I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. (attributed)

Clearly the local response in New Orleans was criminal. The state government was incapable of doing anything. But the federal government may have responded much better than we thought, according to former USAF logistics officer Jason van Steenwyk, who is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized five times for hurricane relief. Van Steenwyk's blog, "Countercolumn", notes;

The [NY Times] also states that Col Terry Ebbert, the LA state Director of Homeland Security, had been on the job for two years, and had never discussed the state's disaster plan with FEMA. Pardon me, but just what the f*** was he doing on the payroll for two years?

Damn good point. You might want to find out who the state Director for Homeland Security is for your own state, how long they have had the post, and whether they've ever bothered talking to anybody at FEMA. Especially if you are impoverished and your locality is prone to natural disasters.

The article also mentions that "only a fraction of the busses promised by FEMA had arrived." But later in the article, we learn that FEMA did not recieve a request from the state for bus support until wednesday, August 31st, the day AFTER the city was flooded. FEMA contracted with Greyhound, who was able to get busses in to New Orleans on the very same day, within 2 hours of getting FEMA approval. That's pretty good response at the Federal level. Pathetic at the state level.

This man has experience and facts. I will defer to his assessment. More at another article:

You simply cannot count on any large scale aid reaching a hurricane zone in anything less than 72-96 hours. It just does not happen, and I don't care who's in charge. The logistical naivete we see among politicians and in the media -- and therefore in the general populace -- is simply startling.

That's me. I am relatively naive about it all. Most of my experience with hurricanes came when I was in the Navy. If a hurricane threatened the Eastern Seaboard, the fleet was sortied to ride it out far at sea instead of being tied up to the pier for the storm surge. It's a little different perspective. And even the hurricanes I have weathered since my discharge (Floyd and Isabelle) have been relatively weak by the time they got to Richmond, VA.

It does seem incredible that nothing better could be done once we saw what was going on in New Orleans, but be realistic. Our federal institutions are not meant to respond to anything like this. There are no fleets of FEMA helicopters and rescue workers awaiting deployment. We have a federal government, not a central government. If you don't know the difference, do yourself a favor and look into it. The apparent incompetence of Brown or Chertoff needs to be addressed, yes. But that is not a cure for what ails the Gulf area. Preemptive evacuations and actual execution of local emergency plans are.

The buck didn't stop with Ray Nagin or Kathleen Blanco, and it has made its way to the Oval Office because of the media and the ignorant public. It was finally brought to a stop there today, instead of being passed back to where it belongs. But that worries me even more. What will the president do now that he has his hands on the buck? Civil libertarians cringed when they first pondered the long-term government response to the 9-11 terror attacks. We should be cringing now, wondering what kind of new and improved FEMA might rise out of the ashes of New Orleans.

(note: Van Steenwyk's blog comments are highlighted in a Jack Kelly article that ran this past Sunday, which is how I found the blog.)