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Congressional report finds Governor Blanco took necessary steps before Katrina, Bush caught napping

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 14 September 2005
4 comments

Catastrophes USA

Nonpartisan congressional research report finds Louisiana governor took necessary steps

John Byrne

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report Tuesday afternoon asserting that Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco took the necessary and timely steps needed to secure disaster relief from the federal government, RAW STORY has learned.

The report, which comes after a request by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to review the law and legal accountability relating to Federal action in response to Hurricane Katrina, unequivocally concludes that she did.

"This report closes the book on the Bush Administration’s attempts to evade accountability," Conyers said in a statement. "The Bush Administration was caught napping at a critical time."

The report found that:

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All necessary conditions for federal relief were met on August 28. Pursuant to Section 502 of the Stafford Act, "[t]he declaration of an emergency by the President makes Federal emergency assistance available," and the President made such a declaration on August 28. The public record indicates that several additional days passed before such assistance was actually made available to the State;
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The Governor must make a timely request for such assistance, which meets the requirements of federal law. The report states that "[e]xcept to the extent that an emergency involves primarily Federal interests, both declarations of major disaster and declarations of emergency must be triggered by a request to the President from the Governor of the affected state";
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The Governor did indeed make such a request, which was both timely and in compliance with federal law. The report finds that "Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco requested by letter dated August 27, 2005...that the President declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period from August 26, 2005 and continuing pursuant to [applicable Federal statute]" and "Governor Blanco’s August 27,2005 request for an emergency declaration also included her determination...that ’the incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of disaster."

The full report will be available soon on the House Democrats’ Judiciary website.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Nonpa...

Forum posts

  • We knew W. was the one that blew it as he blows EVERYTHING he touches!! Hats off to the Gov. and Mayor as at least they were there and not on vacation.

  • The Report is correct, Blanco declared a State of Emergency on the 26th, Friday and sent the letter on the 27th, Saturday.What is in question is what did Blanco actually do? Accordingto the letter she wrote the president

    "In response to the situation I have taken appropriate action under State law and directed the execution of the State Emergency Plan on August 26, 2005 in accordance with Section 501 (a) of the Stafford Act. A State of Emergency has been issued for the State in order to support the evacuations of the coastal areas in accordance with our State Evacuation Plan and the remainder of the state to support the State Special Needs and Sheltering Plan."

    So when did she start evacuating procedures? It was not until Sunday afternoon that mandatory evacuation was declared.

    In addition, the Louisiana Plan says

    "State resources can be mobilized to support risk area evacuation and host area sheltering operations."

    She and Nagin knew in the projections that at least 100,000 people wouldn’t have the resources to evacuate. So why didn’t they work together to use those stranded NO buses starting August 27th, 48 hours until Katrina hit? If all they had to do was to get people from NO’s "bowl" situation and bring them to higher ground, why didn’t they work together to open shelters outside of NO? They knew that the Superdome was the shelter of LAST resort so why did they only open the Superdome?

    The more you look into this, the more it is obvious that the State negatively contributed to the situation instead of helping mitigate. I am not saying that FEMA wasn’t also to blame. FEMA was also not prepared as well as it could have. But to attribute all the misery to George Bush? It is clear that the lefties are using anything and as usual, they will fail to convince the majority of the people.

    • Whatever is said about failures in evacuation, the results were extraordinary. A much larger percentage than predicted were evacuated to at least a "refuge of last resort". Local citizens, local first responders and the Coast Guard save thousands more. The failure that that was exraordinarily bad was the lack of federal response AFTER the hurricane and flood. No amount of finger pointing can erase both of those facts.

    • What lack of federal response? Troops were poured in as soon as it could. Blanco did not allow the red cross with food and hygiene packets to come in to New Orleans because she wanted people to leave! Blanco also didn’t put enough of the Lousiana state troops into New Orleans. That and the inability of both local and state to follow their own emergency plans is incomprehensible. Those two facts also cannot be erased.