Where's FEMA in Florida?

Note: This post is not very coherent and does little more than help me vent. You'd be wise to just ignore it.

From the St. Petersburg Times: Much of Florida's east coast was under alert early today as a new tropical weather system formed offshore and threatened to douse parts of the state with up to 10 inches of rain.

Tropical Depression 16 formed Tuesday southeast of Miami and was expected today to become a tropical storm, with sustained winds of at least 39 mph.

While its path is uncertain, forecasters predicted it would take a northwesterly track, skirting the east coast before making landfall early Saturday, just south of the Jacksonville area, with winds of up to 70 mph.

Wow. Well, if the media is right about the mishandling of Katrina then FEMA had better learn their lesson and deploy twenty or thirty thousand people to Florida... today... just in case. They need to learn their media-taught lesson: over-respond to everything.

Damn media. They forget that it's impossible to tell which ones are gonna be disasters until hours before they hit. Even then you have to wait to see what the real outcome is.

I can't wait to see how the media Xxxks FEMA into an over-reaction on this minor storm heading towards Florida. And into over-reactions for the next ten years. Wasting tons of taxpayer dollars and saving, what, two lives... one being that of a cow.

The alert systems that help people get out of an area are what save lives. The storm is the storm and nobody can do anything about it. New Orleans is a special case because of its geography. In most any other city in the nation the water wouldn't have piled up like that. People who stay could have often gotten out, but chose to stay. If you can get to the SuperDome you can likely get to the edge of town where you're not under sea level, no?

The media acts like FEMA should have known this was gonna be a tragedy. But if they did then why didn't they say anything before the storm struck? Why didn't Ray Nagin ask for busses to take people out of New Orleans instead of putting them into the SuperDome? His city was a fish tank waiting to happen. Why wait, Ray? Why all the talk about busses now?

Oh yeah... because it's impossible to tell what's gonna happen with a hurricane. It was tracking north west, could have missed New Orleans just eighteen hours ahead of landfall. And once it does hit it's damn near impossible to get resources where they need to be. But the media and liberal senators are having a field day finding incidents of incredible stupidity. Great work Xxxholes. You've proven that humans are fallible and make mistakes in crisis situations. But does that equate to charges of racism, systemic incompetence and apathy for the victims? I think not. It's just Xxxthead journalism at its worst.

I'd like to do a business process analysis of the media companies and slam them because accounts payable dropped the ball on paying for toilet paper. A taste of their own medicine. When you get into any organization there's chaos. People always think the grass is greener on the other side. It's the image companies want to project... that they're functioning like a machine. But once you get close to them you realize that they're making tons of mistakes. Familiarity breeds discontent.

Inside of a massive new organization that's been created in all of 24 hours and is conducting operations in an area with no power, phone, roads or rails you should expect a lot of wasted effort. Common sense people. That doesn't mean progress isn't being made. It means progress is hard to achieve. People act like there should be a check box list for how to deal with these things. There is, but when it says "get water to the survivors" and you learn that there's 12 foot water surrounding the survivors, your plans change. When you learn that the survivors have been stirred up by a failing leader named Ray Nagin and are now shooting at your police and medical professionals, your plans change again.

Maybe somebody should remind the Xxxhole senators trying to use this for political gain that roughly half of the people at FEMA who were working to get help to the area are democrats.

I just don't see the incompetence. I see mistakes, but nothing that makes me believe that they people of FEMA or any other organization were attempting to do anything but the best job possible.

In many states there's something called the Good Samaritan Law. This essentially says that if you are trying in good faith to help somebody, you can't be sued if they die. It's for situations where average citizens try to give CPR to somebody who's dying. I'd like to see FEMA and the administration form a Good Samaritan defense. Sad that they have to form any defense against our country's own media, but that's the reality of it.

Or maybe a class action suit from every employee of FEMA who's ability to get a job in the private sector has been affected unfairly by the media. How about that media? Maybe you'll stop biased agenda-based research and look for some real news.

Ok, I'm emotional and mad at the media. Not all media is bad. They are painting a picture. They are doing a good job getting info out. But they're pushing this "failed aid" story way too hard for me and it makes me quite mad that so many Americans are essentially being slapped in the face for their good efforts.