A tale of two floods

There is a difference between the flooding in Iowa and what happened to New Orleans when Katrina came to town. When a natural disaster struck Louisiana, chaos ruled. Governments, especially those of the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana, failed miserably to respond with any kind of effect.

The Feds, although not the first responders, were blamed for the monstrous ineptitude of Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who set the new standard for blaming others while doing almost nothing. Then there was the unfortunate fact that the local populace of New Orleans was, well, unable to cope with getting out of town.

In Iowa this past week, it could not have been more different from the response in Louisiana to Katrina. Order prevailed; folks pretty much all pitched in to help and if they couldn’t help, got to higher ground and stayed out of the way of rescue efforts. So far, there has been one, count it, one case of looting: two teenagers were arrested while stealing stuff from an abandoned apartment.

In Louisiana,  the victims were mostly black; people who had been conditioned to wait for the state to take care of them.  In Iowa, people were far better able to fend for themselves.  But the media played the Louisiana catastrophe as a direct result of white racism.  The Iowa story, of folks going about their business in the face of catastrophe, doesn’t have legs.  it will be off the front pages in a few days.

The biggest difference is that it is impossible to blame the Bush administration for the Iowa floods.  Oh, sorry; forgot that global warming was Bush’s fault, and this must have been the cause.  In contrast, Katrina and its aftermath were hyped, and Katrina has entered the Democratic playbook as evidence that the Bush administration is at fault for everything that goes wrong.

Not that the Bushies did much good at first. FEMA performed in its usual crappy, bureaucratic fashion. The true lesson from Katrina? Response to emergencies must be at the level closest to the people affected. The feds should only come on the scene to coordinate, after the first responders do their thing. In no sane universe should a Federal agency headquartered across the country be the first responder.

But, hey, it was Bush’s FEMA, so screw logic. Had it been president Obama’s FEMA, the media likely would have been as gentle as lambs, and blamed someone else.

Conclusions from this? Iowa is not Louisiana. It is much, much more organized, with better citizens. Louisiana is a better place for not having many of those who left after Katrina. Sorry, Houston, you got their dregs. Gov. Bobby Jindal will do better than Gov. Blanco ever did. As for Mayor Nagin? The idiots who vote in NOLA reelected this incompetent.