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Originally posted by DogHead
Is this all because New Orleans was part of the JFK story?
What kind of evacuation plan would leave 127,000 to sink or swim? It turns out that the Bush administration had contracted out evacuation planning to a corporation, IEM, Innovative Emergency Management. I couldn’t locate their qualifications, but I did locate their list of donations to the Republican Party. We went to Baton Rouge to talk to them.
These are the offices of Innovative Emergency Management. They were the ones that were paid a half-million bucks to come up with an emergency evacuation plan for the city of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. One problem is, I can’t find the plan. So I’m coming here to ask them about it.
So when I showed up at their office, they would only talk to me from behind a glass wall. By phone.
Did you in fact come up with a plan, because it says it’s urgent to come up with a plan? Did you come up—can you just tell me if you came up with a plan or not? I’m just happy to talk to you one-on-one. You’re probably about 12 feet away from me. Or somewhere. I don’t know, are you hiding in this office somewhere? I’m happy to speak to you face-to-face
We can’t find your plan—neither can FEMA—that you were paid a half-million dollars for, that at least claimed to here. We can’t find this plan. And it’s kind of a problem. I guess it’s kind of hard to evacuate a city, if you can’t find the plan itself.
IEM EMPLOYEE: Can we—she’s got a lot of experience in evacuation.
GREG PALAST: Is it more true that maybe it was helpful that she gave a lot of donations to the Republican Party? Maybe that’s the experience?
IEM EMPLOYEE: Terry?
TERRY AT IEM: Yes.
GREG PALAST: So that’s when they called in the guards.
IEM SECURITY GUARD: Security has been called. We ask that you please leave the building now.
GREG PALAST: So, quickly, before security gets here, I just want to tell you that this is Innovative Emergency Management, and it’s very innovative not to have a plan to manage an emergency.
BROD BAGERT: Ongoing protection that should have been occurring was done—it was done negligently. Not only wrong, negligently. And not only negligently, but reckless negligence, the kind of negligence for which an individual would be indicted, prosecuted, tried, convicted, and spend their life in jail. Negligence that killed people, lots of people. Reckless negligence that killed human beings. Old ladies watched the water come up to their nose, over their eyes, and they drowned in houses just like this in this neighborhood, because of reckless negligence that’s unanswered for.
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