Ted Koppel did a fine job on "Nightline" last night grilling Mike Brown, the head of FEMA (which Soledad O'Brien then aped this morning on CNN). Brown apologized profusely for being distant, aloof, slow with help and out of touch, and promised immediately to make amends.
But as I type this, WWL-TV is reporting that FEMA has still not contacted local officials.
Right now on WWL's indispensable webcast, they're interviewing LSU's hurricane expert who is wondering why a tent city hasn't been set up yet.
"We should have by now started a refugee camp," Ivor van Heerden is saying. "The CDC is very good at setting up remote camps. People say, 'Oh, they're living in tents,' but these are tents with wood floors. Families will decorate the walls. And most importantly, they can start to have school. School is a very important part of getting back to normal." As is counseling. Van Heerden said that among refugees social problems will begin manifesting very soon: suicides, domestic abuse, drug use, prostitution.
But right now no one involved in managing the crisis is thinking that far ahead. We need chess players in charge; we're getting hackey-sack players instead.
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If you think you've heard and seen it all, television is only scraping the surface. Read some of these recent postings from the NOLA.com hurricane weblog.
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Dave Walker, the TV critic at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, was doing his job on Thursday -- reviewing TV coverage of the disaster -- when he saw his neighborhood on live TV. An overhead shot showed that every house was sitting under six, eight, ten feet of water. What a terrible way to find out your home wasn't one of the lucky ones. Here's his review, bottom of page A-17 (PDF).
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