Analysis: Response to Helene “Orders of Magnitude Worse” Than Katrina
A former Army Logistics officer: “Don’t let any Democrat voter tell you Biden and Harris have responded to Helene appropriately because the Katrina response tells an entirely different story.”
A former Army Logistics officer has compared the federal response to Helene to that for 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and had has been abysmal in comparison.
A contributor for The Federalist writing under the name Cynical Publius is a former U.S. Army colonel. At the time of Hurricane Katrina was even nearing landfall, he was a shift officer in the National Military Command Center (NMCC) for hurricane support operations.
So he knows a thing or two about recovery from catastrophic storms.
To begin with, the former colonel reviews who was selected to head the deployment of key response units.
In Katrina, a three-star general was placed in command, along with the two-star commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division, with a full Airborne Infantry Brigade task force of the 82nd, a corps-support logistics command of thousands of soldiers, a signal battalion, a combat support hospital, robust Army engineer assets, and countless other support units. All of these units were on standby orders days before Katrina hit.
In contrast, a week after Helene hit, a tiny 1,000-troop Airborne Infantry Battalion task force of the 82nd (one-third the size of a brigade) was given a warning order under the ground command of a mere one-star general. These forces are without the medical, engineer, corps-level logistics, signal/communications, and Division/Army HQ command and control capabilities that defined Katrina support.
The military logistics expert also notes the comparatively small number of air resources being utilized for Helene, in comparison to Katrina.
The Air Force’s airlift capabilities are largely strategic, but in Katrina, they were busy evacuating thousands of injured and displaced people. After Helene, it seems they are mostly busy repairing their own airfields and not much else. This is curious, seeing as their C-130s could be working closely with the parachute riggers on Fort Liberty to prepare essential supplies for airdrop. Guess not.
The folks trapped in the hollows of North Carolina’s mountains need helicopter support most of all, to receive essential food, water, and construction and medical supplies, and to evacuate the stranded, the elderly, the sick, and the injured. If you review the links I included above, you’ll see that hundreds of active-duty helicopters were involved in Katrina. As for Helene, if you look at the DOD’s press releases, it looks like 28 active-duty helicopters are thinking about maybe getting involved as of Sept. 30.
The author speculates on a number of different reasons for the horrendously poor recovery operations occurring in the Southeaster US, after reviewing his concerns with current and former military members and some in the national guard. He concludes:
Don’t let any Democrat voter tell you Biden and Harris have responded to Helene appropriately because the Katrina response tells an entirely different story.
Why are they acting with such disregard for average Americans? Is it negligence? Is it our global commitments to endless wars? Or is it something far more sinister?
You decide on Nov. 5.
Hey Everybody:
The Federalist just published an article I wrote about the inept federal response to Helene. (Thanks to Mollie Hemingway, Kylee Griswold and the rest of The Federalist staff for jumping on this and getting it published so fast, I just wrote it last night.)
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) October 4, 2024
There is much more thoughtful, comparative analysis in The Federalist post….so read the whole thing.
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Comments
Thank you,
Sadly,
Thank you
As the question goes, if they were trying to destroy the republic, the republic’s institutions, and faith and trust therein, necessary for function…
What would they do differently?
I feel like I am in the middle of Habakkuk….
And that is not a pleasant place to be.
They’ve basically handed the country and its wealth over to invaders. Their intentions are already well established. Our Founders could perhaps have spent two or three more days spitballing additional enormities to include under their rather sparse definition of “treason,” and we are now undone by their failure of imagination.
Orchestrating an invasion of America is waging war on America which is clearly stated in the Constitutional definition of “treason”:
Nothing else needed … but some political leaders with courage and a sense of duty.
I don’t think there are trying to destroy faith. In fact, to expand the government you need to convince people that it works better than any other alternative so we must have a big nanny state for oversight.
This is just general ineptitude due to trying to force a bunch of bullshit policies on DEI plus a bunch of backchannel funding to illegal immigration and other pet projects.
kinda heartwarming to see Tunnel to Towers is STILL fundraising on FOX for their thing while these people are suffering
tone deafness never stopped the East Coasters
Yeah, those scumbags! How dare they! The ONLY people suffering and need help right now are in WNC!!
Dipsh**.
Anything west of the Hudson River does not exist until you get to the California coast.
Being of Chinese ancestry, and a historian of sorts, it is not unusual for my thoughts to turn to Chinese concepts that may bear on current situations. I offer for your consideration the concept of the “Mandate of Heaven” and the consequences of its presence or absence.
Subotai Bahadur
ALSO, President Busch OFFERED support, but the mayor of New Orleans declined.
Be careful of biting this hook too aggressively. I’ve been watching on the TN side and while I give FEMA no credit at all- the recovery effort by Lee and the locals is well in hand. Gov Lee is a fairly decent administrator from what I can tell and the locals are a tough bunch. It may be different the NC side. I have seen a lot of posts trying to get people jacked up and havent seen anything locally that aligns with it.
So far as Unicoi – they were hit hard- but I don’t know anyone up there. I’ve been watching Greeneville pretty closely and have friends up there with an open invite to come do laundry /shower if they need- and as of right now, power has been restored to a lot of the area and drinking water is coming back online. Roads and bridges will be fubar for a while.
Local response is exactly what you’d expect from a blue collar / farming / church going community. Aside from the mexicans that were arrested for looting (thanks Biden) it’s been a Norman Rockwell picture of neighbors helping neighbors…. good ol’ boys don’t really need FEMA.
Thank you for your input,
I am just one person far away in Philadelphia wondering what to think.
It does seem that most of the flagrant complaints have to do with NC.
Maybe the specificity of the complaints is in favor of their legitimacy, idk.
Good old boys still need the money and resources to do their jobs
Their money I might add
In looking at the response effort, I would say we as a nation would be better served with greater standardization of infrastructure. Also I seriously think the TVA needs some investigation. They’ve gotten woke in the past decade or so and I am really questioning whether the integrity of infrastructure has fallen to the wayside (rhymes with Boeing)
Water/sewer/power infrastructure and code should be interchangeable, mass produced and easily accessible such that spares, or an engineering team can be air dropped in. There needs to be redundancy and access.
In some ways Gov Lee and the legislature were prepared on that front and you’ll see infrastructure rebound faster because of that.
Compare this to I-5 where I came from. You have several choke points where the majority of life and commerce for Western Wa and Oregon can come to a halt. Look at that monstrosity of a tower that I-5 is over Olympia (homeless have been burning under there BTW) and if that comes down- there is no fast work around. I-5 only goes by Olympia as a corrupt way to give Oly power. The nisqually bridge just north of there is also a choke point- as seen several times in the past decade. Wa is going to be seriously screwed if any of those volcanos ever wake up OR if that fault line goes (which geologically we are due to have happen).
I am well prepared for known risks related to my location, But regardless there are bound to be things that we need, requiring chasing supplies.
One neat thing I have ti discourage looting are carbonation nitrogen tanks with a regulator and mechanical trip valve to airhorns. A translucent monofilament line serves to pop out a piece of brass which then opens the valve. It is incredibly loud & it runs a long time, both inside and outside the building.
No power needed, but purely a one shot alarm.
Oregon will be a red state after Cascadia. The vertebrate parasites will not do well, though it will be a feast for the non-vertebrate variety.
I wonder if they are planning to extend voting in the affected states until mid-2026. At this point their only hope is a massive disruption, and they have already played all of the cards in the WuFlu deck (Harris and Walz are the jokers).
I think depressing voting in rural ares of Georgia and NC is exactly what is going on with the response. It could affect the national election.
No logical person could reach any other conclusion. David Axelrod all but explicitly admitted it yesterday during his own podcast.
Western Oregon and Washington will be still blue…ocean blue and deep brown mud. Areas of Southern California would turn to oatmeal with the Big One. Infrastructure? Chuckle.
What Ukraine was to Joseph Stalin, Southern Appalachia is to Biden/Harris. Incompetence has become malice. The crushed lives of 100’s of thousands are the egg shells left from the election manipulation omelet.
I’m struck at the media’s total lack of curiosity about the death toll. If you remember the immediate aftermath of Katrina, that’s all they could speculate about. This, of course, only adds to the insult of their indifference about the people who are still alive in western North Carolina.
A thousand Jews dying can be ignored but the single death of a “Palestinian” is newsworthy.
I said in the other thread, I’ll say it again.
Leftists know ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THIS.
I was talking to one at the start of this week. I told him what was happening in NC was a disaster for Biden and Harris.
He said, ‘that’s just a Trump lie, Kemp already said Biden was giving him everything he needed, Trump is just a liar’. Then he started ranting about DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY REPUBLICANS HAVE COME OUT AGAINST TRUMP LIES and starting ranting about Jan 6th and how Trump would never give up power again.
They have literally no idea what is happening outside their media bubble.
As they say, democracy dies in darkness. The corrupt media never report anything harmful to the Democrats.
I was a first responder to Katrina. I was the supervisor of the self contained SatComm trailers that provided power, internet, and phone service to Emergency Operation Centers in Louisiana. This disaster is on par with Katrina with the twist of flooding valleys in NC. The government interaction has been almost non-existent. There interaction is criminal.
All North Carolina needs to do to get the feds mobilized is to claim that some illegal immigrants are trapped somewhere…
I am writing to let you know that the damage inspector who contacted me last night about my damage claim from Helene was rude and condecending towards me.
He called at 9:30pm and wanted to inspect the damage at 11am the next day. I said he was welcome to drop by, but I would not be home because I’ve been volunteering at the disaster relief center and I am steadfast in my commitment to help my community recover, but maybe another day?
He got an attitude with me and said if I did not meet him, my claim would be “sent back to FEMA”, whatever that means. And I said again that I was not going to be available, but he could easily see the damage for himself without me there. He then raised his voice and became condecending towards me. He said he had the right to call me up ’till 10 o’clock at night and I had to be home for him to inspect the damage. when I told him not to get an attitude with me, he began whispering sarcastically. I reiterated that I would not leave my community without the help they need, just to meet him when it was convenient to him and I told him “If you’re going to behave that way then to hell with you, we’ll take care of it ourselves,” to which he hung up on me.
Is this who FEMA sends into areas to help disaster victims?