Defense Tech pal Kris Alexander works for Texas’ homeland security department. Which makes his blog absolutely essentially reading, now that a category 5 killer hurricane is about to put the whomp on the Lone Stars.
He runs down the reasons to hope and the potential “friction points” as the state gets ready for a rumble — from Texas’ 375,000 Katrina refugees to the hospitals that have already cleared out. Bottom line:
All of this is happening without one bit of federal resources being committed. FEMA is at the state operations center, but its a state and local show right now. We never planned on FEMA saving our bacon. And no this plan didn’t happen overnight. It has taken years of detailed planning to reach this point. Will there be screw-ups? Yes. Will we do better than LA and NOLA? Probably.
This isn’t meant as hubris. I feel that too many people, especially in the left side of the blogosphere, have rushed to defend the LA state and local governments. I disagree. I think they screwed up regardless of whether or not FEMA/DHS was slow on the draw. I don’t think, knock on wood, that anyone is going to drown and die in a nursing home on the Texas Coast.
THERE’S MORE: Kris reassures us that the big hospital on Galveston Island is being evacuated. But what about the “hot zone” biodefense lab there?
AND MORE: The Journal runs down the gagdets you need to make it through an emergency (too bad they didn’t do it before I re-stocked my disaster kit). And Xeni has pics of the sonic blaster we’ve discussed here before.
AND MORE: “Is it my imagination,” asks Kathryn Cramer, “or isn’t the use of sonic blasters as weapons to deliberately inflict pain on crowds ‘torture’ as defined in article 1 of the UN Convention Against Torture?“
AND MORE: John Little, from Blogs of War, works in downtown Houston. “I have a window office on the eight floor of a building in the Texas Medical Center. I have to assume that in a couple of days I’ll have a windowless office on the eight floor of a building in the Texas Medical Center.” He’s got a great list of resources for folks looking to track the storm.
first of all i wuold like to say hello . i have to learne more military education . so send by email aderres . thank u all of u . bye.
I forwarded this segment to a couple of friends because I found it to contain a lot of good links and food for thought. One person really came unglued because you used the word “refugees” in place of “evacuees”, and refused to read any further. Hadn’t figured on small mindedness of some coworkers.
In a Natural Disaster FEMA ASSISTS states. No matter how much pressure is put out on the state to do something or to be better prepared its always a state operation in terms of response & recovery. The feds aren’t allowed to completely take over unless there is a terrorist event (see NRP). All this ‘incident of national significance’ is just to appoint someone to head up the fed side politically to lean more on that state operation.
Walt Mossberg seems to be on to something with his review of emergency gadgets and power packs. Perhaps he should be reassigned full-time to reviewing peripherals, instead of his willfully ignorant reviews of more complex technology.
DailyKos.com, while nominally a liberal political site, is a great resource for personal, scientific, and political observations of current events. For example, a Florida science writer named DarkSyde is posting hourly updates on Rita, as he did with Katrina:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/22/184224/390
There are also stories, and ongoing discussion, posted by folks who are stuck in Houston due to gridlock:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/22/141153/665
Regarding sonic weapons, as mentioned above: I think their use is ethically and morally suspect, as they are likely to lead to permanent hearing damage or deafness. Anyone operating these devices under stress or direct threat (e.g. riots) is going to skip the safety protocols and crank that sucker up to ‘11’. It raises the difficult question of whether it’s better to shoot 5 people or permanently deafen 100.
–AG
I think that the “sonic blaster” is a great idea for crowd control. It is truly non-lethal as opposed to other methods, I have yet not seen credible evidence of long-term damage if used during short confrontations.
Another thing: Who cares about what the UN says about anything?? Even if we follow those UN guidelines, the use of a sonic blaster in riot control does not violate those rules. THose guidelines only apply to prisoners, people rioting have the option of running away from the noise, that’s the whole purpose of using it..
I was just reading the comments and noticed Mark’s observation that somebody came unglued at the word “refugees” instead of “evacuees” being used.
A good deal of the people who were evacuated were unable to leave on their own, even by walking as far as they could. Whereas those who opted to ride out the storm found out that their safe refuges…the homes that they refused to leave…wound up underwater. When one runs from danger and finds refuge in other locations, one has become a refugee.
Either way you look at it, evacuee or refugee, they needed rescuing…and they needed to find another safe refuge.
It’s all symantics. Evacuee SOUNDS better than refugee, that’s all. If my loved ones and/or I was in that situation and we needed help, it wouldn’t matter one whit what words someone used to describe us…as long as they saw us and helped us to survive.
It would be a heck of a note if FEMA or other rescue organizations separated people into a ‘refugee’ vs. ‘evacuee’ category before helping. The term ‘refugee’ sounds a lot more desparate than ‘evacuee’.
Pride goeth before a fall…sometimes the fall is into the raging water.
Re: MAD device» If such things can be used responsibly and not as a means to gain power over the general population, I can see it. Used overseas as a security enhancement…well, when you consider the troops that lose their lives at various checkpoints, I would venture to say that I would rather see a vehicle stopped far away than having the opportunity to get close enough to kill our guys.
I don’t know, I’m just plain folk. I believe in honesty and integrity and I would so like to believe that ANY weapons would be used for legitimate purposes. Unfortunately there is no real assurance that such a thing will not be used wrongly in the future…just like what happened when they learned how to split an atom.
Incidentally, when I mentioned splitting the atom, I was not criticizing the events at Hiroshima. I meant that now everybody has the things and few seem to care that if every country that has ‘em uses ‘em at the same time…everybody loses!
Once upon a time, everyone having the capabilities to blow up the world served as a detaining force. Seems like now, however, it’s like the jilted lover who says, “If I can’t have you, won’t nobody have you…”
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