Pointing Fingers/Placing Blame

Someone sent me this picture in an email. At first I didn't understand it because the only complaints I heard about New Orleans were directed at President Bush, and he's a Republican. Now, I'm assuming I understand because, while I haven't confirmed it, I'm willing to bet New Orleans is a "Democratic" state.

Based on that "assumption" the email kinda pissed me off. Why? Well, let's start with the evacuation procedure for Texas wasn't completely thought through. As someone who wanted to evacuate BUT COULDN'T because of how it was handled, I feel very comfortable making that statement.

Not only that, no one had any idea how devastating Katrina was going to be and up until the day before landfall, New Orleans wasn't a projected landfall site. That evacuation was on the fly at effectively the last minute. I don't fault the government for that - they did the best they could at the time, under those circumstances. Even if they'd managed to get every living thing out of New Orleans, they'd still have nothing to go back to. Can't blame the government for that.

As for those people who would criticize the levvies only being able to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, a Category 5 is NOT a common occurrence. I said that to someone who was bitching about the levvies and they said, "Well there was one in 1960!" Yeah, that was 45 years ago...like I said, not a common occurrence. You prepare for what you can reasonably expect, not what might happen a couple of times a century. Besides, you can't predict the worst case scenario in this situation because you can't predict top winds or storm surge of a Category 5 hurricane.

You do the best you can.

As for the evacuation in Texas, the media hyped it big time (the hurricane I mean). Had the world not watched in horror at what Katrina had done, I do not believe Texas would have had the evacuation situation it did. We learned from that disaster.

We also made some mistakes...some serious mistakes. Most of the deaths related to Rita were evacuation related deaths. Hundreds (if not thousands but I definitely know hundreds) of cars were abandoned on the side of the roads. People and their pets died in their cars trying to evacuate. To me that is not a success story - that's a learning experience. In theory it was a good idea. In practice it sucked. Hopefully on the next go 'round, it will be better executed.

But my point here is, people want to blame someone for what has happened. That's human nature. But, can you really blame political parties for a natural disaster? I honestly believe that no matter where Katrina had hit the response would have been what it was. And on the heels of that, no matter where Rita hit the response would have been what IT was. To point fingers and place blame does nothing but make a bad situation worse and that pisses me off.