God I hope this story is overblown right now!!!

[minew]

The right wing blogoshpere's (the source of that bus picture) attempt to turn this into Nagin-gate (blame the black democrat) is laughable, that is if anything about this could be humorous.

I do fault Nagin and other local officials for the Superdome plan because they knew it wouldn't work. It was used in the same way in 98 (Georges) and failed utterly, even though the storm didn't even hit. But the idea that New Orleans had the means to bus out everyone without cars or maintain its own levees is ridiculous. New Orleans is the poorest big city in the country - both in terms of people and government. The school system alone, the worst in the country, was 48 million dollars in debt this year. There is no tax base. What tax base there is isn't taxed due to the sacred homestead exemption. Oh, sure there's corruption and graft - lots of it. Mainly, there's just no money.

Back to the busses: according to the same site that posts the bus pictures (linked from Instapundit) the busses in the picture would have transported 13,000 people out of the city. That still leaves you with 100,000. Moreover, who gets on the busses? Who stands there with guns telling people who can get on and who can't?

The levee wall broke late Monday and people called the one working radio station (WWL870AM) to report that water was rising in Mid City, the lowest part of the city. Then someone from the station reported that there was a levee breach. From that point, it would have been clear to every official, federal, state, and local, who has looked at this problem what was going to happen. From that point, it should have been clear, that only a massive and swift federal response would help. It was announced about 11pm monday that there would be a 10AM Corps of Engineers meeting the next day. Guess even the Corps is infected by our manana culture.

As of Tuesday, locals began to say to each other and on the radio, including the mayor, that the army has to come in now, the feds have to do this. Most NOPD had already worked 36 and 48 hour shifts. 1500 police officers and 1000 firefighters were responsible for round-the-clock rescue and security needs of 150,000 stranded hurricane victims. People would remain stranded on interstates, in the Dome, and at the convention center UNTIL SUNDAY MORNING. This despite the fact that media and even ordinary local citizens could easily reach these locations via the Miss. River bridge (aka Crescent City Connection).

One final note about the evacuation and preparation: there was no time. As of Friday morning, Katrina was a minor storm headed for the Florida panhandle, according to the NWS. I checked a local news site at about noon and noticed that N.O. was suddenly in the western edge of the cone (even though 4 or 5 computer models had shifed over us). I made reservations in Baton Rouge, where we had planned to go anyway Sat morning to visit friends. Six hours later (Friday @6pm), the track had Katrina pointed at the Miss Gulf Coast as a 4. Most people I talked to hadn't even heard. It was Friday, they had been at work, they were going out. When we got up Sat. we saw that it was still coming at us. We left at about 10 AM and there was hardly any traffic on the road. The local evacuation plan was enacted. It is a 50-hr staged evacuation. The storm made landfall 45 hours later. The fact that 80% of the population got out with basically no notice, many just hours before the storm hit, is amazing. In terms of telling people to get out, I do not fault local officials. They did it as clearly and urgently and as soon as possible, period.

[RDK]

It's interesting, in retrospect, to go back and look at the stories following the hurricane but before the levee breech and flooding. From last Monday's L.A. Times...

Hurricane Lashes a City Abandoned

Category 4 Katrina aims for New Orleans, where the haves flee and the have-nots hunker down.

By Scott Gold, Times Staff Writer

NEW ORLEANS — Bill Rau, the 45-year-old owner of a French Quarter antique shop that sells diamonds and 18th century clocks, flew his family to Dallas on Sunday, not because he knew anyone there but because it was the only way he could get out of town.

He thought about driving but feared that Hurricane Katrina — a menacing storm with sustained winds of at least 155 mph expected to strike before 7 this morning — would catch up with him while he sat in traffic.

So he spent $3,000 and bought the only tickets he could find: six one-way, first-class seats to Dallas.

John Higgins was struggling in a different way. The 49-year-old man hobbled through New Orleans as the wind picked up, carrying what he owned — a purple comb, a radio and a pack of instant coffee — on his back.

The homeless shelter where Higgins usually stayed had closed because of fears that Katrina would destroy it. He had no car, no money and nowhere to go, so he was trying to make his way to the Louisiana Superdome, the downtown arena that had hosted Super Bowls and Bob Hope but was pressed into service as a storm shelter.

To some degree, Katrina was an equalizer, leaving Rau and Higgins clawing their way to safety.

But it also served as a reminder that this is a city of haves and have-nots. And on Sunday, by and large, the former got out of town — about 1 million of the metropolitan area's 1.6 million people, officials said — and the latter were left behind.

"Ain't that life?" Higgins asked.

Those who remained in New Orleans, a large part of which sits below sea level, will probably wake this morning to calamity.

At midnight PDT on Monday, Katrina was downgraded to Category 4 from Category 5, the rating given to the most powerful hurricanes. Only three Category 5 hurricanes have struck the United States. The last was Hurricane Andrew, which pummeled Florida in 1992.

Katrina grew after hitting Florida's east coast Thursday as a Category 1 hurricane, causing 11 deaths before blowing across the state into the Gulf of Mexico, lifting fuel from the warm water.

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation for the first time in the city's history, calling the storm a "once-in-a-lifetime event."

"The city of New Orleans has never seen a hurricane of this magnitude hit it directly," Nagin said as he and Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco announced the evacuation at a news conference. "This is awesome."

The National Hurricane Center in Miami issued dire warnings about the storm's magnitude. By midnight, Katrina was moving northwest at 10 mph and had sustained winds of 160 mph and higher gusts. Hurricane-force winds extended 105 miles in every direction from the center, and tropical-storm-force winds stretched out 230 miles. The eye of the hurricane measured about 30 miles in diameter.

The Louisiana coast could experience storm surges as high as 28 feet, 15 inches of rain and tornadoes, the National Hurricane Center said. A 28-foot storm surge would be the highest ever recorded, officials said.

Katrina had developed into what leading forecasters had been worrying about for years: a mammoth storm bearing down on a densely populated coastal flat.

Bill Read, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said Katrina was the fourth-largest Atlantic hurricane ever measured, behind Gilbert in 1988, Allen in 1980 and the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, which occurred before tropical storms were named.

Officials said Katrina rivaled Hurricane Camille, a notorious Gulf of Mexico storm that smashed into the Mississippi coast in August 1969 — wiping out entire stretches of shoreline, destroying more than 5,600 homes and killing 259 people.

"At the moment, this one is stronger than Camille," Read said. "It's got everything we warn about going for it: It's large and it's going for vulnerable areas of the coast, so storm surge will be bad."

Nagin said as many as 30,000 people had sought shelter at the Superdome by 5 p.m. and thousands more were in line, though the city had repeatedly urged residents to consider the arena a shelter of "last resort." About a dozen other shelters had been opened, although some were full and people were turned away.

The mayor said people should be prepared to stay in shelters for as long as five days and should bring their own provisions. If power went out, electricity could remain off in parts of the city for six weeks, Nagin said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which coordinates disaster assistance, was sending teams with food, water, ice and generators to areas across the southeastern United States, said Natalie Rule, a spokeswoman.

In addition to supplies, the federal agency has prepared search-and-rescue teams and disaster medical units. "They'll move in as soon as it's safe," Rule said.

President Bush signed emergency disaster declarations for Mississippi and Alabama, a move that will allow federal officials to coordinate more quickly with state and local officials. He signed a similar declaration for Louisiana on Saturday. State officials in Louisiana and Mississippi expect flooding.

In the Gulf of Mexico, oil companies shut platforms and evacuated workers. One oil rig recorded a 65-foot swell.

Tens of thousands of people fled low-lying coastal areas in Louisiana and surrounding states Saturday and Sunday, and officials said many pockets of New Orleans were as they should be — virtually deserted. In other areas, the mayor's evacuation order prompted chaos.

Fistfights broke out at convenience stores when managers tried to close; one store clerk was forced to enlist a customer to lock and unlock the door to let the last customers out. Two dozen people were seen banging on the glass windows of a large hardware store, begging for plywood and other supplies.

By noon, traffic was bumper-to-bumper for 15 miles in any direction.

In the heart of New Orleans, a sense of dread settled over the streets. Although it is one of the most visited places in the nation, it is not a wealthy city. And it was clear that thousands of people did not have the means to evacuate. One man sat forlornly on a street corner with a backpack and an umbrella. Another man walked down Canal Street carrying only a pillow.

Many tourists were stranded; several people wept at Louis Armstrong International Airport, unable to get a flight or a rental car.

Pam Hendrix, a graphic designer, was in Houston on business when she realized how dangerous the storm was getting. She was one of the few people flying into New Orleans but said, "We're only coming home so we can turn around and leave."

As soon as she arrived home, she said, her family and pets would load into a car and drive to Monroe, La., where relatives lived.

"We're all just crossing our fingers that we have jobs and homes to come back to," she said. "The infrastructure of this city is so fragile. I don't know if the city can recuperate from something like this. No one knows what's going to happen because this has never happened before."

As with many powerful hurricanes, much of the damage that Katrina will leave behind will probably come from flooding.

Nagin said he expected the storm to send water over the levees that protected New Orleans. If that happens, he said, it could take two weeks for the city to pump the water out.

Even the historic French Quarter, though it sits at a higher elevation than much of the surrounding city, could be under 20 feet of water.

Equally threatened, although less conspicuous, were low-lying regions like Terrebonne Parish, southwest of New Orleans. Sheriff Jerry Larpenter said about half of the parish's 110,000 residents had evacuated. The morning could bring disaster for the area's mostly poor population, he said.

"I don't know of too many of [the area's houses] that could withstand a [Category] 5," he said. "These people are living from check to check. They don't have the luxury of renting a camper and leaving town."

After dark, a caravan of vehicles on Interstate 10 was moving at a snail's pace through Baton Rouge. The drive northwest from New Orleans, which ordinarily takes an hour and 10 minutes, was dragging on for as much as 10 hours, said Melvin L. "Kip" Holden, mayor-president of Baton Rouge.

At the airport in New Orleans, antique shop owner Rau stood in line for chicken sandwiches with his daughter, fretting about the damage the water could bring but relieved that his family wouldn't be around to face the storm.

Rau owns two homes in the New Orleans area. One, which is 6,000 square feet, was finished three weeks ago. It is on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain north of the city, where significant flooding is expected. Rau said he tried to bring some items into the house before his family left but, he said, "I think it's all moot."

"I'm sure it will be gone," he said of the house. "We had five good nights there."

Higgins, the homeless man, was taking it one night at a time.

By 4 p.m., sheets of rain began to fall and high winds kicked up clouds of dust. Higgins connected with two homeless friends whose shelters had also closed, and the three were trudging through the streets of downtown trying to get to the Superdome. Higgins said he had been there once before, to see the rock band Boston in the 1980s.

"This will be a little different, I guess," he said.

Higgins was joined by Harry Oswald, 52, who had thick glasses and a towel tucked into the neck of his shirt to absorb sweat, and Leon Raines, 41, who was smoking the remnant of a cigarette he had found on the ground. They had tried several homeless shelters. Then they tried to nap in a park, but the wind picked up and safety became their main concern.

Together, the three walked up a ramp leading to the upper tier of the Superdome. They had, collectively, two bottles of water. Officials made no promises that they would be able to deliver food or water into the arena anytime soon.

A member of the National Guard stopped the three and sent them downstairs to get in line.

Two hundred feet below were 10,000 people — women holding babies, men in wheelchairs, bored children. They carried pillows, bottles of water, Spider-Man sleeping bags, loaves of bread and cans of tuna in suitcases, shopping carts and garbage bags.

Nearly two hours later, as the skies darkened rapidly, the three men were finally at the doors of the Superdome, bickering about how long they would have to remain inside. Higgins insisted it would be "a few hours." Raines said, "We could be there for a few weeks!"

Oswald tried to quiet them. "Well, we'll be inside soon," he said. "We've been walking the streets all day, man. It'll be good to sit down."

[Matthew]

WTF????? You mean to tell me a major city that is on the coast, below see level, and no one in FEMA thought a levee breach could take place?

Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist

However, experts for years had warned of threat to New Orleans

Sunday, September 4, 2005; Posted: 8:49 a.m. EDT (12:49 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.

But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years.

Chertoff, fielding questions from reporters, said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans.

"That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight," Chertoff said.

He called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise."

But engineers say the levees preventing this below-sea-level city from being turned into a swamp were built to withstand only Category 3 hurricanes. And officials have warned for years that a Category 4 could cause the levees to fail. (See video of why the levee's breech was devastating -- 1:53)

Katrina was a Category 4 hurricane when it struck the Gulf Coast on September 29.

Last week, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told CNN his agency had recently planned for a Category 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans.

Speaking to "Larry King Live" on August 31, in the wake of Katrina, Brown said, "That Category 4 hurricane caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated. So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we're implementing it."

Brown suggested FEMA -- part of the Department of Homeland Security -- was carrying out a prepared plan, rather than having to suddenly create a new one.

Chertoff argued that authorities actually had assumed that "there would be overflow from the levee, maybe a small break in the levee. The collapse of a significant portion of the levee leading to the very fast flooding of the city was not envisioned."

He added: "There will be plenty of time to go back and say we should hypothesize evermore apocalyptic combinations of catastrophes. Be that as it may, I'm telling you this is what the planners had in front of them. They were confronted with a second wave that they did not have built into the plan, but using the tools they had, we have to move forward and adapt."

But New Orleans, state and federal officials have long painted a very different picture.

"We certainly understood the potential impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane" on New Orleans, Lt. General Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Thursday, Cox News Service reported.

Reuters reported that in 2004, more than 40 state, local and volunteer organizations practiced a scenario in which a massive hurricane struck and levees were breached, allowing water to flood New Orleans. Under the simulation, called "Hurricane Pam," the officials "had to deal with an imaginary storm that destroyed more than half a million buildings in New Orleans and forced the evacuation of a million residents," the Reuters report said.

In 2002 the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a five-part series exploring the vulnerability of the city. The newspaper, and other news media as well, specifically addressed the possibility of massive floods drowning residents, destroying homes and releasing toxic chemicals throughout the city. (Read: "Times-Picayune" Special Report: Washing awayexternal link)

Scientists long have discussed this possibility as a sort of doomsday scenario.

On Sunday, a day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Ivor van Heerden, director of the Louisiana State University Public Health Research Center in Baton Rouge, said, "This is what we've been saying has been going to happen for years."

"Unfortunately, it's coming true," he said, adding that New Orleans "is definitely going to flood."

Also on Sunday, Placquemines Parish Sheriff Jeff Hingle referred back to Hurricane Betsy -- a Category 2 hurricane that struck in 1965 -- and said, "After Betsy these levees were designed for a Category 3."

He added, "These levees will not hold the water back."

But Chertoff seemed unaware of all the warnings.

"This is really one which I think was breathtaking in its surprise," Chertoff said. "There has been, over the last few years, some specific planning for the possibility of a significant hurricane in New Orleans with a lot of rainfall, with water rising in the levees and water overflowing the levees," he told reporters Saturday.

That alone would be "a very catastrophic scenario," Chertoff said. "And although the planning was not complete, a lot of work had been done. But there were two problems here. First of all, it's as if someone took that plan and dropped an atomic bomb simply to make it more difficult. We didn't merely have the overflow, we actually had the break in the wall. And I will tell you that, really, that perfect storm of combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight."

Chertoff also argued that authorities did not have much notice that the storm would be so powerful and could make a direct hit on New Orleans.

"It wasn't until comparatively late, shortly before -- a day, maybe a day and a half, before landfall -- that it became clear that this was going to be a Category 4 or 5 hurricane headed for the New Orleans area."

As far back as Friday, August 26, the National Hurricane Center was predicting the storm could be a Category 4 hurricane at landfall, with New Orleans directly in its path. Still, storms do change paths, so the possibility existed that it might not hit the city.

But the National Weather Service prediction proved almost perfect.

Katrina made landfall on Monday, August 29.

Tens of thousands of people in New Orleans who did not or could not heed the mandatory evacuation orders issued the day before the storm made landfall were left in dire straits.

"I think we have discovered over the last few days that with all the tremendous effort using the existing resources and the traditional frameworks of the National Guard, the unusual set of challenges of conducting a massive evacuation in the context of a still dangerous flood requires us to basically break the traditional model and create a new model -- one for what you might call kind of an ultracatastrophe," Chertoff said.

He vowed that the United States "is going to move heaven and earth" to rescue those in need.

Edited September 4, 2005 by Matthew

[ejp626]

Maybe the only positive thing out of this horror is that the media have decided to stop playing nice with and/or be buffaloed by this administration. I don't know about the US version of CNN, but the international CNN ran some of those quotes and then had many statements, generally from others within the government showing that Chertoff was woefully misinformed at best and more likely simply lying about not being forewarned. They then showed half a dozen reports and disaster training exercises that foresaw this exact scenario of the levees breaking down.

At the very least, FEMA has to be taken out of Homeland Security and restaffed with professionals, since most of the top people left in disgust after the reorganization.

[Soul Stream]

At the very least, FEMA has to be taken out of Homeland Security and restaffed with professionals, since most of the top people left in disgust after the reorganization.

←

I just saw where the Governer of Louisiana hired the former head of FEMA to run her operations from now on. He was the previous head of FEMA for @15 years if memory serves. Seems like we might have kept him on instead of firing him and hiring Mr. Businessman.

Edited September 4, 2005 by Soul Stream

[minew]

vCity must overcome disaster, mayor says

Nagin: Response still isn't enough

from today

By Doug MacCash

Staff writer

Viewed from the windows of a low-flying Blackhawk helicopter, the scope of Hurricane Katrina's destruction becomes clearer. The Causeway is like a broken spine, large sections of roadway listing disconcertingly into the brown water of Lake Pontchartrain. The modest homes in the Lower 9th Ward have been uprooted and are crushed together in clots like bumper cars. Pyramid-shaped rooftops are all that can be seen of many suburban-style houses in the Lakeview neighborhood. And the expanses of small trees that line the coastal wetlands of eastern New Orleans have been bent to the ground and combed precisely in one direction that marks the path of last week's ferocious wind. Nothing is right.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin knew that's what he would find when he conducted a helicopter survey Saturday of the city, a grim tour that graphically exposed members the national and local press to the destruction he's come to know well. The copter turned slow circles over the sky like a buzzard over the still-breached 17th St. Canal levee and twice paused in flight over New Orleanians who were still stranded. Nagin dropped water and a ready-to-eat meal to one of them.

Preparing for the flight, Nagin was in a more sedate mood than he was during an expletive-ridden television interview Thursday, when he railed against the plodding federal and state relief efforts, accused President Bush and Gov. Kathleen Blanco of posturing for political advantage at a time of acute need, and burst into tears -- not that the situation in the drowning, crippled city had much improved.

"When I woke up this morning," Nagin said, "I turned my radio off. I just couldn't digest any more bad news."

Bush was forgiving of Nagin's tirade when they met Friday, Nagin said. "He said, 'Look, I know you said lots of things. We could have done better. I can't argue. Let's deal with the future.' ... Mr. Bush was really, really concerned."

Blanco, too, understood his anger, Nagin said. "I told the president and her, 'I kind of lost it. But put yourselves in my shoes. If I said anything offensive, I apologize.' ... But then I immediately went on to tell them what I need."

Nagin may have mended his fences politically, but he said he still believes the situation is being poorly handled. "We're still fighting over authority," he said. "A bunch of people are the boss. The state and the federal government are doing a two-step dance. "I told the president, 'I'm into solutions. If the state government can't take responsibility, then you take it.' ... I think it's getting better, but the pace is still not sufficient.'"

Some observers have said that because the majority of storm evacuees are black, the lethargic disaster response has a racist component. But Nagin cast the color issue in another light. "I think it's more a class issue than race," he said. "The Superdome had mostly poor people in distress. The rich have resources the poor don't. The Convention Center was different. There the poor were mixed with people from hotels and predators. You had blacks, Hispanics, Asians. The predators in there didn't care. When those stories come out, like children raped, with their throats cut, then somebody's got to answer."

Nagin's ire began to rise anew as he recalled a foiled strategy to send able-bodied refugees over the Crescent City Connection to the high ground of the West Bank.

"We were taking in people from St. Bernard Parish," he said. "If we had a bottle of water, we shared it. Then when we were going to let people cross the bridge, they were met with frigging dogs and guns at the Gretna parish line. They said, 'We're going to protect Jefferson Parish assets.'

"Some people value homes, cars and jewelry more than human life. The only escape route was cut off. They turned them back at the parish line."

Nagin said that in order to cope with the always frustrating, sometimes overwhelming situation he has tried to "stay in the moment," dealing as best he can with each individual issue as it arises: a police officer's report that a large number of elderly people were stranded near Lee Circle; the sight of refugees continuing to gather on the city's raised highways. Nagin recalled with special dismay having recently been told that a New Orleans police officer committed suicide during the storm's aftermath.

"I asked my people to get in touch with the LSU department of psychiatry," he said. "The police are holding the situation together with Band-Aids. We have to let them get three to five days off."

As the Blackhawk coursed over the city, Nagin and the other passengers pointed out familiar landmarks made unfamiliar by the storm. The city was largely ruined. It would be as difficult to restart as the thousands of automobiles submerged in the murky water below. But Nagin insisted it must be restarted, no matter what.

"I think I'm here for a reason: to rebuild," he said. "New Orleans is the soul of the country. It's the place jazz comes from. It has Mardi Gras Indians that nobody else has. It's a place where a chef can take a piece of fish and make it into a masterpiece. We don't even think about not rebuilding Miami. We don't think about rebuilding Los Angeles, and they're on a fault line. We just do it. We don't talk about it. I don't want to talk about that foolishness."

[Soul Stream]

"We were taking in people from St. Bernard Parish," he said. "If we had a bottle of water, we shared it. Then when we were going to let people cross the bridge, they were met with frigging dogs and guns at the Gretna parish line. They said, 'We're going to protect Jefferson Parish assets.'

←

That's pretty goddamn disturbing.

[GA Russell]

Ghost and Berrigan, thanks for posting those articles. They both ring true.

Everyone in New Orleans, including the poor, understood that hurricanes and the flooding they cause are an annual threat to their homes, their incomes and their way of life including their life itself. As much as I think that the govt at all levels has done an unsatisfactory job, I believe that the ultimate blame should be borne by the people called the victims. They gambled with their eyes wide open, and they lost.

Having left New Orleans for good 34 years ago, I have affection and concern for the people who stayed, but not a lot of sympathy for those who chose good times or familiar surroundings over their own safety and the safety of their loved ones.

[tjobbe]

It's nice to see that even though we have had disagreements with a number of countries on this list, there is still a lot of generosity in the world and goodwill for the people of the United States. 

←

...one thing thats often reported here in my area are pictures and news coverage of the german THW (like the IS Army corps of engineers) sitting on packed bags waiting for US officials to let them in and help. The MEDIVAC (a high tech german army hospital Airbus) idles at Cologne Airport (that was in operations within 4days in Thailand and was flying out US soldiers from Kuwait on US request quickly)

as well as there are reports that a Airforce Arbus carrying 10tons of food needed to heavily negotiate landing permission for Pensacola as they have been send over with a scheduled flight but unrequested by the US, but finally handed the the goods to the FEMA... with a second 15tons on a second flight now arriving on FEMA request...

The perception over here is: We can offer help, but if its so hard to help if you get the feeling that it is not wanted...(by the government... as I guess the people suffering don't care where the help comes from)

remember: The December 26th Tsunami was an unexpected terrible incident but within 3-4 days help from all around the world was there.... why did it take 5 days in case of NO and around to get coordinated help in ?

Cheers, Tjobbe

Edited September 4, 2005 by tjobbe

[Ron S]

Ron, someone instructed those people to go to the Convention Center, and that someone opened it up to them, and I suspect that that someone was the New Orleans city govt.  There are 90,000 square miles of damage, and the federal govt can't be expected to know what is going on in every one of them if the local officials don't tell them.  Someone from New Orleans dropped the ball and forgot to tell the feds, who in the person of Brown are operating out of Baton Rouge.

The name of the agency is Federal Emergency MANAGEMENT--not ASSISTANCE-- Agency. The purpose of the agency is to move into disaster situations that figuratively--and in this case literally--swamp and overwhelm the local and state authorities' limited capabilities. FEMA is supposed to move in, take over, coordinate, and MANAGE the response. Don't take my word for it--this is from FEMA's web site:

As it has for more than 20 years, FEMA's mission remains: to lead America to prepare for, prevent, respond to and recover from disasters with a vision of "A Nation Prepared."

Sitting in Baton Rouge or wherever they were and waiting for state or local authorities to tell them where and when to apply this powerful federal agency's resources is NOT MANAGEMENT by any definition. FEMA should be using its own resources--including, at the very least, having its own people on the ground and montioring ALL media reports (and not just the broadcast networks)--to determine where help is needed in the only big city affected by the storm.

I don't know about you, but I expect more from the federal government and its leaders, and I say that having worked for the federal government myself, and having had many friends and relatives who have. I don't want to think that any federal agency, and especially one in the Department of Homeland Security, is relying upon state and local governments to do its job, especially in a situtation where those governments are as overwhelmed by a disaster as enormous as this.

Yes, someone in local or state government may have screwed up by not advising FEMA about the tens of thousands of people at the convention center, but FEMA also screwed up--big time--by not asking the right questions, watching the right television, and having people in the right places to learn about this on its own. Call me naive (and with resepect to federal government capabilities I'm anything but), but I hold a federal agency such as FEMA--and the political leaders above it--to a much higher standard than I would municipal and state governments, and especially those in extremis as here.

[minew]

Ghost and Berrigan, thanks for posting those articles.  They both ring true.

Everyone in New Orleans, including the poor, understood that hurricanes and the flooding they cause are an annual threat to their homes, their incomes and their way of life including their life itself.  As much as I think that the govt at all levels has done an unsatisfactory job, I believe that the ultimate blame should be borne by the people called the victims.  They gambled with their eyes wide open, and they lost.

Having left New Orleans for good 34 years ago, I have affection and concern for the people who stayed, but not a lot of sympathy for those who chose good times or familiar surroundings over their own safety and the safety of their loved ones.

←

What can one say to this except, "Fuck you, too, asshole."

[BERIGAN]

The right wing blogoshpere's (the source of that bus picture) attempt to turn this into Nagin-gate (blame the black democrat) is laughable, that is if anything about this could be humorous.

I do fault Nagin and other local officials for the Superdome plan because they knew it wouldn't work.  It was used in the same way in 98 (Georges) and failed utterly, even though the storm didn't even hit.  But the idea that New Orleans had the means to bus out everyone without cars or maintain its own levees is ridiculous.  New Orleans is the poorest big city in the country - both in terms of people and government.  The school system alone, the worst in the country, was 48 million dollars in debt this year.  There is no tax base.  What tax base there is isn't taxed due to the sacred homestead exemption.  Oh, sure there's corruption and graft - lots of it.  Mainly, there's just no money. 

Back to the busses: according to the same site that posts the bus pictures (linked from Instapundit) the busses in the picture would have transported 13,000 people out of the city.  That still leaves you with 100,000.  Moreover, who gets on the busses?  Who stands there with guns telling people who can get on and who can't?

The levee wall broke late Monday and people called the one working radio station (WWL870AM) to report that water was rising in Mid City, the lowest part of the city.  Then someone from the station reported that there was a levee breach.  From that point, it would have been clear to every official, federal, state, and local, who has looked at this problem what was going to happen.  From that point, it should have been clear, that only a massive and swift federal response would help.  It was announced about 11pm monday that there would be a 10AM Corps of Engineers meeting the next day.  Guess even the Corps is infected by our manana culture.

As of Tuesday, locals began to say to each other and on the radio, including the mayor, that the army has to come in now, the feds have to do this.  Most NOPD had already worked 36 and 48 hour shifts.  1500 police officers and 1000 firefighters were responsible for round-the-clock rescue and security needs of 150,000 stranded hurricane victims.  People would remain stranded on interstates, in the Dome, and at the convention center UNTIL SUNDAY MORNING.  This despite the fact that media and even ordinary local citizens could easily reach these locations via the Miss. River bridge (aka Crescent City Connection).

One final note about the evacuation and preparation: there was no time.  As of Friday morning, Katrina was a minor storm headed for the Florida panhandle, according to the NWS.  I checked a local news site at about noon and noticed that N.O. was suddenly in the western edge of the cone (even though 4 or 5 computer models had shifed over us).  I made reservations in Baton Rouge, where we had planned to go anyway Sat morning to visit friends. Six hours later (Friday @6pm), the track had Katrina pointed at the Miss Gulf Coast as a 4.  Most people I talked to hadn't even heard.  It was Friday, they had been at work, they were going out.  When we got up Sat.  we saw that it was still coming at us.  We left at about 10 AM and there was hardly any traffic on the road.  The local evacuation plan was enacted.  It is a 50-hr staged evacuation.  The storm made landfall 45 hours later.  The fact that 80% of the population got out with basically no notice, many just hours before the storm hit, is amazing.  In terms of telling people to get out, I do not fault local officials.  They did it as clearly and urgently and as soon as possible, period.

←

I do believe the poor of New Orleans are poor, but the city itself? Something like 10 million tourists a year come to N.O. Does that mean all the money went to the state?

N.O. may have done a fine job of telling people to get out, but those too poor, too sick, what was the plan? That photo is of just one lot of school buses. Where were all the transportation buses? Prison buses? You cannot just blame the feds for this, or say they deserve 90% of the blame. It would have been a hell of lot better on those who couldn't leave on there own to have been bused out(Yeah, it would have been a difficult thing to do, but as you said the Superdome wasn't a great option either-but lives were saved by using it, no doubt) than to stay and go thru the hell they endured.

Well, I just clicked on the link from Little green Footballs to the blog site that had the photo above....never been to it before....

LESS THAN A MILE FROM THE DOME

sat dozens of municipally-owned NORTA buses. Here's the photo, from Google Earth:

Thanks to Tom for spotting these buses. I count 146 of them at that facility, which is on Canal Street and less than a mile from the Superdome.

Figure these buses have 60 or so seats on them. That adds up to an additional 9,000 or so passengers who could have ridden them out of New Orleans ahead of the storm and the flood in one trip. If Ebbert had followed the plan.

I take no pleasure in counting up buses, Googling seating capacities and tallying up the number of lives that might have been saved. But when the blame game started, Mayor Nagin and Terry Ebbert made it necessary to do so.

**note** I had an erroneous photo of the Almonaster facility in this post. I've removed it until I can find a legitimate photo of it.

UPDATE: Here's the Almonaster facility. It's nearly empty

It's just a couple of blocks from the Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool. It could have been emptied after the flood, though that seems unlikely. If it was emptied before the flood, why wasn't the other one? They're not far apart. Here's a link to a wide shot that shows both facilities. The Nagin Memorial Pool is in the lower left, if Google Earth's links are working right. They've been a bit screwy.

MORE: The link will take you to a >before photo<, in which you can see dry land and a lot of buses. Click on the red Katrina button to see the after flood shot--water everywhere, and an empty lot.

http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2005_08_28.html#004752

[Christiern]

Ghost and Berrigan, thanks for posting those articles.  They both ring true.

Everyone in New Orleans, including the poor, understood that hurricanes and the flooding they cause are an annual threat to their homes, their incomes and their way of life including their life itself.  As much as I think that the govt at all levels has done an unsatisfactory job, I believe that the ultimate blame should be borne by the people called the victims.  They gambled with their eyes wide open, and they lost.

Having left New Orleans for good 34 years ago, I have affection and concern for the people who stayed, but not a lot of sympathy for those who chose good times or familiar surroundings over their own safety and the safety of their loved ones.

←

• You are either heartless or clueless--Unless you have your head in the sand, I suspect that the former is the case, but neither is forgivable. I think (hope) we have reached a point where the Bush regime's spins are falling on deaf ears, except among the lock-steppers. To say that the people who were crammed into the Super Dome and Convention Center "gambled with their eyes wide open" is callous and blatantly racist. Sorry, but your posts paint a rather sorry picture of GA
  Russell.
  

Edited September 4, 2005 by Christiern

[GA Russell]

Chris, I'm not being heartless. My heart goes out to the poor without a means to escape who had to suffer those days in the heat without food or water, and without the knowledge of when help would arrive.

My point is that New Orleanians are not like other people. They truly chose to make a bad bet. They chose to live in harm's way, unprepared.

Maybe it's something that a New Yorker like yourself couldn't understand. Maybe you can't imagine that anyone would live like that, could be that foolish.

By the way, I am referring to all the people of New Orleans, not just the poor whom we've seen on TV this past week.

I just got off the phone with my best friend from high school, who has lived for the past thirty-three years in Ohio. He's more jaded than I am about it all. The incompetence from top to bottom in that city.

New Orleanians are not victims of circumstance. They are not victims of an unforseeable disaster. They chose to live there, like I chose to leave. They didn't care that they were running a terrible risk, and now many of them from my old neighborhood have lost everything.

[Soul Stream]

But we can't let thoughts like these cloud our compassion. We really need to have unconditional love for these people right now.

[GA Russell]

But we can't let thoughts like these cloud our compassion.  We really need to have unconditional love for these people right now.

←

Wholeheartedly agree, Soul Stream!

[vibes]

To say that the people who were crammed into the Super Dome and Convention Center "gambled with their eyes wide open" is callous and blatantly racist.

Chris, do you ever get tired of playing the race card? There wasn't a single racist thing about GA Russell's comment. Just because there happens to be a lot of black people living in New Orleans does not make a negative comment about New Orleans or its people "racist." It's the same thing when people criticize the policies of the state of Israel, and many Jews claim that these criticisms are "anti-Semitic." It just isn't true.

The race card is soooo overplayed in this country...And you'll probably call me a racist for saying that, too.

Edited September 4, 2005 by vibes

[GA Russell]

Thanks, Vibes.

[Guy Berger]

FEMA fool Michael Brown's excuse is pathetic. He and the other Michael (Homeland Security) need to be fired and, perhaps, tried.

←

Agreed.

Guy

←

Are you seriously agreeing that they should be "tried"?

Not sure if there are laws for criminal negligence.

I thought you were smarter than that.

←

Sorry to disappoint.

Guy

←

Alright, here's the wikipedia entry on criminal negligence.

Guy

[Christiern]

To say that the people who were crammed into the Super Dome and Convention Center "gambled with their eyes wide open" is callous and blatantly racist.

Chris, do you ever get tired of playing the race card? There wasn't a single racist thing about GA Russell's comment. Just because there happens to be a lot of black people living in New Orleans does not make a negative comment about New Orleans or its people "racist." It's the same thing when people criticize the policies of the state of Israel, and many Jews claim that these criticisms are "anti-Semitic." It just isn't true.

The race card is soooo overplayed in this country...And you'll probably call me a racist for saying that, too.

←

• It is, IMO, racist because GA Russell is essentially saying that the the people who were trapped in these two structures "gambled," which means that they had a choice. Many of them--most, probably--did not have a choice. These were poor people, many of them elderly and sick. Most of them were black and I am not suggesting that they were neglected by government because of their skin color--in fact, I think it was more a case of class discrimination. That said, racism is clearly what kept these people down. The Bush regime would like us to think that the thousands of victims who were left in the city were there by choice, that they "gambled" on survival in spite of having their "eyes wide open." Well, if that were so (and when was the last time the Bush people told us anything that wasn't, at best, a self-serving distortion?) it would take the fumbling, incompetent government decision-makers off the hook. It would make Bush and his cohorts seem like victims of "bashing." That, of course, is pure bullshit and either GA Russell has bought into it or he is joining the effort to whitewash Bush and his regime.
  
  So, yes, callously blaming thousands of poor and ill people for the suffering brought upon them through lack of leadership in the White House and unspeakable neglect by their own country's government, is racist, even if the neglect was not directly based upon the color of their skin. It becomes racist when one considers that the people in question--the wide-eyed gamblers, as GA Russell would have it--can attribute their lowly status to a history of racism.
  
  The world knew in advance about Hitler's hatred for Jews, but not all Jews left their country for a safer place--were they also "wide-eyed gamblers"? Should we blame them for being so foolish as to land themselves in concentration camps? I don't think so, but, since "Vibes" brought up the subject, I see a parallel. I see a sad lack of comprehension when someone points an accusing finger at people who--through no fault of their own--have undergone a nightmare of human suffering. Those who sought refuge in the Super Dome and Convention Center did so because no effort was made earlier to get them to safer ground, and because this is where they ultimately were told to go. When they got there, there was no one in charge, nothing to drink, nothing to eat, no medicine for the sick, no electricity, no working bathroom facilities. The doors were closed and they were, in effect, entombed. They deserve our compassion and help, not such insensitivity as GA Russell's remark reveals.
  

Sorry to ramble on like this, but it really irks me when someone shows such a lack of feeling. We are talking about people who never had much of a chance to rise in society, people who became victims of a major natural disaster and then had their suffering compounded once more by their own government. Point your finger at the Oval Office and Pentagon, GA Russell.

[vibes]

To say that the people who were crammed into the Super Dome and Convention Center "gambled with their eyes wide open" is callous and blatantly racist.

Chris, do you ever get tired of playing the race card? There wasn't a single racist thing about GA Russell's comment. Just because there happens to be a lot of black people living in New Orleans does not make a negative comment about New Orleans or its people "racist." It's the same thing when people criticize the policies of the state of Israel, and many Jews claim that these criticisms are "anti-Semitic." It just isn't true.

The race card is soooo overplayed in this country...And you'll probably call me a racist for saying that, too.

←

• It is, IMO, racist because GA Russell is essentially saying that the the people who were trapped in these two structures "gambled," which means that they had a choice. Many of them--most, probably--did not have a choice. These were poor people, many of them elderly and sick. Most of them were black and I am not suggesting that they were neglected by government because of their skin color--in fact, I think it was more a case of class discrimination. That said, racism is clearly what kept these people down. The Bush regime would like us to think that the thousands of victims who were left in the city were there by choice, that they "gambled" on survival in spite of having their "eyes wide open." Well, if that were so (and when was the last time the Bush people told us anything that wasn't, at best, a self-serving distortion?) it would take the fumbling, incompetent government decision-makers off the hook. It would make Bush and his cohorts seem like victims of "bashing." That, of course, is pure bullshit and either GA Russell has bought into it or he is joining the effort to whitewash Bush and his regime.
  
  So, yes, callously blaming thousands of poor and ill people for the suffering brought upon them through lack of leadership in the White House and unspeakable neglect by their own country's government, is racist, even if the neglect was not directly based upon the color of their skin. It becomes racist when one considers that the people in question--the wide-eyed gamblers, as GA Russell would have it--can attribute their lowly status to a history of racism.
  
  The world knew in advance about Hitler's hatred for Jews, but not all Jews left their country for a safer place--were they also "wide-eyed gamblers"? Should we blame them for being so foolish as to land themselves in concentration camps? I don't think so, but, since "Vibes" brought up the subject, I see a parallel. I see a sad lack of comprehension when someone points an accusing finger at people who--through no fault of their own--have undergone a nightmare of human suffering. Those who sought refuge in the Super Dome and Convention Center did so because no effort was made earlier to get them to safer ground, and because this is where they ultimately were told to go. When they got there, there was no one in charge, nothing to drink, nothing to eat, no medicine for the sick, no electricity, no working bathroom facilities. The doors were closed and they were, in effect, entombed. They deserve our compassion and help, not such insensitivity as GA Russell's remark reveals.
  
  

Sorry to ramble on like this, but it really irks me when someone shows such a lack of feeling. We are talking about people who never had much of a chance to rise in society, people who became victims of a major natural disaster and then had their suffering compounded once more by their own government. Point your finger at the Oval Office and Pentagon, GA Russell.

←

Insensitivity is not necessarily a sign of racism. Seems unnecessary to post this, but:

Main Entry: rac·ism

Pronunciation: 'rA-"si-z&m also -"shi-

Function: noun

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

2 : racial prejudice or discrimination

- rac·ist /-sist also -shist/ noun or adjective

That's racism. I don't see any of this in what GA Russell wrote. There should be no question in anyone's mind that in New Orleans, there were both people that chose to stay in New Orleans, and people who couldn't get out of New Orleans. There is no way that it was 100% in one way or the other, and I don't think GA Russell was saying that it was. Having a lack of sympathy for people who chose to take their chances may be insensitive, but it certainly isn't racist.

In any case, I'm not going to debate with you the reasons why people are where they are in life ("lowly status," as you put it). We've had this debate before, and it won't go anywhere. Put simply, I think you support a "victim" mentality, and I do not. With Katrina, there are many victims, and I don't think it has to do with racism or class discrimination. It has to do with poor planning, execution and leadership at every level of the government: municipal, state and federal. All the articles posted on this thread would lead me to believe this. The majority of the blame may lie with the federal government, but certainly not all of it.

Hopefully many lessons will be learned from Katrina, and hopefully all levels of the government will be better prepared for the next disaster.

[Guy Berger]

Leaving aside issues of sensitivity, there's absolutely no racism in what GA Russell wrote.

Guy

[nmorin]

New Orleanians are not victims of circumstance.  They are not victims of an unforseeable disaster.  They chose to live there, like I chose to leave.  They didn't care that they were running a terrible risk, and now many of them from my old neighborhood have lost everything.

Having left New Orleans for good 34 years ago, I have affection and concern for the people who stayed, but not a lot of sympathy for those who chose good times or familiar surroundings over their own safety and the safety of their loved ones.

←

So what. How is that going to change your response to the hurricane? Should we try less hard to save, heal, and resettle the victims? If not, what's the point of your remarks. If so, what do you propose not to do for them that you would have done if they were less to blame?

In a similar line of reasoning, obese people should know better than to eat all those Twinkies and red meat, do you say they had their heart attacks coming and that you don't have alot of sympathy for them?

How about the folks who live in Oklahoma and Kansas, what with all those tornados?

The folks west of the San Andreas fault?

The folks in the upper Midwest and all of Canada with the terrible snow storms?

Same deal, or is New Orleans somehow special?

[catesta]

To say that the people who were crammed into the Super Dome and Convention Center "gambled with their eyes wide open" is callous and blatantly racist.

Chris, do you ever get tired of playing the race card? There wasn't a single racist thing about GA Russell's comment. Just because there happens to be a lot of black people living in New Orleans does not make a negative comment about New Orleans or its people "racist." It's the same thing when people criticize the policies of the state of Israel, and many Jews claim that these criticisms are "anti-Semitic." It just isn't true.

The race card is soooo overplayed in this country...And you'll probably call me a racist for saying that, too.

←

• It is, IMO, racist because GA Russell is essentially saying that the the people who were trapped in these two structures "gambled," which means that they had a choice. Many of them--most, probably--did not have a choice. These were poor people, many of them elderly and sick. Most of them were black and I am not suggesting that they were neglected by government because of their skin color--in fact, I think it was more a case of class discrimination. That said, racism is clearly what kept these people down. The Bush regime would like us to think that the thousands of victims who were left in the city were there by choice, that they "gambled" on survival in spite of having their "eyes wide open." Well, if that were so (and when was the last time the Bush people told us anything that wasn't, at best, a self-serving distortion?) it would take the fumbling, incompetent government decision-makers off the hook. It would make Bush and his cohorts seem like victims of "bashing." That, of course, is pure bullshit and either GA Russell has bought into it or he is joining the effort to whitewash Bush and his regime.
  
  So, yes, callously blaming thousands of poor and ill people for the suffering brought upon them through lack of leadership in the White House and unspeakable neglect by their own country's government, is racist, even if the neglect was not directly based upon the color of their skin. It becomes racist when one considers that the people in question--the wide-eyed gamblers, as GA Russell would have it--can attribute their lowly status to a history of racism.
  
  The world knew in advance about Hitler's hatred for Jews, but not all Jews left their country for a safer place--were they also "wide-eyed gamblers"? Should we blame them for being so foolish as to land themselves in concentration camps? I don't think so, but, since "Vibes" brought up the subject, I see a parallel. I see a sad lack of comprehension when someone points an accusing finger at people who--through no fault of their own--have undergone a nightmare of human suffering. Those who sought refuge in the Super Dome and Convention Center did so because no effort was made earlier to get them to safer ground, and because this is where they ultimately were told to go. When they got there, there was no one in charge, nothing to drink, nothing to eat, no medicine for the sick, no electricity, no working bathroom facilities. The doors were closed and they were, in effect, entombed. They deserve our compassion and help, not such insensitivity as GA Russell's remark reveals.
  
  

Sorry to ramble on like this, but it really irks me when someone shows such a lack of feeling. We are talking about people who never had much of a chance to rise in society, people who became victims of a major natural disaster and then had their suffering compounded once more by their own government. Point your finger at the Oval Office and Pentagon, GA Russell.

←

Chris, at what point to you hold the governor of LA and the mayor of NO responsible for their part in the mess?

[Dan Gould]

FEMA fool Michael Brown's excuse is pathetic. He and the other Michael (Homeland Security) need to be fired and, perhaps, tried.

←

Agreed.

Guy

←

Are you seriously agreeing that they should be "tried"?

Not sure if there are laws for criminal negligence.

I thought you were smarter than that.

←

Sorry to disappoint.

Guy

←

Alright, here's the wikipedia entry on criminal negligence.

Guy

←

Thanks for the info on criminal negligence.

What is disappointing is that among all of the people on this board, a PhD candidate actually gives support to the idea that laws on the books might actually be folded, twisted and mutilated into forming the basis for Albertson's wet dream, otherwise known as a good old fashioned political show trial.