From ground zero

Alan Posner <alan@aposner.net> wrote:
From: "Alan Posner" <alan@aposner.net>
Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2005 12:57:49 -0400

Email from my brother in Baton Rogue:

-----Original Message-----

Subject: RE:stuff

I see first hand how abysmal the response is...including the medical response. This is exactly what I predicted with the takeover of our medical program by Homeland Security. The fucking Bush political appointees are directing our response, not our medical folks. This is the most poorly managed medical response I've seen in my entire career. We don't have the assets we need (they were taken away from us by FEMA who felt the need for power and must control OUR resources). We had an incident where one of our
medical teams was being shot at. It was a terrifying time...took us a long nervous time to finally get some security to them to allow us to extract them. After we got them out, that asshole Mike Brown, Bush's head of FEMA went on a tirade and ordered our team to go back in! (to the combat zone).
Our team rightly mutinied and refused to go back (these are civilian
volunteers). The fact that Brown would be so stupid as to deliberately put them in harms way made evreyone lose confidence in FEMA's leadership. You have to know that Mike Brown's total
experience and training for his job was running the Arabian Horseman's Association...oh yeah, and being a friend of Bush. Zero emergency management experience. Just a Bush croney.

The response is totally incompetent. Your right about the news reporters able to operate in the disaster area. If you can believe it, its now 6 days into it and I still cannot talk to our teams doing patient evacuation at the New Orleans airport. There are no communications. FEMA still hasn't got emergency communications in place. None of the responders can talk to their
field elements. This is the most amateur, mismanaged, incompetent disaster response imaginable. Mike Brown should be fired immediately. George Bush should be fired immediately.