1 Uhm, on Thursday, August 26, Blanco declared a state of emergency, mobilized the Louisiana National Guard, non-combatants only armed only with personal side arms (the combat brigades and all the rifles owned by the LANG are in Iraq), and dispatched them to the edges of the hurricane areas so they could be sent into the disaster area immediately by FEMA upon it being safe to do so. By Sunday, August 28, the 2700 National Guardsmen who had reported for duty were ready to be dispatched from Baton Rouge (it is notoriously difficult to round up National Guardsmen on short notice, specially on a weekend, so this 50% turnout of the National Guardsmen available to her was actually pretty good). On Sunday, August 28, she accepted offers of additional National Guard soldiers from New Mexico, Texas, and Arkansas. By late Monday, the first Louisiana National Guard troops arrived and started enforcing the FEMA-mandated cordon around the New Orleans area to keep out looters. At this point you can fault Governor Blanco for not overriding FEMA and telling the NG's to enter New Orleans, but FEMA was telling her that everything was under control. Finally, on Wednesday, Blanco realized that FEMA was lying to her, and ordered the NoGo's into New Orleans, overriding FEMA's directive that they were to instead put a cordon around the area to "keep looters out". The first column of National Guard trucks entered New Orleans on Wednesday evening... and promptly went to sleep, since they are armed only with personal sidearms and were in a search-and-rescue mission mode and it's too late for them to start search-and-rescue operations. And on Thursday, the Pentagon *FINALLY* finished the paperwork to allow the additional help that Blanco had requested on the previous SUNDAY to enter the city, and the first platoons of fresh-from-Iraq Arkansas National Guard combat troops enter New Orleans (the first National Guardsmen on the scene who were actual combat troops who knew which end of Mr. Rifle went bang and could thus be used to police the city). Blanco's biggest problem is that she has lived through a half-dozen hurricanes in the past, and in those hurricanes, FEMA came in, efficiently dispatched resources to where they were needed, and everything worked like clockwork. The last Louisiana hurricane I was in, the National Guard was in the streets within 4 hours of the eye passing, and were locked and loaded, and this was all orchestrated by FEMA, which evaluated the needs of the various parishes and cities, and dispatched the appropriate troops with the right supplies to each area. As a former Louisiana resident I am shocked that this did not happen this time. I'm sure Blanco is shocked too. Because this is unprecedented. Louisiana has hurricanes almost every year, and FEMA has *never* dropped the ball like this before. Furthermore, in past hurricanes, there were Louisiana National Guard combat troops available. That was not true this time, all the LANG combat brigades are in Iraq. In short, you can fault Blanco for being too trusting of FEMA's ability to dispatch resources to where they are needed, and it is clear, since Blanco has decided to bypass FEMA and hired former FEMA head James Lee Witt to head the state's recovery effort, that now she has come to that realization too. But you can't fault Blanco for not calling up the National Guard. She did. And you know those evacuation busses? Not the charter busses, but the hundreds of school busses? That's Blanco's doings too -- when it became obvious that FEMA was doing nothing to help those people trapped in New Orleans, she issued a call to all the school districts in the state (a call that FEMA was supposed to make) for school busses to evacuate those people. And they responded. And then, and only then, did FEMA charter the big impressive charter busses you see on the news. But most of the evacuation is being done by yellow school buses from around Louisiana. FEMA was set up as the centralized coordinating agency for all the various resources available to tackle national disasters. There are hundreds of individual jurisdictions in the disaster area, from levee boards to school boards to sheriff's departments to city fire and police departments, and huge amounts of resources pouring in from the outside, and it is FEMA's job -- or was in the past -- to coordinate these so that they all work together to solve the disaster. That didn't happen here. And we can blame Blanco for being slow on the uptake, but we can't blame her for not doing FEMA's job, because it WAS FEMA's job, and Blanco DID put the resources under FEMA's effective control... and FEMA didn't dispatch them where they were needed. Is there any wonder that she no longer wants anything to do with FEMA and the Federal government?! I can fault Blanco for a number of things. When the first reports came out of New Orleans, she should have immediately overridden FEMA and sent in the troops, instead of believing Brownie Brown Noses's reassurance that those reports were merely "rumors" and that everything was under control. And the evacuation should have been called a day earlier -- by waiting until Sunday, it was way too late to evacuate the hospitals and nursing homes, and hundreds died because of that. But hanging the responsibility on her head for the aftermath... that's just plain wrong. FEMA has in the past been the managing agency there, and was supposed to be the managing agency this time... and didn't do it, indeed, actively LIED both to Blanco and to the press about the situation in New Orleans. It was not until courageous reporters went into New Orleans and started reporting themselves what was going on that the wall of lies around FEMA's failure to dispatch resources crumbled, and the Guard could be ordered in over FEMA's objections.

2 That explains the evacuation process after the hurricane, but does not address the evacuation processes that should have been employed days "before" the hurricane hit. There was days notice beforehand that Katrina was a category 5. I have a couple questions. Was it really FEMA's responsibility or the Governor's responsibility to employ those assets BEFORE the hurricane arrived, such as all the school buses we've seen sitting in several feet of water? Positioning the national guard around the city was a good move on her part, but it didn't keep people from dying who had no way to get out BEFORE the hurricane. And here's my other question. A category 4 or 5 hurricane is approaching and the Mayor or Governor is totally unaware that all those buses are still sitting in a massive parking lot? They were unaware that masses, tens of thousands of people, especially the infirm, were still sitting in homes and hospitals waiting for help? They were unaware of the condition of the levies and the fact that they, as many have attested, would NOT hold back a storm surge from such a bad hurricane? No matter who had jurisdiction over what, if the Mayor or Governor had just taken control BEFORE Katrina hit I seriously doubt that anyone would have gone to jail or been reprimanded for not following some stupid protocol that may or may not exist. They would in fact have been heroes. Why was Blanco unaware that FEMA hadn't done their job so late in the game? I don't blame her for not wanting to have anything to do with FEMA or the feds, but she and Nagin made that bed by not making it their business to know some very basic things were not being done much sooner than they did. Read Louisiana's Disaster Preparednes plan. It's not FEMA's, it's Louisiana's. And to see all the failures that occurred in that plan that was not executed because someone says it's someone else's responsibility is lame. I could go to the site, print it out and wipe my rear end with it and get more use out of it than what it's gotten so far. I hate getting into these arguments. I've given donations three times now and I'm on my way to deliver 4 cases of diapers in the back of my car to a collection place. The most important thing is to do whatever we can now to alleviate even more suffering. The only finger pointing I'll engage in from this point on would be to point to areas in which we can help and donate.

3 http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12502042.htm It was before -- I've raised this point in polipundit comments before. My belief is that Bush and his administration was calling for a manadotory evacuation to be made and in the midst of a hurricane 5 coming Blanco's way, she and possibly Nagin were debating constitutional and political considerations of the order. The fact that the request came from Bush, the initial Democratic response was to obstruct. This debate unfortunately caused them to become political when they should've been making arrangements to evacuate people like the emergency plan called for.

4 Dammit Brad, you nailed it! I'll bet a damned dollar that the reason she wanted a 24 hour delay was so that the DNC could formulate a strategy.

5 It does appear that Gov. Bianco in refusing to cooperate with the Feds held up relief to the hurrican victums. Further, it would be a mistake to rebuild New Orleans in the current location because those people will be vulnerable to future hurricanes and the tax payers shouldn't be subsidizing those who choose to locate in a flood plain near the coast or near a river. Pauy Cheffy St. Charles,Mo.