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All for and brownie, you are doing a heck of a job, the fema director is working 24 [ applause ] they are working 24 hours a day. again, my attitude is if it is not going exactly right, we will make it go exactly right. and as new yorkers prepare for irene, some are old enough to recall the blizzard of 69 that dumped 20 inches of snow on the city and left mayor john lindsey s political future burieded under the avalanche of criticism for the inept of that storm, so what kind of damage could irene do for the politici politicians in the path? mike viqueira joins us from the white house. mike, given the fact that the president has been making sure that we all know he is being briefed on a daily basis and even though he is on vacation, do you think that he is mindful of how damaging hurricane katrina was to his predecessor? i don t think that there is any doubt that there have been hard lessons learned by presidents and local officials ....
Evening when he departs martha s vineyard. it is interesting because we had been asking the white house officials for a few days if the president would change his vacation plans and come back early because of irene, and they have been saying, no he won t change his plans, because the president can essentially do his job from just about everywhere, but something changed today when we asked the deputy spokesperson about it, he said that president obama decided it is more prudent to be in the nation s capital when the storm hits. martin? nbc s kristen welker reporting. you get home safely as well. thank you, martin. and like a storm surge smashing into the seawall, the nexus of politics can lead to unexpected consequences for the leaders. consider the decision by president george w. bush releasing this infamous photo of himself surveying the devastation of hurricane katrina from 35,000 feet. once on the ground though, things went from bad to worse. again, i want to thank you ....
Everybody, and is it in your view the best proeparation possible for the hurricane? well nashgs are doi, they ar job alerting the public, but one thing with the east coast, they have not experienced a storm like this in so long that people may not heed the warnings or move to late to evacuate and that is when the drama will unfold. mr. nagin to look back for a momentt a hurricane katrina, it was not only devastating for the people there it proved damaging for the elected officials, so with the benefit of your experience, what are the critical actions that you think that need to be taken to ensure that hurricane irene or any other act of mother nature does not become katrina, part ii? well, martin, i wrote a book recently released on create space, a division of amazon, and i lay out specifically what we did. the most critical things is ....
To respond to the needs of people. and of course, another issue that becomes a problem, and in these types of things is the availability of gasoline. and the electric that runs the gas pumps, and you can see how compounded one of the disasters can get, and we are experienced and we know how the prepare and know how to respond and we stay there until the work is done. indeed, mayor nagin, the former mayor of new orleans was talking to me and said in the case of hurricane katrina, he felt that people individually didn t take their responsibilities as seriously as they might have done, and now many of us might question him on that, because fema s performance was hardly impressive, but do you think that people are sometimes irresponsible in circumstances like this? well, i think that people may be inexperienced and may be limited with their capacity to respond. i can tell you that we have never stopped working in new orleans. we continue to develop homes and are working with people the ....
Martin, it was a historic catastrophic event and clearly i could have done things better. you really believe that, sir? absolutely. now that i have had a chance to really go back and take a look, there are a number of things that i think that i could have done better. but in the evacuation situation where a catastrophic storm is approaching, the leader has one responsibility, and also the citizen has a responsibility to heed the warnings and act appropriately. and finally, and briefly, sir, you have been quoted in usa today saying that the city of new orleans is better because of katrina, and how so? well, we have gone through quite a bit of pain and struggles, but we are rebuilding everything, the school system, inf infrastructure and we have young, better educated people moving into the city, and where we used to concentrate poverty in the public housing projects, we are now mixed income communities, and so we have gone through a lot of pain, but we are getting better. fo ....