My question is this…
regardless of who did or did not do what…whos fault you think it is etc…
do you think our country is prepared for disasters?? … & i’m mainly referring to terrrorist acts, but the aftermath of terrorist or natural disaster has similar outcomes.
I just want to see what everyone thinks…since our response to Katrina has been sub-par
Weither its a bomb, hurricane, earthquake, highjacked planes, etc… the aftermath is all similar so doesn’t the Kartrina disaster make you wonder?
I think FEMA needs to get thier act together.
its just something to think about…please no politcal debate shit in this.
i would like to think that we are pretty secure as far as terrorists, but i really dont know. i bet alot of stuff gets stopped and not even brought public, so in that sense that would be reassuring. something like natural disasters, it’s hard to ‘prepare’ for i think. i dont want to really get all back on the katrina thing, as we all know we didnt come out of that looking so good. so hopefully the preparation and immediate response to that doesnt reflect how things would play out in all types of ‘disasters’
i think that people will bitch about anything… you could fucking flood out a city and have 1 person get their shoes wet and there will be front page articles for 2 days about it…
i thnk that the responce time to the stranded people could of improved… but if you’re an engineer watching those levies break and seeing that more are going to break and the possibility for more water, why would you deploy 2000+ rescue workers?
i think there was suitible time from the national weather service telling those people to get out… i think that the people that listened to that are out, and are dealing iwth insurance, which is it’s own porblem.
i think the poeple that bitch every day about it are democrats hating on gwb… seriously… but tha’ts beside the point as well… i do think that we are really prepared in respect that we have people to be deployed and extra supplies for ‘victims’… but i still think there is a level of peresonal responceability that tells the tale… those pople should not of still been in NO… so they sorta made themselves victims… but that town is like no other town in the US… plus the crime rate was high and poverty was a probelm for years and years… so i’m not surprised… anyone that’ sbeen to NO and in that ghetto they talk about all the time KNOWS that place was a real shithole.
the aftermath makes me wonder why people knowingly put themselves in harms way…
how can you protect yourself from a real disaster though? what if an earthquake breaks california off the US, or if an underwater volcanoe causes a tsunami on the east coast? shit like that is hard to deal with… i don’t know of any proactive solution that could of helped poeple over in the path of the tsunami.
i don’t think that terrorism is an issue… overall crime is an issue.
as far as natural disasters vs. terrorism…its both hard to prepare for unless its a storm.
yeah we know storm info and when a hurricane is coming or a tonado might pop up, etc…, but we don’t know when earthquakes, or a terrorist bomb will go off, etc…
i’m just saying that in a aftermath situation were there are a lot of people hurt, dead, need help, & there is a ton of clean up etc… i don’t think we look really prepared…now maybe katrina was an exception for some odd reason, but if that shows how our countrys response is gonna be its kinda scary.
i’m talking once its happened…in any situation where there are masses of people hurt, dead, in nead of help, cleanup etc… its all the same after the fact no matter what caused it.
lets say there is a huge earthequake, or a tsunami…or a chemical bomb or whatever… you feel that the countrys response looks like it would be good?
to me the aftermath of a earthquake, bomb, etc…is all the same.
as far as you thinking terrorism is not as issue i think your wrong
soemone could make a homemade bomb & set it off downtown right now…now weither you want to call it a crime or terrorism is up to you…but i think its very possible…just like the subway in europe.
there are a ton of unempolyed poeple that could be put to wokr helping with cleanup… shit, there are a ton of firms out there (monster.com) that setup gorups of people for cleanup, they send them down, clean up and live there for a couple weeks and make $… i think that a viable solution.
i don’t know what you really expect… it’s not like a dirtbike goggle where you can just rip a cord and clean everythign up in a second… downtime is expected… i also think that NO is an execption… what other city inthe US will POOL the flood waters into a lake! basically none…
terrorist is tossed around so muhc in the past few years that it could be almost anything…
i think if i a bomb went off anywhere there woudl by hysteria… shit, i know people that get hysterical over 1" of snow on the roads in the winter… it’s all up to the person freaking out… you will always have mayhem when something like that happens… it’s just expected.
i do’nt know what you want? you want people to be up on the balls of their feet ready to jump into action if something happens? i’d rather live my life as i am with a day or two of dealing with something than being prepared and living in fear of something happening…
once again, new orleans was ‘different’… they didn’t deploy because it was still flooding itself 2 days after a hurricane came though! … there was no way to block off the levies to stop the flow of water… so there was no relief effort.
i’m not saying that somewhre else couldn’t have a similar issue… but i’m not thinking that anything can be more prepared than we already are that owuld be more proactive…
on a side note… i love how everyone talks about the ‘thousands dead’… i read yesterday and confirmed on CNN that the death toll was up to 700+ people IN FIVE STATES…
so the casualties in New Orleans are not as grave as made out to be. i mean come on… the ‘effort’ wasn’t held up because of ‘redtape’ or ‘george bush’… it was because it was unsafe to send MORE people down there… shit, even structure fires get bad enough that firefighters don’t go in to help anyone that may be stuck inside…
I sort of agree with this. Because it was so drasticly great of a disaster, it pretty much had the people who could have done something saying,
"holy shite, this is more disaster than we’ve ever known, what do we do? …Bob, you wanna go down there in your fishing boat? ;bob; “hell no! Lets see if the water all washes back into the ocean and go from there sips on coffee”
Another note, Do you think if the same disaster sweapt into southern california or say D.C., things would have went the same way?
it wouldn’t of been… the geographical layout simply enough would not of caused this… IF there was a lake to overflow into either city, the low points (sewage drains / run offs / rivers ) would of delt with the access water… shit, downtown pittsburgh got hit with 300 million gallons of water and only flooded for maybe 45minutes to an hour in about 2 city blocks… (not comparing to New Orleans) … but new orleans sewage adn run offs are even further underground than the city itself…
so each of those cities would never of dealt with the pooling of the water and then the associated disease and stagnation of water…
i remember being in new orleans… seeing my elevation on the GPS and being liek… WTF, were standing in a dried up lake (no shit, my buddy that was there can verify that, i called him the night this shit went down and was like SEEEE!!!)
Regardless disaster or people blowin themselves up citizens will be frantic. After seeing what happend the response time and what not I think if there was another attack Gov officials would move faster from this point foward. Lessons Learned! IMO they did a great job responding for 9/11 - Katrina was just a SNAFU in the system
N.O. was just a really fucked up situation. You have horrible local goverment, horrible state wide goverment, and (well, we all know how I feel about the president). Plus the fact that it’s underground and then on top of all of that, throw in some really fucked up people looting and shooting guns at rescue workers. I think if a terrorist attack happenend, it would be handled 11ty billion times different than how N.O. was handled.
hopefully, we learned from this and make things better
ahhhhh c’mon Sonny. Lots and lots of the people that stayed COULDNT leave. If you are homeless, poor, sick, you cant just hop in your Mercedes and drive up to your chalet in Aspen for a few weeks while the whole thing blows over. And Im sure there were also a fair amount of people that could have left that were too stubborn to leave their property to be looted and stuff like that.
As far as it being only Democrats bitching… c’mon. Some of the harshest criticisms have been coming from Republicans. There were thousands of people down there starving to death and dying in the streets waiting for help. This wasnt deep in the hills of Bengladesh or something, this was Louisiana. There was no police presence for days. No food, no water. No nothing. The 82nd airborne is designed to be able to land and deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours, but they cant get to N.O.? There was a massive breakdown in communication and leadership that led to all of this. And we had days to prepare for this disaster. We wont have days to prepare for a massive terrorist attack. If we cant deal with this, what makes you think that we can handle a terrorist attack?
Heres a few interesting stories from the aftermath of Katrina as reported by CNN. Very interesting read.
well i have an opinion on homeless and poor poeple… get a job, make some money, and tough it out like the rest of us… i know that’s harsh and some poeple ‘couldn’t’ get out… but ya know… that’s what happens.
harsh critisim came from both sides… after math thre are some republicans that agree it wasn’t dealt with the best possible… and bush even admitted it was fucked up… but the DAY after, before the levie water even stopped flooding the city, all the democrats were bitching
people withouht food for ‘days’… how many days mike? how about 2 -3 before a broken levie could even be fixed to stop the flow of water… why pump water out to the lake / sea when it’s just coming right back?
what happens aorund the world when people get flooded, or snowed in, or iced over??? they live off EMERGENCY RATIONS… people downt here were too damn stubborn to have food and water ready…
did you stop reading those broken heart stories and read the ones from people that are STILL LIVING IN THEIR HOMES that have plenty of food and water to last? sure it would suck eating canned baked beans for 2 weeks… but you’re alive and not dying of hungar.
like i said… lots of personal responsability that all those people lacked… i’m sorry… if a fucking hurricane cat 5 is coming to your town, board up the house and have some shit ready (generator for power, extra fuel, extra food) shit man… when i used to go camping wth my old man and his buddy we had all that shit sitting in a cabin incase of snow… why can’t poeple do that when they fucking know shit’s going to go down?
not once did i say this was handled the bestest possible… but it’s not th worst
i knwo for a fact that if bush dumped billions into buses and planes and armed gaurds and food for every single person, regardless of if that person would give anything back or has helped society in any way, that people would be bitching that bush friviously spends money.
there are homeless poeple in houston in shelters that are turning down offers to take them home because those people are content living and eating for free.
fuck bottom feeders… i’m sorry… if i have to work for what i have, i don’t care how inhumane, those people that provide nothing to the community don’t deserve anything (i’mnot a communist either rofl)
i hear that… but most of the hospitals were the areas of safegaurd for fleeing victims… the hospital WAS the safe haven.
shit like that retirement home, there were what, 30 - 35 elderly in there, the shit eating husband and wife that ran it just up and left town to ‘save themselves’… now they’re being charged iwth 30 cases of murder… good for them
If there were some type of widespread disaster, be it chemical, biological, nuclear, etc, I don’t think we would be prepared. And quite honestly I’m not sure you could be, unless individuals took the appropriate actions themselves. If even 0.01% of the population needed medical assistance, how could we possibly attend to all those people? I pulled that number out of my ass, but in general, you see what I mean.
We were probably more prepared for a nuclear attack in the 50’s. I personally don’t have any plans to dig and stock a bunker in my back yard.
you lack the compassionate part of compassionate conservative. Ok, there were some people that didnt prepare properly. And yes, there are some people that live in poverty down there that could probably make a lot more out of themselves if they tried harder. But can you really say that since they didnt prepare and/or are stupid that its ok to let them die?
if it’s unforseeable and they didn’t do dick to help themselves, then fuck’em
i don’t think that bush, or whomever you’re blaming, ‘let’ anyone die or be stranded.
i know that the weather service ‘let’ them know that a huge fuckin hurricane was coming and i know that the city of new orleans ‘let’ their public know that the town cannot withstand a big ass hurricane…
i was down there in the historical district and they even have a plaque and shit stating that if the city were to flood it would be disasterous (it was explaining the fact that it’s under sea level)
who says i’m a republican? or compassionate for that matter?
KIDDING!!!