TIME TO POINT FINGERS YET?
As Coach Paul Brown told the New York bus driver who couldn’t find Yankee Stadium to deliver us, the Browns to play the game against the Giants, “I don’t blame you I blame the guy that hired you.” Don’t blame Mike Brown, Fema Director, or Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Director for the fiasco of a hurricane Katrina rescue effort, blame whoever hired them.
As a general contractor I built the Tremont House Hotel on the Strand in downtown Galveston and designed and built the Holiday Inn on the beach in Galveston, Texas. Both projects along with the rest of Galveston took a direct hit from Hurricane Alicia in 1983. The Holiday Inn was 85% complete while the Tremont was 40%. I had just taken the huge French Provincial style roof off the building to install a forth floor planning to then replace the roof. The 120 year old building was hit with no roof on it and the old 2 1/2ft thick soft masonry brick bearing walls were exposed to the water. Those walls came within hours of crumbling but an all out effort by dedicated crews under the supervision of my Vice-President Bob Ubaudi, that began at midnight the night following the storm hit, saved the building. We shored up the walls with half a mile of oil drilling pipe supplied by the owner George Mitchell, who was also CEO of Mitchell Energy.
My construction company (I was the CEO) repaired those two hotels and several other buildings after the storm about $5,000,000 worth of hurricane repair work. The Tremont Hotel is an historical renovation and the work was closely monitored by the National Historical Society. It is a beautiful luxury hotel in downtown Galveston today.
Immediately after Alicia the owners of the Holiday Inn, Sam Albaral and Vic Fertitta and I made a trip to the eastern coastal cities of Mexico to see the innovative ways and materials that they were using to make repairs after their frequent hurricanes. While there we contracted with one innovative stucco/plaster contractor who had come up with a trowel-on textured finish material that incorporates quartz and a chemical used in ladies facial make-up that kills mildew and mold. In different ways we used as a major repair component on both hotels. In 2003, I visited the two projects and that quartzoplast finish is still holding up like new.
One of the first things a contractor notices working in Galveston is that all the older buildings have been jacked up and put on stilts. Yes the entire town all the buildings that remained after the disastrous hurricane of 1900 when between 8,000 and 12,000 people were trapped on Galveston Island and killed by the flooding. The government also built a 20ft seawall about ten miles long to protect the island as well. Perhaps New Orleans should take a good look at Galveston and what was done there after that tragic storm before they start listening to government incompetents like Fema’s Mike Brown and Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff.
Brown and Chertoff answers to simple questions are bureaucratic babble. Instead of answering “When is help going to arrive?” Brown and Chertoff tell us in sickening minutiae how their bureaucratic processes work, if it were to work, and never answer the question. Even more disgusting the reporters or persons asking the questions let them get away with it.
The emotional fellow who described how one of many storm victims died while awaiting for a promised rescue that never arrived was most poignant. He cried, “Quit having news conferences and get the help here now!” It makes you want to grab Brown, and Chertoff, and the La Governor, the Mississippi Lt Governor, the mayor and the police commissioner by the throat to choke a straight answer out of them. Where were each of you when Katrina hit, what exactly were you doing, where were you sitting for the following 8 to 24 hours?
Do the evacuees and those who are refusing to leave trust the Mayor and New Orleans deserter riddled police to protect their remaining property? “Hell NO,” is certainly the resounding answer. The US Military must protect the evacuees property or it won’t be protected.
Katrina was a category 4 & 5 storm two days before it made landfall and yet Brown and Chertoff claim neither they nor their experts (could have) anticipated the catastrophic impact of this category 4 or 5 storm. The fact is they both knew the levees could not stand up to a category 3 storm let alone the 4 or 5 storm staring them in the face. Pres. Bush declared a state of emergency at least 24 hours before the storm hit. What process, that didn’t work, did that start. The press says that Fema’s leader Brown went home and turned off his TV set, how long was it before he turned it back on?
It is a very suspicious coincidence that those who the Federal Government ignored and left in fatal chaos for 3 to 6 days were basically black Democrats waiting for a white Republican administration to respond to its plight. Other publications have said that Bush fiddled while New Orleans drowned and the price of his gouging oil buddies gasoline profits skyrocket. Bill O’Rielly keeps saying that it costs the Saudi’s $4 to produce a barrel of oil, $4!
Our fate, if we are attacked by terrorist or Grenada is in the hands of incompetent idiots showing some thing about our own intelligence. Not CIA Intelligence but IQ intelligence. No wonder the Mexican boarder issue is a disaster; it too is being managed by Mr. Chertoff. With Chertoff in charge we could hardly be safe from terrorists or any other threat to our lives.
“You are fired, and so is the guy who hired you.” is the phrase.
President Bush told us, the TV audience, with the wealthy black Dallas preaching Bishop T.D. Jakes nodding approval at his side that, “…as long as people’s lives are in danger the governments work is not finished.” T.D. Jakes used to be one of my favorite people. When did the federal government’s work (responsibility) begin how many hours before or after the hurricane hit? Was it when Bush declared the state of emergency? To President Bush’s credit he declared a state of emergency well before the hurricane hit. Who was supposed to move and do when the President gave the order? Chertoff? Brown? General Honore? Congress? Nobody? Why do it if it isn’t an order to initiate action at the site of the impending emergency?
The unpatriotic card is already on the table. Criticizing the hours and days of callous disregard for the lives of poor blacks in New Orleans is being twisted by the conservative media to be called and unfair criticism of the courageous helicopter and other personnel engaged in the tardy rescue efforts. From what I hear, I believe that the heroic General Honore’s “B.S.” response to criticism that there were helicopters that could have been working in the rescue effort but were held up by bureaucratic red tape will prove to be “B.S.” too. The General himself was extremely late to the rescue party, why is the question? He didn’t choose to be late to the fray himself, the question is who withheld his orders to move and do? I am not a Bush hater but I think he has had finer hours. In 20/20 hindsite he should have told the Governor she didn’t have 24 hours people are dying. It is a tough job but he ask for it, some grouse that he stole it.
As with 9-11 communications were a disaster. How could it happen again? In a world so full of cell phones sticking out of the ears of SUV driving women that you have to fend for your life every minute you drive. How could emergency communications fall apart? Why aren’t emergency services using satellite communications systems? Were satellite communications knocked out? How could they be knocked out?
Having built housing at numerous military bases and bid on many others around the country including Texas and Oklahoma, I know there is a surplus of boarded up housing at many closed bases. A day or two after Katrina hit I suggested to Congressman Steve Largent that they use that abandon housing for the evacuees.
The networks and CNN are now providing platforms for the Police Commissioner and the Mayor allowing them to portray them selves as heroic rather than incompetent further polluting the mess.
The Republicans are covering ass with damage control their top priority. Democrates are taking advantage of the opening. The Red Cross didn’t even make it into New Orleans and the early claim on the TV crawl that 356,000 evacuees are in 46 Red Cross shelters “give cash” was later contradicted by the Head of the Red Cross who admitted they didn’t make it into the Super Dome and other New Orleans disaster shelters and that they had only 126,000 in some what distant shelters around the region “give more cash.” Watching the TV coverage on CNN and Fox I kept looking for the Red Cross emblem on people or vehicles in New Orleans. I saw some in Houston but none in New Orleans. I also saw some black crosses on shirts and wondered what that was about. It prompted me to think “What a huge cash raising scam this could turn out to be for the Red Cross. Over $450 million so far.” I gave, so I hope this isn’t another oil for food fiasco. Celebrity grandstanding has reached a new low. There seems to be room under the bus for everyone, even me.
I haven’t done nearly as much as I should have myself. Yes, I remain in a clean dry place in Florida. Perhaps I should start up another construction company and help rebuild some neighborhoods in the disaster area Katrina has created. Maybe I will, I do want to help.
I have always believed that government exists for the purpose of protecting the lives and health of a nation’s people. That government must be pledged to protect and care for the least able of those people.
On his FOX radio program this evening Sept 8, 2005, Bill O’Rielly said we must all be conservative capitalists and take care of ourselves. He says that the poor black New Orleans population must blame themselves for not having cars and enough capital to flee the storm on their own. He says they should not have expected government to take care of them because they did not take advantage of their opportunity to get educated and get a good job. He says their plight is of their own making. He also says he is going to buy a gun himself now because it is up to each one of us to take care of ourselves and not depend on government to do anything for us. He also said “I’m not arrogant.” Why would he even feel the need to mention himself and arrogance? O’Rielly is a rich white guy, a card carrying member of the conservative media and his property didn’t get flooded by the hurricane.
O’Rielly is riding a huge wave of popularity maybe he is right and I am wrong about government? Should I be buying a gun too?
