Hurricane Rita was Upset She Didn't Get Her Own Discussion Thread
 

And therefore caused a high enough storm surge again to breach the New Orleans Levees.

The 9th Ward is under water. Again.

I'm guessing the French Quarter might go this time, but I tend not to be optomistic.

Few of the structures that survived Katrina will withstand Rita. (note to the people who assign hurricane names ... try to stay away from cutesy near-rhymy name combos like this. We need the names to be distinctive enough that we can easily recall which one is which)

I started this thread largely because I didn't want plthijnx's photojournal to get bogged down with endless discussions of the storm's progress that don't relate to Houston and environs.

I think the comparisons between responses to the two storms should prove interesting.

I'm certain that at least some of the comments will point to the "whiteness" of Houston/Galveston, as well as the Presidential connection to Texas ... just you watch ...

I would like to take a moment to offer my sincere thanks to the Louisiana State CISM Coordinator, who told me to stay home.

Rita is a total no-win situation for Bush. If the Feds do a bang-up job with Rita, people will say it was only because Texas is his home state. If they again suck, people will say that it proves he's inept.

Georgie-boy is already in place to "oversee" the evacuation/rescue/recovory process. Unfortunately, it will come across to some that the Prez takes notice when it's in his own backyard or when disaster strikes all them white-folk.

Damned if you do...damned if you don't.

Same for the rebuild/don't rebuild NO controversy ... as much sense as it might make just to let the bowl fill up with water, declare it a protected wetland of some kind and tell people not to live there, it would be political suicide (not just for Bush, but for Republicans in general) even to make such a suggestion.

Some Rita observations:

Even with a stark painful lesson just weeks earlier, the evacuation is **still** a galactic clusterflop. The HURRICAINE is moving faster than the traffic. :smack:

People running out of gas on the road. Sad, probably inevitable, trouble for everyone.

The bus full of seniors (on oxygen) that exploded and burned. How awful, tragic.

If New Orleans hadn't been decimated by Katrina, 99% of the people currently evacuated from Houston would have laughed at the idea of leaving.

yep.

Have you seen the CGI projections of Port Arthur disappearing under the high tide storm surge? Yikes. You don't have to evacuate, you'll just float away.

It is a no win situation for Bush. If Bush does a bang up job, I will say that it's because he got a harsh wake up call last time and is ready for this one. If the response is inept, I'll be calling for impeachment. I doubt the response will be inept this time. They are already taking this one seriously, and it seems to be smaller with less potential for destruction. Like the rest of the gulf, Texas is flat and low lying, but at least it's above sea level. It's a very big storm, but it's not Katrina.

Too bad about all those seniors who died in the fire on that evacuating bus. At least they weren't left behind in the nursing homes though.

Yeah, they were just incinerated on a bus. Better than drowning? Horrible way to go either way. I find it ironic that the item(s) that helped them live, ulitimately played in thier tragic deaths.

It's better that someone tried to save them and failed than if they had been abandoned and died. Sure, the end result is the same, but this is better.

I found that ironic too. And very sad.

And then just to mess with all the invidious theorizers, the eye seems to be heading nearly straight at the TX-LA border. Moms Nature is saying "Ha!"

I saw a report on one of the 24-hr news services (might have been MSNBC or Fox) that indicated a truck was patrolling the evacuation routes doling out gas to stranded motorists.

Well done Wolf, Rita is satisfied.

Bush Happy with Rita Photo Ops
But says government must create impression of concern faster in the future

Sept. 27, 2005 - In a televised speech to the nation last night, President George W. Bush praised the Federal government for responding swiftly to Hurricane Rita with well-crafted, high-quality photo opportunities showing him looking concerned. But he said that the government needs to create the impression of concern even faster in the future.

Mr. Bush said the fact that the government provided the first images of him looking grave and engaged in the crisis even before Hurricane Rita slammed into the Texas and Louisiana coastline showed that it had learned the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. "After Hurricane Katrina, it was hours before the American people saw the first photos of me furrowing my brow and looking serious," Mr. Bush said. "But with Rita, we had high-quality images of me looking worried right from the get-go."

While praising the swiftness of the government's photo-op response to Rita, the president said that "much work still needs to be done" to ensure that the government will produce high-quality post-disaster photo-ops even faster in the future.

To that end, he said he was creating a new government bureaucracy, the Federal Emergency Image Management Agency, which would provide the president with lighting, cameras, and dramatic backdrops within minutes of any national emergency.

"In times of crisis, the president needs to send the American people the following message," the president concluded. "Message: I look like I care."

Elsewhere, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher wed in a private ceremony over the weekend, vowing to love, honor and obey each other longer than Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney.

:lol:

You've been reading The Onion again, haven't you?