Even Loudoun County help is dissed

Wow, isn't anybody good enough for FEMA?

Irate Sheriff Still On Standby To Assist Louisiana

Sep 02, 2005 -- Loudoun Sheriff Stephen O. Simpson said this evening that he cannot understand why he has been unable to send a group of 22 deputies to Louisiana to assist a law enforcement agency there that asked for help Wednesday night.

“I was so angry [Thursday],” Simpson said this evening. “I was foaming at the mouth yesterday. We’ve been tied up in this bureaucratic red tape for 12 hours now and people are dying. We need to be getting down there and helping people and we can’t get someone to answer the phone and answer a simple damn question and give me the authorization I need.”

A communication breakdown with FEMA, the State of Louisiana, and other federal and state agencies prevented the team of Loudoun deputies from getting any farther than Harrisonburg. That is where they were when the sheriff told them at about 12:30 a.m. today to turn around and come home. Simpson said he tried all Thursday to get insurance clearance for the deputies so that they would be covered in case of an injury. Hurricane Katrina left major destruction in three states, killing hundreds of people and flooding the entire city of New Orleans after levees failed.

He said the reports that communication networks are not working well in the Gulf region are false because he knew for a fact agencies were communicating, just not with him.

The chain of events started Wednesday night when Simpson said he got a message from the National Sheriff’s Association that the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, near New Orleans, sent out a request for more law enforcement assistance. Simpson responded and within hours he had 22 deputies volunteer for the first of what was going to be three trips to Harvey, Louisiana.

The group was supposed to leave at noon Thursday, but Simpson said the unit didn’t get out of Loudoun until 9 p.m. after several hours of delays for paperwork. The group reached Harrisonburg shortly after midnight when they were told to return to Loudoun. The team returned to Loudoun at about 2 a.m.

Simpson said he got a call from the Louisiana State Police telling him not to send anyone because the state didn’t have a place to house the deputies or a place to park their vehicles. But Simpson said those logistics had already been worked out and that he was confused by the state police directive.

“Because in Virginia, I know the superintendent of the state police is appointed by the governor and answers to the governor,” Simpson said. “And I was just watching the governor of Louisiana on TV saying anybody and everybody please come help and now you, with state police, are telling me not to come? Once he tells me that, I ask him again, with all due respect, where is this coming from?”

Simpson and others around the world have watched as the magnitude of the problem has grown in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, where people are still on rooftops begging for help, treading through flood waters and looting stores. Simpson said the frustration grew even larger after he heard another police officer was shot in Louisiana.

“For the FEMA director to stand there and say we’ve called in every available resource and we’re doing everything we can, that’s bull,” Simpson said.

And what's really sad is these guys were trying to get to Jefferson Parish and would have been there by Friday. You know, the place where the guy's mother died on Friday after being promised help over and over again...

People are dying who survived the storm and the flood because help isn't getting to them in time, and help is being turned away. What is going on??