Military relief effort in Houston to equal that of Katrina...

Thanks to Lee for the link!

via Stripes.com

Several thousand troops will soon join about 3,500 servicemembers already responding to Hurricane Harvey rescue efforts in southeastern Texas in an operation that could equal the size of the military’s response to Hurricane Katrina, a National Guard general said Tuesday.

Air Force Gen. James Witham, the domestic operations director for the National Guard Bureau, said military efforts could last several weeks and grow as large as the Pentagon’s involvement in 2005 to Katrina, when some 50,000 guardsmen and 20,000 active-duty servicemembers participated in the response to the devastating storm in Louisiana and Mississippi.

“This will be a long-term effort,” Witham told reporters Tuesday at the Pentagon. “Usually when the Guard responds to hurricane-type events we normally talk about that first 72 to 96 hours for life saving and sustainment then we’re into a recovery effort. Due to the nature of this storm as it spins across southeast Texas for days and dumps record or historical levels of rainfall … our response to this hurricane has been very different than ever before.”

Already some 3,000 Texas National Guardsmen and about 500 active-duty soldiers and airmen are participating in rescue operations, primarily by boat but also by helicopter, Witham said. The bureau on Tuesday was in the process of alerting between 20,000 and 30,000 additional National Guard troops, primarily from states around Texas, to prepare to deploy should Texas Gov. Greg Abbott request them.

Story here. 

The response is TOO SLOW!  Units should be ready to move in or be forward staged in the area.  To move people in later is good for public relations.  We'll hear about units acting valiantly, and they'll toss humanitarian assistance awards around like candy.

But the reality is much different.

The need for military assistance is soon to pass.  Hell it might have already passed once the full force is on deck.

Who took care of this drama?

Local Police and Sheriffs.  Medical Personnel.  City Transport/Utility workers. Customs and Border Protection.  The United States Coast Guard.  Border Patrol.  Louisiana and Texas Wildlife Agents.

The heavy lifting has been done by local law enforcement and other first responders of every stripe.  Also by the local city/county workers.

The govt fucked up the response again.  Bureaucrats are just INCAPABLE of acting in a timely manner.  Bureaucracies are incapable of moving rapidly.

This is the danger of big govt.

During the time of greatest need they default to the comfortable which is to make SLOW decisions after a ton of paperwork has been shuffled. Even my beloved Marine Corps has been infected by this disease.

Add this to another cause of our failures in recent wars.

NOTE:  Be advised though.  In the coming days you will hear all kinds of METRICS about how this was such a successful operation.  You will see people from all parts of the govt pat themselves on the back for how well they handled this terrible situation.

When they do that, and rest assured they will, remember the pics from this event.