Marty Bahamonde is my new hero (FEMA/Katrina - Washington Post)

[bertha katzenengel]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102000858.html?nav=hcmodule

AIDE SAYS FEMA IGNORED WARNINGS

~snip~

Marty Bahamonde, sent to New Orleans by Brown, said he alerted Brown's assistant shortly after 11 a.m. that Monday with the "worst possible news" for the city: The Category 4 hurricane had carved a 20-foot breach in the 17th Avenue Canal levee.

Five FEMA aides were e-mailed Bahamonde's report of "water flow 'bad' " from the broken levees designed to hold back Lake Pontchartrain. Bahamonde said he called Brown personally after 7 p.m. to warn that 80 percent of New Orleans was underwater and that he had photographed a 200-foot-wide breach.

"FEMA headquarters knew at 11 o'clock. Mike Brown knew at 7 o'clock. Most of FEMA's operational staff knew by 9 o'clock that evening. I don't know where that information went," said Bahamonde, a 12-year FEMA staffer who has worked full time since 2002 as a public affairs official.

~snip~

His disclosures add significantly to public knowledge of how much information Brown and FEMA officials had about the damage Katrina caused, and how soon they were aware of it. The federal government has been widely criticized for its slow, uncoordinated response to the hurricane, which left 1,053 people dead in Louisiana, most of them in New Orleans.

~snip~

I don't care if FEMA's muck-up in the Gulf is "old news;" this tidbit is keeping it alive. It SHOULD be kept alive.

[afdip]

1. and the repuke spinners will say . . . .

"ha, he's been @ fema for 12 years, which means he started under bill clinton's presidency, so he was a democrat(sic) plant trying to make the saintly bushco regime look bad." in other words, it's bill clinton's fault.

[bertha katzenengel]

3. Let 'em spin it. It's hard to spin hard proof -- emails time/date stamped,

photos from the only FEMA rep on the ground.

[BOSSHOG]

5. He was on the ground in New Orleans

and almost got killed while brown was waiting for his steak. I'll take the man's credentials anyday. And who is still at FEMA? (not counting the sham brown "consultant" job.)

[pitohui]

2. i like this quote

after emailing the MIA brownie that people were going to start dying in the superdome & getting back an email saying that brownie was busy trying to find a good restaurant for dining in baton rouge, he sent back this email to brownie's publicist--

"OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!" Bahamonde wrote in an apparently hastily written response to a colleague at FEMA after the message was shared with him. "Just tell her (the press secretary) that I just ate an MRE and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends so I understand her concern about busy retaurants. Maybe tonight I will have time to move the pebbles on the parking garage floor so they don't stab me in the back while I try to sleep."

linky here-
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1129878424123770.xml

[bertha katzenengel]

4. Wow.

That's painful.

[Dancing_Dave]

6. Nola.com totally rocks!

Check out all the peoples stories in the "Nola in Exile" blog!
http://www.nola.com/weblogs/bourbon/

[bertha katzenengel]

7. Dolphins' game moved up to tonight due to Wilma; FEMA scrambling

all over the team's administration to recruit new leaders. Film at eleven.