Glass 1/5 Full.

Sunday was a frustrating day. I’m sitting in my hotel room at 0100, 5 Sept 05 and I’m getting ready to go to bed.

The news is not getting much better – the accounts I hear of the violence (rape at the SuperDome and shots fired at USACE contractors working on levee repairs), chaos (evacuees without a haven or proper medical care) and the huge loss that my agency may have faced (90% of the New Orleans USACE district personnel has been accounted for. So 10% are still missing.) is so disheartening and disillusioning. And as I said to a friend this evening, “I wasn’t very illusioned to begin with!!!”

All the bad news only compounds my frustration with the bureaucrats inside the monolith. The frustration grows every minute I’m in the office. No one knows what is going on. No one has the time to write down the common processes that we (the Federal agencies) should use to do a variety of tasks. But then again, we don’t have the time to NOT write down the processes that need to be implemented up and down the chain – all the way from a county in Mississippi, through the FEMA region in Atlanta and up to Washington DC.

In the past, the processes to coordinate Federal emergency efforts have floundered, at the very best. But, in the past, this hasn’t killed anyone. Or at least not enough to draw a compelling causal relationship. This time our floundering or failing processes (perhaps I should be more frank – our INCOMPETENCE) is making people sick, compounding their severe emotional distress, or killing them.

The directors and leaders at various nodes often say, “We’ll work that issue.” I’ve heard some variation of that phrase 5000 times in the past week. Basically that translates to: I don’t have an answer and I’m not going to take 15 seconds or 5 minutes to actually THINK and formulate a possible avenue of ACTION to resolve the identified issue.

After leaving work at midnight, I called a friend to vent about my day. After my tirade, she commented, “It seems like no one thinks they have any power to do anything.”

Her assessment is spot-on. And yet it seems so odd – usually some self-aggrandizing self-promoting jerk usually emerges to fill the vacuum. Why did it not happen this time? Last year, there were tales of such jerks that had prominent roles in the Florida operations. Maybe even the jerks know when they are out of their depth and no CYA safehouse is in sight.

Now that the situation in NOLA has calmed down, relief efforts in coastal MS are going to be scrutinized and lambasted and maybe Congress might wake up and show some leadership. And, by the way, where the hell is the National (Congressional or otherwise) discussion and leadership that needs to take place about the future of these evacuees? What options will the Feds provide? Look at the harsh reality. Many of these people may not be citizens of Louisiana any more. These people have NOTHING, have been through HELL, and no one is formulating a long-term plan to provide help to these people through a combination of Federal vouchers to evacuees as well as Federal grants to states/localities that agree to accept and provide services to these people. (I would quote someone from the mtg I attended at 10pm tonight, but I’m trying to avoid too much operational specificity). I know Congress just had their August recess and the Administration is completely out-of-touch – but I think the silence is based on that nasty reality of race-and-class. These are the neediest people that will drain local and state economies. They are going to be an unwanted population.

Last night, I kept thinking of the governments of India and China who are building massive dams that, when operational, will flood (or have flooded) many small poor river communities out of existence. There were half-hearted efforts by the national gov’ts to relocate these communities but monies allocated were said to have been siphoned off by local officials and not actually used to give people money to move and buy a new home etc.

In some ways, by ignoring the risks of New Orleans for the sake of commerce and capitalism, we’ve done the same thing – flooded the poorest people out of their homes. But we still have the opportunity to help these people. However, like I said earlier, I was never very “illusioned” about these things. And based on the last seven days – I’ve got no reason to change my outlook.

But lest you think I’m completely in the throes of despair….my mounting frustrations actually have less to do with my immediate job responsibilities. I feel like my immediate team is well-organized and know how to work through the system to effectively fill our primary function as the ‘money-people’ in addition to doing some coordination of mission execution. I’m a tech-geek and have implemented some efficiencies to reduce the time it takes for me to respond to questions about the reams of paper that I have to track. And I take some small satisfaction in the role I played in getting a team of structural/hospital engineers from our agency and ANOTHER agency to deploy to Mississippi to evaluate 8 coastal hospitals. The fact that inter-agency coordination actually came to fruition on the ground is a minor miracle that I’ve marveled at all day. Does my contribution give me satisfaction enough to keep me coming back for more?