How can the world's lone superpower be brought to it's knees in such an embarassing way as this? 10,000 dead in a major U.S. city! Why was the federal response so slow? This is the worst natural disaster in U.S. history! While everyone's trying to assign blame for everything, they are missing the fact that none of these things are true.
For one, our federal response to the disaster was not slow. Federal responders are not meant to be first responders, and can't actually just wait there during the hurricane. And they responded faster than they did in other recent hurricanes, such as Andrew.
There are not 10,000 dead, a pathetic estimate by fearmongering people and a panicking mayor with zero faith in individuals. Unfortunately for them, many people still can take some care of themselves and have survived. I don't know why they didn't just guess 50 or 100 thousand, for all the facts they had.
It was not the worst natural disaster in US history, and it won't even crack the top 5. And that's leaving out heat waves, which would knock it out of all contention.
Why bring up heat waves? Well, it wasn't so long ago that Parisians truly were dying by the thousands in just such a natural event. It was actually just 2 years ago, August 2003. Estimates range between 11,435 and 14,802 dead, 80% of them elderly and ostensibly being cared for by the government in France's socialist worker's paradise. Now that's what I call a pathetic government response.
What I'm left wondering is who will take responsibility for blowing the storm out of all proportion? Who will apologize when, as likely happened this time, people ignore evacuation warnings because it's never as bad as they say? Does the media ever apologize, or get called out on things like that? Do they get fired? Do they even care if what comes out of their mouths is accurate?
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