Repub donor responsible for failed evacuation of N.O. -Greg Palast

[jasmeel]

Today on Democracy Now there was a great segment by Greg Palast regarding N.O. and the failure to create an evacuation plan. A company called Innovative Emergency Mgmt (IEM) was asked to come up w/a plan to evacuate New Orleans (and paid $500,000 for said plan). Palast went to their headquarters in NO and asked for a copy of the plan- they kicked him out of their offices. Apparently no one can find the plan!

After this great failure IEM was hired to evaluate what went wrong w//Katrina!!!

http://www.democracynow.org/index.shtml

Anyone wanna call/email IEM and ask them for a copy of the evacuation plan for N.O.? I think ya do.
Chris Kisling [e-mail]
Business Development Manager
8555 United Plaza Blvd., Suite100
Baton Rouge, LA 70809
Voice: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Here's a link to the partial transcript:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/28/1342209

snip<What kind of evacuation plan would leave 127,000 to sink or swim? It turns out that the Bush administration had contracted out evacuation planning to a corporation, IEM, Innovative Emergency Management. I couldn't locate their qualifications, but I did locate their list of donations to the Republican Party. We went to Baton Rouge to talk to them.

These are the offices of Innovative Emergency Management. They were the ones that were paid a half-million bucks to come up with an emergency evacuation plan for the city of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. One problem is, I can't find the plan. So I’m coming here to ask them about it.

So when I showed up at their office, they would only talk to me from behind a glass wall. By phone.

Did you in fact come up with a plan, because it says it’s urgent to come up with a plan? Did you come up -- can you just tell me if you came up with a plan or not? I’m just happy to talk to you one-on-one. You're probably about 12 feet away from me. Or somewhere. I don't know, are you hiding in this office somewhere? I’m happy to speak to you face-to-face.

We can’t find your plan -- neither can FEMA -- that you were paid a half-million dollars for, that at least claimed to here. We can't find this plan. And it’s kind of a problem. I guess it's kind of hard to evacuate a city, if you can't find the plan itself.>snip

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

1. I wonder how much of the 500K wound up right back in RNC coffers?

[jasmeel]

2. And I wonder how much they're being paid for the new evaluation

of what went wrong w/the response to katrina.x(

[TomInTib]

4. I have a friend who is bidding on a contract for corrosion-proof

coating on a Bechtel project.

Two bidders - an English company and my friend.

My friend's product is twice as good at half the price.

The very next day after the bid was made, my friend started receiving calls from the RNC asking for a $50K contribution.

Although he is a life-long 'pub, he is sick of the current situation and tells me he will never vote the party line again.

He refused to make the "contribution". But the phone calls kept coming.

Bechtel tells him they are "reconsidering" the bid.

This is a public project, by the way.

And my friend is planning to go public with this.

[havocmom]

9. Possible to get more info out about this shakedown?

Give Michael Moore a heads-up, at least.

When your friend goes public, get info to us ASAP so we can flood LTTE columns all over America.

The GOP is a bunch of thugs running a Protection Racket. The media isn't gonna tell the tale. We MUST.

You know how to get hold of me if your pal goes public. We'll get behind with letters and calls.

[TomInTib]

10. I will get back to you on this

later today.

This is an incredible story.

But I am out the door for the day.

[ThomWV]

13. Tell Your Friend To Call The Inspector General Of The Agency

To call the Inspector General of the Agency that has the Invitation for Bids out.

In general the Inspector's General will do their job and in this case some very very serious laws are being broken if what you imply is actually going on. The IG is the place to go.

[Catbird]

19. IGs often protect the agency, not the public.

In many agencies part of the responsibility of the Inspector General is to deal discretely with problems to avoid bad PR. They are generally serious about their responsibilities, but making sure the public knows about problems is not one of them. Contacting the IG might help in an individual case or with a specific problem individual. But I wouldn't count on them to deal with widespread corruption if it exists.

[Joanne98]

17. Go to the bloggers first and let them go to Lou Dobbs. Get them on tape to

[havocmom]

21. Good plan. And Alert KO too

He seems to enjoy exposing crooks.

[Ian David]

3. I found a copy of IEM's plans...

[jasmeel]

5. Looks about right!

[Ian David]

8. The tip-off should have been when all their specs were given in Cubits.n/t

[TomInTib]

7. That's not the one I found.

It was in red crayon on a grocery bag reading:

RUN
MOTHERFUCKER
RUN

[jasmeel]

6. I emailed Chris Kisling-let's see what he has to say for himself.

He'll probably just say the plan is a state secret or some shit.

[lonestarnot]

11. I emailed also.

[dogday]

12. K&R for freedom of information

You bet a phone call is in order to IEM ...

[The Deacon]

14. Dealt With IEM

In Huntsville, AL on a FEMA contracted rewrite of local emergency plans (eventually they were to be paid to rewrite Huntsville, Mobile, Birmingham & Montgomery's emergency plans.) My impression of them wasn't great - a consulting group set up to take advantage of all the "Homeland Security" grants to change the focus to terrorism. Well, funny thing - outside of New York City & Washington, D.C. every major city in the United States have risks which are much higher than the risk of terrorism (i.e., Los Angeles & San Francisco - earthquake; Dallas, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Wichita, Kansas City, Omaha - tornado; Gulf Coast (including Houston) - tropical storms.) A man by the name of DeWitt recognized this - and developed something called "All Hazards Planning" (probably why Jimmy Carter made him head of FEMA.) The idea is, no matter what the cause of the disaster, the folks affected are going to need pretty much the same things, no matter the size of the disaster the challenges are going to be pretty much the same (just different in scale - getting water to 100 people in a high school gym in Western Kansas stranded by a tornado presents much the same logistical challenges as getting water to 10,000 people stranded in the Superdome in NOLA); all of this is predictable stuff we've been talking about for years (ten years ago the Red Cross told authorities we would not set up a shelter within the city limits of New Orleans - there was no building we considered safe. We recommended early mandatory evacuations with use of school buses & city buses.)
You don't hear much about "All Hazards Planning" from Homeland Security. In fact, if you want to hold a drill on response to a tornado or hurricane, about the only way you can get Homeland Security money for it is to throw in someone blowing up a chemical plant or something.

[Old and In the Way]

15. Classic Republican public management.

Offload responsibility and create profits by privatizing the work to their political cronies. This, in a nutshell, is why our country is in such a mess.

[bvar22]

16. Hence, my new bumper sticker:

Thanks, C_U_L8R

[AnnInLa]

18. Is this one of Neil bush's companies?

[jasmeel]

20. Not that I can find. They may just be regular old repukes. n/t