Lessons from Katrina, Gustav

I've had my eye on Hurricane Gustav and, of course, the fallout as it approached the Louisiana coast for a couple of reasons beyond the same concern I have any time a natural disaster threatens to wreck havoc on people's lives. First, I'm planning to be in New Orleans inside of two weeks. And second, it's fascinating to watch the "spin" as this storm threatened an area devastated by Katrina not so long ago.

Well, "fascinating" might be too strong a word. The media's reaction as the storm tore through the western side of Cuba and roared into the Gulf was fairly predictable. The glee they failed miserably to hide when reporting that this storm could overshadow and disrupt this week's Republican Convention was pretty much par for the course.

As was the slew of Libs, some of them elected officials even, making suggestions that Hurricane Gustav was proof that God hates Republicans.

Joke or not, imagine that turned around, with Republicans suggesting such a thing about Democrats. The line of Libs jumping in front of cameras demanding apologies and resignations would stretch from Maine to San Diego. Weekend network "news" shows would have needed three times their normal time slots, if not more, to conduct their symphonies of condemnation.

It's nice to see, for a change, New Orleans on board with the rest of the country in terms of preparedness, though. Two million people evacuated from the area two full days before the storm!

And you know what? FEMA played little role in the process. President Bush didn't drive any of the buses, and Dick Cheney wasn't directing helicopter traffic.

Know what that tells me? Yes, boys and girls, as is the case along the East Coast and in Florida and the rest of the Eastern Gulf Coast, where hurricanes are an annual event, state and local governments have their acts together. They know how to prepare as a storm approaches, and they know how to react after it hits.

Louisiana, New Orleans and the southern one-third in particular, did little to nothing to prepare for Katrina. The people, festering in the pentultimate petri dish of Liberalism, could not help themselves. They suffered mightily because of it.

And Bush took the blame. Wrongly, I might add. Because if it was the federal government's job to lead these people by the hands out of harm's way, why this time did so many manage to make it out without the federal government's assistance?

It's also not the federal government's role to be a first-responder, which Bush took an unfair amount of heat for following Katrina. It's not the federal government's role anywhere else on the continent, so why would it be in Louisiana?

Outside of releasing federal funds, I didn't see FEMA, Bush, Cheney, et al, leading Floridians by the hand last month as Hurricane Fay bounced back and forth across the state. I didn't notice them assisting in numerous states this summer or the last time that the Mississippi River flooded tens of thousands of square miles from the Upper Midwest right through the heart of the country. I can't remember seeing people after their lives are devastated by tornados or caught in record freezes when power is down for weeks point fingers at Washington, asking "Why weren't you here to help us?!"

Preparation for Gustav has been applauded widely and deservedly so. Lessons were learned, apparently. And that's always a good thing.

There's another lesson in this, too, although I doubt it will be acknowledged much.

Gustav shows that there should be no doubt whatsoever that Louisiana's leaders, who prepared their people well this time around, failed them miserably three years ago.

(Imported from Sept. 1, 2008)