You want a DHS director who knows what to do and what should have been done? You want a head of FEMA who is capable, hands-on, action-oriented, caring, and graced with foresight and the ability to anticipate what natural disaster victims need?
Damn right you do!
Follow below the fold to see what a competent FEMA director should have known. I’m not gonna address a head of DHS, because I think that “office” was designed to be filled by a political sycophant toady. I’m not interested. Waste of time to even give it a thought.
Here’s what would have been done, if I were FEMA Director. My qualifications for the job? I learned from surviving Andrew.
[Disclosure: crossposted at DailyKos.]
By now field feeding/housing and medical aid stations should be in place, manned by Nat’l. Guard and marked by green and red balloons, tethered to the site so that they can be seen for miles by people making their way on foot, or any floating object to a hoped-for safe harbor.
Military and civilian medical personnel should be triaging and immunizing anyone who makes it to the ballon sites.
Each adult victim should receive $100 cash and each dependent under 18, $50, a hygiene/sanitation kit, and a S,M,L,XL,XXL set of OR pjs, flip-flops, and socks before being evacuated from the impact zone.
A registry of survivors and reported (as yet offically unconfirmed) deaths, recording name and address should be kept at each of the field sites.
Law enforcement would be introduced and conducted by every municple, state, and Federal agency, plus military. I don’t care if it’s the Fish and Wildlife, the Forestry Patrol, or the Agriculture Patrol. Get out there and keep the first area you come to safe. Man the the rooftops and patrol the streets. Direct people to the emergency facilities. Get them there if you can. Presence reassures.
Private blimps should be maneuvering over the city at night informing stranded victims below that a) help is in place and how to get to it, if possible; b) how to use any white sheet or combination of white cloths on the roof to signal if rescue is needed, and other signaling methods.
There should be a distribution of MREs and water from amphibious vehicles, shallowdraft boats, and from staging areas to and in heretofore unaccessible neighborhoods by Nat’l. Guard.
They should be bullhorn broadcasting information about where to go to get this help by Nat’l. Guard. Once areas are surveyed for underwater hazards, inflatable craft should be added for these duties and those below.
There should be shallowdraft boats in mini-convoys carrying medical teams and first-response survival supplies, manned by Nat’l. Guard and civilian volunteers carrying chain saws and other rescue equipment, continuously roving all streets that are underwater. Part of the “flotilla” should include craft capable of making emergency evacuations of critical need cases.
There should be diesel generators providing power to installed “camp utilities” located inside intact structures in Vieux Carre. These places should become refugee shelters.
There should have been sipping/cargo containers pre-outfitted as “mess kits,” “toilet kits,” “shower kits,” and “sleep kits” that could be loaded onto flatbeds and driven and emplaced in dry areas, or towed barge-like and “anchored” in areas underwater throughout the city.
Similar containers containing potable water, MREs, rescue equipment, generators, medical supplies, water treatment/purification, clothing, and sanitary supplies should have been equipped and staged prior to Katrina so that they would be available for immediate delivery to afflicted areas.
Finally, there should be veterinary field camps for pets, strays, and injured animals and wildlife manned by state ag. vets and volunteers.
And believe me, I’d be open to suggestions, all volunteer help offered (who would be reimbursed on the spot at the end of each day), and aid from foreign governments.
And the buck would stop with me.
Now, obviously, I’m not really the one who’d ever be hired. So, draft Janet Reno instead.
