23571: lyall: that emergency response canard (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: J.David Lyall <postmaster@lyalls.net>

The blan ki viv titid have recently been flogging
the horse of the lack of an emergency response
system.
It is news to me that such a system existed.
Installed by the heinous USAID? How could you be
trumpeting the success of a system installed by
those tools of empire?

Anyway, perhaps such a system supposedly existed.
If it existed for more than a year there was a
perfect event to test the efficacy of these civil
defense corps. Last year there was a flood in St
Marc. The whole downtown was inundated. Somewhere
between 25 and 50 people died. It rained in the
mountains and came down the river and filled up
the town. Not hard to figure out that clogged
river bottoms would flood. It's happened before.
Just not so bad. Like all the other environmental
crashes here, it is getting worse.

There was no warning to people to get to high
ground. Getting to high ground would be much
easier in St Marc than in Gonaives. Perhaps
Gonaives had a civil defense bureau and St Marc
didn't? Unlikely, but possible.

The aftermath is telling however. The folks of St
Marc say that the government in Port au Prince
did nothing at all for them. No equipment came to
dig out, no work crews to help bury the dead and
shovel out the mud. Is it true? They think so.
The complete unconcern exhibited by the Aristide
government and the legions of fat cats in new
Nissan Patrols in the  capital certainly helped
turn the populace against the Pouvwa Lavalas.

Isn't a canard a duck?

>A recent example of Latortue’Äôs ineptitude was his hapless response to
>Tropical Storm Jeanne, the natural tragedy that took several thousand
>lives on the island and cost tens of millions of dollars in personal
>and public property loss. While the storm was raging, Latortue and
>his confederates were not even competent enough to take the basic
>step of establishing an emergency national radio grid over which they
>could have broadcast calls to the population to go to high ground in
>order to escape from the flooding. This abdication of responsibility
>alone should have been enough to justify calling for his and his
>colleague’Äôs resignations.

-- 
J. David Lyall
http://www.lyalls.net/