Hurricane Katrina Anniversary Hits Home for Martin O'Malley

[seabeyond]

http://www.newsweek.com/hurricane-katrina-anniversary-hits-home-martin-omalley-366834


A week after Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, 2005, there were still 11 feet of water sloshing around Armand Buuck’s house in Chalmette, Louisiana. Buuck, the fire department battalion chief in St. Bernard’s Parish, and his staff had retreated to one of the few pieces of dry land in the area, a fire house in an oil refinery, and were trying to organize a search-and-rescue operation off a legal pad and paper maps. Every single structure in the parish, a strip of land on the outskirts of New Orleans that juts into the Gulf of Mexico, had taken on water.

That’s when Buuck heard a voice, crackling over his two-way radio, alerting him that two tour buses were headed toward the compound. “I said other things,” that are not printable, Buuck laughs, the equivalent of “what the hell am I going to do with tour buses?”

He went downstairs in a huff, only to to be greeted by members of the Baltimore Fire Department filing off the buses. “They had computers and printers and maps and everything; all of the forms that I needed for FEMA and everything that I needed to do a quality search of the parish and I couldn’t believe it,” Buuck tells Newsweek, his voice cracking. Even now, as the region marks the 10-year anniversary of the storm and its aftermath, the emotions evoked by Katrina are still raw.

*

Heading up the convoy was Michael Enright, right-hand man for then-Baltimore mayor and current 2016 presidential candidate Martin O’Malley. O’Malley had dispatched Enright, his deputy mayor, and a team of 130 first responders—firemen, police, EMTs, doctors, nurses, road crews. “They sent down an entire kitchen so we could cook our own meals,” Buuck recalls.

It was, as The Baltimore Sun labeled it at the time, a “backdoor” effort. The mayor had notified federal authorities the day Katrina hit that they had an emergency response convoy ready to head down to the Gulf Coast. Almost a week later, they had gotten no response. In fact, federal officials were actively discouraging local authorities from conducting independent relief efforts, telling them they would not be reimbursed for their efforts.

*

“We kept getting the ‘thanks, we’ll get back to you, the situation is under control,’ response,” Enright recalls. “We took that for a couple of days.” But when New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin erupted in a radio interview on Sept. 2 and “made it clear that they were in deep trouble and nobody was there,” he says, “the mayor turned to me and just kind of said, ‘enough of this.’”

*

more...

[uppityperson]

1. So many stories about Katrina. So many untold.

Thank you for this one.

[seabeyond]

13. i was surprised i had not heard. then i was reminded, bushco time. he had tight control of media

who knows what we didnt hear. i mean, we dug a lotta lotta up on du. for sure. but that was a time with media.

[seabeyond]

2. i had a link to this story, since it was in another forum. i thought gd should have the

opportunity to read. but it was locked. so i just brought the story over. remember the time. bushco. and the ineptness and uncaring. people across the nation wanted to help. omalley was one. he got it done. i love how he did it.

anyway. i hadnt heard this story. i have to figure bushco had a tight grip on media.

it is a feel good, of the best of who our dems are.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Do you realize you reposted in GD, not GDP?

You might want to move it before the jury completes its service...

[seabeyond]

4. first, it is about katrina. not the primary. secondly, it is not a jury issue, but a host issue

why the hell would you people have a problem with people reading about what omalley did to help out in katrina. bushco silenced it in the media then. now you and others are working hard to silence an EXCELLENT story, about katrina, that we should already know about.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. Well it went to a jury.

And I actually dropped off of the jury because I thought you'd reposted in GD accidentally and wanted to let you know.

Why did I do that? I don't know.

[seabeyond]

7. of course it went to jury. arent i surprised, you backed out, lol. now i am feeling a bit, hm

flustered, lol.

k

thank you

no. i have to take my chances. cause there is

right

and

wrong.

but thank you

[seabeyond]

8. guessin' i survived jury. yea. nt

[AnnieBW]

9. And I'm Sure that My Fellow Marylanders Complained About their Taxes Paying For It, Too

I get sick of the "O'Malley raised our taxes" bullshit. He was one of the best governors we've had in a long time - Dem or Rep. I don't think that he'll advance to be President, but I can certainly see him as VP or a Cabinet post.

[seabeyond]

10. so you lived there, and you liked him? good to know. nt

[AnnieBW]

11. I live between Baltimore and DC

I didn't think that O'Malley was all that as a mayor, but I do think that he did well as a governor. He steered our state through some pretty tough times, and we've come out better than most states (ahem, Virginia).

[seabeyond]

12. ty. nt

[jfern]

14. Al Gore volunteered his time and money

While George W Bush had a photo event that interfered with search and rescue