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

[Soulstation1]

those two fools that left 34 people to die at st. rita's should be shot

end of story

f'n idiots

ss1

[Johnny E]

those two fools that left 34 people to die at st. rita's should be shot

end of story

f'n idiots

ss1

←

Or better yet, straped to a bed in a room slowly filling with water. Fucking pigs!

[Johnny E]

A Fatal Incuriosity

By MAUREEN DOWD

NY Times - September 14, 2005

I hate spending time in hospitals and nursing homes. I find them to be some of the most depressing places on earth.

Maybe that's why the stories of the sick and elderly who died, 45 in a New Orleans hospital and 34 in St. Rita's nursing home in the devastated St. Bernard Parish outside New Orleans, haunt me so.

You're already vulnerable and alone when suddenly you're beset by nature and betrayed by your government.

At St. Rita's, 34 seniors fought to live with what little strength they had as the lights went out and the water rose over their legs, over their shoulders, over their mouths. As Gardiner Harris wrote in The Times, the failed defenses included a table nailed against a window and a couch pushed against a door.

Several electric wheelchairs were gathered near the front entrance, maybe by patients who dreamed of evacuating. Their drowned bodies were found swollen and unrecognizable a week later, as Mr. Harris reported, "draped over a wheelchair, wrapped in a shower curtain, lying on a floor in several inches of muck."

At Memorial Medical Center, victims also suffered in 100-degree heat and died, some while waiting to be rescued in the four days after Katrina hit.

As Louisiana's death toll spiked to 423 yesterday, the state charged St. Rita's owners with multiple counts of negligent homicide, accusing them of not responding to warnings about the hurricane. "In effect," State Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. said, "I think that their inactions resulted in the death of these people."

President Bush continued to try to spin his own inaction yesterday, but he may finally have reached a patch of reality beyond spin. Now he's the one drowning, unable to rescue himself by patting small black children on the head during photo-ops and making scripted attempts to appear engaged. He can keep going back down there, as he will again on Thursday when he gives a televised speech to the nation, but he can never compensate for his tragic inattention during days when so many lives could have been saved.

He made the ultimate sacrifice and admitted his administration had messed up, something he'd refused to do through all of the other screw-ups, from phantom W.M.D. and the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to the miscalculations on the Iraq occupation and the insurgency, which will soon claim 2,000 young Americans.

How many places will be in shambles by the time the Bush crew leaves office?

Given that the Bush team has dealt with both gulf crises, Iraq and Katrina, with the same deadly mixture of arrogance and incompetence, and a refusal to face reality, it's frightening to think how it will handle the most demanding act of government domestic investment since the New Deal.

Even though we know W. likes to be in his bubble with his feather pillow, the stories this week are breathtaking about the lengths the White House staff had to go to in order to capture Incurious George's attention.

Newsweek reported that the reality of Katrina did not sink in for the president until days after the levees broke, turning New Orleans into a watery grave. It took a virtual intervention of his top aides to make W. watch the news about the worst natural disaster in a century. Dan Bartlett made a DVD of newscasts on the hurricane to show the president on Friday morning as he flew down to the Gulf Coast.

The aides were scared to tell the isolated president that he should cut short his vacation by a couple of days, Newsweek said, because he can be "cold and snappish in private." Mike Allen wrote in Time about one "youngish aide" who was so terrified about telling Mr. Bush he was wrong about something during the first term, he "had dry heaves" afterward.

The president had to be truly zoned out not to jump at the word "hurricane," given that he has always used his father's term as a reverse playbook and his father almost lost Florida in 1992 because of his slow-footed response to Hurricane Andrew. And W.'s chief of staff, Andy Card, was the White House transportation secretary the senior President Bush sent to the rescue after FEMA bungled that one.

W. has said he prefers to get his information straight up from aides, rather than filtered through newspapers or newscasts. But he surrounds himself with weak sisters who don't have the nerve to break bad news to him, or ideologues with agendas that require warping reality or chuckleheaded cronies like Brownie.

The president should stop haunting New Orleans, looking for that bullhorn moment. It's too late.

[ghost of miles]

It's great to see the media FINALLY waking up to what an AWOL airhead our "commander-in-chief" really is. Too bad it took 'em one of the most devastating natural disasters in American history to get a clue. And no, I'm not referring to Dowd's column--I'm referring to the generally much sharper and more objective coverage that CNN and others have offered, instead of routinely buying the puff & spin of the White House image-makers.

[Soulstation1]

damn

water is flowing back into new orleans

[Ron S]

MSNBC.com

Rita causes more flooding in New Orleans

‘Our worst fears came true,’ official says as water pours into Ninth Ward

The Associated Press

Updated: 11:44 a.m. ET Sept. 23, 2005

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Rita’s steady rains sent water pouring over a patched levee Friday, cascading into one of the city’s lowest-lying neighborhoods in a devastating repeat of New Orleans’ flooding nightmare.

“Our worst fears came true,” said Maj. Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard.

“We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly,” he said. “At daybreak I found substantial breaks and they’ve grown larger.”

Dozens of blocks in the Ninth Ward were under water as a waterfall at least 30 feet wide poured over and through a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal levee. On the street that runs parallel to the canal, the water ran waist-deep and was rising fast. Guidry said water was rising about three inches a minute.

The impoverished neighborhood was one of the areas of the city hit hardest by Katrina’s floodwaters and finally had been pumped dry before Hurricane Rita struck.

Ninth Ward believed cleared of residents

Sally Forman, an aide to Mayor Ray Nagin, said officials knew the levees were compromised, but they believe that the Ninth Ward is cleared of residents.

“I wouldn’t imagine there’s one person down there,” Forman said.

Mitch Frazier, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, said contractors were being brought in Friday morning in an effort to repair the new damage. The corps had earlier installed 60-foot sections of metal across some of the city’s canals to protect against flooding and storm surges.

Forecasters have called for between 3 and 5 inches of rain in New Orleans as Rita passes Friday and Saturday, dangerously close to the 6 inches of rain that Corps officials say the patched levees can withstand.

Another concern is the storm surge accompanying Rita, which could send water rising as much as 4 feet above high tide.

Already Friday morning, a steady 20 mph wind, with gusts to 35 mph, was blowing, along with steady rains.

Because of uncertain weather conditions from Hurricane Rita, the recovery of bodies was suspended but previous discoveries pushed the death toll from Hurricane Katrina to 841 in Louisiana, and at least 1,078 across the Gulf Coast.

Grim advice from the governor

As many as 500,000 people in southwestern Louisiana, many of them already displaced by Hurricane Katrina, were told to evacuate and many jammed roads north to escape.

Glynn Stevenson, who swam out of his New Orleans house with belongings taped to his body, had just gotten settled into a trailer provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency when the call came for him to uproot again.

“It’s nothing to get mad about,” he said. “Just keep a cool attitude and help your brothers.”

As for those who refuse to leave, Gov. Kathleen Blanco advised: “Perhaps they should write their Social Security numbers on their arms with indelible ink.”

Landfall expected early Saturday

Rita was headed for a Texas landfall but the massive storm threatened southwestern Louisiana as well, with tropical storm-force winds expected by noon and hurricane-force winds of 74 mph or higher by early Saturday. Flash floods were possible as 10 to 15 inches of rain was forecast.

Workers were out overnight monitoring the enormous sandbags and rocks that were dropped into the broken levee and canal walls after Hurricane Katrina.

“Up until Rita, everyone was pretty upbeat,” New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said during a blustery outdoor news conference amid intermittent rain. “Now that Rita has come into the picture, it’s been difficult.”

National Guard and medical units were put on standby in the city. Helicopters were being positioned, and search-and-rescue boats from the state wildlife department were staged on high ground on the edge of Rita’s projected path. Blanco said she also asked for 15,000 more federal troops.

“We’ve got buses running continuously to get residents out. We’re trying to learn from other areas, not to repeat their mistake,” said Cindy Murphy, a manager at the police bureau in Lake Charles.

Supplies on hand in Louisiana

Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen said three days worth of supplies, including food and water, for 500,000 people are ready and waiting around Louisiana, if needed after Rita.

Hospitals around the state were shutting down, too. Jimmy Guidry, Louisiana’s state health officer, said patients from hospitals in Lake Charles and Cameron were being evacuated, some north to Alexandria, La., and others to hospitals as far away as Oklahoma.

A mandatory evacuation order was in effect for homes on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, and police said people in the city’s Algiers section on the other side of the river would be wise to get out, too. But thousands stayed put.

“I’m sticking it out,” said Florida Richardson, who sat on her front porch in Algiers, holding her grandson on her lap. “This house is 85 years old. It’s seen a lot of tornadoes and a lot of hurricanes. You can’t run from the power of God.”

Traffic jams, gas shortages

A traffic jam of evacuees extended from Houston and other Texas cities well into Louisiana, with Interstate 10 congested across southern Louisiana.

Janell LeDoux and her husband spent six hours on the freeway and covered just 80 miles from their home near Lake Charles east to Lafayette. And they were only halfway to her sister’s house in eastern Louisiana.

“I just hope we have something left to go home to. Not like in New Orleans,” she said. Four gas stations in Lafayette had run dry. A fifth station had only premium.

Billy Landry, a marina manager in Cypremort Point, wasn’t going to stay for Rita. He planned to haul himself and thousands of soft-shell crabs to safety.

“Since Katrina, everybody seems a little nervous. They don’t want to get pulled from rooftops,” he said.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9438536/