Could Bush have Weathered the Storm?
By Leslie Capobianco, 12th grade
February 10, 2006

“Bush doesn’t care about black people!” Successful rap artist Kanye West shocked the Eastern Coast with his brazen comments as millions of viewers watched the NBC Special Presentation. Rather than hurl his agitation at his alleged racial issues, West should ask a more relevant and poignant question: Did Bush exhaust every prospect in preventing the catastrophic loss caused by Hurricane Katrina?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is a household name in Florida. Before Hurricane Andrew, which decimated much of Florida in 1992, FEMA was nothing more than a backwater agency. The large numbers of complaints in response to Andrew upgraded FEMA to a Cabinet-level agency. Then came September 11th.

The previous Cabinet-level agency was folded and incorporated into the vast bureaucracy of the newly created Department of Homeland Security. As the White House appropriated the larger funds for terrorism, the funding for natural emergency dwindled.

But let’s delve into the mistakes of the government and Bush Administration. In 2001 FEMA issued a report saying that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. Was the former a coincidence? As much as we’d like to think so, the report was formed on a factual basis. Statistics are mathematical facts proven by numbers, which are often derived from the process of proving laws and theories.

Bush seemed to have missed out on that tid-bit of information:  FEMA 1, Bush 0.

Natural disasters are inevitable in any part of the world. Just this past year, the entire coastline of a continent was swept away by a tsunami. Natural disasters do not cease because we want them to; they are incapable of being tamed.  A common natural disaster striking the U.S. coast, hurricanes, travel one way or another through the Gulf of Mexico - 9 out of 10 times, in fact.

Take a step back even further—to 1995—and reach into the pocket of mistakes when Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was to have strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations that contain the deluge of water in New Orleans. Funding was cut and renovations ceased. Thus, the levees had not been completely attended to for over a decade, and the efficiency of them was not at 100 percent.

Knowing that the levees had not been tended to, efforts were made to reduce water levels that were contained by the levee. The Bush Administration, in 2004, cut funding by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA requested for holding back the waters of Lake Ponchartrain by more than 80 percent. The Senate debated adding funds for fixing the levees, but it was too late. The waters of Lake Ponchartrain were, in part, responsible for thousands of deaths and enveloped the entire city of New Orleans. FEMA 2, Bush zip.

Just when you think Bush couldn’t have done another thing wrong to prevent the severity of Katrina, he surprises us yet again. In 2003 Bush cut all funding for “no net loss” of wetlands that were to serve as a buffer for hurricanes. Launched by the first President Bush, the program was to restore and build two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf. The wetland, in turn, would reduce the surge of the Gulf by a half foot. Four leading environmental groups in 2004 conducted a joint expert study, concluding that without wetlands protection, New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary hurricane, much less a Category 4 or 5.  Did Bush not get that memo?  FEMA 3, Bush nil.

Did Bush make efforts to bring aid to the victims of this diastral phenomenon? The answer is yes, but more could have been done years ago to help lessen the blow. Perhaps if Bush had followed through and listened to the scientific research, New Orleans would not be an Atlantis. If Bush had not cut funding for grove protection, levee restoration, Lake Ponchartrain being reduced, or even set FEMA’s priorities right, the people of New Orleans might still have a home. The people might still have their families intact. I will give Bush his snaps, for he and his administration’s post efforts, but didn’t he see these problems coming?

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