Article Highlights Coordination Difficulties
This article (from cbs2chicago.com) is about some Chicago firefighters that have been delayed in helping out the firefighters in New Orleans.
The fact is things are very difficult here, with the orders of evacuation being given, the city is on virtual lockdown. We had to pass through four different checkpoints just to get here to this spot in the French Quarter....
But in another example of the bureaucracy getting in the way of people to help, these Illinois firefighters are stopped 80 miles short of New Orleans and have been for the past 24 hours, throwing footballs instead of fighting fires.
I don't think people outside of emergency services realize the amount of coordination that needs to happen to effectively utilize all of the responders at an incident of this size. You can't just send them all in and say "Get to work".
Each and every responder needs to be tracked in case something were to happen to them - its called accountability. The responders themselves have needs such as food, water, and shelter that have to be arranged. Accurate reports from the incident need to be received so that proper deployment of responders can take place. All of these things take time but it helps insure the safety of the responders.
I wish the media reports would include some of this type of information instead of just barking about the slowness of emergency response - grrr.
