Ray Nagin - I'm Shocked

Shocked, I tell you, just shocked.

Mr. Chocolate strikes again. What an idiot. Honestly, is there anyone within earshot of a radio or TV that didn't hear that the levees could fail in the run up to Latrina??

Comments

[fried]

i live on the gulf coast and tend to watch storms closely, i was surprised it wasn't actually worse,
it landed just a few miles off the forecast track, the same track for several days. what happened in NO
has apalled a lot of people around here, not because of the lack of federal help, but the abundance of it, compared to other recent storms, and the response of the government of NO. everywhere else there is federal help for infrastructure, immediate money for homeowners,($2000), fema paid to have debris picked from the roadside, but does not organize the pickup,
and the property owner is responsible for sorting and moving the debris to the roadside. they supplied rv's for some people and put a few in hotels. the red cross (non government agency) and the state did much more.
After the 2004 season, then the 2005 season, resources were tapped out when it came to katrina, especially since the people of NO have shown little desire to do anything for themselves.

[CARRY NATION]

I live in California and even I knew about the levees vulerability. My husband traveled that area frequently in '96 and the locals talked a lot about about flooding. He was told if it rained 5" in 5 hours the pumps couldn't handle it. They also talked a lot about the Fed funds that were allocated for the levees having been spent elsewhere. Did Nagin just arrive there right before the rains began?

[fried]

i don't think nagin is there yet.

[kim]

he bought a huge house in dallas for his wife and daughter the week after the storm. daughter is going to a nice expensive private school. he was commuting back and forth at one time, don't know about now. if he really wants people to return and rebuild, he should have his family in new orleans. heard blanco's brother is running for mayor, that's a pity also.

[Hobo]

Nagin's story sounds just like Jesse Jackson's. If it weren't for a government job or some way to live off the back of the civil rights movement, those two guys would be homeless. Jesse has always lived with and around money; had clothes, food, a place to live and three parents. The 16 year old mother who gave birth to him, the next door neighbor h=who was his bio-father, and later a mailman who eventually married his mother. JJs kids never saw the inside of a public school and JJ charges $10 thousand an hour to speak to the SEIU Home Health workers in Fresno who earn $8 an hour. When does the entitlement end?

[YipeeKiYa]

I AM A CHOCOLATE BROKE BACK MOUNTAIN COWBOY !

YE HAW..

[R-Nagin]

I'm going to make sure that New Orleans will be a Chocolate City again. New Orleans should be Chocolate!!

[ChinbeardXIV]

It's a shame, but Ray Nagin just got caught up in being a "paper mayor" and wound up with his pants down when everything started happening.

[Forreal]

I love it when people show their true "colors". It makes you understand (and feel sorry for)why most folks on here make uneducated, uninformed and pre-historic comments. The real issue of course is that the President lied (caught on tape), but you focus on the Mayor's response, which is insignificant at best. Go figure . . .

[ChinbeardXIV]

Get real, Forreal...it was the paper mayor who held the "we can take care of ourselves" attitude until the storm hit and the levees failed--then, he was so deeply in hiding that Osama Bin Laden might have been taking notes! When he emerged from his hideaway, all he could to was point fingers at the governor, the president, and anyone else he could find...

[mmy]

Be it chocolate, vanilla or any shade in between, New Orleans deserves far better than Nagin for Mayor! I wouldn't chose him for dog catcher. A true leader focuses on the character traits of residents, not the pigmentation of the skin.

[ChinbeardXIV]

That's just it, mmy, I think Nagin wanted to play the role of mayor in the movie form of reality instead of actual reality. He's a hollow leader. A paper mayor.

[Forreal]

CB, the bigger picture that you don't seem to get is that no matter how much Nagin screwed up, he is just the Mayor. A Mayor is like a Middle-Manager, where as the President is like the CEO. Where does the buck stop? The Mayor does not have access to Billion $$$ budgets(especially in New Orleans). The Mayor does not have access to the Armed Forces or its tools to come in and restore order or for rescue ops. Does it bother anybody, even just a tiny bit, that the Pres said he could not have had a clue, but it now seems a lie.

[fried]

forreal, what you and so many others do not realize,
is that responsibility for evacuation is at state level. the govenor of a state orders a mandatory evacuation. they waited too late. that is why so many died, that is why so many had to be rescued, that is why so many were in the superdome and at the convention center without supplies, the superdome was only a refuge of last resort, not a main shelter, the main shelters were inland. this was not a surprise storm, but it took a lot of people by surprise. the governor should have ordered at least the lower elevations evacuated on saturday morning,not sunday afternoon. the hurricane center and the president were pushing that as early as thursday afternoon. nagin should have pushed for it, he should have made sure that people got out. he did not. the responsibility for the tragedy rests not on those that responded (or didn't) after the fact, but on those that should have prevented it, and are charged to do so. the people of NO should have heeded the call and left. if you were standing on a train track with an express coming at you, would you wait for someone to tell you to get off? and then just move to the edge of the track, or just lay down between the rails? same kind of situation, but with a hurricane you know it is coming,days in advance, you know what it can do, there is no excuse for the behavior of NO and the state of LA for their inaction prior to the storm hitting.
especially after the storms of 2004, there should have been a plan in place, practiced, and money set aside just for that situation. there was not.
if things had been handled properly before landfall, responses after the storm would have sufficed.

[Forreal]

Oh Fried, if only life were so simple. You must live in a dream bubble too. A mandatory evacuation was ordered and if 70% - 80% heeded the warning then that is considered a success. 100% evacuation would be ideal in a perfect black and white world but is unrealistic. The poor had no means to evacuate, to afford a hotel, or relatives to flee to. That's why the Superdome was planned as a TEMPORARY shelter. Once the storm hit and the levy broke, the local gov't did not have the means needed for a quick and adequate response. Oh and if you would like to bring up prevention, why did the Prez cut out of the budget, the planned funding to repair and improve the levies in 2004?

[fried]

yes, 100% evacuation will never be accomplished. that is why most other places have made sure that people that decide to stay, know that there will most likely be no assistance during and for some time after the storm, including everything,everything. no assistance what soever, for an undetermined amount of time, and to write your SSN on yourself with an indelible marker. there were buses, they have two large airports, there are schools and national guard armories all over the state. the approximate number of people in danger areas is known. they could have gotten more out.
the difference between a temporary shelter,
and a shelter of last resort, which the superdome was, is that a temporary shelter has facilities to house and feed a set number of people for usually a few days at most, a shelter of last resort is a place to get out of the weather and hopefully the roof won't blow off, for the few hours of the storm, and that is all. the convention center was never considered a shelter.
there are a limited number of ways to get there. three bridges, over water, and most of the similar bridges around the gulf coast have been damaged in past experience, by boat, but that is dangerous after a storm, never know what is in the water. the airports may very well be underwater or damaged to the point that they are unusable.
the pump stations should have been able to handle any overflow. but was it worth lives to just not plan on helping those people, to look out for their welfare, before the fact, when you always know it is a possibilty, when it is staring down your throat.
i do not think it was worth the trouble to the government of louisiana or the city of new orleans.
they have the resources, they just chose to wait for someone to force them to use them, and, by law, none could. people died, most all shouldn't have.
the decision to evacuate is the state's responsibility, what to do with the people is the state's responsibility. that is fact. that is law.
large urban areas, usually have a large population of residents that depend on public transportation to get around, they don't have cars.
in other areas, smaller urban areas, around the gulf coast, people can get rides from family and friends, but not in a place like NO. the city should have done it, the state should have made sure, they have the authority, and responsibility to do that.
they did not help those people that died.
the worse thing is the hospitals and nursing homes, their location and number of patients should have been known and resources provided, they should never have been left to die.
if the levees hadn't broken none of this would have occured. however, a lot of the money to repair and maintain the levees went to buy a casino and several planes, who knows what else. nagin should have ensured the dirt piles keeping the water out of his city were truely secure, how much of that money did he spend on things other than the levees?
it is their yard they should have taken care of it.

[ChinbeardXIV]

Forreal, to keep it in the simplest form possible, when a hurricane (Cat 2) beats the snot out of Florida...then makes a move toward me--over warm water--and grows and grows, you can bet your bottom dollar that I'm not going to stay around to greet it. If I'm one of the many homeless folks, I'm going to use that as a sign for me to move my homeless self to another town that's a little above sea level. My point is this--it's not going to take a president, a governor, a mayor, or rent-a-cop to tell me to move along...I'll already be gone!

[nova]

Mitch Landrieu should win the Mayors race easily.

[Rick]

Forreal; You might try getting your information from somewhere other than airhead america. It is very much the local government's purview and responsibility to begin the response and escalation. While the Fed is definately STILL lagging behind, which happens when you hire lawyers and horse farmers to do work they arent capable of, it is still the locals who bear the most blame. Nagin sat on hundreds of school buses, took money meant for levee repairs and used it elsewhere and should have been screaming about the levees the DAY he took office. Blanco well there's a new way to spell "incompetent idiot". Governors call in the Natl Guard, not the President. The "poor" couldn't get out? BS. City buses could have evacuated the infirm. Guarantee you this. Had the government been giving away free cheese 100 miles north...........evacuation would not have been a problem.

[Pastor Creflo Dollar]

Why you all trippin' trying to keep the man down!! Good laaaawd!!