The End Result of Public Incompetence

New Orleans is now a Lost City. There are stories in every media outlet about how helpless the local authorities are, and how little aid the federal Government has been offering. On one morning news show,a parish president recounted how his parish's emergency management director was not even able to rescue his mother, it breaks your heart.

How could this happen? This is just one of the countless examples that are currently being cited.

On Monday morning, as the storm slammed into the Gulf Coast, Col. Tim Tarchick of the 920th Rescue Wing, Air Force Reserve Command, got on the phone to call every agency he could think of to ask permission to take his three rescue helicopters into the disaster zone as soon as the storm abated. The response was noncommittal. FEMA, the federal agency that is supposed to handle disasters, told Tarchick that it wasn't authorized to task military units. That had to come from the Defense Department. Tarchick wasn't able to cut through the red tape until 4 p.m. Tuesday; more than 24 hours after the storm had passed. His crews plucked hundreds of people off rooftops, but when they delivered them to an assigned landing zone, there was "total chaos. No food, no water, no bathrooms, no nothing." There was "no structure, no organization, no command center,"

The end result of this and other counltess failures on the part of FEMA and homeland security is clear.

A look at what a few other Blogs are syaing can be found here.