jon-david schlough

8.29.05 - 1,000 additional DHS employees within 48 hours and 2,000 within 7 days

UPDATE:: it's up on cnn now. The memo is dated August 29th, the day Katrina made landfall. Here are the parts cnn is running, although right now it's buried in the Delay story I just posted.

"We anticipate needing at least 1,000 additional DHS employees within 48 hours and 2,000 within 7 days." According to Natalie Rule, a spokeswoman for FEMA, the employees were needed to answer phones, do community relations and help set up field hospitals, what she called "non-emergency tasks." They are not first-responders, she said.

"We already had all of our first-responder teams pre-deployed -- 32 teams in all -- who went in and staged in and around the hurricane zone and were ready to go by Sunday. This is deployment that requires that the governor make a request to the federal government," Rule said.

The where were they? It wasn't enough - not nearly enough personnel to handle the scope of the catastrophe.

One part of the attachment advises employees to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public."

Incompetence, negligence, and a total disregard for human life.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Just saw on CNN, but I don't see it on the wires yet - nor on cnn.com.

SO- FEMA head Michael Brown sent an interesting memo to Michael Chertoff -I'm not sure where this fits into the timeline, but the memo is a record of Brown requesting 1000 DHS rescue personnel - anticpating needing 2000 within a day or so. This may very well be the beginning of the paper trail backing up the already widespread feeling that the lack of a coherent response to Katrina means some pink slips need to come down.

CNN and the wires will have it soon, I'll send a link to the text of the memo when they get off their asses ;->

I'm glad the media seems to be finally perking up. Go to c-span and watch Scott McLellan take a thorough flogging this afternoon.

Delay blames local officials for Katrina response failures

Tom DeLay thinks that the problems with the response to Katrina are at the local level. Basically, the argument is that Louisiana never asked for help.

"It's the local officials trying to handle the problem. When they can't handle the problem, they go to the state, and the state does what they can to, and if they need assistance from FEMA and the federal government they ask for it and it's delivered," DeLay said."

My emphasis. This is Rove's strategy, to shift the blame to local authorities. I think the journalists on the ground after Katrina have got to call this out for what it is - patent nonsense.

He [Delay] added that Alabama and Mississippi did a much better job of responding quickly than Louisiana. Alabama and Mississippi have Republican governors.

Those states also lacked catastrophic flooding of a major metropolitan area, but I'm sure it was the Republican governors that made the difference.

Link: CNN.com - Delay points to local officials - Sep 7, 2005.
[Photo slurped from the AP ;-0]