Yet More FEMA Oddities: Where's that New Orleans Place Again?

 
Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque has checked out the text of President Bush's August 27th Emergency Declaration and finds something strange:

While giving FEMA full responsibility for coordinating all disaster relief efforts in "those parishes in the path of the storm," the Aug. 27 declaration leaves out the specific parishes in and around New Orleans and along the coast -- the very areas mostly likely to sustain the most catastrophic damage.

Now, as Chris points out, Bush's declaration of August 29th targets the entire state of Louisiana, establishing that "a major disaster exists in the State of Louisiana" and orders "Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts in the area struck by Hurricane Katrina." That's fine, as far as it goes--but in this declaration, one should note, as Chris does, that it only dealt with the availability of funds to individuals and state and local governments. It didn't actually set up any infrastructure or activate any plans to coordinate the relief effort. And what did Bush discuss with Michael Chertoff, head of DHS, on the 29th? In his own words:

I spoke to Mike Chertoff today -- he's the head of the Department of Homeland Security. I knew people would want me to discuss this issue, so we got us an airplane on -- a telephone on Air Force One, so I called him. I said, are you working with the governor? He said, you bet we are. That's the most effective way to do things, is to work with the state and local authorities. There are more resources that will be available, we'll have more folks on the border; there will be more detention space to make sure that those who are stopped trying to illegally enter our country are able to be detained.

So on Monday the 29th, after a category 4 hurricane has hit New Orleans, President Bush, who stresses the need to coordinate relief efforts with local officials, makes preventing illegal immigration the focus of his efforts. I'm sure that the folks whose toxic, collapsing, and empty houses were threatened by the tide of immigrants feel much better. And on Saturday the 27th, his emergency declaration specifically omits the areas of Louisiana most likely to be damaged by the hurricane--when everyone was still talking about Katrina being a category 5 storm at landfall, and that landfall was expected to hit New Orleans dead on.

I guess nobody could have anticipated that the hurricane might hit New Orleans.