Hurricane Katrina: The Good news

(Via Instapundit)

Popular Mechanics will be reviewing the congressional review on Katrina...and questions why they finger point at certain leaders, when the real question is what exactly should FEMA's role in disasters should be...something I noted in my Katrina coverage, that the federal bureaucracy is slow by it's very nature, and that local responders are the answer.

But, as I also pointed out in my coverage of overlooked reports, there WAS a huge local responder involvement that got little coverage and little thanks by the networks...

As Popular Mechanics notes: "
The Committee report also criticizes the DHS and FEMA for not including the Department of Defense in their pre-storm and immediate post-storm planning. However, the same August 28 transcript shows that DoD was included from the beginning. In reality, despite organizational shortcomings, the rescue spearheaded by the National Guard and the Coast Guard turned out to be the largest and fastest in U.S. history, mobilizing nearly 100,000 responders within three days of the hurricane’s landfall. While each of the 1072 deaths in Louisiana was a tragedy, the worst-case scenario death toll would have been 60,000....

Like Garrison Kieller's criticism of Mr. Levy's "look at the weird stuff at America" that ignored the ordinary working American who quietly lives with their families, the press tends to emphasize "look at the BADBUSH, look at the terrible response" and not "look at the 100 000 normal everyday people who left their families to help prevent others from dying"...

And this doesn't even count the hundreds of thousands who took in displaced friends and relatives and even strangers into their homes and churches and schools to ride out the storm...

Full Article HERE