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The original is at http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2005/09/12/relief-timeline.html.
Katrina: Where it all went horribly, horribly wrong
Relief timeline reveals all
by Bob Wallet
As the last poor people are slung out of town, authorities in America are still mud slinging and demanding to know who exactly was responsible for the shambolic response to a major US city being wiped from the face of the Earth. The Rockall Times has pieced together the events in chronological order and discovered a startling error at the very heart of the Federal relief efforts.
31 August: State of Louisiana asks Washington for federal aid. Worst affected areas are New Orleans and Gulfport. Damage from Hurricane Katrina is complicated by widespread flooding from breached levees.
32 August, amended to 1 September: Whitehouse spokesman announces "massive relief aid is on its way".
2 September: 136 Chinook helicopters from the US 96th Airborne Division arrive on the outskirts of New York. Five hours later, having discovered their mistake, they leave taking the provisions with them.
3 September: President Bush apologises to the citizens of New Orleans for the administrative cock-up. "We never abandon our fellow Americans," he insists.
4 September: US 96th Airborne Division finally arrive in New Jersey. Told to get lost by irate residents who have their roofs blown off by the choppers.
5 September: Prime Minister of New Zealand thanks Condoleeeeeezaaa Rice's offer of speedy and generous help, but insists that they are fine for now. Maybe next year.
6 September: White House sets up a new "Federal Relief and Action Task Force" headed by Major General Sergeant Heath B Robinson, an Eyerack veteran decorated during the Vietnam war against Vietnam. Major General Robinson's brief is "to pay attention to detail and avoid the silly mistakes of the past few days". By 7pm two hundred thousand tonnes of food, medicines and shelter provisions are hauled out of the massive Ronald Reagan Military Facility in Whitesock, Mississippi.
7 September: Two hundred thousand tonnes of food, medicines and shelter provisions arrive in New Hampshire. Starving residents of Gulfport are enraged to hear that their provisions have been delivered to Southport in England. Major General Heath B Robinson is demoted to Private and posted to Nomchock in Greenland.
8 September: President Bush takes personal responsibility of the relief effort and promises "swift and devastating action" to help his fellow Americans in New Orleans and Gulfport. 12.15 local time, aid and relief provisions on the USS Loudon Wainwright III arrive in the port of New Delhi, eighty thousand miles away from Louisiana. Spelling error is blamed for the mistake.
9 September: President Bush, complaining of sleep deprivation brought on by the disaster, hands control to Dick "Sickbed" Cheney. Provisions stored in a military warehouse in Bloomingfont, Illinois, immediately go missing and are written off. Two hours later a second movement of provisions is taken by the US 4th Airborne Division and the US 965th Infantry Division, the feared "Sioux City Bloodmen".
10 September: Two US army divisions are discovered by state patrolmen on Highway Twelve in Idaho asking for directions to Colorado. They are turned back. Both divisions, including the feared "Sioux City Bloodmen" are last seen stuck in thick mud five miles west of Des Moines heading for Seattle.
11 September: Following an idea found in a Whitehouse staff suggestion box, responsibility for getting aid to New Orleans is handed over to the Coca Cola corporation, famed for placing vending machines in the Congo rainforest and rail stations in North Korea and Kaliningrad. Twelve minutes later, eighty thousand tonnes of food, twelve hundred tonnes of medicines, sixty thousand tents, and two million bottles of Diet Coke arrive in New Orleans and Gulfport. They are met by state officials who tell them that the last citizens were taken to Texas three days ago.
As The Rockall Times went to press stories were circulating of a US aircraft carrier being dismantled on a beach near New Delhi, New Zealand health officials had reported a surge in weight of citizens in the greater Auckland area, and a team of US soldiers with headbands and blackened faces listening to Ja Rule had arrived in Newport, South Wales.
Previously
From The Rockall Times Monday 12th September 2005
http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/.