10:25 am
Blanco’s chance to respond to criticism over Katrina response
WASHINGTON (AP) – Governor Kathleen Blanco is telling her side of the story. She tells senators that two powerful hurricanes “knocked us down, but didn’t knock us out.”
She says Louisiana needs jobs to bring citizens scattered around the country back together again.
Blanco is denying claims from FEMA’s former chief that she’s partly to blame for a failed response.
Former FEMA director Michael Brown told lawmakers yesterday that Blanco and other state and local officials bear much of the blame for what went wrong in the response to the storm.
In a statement issued in advance of today’s hearing, Blanco said she issued the evacuation order two days before the storm, and that it resulted in one-point-three (m) million people leaving the city.
She accused Brown of uttering “falsehoods and misleading statements” under oath to Congress, and called that “shocking.”
Posted by: Jon