances.

Yes, Bush got a raw deal on a hurricane-ravaged city that is built below sea-level but trying to vindicate Bush by slamming Haiti over Obama’s head is petty, lame and flat-out wrong.

So, please just knock it off.

Wet Nurse-in-Chief

With over 5 million boxes and rolls of Kleenex and toilet paper at the ready, President Bush dodges a bullet from having to personally wipe everybody in the Gulf region’s nose and ass as it appears “Gustav” has not unleashed the destruction on New Orleans and surrounding areas as did “Katrina” some 3 years ago.