I am heartbroken at what is occurring down in New Orleans and am mad at myself because all I am offering is prayers and that just doesn't seem to be enough and I'm selfish as I want to be rounding up all the able bodied men in my neighborhood, collecting every extra scrap of clothes, extra car, truck or van, food and water and wanting to head down there, but I'm not. I'm thinking and praying about it, but otherwise I'm going about my regular daily life while people are suffering and dying.
A few things I have been noticing about the evacuation and when I was visiting down there the couple times I travelled there this year that IMHO are a few answers as to "Why is this taking so long" and also to "Why are there 100,000 people (many very, very able bodied) still in New Orleans.
First, the U.S. has been hit by hurricane's before, but the response and REGULAR channels to distribute aid in previous hurricane's doesn't WORK with New Orleans right now for a few reasons that I see at least.
First New Orleans has an interesting geography. It is surrounded by LARGE bodies of water on THREE sides as well has having the MISSISSIPPI river run right through it as well as drainage canals from Lake Pontchatraine (sp?) running right through it as well. It is alot like Florida in that it's almost a peninsula, except on a much smaller scale and one huge difference is GROUND ACCESS. Please look at this map of the affected areas on both a large scale and small scale:
Now, when speaking of getting out of "New Orleans" or getting relief in, there are only two ways, By air, or by roadway.
If you look at the map and know the devastation, there aren't alot of ways OUT or IN to New Orleans by roadway. I-10 is the major freeway that DOESN'T cross water that goes into New Orleans. Both Causeway and the other over water roadways are unnaccessible, or no longer existing. So you have to fly in all of your relief, which ran into it's own set of problems. Those problems are the THOUSANDS of New Orlean's residents who were TRAPPED that needed to be rescued by Helicopter. Unfortunately there is not an unlimited supply of helicopters to rescue people AND bring supplies to those who are "out of physical harms way". The decision was made (as I understand it) to use the helicopters to rescue those in IMMEDIATE danger first.
However, it wasn't a few hundred or even a thousand people that needed to be rescued. It's at least 5,000 + and it's still going up I think.
That left, as far as I know, roadways. Here is a map of the western suburbs of New Orleans which is Metairie (where the flooding begins, etc.) and another suburb and the french quarter off the screen to the west and the "downtown" New Orleans with the Superdome, etc. off the screen to the east.
I-10 is the major artery that flows east and west. However, it is not an "elevated" freeway. Parts are elevated and parts are ground level. Veteran's and other blvd's run parallel to it but they are all ground level roadways. In the middle you have "Causeway Blvd" that eventually goes NORTH accross lake Pontchatraine that connects with I-10 and Veteran's, etc. Notice that to the south you have the Mississippi River.
If you look to the EAST of Causeway Blvd you see NOT a few bluelines running north and south. Those are the canals. One of those canals at least broke it's eastern levee and flooded everything to the east of it. I-10 and all roads east of that canal are under water all the way to downtown New Orleans. However, there is flooding to the WEST as well all the way to the French Quarter.
The problem is how are you going to get relief TO the superdome and eventually get the people OUT. If you could get all the people to the New Orleans Airport, you could fly them out, however, the New Orleans Airport is clear to the WEST THROUGH the flooded Metairie and downtown areas.
Basically you have two major catastrophe's that do not have a common solution. You have a Hurricane and all it's devastation, followed by a CONTINUAL FLOOD that has no signs of receeding (unlike rain caused Mississippi river flooding) and you have a THIRD catastrophe. 100,000 really HELPLESS people in the middle of it all.
In all honesty, they are doing the best they can and IMHO it could be much, much worse. Although that is hard to imagine, it very much could.
I am not suprised at all at how long it is taking or how unorganized it it. This is a unique problem on a scale we haven't dealt with.
Think about all the floods we've had and all the Hurricane's we've had and then throw all the variables that make this one different in and you've got a huge problem with limited way to attack it and solve it and all of those ways dangerous, time consuming and untested.
[ September 04, 2005, 03:02 PM: Message edited by: CStroman ]
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
Could you fix those links please? Or use tinyurl?
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
CNN is reporting that President Bush just announced the deployment of 7000 active duty troops to the area.
Posted by CStroman (Member # 6872) on :
Dang, well that url fix didn't work. Lemme try again.
I'm glad they're sending in more troops. New Orleans needs to be emptied of all civilians before anything else happens.
Posted by Mankind (Member # 2672) on :
I heard an interview yesterday with the folks from Save The Children saying that they were not ALLOWED to go in sooner, out of concern for the saftey of the relief workers.
Until the National Guards and others could restore order, there was worry that aid workers would be mobbed, shot at, etc.
He also explained they couldn't have responded much quicker if they'd been allowed to--they still had to get the supplies, get them loaded in trucks, get drivers hired, etc.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Agreed. I also found my friend Ursula's posts at another forum to be helpful. She is a law student and, like Dagonee, extremely intelligent and articulate. (When I link to these threads, some of you may recognize me. Or not.)
quote:It isn't just "supplies" that are needed. It is the right supplies, in the right place, at the right time, with the right support system.
If someone just randomly loads up a truck with stuff, and wants to go hand it out, it is a problem. If you let people just go in and start handing stuff out, they're likely to be mobbed by desperate people. If you divert guards to protect them, those are trained guards being taken away from the organized effort, and the overall aid effort gets slowed, even if a lone truck of aid gets through. The people whom they help may have been headed in direction x, towards safety, and diverted towards y, where this truck is, where they can get one bottle of water, but loose contact with the effort to get them to safety.
Plus, they just aren't letting people in to some areas - they're trying to get all the civilians out. If you let someone drive in with a truckload of stuff, but there is no gas for them to drive out, you've added another person who will need evacuation and aid. Fuel supplies in the area are limited, and no doubt being carefully rationed to get the most stuff moved to the right place quickly. These trucks may be heading down a road that is washed out a mile down, or otherwise closed for good reason.
quote:
quote:And I thought I was ashamed after this last election. And Ursula, you know I love ya.
Ah Snowy. You have a big heart, and you want things done now.
But it is precisely because the need is so big that they have to be careful. There is a saying "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." If you look at the surface of the problem, you want to rush in, but if you rush in, the underlying problems will trip you.
One or two trucks running out of gas in the middle of the few access roads still standing, and no aid at all gets in, while time is wasted clearing them out of the way. Even if we can bring in more gas, that takes time and organization, and the trucks need to know where the gas is, etc. They're having trouble getting gas to places as far from the storm as the Carolinas - with pipelines down, the gas has to be trucked, and that is both more expensive, and slower. What gas is brought needs to be used carefully, and not wasted. Does it go to a truck carefully loaded, with supplies that are known as needed, to go directly to an aid station set up to distribute the goods? Or does it go to some random truck, with no planned destination, carrying supplies of unknown type and quantity? The random truck may get the goods to a few people who need it, but the gallon of gas will do more good as part of a coordinated effort.
When things are that broken down, each simple need has a hundred more hidden needs that need to be met before the simple need is filled. People need food? You have to bring it in. Where do you bring it? To an aid station? That has to be built. How do the people get there? How do they know where it is? Communication of some kind needs to be set up. Your bringing in food - you need a road to bring it on. Road is gone? Off road vehicles can carry only small loads, much smaller than a big truck. Boats? Also carry smaller loads, and the boats there were there already are mostly destroyed, new boats need to be brought in from distant places. Someone brings a boat, on a trailer behind their pickup truck? The pickup truck can't drive the impassable roads between where they are coming from, and where the boat is needed. Have goods on a truck, and a boat nearby? The goods need to get from the truck to the boat, which requires a dock, and people to help load and unload.
You want to build the aid station? You need dry land to put it on. You want to set up a tent city? Again, you need dry land to put it on. People who need the aid station and tent city are in flooded areas? You need to get them to dry areas where the aid can be distributed. Floating roads, rebuilding bridges (even temporary ones) takes time, skill and knowledge, to get the right type of structure in the right place to do the job needed.
quote:Also, while the news is focusing on the flooding in NO, that disaster is surrounded by hundreds of square miles of "ordinary" hurricane disaster, which have equally pressing needs that have to be met. You can't just rush through those areas, to get aid to NO. Those areas have to have their own aid to set up, and somehow be built up enough to be the staging area for the NO aid.
If someone has a truck of supplies, they would do well to take it to a small town on the edges of the disaster area that has been struck with hurricane damage, but overlooked in the larger aid effort. I'm sure there are hundreds. And a truck of random supplies would probably be welcomed there. Thinking that by yourself, with just a truck, you'll get to NO and be able to help, is foolishness.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
(She's pretty freakin' spot-on, in my analysis. And as far as that goes, it is a great forum site, albeit somewhat more limited in scope than Hatrack. Still, here was where I found the Anchoress link for Belle and some of the most considered and helpful analyses of the situation in New Orleans. Very strong sense of community, very wonderful people.
And it's also where I found the Chinese bun instructions for Olivet! )
Edited to add: My thanks to Johnathon Howard, whose (purely altruistic) interest in women with long hair led me to the site. I found it while looking for a link for him, and I've enjoyed browsing around it very much.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: (When I link to these threads, some of you may recognize me. [Smile] Or not.)
Sally of Toronto? *blink*
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
CStroman, you can run the web addresses through the www.tinyurl.com generator if you like. (takes about 5 seconds)
Posted by CStroman (Member # 6872) on :
Yeah, I have to say that people blaming the government are doing so because they have a NEED to want to blame someone and they have dislike of individuals, organizations, etc. that they want to point blame to.
Right after the hurricane hit, they responded appropriately, but the problem was larger than they imagined and rightfully so. So the response is to look at where the MOST need was. Where was it? It was the people stranded on rooftops waiting to be rescued. Ok so you put up all your available helicopters and start rescuing people. Ok good plan except there are THOUSANDS of people who need rescue. Everytime they went and picked up one family, they were told or saw others a few houses down that needed rescue and it kept happening over and over and over.
The people criticizing the government response do so out of NOT knowing what the whole picture is because they are either "IN the middle of the problem and limited in the overall problems of the entire area" OR they already have a chip on their shoulder about the government and will automatically place any and all blame on the government as a "knee jerk reaction".
The thing that pissed me off more than ANYTHING so far, was the DNC making a political statement out of Hurrican Katrina. WTF you stupid morons! People are suffering and dying and people are putting their LIVES on the line to try and resolve the problem and they are already criticizing and pointing fingers politically. It makes me sick regardless of who does it.
We are not dealing with the AFTERMATH of a catastrophe, we are in the MIDDLE of a continuing catastrophe. The waters have NOT receeded, the roads are NOT cleared and the people being plucked from rooftops are STILL being rescued and only ADDING to the numbers of people.
It is being responded to the best that we can for how catastrophic this is.
Posted by CStroman (Member # 6872) on :
If you feel the need to point fingers RIGHT now. Here's my suggestion. Point them at KATRINA and/or at GOD or NATURE in general.
I'm not expert on NO, but just from my visiting down there, it could be alot worse. ALOT worse.
Think NO houses for people to get to the rooftops on. Think NO superdome but a pile of ruble with 9,000 people underneath it, think NO access to the area from anywhere on the northrim of Pontchatraine's northern shore, southward (this is pretty much true, but by some miracle they have actually been able to get buses down there. THAT in itself I guarantee you was NO easy task. Think about it. You look at any of the maps of New Orleans, the pictures of it now with water covering it, and then you tell me how they got ANY buses to downtown NO.)
This isn't the calvary riding over an open plain to the stranded settlers.
This is the calvary having to ride through literal HELLFIRE over and over and over again to even GET to the settlers.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I think the evacuation was slow because the city decided not to use its fleet of 100+ school buses; they're now sitting in a flooded lot. You can see the picture on Yahoo! News pictures.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
CStroman, it's extremely easy to use the forum's url codes.
Easiest way: 1. Click on "Full Reply Form" at the bottom of the thread. 2. Click on "url" under the posting window on the full reply form. 3. Enter the long url into the dialogue box where it says, and some short text like "here" for the link text. 4. Voila, hit the "Add Reply" button to post.
Slightly harder but still really easy way: 1. When adding or editing your post, put the ubb codes in yourself. They are really simple. Imbed the url like this. <url=http://www.linkedsite.com>Click Here</url>
2.Replacing the angle brackets I used above "<" and ">" with the square brackets "[" and "]" which are used for ubb codes makes it look like this.
He's using the URL tags. Sometimes I just can't get a link to work right.
But tinyurl generally takes care of it for me.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
Oh, it's a forum glitch? My bad!
Maybe he could delete the links from the zeroth post and try posting them in a different post?
This thread sounds interesting, but it's just tooooo hard to read in this state.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: The people criticizing the government response do so out of NOT knowing what the whole picture is because they are either "IN the middle of the problem and limited in the overall problems of the entire area" OR they already have a chip on their shoulder about the government and will automatically place any and all blame on the government as a "knee jerk reaction".
I knew this statement was coming. I thought about making a sarcastic statement in one of the hurricane threads that it was coming, but didn't, and now I regret it.
Chad, did you not hear the president? Did you not read the various links to articles printed before the disaster that detailed exactly the problem that is happening now in New Orleans? Frack, did not everyone see the big honking hurricane on the news heading towards New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and put two and two together and think, ****, maybe we'll need a bunch of National Guard and rescue and aid people if this bastard hits! Maybe we should have people on stand by!
Yeah, there might be a good reason why plans weren't made and it took, what, three days for a real military presence to make itself felt. Maybe there's a reason that they didn't coordinate things with the police and dump a bunch of MREs and other food out the back of C-130s and choppers like they did for the Iraqis....
The president gets it. You don't. Sometimes people screw up and things don't go as they should.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
I know this is a serious thread, and I am a very, very bad girl to think this.
But the title keeps making me giggle. *guilty*
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
*Question Mark*
??????????????????????????????????
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
*hangs head*
It's the, ah, scatalogical meaning of "evacuation" that's doing it.
*goes to cry in sheer shame*
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
quote:Frack, did not everyone see the big honking hurricane on the news heading towards New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and put two and two together and think, ****, maybe we'll need a bunch of National Guard and rescue and aid people if this bastard hits! Maybe we should have people on stand by!
I've said this three times on this forum in the last few days on various threads. I will say it again.
THEY DID HAVE PEOPLE ON STANDBY
FEMA was in Baton Rouge on Sunday, before the hurricane ever hit, ready to go in. Florida task force 2 was mobilized and standing by and left for Mississippi before the winds even died down so there were on scene almost immediately. Birmingham didn't mobilize quite as quickly because they had to wait to see what damage would happen to our own area, to see if we could spare our firefighters/paramedics. As soon as we knew it, guess what? We still had to wait on official word from the goverment of Mississippi before we could go.
We don't just send fire fighters and certainly not military into areas that haven't asked for it - and I don't think we want to start that. I think it should be the local goverment that makes the requests and coordinates the needs because they know what they need and where best to allocate resources. I would say that if you really must point fingers, it might be actually more appropriate to point them in the direction of the New Orleans city government and Louisiana state government. My preference, though, would be let's not point fingers at all just yet. Let's get through the most desperate part of the crisis, then let's review, look back at what worked and what went wrong, and decide how to be even better prepared next time.
I heard someone on the news saying that people were dying because George W Bush didn't have the National guard standing by. Pres. Bush doesn't mobilize the National guard of Louisiana. That would be the governor's job. Those are the kinds of things that upset me, to hear, blame placed where it doesn't belong simply for the sake of blaming.
I also get upset when people talk about how long it took the help to arrive, when I know how quickly the groups from Alabama got ready, and how much they've gone through to be there and how much help they've actually granted the people in the stricken areas.
My husband said he watched some news coverage for the first time last night in a Gulfport fire house. They had reporters on the cable news networks saying "Finally help is arriving! Finally rescuers are getting to the affected areas!" One of the guys who'd been there since hours after the hurricane hit pulling survivors and bodies from the wreckage and clearing roads said he guessed they weren't really help. If, after all, no help has arrived until today, they must not really have been doing anything.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: I would say that if you really must point fingers, it might be actually more appropriate to point them in the direction of the New Orleans city government and Louisiana state government. My preference, though, would be let's not point fingers at all just yet. Let's get through the most desperate part of the crisis, then let's review, look back at what worked and what went wrong, and decide how to be even better prepared next time.
If I was in error in my statement that people weren't already standing by, then I was in error. It's clear to me from the New Orleans coverage, at least, that many more should have been on standby, and it doesn't change some of my other criticisms, and it's important to note that I didn't point any fingers at anyone in particular as being responsible for the problem. What I do say is that something went wrong and things didn't happen the way they should or could have happened, for the reasons I have already given, and some that I didn't. Someone somewhere dropped the ball. You don't find this outrageous? Doesn't the fact that some of the problems could have been mitigated bother you?
You don't want fingers pointed. O.K. What about outrage? Isn't outrage appropriate now? When is it? Isn't it normal to feel outrage when life and property are lost unnecessarily? Don't you feel anger and outrage whenever threads come up detailing how bad people can be, feel bad for the loss of life or the hurt people suffer, or do you wait till after the trial is over to voice your opinion of the inustice? Why aren't you angry at the simple fact that things were botched and an injustice has been committed?
We dishonor the dead, the injured and the homeless by not getting angry at the injustice they have suffered. Many of them are dead and homeless for no good reason, and if we can't get angry about that, then when is anger ever appropriate?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:...and it's important to note that I didn't point any fingers at anyone in particular as being responsible for the problem.
quote:Maybe there's a reason that they didn't coordinate things with the police and dump a bunch of MREs and other food out the back of C-130s and choppers like they did for the Iraqis....
I'm sorry, was this second quote just unintentionally levying blame or criticism against the federal government in general and the Bush Administration in particular?
Belle has not said, "Don't be outraged."
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
I'm more interested in getting as many thoughtful and well-reasoned ideas out there -- even if painful to bear and hear -- than I am about expressing outrage. (Although I take it that others' outrage is something I probably need to hear and carry right now, too. Even if my belly is already churning and I am in despair.)
So in my ongoing quest to butt in on all the Katrina-related threads, I'm going to repost something here. (Rakeesh, it may look like I'm stalking you. I am, but not for your ideas. ( ) Seriously, we're both just caught up in the same swirl of anguish, and this is all we think about, I'm sure.)
Reposted from elsewhere for your viewing pleasure:
The first priority is to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the poor, heal the sick, and comfort the widowed and orphaned. But while we are doing this, we can ask questions and brainstorm together about what happened, why, and how to make it better next time. Not to ask questions now (and again, and constantly, and always) is to dishonor those who are devasted now, and those who are in harm's way of being devasted in the future.
Some of those questions are about local response, some about national policy, some about individual people. They all need to be asked, and we all need to think hard about them and offer the best we have to answering them. I'm sorry if that makes us uncomfortable. Truly, I am -- being frustrated, uncertain, and confused is a terrible feeling. But we have to deal with it.
I'm going to be a butt and keep reposting this wherever I see discussion -- any discussion that is not interfering with the ongoing addressment of the first priority -- being shut down. I want to hear it all. We need to hear it all. Praise for the good as well as thoughtful critique of the not-so-good -- we need all we can come up with in the public forum of ideas, and as soon as possible, so long as the first priority is also being taken care of. Sure, one shouldn't be sitting down to shoot the breeze while the bodies pile up next to you, but nobody reading this forum is likely to currently be engaged in a relief effort themselves, this very minute. (If you are, then there are better things to be doing than monitoring the discussion on Hatrack.) I think it is a moral duty for us to engage in such a discussion, and it's our moral duty to get through these uncomfortable feelings in the hopes of averting similar devastion in the future.
You want to honor the dead? Do the very best you can to make sure more don't die like they did. Even if that means listening to people who disagree with you about the reasons why this happened. Nobody -- nobody -- has a lock on the answer, and it's an important and complex enough answer that a multitude of views must be expressed and allowed to stand or fall on their own merits.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
I'm going to take a page from CT's book and repost this wherever I see people wondering why there is frustration at much of the discussion about what went wrong:
-----------------------------------------------
What I find incredibly annoying right now is how much of the criticism is based on unconfirmed and verifiably incorrect facts right now. It's tiresome and it's terribly unfair. And at least some of the people (not here) spreading the inaccurate information are doing so for political gain.
A lot of the frustration at the criticism stems from this, I suspect, and spills over into other discussions about what went wrong.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
(And I am responding to Dagonee's eloquent point on [my post's] original thread, Anne Rice Commentary in the NY Times. Come join us there, too! )
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I can't read this, although I would liketo.
Please use tinyURL on this thread...go to www.tinyurl.com, enter the present links, and post the smaller links it gives you so that the frames won't be broken.
I am getting motion sick trying to read it. Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Hell, I could do a lot worse than CT was a stalker Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
(Be sure to take it easy and get some sleep, okay? This is an awful, awful time, even for those of us somewhat removed from the middle of it.)
Posted by Occasional (Member # 5860) on :
I think you can tell a Republican from a Democrat by who is criticising whom. If you are a Republican you will blame the State Gov. If you are Democrat you will blame the Fed Gov. Ideologically this makes sense, because Republicans believe that most power shouls be invested in the States while Democracts believe most power should be invested in the Federal Government. Of course, the whole question relates to power of leadership.
By the way, as a Republican I blame the states. It was their responsibility FIRST, and they failed. As someone said, they are the ones who said go to the Superdome. They are the ones who didn't use all available transportation to get people out. They are the ones responsible for REQUESTING ASSISTANCE of the Federal Government if they feel they can't handle things. If there was political blame to go around then it was about ideology of responsibility and not unwillingness.
Posted by Cactus Jack (Member # 2671) on :
You want partisan comments? I'll give you partisan comments.
If the city and state leadership had emulated Rudy Giuliani's approach post-9/11, and stepped in to provide leadership and guidance and comfort, the situation would never have become as bad as it did.
Instead, they do what liberals always do, which is look upwards for help, considered "big brother" as their only salvation, and tried to find people to blame instead of trying to solve a problem.
If the president had been a liberal, no help would have come in to New Orleans until whoever that President thought he could look to for help had shown up--somebody like the United Nations.
Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :
Allow me to second the "tiny url" request. I'd love to read the thread, but I can't until that first post is fixed.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Your two URLs are exactly the same, so this one should suffice. And I promise you that it will go to the exact same place. Just try it.
Please, for the love of Pete, help a brother read a thread, CStroman. Thank you in advance. Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: I'm sorry, was this second quote just unintentionally levying blame or criticism against the federal government in general and the Bush Administration in particular?
It was asking a question about why any of the powers that be didn't do those things. It doesn't imply any level of government.
quote: Belle has not said, "Don't be outraged."
I know, but I am getting a vibe that I am trying to point fingers.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Cactus Jack -
I hope you were being sarcastic. If not, then I think that's the stupidest thing I've heard yet.
Ray Nagin was clamoring for help since it was first announced that Katrina would hit the Gulf coast. He ordered a mandatory evacuation, but with so many people unable to evacuate themselves, what was he to do? He asked for help. And the reason Republicans are blaming Louisiana is because the Blanco, Mary Landrieu, and Ray Nagin are all democrats, not because of some state's rights issue, which I think is laughable since this REPUBLICAN president has done more to curtail the rights of individual states than any president of the 20th century.
The post-hurrican excuse doesn't wash with me. Nagin was clamoring for assistance for days before Katrina hit. He had few resources, and even post Katrina it's pretty obvious LA didn't have the resources either. These are resources only the Federal government can get ahold of. Bush should have known that. Yes, officially Blanco needed to request aid, and we don't know for sure yet when exactly she did that do we? But you don't have to be a genius to figure out this was more than they could handle.
Bush should have sent in massive amounts of transportation to get people out before hand, they should have had tents, and other shelters ready for the evacuees. It's no excuse that they didn't know how bad it would be, they did an exercise LAST SUMMER that theorized what would happen if a Cat. 3 hit NO dead on. There is no excuse, they knew what would happen. It's no one person's fault, but Bush, as the nation's leader has to accept some responsibility.
He won widespread praise after 9/11 for his handling of that situation, where, if you ask me, he didn't really do all that much more than give moral support. So here he has to face the other side of the coin.
Also, I think he should take some fire for being on vacation when this happened. He keeps making the argument that he can do his job just as well from Crawford as he can from the White House, but I don't buy it. I believe he would have handled the situation differently if he were in the Oval Office instead of biking around a field of poppies.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
All this time and still no sign of relief from the breakdown of margins in this thread? I don't blame CS, I blame Bush.
Cactus, plenty of criticism of the feds has been thrown out by Republicans. Your take on it is laughably partisan and mean-spirited.
More helicopter rescues have been performed by the Coast Guard and others since Katrina than the TOTAL for the last 3 years. That's impressive.
On a technical note, I wonder if seich dynamics were responsible for the levees breaking, after the storm had passed? This was suggested by one expert, and is one reason the timing of the levee breaks was surprising to non-experts, including me. I thought NO had dodged the bullet. Lake Pontrechain is said to be vulnerable to seiches, which is sloshing of a lake that continues for hours or days after being disturbed by storm or earthquake.
Resources, especially helicopters, could have been allocated and committed around the area, only to have the levee break cause a massive need for reprioritizing. Which seemed agonizingly slow, but it takes time to gear up for disaster #2(levee breaks and flooding of NO) while already dealing with the worst natural disaster in US history, with the possible exception of the 1906 San Fran quake or the 1900 Galveston hurricane and flood.
That said, I think there is blame to go around for the slow response in NO, both locally, state and federal. Poor planning all round, and poor execution by FEMA.
[ September 04, 2005, 02:30 PM: Message edited by: Morbo ]
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
CT, your friend Ursula makes some good points. But not all the roads were out. One reporter went into NO on tues or wed, all the way to the convention center, and said it took him only a few minutes. Surely a few trucks of food and water could have made it in before the big convoy rolled in on Friday.
The convention center was not officially an evac center, but the Superdome was. And they were out of food and water for a considerable time, with next to no resupply. Surely some more helos could have been tasked for water supply than were.
[ September 04, 2005, 02:40 PM: Message edited by: Morbo ]
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Superdome.
And from what I hear, hundreds of people were told by the Mayor to head to the convention center of Superdome for shelter.
Posted by Eldrad (Member # 8578) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Cactus Jack -
I hope you were being sarcastic. If not, then I think that's the stupidest thing I've heard yet.
Ray Nagin was clamoring for help since it was first announced that Katrina would hit the Gulf coast. He ordered a mandatory evacuation, but with so many people unable to evacuate themselves, what was he to do? He asked for help. And the reason Republicans are blaming Louisiana is because the Blanco, Mary Landrieu, and Ray Nagin are all democrats, not because of some state's rights issue, which I think is laughable since this REPUBLICAN president has done more to curtail the rights of individual states than any president of the 20th century.
The post-hurrican excuse doesn't wash with me. Nagin was clamoring for assistance for days before Katrina hit. He had few resources, and even post Katrina it's pretty obvious LA didn't have the resources either. These are resources only the Federal government can get ahold of. Bush should have known that. Yes, officially Blanco needed to request aid, and we don't know for sure yet when exactly she did that do we? But you don't have to be a genius to figure out this was more than they could handle.
Bush should have sent in massive amounts of transportation to get people out before hand, they should have had tents, and other shelters ready for the evacuees. It's no excuse that they didn't know how bad it would be, they did an exercise LAST SUMMER that theorized what would happen if a Cat. 3 hit NO dead on. There is no excuse, they knew what would happen. It's no one person's fault, but Bush, as the nation's leader has to accept some responsibility.
He won widespread praise after 9/11 for his handling of that situation, where, if you ask me, he didn't really do all that much more than give moral support. So here he has to face the other side of the coin.
Also, I think he should take some fire for being on vacation when this happened. He keeps making the argument that he can do his job just as well from Crawford as he can from the White House, but I don't buy it. I believe he would have handled the situation differently if he were in the Oval Office instead of biking around a field of poppies.
Read Belle's point from earlier. There were people on stand-by to help out, but you can only have so many; otherwise, you have no place to put them, except for the areas that were still hit, however relatively minorly in comparison with New Orleans, by Katrina. Even if they did perform an exercise, it was for a Category 3 hurricane; Katrina wasn't downgraded to that until she'd passed by New Orleans. The scope of the disaster was far greater than anyone could've expected. What would you expect Bush to do? Send in the military? Granted, he has now, but can you imagine what effect that would've had on the people inside New Orleans, the additional fear they would've felt? It's already bad enough for them there. Add to that fact that Louisiana doesn't allow for martial law, and there's not a whole lot that could've been done, given the scope of the hurricane. Further, why does it even matter where Bush was when the hurricane hit? What more could he have done from the White House? Nothing.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
From what I can tell, after the storm some officials did say go to the convention center.
But the Superdome was the previously planned storm shelter and evac location.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I'm afraid I disagree on pretty much every point. Eldrad.
quote: There were people on stand-by to help out, but you can only have so many; otherwise, you have no place to put them, except for the areas that were still hit, however relatively minorly in comparison with New Orleans, by Katrina.
It wasn't a matter of having them inside New Orleans ready. Why weren't helicopters fueled and fired ready to go in? Why weren't Navy ships waiting to move in? Why weren't convoys of supplies ready to go in? Yes, there was only so much room at the staging area. But it cost precious time to get all this set up, when it could have been ready before hand.
quote: Even if they did perform an exercise, it was for a Category 3 hurricane; Katrina wasn't downgraded to that until she'd passed by New Orleans. The scope of the disaster was far greater than anyone could've expected.
All the more reason to expect a larger disaster! You're wrong, it was upgrated to a category FIVE the day before it hit NO, which is part of why the evacuation order was made mandatory. It wasn't downgraded to a category 4 until just before it hit the coast. At the category 3 simulation they expected the levees to break and for massive flooding to rip the city. And they couldn't GUESS THAT A LARGER AND MORE POWERFUL STORM WOULD CAUSE MORE DAMAGE? That excuse is incredible bullshit.
quote: What would you expect Bush to do? Send in the military? Granted, he has now, but can you imagine what effect that would've had on the people inside New Orleans, the additional fear they would've felt?
Why would they have felt afraid? They needed help and the troops come in to help them out. I wouldn't be afraid, I'd be relieved that someone cared enough to help. And either way, if they had been afraid of US troops, for whatever reason, I'd rather them actually be ALIVE to be afraid, than dead and unable to feel at all.
quote: Further, why does it even matter where Bush was when the hurricane hit? What more could he have done from the White House? Nothing.
It shouldn't have taken him 40 hours to get from Crawford to Washington. How long did it take him to get from Florida to NY on 9/11? Even after he kept reading that stupid book to the kids. He's always characterized as a man of action, except when he needs to be, then he blinks.
If he were in the White House, I think he would have been in Presidential mode, and not brush clearing cyclist mode. He would have issued orders, his staff would have been on hand to give him advice, as opposed to being a thousand miles away. It's bull for him to say that he's just as connected at Crawford as he is at the White House.
He should have been at his post.
Posted by CStroman (Member # 6872) on :
quote:The first priority is to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the poor, heal the sick, and comfort the widowed and orphaned.
Not in this case. If it were in Florida or just a regular Mississippi overrunning it's banks for a day or two and then subsiding, then yes.
In this case the first priority was to get the THOUSANDS of people stranded on their ROOFTOPS out of harms way. Which takes away the helicopters from delivering food.
In disaster relief 101 the first priority is "search and rescue".
THEN once the people are "out of harm's way" you make sure they have continuing life support.
A few HUGE problems here are that the "search and rescue" portion hasn't ended yet. There are still people trapped and being rescued. Also there is still a FLOOD going on. The waters haven't subsided. ALSO the area around the deluged areas are states of disaster as well.
quote:Why weren't helicopters fueled and fired ready to go in? Why weren't Navy ships waiting to move in? Why weren't convoys of supplies ready to go in? Yes, there was only so much room at the staging area. But it cost precious time to get all this set up, when it could have been ready before hand.
They were, but there were stuck RESCUING people who were stuck in there homes instead of being at the Superdome or Convention center. The ships is another matter because A. the hurricane wasn't orignally headed for the Gulf Coast, it was headed for Florida and B. it had LOST strength when it hit Florida. C. BTW did I mention that the hurricane was projected to HIT Florida first? Oh and that it DID as what a Category 1?
Also the ships wouldn't be able to help New Orleans for the many numerous geographical reasons coupled with the hurricane's destruction. Also ships aren't the fastest way to get supplies anywhere.
quote:Why weren't convoys of supplies ready to go in? Yes, there was only so much room at the staging area. But it cost precious time to get all this set up, when it could have been ready before hand.
Into where? Florida where it was scheduled to hit as a Category 1 or 2? No one thought that 100,000 people would still be in New Orleans when it hit. It's why people get out of Florida when hurricane's head that way. In fact we've had DEVASTATING hurricane's hit Florida and the Eastern Seaboard but the human casualties have never been this high because PEOPLE GET OUT! Unfortunately the people are a large part of the reason it's a problem. That's a discussion for another thread, but one man interviewed sumed it up best. "Where is the government? They's supposed to take care of us!"
Now I'll say it again. The biggest problem isn't that there was a hurricane or that there's flooding. The biggest problem is that you have 100,000 people STILL IN THE CITY WHEN IT GOT HIT.
And unless you have lived there or visited the area there is a mentallity there that you may or may not understand which boils down to "If the government wants me to evacuate, then I'll wait for them to drive up, knock on my door and help me load my stuff in the bus to get out because that's their responsibility" vs. other people's mentallity of "The government wants us to evacuate, that means I need to do everything I can in MY power to get out if it means I have to walk or call the police to come and pick me up, or what have you. I have to get out."
So then it becomes an issue of it's the government's responsibility to force people to leave door by door. In this case, there wasn't enough time or manpower to go door to door and evacuate everyone. More could have been done, but what do you do in a huge city to find out who needs to be evacuated? Do we automatically assume all SSI recipients are unable to evacuate? That would be a good start, but does the government have the privacy intrusion available to them at the state level?
Poverty has a lot to do with that. Social Security has a lot to do with that.
The biggest problem I see is that there were 100,000 people still in a city that LOGIC (that may or may not be missing from the minds of some of these people) says is UNDER SEA LEVEL.
I think there were multiple failures, but I am NOT going to start biting the hand that feeds you when when they are at least trying to feed you.
The town should have been a ghost town when Katrina hit, it wasn't, and that's where the biggest problems started.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
There are numerous reasons people stayed, and almost all those reasons apply to all other coastal US cities. Your characterization of the victims as stubbornly demanding gov't assistance vs the strapping self-reliance of other God-fearing Americans is a poor joke.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Indeed. They knew for days before it hit that it would hit, and as a stronger storm than a Category 1. You're "they didn't know, they didn't know" excuse rings hollow in my ears. Because they did know, or common sense would rule that they should have known.
And why the hell didn't the federal government heed the cries of Ray Nagin and Blanco? They said repeatedly that they didn't have the manpower to evacuate the city and Bush kept on clearing brush at Crawford. No one made a move for them, and they, especially Ray Nagin, were clamoring for help. What's your excuse to shift responsibility off the government and on to the poor destitute for that one CStroman?
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
In fact, everyone was told months if not years ago that they were on there own in case of evac: Can't say we didn't see it coming thread, see the articles I quoted and linked
quote:"City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own. _____________________________________________ "We pretty much knew this would happen somewhere along the line," Gregory W. Stone, director of the Coastal Studies Institute at Louisiana State University, said Thursday. He is among the scientists who have issued dire warnings for years.
"A lot of that has not been taken seriously" by the federal government, Stone said. "That's a regrettable thing to say."
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
I think LA and NO both dropped the ball by refusing to plan adaquately for evacuation. So what if the Mayor was clamoring for help 48 hours before Katrina hit? He wrote off the poor months ago, and is unwilling to accept any blame for his city's lack of planning.
Bush has made some mistakes, but he's not alone. It was national wishful thinking to dream that NO would never get a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane. Sooner or later it was going to happen, and we weren't prepared.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
quote:Why weren't helicopters fueled and fired ready to go in? Why weren't Navy ships waiting to move in? Why weren't convoys of supplies ready to go in? Yes, there was only so much room at the staging area. But it cost precious time to get all this set up, when it could have been ready before hand.
Coast Guard rescue helicopters are always fueled and fired. Do you think the ones that were in service were just sitting around collecting dust somewhere?
You say there should have been convoys at the staging area. What staging area? Where do you stage them when you have no idea exactly where a hurricane will hit? If you guess wrong you might be hundreds of miles away from where you're really needed.
If you stage them in Birmingham, figuring it's far enough from the coast, then what do you do when tornados spin off the remains of the western eye wall and wipe out your staging area? Few people remember because it hasn't gotten near as much press, but there were areas in Georgia that had massive damage due to tornados from Katrina. We had a fair amount of damage in Birmingham, and widespread power outages.
Those of you that want this massive gear up of manpower and supplies before every hurricane - where are you going to put them and where are you going to get the money to keep doing that? What happens when you pour millions into a staging for a hurricane and a western dry front moves in and the hurricane falls to a category 1 and does nothing? Will we all be saying "Oh good, at least we were ready" or would we screaming about the govt wasting resources? And where are the resources going to come from to do all that in the first place?
Do you think we should spend millions (or billions maybe) to have a staging area just outside San Francisco waiting for a possible earthquake?
Yes, we have a little more warning for a hurricane than we do for an earthquake but predicting landfalls and severity is most certainly not an exact science.
I understand frustration and anger and the desire to make someone be responsible for what has gone wrong, but some of the solutions people want are just not feasible, sometimes we have to accept that natural disasters are just that - disasters - and our ability to prevent, predict, and control them is severely limited.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Morbo -
I think that's more true than most other things that have been said here.
Including my own rhetoric Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
The only helicopters we have in the country are the coast guard's? There are dozens more out there. And there weren't convoys ready ANYWHERE, and no matter how far away. Thus it took 4 days until they were actually in the city. They could have been made ready in Utah and gotten there in 4 days.
And it was a category five heading towards the coast. That isn't good enough reason to gear up? Isn't that what NOAA is partially for?
Posted by CStroman (Member # 6872) on :
quote:Indeed. They knew for days before it hit that it would hit, and as a stronger storm than a Category 1. You're "they didn't know, they didn't know" excuse rings hollow in my ears. Because they did know, or common sense would rule that they should have known.
And why the hell didn't the federal government heed the cries of Ray Nagin and Blanco? They said repeatedly that they didn't have the manpower to evacuate the city and Bush kept on clearing brush at Crawford. No one made a move for them, and they, especially Ray Nagin, were clamoring for help. What's your excuse to shift responsibility off the government and on to the poor destitute for that one CStroman?
I want you to tell me exactly what it is you think President Bush failed to do and I want you to break it down chronologically from the moment that the Governor of the State of Louisiana asked for help PRIOR to the Hurricane making landfall.
I'm open to have you convince me.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Lyrhawn, no one knew the helicopters would be needed. No one expected that many people to be stranded on their roofs. And, even after the hurricane hit and left, they still didn't need the helicopters. It wasn't until after the levee breach that they knew they needed them.
I really, really wish the government and everyone else had the psychic ability to look into the future that you seem to think they do.
I want to know how you expect convoys to move into a city that has been virtually cut off. Did you miss the video or still shots of the bridges that are destroyed? How do you move convoys across bridges that no longer exist?
The reason the help took so long to get there is not entirely due to people not caring or not being ready or prepared - part of the reason is that they simply could not get in there. They still can't get in there.
So many people panicked and put a run on gas in Mississippi both before and after the storm that the Red Cross still has relief trucks full of supplies stranded in Meridian MS because they're out of gas. They can't get down there. Read the story I linked to in my thread about dsyntery and cholera, they mention it there.
There are a lot of things that have gone wrong and there are things that people and government agencie did wrong, I truly believe that. But I don't believe that we can predict and plan things to the extent that you think we should be able to. I just don't think it's possible when you're dealing with natural disasters.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
So how did that big convoy of trucks get into the city yesterday? Floated in on pontoons?
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Some facts that don't get enough attention: Belle's right, there were a series of powerful tornados in GA, some east of Atlanta, hundreds of miles from landfall.
This storm was worse than Camille, the worst hurricane in US history (in some terms), except possibly for the unnamed storm that destroyed Galveston in 1900.
It set a record for storm surge, approx. 25 ft waves surged inland. That's what was so deadly in Miss. and Ala. I think Camille had a 22 ft max storm surge.
Andrew had higher sustained winds, but was much smaller. Katrina was HUGE. The disaster area is 90,000 freakin' square miles, an area the size of Great Britain!!
It really was too late 72 hours before the storm to do much. Hurricanes can weaken and intensify dramatically in a few hours, as Katrina did. And at that point, the landfall point is not totally predictable, it can shift hundreds of miles from the best prediction.
Aside for the long delays getting into NO in force, I personally think everyone's doing the best they can.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Fine, I'm wrong, you are all right.
I'm already sick of arguing about it.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Lyrhawn the Crescent city connection is still operable, but it's the only major one. So that's why all the trucks you see are in giant convoys.
Many of them would have come in on I-10, or across the twin spans, and they would have been spread out and arriving over different periods of time.
Any relief vehicle, say in Florida, which normally would have come in on I-10 is having to go perhaps hundreds of miles out of its way to come in on the crescent city connection (I'm not totally familiar with the geography, so somebody correct me if I'm wrong) and any relief supplies in Arkansas, or coming south on I-59 is also going to have to divert way out of its way to come through on the connection.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Lyr, that last wasn't aimed at you specifically, but at everyone that's been throwing out blanket criticism of the government response lately. Some of the criticism is correct, lots of it I disagree with.
Posted by CStroman (Member # 6872) on :
quote:It really was too late 72 hours before the storm to do much. And at that point, the landfall point is not totally predictable, it can shift hundreds of miles at the last minute.
Bingo! But to some people that doesn't matter, they want troops poured into the area before landfall with NO plan on how to get the people out or how to SUSTAIN THEM. EDIT: and to basically go door to door to find out who needs to be extracted as there weren't people standing on their roofs needing to be evacuated until AFTER the storm hit.
I want Lyrhawn to tell me exactly how President Bush failed to pre-emptively strike prior to New Orleans and how he failed to magically make trucks appear in NO immediately afterwards because you seem to have a strong opinion on whose fault it is and I would like to find out what facts/thinking on the failure found those opinions.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
And all those people who have been offering to help with their boats that were turned away by local authorities? Supplies couldn't have been motorboated in? I know the Navy and Coast Guard have zodiacs, they couldn't go in with supplies on those? and leave with rescued stranded people?
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Morbo -
I think that's more true than most other things that have been said here.
Including my own rhetoric
Thanks for that. And your rhetoric is fine, it's your logic that needs work. Just kiddin'! Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
*sigh*
You can't just send untrained people into areas to rescue folks. Plenty do it anyway, and I admire them, but the government can't sanction that.
What happens when they themselves get stranded - now the officials have one more person to rescue. What if the people going in encounter folks with medical emergencies they aren't trained to handle or help with? What if they only make things worse instead of better? I'm sorry, but first responders and rescuers undergo extensive training for a reason and it's not something we should just send anybody to do unless they've had some of that training.
As for the Navy and Coast guard - from where are they going to launch these zodiacs? The naval ships still won't be there for a few days, you can't have them just sitting in the gulf waiting to launch their zodiacs in the midst of a hurricane and you can't move ships into the gulf until you know for sure where the hurricane is going to go.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
FEMA did turn away supplies, that's a fact. A LA official, I think that poor parish president that broke down and cried on Meet the Press, said Walmart sent 3 semis of water to NO on Tues or Wed, and FEMA turned them away, saying they weren't needed.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Was anyone else struck by all the diabetics in NO? For unknown (to me) reasons, the Gulf Coast has some of the highest concentrations in the US of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and other serious medical conditions. Yet another complication that's killing people. Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Morbo, I'd like to hear who exactly turned them away and what reason they gave for it, in detail. Not that I don't believe you, but if that was the case then it's despicable. Water is still needed desperately, I hope the semis turned around and went to Gulfport or Biloxi, because they certainly still need water.
However, because I know how rumors fly, I'd want to hear details to be sure what that guy reported is completely accurate.
Poverty and ill health go hand in hand, unfortunately. New Orleans is also an area famous for its rich, fattening foods.
Posted by Theaca (Member # 8325) on :
NO was the 7th highest city for the amount of obesity present. Lots of diabetics and other related health problems would be highly prevalent in NO too.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
It was someone with FEMA. No other details, sorry. I know how rumours fly. This was on a national network news show, I think on Meet the Press. Possibly Fox News Sunday. MtP reruns late tonight, I'm taping it anyway.
Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Cactus Jack -
Ray Nagin was clamoring for help since it was first announced that Katrina would hit the Gulf coast. He ordered a mandatory evacuation, but with so many people unable to evacuate themselves, what was he to do? He asked for help. And the reason Republicans are blaming Louisiana is because the Blanco, Mary Landrieu, and Ray Nagin are all democrats
But a mayor cannot request aide when the Governor of the state doesn't want it. Bush wanted the federal government to take over the evacuation of NO since the local government couldn't get it done, but Blanco said no. Washington Post
Sure, the mayor might have said he was not capable of handling the situation, but the president cannot do anything about it. The Governor must mobilize the National Guard. That is how the system works. Bush had a lot more leeway after 9/11 because it was foreign attack on the USA. In this case it was a natural disaster. If the state governor wouldn't give control to the federal government, then they can't legally take control.
People said that that the military could have kept the peace, but that is also not legal. The national guard can police in the USA, but the military cannot. Bush did end up sending in military for non police functions, but that is the limit of what they can legally do.
Another claim I have seen was that the military could have helped transport people out of the area. This again, could have been done locally. By now most people have likely seen the yahoo photo of all the busses that were left sitting where they were eventually flooded. The state could have used those to get people out before hand, but chose not to. As people have mentioned elsewhere, at this point it is tough to get people out. The roads are flooded, and there are a limited amount of helicopters...and even those are not meant to quickly transport the number of people that need to be moved.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
CS, thanks for fixing the frames, I will be able to read this now. Posted by CStroman (Member # 6872) on :
The url code wouldn't work for some reason on edit so I appreciate the small url hints. Sorry it took so long as I was busy watching the Cougars lose on Saturday.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
MSNBC has a breaking news bullitin that 6-8 people were shot by authorities on a NO bridge, some killed.
There weren't any details.
Posted by Theaca (Member # 8325) on :
Well, it did say the people had guns.
Posted by CStroman (Member # 6872) on :
Well that is Bush's fault too, I just haven't come up with a reason yet.
Posted by Cactus Jack (Member # 2671) on :
quote:Also, I think he should take some fire for being on vacation when this happened. He keeps making the argument that he can do his job just as well from Crawford as he can from the White House, but I don't buy it. I believe he would have handled the situation differently if he were in the Oval Office instead of biking around a field of poppies.
Hey! That's a coincidence!
I wrote the stupidest thing you read, and you wrote the stupidest thing I read!
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Well at least we're even.
Posted by Cactus Jack (Member # 2671) on :
::High fives Lyrhawn good-naturedly::
I really didn't mean to ever become partisan about this, but I'm just getting fed up.
I honestly read, here on Hatrack, somebody post that Bush's job is to protect people from disasters like this.
Nobody expected this. Let's take off the hindsight glasses. People made the best decisions they could at the time they could make them. We've experienced hurricanes before, and nothing like this ever happened.
There was no anticipating the level of the tragedy. Even after the hurricane had passed, the full effect of the tragedy hadn't set in yet. People were saying even after the hurricane that New Orleans had dodged the bullet.
So let's stop playing woulda-coulda-shoulda partisan games. It is beyond worthless.
Instead, let's concentrate on what's actually happened there now.
Mistakes have absolutely been made. By everyone, on every side. Not because anyone is incompetent, but because we haven't experienced anything like this before.
We're learning from it. Just like we had to learn from 9/11, we have to learn from this. That doesn't change the fact that everyone is doing the best they can under the circumstances, and will do everything in their power to do better next time.
And that applies to all parites.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
We need to a little bit. I'll agree to back off the "Bush should have..." rhetoric, as rereading my previous posts I believe some of what I said was unfair. But this isn't the best we could have done.
NOAA had been tracking Katrina since it was just a little whirlwind out in the Atlantic. They tracked it moving into Florida. They warned that when it hit the Gulf it would probably pick up steam, but no one really batted an eyelash. When it got out into the Gulf, people started to move, but still no one thought to kick it into high gear. By the time it had grown into a Category 5, it was too late to fix the problem.
What we need to do is examine the way we look at emergency preparedness and what the criteria are for getting emergency supplies set up in advance of a disaster. NOAA told everyone to look out. We've known for years that if something happened to New Orleans we should look out. Last year when the Congress/Bush cut funding for the levee repair, we knew we had to look out.
This didn't come out of some blind alley to whack us upside the head. We knew it could happen, and had warning signs for days. So yes, we made mistakes, ones that should not have been made, and some of that I am willing to forgive, based entirely on the condition that everyone who screwed up steps up and says "I did this wrong, and here's how we should do it next time."
I don't think you can say "well what if the storm had missed?" Because it didn't miss, and we didn't think it was going to miss. Everytime information is staring you in the face, you can't look at it and blink, because it might not be true. Hell, we went to Iraq ignoring obvious evidence, and we know how that turned out don't we?
That part of the process needs to be examined. Because obviously it doesn't work. If someone doesn't already have the job, someone needs to be in charge of managing hurricane disasters on the coast, looking for potential threats and then preparing to move resources into place before the threat hits, and then being prepared to clean up afterwards. You would think this is FEMA's job, but they obviously weren't equipped to handle it. Especially if this is just the beginning of how the next 40 years are going to go.
Posted by Occasional (Member # 5860) on :
I think my point is getting proven. Republicans (if you count this thread alone at least) are defending the Fed. Government and saying it was the STATES repsonsibility (and I of course agree) and they failed. The Democrats are blaming the Fed Gov. (Bush in particular so I am not surprised) and asking them to be the militants they think they are.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by CStroman: The url code wouldn't work for some reason on edit so I appreciate the small url hints. Sorry it took so long as I was busy watching the Cougars lose on Saturday.
Man, I remember the first time I broke the frames, and someone steered me to tinyurl....I loved it.
Since you are a Bush supporter I figured it would take at least three days for you to try and fix it...
(I was kidding, just in case someone might take me seriously about that last one....I wouldn't usually post a notice of joke, but considering the topic... )
Posted by Occasional (Member # 5860) on :
By the way, has anyone compared Miss. to LA when it comes to reactions to this disaster? Again, a highly Republican state hasn't complained about a lack of help even after having at least equal devistation aside from perhaps NO. The criticism from LA constituents has been non-stop against the Feds. Again, this proves its who you are and not what happened that determines who is getting blamed.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
From what I've seen on the news, the Federal response in Miss. was almost immediate. They were in, help was delivered. People weren't complaining of not having food there 5 days later.
That's perhaps part of the reason for the difference.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
quote: I think my point is getting proven. Republicans (if you count this thread alone at least) are defending the Fed. Government and saying it was the STATES repsonsibility (and I of course agree) and they failed. The Democrats are blaming the Fed Gov. (Bush in particular so I am not surprised) and asking them to be the militants they think they are.
Occasional, you're point is NOT proven. Plenty of Republican and conservative critisism has been leveled at the federal response, including by Sen. Lott of Miss.
quote:In a sign of the political pressure facing Bush, Mississippi Republican Sen. Trent Lott, a former Senate majority leader, said he has been battling the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its Mississippi counterpart for help for his state and urged Bush to cut red tape.
After a one-on-one meeting with Bush in Poplarville, Lott said: "I am demanding help for the people of Mississippi to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina." ... Bush has been under fire from Democrats and Republicans alike for a sluggish federal response to a flood that has made hundreds of thousands homeless and is feared to have killed thousands along the northern Gulf of Mexico coast.
quote: "Government at all levels failed," Sen. Susan Collins (search), R-Maine, said at the Capitol. She announced that the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee would hold hearings, adding, "It is difficult to understand the lack of preparedness and the ineffective initial response to a disaster that had been predicted for years, and for which specific, dire warnings had been given for days."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168574,00.html
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
This surprised me:
quote:The spotlight began to turn yesterday on Michael Brown, the head of Fema, who had minimal emergency management experience before joining the agency in 2001, and had spent the previous 10 years organising horse shows for the International Arabian Horse Association. Press reports claimed he had had to leave that job because of questions about his performance.
There's an aspect to this that I don't think has been brought up yet. The situation has demonstrated that we weren't ready to deal with a major disaster. Despite this being recognized as one of the top 3 dangers, our agencies didn't seem at all prepared to handle it.
Disasters can be man-made as well as natural. America is now under serious threat of major terorist attacks, which will likely be much less predictable than this major hurricane scenario that we were anticipating. I worry that the situation in New Orleans is an indication of the disaster response and recovery we can expect in the wake of a successful terrorist attack.
I have to wonder what the heck they've been doing in planning for the aftermath of attacks, if this is the kind of response they can muster to an anticipated disaster.
Posted by jebus202 (Member # 2524) on :
quote:This surprised me: quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The spotlight began to turn yesterday on Michael Brown, the head of Fema, who had minimal emergency management experience before joining the agency in 2001, and had spent the previous 10 years organising horse shows for the International Arabian Horse Association. Press reports claimed he had had to leave that job because of questions about his performance. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote: WASHINGTON — The leader of the U.S. government's much-criticized handling of hurricane relief efforts in the Gulf Coast came to Washington in 2001 with scant background in dealing with natural disasters. But he had an important connection: His new boss was an old friend who had managed George W. Bush's successful campaign for the White House.
Michael D. Brown left his job in Colorado supervising horse-show judges to work for Bush's longtime political aide, Joe Allbaugh, who was heading the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the new administration.
Brown had been a lawyer active in Republican politics whose most relevant emergency response experience was a stint supervising police and fire departments as assistant city manager in an Oklahoma City suburb.
But within two years, he rose from FEMA's general counsel to deputy director and, when Allbaugh left, he moved to the agency's top spot.
This was a patronage "plum job," pure and simple. Every administration does it. But one would have thought that GWB, the post-911, security-minded president would have reserved positions like this for qualified people, rather than as a political reward.
Brown is probably safe. The president's track record right now is this: He only fires or asks for resignations for perceived disloyalty. Incompetence is tolerated and protected.
(and, for the record, I'm not particularly happy with the performance of the local and state Democrats in this deadly fiasco, either.)
Posted by Theaca (Member # 8325) on :
I heard that the FEMA leader once upon a time had a near-cabinet position post. But since 9/11 it got lumped in with a bunch of other stuff under Homeland Security or something like that. So there wasn't as much scrutiny over the position as there had been. I don't know but I would think that might be part of the problem. Assuming that information was true.
Posted by Eldrad (Member # 8578) on :
quote:Originally posted by Occasional: By the way, has anyone compared Miss. to LA when it comes to reactions to this disaster? Again, a highly Republican state hasn't complained about a lack of help even after having at least equal devistation aside from perhaps NO. The criticism from LA constituents has been non-stop against the Feds. Again, this proves its who you are and not what happened that determines who is getting blamed.
Mississippi suffered a lot of damage, certainly, but it wasn't on the scale of what happened in New Orleans, as you said yourself; that alone disproves your point, as the conditions enabled help to get where it needed to go immediately, as transportation systems weren't damaged nearly as much as they were in Louisiana. Blame's to be had at all levels of government, certainly, but it's completely illogical to try to make a tenuous and unprovable connection between the way a state voted and the relief response. Remember, much of the relief in Louisiana came from within the state itself; more came from the feds when they were overwhelmed. Mississippi, again, was better able to deal with it because the infrastructure there wasn't as heavily damaged, nor was the damage so concentrated in just one place (as it was in a city the size of New Orleans). If you're going to make the connection that politics had something to do with the response time, it would make a good deal more sense for the government to respond as quickly as possible so that they'd be viewed as handling the situation favorably. Remember when Florida was struck just before last year's election? The damage and relief effort was dealt with swiftly, and the state swung to Bush by a much, much larger margin than anyone had predicted. That lends credence to the idea that helping a state as quickly as possible in a situation like this would be more beneficial politically; thus, it makes more sense to expedite the relief effort for the reason you cited. Not political punishment, but a way to entice the state back over to that party during the next elections (say, the upcoming congressional elections in 2006, for example, to help cement a Republican majority?). Either way, I don't think the relief time should be politically motivated, but as I said, it makes far more sense to help the state rather than 'punish' it in this manner.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
"Again, a highly Republican state hasn't complained about a lack of help even after having at least equal devistation aside from perhaps NO."
Did Mississippi vote for Kerry?
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: our agencies didn't seem at all prepared to handle it.
Now, just a second. Just because Harry Connick, jr. was able to get to the convention center before most of the other help got to New Orleans doesn't mean anything. All those other agencies clearly had, you know, other stuff they had to do besides getting food and water to thousands of people.
Edit: I meant superdome, not convention center. Pardon.
[ September 07, 2005, 02:49 PM: Message edited by: Storm Saxon ]
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
"Did Mississippi vote for Kerry?"
Just get snarky, Dag. You're pretty good at strawmen and red herrings.
The question at hand was whether the "slow response" was a fabrication of democrats, since the majority of the attention is on New Orleans, and Bush and Co. are trying to blame local politicians.
Lott is complaining that FEMA's response is slow and bureaucratic, not that funding for flood preparation was cut in retribution for failure to support Bush.
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
quote: New Orleans emergency management plan. Here is an important section in the first paragraph.
"We coordinate all city departments and allied state and federal agencies which respond to citywide disasters and emergencies through the development and constant updating of an integrated multi-hazard plan. All requests for federal disaster assistance and federal funding subsequent to disaster declarations are also made through this office.
also (in response to Glenn Arnold's last statement) some media are now pointing out that some of the federal aid that was sent to New Orleans designated FOR levee repair, improvement and construction was not used for that purpose when it arrived there. Local corruption. I will try to find that article link again.
FG
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
I keep hearing people say "nobody could have anticipated this" or "nobody expected this". I've seen those statements over and over but they are completely false.
For those who may have missed the other thead, here is an article published in 2001 in Scientific American telling all about the disaster in advance, as well as telling about the near miss in 1998 that should have been our final wake up call.
Whatever else one can say about what we've done or not done or should have done, one can not say that we didn't clearly see it coming.
Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :
Or you could just watch the repeat of last night's The Daily Show where Jon Stewart, just back from vacation, shows the footage of someone who did know it could happen. It was a very funny show and I'm glad he's back from vacation.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:"Did Mississippi vote for Kerry?" Just get snarky, Dag. You're pretty good at strawmen and red herrings.
And you're pretty good at unfounded conspiracy theories and misstatements about when federal help arrived in New Orleans.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
Misstatements? Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
Farmgirl,
The "FEMA is not a first responder" argument disappears as soon as the local first responders are rendered inoperative by the state of disaster. In other words you can't mount a rescue from within a disaster area.
What local officials were responsible for was to ask for help, which they did. The republicans' early claim that Governor Blanco did not ask for help is bogus. She requested federal help on Friday the 26th, before landfall. But FEMA demanded that full control be turned over to them, effectively putting local officials out of the loop.
The quote you offer above partly explains why this isn't supposed to happen. The local leaders know the area, they're supposed to coordinate and provide their knowledge to the rescue teams, not be swept aside by the federal guys.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Misstatements?
Yes. Your own link documents them.
Posted by John Van Pelt (Member # 5767) on :
quote:By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the “officials” told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the city, we finally encountered the National Guard.
The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the city’s primary shelter had been descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the city’s only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, “If we can’t go to the only two shelters in the city, what was our alternative?” The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us.
quote: As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander’s assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the six-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their city.
quote: “We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn’t go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai," said Hans Buder, who made the trip with his roommate Byrd and another student, David Hankla. ... "Anyone who knows that area, if you had a bus, it would take you no more than 20 minutes to drive in with a bus and get these people out"...
quote: The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. “Taking care of us” had an ominous tone to it.
Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking city) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, “Get off the ****ing freeway”. A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
Dag,
You do realize that you haven't so much as offered a counterargument? All you've done is adopt a smug attitude that my arguments are inaccurate, unfounded or unworthy.
You've demonstrateed time and time again that when you don't like what you're hearing all you have do do is lob insinuations of dismissal at those you're arguing with, and then praise yourself for having won the argument. Well, the guy in Michigan was murdered for his atheism. Nothing changed that, but you sure made the argument go away.
That doesn't mean you won.
By the way, my belief that BushCo. defunded the New Orleans flood control effort for political retribution is not a theory, it is a hypothesis. I doubt it is likely to be tested, but it is not unfounded. The funding was cut. No one disputes that. The city did vote in large numbers for Kerry. No one disputes that either. And BushCo. has made it absolutely clear that anyone who doesn't support him gets fired, gets discredited, gets outed, gets the finger. The evidence is circumstantial, that I'll give you, but the claim is not unfounded.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
About the medication... I believe blacks are at higher risk for diabetes than the general population of the USA. New Orleans has a mostly black population. Statistically I believe your diabetes incidence would be higher than the rest of the country.
I still don't know who is "in charge" NOW! What I am disappointed in, is that there *still* isn't a clear chain of command, and Blanco and Nagin still seem to be in some sort of power struggle.
AJ
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:You do realize that you haven't so much as offered a counterargument? All you've done is adopt a smug attitude that my arguments are inaccurate, unfounded or unworthy.
And you've made inaccurate statements and gross accusations.
I've demonstrated that FEMA was on site on MONDAY, the day the levee breached. You claimed Bush didn't "send in help until it [was] too late for thousands who have died."
FEMA was onsite Monday, the day the levee breached. Too little help does not equal no help.
Your statement was inaccurate.
quote:You've demonstrateed time and time again that when you don't like what you're hearing all you have do do is lob insinuations of dismissal at those you're arguing with, and then praise yourself for having won the argument. Well, the guy in Michigan was murdered for his atheism. Nothing changed that, but you sure made the argument go away.
All I did was point out that I was skeptical and the reasons why, in one post. I didn't say it didn't happen. I said the reporting was shoddy, and the lack of mention anywhere else was suspicious.
You kept pressing me on it. I had nothing to do with any argument going away.
Edit: As for "lobbing insinuations," you are the one who has taken it upon yourself to accuse the president of slashing flood control as political punishment, despite the fact funding levels are higher than they were under Clinton, despite the fact that Lousianna gets more Army Corps money than any other state, and despite the fact that the Louisiana congressional district is quite capable of getting projects they consider important passed.
quote:y the way, my belief that BushCo. defunded the New Orleans flood control effort for political retribution is not a theory, it is a hypothesis. I doubt it is likely to be tested, but it is not unfounded. The funding was cut. No one disputes that. The city did vote in large numbers for Kerry. No one disputes that either. And BushCo. has made it absolutely clear that anyone who doesn't support him gets fired, gets discredited, gets outed, gets the finger. The evidence is circumstantial, that I'll give you, but the claim is not unfounded.
All quotes from a washington post article linked by Bob in another thread:
quote:In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.
Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.
For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations. The Corps also spends tens of millions of dollars a year dredging little-used waterways such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the Atchafalaya River and the Red River -- now known as the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, in honor of the project's congressional godfather -- for barge traffic that is less than forecast.
quote:But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects.
quote:"We've been hollering about funding for years, but everyone would say: There goes Louisiana again, asking for more money," said former Democratic senator John Breaux. "We've had some powerful people in powerful places, but we never got what we needed."
That may be true. But those powerful people -- including former senators Breaux, Johnston and Russell Long, as well as former House committee chairmen Robert Livingston and W.J. "Billy" Tauzin -- did get quite a bit of what they wanted. And the current delegation -- led by Landrieu and GOP Sen. David Vitter -- has continued that tradition.
The Senate's latest budget bill for the Corps included 107 Louisiana projects worth $596 million, including $15 million for the Industrial Canal lock, for which the Bush administration had proposed no funding. Landrieu said the bill would "accelerate our flood control, navigation and coastal protection programs." Vitter said he was "grateful that my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee were persuaded of the importance of these projects."
quote:The Bush administration has proposed cuts in the Corps budget, and has tried to shift the agency's emphasis from new construction to overdue maintenance. But most of those proposals have died quietly on Capitol Hill, and the administration has not fought too hard to revive them.
In fact, more than any other federal agency, the Corps is controlled by Congress; its $4.7 billion civil works budget consists almost entirely of "earmarks" inserted by individual legislators. The Corps must determine that the economic benefits of its projects exceed the costs, but marginal projects such as the Port of Iberia deepening -- which squeaked by with a 1.03 benefit-cost ratio -- are as eligible for funding as the New Orleans levees.
"It has been explicit national policy not to set priorities, but instead to build any flood control or barge project if the Corps decides the benefits exceed the costs by 1 cent," said Tim Searchinger, a senior attorney at Environmental Defense. "Saving New Orleans gets no more emphasis than draining wetlands to grow corn and soybeans."
The claim is unfounded.
Dagonee
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
As to FEMA turning away supplies, here's my story:
My mother in law has a very large house, with 7 bedrooms. We're not in a very good location, but some families are travelling long distances to find shelter.
Anyway, my wife and I have been trying to find out how to make this house available to victims of Katrina, but according to the local Red Cross, FEMA apparently shut down a website that was trying to make connections between people who need shelter and people who are offering shelter. There are other websites, but Red Cross was hesitant to make recomendations, because FEMA is refusing to allow refugees to be housed anywhwere that is not pre-approved by them.
Right now we're following a different avenue, since my wife works for a college, and many colleges are accepting students with minimum application hassle, as long as they are confirmed as being students at schools in the affected area. Since the school is a community college, with no dorms, we may be able to provide housing for those students. Cross your fingers.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
"I've demonstrated that FEMA was on site on MONDAY, the day the levee breached."
No, your post simply stated that FEMA was on site monday. You offered no link, and no additional information. You demonstrated nothing.
Which thread are the above quotes from?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Where is your link that FEMA didn't arrive until whenever it is you say they did? Don't hold me to some standard of proof you haven't even attempted to meet.
quote:Despite all the talk of nonexistent federal help, aid did arrive early on, even before Katrina hit. FEMA moved supplies from logistics centers in Atlanta and Denton, Texas, to Baton Rouge and the New Orleans airport. The agency positioned seven search and rescue teams and 23 medical assistance teams from Tennessee to Texas. About 7,000 National Guard troops were deployed in the state. Army Corps personnel started securing the locks, floodgates and other equipment.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
May I point out that merely having FEMA onsite doesn't necessarily constitute help. According to everyone I've talked to who was in New Orleans Monday, saying FEMA was on site then might be a stretch.
They may have been there, but the presence was minimal, and I certainly didn't here of them doing anything of significance until at least Wednesday.
Glenn, Claiming that GW made the funding disappear is a little too paranoid for me. Louisiana as a whole is very Republican, even though N.O. isn't.
Dag, Louisiana, while still getting a good chunk of Corps money when compared to other states, was allocated much less than what they needed and what they were promised.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:May I point out that merely having FEMA onsite doesn't necessarily constitute help.
There's a difference between "didn't send help" and "the help sent was inadequate." Glenn has chosen to stake out the former position as part of his attacks on the administration.
quote:Louisiana, while still getting a good chunk of Corps money when compared to other states, was allocated much less than what they needed and what they were promised.
It's not just "a good chunk," it's more than any other state. And the Lousiana delegation has been successful in getting that money earmarked as they want.
Did they get what they asked for? No. No one ever does.
Bush requested more money for NOLA flood control money than Clinton did in a comparable period. Only slightly more, but it's still demonstrative of the fact that no penal action was taken.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
Some pertinent background:
quote:When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.
Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.
Now the important part (bold mine):
quote:Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
It's not a case of getting what they asked for. This money was promised, allocated, then cut to make room for Iraq.
It's a lovely smoke and mirrors tactic to compare the funding for Louisiana and other states, but it just doesn't hold up. Whether or not Louisiana got more money than California is irrelevant. It's Army Corps funding, and Louisiana has more Army Corp dollars tied up than any other state because they have the need for them.
One more:
quote:The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
So that's even more evidence that it wasn't because the city voted for Kerry.
Further, the money was cut from what it would have been had one particular budget plan been followed.
But the amount requested by the Bush administration was still higher than what Clinton requested in a comparable time period.
In summary:
1.) The absolute levels requested by Bush were higher than those requested by Clinton.
2.) The cuts to the projected increases were started before the election which supposedly motivated the cuts.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
Presidents don't request funds in a situation like this. The Army Corp district in Louisiana puts together its yearly budget (which had been approved the year before) only to find that much of the money promised was not there. This is not unusual for federal funding.
What's unusual is the amount which was cut.
From The Washington Post:
quote:For instance, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers requested $27 million for this fiscal year to pay for hurricane protection projects around Lake Pontchartrain. The Bush administration countered with $3.9 million, and Congress eventually provided $5.7 million, according to figures provided by the office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).
They got less than one-quarter of what they requested. This is money that would have directly affected the integrity of the levees.
The other thing that I can't believe is that shoring up the levees is a project that began in 1965 and was supposed to be finished in 10 years. So it's run 30 years long (and still isn't finished).
The reason I don't like the comparison between Clinton and Bush is that they aren't on equal footing. The economy is totally different, and we're fighting a war now. It's not apples to apples. It's like saying the absolute temperature in Colorado is greater than the absolute temperature in Texas. If you're measuring one in the summer and one in the winter that's not a very good comparison.
And I'm not sure if you're directing the Kerry comment at me, but I agree with you that the cuts weren't political retribution, as I indicated in my previous post.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Presidents don't request funds in a situation like this. The Army Corp district in Louisiana puts together its yearly budget (which had been approved the year before) only to find that much of the money promised was not there. This is not unusual for federal funding.
The President does too request money. Every year (theoretically, it's been missed before) the president submits a budget to Congress. It's done on the project level for Army Corps budgets. In the Navy, the budgets were created at the division level, passed up to HQ, reviewed by the DoN at the Pentagon, then reviewed by DoD, then reviewed by OMB, then submitted to Congress.
I have physically printed the books that get submitted to Congress for the analogous budget items for the Navy.
The budgets generally run out about 10-15 years. Historical information is given where relevant. The years that are beyond the end of the current congressional cycle are called "out years." The out year numbers change from budget to budget all the time.
quote:And I'm not sure if you're directing the Kerry comment at me, but I agree with you that the cuts weren't political retribution, as I indicated in my previous post.
I know. But your post provides further evidence.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
"You claimed Bush didn't "send in help until it [was] too late for thousands who have died.""
Ah, I see. You're complaint of inaccuracy boils down to the fact that I should have used the word "enough" before the word "help." I could also concede that I used Bush as the target, rather than Brown, which would have been more accurate.
" Where is your link that FEMA didn't arrive until whenever it is you say they did? Don't hold me to some standard of proof you haven't even attempted to meet."
In that link you claim supports your argument, in the article titled: "FEMA Chief Sent Help Only After Storm Hit."
Ok, I read the article about spending on water projects in Louisiana.
Frankly, this doesn't surprise me. Louisiana is certainly not exempt from this kind of political B.S. But the article is also rather disingenuous in lumping a bunch of pork barrel projects together simply because they were all water projects, and all Army corps of engineers.
This makes it difficult to sort out the issues, because despite the similarity between the projects, they aren't necessarily related. A project that upgrades a lock, or deepens a channel so tankers can get through has nothing to do with a project that is intended to prevent flooding.
As has been pointed out by several people here, the prediction that New Orleans was set up for this particular disaster has been well publicized before the storm, and the descriptions almost exactly predicted what happened.
quote: Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.
Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate.
This makes it sound as if money was diverted from flood control projects, but it's actually talking about independent projects.
quote: Pam Dashiell, president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, remembers holding a protest against the lock four years ago -- right where the levee broke Aug. 30.
quote: Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects.
Now this is the chief of the Corps itself talking, saying that the levee would not have been fixed. Yet the concern in the descriptions before Katrina centered on the fact that the ground under the levees was subsiding, and that the levees (or maybe the ground under them) needed to be shored up. That was the concern, and that was the request that's making the headlines. It may be perfectly true that the repairs wouldn't have been done in time for this storm, but that doesn't alter the intent.
What I find I'm seeing in this article is that projects that support industry got funded, even when it was of very questionable value, but projects that would have protected the city got paid short shrift. The inhabitants of the city protested against the commercial projects, but were ignored.
Posted by John Van Pelt (Member # 5767) on :
quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: The other thing that I can't believe is that shoring up the levees is a project that began in 1965 and was supposed to be finished in 10 years.
quote:FG originally quoted: "... in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.
Over the next 10 years, ..."
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Ah, I see. You're complaint of inaccuracy boils down to the fact that I should have used the word "enough" before the word "help." I could also concede that I used Bush as the target, rather than Brown, which would have been more accurate.
The inadequacies of the federal response are Bush's to answer for, not Brown's. And accuracy is important when it's the basis for your charge of political punishment.
quote: As has been pointed out by several people here, the prediction that New Orleans was set up for this particular disaster has been well publicized before the storm, and the descriptions almost exactly predicted what happened.
Yes. I haven't ever disputed this.
quote:This makes it sound as if money was diverted from flood control projects, but it's actually talking about independent projects.
The money is part of the same appropriation process. Of course they're different projects - one was funded adequately, one wasn't. The point is that Lousisianna's congressional delegation was the one who made their earmark requests in this fashion.
quote:What I find I'm seeing in this article is that projects that support industry got funded, even when it was of very questionable value, but projects that would have protected the city got paid short shrift. The inhabitants of the city protested against the commercial projects, but were ignored.
A trend that has existed for at least 20 years, which makes it hard for it to be the result of retribution for an election 1 year (or even 5 years) ago. The specific levee problem was discovered in 1995, I believe. That's 10 years ago.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
"The inadequacies of the federal response are Bush's to answer for, not Brown's. And accuracy is important when it's the basis for your charge of political punishment."
Except that they were two different accusations. I made that explicit in the post. Being late with help was simply an accusation of incompetence. You have apparently conflated the two accusations.
I also said in a follow up post that I don't blame Bush for the political retribution.
quote: It's perfectly reasonable to look back with hindsight and see that when the destruction of New Orleans was merely a possibility, the Bush administration cut funding that would be wasted if this storm had never materialized.
That's not what I'm blaming him for.
What I'm blaming him for is his reaction when this disaster was all but inevitable.
Posted by John Van Pelt (Member # 5767) on :
In yesterday's White House press briefing a question came up about LA Gov. Blanco's request for Federal assistance:
quote:MR. McCLELLAN: If you go back to that time period, we were in close contact with governors and local officials. And if you recall, that the request for -- and the disaster declaration is issued by the President, but it comes at the request of the state. And that's why we were consulting closely, and I think we mentioned this at the time, with the governors. And Governor Blanco got a request into us ahead of time so that we could issue that disaster declaration.
Now, in terms of the National Guard troops, I think that General Blum and the military have talked about how things were pre-positioned in the region, and I would leave it to them to describe the deployment of military troops and the requests that were made. I think they've been briefing on that the last couple of days and --
Q My question, though, I think was, did Governor Blanco ask the President for the dispatch --
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not aware of that, David, and I don't want to try to get into going back through every single detail of this. I mean, we're going to look at all this. Right now we're trying to stay focused on what's ahead, not what's passed, because we need -- ...
(Emphasis mine.)
Now, I may be seeing ghosts, but this makes it sound as if it is at least possible that an 'early request' occurred -- certainly with the aim of expediting aid -- but that because it was early, no trigger existed for the actual dispatch of said aid.
I read today that Jeb Bush (FL) similarly declared for Federal disaster status early, so it is probably common with major forecasted events.
Does anyone know the prescribed chain of request-declaration-dispatch and whether this 'early' requesting practice might have contributed to the impression we're getting that nobody said (soon enough), "Okay, NOW! Send help NOW!"?
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
"The inadequacies of the federal response are Bush's to answer for, not Brown's. And accuracy is important when it's the basis for your charge of political punishment."
On the basis of accountability, I agree. On the basis of who actually acted belatedly, or with inadequate urgency, the article I cited points to Brown.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote: Does anyone know the prescribed chain of request-declaration-dispatch and whether this 'early' requesting practice might have contributed to the impression we're getting that nobody said (soon enough), "Okay, NOW! Send help NOW!"?
A number of laws are cited in the letter Gov Blanco sent to Bush. I suspect figuring out what it all means is quite a research project.
Actually I guess the only law is the stafford act, but the wording changes. That might make it easier.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
I have both libertarian, and socialist leanings. I can't decide in this case which I should listen to.
I think it's safe to say that the LA governor is a nut case, when she's waiting for testing on water that was already causing infections. It's now is proven to be 10 times over the safe bacteria limit and I haven't yet seen the blurb saying that she *is* authorizing mandatory evacuations as she said she would yesterday *if* the water came back bad. I think the NO mayor is a loser too, because while anger at a situation is acceptable, hysterics from someone in leadership are pointless.
It seems to me that the LA government is both corrupt and inept. (Contrasting, IL politics are probably as corrupt but certainly not as inept.) So at what point does the federal government step in and override states rights? These incompetent leaders were legally elected.
On an extreme end one could argue that the citizens of Louisiana and New Orleans are getting the what they deserve for electing crappy leaders...I'm not making that argument, because no one deserves to die from a natural disaster. But again, the people with the most immediate local power were all legally elected leaders...
Chicago also has the largest political corruption branch of the Feds in the country. This is what keeps the corrupt elected officials up here, from being totally inept. If you are going to do something under the table, you've got to be at least intelligent enough to hold the Feds at bay. (Mayor Daley Jr. is much less intelligent than his father but still not entirely dumb.) I think that, an expansion of the same wing in Louisiana is an absolute necessity. The descriptions of even pre-flood New Orleans sound like 1930s Chicago.
I don't actually think FEMA or Homeland Security can save us from the worst parts of ourselves. Only corruption prosecutors can, unfortunately.
I actually suspect that the reason why they haven't done more corruption prosecution down there, is because they'd be targeted as being racist, since the population down there just happens to have a large black percentage. I'd also suspect that it's more dangerous for a Fed prosecutor down there, than it is in Chicago, where the corrupt element, while still occasionally getting violent, attempts to have a veneer of civilization.
To sum up: while I have a strong socialist side, I still wish to protect states abilities to run their own affairs. I believe that the best way to improve the social services and emergency response within a state, is to weed out the corruption, rather than expanding the authority of federal government, for emergencies. If there are/were people of higher character (and/or intelligence) in state and local offices, I believe there is much less obfuscation in a true crisis.
I also think that this can be evidenced during this crisis, in other areas who were also hard hit. I'm not pointing at one party or the other. I want them both to show more balls and leadership.
AJ
[ September 08, 2005, 05:40 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
quote:On an extreme end one could argue that the citizens of Louisiana and New Orleans are getting the what they deserve for electing crappy leaders...I'm not making that argument, because no one deserves to die from a natural disaster. But again, the people with the most immediate local power were all legally elected leaders...
Of course I agree no one deserves to die at any time but you bring up a good point. Someone mentioned in one of my classes today that the people of New Orleans had been clamoring for something to be done about the levees for years and the federal govt ignored them. The prof. then asked if anyone disagreed and I raised my hand. I then asked the person who made the statement if he was a native New Orleanian, and he said no, he'd never been there.
So, I told him that as someone that had lived there, I never remembered shoring up the levees being a key issue people talked about or that was a campaign issue for any politician. And that if the people of New Orleans really did live in fear every day that the levees were inadequate (an attitude I never witnessed) why weren't they electing local officials and state officials who would do something about it?
Now word is coming out that federal funds WERE sent, and diverted to other projects by the local officials.
The sad truth is no one spent money on shoring up the levees because it wasn't something that people thought about too much. It's like insurance, you never know how much you'll need until you need it. You can read all kinds of articles telling you how important it is to have health insurance and be warned that your insurance isn't adequate, but most people hate to spend money on it until one day you have a heart attack and are stuck with a huge hospital bill. Poor analogy, I know, but it's true that we often put off spending money on things that fit into the category of "We might need this someday" when we're not sure if someday will ever come.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
"FEMA was onsite Monday, the day the levee breached. Too little help does not equal no help."
Sitting around on-site and failing to distribute aid while claiming to be doing so to the public, AND blocking private aid from entering the disaster area -- the obstructionism that FEMA is being charged with -- is even worse than doing nothing.
Such sophistry in argument is beyond even Clinton's "depends on what 'sex' means". And, while highly profitable for attorneys, is ill suited for the higher standard, the whole truth, which prosecutors and judges are expected to meet. Admittedly, Republicans dislike nominees with a tendency toward probity.
Frankly, I don't know whether the charges are credible or just "heat of the moment" venting. On the main, I think the degree of federal aid for Katrina's aftermath has been better than expectable. Though maybe my expectations woulda been higher had someone other than Dubya been in charge I don't think they would have.
[ September 08, 2005, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
quote:
quote: The other thing that I can't believe is that shoring up the levees is a project that began in 1965 and was supposed to be finished in 10 years.
quote:A corps plan to shore up the levees began in 1965 and was supposed to be finished in 10 years but remains incomplete.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
It's also true that *many* major cities in the US were built on unstable land, in the middle of swamps. It's because River Deltas are good for trade.
Chicago's crisis that led to modern sewage treatment, is somewhat similar to what New Orleans faces today. They actually built on *top* of sinking Chicago buildings several times when the seconds story would become the first story and the first story would become the basment. New York has crappy land. D.C. also. Skyscrapers *have* to go down to bedrock. That's what saves them. But a lot of the other cities got shored up while labor was cheaper, and the resources of the rich were perhaps more plentiful than today. Higher tolls in human lives, but the tycoons were good for massive construction/infrastructure projects, that don't happen often in the private sector today.
Also the New Orleans situation is worse than the others, because the Missisippi is the biggest river, and the sedimentation was even more rapid of a cycle than elsewhere. It's sinking faster as a result. The long term solutions are to figure out how to do underground or offshore sediment deposition, or to put the entire French Quarter on a platform that goes down to bedrock. Putting soil on top of what is already there isn't going to solve the problem. Levees aren't going to do it either in the long term, because they will have to get higher and higher if the soil level keeps dropping.
AJ
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Sitting around on-site and failing to distribute aid while claiming to be doing so to the public, AND blocking private aid from entering the disaster area -- the obstructionism that FEMA is being charged with -- is even worse than doing nothing.
quote:HUME: Standing by, ready. Why didn’t FEMA send the Red Cross into New Orleans when we had all of those people there on that bridge overpass and elsewhere?
GARRETT: At the Superdome (search), at the convention center...
HUME: Lack of water, right. Why not?
GARRETT: First of all, no jurisdiction. FEMA works with the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and other organizations, but it has no direct control to order them to go one place or the other.
Secondarily, the Red Cross was ready. I just got off the phone with one of their officials. They had a vanguard, Brit, of trucks with water, food, hygiene equipment, all sorts of things ready to go, where? To the Superdome and the convention center.
Why weren’t they there? The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security told them they could not go.
HUME: Now, this is the Louisiana — this isn’t the Louisiana branch of the federal Homeland Security? This is...
GARRETT: The state’s own agency devoted to the state’s homeland security. They told them, "You cannot go there."
Why? The Red Cross tells me that state agency in Louisiana said, "Look, we do not want to create a magnet for more to come to the Superdome or the convention center. We want to get them out."
So at the same time local officials were screaming, "Where is the food? Where is the water?" The Red Cross was standing by ready. The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security said, "You can’t go."
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
Belle,
When did you live in New Orleans? There are several dates that would highlight changes in attitude regarding the levees. The first is 1995, when the problem was first identified. The second was 1998, when hurricane Georges came through. I can't find a date, but I think I recall someone here saying that they saw a TV segment (probably the same one I saw) in 2001, showing how New Orleans could be destroyed if a big hurricane hit. More recently, FEMA cited this scenario as one of the 3 most likely catastrophes to hit the U.S.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Such sophistry in argument is beyond even Clinton's "depends on what 'sex' means". And, while highly profitable for attorneys, is ill suited for the higher standard, justice, which prosecutors and judges are expected to meet. Admittedly, Republicans dislike those with a tendency toward probity.
Further, the difference between "sending" help and not sending help is critical for the purpose the distinction was being offered - showing that Bush was not punishing NOLA with his response. Unless you think Bush sent the FEMA to NOLA but told them not to do anything useful, what's important is whether the people were sent.
(And yes, Glenn, Ii know you say those two parts of your post weren't related. I'm speaking to the purpose of the post based on my understanding of your intent when I made it. And responding to the normal ill-thought slander of aspectre.)
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
At what point do you want FEMA to directly go against elected authority in our own country? That's what it really comes down to. Should they in this extreme case? Maybe.
I don't blame them for sitting on the outskirts then. I might now, because I still don't know who is in charge and that is a travesty. BUT This is because legally FEMA *has* to work through the state government. Blanco asked for help but didn't truly give them the necessary authority they asked for. Also why they didn't go in sooner, they didn't actually have the authority to do what was needed on a large scale.
And given the dire state of things, I don't think it would actually be unreasonable for her to request Congress for martial law either. If she had, even if Congress had refused, it would have shown more initiative and leadership than has happened thus far.
AJ
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
The first major push to improve the levees came in 1965, after Hurrican Betsy hit.
The next major event was 1986, when Congress asked the Corps to build levees around the southern half of the city.
In 1995, the southern protection zone was expanded to its current size, with about 65 miles of levees.
Sciam published an article in 2001 detailing exactly the scenario we're currently in the middle of.
There's an excellent article here from Civil Engineering Magazine that covers much of what I just listed, and more.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
The RedCross (and Wal*Mart/etc) is complaining that its truckloads of water/etc to the Superdome were stopped by FEMA/etc. Whether FEMA/etc had the legal right to do so is a separate matter, as is whether the RedCross (etc) should have known that the order was illegal and ignored it. People tend to follow the instructions of the folks with the guns, even during holdups.
Like I said, I don't know whether the charges are credible, or just the media echoing statements from some unauthoritative individuals attached to those private organizations.
[ September 08, 2005, 06:42 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
And for Bush to ask for Martial Law in the state of Louisiana(invocation of Posse Comitatus) so he *does* have direct authority, would be a slap in the face to governors everywhere, and *wouldn't* get through congress.
I personally think the situation is such a mess, even now, that it could be morally justified.
AJ
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
It appears from the timelines, that the stoppages by FEMA of those supplies, were because they were following the direct instructions of the Louisiana department of Homeland Security. If they had let them through, they would have defied the state government. Once again, morally, should they have defied the state government? Perhaps. Legally, though they probably couldn't.
In pragmatic hindsight, the FEMA director could have guessed his career was screwed either way, since a natural disaster happened on his watch. He could have told them to do what was necessary, forget the state government, and he'd take the fall. It would have been a calculated gamble. But if it had worked, the ends justifying the means, might have saved his reputation in the long run.
AJ
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
"And given the dire state of things, I don't think it would actually be unreasonable for her to request Congress for martial law either. If she had, even if Congress had refused, it would have shown more initiative and leadership than has happened thus far."
One of the accusations agains Blanco is that she didn't ask for help early enough. She did, on Friday the 26th. I linked her letter above.
But the federal response to her letter asked for complete control of the response agencies, including the national guard. She balked, because she thought they were telling her they wanted to declare martial law, which was precisely what she didn't want to have.
This was all before the storm hit. After the storm during reports of looting and so forth a call for martial law may have seemed appropriate, but:
1 It would have seemed like a reversal on her part.
2 Martial law is generally punitive. Punishing people for being victims of a storm just doesn't make sense. I suspect that was her reason for not wanting it in the first place.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
I disagree with 2)in this day and age. Martial law to me is about imposing order under extreme circumstances.
What I get from it, is that Martial law gets in trouble during occupation when it has to start dealing with court tribunals and the like. In this case, there would be a lot less of that, since I don't think it would be a long term supplantation of local government.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
"(And yes, Glenn, Ii know you say those two parts of your post weren't related. I'm speaking to the purpose of the post based on my understanding of your intent when I made it. And responding to the normal ill-thought slander of aspectre.) "
We've certainly been through this before. It takes awhile to get to the meaning of what each of us are saying, and we tend to see each other as opponents.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
"I disagree with 2)in this day and age. Martial law to me is about imposing order under extreme circumstances."
Which is why it would have made more sense after the storm, when looting was an issue, rather than before the storm when she was just asking for help.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:The RedCross (and Wal*Mart/etc) is complaining that its truckloads of water/etc to the Superdome were stopped by FEMA/etc. Whether FEMA/etc had the legal right to do so is a separate matter, as is whether the RedCross (etc) should have known that the order was illegal and ignored it. People tend to follow the instructions of the folks with the guns, even during holdups.
The truck was stopped by a state agency.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Like I've twice said before, I don't know whether the charges are credible. And I don't know whether Garrett's statement is addressing the same incidents.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Poland Springs, from my neck of the woods (at least for now ) tries to send trucks with free water, in their trucks and with the gas they would pay for, but they were told not to send it.
It was in the local news here a few day ago. Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :
Just to balance Dagonee's article. . .
quote:But furious state and local officials insisted that the real problem was that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which Mr. Chertoff's department oversees, failed to deliver urgently needed help and, through incomprehensible red tape, even thwarted others' efforts to help.
"We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water," said Denise Bottcher, press secretary for Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana. "They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart."
Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans expressed similar frustrations. "We're still fighting over authority," he told reporters on Saturday. "A bunch of people are the boss. The state and federal government are doing a two-step dance."
Amusingly, three LA Homeland Security officials are under indictment for conspiracy to obstruct an audit, in which (irony) $30 million was misappropriated.
quote: We were briefing them way before landfall," Mayfield said. "It's not like this was a surprise. ... I keep looking back to see if there was anything else we could have done, and I just don't know what it would be," he said.
Chertoff said Saturday that government officials had not expected the damaging combination of a powerful hurricane and levee breaches that flooded New Orleans.
quote: Efforts by Chertoff and other Administration spinmeisters to pin the blame on the delayed response on State and local authorities does not hold water. Although the NRP recognizes that State and local authorities have a responsibility to ask for help, the NRP correctly provides a provision to take proactive steps to deal with a threat. On page 43 of the NRP the section is titled, "Proactive Federal Response to Catastrophic Events" (which I have copied and pasted below:
quote:The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Steve pointed out to me that if Chertoff actually defied the Louisiana homeland security department, he wouldn't just have a ruined career... he'd likely end up in Ft. Leavenworth for life for insurrection. In what is already a gray moral area, he probably made the sane decision.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
I don't get that. I thought the whole purpose of having a homeland security department as to cut down on the interdepartmental boundaries and red tape so things could get done? I thought 'Homeland Security Department' was like the FBI--federal by definition with state branches that answered to the federal office.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
No - the state agency is not a branch of the federal department. It's a separate agency that happens to have the same name.
quote: The Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (LHLS & EP); formally the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness (LOEP), was created by the Civil Act of 1950 and is under the Louisiana Military Department. In 1976 LHLS & EP via the Louisiana government reorganization, was moved to the Department of Public Safety (DPS). In 1990 LHLS & EP was transferred again to the Military Department. In 2003 the Agency name was changed to the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, reflecting the additional responsibilities to the State and her citizens.
Since LHLS & EP was placed under the Military Department in 1990, the Agency has managed over 16 Federal Disaster Declarations and has coordinated several hundred State Disaster Declarations authorized under the Governor's signature. Over the years, the mission has evolved to include the spectrum of natural, man-made disasters and as of 2003; the duties and responsibilities for supporting Louisiana's Homeland Security needs.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Sigh. Thanks for the irritating information.
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
This morning I read an interesting reprint of an article from a Texas newspaper about the huge hurricane of Galveston in 1900 (sorry I can't link it here - the paper doesn't have an online version).
While facing many of the same issues and problems as New Orleans is today -- it also mentions it being very hard to find people willing to help load up the estimated 10,000 bodies (onto carts and horses) so they finally loaded them all on barges and set them out to sea to dispose of.
It also talks about people looting the bodies of those who died. They were cutting off the swollen fingers of the dead people to steal their rings, and stripping the bodies. Most looters were shot and killed on site, no questions asked.
Farmgirl
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
I talked to Steve last night about what he would do if he controlled the world, to save New Orleans.
He mentioned Boston as an example. Apparently most of the city is actually on fill dirt that wasn't there naturally. His grand proposal was that they dredge a *huge* deep water harbor through all of the sediment layers(which will actually help even more with the shipping) and use that dirt to fill in the lowest areas. You'd still have some sinkage/compaction issues but if you could brace the dirt, at the point of contact in the deepwater harbor it would help.
I've been wondering what Happy Camper has been up to as he works for the Army Corps of Civil engineers (and is a geotechnical engineer). It hasn't been made clear to me how much manpower the Corps has redistributed because of the crisis, but it isn't just New Orleans that needs them either in the disaster area.
AJ
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
I like that idea, but I just don't think it's practical. I don't think you'd get enough fill no matter how deep you dredged. There's simply too much land too low below sea level. I haven't done any volume calcs to see how much fill you'd need, but that's my gut feeling.
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
I dunno. Back Bay in Boston was, indeed, a bay. It took them several decades to be sure, though that was in the 1940's or something.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
de Spang, I think Steve (who is a civil engineer himself) was saying to take the dredge down to bedrock. They *have* to anchor large buildings on bedrock, most of the time. It appears bedrock is about 70 feet under the actual city of New Orleans.
AJ
[ September 09, 2005, 12:37 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Looks like Brown of FEMA is on his way out. It's telling when spokesmen don't say "he enjoys the presidnt's confidence" etc.
If he lied on his resume, he deserves to be scapegoated. Even if he didn't, he doesn't seem qualified for the job.
quote: But today, the chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, declined repeated opportunities to say that Mr. Brown still enjoyed the president's full confidence. "We appreciate all those who are working around the clock, and that's the way I would answer it," Mr. McClellan said.
With each passing day since the storm pounded the Gulf Coast, the criticism of Mr. Brown, a lawyer whose credentials indicated no emergency-response experience when he became head of FEMA two years ago, has only increased.
Several days into the crisis, Mr. Brown acknowledged in an interview with Paula Zahn of CNN that he was not aware that thousands of New Orleans residents were huddled in the city's convention center under increasingly dire circumstances.
As recently as Thursday there was obvious disarray within FEMA, as agency spokesmen in Baton Rouge and Washington gave conflicting answers on whether the agency would proceed with plans to use debit cards to distribute financial aid to people dislocated by the storm.
Mr. Brown's standing was further clouded when Time magazine reported on its Web site Thursday that he had embellished some of his credentials. When he was asked today whether he had done so, and whether he would resign from FEMA, Mr. Brown was silent.
quote:
NYtimes Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Didn't China start ti guve like a million tonnes of supplies? Talk about buttering up the US neh?
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
quote:de Spang, I think Steve (who is a civil engineer himself) was saying to take the dredge down to bedrock. They *have* to anchor large buildings on bedrock, most of the time. It appears bedrock is about 70 feet under the actual city of New Orleans.
This isn't always the case. Only for buildings of a certain size (here when I say size, I really mean weight) does the substructure (the base that supports the steel columns) have to go all the way down to the bedrock. For smaller buildings, putting the substructure on clay is fine.
I have no idea what the soil beneath New Orleans looks like, specifically where the clay starts and where the bedrock starts. But 70 feet, that's a long way down.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
Are you guys talking about shoring up the city or just the levees?
I'm thinking of the way they built the Aswan dam in Egypt, by drilling holes and filling them with cement. The issue being that the ground was made of sand pretty much all the way down to bedrock, and water would simply tunnel its way under the dam. By drilling holes side by side they were able to make a continuous curtain under the entire length of the dam, but without the expense of excavating down to bedrock.
In New Orleans' case that wouldn't be necessary, since the soil is not permeable (at least, the natural barrier doesn't leak). So all that would be necessary is to drill piers down to bedrock at reasonable intervals, to keep the levees from sinking. If it's 70 feet that's no big deal for a drilled hole.
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Or not.)![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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*guilty*
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I don't think they would have.