Riding Out Katrina

[chuckwoww]

Hugh_Hoy said:

One thing that really and truely puzzles me: one can plan and promote a skytrain, an airport, etc. (large-scale projects with lots of money to launder); one can start a war (a bigger project with much more money to launder); but how the hell do you start a hurricane?

 

HH (mak)

 

Not sure what you're getting at Hugh. Blame is it? I don't think anybody is blaming the administration for the hurricane. That would be silly. A lot of people seem to have problems with the response. (Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job).

 

Of course that may just be good old partisan politics playing itself out. Too early to say in my opinion.

 

I think if Bush was to run again he would probably win. That says more about the Democrats than anything.

[Flashermac]

Says a lot about American politics! Whoever is really pulling the strings makes sure that nobody who might make any genuine changes even gets nominated.

 

The US is a democracy in that the people get to vote. But what difference is there really between the major parties? Maybe they should just merge into one and save a lot of money.

[Steve]

Khunhunter said:

I was staying in a timeshare (TheQuarterhouse) on Chartes st

just off of Canal St....the water got up to 3ft deep on the st and in the general french quarter area but not any worse. We (those of us they did not heed the warnings)couldn't get out so we moved up to the second and third floors of the timeshare and chilled for three days. The real flooding was in areas adjacent to the 17st street levee. And although things were bad they were not as bad as the press made them appear.

As for the weather service underestimating things...no they told us that the city may be hit by a catagory 5 hurricane and gave everyone 5 days notice. Most left, some of us didn't... I didn't appreciate the damage a hurricane of that size could cause but I just lucked out because although the french quarter is low lying it is still above sea level..

The areas that really got soaked are below sea level and next to the levees..... And although the press makes it appear that the entire city is under water when I left three days later...I drove out on dry roads and the french quarter, canal st. and many other places where still standing although many were being looted. In fact the real damage did not happen until after the hurricane was gone...several hours later...the levee broke and that's when all hell broke loose.

 

Cordailly,

 

Hunter

 

Hunter, thanks for your first hand report. Also, from what you wrote I'm assuming you (and if you were with any others) made it out safely. I can only imagine what it was like. I only have the 'average' tornado once in school and there wasn't nearly as much damage as Katrina.

 

How were people reacting? What did you do for food? What was the general sentiment? Any first or second accounts of the raping and violence that was rumored to be taken place?

[Hugh_Hoy]

chuckwoww said:

Not sure what you're getting at Hugh. Blame is it? /quote]

 

Was only a joke.

 

HH

[chuckwoww]

Hugh_Hoy said:

chuckwoww said:

Not sure what you're getting at Hugh. Blame is it? /quote]

 

Was only a joke.

 

HH

 

Sorry Hugh. I just woke up. I'm as tired of all the blame as you are. I'd like to see somebody take responsibility and get on with the job. And I don't mean more posturing for TV cameras.

[chuckwoww]

Yeeha, this is more fun than 'Mercenaries'!

 

http://www.lucasarts.com/games/mercenaries/main.html

 

Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details of the former head of the U.S. occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte.

 

http://www.alternet.org/story/25320

[gummigut]

BelgianBoy said:

I hope I will not be flamed for this, but......

The tsunami took everyone by surprise and 300K+ people were killed.

However, Thailand started organising all from day one and had pretty much all under controll very quickly....

 

Huh???? What I distinctly remember is someone named Porntip on the edge of exhaustion because there was absolutely no help on Phangna. When authorities did show up at Kao Lak they just wanted to take over the whole operation.

 

I also thought there was a very vocal member of the board who was sharing his incredible experiences of how there was NO help. Not for hours, and not for a day or two.

 

Maybe a search on the site might help your memory.

 

**************

 

Katrina has made it very embarrassing to be an American. I am still shocked at how slow the American Public is to hold the administration responsible. Okay, you know it's coming, but after it arrived the response was aweful.

 

But what I can't forgive are the lies. Hours after he found out about the situation at the SuperDome, Michael Brown lying that hot food was being provided to them. Forgot if it was Bush or Brown who said the National Guard where in the City and restoring order when few had reached the City and those that had weren't doing anything. And then praising Brown for the job he was doing. Ughhh.

 

THAT'S unforgivable. Like dragging the country to war on flimsy pretext (lies?). Yet we can impeach a President on his morality for getting a blowjob from an intern.

 

AARRGGGHHHHHH

 

<<burp>>

[BelgianBoy]

gummigut said:

BelgianBoy said:

I hope I will not be flamed for this, but......

The tsunami took everyone by surprise and 300K+ people were killed.

However, Thailand started organising all from day one and had pretty much all under controll very quickly....

 

Huh???? What I distinctly remember is someone named Porntip on the edge of exhaustion because there was absolutely no help on Phangna. When authorities did show up at Kao Lak they just wanted to take over the whole operation.

 

I also thought there was a very vocal member of the board who was sharing his incredible experiences of how there was NO help. Not for hours, and not for a day or two.

 

Maybe a search on the site might help your memory.

Yep, it had to be you !

Authorities were helping the SAME day in Thailand. The army and the red cross were there and helping people.

You do a search on this.

As for Porntip she complained about the lack of help of forensics, and the member was called Flyonthewall FYI.

 

As for your comments on the US, spot on.

 

BB

[kamui]

'People making decisions hesitated'

More officials' jobs may fall to Katrina response criticism

 

(CNN) -- Michael Brown may have been the first official to lose his job to Hurricane Katrina, but he might not be the last.

 

Even after Brown's departure as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, criticism of the government's response to the disaster keeps rising like the unstoppable floodwaters.

 

It threatens to swamp other officials involved in the recovery effort. Blame is being directed at every level of government -- federal, state and local

 

As new details emerge on what happened behind the scenes as the storm ravaged New Orleans, it is becoming clear that government officials knew what to expect, despite claims to the contrary. ( Watch the video that documents what officials knew and who warned them -- 3:28)

 

They had planned and trained for it for five days last year, playing out the disastrous scenarios of a hypothetical Hurricane Pam. But when the real disaster stuck, they appeared to be paralyzed.

 

President Bush on Tuesday acknowledged "serious problems" in the government's response to emergencies, and accepted responsibility for the federal government's failures in responding to the disaster.

 

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government and to the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said during a news conference.

 

There are plenty of unanswered questions about what went wrong, when it went wrong and who is at fault.

 

In the hurricane's aftermath, thousands of people trapped in the submerged city began asking how they got left behind without food and water. And why?

 

Why did it take so long to get help to stranded people? Where were the helicopters to drop food and emergency supplies? And eventually, why were people who sought safety in shelters still without food and water five days after the storm?

 

In the aftermath, the questions grew sharper: Why did aerial shots of the flooded city show hundreds of school and city buses window-deep in water? Why hadn't anyone used those buses to move people out? Did Amtrak really offer residents seats on trains the company moved out of harm's way? And if so, who refused that offer and why?

 

People also asked why FEMA wouldn't allow the delivery of 20,000 trailers Sen. Trent Lott found? Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, lost his own home.

 

Then there's perhaps the most alarming question of all: Is the Department of Homeland Security too big a bureaucracy to be effective in its mission?

 

"We had our first post-9/11 task and we've miserably failed," said former U.S. Rep. Tim Roemer, an Indiana Democrat who was a member of the 9/11 Commission.

 

"Our government couldn't drop water to our most needy citizens," Roemer said. "We couldn't get generators to people in hospitals. We didn't go by any evacuation plan."

Plenty of blame

 

In addition to Brown, other public officials face criticism and hard questions about what they did and didn't do. Chief among them are Michael Chertoff, who heads the Department of Homeland Security, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

 

Chertoff has insisted for two weeks he had no warning of how bad Katrina could be.

 

But the National Weather Service issued a detailed message a day before Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, saying buildings would be leveled, high-rises crippled and most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer.

 

Chertoff, whose department oversees FEMA, had continued to downplay the significance of the levee breaks in New Orleans, even as floodwaters consumed 80 percent of the city.

 

Blanco is under fire over whether she asked the right people in Washington for help soon enough. She has been accused of waging a bureaucratic turf war that delayed the National Guard response as New Orleans spiraled into anarchy.

Help turned away?

 

State officials also are being blamed for turning back assistance during the critical first few days. Sheriff Steve Simpson, of Loudon County, Virginia, sent 22 deputies with supplies and 14 vehicles, including four all-terrain vehicles. But he called them back when Louisiana state police officials waved him off.

 

"I said, 'What if we just show up?' and he says, 'You probably won't get in," Simpson told CNN. Later that night, Blanco cleared legal hurdles that would have allowed local officials to accept the help, but no one ever got back to Simpson.

 

"I'm very frustrated, trying to figure out what went wrong in that process," Simpson said.

 

The White House has suggested that Gov. Blanco also failed to call early enough for the federal help she needed. The governor's office says that before, during and after the storm, Blanco's message to the president was consistent. (Watch the video on political defensive moves -- 1:56)

 

"The governor genuinely felt at that time she had asked for help," press secretary Denise Bottcher said, "She said, 'We need your help. We need everything you've got.'"

 

Blanco lashed out at FEMA Tuesday for what she said was a "lack of urgency and lack of respect" involving the recovery of bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

 

Blanco said she ordered the state to sign a contract with Kenyon International Monday , after Chertoff failed to live up to renew the private disaster recovery firm's contract. The company has been recovering bodies in New Orleans.

 

Kenyon worked for the Australian government to identify the remains of tourists killed during the December tsunami, and the company handled the remains of plane passengers who crashed into a Pennsylvania field during the September 11 attacks.

 

Kenyon told the state that if they didn't get a contract soon, they would be force to leave as soon as they professionally could.

 

"In death, as in life, our people deserve more respect than they have received," Blanco said.

Empty train

 

Nagin, whose desperate plea for help in the days after the storm made him a folk hero to some, faces criticism for turning away resources that could have moved more people out of the city faster.

 

The mayor's disaster plan called for mobilizing buses and evacuating the poor, but he did not get it done. He said he could not find drivers, but Amtrak says it offered help and was turned down, so a train with 900 seats rolled away empty a day and a half before the storm. (Watch the video detailing the failed evacuation plan -- 2:11)

 

"One of the problems that we're facing at the federal level and at the state level and at the local level -- and again, not casting blame anywhere, is a total system-wide failure, because people making decisions hesitated," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, told CNN.

 

Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, a Republican, said he initially was impressed by how quickly federal authorities mobilized before the storm. But after it hit, nothing happened for days.

 

"There was absolutely no execution," Vitter told CNN.

 

"I was very happy with how quickly the president had signed his first emergency order," he said. "The FEMA director was on the ground before the storm. FEMA teams were on the ground. But then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, absolutely no execution. I don't know what they were doing."

Bureaucratic breakdown

 

The accusations and the public outrage make federal, state and local leaders jittery and defensive. They know that just a few days ago Brown's job appeared to be safe.

 

Vitter believes the time will come soon enough to answer the hard questions.

 

"I don't have a doubt in the world that all of these questions are going to be asked in a very forceful, focused way," he said. "So there are a lot of folks, myself included, just as a citizen of Louisiana, who are going to demand straight answers and get the full story, wherever that leads."

 

He said that the blame does not rest solely with Brown.

 

"This wasn't a failure of one person, although it was that also," Vitter told CNN. "It was a failure of the whole bureaucracy, and the solution to that isn't getting a new head bureaucrat or a new type of head bureaucrat. I think the whole bureaucratic FEMA model is what has to be probably discarded. "

 

CNN's Tom Foreman, Mike M. Ahlers and Anderson Cooper contributed to this report.

[Flashermac]

Help is on the way!

Monday, Sept. 12, 2005

 

John Kerry's Katrina Aid Arrives Late

 

Billionaire Democratic Sen. John Kerry has finally sent his own aid package to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans more than two weeks after the storm hit and a week after most of the city had been successfully evacuated by the Bush administration.

 

Kerry traveled to New Orleans on Monday aboard a UPS Boeing 757 loaded with 5,000 bottles of baby formula, 5,000 pairs of sneakers and an array of cleaning supplies, the Associated Press said.

 

"Everything that any of us can do is so welcome, and it provides just a little bit of help at an extraordinary time," the Massachusetts Democrat told the AP.

 

But rather than pay for the aid using his wife's ketchup fortune -- which the Los Angeles Times estimated last year at over a billion dollars -- Kerry's aid package was donated by Boston's Children's Hospital, the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans and the New Balance sneaker company.

 

UPS donated the plane, the flight crew and fuel, trucks and drivers to transport the goods to Logan International Airport and then to disperse them to Baton Rogue and Lafayette, La.

 

It's not clear what, if anything, Sen. Kerry paid for.