Riding Out Katrina

[sayjann]

'How do you move that many people out ?

how do you feed / cloth / house that many people'

 

yes but the Americans had a couple of Days warning to get the hell out of Town.

many disregarded the directive and died.

 

the Tsunami was quick and unexpected at such an early Hour of the Day.

 

this is now Hurricane Season and every Year there are 2-3 Hurricanes which hit the Carribean and Florida mostly.

the Americans know something big will happen each Year.

 

the Tsunami was a 'freak of nature'.

 

NO is unlucky because of the Geographically nature of the City.

below Sea Level and i expect that no-one expected the Levee's and suchlike to be breached.

i loved NO when i visited many Years ago and am saddened that such a fine City is in such despair.

[Flashermac]

Noo Yawk Times

September 2, 2005

 

The Man-made Disaster

 

 

 

The situation in New Orleans, which had seemed as bad as it could get, became considerably worse yesterday with reports of what seemed like a total breakdown of organized society. Americans who had been humbled by failures in Iraq saw that the authorities could not quickly cope with a natural disaster at home. People died for lack of water, medical care or timely rescues - particularly the old and the young - and victims were almost invariably poor and black. The city's police chief spoke of rapes, beatings and marauding mobs. The pictures were equally heartbreaking and maddening. Disaster planners were well aware that New Orleans could be flooded by the combined effects of a hurricane and broken levees, yet somehow the government was unable to immediately rise to the occasion.

 

Watching helplessly from afar, many citizens wondered whether rescue operations were hampered because almost one-third of the men and women of the Louisiana National Guard, and an even higher percentage of the Mississippi National Guard, were 7,000 miles away, fighting in Iraq. That's an even bigger loss than the raw numbers suggest because many of these part-time soldiers had to leave behind their full-time jobs in police and fire departments or their jobs as paramedics. Regardless of whether they wear public safety uniforms in civilian life, the guardsmen in Iraq are a crucial resource sorely missed during these early days, when hours have literally meant the difference between evacuation and inundation, between civic order and chaos, between life and death.

 

The gap is now belatedly being filled by units from other states, though without the local knowledge and training those Mississippi and Louisiana units could supply. The Pentagon is sending thousands of active-duty sailors and soldiers, including a fully staffed aircraft carrier, a hospital ship and some 3,000 Army troops for security and crowd control (even though federal law bars regular Army forces from domestic law enforcement, normally the province of the National Guard).

 

But it's already a very costly game of catch-up. The situation might have been considerably less dire if all of Louisiana's and Mississippi's National Guard had been mobilized before the storm so they could organize, enforce and aid in the evacuation of vulnerable low-lying areas. Plans should have been drawn up for doing so, with sufficient trained forces available to carry them out.

 

It's too late for that now. But the hard lessons of this week must be learned and incorporated into the nation's plans for future emergencies, whether these come in the form of natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Every state must now update its plans for quick emergency responses and must be assured by the Pentagon that it will be able to keep enough National Guard soldiers on hand to carry out these plans on very short notice.

 

Things would have been even worse if a comparable domestic disaster had struck last year, when an even greater percentage of National Guard units were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some states had more than two-thirds of their Guard forces overseas. After several governors protested, the Pentagon agreed to adjust its force rotations so no state would be stripped of more than half of its guardsmen at any one time. That promise has been kept so far. But honoring it in the months ahead will be extremely difficult with active-duty forces so badly overstretched in Iraq, and prospects for any significant early withdrawals looking bleak.

 

One lasting lesson that has to be drawn from the Gulf Coast's misery is that from now on, the National Guard must be treated as America's most essential homeland security force, not as some kind of military piggy bank for the Pentagon to raid for long-term overseas missions. America clearly needs a larger active-duty Army. It just as clearly needs a homeland-based National Guard that's fully prepared and ready for any domestic emergency.

[Flashermac]

The Washington Monthly

1 Sept 2005

 

by Kevin Drum

 

CHRONOLOGY. Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both Federal Emrgency Management Agency and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration. Read it and weep:

 

* January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.

 

* April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."

 

* 2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country."

 

* December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy, Michael Brown, who, like Allbaugh, has no previous experience in disaster management.

 

* March 2003: FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position and folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is refocused on fighting acts of terrorism.

 

* 2003: Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's preparation and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of Preparedness and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and recovery.

 

* Summer 2004: FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You would think we would get maximum consideration... This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."

 

* June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay."

 

* June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.

 

* August 2005: While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain, plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day, and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech in the Rose Garden.

 

So ... a crony with no relevant experience was installed as head of FEMA. Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was known to be one of the top three risks in the country. FEMA was deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's conservative agenda to reduce the role of government. After DHS was created, FEMA's preparation and planning functions were taken away.

 

Actions have consequences. No one could predict that a hurricane the size of Katrina would hit this year, but the slow federal response when it did happen was no accident. It was the result of four years of deliberate policy and budget choices that favor ideology and partisan loyalty at the expense of operational competence. It's the Bush administration in a nutshell.

[redwood13]

chuckwoww said:

I agree Steve. Those who are just after food and water shouldn't be labeled as looters. Those who steal TV sets, trucks, break into banks and ATM machines and shoot at policemen are definitely looters. My guess is some folks are in gangster paradise. Going to be interesting to see if anybody gets caught after all this.

 

If it's anything like the Watts Riots of 1965, some of these folks, who stole television sets for example, will send in the warranty cards complete with their names and addresses

 

-redwood

[OCgringo]

Bush is down south right now , giving a bullshit story about how this will all work out and we will have a "better" gulf coast.

 

Nice to say , its 4+ days later

 

Well how do you "fix" all the houses in New Orleans ?

No WAY , they will need to all be knocked down and start again,

 

Is it even right to rebuild back in the New Orleans "bowl" ?

 

I don't know , its just too big of a disaster that will be forgotten by the public in a few weeks , but will go on for years if you lived there

 

OC

[Khun_Kong]

You can catch the mayor's FIERY comments here.

[Steve]

As you Brits say its all going 'tits up' down there. I have a friend of a friend who is in uni there and she said the people were promised food by some of the authorities but were told not to take any from stores.

Because its such a herculean effort, the food can't get to the poor fast enough so there is now rioting.

My guess is being poor and largely minorities, they feel they are being neglected or not enough urgency since they are not middle class or rich. I'm not saying they are right but that is probably what a lot are thinking. The poor there have been largely neglected before Katrina as its one of the poorer states.

My issue with the media was portraying people trying to feed themselves as looters. In my opinion, if you have food, diapers and things like that in your hands you're feeding yourself and your family, a TV set or the like, then you're looting.

[Steve]

Just like a lot of things, the federal government never actually thinks anything this scale will happen.

The government could have done better and arguably should have.

However, given the amount of time, and I'm guessing at this, could they have safely evacuated, housed, fed nearly a million people in a few days?

It takes 4 years just to plan to house and feed 10s of thousands of people for the Olympics and the host cities still have problems that they didn't plan on.

I do agree that more should have been done. From what the FEMA post is insinuating, it could have been avoided. Is that the general feeling of those on the forum? Espeically from fellow Americans who have a better understanding of FEMA and emergency efforts domestically.

 

The same scenrios are expected if a major earthquake hits SF or LA. If a huge one hits either city, there will be a similar issue. I was in the Northridge quake, very close to the epicenter and spent a day not having radio or tv (no electricity), no gas stations or stores with electricity and it had to use the disposable food that was already in the fridge which would go bad soon without refrigeration. Thankfully, power was restored towards the end of the day in my street but had it gone on a bit longer, the market would start looking a bit enticing.

[Evel_Penivel]

National Guardsmen Reach New Orleans

By ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press Writer

28 minutes ago

 

NEW ORLEANS - Four days after Hurricane Katrina struck, the National Guard arrived in force Friday with food, water and weapons, churning through the floodwaters in a vast truck convoy with orders to retake the streets and bring relief to the suffering.

 

"The cavalry is and will continue to arrive," said one general.

 

Rolling through muddy water up to their axles, the trucks began arriving at the New Orleans Convention Center, where 15,000 to 20,000 hungry and desperate refugees had taken shelter _ many of them seething with anger so intense that the place appeared ready to erupt in violence at any moment.

 

The open-topped trucks carried huge boxes of relief supplies. Soldiers sat in the backs of some of the trucks, their rifles pointing skyward.

 

The military convoy was followed by dozens of air-conditioned tour buses, which broke off and went to the Louisiana Superdome, where thousands of storm refugees were massed outside after suffering through the heat, the filth and the overpowering stench inside the stadium.

 

The soldiers' arrival-in-force came amid blistering criticism from the mayor and others who said the federal government had bungled the relief effort and let people die in the streets for lack of food, water or medicine.

 

On Thursday, at the Convention Center, corpses lay abandoned outside the building, and many storm refugees complained bitterly that they had been forsaken by the government. And at the Superdome, fights and fires broke out and storm victims battled for seats on the buses taking them to the Houston Astrodome.

 

"The people of our city are holding on by a thread," Mayor Ray Nagin warned in a statement to CNN. "Time has run out. Can we survive another night? And who can we depend on? Only God knows."

 

In Washington, President Bush admitted "the results are not acceptable" and pledged to bolster the relief efforts. He visited the stricken Gulf Coast, and pledged in Mobile, Ala.: "What is not working right, we're going to make it right."

 

Lt. Gen. Steven Blum of the National Guard said 7,000 National Guardsmen arriving in Louisiana on Friday would be dedicated to restoring order in New Orleans. He said half of them had just returned from assignments overseas and are "highly proficient in the use of lethal force." He pledged to "put down" the violence "in a quick and efficient manner."

 

"But they are coming here to save Louisiana citizens. The only thing we are attacking is the effects of this hurricane," he said. Blum said that a huge airlift of supplies was landing Friday and that it signaled "the cavalry is and will continue to arrive."

 

As he left the White House for his visit to the devastated area, Bush said 600 newly arrived military police officers would be sent to the convention center to secure the site so that food and medicine could get there.

 

Earlier Friday, an explosion at a warehouse rocked a wide area of New Orleans before daybreak and jolted residents awake, lighting up the sky and sending a pillar of acrid gray smoke over a ruined city awash in perhaps thousands of corpses, under siege from looters, and seething with anger and resentment.

 

A second large fire erupted downtown in an old retail building in a dry section of Canal Street.

 

There were no immediate reports of injuries. But the fires deepened the sense of total collapse in the city since Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore Monday morning.

 

The explosion took place along the Mississippi River about 15 blocks from the French Quarter. It was about two miles from both the Louisiana Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center, the two spots where tens of thousands of hungry, desperate and hostile refugees awaited buses to deliver them from their misery. The cause of the blast was under investigation.

 

City officials have accused the government _ namely the Federal Emergency Management Agency _ of responding sluggishly.

 

"Get off your asses and let's do something," the mayor told WWL-AM Thursday night in a rambling interview in which he cursed, yelled and ultimately burst into tears. At one point he said: "Excuse my French _ everybody in America _ but I am pissed."

 

The National Guard arrived in force after law and order all but broke down.

 

Over the past few days, police officers turned in their badges. Rescuers, law officers and medical-evacuation helicopters were shot at by storm victims. Fistfights and fires broke out at the hot and stinking Superdome as thousands of people waited in misery to board buses for the Houston Astrodome. Corpses lay out in the open in wheelchairs and in bedsheets. The looting continued.

 

At the Superdome, group of refugees broke through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen in a scramble to get on to the buses. And about 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at the convention center grew ever more hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead, including at least seven bodies scattered outside the building.

 

Police Chief Eddie Compass said there was such a crush around a squad of 88 officers that they retreated when they went in to check out reports of assaults.

 

"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

 

A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times Thursday to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.

 

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

 

"I don't treat my dog like that," Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people."

 

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said FEMA just learned about the situation at the convention center Thursday and quickly scrambled to provide food, water and medical care and remove the corpses.

 

While floodwaters in New Orleans appeared to stabilize, efforts continued to plug three breaches in the levees that protect this bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city, which is wedged between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River.

 

Helicopters dropped sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into the mouth of the canal Thursday to close its connection to the lake.

 

Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, said engineers are developing a plan to create new breaches in the levees so that a combination of pumping and the effects of gravity will drain the water out of the city. Removing the floodwaters will take weeks, he said.

[BadaBing]

I still can't see how there could be a " Game Plan " for such a major disaster like this. I beleive the state governments have their hands full with so many existing social programs that absord alot of state funds. To create and maintain a plan for an event like this would be almost impossible. You would need multiple plans also as a back up if plan "A" is not enough to cover the needs. That is alot of money spent to maintain these plans as they will always need adjusting. And then consider that after 5-7 years of pouring money into something that is not being used is going to raise alot of eyebrows wondering why those funds are not spent elsewere..... I dunno , just don't see it happening.

 

I was in Sherman Oaks for the Northridge quake. No power for 3 days and 5 days to get the water back. I at least had a roof over my head and my car. More of an inconvenience for me than a catastrophic situation as is New Orleans now.

 

Bada :: Bing