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Hundreds of thousands of our own fellow citizens are now homeless. Entire communities, including the vibrant and historic city of New Orleans, have been shattered. Worst, the magnitude of loss of life appears to be in the thousands.
The immense human tragedy left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina challenges us to respond as never before to help our fellow Americans in need. Please help in any way that you can, particularly by donating to Habitat for Humanity and many other worthy charitable organizations. They are on the frontlines providing vital disaster relief services to Katrina survivors throughout the Gulf Coast states, and will need millions of dollars in order to feed, clothe and house victims over the coming months.
Given the need for additional troops to respond to this disaster -- and the distress of soldiers from the affected region -- I have asked
President Bush to immediately recall National Guard troops currently stationed in Iraq who are from the Gulf Coast. The local knowledge of these troops will prove vital in continuing rescue operations.
Please join me today in urging the President to immediately bring home all National Guard troops from the affected Gulf Coast region. It is not yet known how many lives could have been saved with a more effective federal response to this disaster. A nation that has the resources to send troops door-to-door looking for terrorists in Iraq certainly surely could have sent them door-to-door to evacuate our poor, sick, and elderly neighbors in New Orleans. Yet, each new tale of horror makes the failure of the response plain.
President Bush has termed what happened on the ground in the Gulf Coast as "unacceptable." And he should.
But what is also unacceptable to me is that the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency has absolutely no experience in disaster relief. It is unacceptable to me that after four years of being told that our homeland security is improving, the system utterly failed its first test. It is unacceptable to me that an untold number of people died or were needlessly traumatized in the horror of the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center because of a chaotic federal response.
There will be another word I will focus on in coming days: accountability. Congress must hold hearings to find out what went wrong and make sure it gets fixed. And the federal officials whose ineptitude contributed to this disaster will have to explain themselves to Congress and the American people.
In the meantime, I will be introducing a plan to help put the people of the Gulf Coast back to work by hiring those who are displaced for the rebuilding effort. The Gulf Coast will once again be a beautiful place to live and work, but it will take the combined work and energy of all of us.
Thank you again for any help you can provide to the victims of this terrible disaster. Our friends and neighbors throughout the Gulf Coast are counting on us to stand with them in the coming days, and we cannot let them down.
In Friendship,
Barbara Boxer
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