Reply #9: Look at this, from Sept. EIGHTH - "Local Rescue Team Returns Home Early" [View All]

[kath]

http://www.nbc11.com/news/4948994/detail.html

Local Rescue Team Returns Home Early

POSTED: 9:40 am PDT September 8, 2005
UPDATED: 10:05 am PDT September 8, 2005

A Bay Area Air National Guard wing is back from New Orleans more than a week earlier than expected. About a dozen members of the 129th Rescue Wing out of Moffett Field returned to Mountain View Wednesday night.
The group left for New Orleans on Monday and helped remove more than 200 people from their flooded homes. The team came home early because they say rescue efforts are winding down. One member says he wishes they had been sent sooner.
"We failed the people, the system failed the people. I wish we could've done something better - we could've done more, I guess. That's my only regret," said Senior Airman Mickey Chan. The unit sent medical teams and a chaplain to New Orleans.


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"Because rescue efforts are winding down"?!?! ON Sept 8?!?! WTF?!?!?
Shit, the Orange County rescue team (whose doc was the one who helped get an IV line into Mr. Hollingworth on Tuesday) wasn't even allowed to BEGIN its rescue work until Sept. 7 or 8. This was true for about **700** rescue personnel who were holed up in Dallas for DAYS because FEMA wouldn't let them into the disaster area. Others were stuck in Georgia - including the 50 firefighters who were assigned to be a backdrop for one of the Chimperor's photo-ops.

Then there's the Vancouver rescue team, who managed to sneak into New Orleans early, and got there 5 days before any US military. Then, even though they had food and water to be self-sufficient for TEN days, they were sent home early as soon as the Feds finally got there.

All these examples of impeding rescue efforts (and there are lots and lots and lots of them) need to be investigated BIG-TIME. Since there's probably not going to be any real govt. investigation, Michael Moore or someone ought to interview as many rescue crews as possible to find out details of all the bullshit that went on. I'd bet that rescuers are plenty pissed that they were not allowed to do the work they were trained to do in a timely fashion, **when people were still alive to be rescued**, or that their missions were cut short.