Galveston Mayor finds political supporters around the world after Rita evacuation stories

Houston Chronicle:

As Hurricane Rita, the third-strongest Atlantic storm on record, bore down on the Texas coast as the third strongest Atlantic storm on record last week, Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas was in high demand for television interviews seen around the world.

Her city was in peril and people wanted to know what she was doing to protect lives and property on Galveston Island.

In individual interviews on such shows as the Today Show, Nightline and on CNN, as well as during televised, twice-daily briefings for dozens of journalists covering the storm, Thomas appeared cool and collected. She was forceful in her pleas that citizens evacuate Galveston, poised to handle any question and genuinely concerned about the safety of all citizens, rich and poor.

The performances resulted in a flood of e-mails from around the world from people complimenting Thomas and other city officials for their handling of the emergency, particularly for the preparation and execution of an evacuation on publicly owned buses of more than 3,200 poor and disabled people who had no easy way to get out of town.

"I am ... impressed with your evacuation plans," wrote one person from Canada. "Thank you for remembering the seniors, disabled and poor people in your city plans. Job well done."

Two people from Sweden sent their compliments and asked Thomas to send them autographed photos for their collections "of very important persons of today's world."

From a Chico, Calif., woman came commendations "on your quick action to save the citizens of your city."

...


Comments

  1. bbeth7:16 AM

    She did do a great job, but getting 500,000 out would have presented a much larger problem. Maybe she would have been equal to the task.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more