There's plenty of blame

Addendum: I almost deleted this. This honestly isn't an entry about who to blame. It's my attempt to understand how this happened. I want to blame someone for this, too. But there's too many and right now, blaming others doesn't help those people in New Orleans right now. Mainly, this is a history and how things got to the level they've reached. If we're to learn anything, don't expect any level of government to protect you in a disaster. Know the shortcomings of your particular area and have enough on hand to survive a week without any help from the government in an emergency.

I'm functioning on an hours worth of sleep.

I spend way too much time glued to the television and other blogs.

Please, there's so much blame to go around it's really unfair to blame one person or entity.

Who should we blame?

Let's go way back to the first idiot that thought it was a grand idea to create a community in an area that was below sea level. Oops, they're all dead. It's just not as fun to blame people who've been dead for a couple centuries.

Let's start with the levees. Let's go back to Camille. We've had Dems and Repubs in the White House, Senate and House since then. Nixon dropped the ball, as did Ford, Carter, Regean, Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43. They've known for decades the levees weren't strong enough to stand a Category 4 or 5 hurricane.

With the research I've done, it appears that Louisiana also has a habit of asking for more federal money than they knew they could come up with matching funds for. That's the way our state and federal governments work together. I didn't make the rules and hell, let's be honest, this matching funds thing has been around for decades. It's not a brand new concept.

Maybe we should just get over the history, because we have 200 years of mistakes and various people/entities dropping the ball.

Let's go to Katrina growing to a Category 5 in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. A week ago.

On Saturday, Gov. Blanco ordered a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. Unfortunately, in the USA, a mandatory evacuation doesn't mean a person really has to evacuate. We are a country where if we want to make stupid choices that don't harm others, only ourselves, our government allows us to do so. (Don't get your tails in a tizzy, I'll brouch the other reasons why people didn't leave.) I'm not sure what type of order one needs to force people to evacuate their homes, but it's not something that's done easily in this country. It's the way we want it, too. The day our government can force us from our homes, even for our own safety, is the day they'd better have a damned good reason.

Why didn't those people leave? I've lived in hurricane country. The truth: most people who live in such a spot honestly believe the storm will shift just enough to save them. The ones who made it through Camille assumed she was the worst of the worst. They were wrong. But they'd survived a horrible storm, so this one wouldn't be any worse. It's the same mentality each of us uses when we get upset by the vehicle in front of us that's going the exact speed limit and we pass them, breaking the speed limit laws by doing so. We've all done it. Each of us has that mentality in us.

Then there are the ones who couldn't leave. New Orleans has a wonderful public transit system, so it has a high portion of the population who doesn't own a vehicle. Yeah, they can walk. What about the woman who happens to be in her last month of pregnancy? It's hotter than hell on the roads. Can she even make it across one of the bridges? Or the young couple who are without a vehicle and they have a new born at home? Or the elderly? The disabled? Yeah, there's some lazy ones tossed in there, too. But what about the family who has three kids, ages two months, 18 months and four years? How were they to leave?

If Gov Blanco and the mayor wanted them out, why didn't they help them get out? Why didn't they use some of these to get those who wanted to leave out of New Orleans?

Or what about the evacuation plan that each city has in place for whatever their local disaster might be? I can't find the link to the NO disaster plan, but I located it earlier today. Sorry. But they did have a plan that, from everything I could find, was never practiced.

I watched the news prior to Katrina hitting. The media was giving worst case scenarios. Wind damage. Broken levees. Flooding. A failed grid. Contaminated water system. Fires. I heard them discuss all these things before Katrina hit. Where did they get those worst case events? Studies? They've known for decades what a direct hit from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane could cause. Why didn't they practice their disaster plan?

Why didn't they (the city and state) use some of those school buses on Saturaday and Sunday to remove those who wanted out and couldn't get out?

Has it taken too long for federal aid to arrive? Hell yes. We watched as an American city, an American icon, has gone from a great city to a third world country.

We've had a governor order our military to shoot to kill our citizens. We have a city where the dead are floating in the flood waters. We have a city where thugs are shooting at rescue attempts. We have a city where our citizens survived the hurricane, survived the flood, but died from dehydration as the police department ignored them. We have a city where our citizens were told they could have shelter at the Superdome and Convention Center, only to go there to be raped, beaten, murdered and endure more starvation and dehydration.

All eyes have been on New Orleans. We've sat in our homes and watched this happen. And we've felt helpless. I'm sure almost everyone of us alternated between dispair and rage.

So, who should we blame? Katrina. If you want someone else to blame, start with our building codes. We're spoiled. We know our buildings meet a standard and only the worst Mother Nature flings at us will harm us. Since Mother Nature doesn't fling the worst at us too often, we feel safe. Safer than we really are.

Not happy with that? Okay. Blame the government of New Orleans. Add the state government to the list. And yes, add the federal government. But to blame only one of the entities is ignoring the history of New Orleans. And the history of the United States. There's plenty of blame to go around, starting with those who could leave and didn't, to every level of government.

But honestly, shouldn't we wait until at least one of the bodies in NO can be buried before we point too many fingers? Shouldn't we wait until all those still alive have been rescued? Shouldn't we be praying for all those in the hurricane areas?

We can place the blame later. Right now, we still have people who need water, food and a way out of New Orleans.