Chron: Perry overestimated; No, he underestimated
Tom Tyler calls our attention to a recent article by the Chronicle Austin bureau's R.G. Ratcliffe that can't seem to decide how to attack Gov. Rick Perry's response to the Act of God that devastated New Orleans.
Early in the article, there is this criticism:
The deluge of Louisiana hurricane evacuees has left questions about whether Texas officials had adequately planned to handle the thousands driven from their homes by a major disaster.
The capacity of facilities in Houston, San Antonio and Dallas to house evacuees was far below what Gov. Rick Perry had offered to Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco last week. And by Sunday, Perry's office admitted that "unsuitable overflow conditions" may exist at some shelters and began organizing an airlift to other states.
So, Gov. Perry overestimated our state's ability to shelter evacuees?
Except, there's this:
While the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans was massive, the fact Perry and his staff repeatedly underestimated how many people could be housed at facilities in Texas raised questions about how well the state had prepared for a hurricane here or a major terrorist attack that created thousands of evacuees.
So, now Gov. Perry underestimated?
Does the Austin bureau have editors? Or was the bureau chief too busy moonlighting as a weekend lefty editorialist to oversee properly the accuracy of dispatches coming out of Austin?
There's also this bit of underreporting:
Perry had first announced last Wednesday that Texas would house 25,000 in the Reliant Astrodome. But the Astrodome's capacity for evacuees was far below what Perry had offered, so Mayor Bill White had to order other facilities opened to house people.
That conveniently leaves out the facts that the fire marshall stopped evacuees for a time, there was legitimate talk of turning those evacuees away, the Chronicle misreported the number of waiting buses in a manner that interestingly dovetailed with numbers put out by the mayor's spokesman, and the pounding that city officials were taking from live coverage of the potential fiasco by Dave Ward and KTRK-13 finally seemed to get the attention of the mayor's staff and to get the situation under control.
Despite the angles taken by various journalists covering this story, the bigger story remains just how well Houston and Texas have managed the aftermath of this catastrophe. In time, we'll discover mistakes, and we should certainly learn from those. But mistakes aren't the story in Texas right now (except in the editing of this Austin dispatch, one supposes).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/07/05 12:05 PM | Print |
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