Kirk Watson: “we got word today that there will be a bipartisan, bicameral investigation into what went wrong in the Federal…”

“we got word today that there will be a bipartisan, bicameral investigation into what went wrong in the Federal Government's response to Hurricane Katrina. This is welcome news. A full investigation will help us understand, in detail, how we can improve our disaster response capabilities to prevent this sort of mishandling from ever happening again. The problem is that an investigation will take months. Meanwhile, it is clear that the Federal Government still does not have its act together on this crisis; and in the meantime, people are dying. Here are just a few of the recent foul-ups: In the Gulf of Mexico, the USS Bataan, a Navy hospital ship, has been sitting in the Gulf of Mexico since Hurricane Katrina hit. Yet the Bataan's hundreds of hospital beds are still going empty. FEMA has requested hundreds of firefighters from around the country to rescue Katrina victims, but for 4 days they have been sitting idle in a hotel at the Atlanta airport and playing cards while studying FEMA history. Said one Pennsylvania firefighter, ``On the news every night you hear hurricane victims say, How come everybody forgot us? We didn't forget. We're stuck in Atlanta drinking beer.'' On Tuesday, FEMA asked the South Carolina Department of Public Health to scramble on only a half hour of notice to receive 180 injured evacuees from New Orleans. The South Carolina doctors then waited for hours for the evacuees to arrive in Charleston.…”