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This is the Louisiana declaration of a state of emergency prior to the storm, which is required before the President can issue the Federal declaration of a state of emergency and put the Federal Emergency Management Agency in charge of the emergency.

Both were issued and in place while Katrina was out in the Gulf.

I keep hearing this crap about “the local officials didn’t ask”. Excuse me, but when exactly did the governor of Louisiana ask the Federal government to ship the state’s National Guard and equipment to Iraq?

Update: Jillian of skippy pointed to a Larry Johnson post at the TPM Cafe on the National Response Plan that gives FEMA the power and responsibility to do whatever it believes is necessary, like they did last year in Florida.

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The Culture Ghost has made a note to himself to take the money that he would normally spend on Christmas and use it to help the victims of Katrina.

If you can’t make that commitment, remember: there are any number of projects that offer various merchandise with the proceeds going to disaster relief that can be used as gifts.

You can make donations in the name of those on your gift list and many organizations will send a letter acknowledging the gift to the person.

This is a long-term problem and I think we can all agree that the government is not up to the task.

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In addition to preventing private assistance to the victims in New Orleans, FEMA is interfering with foreign governments attempting to contact their citizens. Australian Broadcasting says Australian officials are frustrated by limited access to hurricane victims.

For those who wondered why the Secretary of State needed to cancel her vacation for a “domestic problem”, this is why.

You would think that the senior cabinet officer [check your Constitution] might be able to do something about this, but apparently not.

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WJHG in Panama City has a report on local military response.

Checking around it turns out that the people seen doing calisthenics and playing basketball on Keesler AFB are security and engineering people as the rest of the base was evacuated and now being re-assigned as there is little for them to return to. The base is supplying Biloxi with clean water and generators because they don’t need them. There are reports that the base personnel had to repel looters.

The Air Force sent an engineering force to the base on August 30 ^th, but it is possible that the base won’t be re-built. Keesler AFB is second only to the casinos as an employer in Biloxi.

Also lost was a veteran’s nursing home near the base.

CBC is reporting that U.S. Air Force sends men home to help their families cope. These are people who were sent to the Middle East from bases that were affected. Their families would have remained at the bases, and there are some things that can only be dealt with by a member of the military regarding reimbursement and relocation.

Somewhere in the scanning I’ve been doing, probably on a .mil site I saw the Commander of Northern Command, the military component that handles things in the US, wondering why FEMA hasn’t asked for more assistance.

It will be interesting to see if Trent Lott and the Mississippi delegation can convince the Pentagon to rebuild.

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