Galveston's Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas made a decision on Monday and ordered all city employees not to talk to news reporters. She did not say when that order would be lifted. Reporters staying at San Luis hotel were asked to leave Thomas and City Manager Steve LeBlanc will be the only officials allowed to talk to reporters. City spokeswoman Mary Jo Naschke vehemently denied the city was trying to clamp down on news coverage. She said emergency personnel and city employees were too busy to talk to reporters. Naschke also said the city had been accommodating news reporters by allowing them access to the island when others weren't allowed, giving them escorted rides to damaged areas and allowing them to move about outside during a curfew. But at a noon press conference on Monday, Thomas and LeBlanc talked for less than 30 minutes and refused to answer any more than five questions. Galveston Daily News reporters who tried to speak to city employees at rescue sites were denied information and told no one was authorized to talk to them except for the mayor and city manager.As you can imagine, the press is angry over the decision, but let's look at the facts. Mayor Thomas is taking a lot of grief from the press as she is a part-time, unpaid Mayor and yet has pretty much all the power in the city right now as it is a disaster area. The Mayor instituted a "look and leave" earlier, allowing people to travel through the area and then retreat back over the causeway but the plan was poorly concieved and so the allowance was cancelled.
There are many in the press that are jumping all over Thomas because of her part-time, unpaid position claiming that she should not be the one in charge.
Seriously, there is a lot of work to do on the island of Galveston and none of it will be accomplished by homeowners, reporters and on-lookers right now, so I am going to go on record as standing behind the Mayor's decision despite my affiliation with KHAS TV and the media as a whole.
As for evacuees suffering because of the blackout as the Daily News has stated, perhaps America needs to focus on the possibility of this happening elsewhere. Maybe the media, now that they have 3 minutes of extra time during the 10 o'clock, should use this time to promote disaster resilience education throughout the country pointing out that ANYONE, ANYWHERE in this country could suddenly be uprooted from their home for months without any idea what condition their home is in.
Maybe that is a reality that America needs to focus on right now while being locked out of Galveston, for surely, once the "gates" to the city are reopened, there will be work to do and the aftermath of Ike will soon be pushed into the back of people's minds along with any thought that they should maybe prepare for this to happen to them.
For three days before Ike, the media ran informational ads and short pieces encouraging folks to put Home Disaster Kits together. perhaps now would be a better time to run those pieces. Perhaps now we should grab hold of the recent tragedy and turn it into something good for a change and start using airtime to educate the public about options for surviving the future. Death tolls and damage pictures can all come later.
As for Mayor Thomas, she has received many honors, including the Beacon of Hope Award from Catholic Charities, the Downtown Renaissance Hall of Fame Award, the Spirit of Elissa Award from the Galveston Historical Foundation, the Community Enrichment Award from the Grand 1894 Opera House, the Pacesetter and Quality of Life Awards from Clean Galveston, the People of Vision Award (with her family) from Prevent Blindness, the Brotherhood Award from Reedy Chapel AME Church, the Helping Hands Award from Public, Inc.
As Mayor, Thomas has been acknowledged nationwide for her leadership and stewardship of the citizens during the Hurricane Rita evacuation in 2005 and for her efforts since Rita to plan, prepare and be ready to respond and recover from any future disaster. In 2006 she was chosen to make a presentation on preparedness at the Kennedy School in Boston. She received the 2007 National Blueprint Best Practices Award from the National Council on Readiness & Preparedness.
Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, Thomas created the Mayor’s Citizen Response Team to coordinate the evacuation of special needs individuals, which was put to the test a few weeks later when Rita forced Galveston to evacuate. Because of her public and civic endeavors, she was given the BRAVO Award by the League of Women Voters in 2005, was selected as Public Elected Official of the Year 2005, named the Galvestonian of the Year by the Chamber of Commerce. The Mayor was named Citizen of the Year in 2006 by the Galveston County Daily News, the newspaper that now claims she is hurting the evacuees.
Her people may not be home, but they are alive, and I believe it is because she is a woman of determination and vision and forethought.
As for the criticism that she is only part-time and unpaid and therefore not capable?
I'd be careful making statements like that around a volunteer firefighter, son.
