Incompetence? Or Worse?

Here is the transcript of the conversation between Tim Russert and Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish LA. It raises serious questions.

MR. BROUSSARD: Sir, they were told like me, every single day, "The cavalry's coming," on a federal level, "The cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming." I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry. The cavalry's still not here yet, but I've begun to hear the hoofs, and we're almost a week out.

Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back.

They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel."

Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.

Examples of incompetence, indifference, and arrogance on FEMA's part abound, and I fear we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

The turning away of the Wal-Mart trucks (Irony alert: Wal-Mart outperformed the Federal government! How bad is that?) and the refusal to allow the transfer of badly needed fuel are bad enough.

The cutting of the comm line disturbs me. We had a saying in my Comm Platoon in the Marine Corps that "Communications lends dignity to what would otherwise be considered a brawl". It was a semi-humorous understatement.

Communication is EVERYTHING in any kind of serious situation. It's a lifeline. Think about it. You can't communicate by voice more than about a hundred feet. Beyond that, you need telephone, telegraph, radio, semaphores, runners, carrier pigeons, smoke signals, any means of extending the range of the human voice.

Without reliable communications, people die.

Why did FEMA cut their comm line? I think this is important and needs to be looked into.

Update:

From one of the links in Fixer's post above:

Nearly every emergency worker told agonizing stories of communications failures, some of them most likely fatal to victims. Police officers called Senator Landrieu's Washington office because they could not reach commanders on the ground in New Orleans, Mr. Sharp said.