On Aug 29, 2011, at 3:13 PM, Paul Stenquist wrote:
Well, we'll just have to disagree on this one. I believe it was
indeed much ado about very little.
I'm not surprised it seems this way. From what I saw it looked like
they were expecting a lot worse than what actually happened. With
Katrina in their minds they would not have wanted to screw this up as
doing so would guarantee losing the next election.
The federal government declared New York a disaster area before it
was a disaster area
I did wonder about that I wonder if it's a procedural thing as
making declarations like that can free up certain sources of funding,
give extra legal powers, allow civil defence / the armed forces /
national guard to be mobilised, and all that sort of thing.
It's mainly about making recovery/reconstruction money (government
guaranteed low interest rate loans [1]) available thru FEMA.
It's very seldom a natural disaster is serious enough to require Federal
troops. For hurricanes, that's mainly Coast Guard, who would be doing
what they do anyway, and don't have to wait for disaster declarations. A
lot of times the scope of what's declared a disaster in the wake of a
hurricane is based on what the Coast Guard can observe from their rescue
helicopters.
Going back to Hurricane Floyd in 1999, North Carolina got some
assistance from active US Army CH-47 helicopter units, but those units
were from Ft. Bragg in North Carolina and were actually ordered to
render assistance before the disaster declaration was made. The actual
"boots on the ground" were all NC National Guard - plus an additional
CH-47 unit loaned by Georgia's Governor.
The governor of any affected state doesn't need Federal permission or
disaster declaration before using the state's National Guard for
disaster relief. The National Guard is a local resource that can be
employed much more quickly than Federal troops could be.
There are also pre-existing regional compacts between some states to
share National Guard resources, such as that CH-47 unit Georgia loaned
to North Carolina in 1999. North Carolina National Guard doesn't have
any heavy lift helicopter resources of our own.
But what we do have is an aerial fire retardant dispersal system that
fits the Air Guard's C-130s that gets used from here to California every
year.
[1] Not, however, interest rates as low as the Wall Street Banks got!
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