As we sit, our eyes glued to the television, unable to stop watching the human tragedy and suffering caused by Katrina , further complicated by the shear weight of incompetent bureaucracy , you can learn some valuable things about the federal government and federal employees. A short four years after the tragedy of 9-11, our country faces another enormous blow and one which may almost be impossible to survive.
What you can learn, once again, is about the indomitable spirit of the American people. But it is being sorely tested. The death toll is expected to be in thousands, one of the single most devastating death tolls in our nation's history. It could possibly be twice that of all our disasters both natural and war combined for a single incident or event. But the spirit came through, how people helped each other, when the bureaucracy failed. How thousands of people volunteered to go to those states that were hit, just to be left languishing until somebody made a decision. But they volunteered and they helped and they fought.
The spirit of the people in those ravaged areas who fought for life though the tears and the horror, just to be ignored, disenfranchised and left by those who were in charge. But they hung on and helped others. Despite the pictures of "looting" by the blacks and "finding food" for the whites in the same disaster area., the spirit of those people who did not have the means to escape but had the will to survive, and did survive until they were placed in areas of relief, that offered little or none.
Prominent among them were the federal employees who lost everything, some still not accounted for, whose homes and families may be lost. Among them are the hundreds of federal employees who immediately volunteered to go and help either as volunteer firefighters, EMTs, National Guardsman or just private citizens. It was not from the lack of volunteerism that help was late; it was because "somebody" had to make a decision. A decision that took almost 4 days to make… too little, too late!
And for those federal employees who went there because of their duty, it was evident that the delay was not because of any union contract or union work rule. The folks on top couldn't get together. The rationale for this Administration wanting to eliminate or severely curtail union contracts and civil service rights was it would delay any mobilization of federal workforce to face any disaster whether from terrorists or natural disaster. All of this has been delayed by the unions or the courts and so existing contracts are mostly still in effect. And it did not delay the mobilization for a second. Every federal employee, union or otherwise was available, prepared and anxious to go where it was necessary and it was as it always had been, the lack of leadership to make the decision.
Millions have been spent on Homeland Security since 9 11 and plans have been drawn, field exercises have been conducted, analyzed and re-analyzed and re-thought for the past four years... and the first time out of the chute, it failed... not from the lack of planning, not from the constrictions of union contracts but by the shear incompetence of the leadership.
While I could gloat and be content that this proved what our unions were trying to convey to the Congress and Administration was proven to be dead wrong, I can't. I am sickened by the devastation and the loss of lives.
I take little comfort in the fact that federal employees, as well as the thousands of other people were right and our "government" got it all wrong. People should not have had to pay with their lives and others with the loss of all they possess to prove a point that federal workers as well as all Americans will rise to the occasion and not let anything get in the way to help others and survive in spite of the incompetent bureaucracy.
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