Cheney's Office Ordered Power Restored to Pipeline Before Hospitals

[BurtWorm]

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/14/cheney3/index.html

According to a report in the Hattiesburg American, Cheney's office placed calls to the Southern Pines Electric Power Association on Aug. 30 and Aug. 31, insisting that the agency immediately repair two electrical substations that supply power to Atlanta-based Colonial Pipeline Co., a company that pumps gasoline and diesel from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast.

Southern Pines complied with the order from Cheney's office, the paper says -- taking a risk that the repair work would knock out power throughout its system and delaying by at least a day efforts to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in Mississippi.

Neither Cheney's office nor Colonial Pipeline would respond to questions from the paper about the vice president's directives.

Update: Several readers have reminded us that the pipeline Cheney's office helped to get back online provides a substantial percentage of the fuel needed in the Northeast, and that therefore the choice to restore power to the pipeline rather than to two rural hospitals might well have been the right one from a national perspective. But if that's the case, as one reader asks, why wouldn't the White House want to trumpet Cheney's decisive action in the time of diaster? Could it be that the government doesn't want to acknowledge, for the al Qaidas of the world to see, that a single pipeline is so important to the nation? Or is it that the White House just didn't want Cheney's actions -- if they were Cheney's actions -- to stand in contrast to the president's slow and stumbling response to Katrina?

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Are we shocked?

no. But we are :mad:

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URGENT yet easy! Hold the government accountable for Katrina's aftermath
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4736062

Save the gulf, then save the nation! http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/electionreform.htm

[Mistress Quickly]

2. Were there people in

the hospitals? Did they have emergency power? Were the water systems even able to treat water at that point? Were they functional if they even had power?

Gah, I hate when stories don't have enough info!

[BurtWorm]

3. Here's a link

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050911/NEWS05/509110304

Callahan said the process of getting the pipelines flowing would be difficult and that there was a chance the voltage required to do so would knock out the system - including power to Wesley Medical Center in Hattiesburg.

With Forrest General Hospital operating on generators, Wesley was the only hospital operating with full electric power in the Pine Belt in the days following Katrina.

"Our concern was that if Wesley went down, it would be a national crisis for Mississippi," Callahan said. "We knew it would take three to four days to get Forrest General Hospital's power restored and we did not want to lose Wesley."

Compton, though, followed the White House's directive.

[Fla Dem]

4. What it also shows is that either Cheney or Bush could have

picked up the phone for any reason and given orders that would have been followed and would have saved lives. Complete lack of leadership.