If I hadn’t been down to Crescent Con down in New Orleans a couple weeks ago, then I would simply feel badly for the folks down in the Big Easy and keep my fingers crossed for them.
But instead, for me, the Big Breezy has a very personal aspect to it now. I met hundreds of great folks down there, and now I’m worried about all of them. I find myself wondering which of them got out in plenty of time…which ones were sitting there stuck in the unmoving mass of traffic. I remember the chatty cab driver who jovially pointed out the Superdome as the place where the Saints go to lose every weekend (if I got the team wrong, cut me some slack, I’m not Mr. Football), and now I wonder if the cabbie was one of those who couldn’t afford to get out and is now huddling in that same structure for which he showed such disdain. There’s a shop in the French Quarter that sells toy soldiers that Harlan loves, and I didn’t get a chance to swing by there and buy him something while I was down there; now I wonder if it’ll still be there by morning.
Katrina has been downgraded from a category 5 to category 4 which, according to a spokesman for the National Weather Service, is like being downgraded from being hit by an 18 wheeler to being hit by a freight train.
If any of the great folks I met down there are able to, chime in here and let us know how you’re doing.
PAD
• 
Tim,
“Jerome, Sasha…with all due respect I don’t know that this thread is a good choice for political rants (of either stripe). Time enough for that later.”
I wasn’t trying to rant either, but you are correct.
One other note. People never cease surprisingly. Some, who I expected to be indifferent to this because, well, they seem indifferent to everything seem to have been genuinely touched and even moved to act. Others, who I would expect respond in a compassionate way, are only whining about how they may not be able to go to Mardi Gras next year and higher gas prices.
Unbelievable. On both counts.
Just in case some of you don’t hear it from other sources, but many national chains are going to be accepting donations to help with rescue/salvage/and refugee assistance. If’n you want to help, there should be plenty of reliable avenues nearby everyone that will accept cash donations, check, etc.
Ugh, the news from New Orleans seems to keep getting worse…if this is how bad things are from a “better than it could have been” scenario, I shudder to think of the worst case scenario…maybe the newsfolks weren’t as over the top as some of us assumed.
Well, I think this comes down to the fact that New Orleans DID dodge a bullet in the fact that they didn’t take the brunt of the hurricane in the face (since they were hit by the western side, and not northeast quadrant).
But then the levees started giving way, and it became a total “oh f*ck” scenario.
If the levees had held, this wouldn’t have been as bad as they were saying once the hurricane passed.
Unfortunately, I’ve heard reports from 2 to 4 different levees giving way, with like 80% of the city underwater.
Yeah, that’s basically as bad as taking the storm head on.
Below is an excerpt of a U.S. Air Force weather service story about Typhoon Jelawat, which hit Okinawa in August 2001, packing winds of 100 knots with gusts to 125 knots. And it clearly illustrates why hardened construction of buildings in high hurricane- or typhoon-risk areas are crucial for preventing death and damage of the magnitude we are seeing along the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina:
“We had tree limbs fall and a couple of trees toppled,” he said. Only one U.S. military housing area reported a power outage, as opposed to more than 19,000 homes without power off base. There were no other reports of damage on Kadena thanks to ample warning time given for the high winds.
“It just amazes me how well this base is built to withstand typhoon force winds,” remarked Master Sgt. Ronald Keene, Chief of 18th Weather Station Operations. “We had typhoon force winds for more than 12 hours with not so much as a power fluctuation or loss of phone lines in most areas, and when we got into the recovery stages, the Wing spent only a few hours cleaning the base. Operations were back to normal very quickly.”
Keene also remembered that, “after Super Typhoon Bart, which gave us 126-knot winds, I was convinced of the strength of Kadena’s ‘typhoon proof’ buildings. It gives us a comforting feeling knowing that as long as our families, friends and coworkers stay inside their homes, they will be safe.”
For the full story, see: https://afweather.afwa.af.mil/observer/JUL_AUG_2001/Just_another_typhoon_season_in_Japan.html
And Sasha is proven correct with the bleatings from Michael Marcavage of REPENT AMERICA; “Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city. From ‘Girls Gone Wild’ to ‘Southern Decadence’, New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. May it never be the same.”
Idiot. I’ll send an extra dollar to the charity of my choice just for him.
Well,
My name’s Leo and my girlfriend and I live(d) in Mid-City, near the major levee break that flooded the city on Tuesday.
We got out late Saturday night and fled to Houston, where a friend I made only through an event I organized in N.O., the Alternative Media Expo. He’s putting us up for the time being, but tomorrow morning we head for St. Louis where we meet up with my parents and other family members. We’re lucky enough that some friends of the family have plenty of space and are going to put us, my immediate family, and some aunts, uncles and their families up for the longterm, until we can get back into New Orleans. Unfortunately it doesn’t look that will be for a few months at least.
Look, New Orleans is bad off, trust me. I’ve come to accept that all of my belongings are gone. All of the thousands of comics and books and other mementos that I’ve gotten since I started reading comics 20 years ago are gone, flooded away I’m sure. My story is only one of many. BUT. New Orleanians are a resilient bunch, and many of us will be back in the city as soon as humanly possible to rebuild and make the city into an image as close to what it used to be as possible.
I publish a music and culture magazine called AntiGravity. I and other small business owners will be back to rebuild. It’ll be slow going, but I have 100% confidence that it’ll be back to where it was. Not tomorrow, not next month, maybe not next year. But it will be, because I can’t imagine living anywhere else.
-Leo McGovern
For those wondering how knots convert to miles per hour, I’ve done a little bit of the math. 100 knots is about 115 mph, 125 knots would be 144 mph, close to what Katrina was packing.
Some of you may have heard reports of the Red Cross saying this may be the worst catastrophe to hit the United States.
I hope not. That dubious record is currently held by the hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas, in 1900. Galveston was largely built on some sand bars, and had resisted spending the money to put a seawall up between the city and the Gulf of Mexico. Furthermore, the US Weather Bureau refused to believe a hurricane, already experienced and reported on by Cuba, would go on into the Gulf, instead fo going up the Atlantic along the East Coast as many of them do. As a result, Galveston got hit without warning about September 8, 1900. Besides wiping the city almost completely off the map, it claimed an estimated 6,000 – 8,000 lives. Katrina’s damage looks bad, but I pray that it isn’t that bad.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Galveston hurricane, I recommend the book ISAAC’S STORM by Erik Larson. (No, not THAT one! His last name is spelled “Larsen.”)
I made the following comment elsewhere, but I’d like to make it here as well:
My harsh thought is to start taking truckloads of dirt down there, and bury the existing city until the place is at least sea level, and don’t rebuilt until that happens.
This cannot be allowed to happen again.
Yes, people are going to live in places that are prone to diaster (most of North America is prone to some major disaster or another), but New Orleans set themselves up for this, as horrible as it is to say this.
When you live in a city below sea level, surrounded on 3 sides by water, you’re asking for it.
No they don’t deserve it, but everybody knew it was a matter of time, whether they wanted to admit it or not.
Craig,
I wondered about that, the whole idea of piling on dirt until the area was high enough. I got a derisive snort from the engineers I know so I guess it’s a bout as good as the ones proposed by 4 of my students that we “drop an atomic bomb” on hurricanes as they form. (Yeah! Make it radioactive! THAT’LL do it!).
Hey let’s face it–we may have this conversation again about San Francisco. Should we begin the evacuation and abandonment of SF now, before it has to take place in rubble?
I can see the need for a New Orleans and reading Leo’s account above makes me want to see it brought back brick by brick. (My condolences on you losses, Leo). But you have a point–is the geographic reality of New Orleans such that catastrophe is inevitable? Should there be limits on how many people are allowed to live in the area and what kind of housing they are allowed to live in?
Right now, of course, it’s time to save the trapped and needy and get the looting under control.
You can rebuild NO…but if you don’t take the time and design a system that can handle this level of event, you’re just going to end up rebuilding it all over again, sooner or later. What might be Marlene is just now forming along the same track that Katrina took, so that area might have to deal with yet more storms just in this year alone.
I suppose you could add fill until the area was above sea level, but from this flood, that would need to be an elevation of over 20′ in some areas. I don’t think you could take the excess dirt from every construction project in the country from this past year and do that. Not to mention that you’d have to wait about another year to make sure that the new land is stable. And you’d have trouble building anything bigger than a 2 story house on such a landfill.
It really might be easier to use the funds from insurance to relocate everything except the warhouse and industrial sectors.
But if they’re going to replace anything, they need to start with the system that keeps the water out. This crisis really wasn’t caused by the hurricane. In some ways, having this large a hurricane actually helped in getting more people out of the way of the flood. If Katrina had stayed a Cat 3, more people might have opted to stay, and instead of having 100,000 people to rescue, we might have 500,000. Granted, we’d also have most of the police force there to keep order.
The levee and pump system needs to be totally replaced with a moderns system, with independant emergency generators. And there needs to basically be an emeregency pump and drain system, some place that they can just essentially dump out the water.
I was thinking about California this morning, facing a similar dire circumstance. The difference being, the kinds of earthquakes that would cause total destruction happen once every 500, 1000 years. Every time Nawlens gets hit with a major thunderstorm, there’s a risk that this level of flooding could occur.
All,
Thanks for the kind words from people above, first of all.
About rebuilding New Orleans:
We’ve already had some local officials get into arguments about who didn’t do what and when. Washington officials blame La. officials for not having enough rescue boats the the ready and generally not being ready for this catastrophe (which, I don’t think anyone would have thought it feasible to prepare for this), and a representative from La., Bobby Jindal, blames Washington for not heeding their pleas for help in rebuilding our wetlands, which would have absorbed most of the tidal surge that is now in our cities. I’ve heard stories about LSU people not being able to finish a $250 million dollar levee project because the money was pulled to fund the war in Iraq. Mayor Nagin is complaining that there are too many chiefs and not enough indians, with a major incident happening Wednesday when the plugging of the biggest hole in the levee system didn’t happen, even though he called it “the highest priority” for that day.
Had New Orleans been completely flattened, maybe this idea of making it sea level could be feasible, but they’re not going to raze what is left now. There would be no way to make it level, if only because it would just sink that much further anyway. New Orleans is below sea level and it always will be. We knew it was a possibility this could happen. No one thought it would happen to us, of course, and that it would be something a future generation would deal with. Everyone knows all too well the “bowl effect” that’s beginning to take place.
When you’ve got 12 feet of water in one part of the city it’s only going to level off, which is why water from the 9th ward is finally finding its way Uptown and in the CBD. Luckily the water seems to have stopped rising, and minus any other major rainstorms (or, goodness forbids, another hurricane) the water should begin to naturally recede in the next few days and weeks.
National Guard is in to help with rescue operations and hopefully get more people evacuated, NOPD has been instructed to give up rescue ops to control the looting. In the time being everyone is just trying to make plans for two to three months.
I finally saw a familiar face from N.O. yesterday, a fellow small business owner I’m familiar with through my magazine. We talked for a few minutes, and she said “you know, two or three months isn’t that long to wait.” In the long run, it isn’t, really, if you have the means to get by. If you’re stuck in poverty or a tent city, two or three months can be forever. We parted company saying that all we could hope for is that this time next year we’re sitting on Magazine St. remembering these days as having passed.
I’m pretty lucky compared to many, many other people. My parents live on the West Bank, which only incurred about three feet of water. They’re saying that people in Jefferson Parish, where their house is, can perhaps go back next week, but only to grab what they can. They’ll be asked not to go back for at least one month. If that time frame shapes up, my girlfriend and I will go back to live with them until New Orleans is back up and running enough that we can find a place.
Anyway, enough about me. I’ll post back here when I can with any specifics I can give, but until then send hope to all those other people who’ve lost everything. I can replace my comics and get new mementos, but there are too many people out there with nothing left but the pajamas they have on. Compared to them, I’m flying high.
All,
Thanks for the kind words from people above, first of all.
About rebuilding New Orleans:
We’ve already had some local officials get into arguments about who didn’t do what and when. Washington officials blame La. officials for not having enough rescue boats the the ready and generally not being ready for this catastrophe (which, I don’t think anyone would have thought it feasible to prepare for this), and a representative from La., Bobby Jindal, blames Washington for not heeding their pleas for help in rebuilding our wetlands, which would have absorbed most of the tidal surge that is now in our cities. I’ve heard stories about LSU people not being able to finish a $250 million dollar levee project because the money was pulled to fund the war in Iraq. Mayor Nagin is complaining that there are too many chiefs and not enough indians, with a major incident happening Wednesday when the plugging of the biggest hole in the levee system didn’t happen, even though he called it “the highest priority” for that day.
Had New Orleans been completely flattened, maybe this idea of making it sea level could be feasible, but they’re not going to raze what is left now. There would be no way to make it level, if only because it would just sink that much further anyway. New Orleans is below sea level and it always will be. We knew it was a possibility this could happen. No one thought it would happen to us, of course, and that it would be something a future generation would deal with. Everyone knows all too well the “bowl effect” that’s beginning to take place.
When you’ve got 12 feet of water in one part of the city it’s only going to level off, which is why water from the 9th ward is finally finding its way Uptown and in the CBD. Luckily the water seems to have stopped rising, and minus any other major rainstorms (or, goodness forbids, another hurricane) the water should begin to naturally recede in the next few days and weeks.
National Guard is in to help with rescue operations and hopefully get more people evacuated, NOPD has been instructed to give up rescue ops to control the looting. In the time being everyone is just trying to make plans for two to three months.
I finally saw a familiar face from N.O. yesterday, a fellow small business owner I’m familiar with through my magazine. We talked for a few minutes, and she said “you know, two or three months isn’t that long to wait.” In the long run, it isn’t, really, if you have the means to get by. If you’re stuck in poverty or a tent city, two or three months can be forever. We parted company saying that all we could hope for is that this time next year we’re sitting on Magazine St. remembering these days as having passed.
I’m pretty lucky compared to many, many other people. My parents live on the West Bank, which only incurred about three feet of water. They’re saying that people in Jefferson Parish, where their house is, can perhaps go back next week, but only to grab what they can. They’ll be asked not to go back for at least one month. If that time frame shapes up, my girlfriend and I will go back to live with them until New Orleans is back up and running enough that we can find a place.
Anyway, enough about me. I’ll post back here when I can with any specifics I can give, but until then send hope to all those other people who’ve lost everything. I can replace my comics and get new mementos, but there are too many people out there with nothing left but the pajamas they have on. Compared to them, I’m flying high.
if you go to wlbt.com and click on news, you can watch twenty minutes of the destruction on the mississippi gulf coast as narrated by the stations helicopter pilot. i hope people remember that while new orleans is flooded, there are several cities in mississippi that don’t exist any more.
“i hope people remember that while new orleans is flooded, there are several cities in mississippi that don’t exist any more.”
In a big way, new orleans doesn’t exist either. and even after it’s rebuilt, it will be a shadow of it’s former self. for all intents & purpose the city is destroyed. it just happens that most of the structures still stand.
Joe V.
Four days later, people dying from starvation, looting just to get the food to survive. Does Bush not want thousands of refugee blacks in Texas, is he hoping they’ll all die off before he has to deal with the problem?
Why the hëll hasn’t someone from his administration come forward with a viable mobilization plan?
Xero, the military and national guard are mobilized, the charity organizations are moving in as fast as they can with food/essentials, and the buses are moving people out as quickly as they can fill up. What more do you think the Bush administration can do?
These things take time. It’s called a disaster for a reason.
Does Bush not want thousands of refugee blacks in Texas, is he hoping they’ll all die off before he has to deal with the problem?
Yep. You got it. I thought he would get away with it but, you clever fellow, you saw right through him. He wants them all to die. Ðámņ, you’re smart.
What more do you think the Bush administration can do?
At this point, it’s about what the government (not just the administration) isn’t doing.
It is about lost opportunities, about not being more aggressive, and about a complete fûçkìņg failure of our government.
There is no question that the conditions are beyond horrible. And in hindsight, there are always things that could have been done better. But that cuts both ways. People who live there could have gotten out sooner, taken this more seriously, been more prepared. The government began major mobilization before the hurricane ever even hit land.
Some of the arm chair quarterbacking is mind boggling. Have you ever been stuck in traffic after a major event such as a concert? You sit there for hours. Now compound that by thousands, with roads out, no power, etc. We are not a police state, and this was not a school that had rehearsed a fire drill. This is a major city with a side range of people. It is impossible to have a complete disaster plan for a catastrophe of this magnitude. There will always be holes and problems because people don’t do what they are told or what you expect.
Saying there was a failure of government is just plain wrong and an insult to the hard work that is going on. In terms of the area of destruction, I don’t know of anything in history that even comes close. To not have the problems we are currently having would be nothing short of a biblical miracle.
You want to blame someone? Fine. It does little good. Give if you can. Do something to help other than complain about the people who are working hard to do something about it. Get some perspective and realize we are talking about an event that dwarfs 9/11 in terms of the scope of its impact. We are dealing with a situation that is bringing out both the best and worst in people.
Bottom line, this is not the time or place to be criticizing the government. It is the time to sorrow over the loss of life. It is the time to come up with ways to help those who have lost everything. That is not the government’s job. That is OUR job.
Iowa Jim
“In a big way, new orleans doesn’t exist either. and even after it’s rebuilt, it will be a shadow of it’s former self. for all intents & purpose the city is destroyed. it just happens that most of the structures still stand.”
I really don’t want to argue semantics. What has happened in New Orleans is a epic tragedy. One of the oldest cities in the USA has had up to 80% of it submerged. At the same time, as countless people are pointing out, we knew it was just a matter of time until it happened. New Orleans is sinking at a rate of about an inch per 100 years. Every 33 minutes, Louisiana loses an acre to the Gulf of Mexico. The army corp of engineers asked for 105 million bucks to modernize the levee system, but the current administration slashed their request to 40 million and Congress gave them 42 million. It’s a tragedy, but one we were tipped off to.
Mississippi, on the other hand, is pretty much the poorest state in the country. All the casinos are wiped out on the coast and those provide millions of dollars a day in tax revenue that is the lifeblood of the state’s economy. Reports are that 90% of Gulf Coast structures no longer exist. The town of Waveland no longer exists. In Durant (probably a four hour drive north from the coast), my grandmother who is into her 80s is dealing with no electricity, mid 90 degree temps (and a similar level of humidity) by opening her windows. If there were any gas available to be bought, perhaps my parents could go get her and take her to their home where there is also no power, nor is there any expected for two to three weeks. Except that there is no gas to be bought. A large number of gas stations don’t have electricity and the few that do have an average two hour wait to get to a pump to fill up. Power company vehicles are dead on the side of the road, unable to get anywhere to fix the lines because they had no where to fill up with gas. This weekend, my parents generator will run out of gas. All the food my father grew the last several years will go bad due to the freezers having no electricity.
This is a just what a few people are going through in Mississippi currently. The water in New Orleans will go down. The levees will be rebuilt. The city will be pumped dry. In a year, with luck, things will be back the way they were before. In Mississippi, in a year the Gulf Coast casinos will hopefully be about ready to reopen. In a year, Mississippi will regain one of its main revenue streams. In the meantime, the state will have to figure out a way to fund state run institutions like schools with a fraction of its normal revenue.
I am not a fan of governor Haley Barbor, but I hope I am wrong about his abilities.
as reported this morning by icv2.com
“Peter David, who was on the conference call from Dragon-Con, spontaneously pledged his royalties from Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1 to hurricane relief on the spot.”
Ðámņ PAD seeing that left me speechless.
Massive Kudos
JAC
as reported this morning by icv2.com:
“Peter David, who was on the conference call from Dragon-Con, spontaneously pledged his royalties from Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1 to hurricane relief on the spot.
Ðámņ PAD seeing that left me speechless.
Massive Kudos
JAC
opps, sorry about the multiple posts. Kinda lessens the impact of the speechless comment. So I’ll amend it
Ðámņ PAD seeing that, well I just couldn’t shut up about it apperently.
JAC
“The water in New Orleans will go down.”
No, the water may be pumped out, but it can’t go down. New Orleans sits in a bowl…there’s no “down” for the water to go. And it’s built on a marsh, meaning the water table is so high, that surface water doesn’t drain off. So, no, the water will not go down on it’s own, not so long as the levies remain breached, and lake Ponchetrain has free access to keep flowing.
“The levees will be rebuilt.”
With luck, they won’t, but instead will be replaced with a better, long term solution. The levies are 40 years old, and were a bad idea back then. If you’re going to rebuild, then you’ll need to disconnect the New Orleans bowl from free-flowing water coming from the lake, and that means repairing the levies. But if all you do is replace the old system with the same thing, we’re going to have a repeat of this tragedy sometime in the next 50 years.
“The city will be pumped dry.”
No, the water will be pumped out, but old New Orleans will never be dry. Any structure that lacks a steel frame is worthless. And those with steel frames will need to be inspected for any strucutural twisting that could have resulted, either from wind, or the great constant pressure of flowing water. Everything else cannot be repaired. Once wood becomes water damaged in this way, it’s worthless as a building material. It’d be different if this were extremely cold water. It’s not. It’s water at 70 degrees, in sweltering heat and humidity.
“In a year, with luck, things will be back the way they were before.”
You mean with a miracle? Back the way they were before? After thousands, maybe tens of thousands, have died, it’s all going to be OK in a year? After 80% of the city has to be bulldozed, all that’s going to just rebuilt, in a year?
You talk of the loss of casinos, of income. Whatever happened to the priceless value of a single human life?
Jim, have you heard the Mayor’s radio interview from yesterday? Have you heard him describe the situation, and the appalling lack of response? You talk about not assigning blame, yet here’s what you said
“People who live there could have gotten out sooner, taken this more seriously, been more prepared.”
I’ve disagreed with you in the past, but here I’m just plain going to call you wrong. Don’t start defending the various failures at all levels of our elected leaders to respond to this crisis, while at the same time blaming the very people we should all be praying for. This is worse than saying the elected officials are at fault. You’re basically saying these people deserve to die because they didn’t get out. Does it really matter how they got there? Fine, if we’re not going to look at people’s failures, then let’s do that. Ignore the reasons why things are happening, and just focus on saving lives. We can disect eveything later. But if we’re not going to “armchair QB” the goverment, then we sure as hëll are not going to second guess the people in need, either.
It seems to me that if you want to blame someone for the hurricane you should blame the local and state politicians in Louisiana before you blame anyone else. It is them, and only them, that knew the extent to which the city wasn’t prepared for something like this.
Obviously, no one is to blame for the actual hurricane. Stronger hurricanes occurred well before the industrial revolution so I can’t take any of this global warming argument.
If any blame is to be put on the Bush Administration it should be that they failed to recognize soon enough that the local and state governments were so inept to organize the relief effort. Once they realized this they should have pushed them aside and started their own relief organization effort.
Where is the Mayor? Where is the Governor? Leadership is surely lacking in this part of the country.
That’s not what IJ said. His words are *not* “basically saying these people deserve to die because they didn’t get out.”
To say that some people made a bad choice is not anywhere NEAR saying they deserve to suffer or die. You are putting words in his mouth. I can look at all the different things EVERYBODY did and not think they deserve to die. Well, looters and people who jack up prices to take advantage of the situation are pretty scummy…but even they do not deserve to die. I saw nothing where Jim suggested we should not have compassion and concern for the people who stayed.
And the situation in NO keeps deteriorating. A big chemical depot exploded, and hundreds of Nat’l Guardsmen are landing; and the Gov. says
“They have M-16s and they’re locked and loaded,These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will.”
Not to mention the people who are desperate to get out NO and are fighting the Nat’l Guard to get out.
And they have run out of room in the superdome. They can’t even land choppers outside the convention center.
all I can say is Holy F*ckin’ God.
Everybody, even if you already sent money, like most of you did, send even more if you can. Nobody needs it like they do.
The whole story is here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050902/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_katrina_76.
I work for a state agency and I can tell you from first hand experience that, the year after 9/11, everything was about emergency planning. Every state and local agency was involved in reassessing their priorities to determine what resources they could bring to the table in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.
However, in the years that followed, something changed. People developed a collective case of amnesia and emergency planning began to slide done the list of priorities. Funds that were earmarked for emergency planning suddenly became diverted to other areas.
In the coming weeks, there will be a lot of finger pointing and the sad thing is, there will be plenty of blame to go around. The facts are that federal, state, and local officials did dither around for years knowing that a levy breach was all but inevitable. It is also a fact that once a plan to improve the levies was in place, the federal government slashed the funding in 2003. It is also a fact that the Department of Homeland Security has failed to demonstrate that it is any more capable in mobilizing resources than FEMA and the other federal agencies of before.
We should have learned these lessons before, not only the lessons of 9/11, but also from the floods of 1993. It’s been known that the old strategy of the Army Corps of Engineers of dredging and levying the river only made flooding worse in the long term.
We didn’t.
We can blame Bush. We can blame the governor of Lousiania or the mayor of New Orleans. But what we cannot afford to do is to ignore these lessons another time. Because another disaster will come again, whether it’s a dirty bomb in Times Square, an earthquake in San Francisco or another major Gulf hurricane.
It will happen again.
They are called “natural disasters” and “acts of God” for a reason. Stop trying to assign blame! Not every disaster can be forseen, not every contingency can be prepared for. Neither the people in New Orleans, nor the leaders (at any level) are omniscient.
It is an unfortunate, disastrous mess. Rather than trying to blame, we should be trying to figure out more ways to help.
Could this mess have been prevented? Maybe. The important issue now is figuring out how to help these people now. I’ve can’t even imagine what these people are going through, but were I in the situation and listening to a portalbe radio, hearing the director of FEMA refer to my mindset as “frustration”, I’d be triggered. A more accurate word is devestation. Refering to these people’s response to the lack thereof thus far as frustration is like calling a war a conflict. It is either a total lack of understanding or a conscious attempt to stay away from words that they feel may further escalate these people’s response.
Fred
The problem is, this is something that the people HAD foreseen. Before 9/11, FEMA listed three scenarios as the most serious catatrophies that could hit the country: a terrorist attack in NYC, an earthquake in San Francisco, and a major flood in New Orleans.
It is not assigning blame to recognize what should have been done to prepare for it and to use that to try and prevent or at least mitigate the impact the impact of such a disaster in the future.
Agreed Den, though I do believe that it may be more productive to wait until the crisis has passed until the focus is placed on examination of should-haves. It only distracts from what should be the immediate focus to do so now.
Iowa Jim –
People who live there could have gotten out sooner, taken this more seriously, been more prepared.
You know, this shows you’re just as ignorant as Rush Limbaugh and that guy from FEMA who said the same thing.
You’re talking about one of the poorest cities in the nation. About tens of thousands who had no way out of the city.
How the hëll do you, as an individual, prepare for this when your house is under 20 feet of water, you had no way out, and help is actually ignoring you?
Greg Young –
It seems to me that if you want to blame someone for the hurricane you should blame the local and state politicians in Louisiana before you blame anyone else.
And now there are reports that they attempted to get money from the federal government to improve the levees, but the government dumped that money into Iraq instead.
Yeah, we should blame the local and state policians for, you know, going to the federal level to try and get our pathetic government to do its job.
Mark L –
Not every disaster can be forseen, not every contingency can be prepared for.
Oh give me a farking break.
They knew the levees were at risk to give way or not prevent flood waters from storm surge and such.
This isn’t a case of not forseeing disaster, it’s a case of completely ignoring the potential, preferring to be blind and running on the fumes of luck.
NO’s luck ran out and many are now paying for that ineptitude.
“To say that some people made a bad choice is not anywhere NEAR saying they deserve to suffer or die.”
When that “bad choice” is to stay in an area after a mandatory evacuation order has been given, what else does it mean? That they deserve to suffer? Or feel mild discomfort? What else can it be but an attempt to apportion blame and responsibility. It says that some people brought this level of suffering on themselves.
Craig J. Ries said
And now there are reports that they attempted to get money from the federal government to improve the levees, but the government dumped that money into Iraq instead.
Yeah, we should blame the local and state policians for, you know, going to the federal level to try and get our pathetic government to do its job.
Money is requested from the federal level every day. It is the local and state politicians responsibility for persuading people that something is important enough to fund. It is their shortcoming in this regard, not an administrations for cutting it out of the budget.
In the recovery effort it also falls to local leadership to lead and in what I have seen of the coverage so far I don’t see great leaders rising up to the occasion in Louisiana.
Could we have done more? Yes. Could we be doing more? Yes. If there was a mandatory evacuation why weren’t measures taken to help those that could not help themselves? Now people are beginning to place the blame on the survivors? “Why didn’t they leave when they had the chance?” “Are they so used to having people do things for them that they can’t do anything for themselves?” “Why didn’t they walk out?” Seeing the amount of overweight, elderly and toddler age people, I wonder just how far they would have been capable of walking.
This morning I heard someone quoting from the Book of Matthew…”When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink. When I had no home, you gave me a place to stay. When I was naked, you clothed me.” Whether ‘they brought it upon themselves’ or not (and I believe they most certainly DID NOT bring it upon themselves, this whole thing could have been easily avoided) it is our duty to help them – and we haven’t been. The only thing I have seen happening is the same old buck passing…it is always someone else’s fault. When things go bad all the ‘personal accountability’ talk just goes out the window and the finger pointing begins. We are all to blame for thinking that it couldn’t happen here, that we are somehow immune because of our technology, our beliefs, our lifestyle, our toys, etc. None of that is true.
One thing is certain – what little faith I had that my government was in any way shape or form able or prepared to defend or assist the American people in the event of a natural disaster or a terrorist attack is every bit as destroyed as New Orleans and the Twin Towers. It cannot serve or protect. It can only take our money and go on vacation after an intern gives it a BJ in the oval office and whine about how difficult we make things when things do go its way.
how difficult we make things when things do go its way
Typo there – it should say DON’T go its way.
Money is requested from the federal level every day. It is the local and state politicians responsibility for persuading people that something is important enough to fund. It is their shortcoming in this regard, not an administrations for cutting it out of the budget.
Maybe you should actually look for some news articles to find out just how far the Bush Administration slashed the budget that was to go to New Orleans for levee improvements before you type anything again.
This is a complete and total failure of the federal government. This country has learned NOTHING from 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew.
Odds are we’re too dámņ stupid to learn anything from this one, too.
Money is requested from the federal level every day. It is the local and state politicians responsibility for persuading people that something is important enough to fund. It is their shortcoming in this regard, not an administrations for cutting it out of the budget.
Except that Bush then fired the deputy for the Army Corps of Engineers for the offense of telling Congress that Bush’s budget cuts would cause numerous contracts already initiated to be cancelled, including the levee project.
Here are the facts: Fact one is that, in the 90s, the Army Corps of Engineers began work on reparing and strengthening the levees. Fact two is that in 2003, Bush slashed the money going that project, among others, to pay for the Iraq invasion (you know, the one that Rummy and Wolfie said would pay for itself). This brought the project to a complete halt.
Now, would the levees have held if the project had managed to continue for two more years? That’s a question we’ll probably never get an answer to.
Here’s our wonderful director of FEMA, Michael Brown, on the situation in New Orleans:
“Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands.
“Unfortunately, that’s going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings,” Brown told CNN.
“I don’t make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans,” he said.”
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m ready to run this guy out of the country.
Den wrote: “Here are the facts: Fact one is that, in the 90s, the Army Corps of Engineers began work on reparing and strengthening the levees. Fact two is that in 2003, Bush slashed the money going that project, among others, to pay for the Iraq invasion (you know, the one that Rummy and Wolfie said would pay for itself). This brought the project to a complete halt.”
Left unsaid, however, is the fact that the first levee area to fail was an area that HAD been upgraded. It was a wall of concrete several feet thick.
I’ve lived around flood zones enough to know that whenever you have such an extensive levee system, if the water reaches the top, the system can fail anywhere. New Orleans was an accident waiting to happen, and no matter how much money had been spent, it was just a matter of time before something like this happened.
Politicizing the argument is a waste of time, in my opinion.
Politicizing it is certainly not going to solve the problems, R, but it will also raise some very valid points. Primary among them: The Bush Administration has, in their prosecution of the war in Iraq, taken money away that could have strengthened domestic disaster prevention and response and put it into the war. Could this disaster have been prevented? Absolutely not. Should the federal government be better equipped to respond? Absolutely. And once again, the Bush Administration has failed in a crisis.
“When that “bad choice” is to stay in an area after a mandatory evacuation order has been given, what else does it mean? That they deserve to suffer? Or feel mild discomfort? What else can it be but an attempt to apportion blame and responsibility. It says that some people brought this level of suffering on themselves.”
That’s the problem with both assigning blame and trying to second guess what COULD have been done. Neither do any good for the people dealing with the issue (and the blame game is pointless-there is enough “blame” to go around and cover everyone). Frankly, it’s an pointless debate.
The situation is bad, and fingerpointing (whether you point it at the people who stayed/were stuck back or George Bush) is wasting valuable time anyways.
“The situation is bad, and fingerpointing (whether you point it at the people who stayed/were stuck back or George Bush) is wasting valuable time anyways.”
Thom, I have to disagree. When the people involved in the relief and rescue efforts, or the people that need to be organizing those efforts, sit around and discuss this stuff, while people are suffering and dieing, yes, that’s a waste of valuable time.
But for the rest of us, what else are we supposed to do? If we’re not involved on site, or connected to the chain of command, it’s not like our discussion these kinds of issues takes away anything from the relief efforts. I can only give so much blood, and only donate so much money, before I’ve exhausted everything I can do to help.
Just read on ICV2 that PAD has offered to donate his royalties from Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1 to the New Orleens relief effort-
True?
I’ve lived around flood zones enough to know that whenever you have such an extensive levee system, if the water reaches the top, the system can fail anywhere. New Orleans was an accident waiting to happen, and no matter how much money had been spent, it was just a matter of time before something like this happened.
This is true. We should have learned the lesson from the 1993 floods that levees only make floodings worse when they do occur. Again, I can’t say whether further work would have prevented the levee from failing or not. However, none of that changes the fact that resources that should have gone to emergency preparedness and flood prevention were taken away to spend on Operation Fix Daddy’s Mistake.
Politicizing the argument is a waste of time, in my opinion.
But it is inevitable. Already, Bush’s supporters are out on the blogs making sure that the weak response form DHS is everyone’s fault but his.
Bobb, certainly…but if we are going to discuss how things could be done differently, then one of the questions that comes up is “people were told to get the hëll out of dodge and not everyone did.” It’s a valid question, unlike the tsunami which came completely out of the blue for the tourists and citizens.
And yet, when I look at the suffering and devestation, I don’t really care. I could step back and analyze that, and it’s not wrong to ask the question. What’s wrong is to use it as a reason to not extend help and relief. Compassion should not have limits in these times.
Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands.
“Unfortunately, that’s going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings,” Brown told CNN.
“I don’t make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans,” he said.”
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m ready to run this guy out of the country.”
Why? I would go with firing the guy for the absolute failure on all levels of the last week’s operation but, his excuse making aside, he’s right. He’s 100% right. Don’t try and blow it off or dismiss as though he were telling a complete lie to cover his butt.
In the 24 hours leading up to Katrina hitting the city they had bits on the networks and the 24/7 news outlets with people talking about how they weren’t going to leave. Hëll, CNN and MSNBC had two different groups on talking about the rocking parties they would be having while riding the storm out.
my wife’s Aunt was ending a two week vacation down there as this started and my wife was worried as hëll. She got out of there in time because she chose to leave. But she was telling us how shocked she was at the number of people around her who were staying because they wouldn’t, not couldn’t, leave because all the doom sayers and such didn’t know what they were talking about and how they had seen worse then this before. I had listened to a few net feeds from local radio stations before the storm hit and heard the same thing from callers then.
I’m not the only one who was seeing this stuff. From this thread above:
Posted by: Eric! at August 29, 2005 03:04 PM
I did like the one sign I saw.
“We don’t run from Hurricanes, we drink them.”
Yeah, there are people there who COULD NOT get out. For them I feel the most sorry and get the most pi$$ed off when watching the news and seeing the relief efforts run like a Three Stooges act while the people in charge and the pols get in front of news cameras and pat each other on the back for the fine job they’re doing. But there are lots of people there who were told to get out and said no. They chose to stay.
What he said mixed with the timing of it was dumb as hëll. What he said is almost as dumb as all those saying that the people there are being left to die based on their skin color. The fact that he said it in order to excuse the pi$$ poor job he and other have been doing the last few days is a great reason to fire him. But the sad thing is that he told the truth. The number of deaths will be greater in the end because many stupid people decided to stay that could have gotten out of the area.
This doesn’t make their deaths less of a horror. This doesn’t make their lives less. This doesn’t mean that anybody there (other then the snipers shooting at cops and rescue units to protect looters) deserved/deserves to die. But it is the truth. Don’t attack people who are saying that now and don’t try and completely write it off as cruel. Don’t whitewash it so that you can feel better about the fact that you believe no victim “deserved” it (again, they didn’t.) Use it to smack some sense into people the next time (where or when ever the next time is) and maybe reduce the number of deaths then.
Now, if you’re just pointing to his poor timing and less then thoughtful way of saying it then I’m with you there. But I still think we should fire him first.