Guard Under Equipped for Hurricanes
This may be one of the most important stories I’ve read recently. And of course, it isn’t get any play in the "Main Stream Media." Our National Guard is under equipped by up to 75% of their needs. And this isn’t a new problem. Post 9/11 they were 30 percent under-equipped. And this doesn’t even take into account how many thousands of the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas National Guard members were in Iraq, and therefore not available to help.
In Louisiana, about 100 of the Guard’s high-water vehicles remain abroad—even as the state continues to rebuild from Hurricane Katrina. Coastal North Carolina is missing nearly half its Humvee fleet, and Guard officials there said shortages have forced the state to pool equipment from different units into one pot of hurricane supplies. Vehicles are particularly crucial to hurricane response because they are often the only way to ferry ice and water through devastated areas.
"I think everyone this season is concerned about the capability of the National Guard and what we have," said Capt. Matt Handley, a spokesman for the National Guard of North Carolina. "We’ll be ready, but hopefully we’ll have a slow (hurricane) season."
The lack of equipment is not a new phenomenon, said Jack Harrison, spokesman for the National Guard Bureau, the administrative arm of the service. Even before the terrorist attacks of 2001, non-deployed Guard units had only about 70 percent of the equipment they needed, he said.
But fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has taken an even greater toll. Last year, Guard units not on active duty had only about 34 percent of their equipment. That number has since fallen to about 26 percent, although much of the shortages have been in equipment better-suited for combat, rather than hurricane response, Harrison said.
While more equipment is staying behind, more guardsmen are coming home. As of March, there were 55,000 guardsmen in Iraq and Afghanistan, down from 80,000 a year before.
A report from the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) last year shows major gaps in equipment that could be used to respond to a hurricane or other disasters. In May 2005, Guard units here had only about 8 percent of the tractor trailers they were allotted and none of the Humvees with added armor, according to the GAO report.
Do you feel safer? I sure don’t. I also suggest you click here and read the 38-page GAO report on this topic. Maybe we should be taking some of the revenue lost from tax cuts to the richest 1 percent and buy our men and women tasked with protecting us the equipment they need.
