New Storm, New Blunders
There's a 100 mile traffic jam heading out of Houston. Some are describing it as a parking lot since many along the way have run out of gasoline. I was in Houston on Wednesday and at Hobby airport there was a line to get through security I haven't seen since just after 9/11. Of the 6 metal detectors they had, 3 were staffed with employees and the others were shut down. I've been told that the lines were 5 hours long yesterday so I missed the worst of the worst.
The point here is: after all of the finger pointing by the Feds at how unprepared New Orleans was for Katrina, a city in the heart of Bush Country has proven to be equally as unprepared for evacuation. This is no longer about one city, one black mayor, one inept governor, one group of poor people... This is now about the fact that we've spent billions of dollars and created the department of homeland security and all of this preparation has meant absolutely nothing. We can't evacuate a single city without putting thousands in danger in stalled cars on the freeway. We can't properly staff security posts at airports so people can get to their flights to get out of harms way. We can't shut down inbound lanes into a city in a timely enough manner to avoid the backups we've seen out of Houston. We can't get national guard troops in place to block off ramps, remove stalled cars, provide fuel to those in need... BECAUSE the troops to handle these emergencies are otherwise engaged.
But Bush will fly into Texas today for his photo-op. He isn't on vacation this week.
UPDATE: Bush canceled his visit to Texas. They said it was because he didn't want to get in the way but... there is a report that he actually canceled his visit because it was too sunny! I'm not kidding! The photo-op wasn't good enough or he'd have been there in the way. What a guy!
See report here.
The point here is: after all of the finger pointing by the Feds at how unprepared New Orleans was for Katrina, a city in the heart of Bush Country has proven to be equally as unprepared for evacuation. This is no longer about one city, one black mayor, one inept governor, one group of poor people... This is now about the fact that we've spent billions of dollars and created the department of homeland security and all of this preparation has meant absolutely nothing. We can't evacuate a single city without putting thousands in danger in stalled cars on the freeway. We can't properly staff security posts at airports so people can get to their flights to get out of harms way. We can't shut down inbound lanes into a city in a timely enough manner to avoid the backups we've seen out of Houston. We can't get national guard troops in place to block off ramps, remove stalled cars, provide fuel to those in need... BECAUSE the troops to handle these emergencies are otherwise engaged.
But Bush will fly into Texas today for his photo-op. He isn't on vacation this week.
UPDATE: Bush canceled his visit to Texas. They said it was because he didn't want to get in the way but... there is a report that he actually canceled his visit because it was too sunny! I'm not kidding! The photo-op wasn't good enough or he'd have been there in the way. What a guy!
See report here.
posted by crackerdog at 7:18 AM
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