Katrina General Retiring From the Army
By GREG BLUESTEIN
FOREST PARK, Ga. (AP) — The gruff, cigar-chomping general who led federal troops into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is convinced America hasn’t learned its lesson from the storm.
As Lt. Gen. Russel Honore gets ready to retire from the Army and hand over his command on Friday, he says he wants to spend the rest of his life creating a “culture of preparedness” to prevent another post-disaster disaster.
“There’s an attitude everywhere else that people are smarter than they are in New Orleans and in Mississippi. They’re not,” the 60-year-old general said at his office at Fort Gillem, just outside Atlanta. “What happened in New Orleans could have happened anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard.”
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His next project is still taking shape, but he wants to see civil defense classes for young people that would teach first aid and survival basics, such as how to purify water. He wants to lobby drug stores and other businesses to keep generators in case of a long power failure. He wants cities to stockpile food and water so they don’t have to rely on the federal government.
And he wants to pressure every family to have an emergency plan, right down to backpacks with food, water, essential documents and medicine.
Although he hopes someday to return to Louisiana — he hasn’t ruled out a try at politics — he plans to use Atlanta as a launching pad for the project. He said he has discussed the idea with Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue’s staff and plans to meet with local business, civic and political leaders.
“In this new normal, with the possibility of terrorist attacks, natural disasters and industrial accidents, we need this culture of preparedness,” he said. “A vast part of America still thinks, `That couldn’t happen where I live.’ And they are dead damn wrong.” (more…)
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Now THIS is someone who would get my vote!
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