Don't blame the man

With the devastation of Hurricane Katrina still a large focus in the national media, one has to wonder where things went wrong. Was it Bush? He has been accused of being slow to answer the cries of New Orleans's governor. Or was it Michael Brown, executive director of FEMA, and his lack of disaster relief experience? Or could it possibly be due to blunders on the part of the local government, headed by Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and Mayor C. Ray Nagin?

When tragedy strikes, it is easy to start pointing fingers at those we deem to be in charge of any given situation. But when the media frenzy and political banter dies down, what will remain is the fact that it was not the fault of any one person that relief efforts for Katrina failed. If anything, a collective state of being unprepared and shocked by the enormity of the situation is what caused a failure of both the local and federal systems to help Katrina victims.

A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of 609 people taken Sept. 5-6 distributed much of the blame across the board: 13 percent blamed Bush, 18 percent said "federal agencies," 25 percent pointed fingers at state and local officials, 38 percent said no one was to blame and 6 percent gave no opinion.

As much as liberal democrats are eager to pounce on the latest fiasco under the Bush administration, it was not his job to single-handedly save New Orleans. The first step should have been for the local government to organize and distribute resources. A disaster like Katrina needed immediate help from Nagin and Blanco before getting the federal government involved. They apparently followed Louisiana's Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) word-for-word, declaring a state of emergency, notifying the National Guard, rearranging traffic patterns to lead out of New Orleans and more. Yet Louisiana's EOP doesn't list any federal entity aid until the recovery phase of the hurricane -- even then it delegates FEMA to help manage long-term shelter operations. If you ask me, it sounds like Brown anticipated a lot less work according to Louisiana's guidelines than what was actually demanded of him.

It was three days into the hurricane when Blanco drafted a specific list of supplies and resources needed from Bush. It has also been noted in the press that Blanco had unrealistic, lofty expectations of Bush and the federal government's capabilities. As callous as it sounds, the federal government is far too bureaucratic to pass down resources and supplies in a timely fashion. It's really a last ditch effort when absolutely and positively needed, and even then it should be minimal.

Likewise, Nagin waited until the last minute and didn't make the evacuation mandatory until barely 24 hours before Katrina hit. He did urge people to get out of New Orleans as best they could, or that they could stay at shelters such as the Superdome. He also instructed people to eat a full meal before arriving and to bring their own food and drink to last several days, noting that the Superdome and other locations were not hotels, but temporary shelters.

But here's where the 38 percent who say no one is to blame begin to make sense.

In retrospect, giving an earlier hurricane warning would have done little good. It's been widely estimated that 100,000 people would be unable to evacuate New Orleans due to location and lack of transportation. And, as with all hurricanes, people choose not to leave for various reasons. Communication systems were also complicated when cell phones and landlines went out for two days, cutting off Nagin and his emergency team.

This communication breakdown summarizes very well the situation between local and federal government as a whole during Hurricane Katrina. Don't blame the man, blame the system.