It takes a lot less time to put together a team of 50 verses a team of 20,000. Peopel need to understand that activating the military is not a easy task. When you call up the guard troops you have to, once the order is given, give them time to leave thier jobs, pack thier equipment and reprot to thier NG armory. Then they need to get the equpiment together, load it and set out for your destination. Most military convoys travel at 45-50 MPH. They are usually sent to a staging area outside the damage area and sent into locations as the onsite officials request them. This process takes 2 - 3 days depending on the diistance they have to go.
For the Huricane I am sure LS, MS, and AB Units were placed on standby. With the devistation as wide spread and total as it was it would take days for them to get to the worst areas as they would have to go through areas the they had to clear the way and help people along the way. The flood happened the day after and by the time they realized that they could not handle that on top of the rest it took the above mentioned time to get help there.
As far as active duty troops going in to help, well that takes an act of congress to do, under federal law. this would have still taken a few days to accomplish from the time of the request. Air drops of supplies started within 2 days of the flood, but there was not enough people to give the stuff out. Could this have be done better? Well we can all sit back in our homes and say this is a travisty and they should have acted faster, but until they ask for help what do you send. This will teach the Gov a lot about what needs to change to get elp there quicker and after this is over they will lok at what went right and wrong and learn from thier mistakes. But the congress will hold hearing and spend millions of dollar on a investigation that could be used by those that lost it all in the storm and flood. I think we need to stop trying to place blame, learn from the mistakes and do what needs to be done to help the recovery.
My 2 cents. from my experience in the military. Nothing the government does is done quickly, just look and congress and the senate.
