Hurricane Katrina is a terrible tragedy. Some will say the lack of action by the Federal, State and local governments is a bigger tragedy. The Mayor of New Orleans was on a Radio Show blasting the Federal and State bureaucracies.
It appears now that the Federal troops are in place and the looting and rioting has stopped. The vast majority of people left in the Hurricane Katrina disaster area have been evacuated. The process has started to fix the levees and dry out New Orleans.
It is very easy to point fingers. It is very easy for the State Governments to say it is the fault of the National Governments. Unfortunately these mistakes and the delays in getting aid to New Orleans has probably cost the Lives of hundreds if not thousands of people. The bigger tragedy would be to not learn from the mistakes that were made and make the same mistakes in a future disaster.
A task force needs to be created to study what mistakes were made. This task force needs to determine what was done right and what can be done better. This task force needs to point out what was done wrong and what steps need to be taken to fix it without any finger pointing. It would be a far greater tragedy to not learn from the mistakes and have them repeated in a future natural disaster.
It appears that allot of the problems revolved around a federal law designed to protect the states. This law states that Federal troops cannot be used unless requested by the state governor. There may need to be revisions in this law that allows federal troops to be deployed for a short period of time without the governors request under very specific terms with proper checks and balances. |
