posted
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.
posted
CNN is reporting that President Bush just announced the deployment of 7000 active duty troops to the area.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
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.
Posts: 1533 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
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.
Posts: 75 | Registered: Nov 2001
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posted
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
(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.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
CStroman, you can run the web addresses through the www.tinyurl.com generator if you like. (takes about 5 seconds)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
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.
Posts: 1533 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
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.
Posts: 1533 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
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.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
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.
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.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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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.
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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?
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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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."
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
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.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
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.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
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. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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(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.)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
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.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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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.
Posts: 241 | Registered: Nov 2001
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posted
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.
Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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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.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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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.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
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.
posted
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.
And from what I hear, hundreds of people were told by the Mayor to head to the convention center of Superdome for shelter.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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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.
Posts: 143 | Registered: Sep 2005
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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.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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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.
Posts: 1533 | Registered: Sep 2004
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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.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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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?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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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
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.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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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.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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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?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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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.
Posts: 1533 | Registered: Sep 2004
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