KATRINA: What Went Right

Via Instapundit, a RealClearPolitics analysis by Lou Dolinar of what really happened – as opposed to what the media wanted you to know – in Hurricane Katrina:

Official estimates at this point suggest the [National] Guard, working from the Dome, saved 17,000 by air and uncounted thousands more by boat.
Let’s try that again: The cavalry wasn’t late. It didn’t arrive on Thursday smoking a cigar and cussing. It was there all along.
. . . [R]escue operations saved up to 50,000 lives, with perhaps an equal number making their way to shelters on their own.

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Except for the Coast Guard’s brilliant performance, which saved up to 30,000 lives, most of the rescue operation was run by local National Guard middle management, combat tested in Iraq, accustomed to hardship, and intimately familiar with the city. (In fact, as I previously reported, Guard members rescued other Guard members, who then reported for flight duty.)

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Gov. Blanco, facing the voters in 2008, is eagerly, and with justification, claiming some of the credit for the rescue operation. “When all the stories are told,” Gov. Blanco is quoted as saying, “the story is going to be that Louisianans were saved by Louisianans.” Understandable, but a little bit of a stretch, as it conveniently leaves out the federal contribution, namely the Coast Guard, the regular armed forces and Guard units from other states, as well as the key coordinating role the National Guard Bureau played.
What’s more puzzling is why the White House hasn’t joined Blanco in trying to rehabilitate its reputation. . . .
The president’s side isn’t a complicated story. He sits atop a huge bureaucratic machine. He’s responsible for how the pieces of the pyramid work, not every last detail. “The rescues happened way below the radar screen and that’s not bad,” Carafano said. “You want this kind of decentralized execution. If we have to sit around for someone in Washington to make a decision, we’re all going to die.”
FEMA failed miserably. Yet the Coast Guard, a branch of the much-maligned Department of Homeland Security, operated precisely according to plan and saved up to 30,000 lives amid near total destruction. The National Guard Bureau helped run the show. The State Guard and regular military, which owes its extraordinary professionalism to the administration’s insistence on training and equipage for service in Iraq, saved tens of thousands more.

I still think this account is too easy on Blanco and Nagin for not conducting a more thorough evacuation, although even on that score, reports after the fact have stressed that many more people were evacuated successfully than it first appeared. Overall, though, Dolinar makes yet another compelling case that the people responsible for first response accomplished the best you could ask of them, and – more to the point – they, not people in Washington or Baton Rouge, were the ones who were really responsible for handling the crisis. Read the whole thing. Unfortunately, as usual, the Bush White House is only facing forward while it bleeds profusely from shots to the back over the past, instead of setting the record straight.

One thought on “KATRINA: What Went Right”

  1. You chances of being rescued improved exponentionally the further away politicians and the news media were from you. Just like most things

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