42 people are dead as the massive ice storm that ravaged great swaths of America subsides to reveal the devastation that reaches through several states. Over a million people are without power, heat and basic sanitation and are facing sub-zero temperatures in some places, are running low on food and clean water, and cannot even reliably heat their homes or cook food. This is truly a disaster but where is FEMA? Where is Obama?
In Kentucky where 11 people have already been murdered by the criminal ineptitude of this administration, a tiny force of 25 National Guardsmen were deployed to help recovery in hard hit Grayson County, but weren’t given the proper equipment to do so. People are staying in motels and shelters because authorities have no way to ensure their safety if they stay in their homes. It is a scene more chaotic than Katrina and much more dangerous, yet the thousands of Americans in danger of freezing to death are being largely ignored by the same howling masses that called for Bush’s blood after Katrina, even though he authorized the largest rescue effort in American history.
How bad is the disaster?
From the AP:
MARION, Ky. – In some parts of rural Kentucky, they’re getting water the old-fashioned way — with pails from a creek. There’s not room for one more sleeping bag on the shelter floor. The creative are flushing their toilets with melted snow.
At least 42 people have died, including 11 in Kentucky, and conditions are worsening in many places days after an ice storm knocked out power to 1.3 million customers from the Plains to the East Coast. About a million people were still without electric Friday, and with no hope that the lights will come back on soon, small communities are frantically struggling to help their residents.
One county put it bluntly: It can’t.“We’re asking people to pack a suitcase and head south and find a motel if they have the means, because we can’t service everybody in our shelter,” said Crittenden County Judge-Executive Fred Brown, who oversees about 9,000 people, many of whom are sleeping in the town’s elementary school.
Local officials were growing angry with what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In Grayson County, about 80 miles southwest of Louisville, Emergency Management Director Randell Smith said the 25 National Guardsmen who have responded have no chain saws to clear fallen trees.
“We’ve got people out in some areas we haven’t even visited yet,” Smith said. “We don’t even know that they’re alive.”
Smith said FEMA has been a no-show so far.
“I’m not saying we can’t handle it; we’ll handle it,” Smith said. “But it would have made life a lot easier” if FEMA had reached the county sooner, he said.FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak said some FEMA personnel already are in Kentucky working in the state’s emergency operations center and that more will be arriving in coming days. Hudak said FEMA also has shipped to 50 to 100 generators to the state to supply electricity to facilities like hospitals, nursing homes, and water treatment plants.
Had Mary Hudak been working for President Bush her cavalier attitude would be untenable. But because Obama’s perfidious cult reaches into the traditional media and alternative media there is scarce criticism of the virtual death sentence hundreds of women and children are living under courtesy of FEMA and Barack Obama:
Thousands of people were staying in motels and shelters, asked to leave their homes by authorities who said emergency teams in some areas were too strapped to reach everyone in need of food, water and warmth. The outages disabled water systems, and authorities warned it could be days or weeks before power was restored in the most remote spots.
That uncertainty had many appealing for help and officials urging those in dark homes to leave, if they could — many were stuck in place by blocked roads and other obstacles.
The storm that began in the Midwest had been blamed or suspected in at least 42 deaths, including 11 in Kentucky, nine in Arkansas, six each in Texas and Missouri, three in Virginia, two each in Oklahoma, Indiana and West Virginia and one in Ohio. Most were blamed on hypothermia, traffic accidents and carbon monoxide poisoning.
From Missouri to Ohio, thousands were waiting in shelters for the power to return. As far away as Oklahoma, around 10,000 customers still had no electricity.
At Graves County High School in western Kentucky, where 490 sought shelter Friday night, Ruthann Taylor, 23, said she tried to ride out the early part of the storm at home with her 1-year-old son, but it simply got too cold.
“I woke up the next morning and my son was pretty much an ice cube,” Taylor said. “I said ‘OK, we’ve got to go.'”
Fuel shortages, a problem since the storm, spilled into the weekend, with radio stations that normally broadcast music telling people where they could get gas and oil businesses ranking customers according to how urgently they needed it.
“We’re trying to prioritize to get fuel to hospitals, nursing homes, ambulance services,” said David Dunlap, regional sales manager for MFA Oil Co., which has 10 locations in southeast Missouri.
As many if not more people are being displaced by this storm, the death toll continues to rise and there is absolutely no outcry by the usual suspects. While Obama poses for the cameras and the media seeks to deify the product of the progressive plantation (and thus themselves and their own foolishness) Americans he has the power to save with the stroke of a pen are dying. Meanwhile our media shows less concern than Australian papers.
Update: The death toll is at 55.
anything that obama said to do is happening right away he talked about a change ther goes your change he is signing anything that gets on his head on a hearth beat just like somebody will bring down somebody who they consider to be their enemy curse be the man that trust man
Gen. John W. Heltzel, director of Kentucky’s Division of Emergency Management has nothing but good things to say about FEMA under President Obama:
“This is an amazing effort and we have worked long hours to move supplies and equipment. Our working partnership with FEMA ensures we are getting excellent help under difficult circumstances for Kentuckians suffering from the winter storm,” said Gen. John W. Heltzel, director of Kentucky’s Division of Emergency Management.
Robert-Did he have anything to say about all the dead people? Or the tepid response to those deaths?
I guess you don’t care about those people. Nor the proper definition of “Hemorrhage” by the looks of your site. Those deaths are partly on your head.
Rod……
FEMA or any organization can do everything right and during some emergencies, people die. Your logic is flawed, because people die, Obama bad.
I am sure FEMA could have done better here and elsewhere. However, the reports in state are pretty consistant that FEMA acted quickly.
Those death are terrible. I hope that FEMA will be adequately funded in the future so causulties like this can be reduced.
My heart goes out to the families and friends of those that died. They are in my thoughts and prayers.
Nothing new, I ran into the same thing in Indiana floods, wrong color. Bush probably still had something to do with this. At least that’s what the Dummycrats and Lie-berals probably think.
It’s really okay guys! It’s FEMA, it’s Obama, the Dead and dying are White and poor…FEMA nor Obama can use them so, well, you know, it’s okay!
Yes, I am being facious, but, since President George W Bush was White and got drug over the coals because New Orleans is a Chocolate City…..I just assumed that the opposite is the case here. Obama has admitted that he hates Whitey so how simple is it to allow nature to take it’s course? He will soon (at this rate) have the CHANGE he preached, but, could not voice prior to the Election! Whitey Gone (DEAD) Black In (CONTROL)! WHO IS RACIST? Could it be Liberals, Democrats, The NEW Government, The New First Family in the WHITE HOUSE? ME Believeth so!
WAKE UP DRIVE BY MEDIA! THIS IS PULITZER STUFF AND YOU ARE STILL DANCING WITH GOD KNOWS WHAT. Take a good unbiased look at what you are doing and then start writing real stories! Write about the REAL FIRST FAMILY. Write about the fact that your photographers are NOT allowed to get candid shots of YOUR New Idol, but can only have what he doles out to you. Write about the stupidity he is showing by trying to make peace with Terrorist Groups just so they can come back to make 9/11 look like a minimal practice run!!
I DARE YOU TO DO YOUR UNBIASED JOB AND REPORT THE TRUTH!
I also suggest that any of you who believe in God pray and pray hard for forgiveness while you can….Obama will take you down and stand upon your graves. There is no one who is not expendable once He has reached his goal and you are helping him to reach it FAST! Only then will you see the real Obama…I don’t think he is what you thought he would be. But, he Is YOURS whether you still want him or not!!! May God have Mercy upon your Souls!.
Robert_First of all it’s Rob but that you didn’t catch that is indicative of how little research you do. I have two separate reports linked to and excerpted above show that FEMA has not reacted quickly or well.
42 people are dead and more WILL die soon. That’s O.K. with you because Obama’s in power but in Katrina it wasn’t. Your hypocrisy is amazing. Why isn’t Obama there? Why isn’t the media? Because like the classist you are the deaths of middle Americans is simply something you giggle at while quoting the books you never read to each other in Brooklyn coffee houses.
Hattie-Nice try Moby. Take the race baiting elsewhere. There are plenty of Black dead people in the ice storm.
The biggest difference between this incident and Katrina is that this Ice storm came and went pretty quickly with no warning. Katrina was a known storm for several days before it hit Louisiana. And when it did millions of people were displaced. thousands of people died. And its not about race unless you want it to be. If you feel that this ice storm is being ignored because the people there are white, then you are agreeing that Bush ignored Louisiana because the victims there were Black. Are you saying Bush is racist? Cause I never though that was a motive, but the way you are painting it I might have been naive to believe that was the case.
Alex- Thousands died? Bullshit. 1500 people died in Louisiana “indirectly” during Katrina, meaning that that murders, drug overdoses and other non-storm related deaths were counted in the tally. Louisiana has more shooting related deaths than Iraq (mostly in New Orleans) and a large population of drug addicts. More than 1500 people lose their life in New Orleans every year, but there are no tears from you for them.
The point is that Bush initiated the largest rescue operation in American history with 30,000 people pulled off of rooftops after Katrina cleared. Obama watched the Superbowl while people are still unaccounted for.
And since I’m Bi-racial like your precious Obama don’t come here and try to race card me. I never said it’s about race, your reaction to these deaths as insignificant i certainly about class (in both senses of the word) and ideology trumping your non-existent humanity. It was one of your friends posting under a different name (from the same IP) that tried to inject race here, so calm yourself.
But “If you feel that this ice storm is being ignored because the people there are white, then you are agreeing that Bush ignored Louisiana because the victims there were Black. Are you saying Bush is racist?” is just asinine. If you think Bush is a racist (which all lefties claim) doesn’t that mean Obama is? Oh wait, that kind of logic doesn’t stand up.
Bush was in New Orleans, Obama’s at a SuperBowl party. Bush activated thousands of FEMA agents, Obama hasn’t even mentioned this crisis. And you didn’t either because you simply don’t care. You didn’t care about Katrina, you just needed a way to attack Bush, and you don’t care about the people who are even now trapped in a house with no food water or heat.
Right now someone is about to die and all you care about is protecting Obama. Doesn’t that say something about you?
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Well I wonder how dumb can people get? No matter what happens somebody is going to complain! He is the president! Why or better yet what in the hell is he gonna go in the middle of an ice storm for? Yea Bush came to New Orleans (over a week later). But what was Bush going to do in New Orleans while it was flooding? What has the people complaining down about either? What have you done, did you fly,ride or drive to help? Heck NO! just making things worst by complaining. Or maybe you watched the superbowl also. The fact is you don’t know what the president or fema is doing or have down to assist so SHUT UP!! LET HE WITHOUT SIN OR FAULT CAST THE FIRST STONE!
“It is a scene more chaotic than Katrina and much more dangerous…”
-Are people really stupid enough to believe propaganda nonsense like this? To call this Obama’s Katrina? As for the 1.3 million without power, as a resident of California, power outages are no death defining incidents and citizens have many tools applicable at their hands to get through those times. As people have said, FEMA acted as quickly as possible. If you expect “wide swaths” of America to be attended to in mere hours then you are living in a dreamland, my friends. And that “largest rescue effort ever” issued by Bush was ONLY a few days late. At the time of Katrina hitting, he was at a promotional event with none other than John McCain. And that’s not a lie.
Bush, when asked about Katrina, said that he would have landed a plane there to see what was going on but did not want to distract the personnel to help and protect him instead of the American people. As if the major blunder he made was not showing up. A confused man who doesn’t even know why people are angry at him.
If you count this as a Katrina, hell, i don’t even know how many Katrinas President Bush had. A city of millions underwater from a hurricane they knew would hit days before with levees they knew would fail, or this? My heart goes out to the people suffering through this, but I’d like to get my news source about what FEMA is doing and how quickly somewhere else than this clearly biased website.
^Comment above me. Amen to that Michael Smith. Find out independently what FEMA is up to, not through this man who clearly hated the president before he ever stepped into office. I can’t wait until something really unfortunate happens. I’m going to wait until Obama REALLY messes up. As for the Bush administration’s real screw-ups, just google it and you’ll find plenty.
John when power goes out in California are you trapped in a house by downed power lines and can’t leave? Are you unable to heat your house while nightly temperatures go to freezing?
The point is you were quick (and still are) to blame Bush of a city shaped like a bowl flooding during a Hurricane. But you won’t blame Obama for FEMA not getting to people who are still trapped in their house and freezing.
Understand that if you were trapped during Katrina you could simply floay a board until you could wade out. The people trapped in thi ice storm can’t get out their houses and will freeze to death.
Your heart doesn’t go out to anyone, or you wouldn’t minimize the deaths that happened. You’re a degenerate.
Question for the people defending President Obama: what is preventing him from releasing a heartfelt statement asking the American people to consider volunteering and making donations to the Red Cross? He could both acknowledge the disaster and rally Americans to help. Wasn’t that one of Obama’s big criticisms of President Bush’s reaction post-9/11 – that there was no national call to service following the attack?
I’m appalled at the idiocy in defending Obama by these bafoons commenting here, Rob. As a Louisiana native, I THANK YOU for your comment about the deaths occurring because of the dipshits who REFUSED to leave their homes DAYS before Katrina hit. And your comment about the death toll in N.O. every year due to the crime, as well as the deaths that were contributed to Katrina but were actually from the criminals taking advantage of the situation. Thank you for a VERY HONEST post!