I'm shocked at the way this lowlife scumbag engages in name-calling!

Recent citations from a certain leftwing mailing list I have the honor to be on:

The real SCANDAL is the bu$h criminal negligence regarding US Army Coprs (sic) of Engineers levee construction/maintenance monetary cut-backs…

You're seeing America's future, when the infrastructure (cannibalized for Iraq and a nonsensical "war on terror") further decays and a Great Depression finally hits…

It has been a major disaster scenario for years… Everybody anticipated it, which makes this single statement by George W. Bush possibly the most dishonest, lying, craptacularly false thing he has ever said in his presidency -- even surpassing his now-infamous State of the Union Address…

Guess who castrated FEMA?…

With his despicable comments, Bush gave a "green light" to the police and National Guard to kill people in cold blood who are foraging for survival-related essentials such as food, water, clothing, tents, blankets, radios, batteries, and child-related items such as diapers?…

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit…

Condi is in NYC and buying 1,000 dollars shoes! And a fellow shopper reamed her out for not trying to help the victims of NOLA and CONDI HAD HER THROWN OUT OF THE STORE!!…

How Bush destroyed New Orleans, I…

How Bush destroyed New Orleans, II…

And one that just came in this morning:

Pat Robertson politicizes Katrina

Comments

[theCoach]

Tim, I do not think you can accuse the first citation as politicizing...those are objective facts. Anyone who does not believe then is objectively pro Mother Nature over humanity, or something.

Teh funny.

[Mike_twincities]

That whole thing looks like something someone would say in an AOL chatroom. What a hot, stinking load.

Idea. Take all those hippys and lefty-conspiracy nuts and chuck the LOT of them into the maelstrom.

What passes for truth and knowlegde these days is very 'effing thin.

Live free, fall or fight.

[joe]

This clearly not MoveOn or anyone like them. Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League? International ANSWER?

[wsdave]

On the plus side, nobody has mention Aruba for a few days. The press seems to be on Holloway Holiday.

[MP]

theCoach,

I've said it before, but apparently it bears repeating...anyone who thinks this failure is the result of actions by a single political party is delusional. This is a failure of Government. This is not a failure that can be directly attributable to the party in power. The partisanship around this event is truly stunning. It makes me wish that DC was built 10 feet below sea level.

[Tom Crick]

"The real SCANDAL is the bu$h criminal negligence regarding US Army Coprs (sic) of Engineers levee construction/maintenance monetary cut-backs..."

For all I know, this may be true. ...but the idea that our infrastructure was cannibalized for Iraq or that a Great Depression is in the works--that's at best a gross exaggeration and at worst ridiculous. I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that the President gave authorities a green light to shoot refugees too.

Noting this, of course, doesn't mean that the President isn't a despicable, incompetent boob. ...but there are so many clear examples of the President's incompetence, why manufacture them ex nihilo?

[rafuzo]

joe,

I'd have to disagree, based on the lack of "Marx and Lenin and Mao all predicted this decades ago" citations, and the absence of plugs for "MIM Theory #14,587: Levees and post-bourgeoisie civil engineering".

[Timothy]

I'm gonna guess MoveOn, DU, or ANSWER.

[joe]

rafuzo,

You're probably right. I didn't see any "Racist federal flood KKKontrol projects."

[joe]

Too overboard for MoveOn, and I don't think DU sends out mailings.

"You'll never take me alive, Coprs!"

[dpotts]

This is a failure of Government. This is not a failure that can be directly attributable to the party in power.

Absolutely; the situation as far as the poor planning and preparation for such an event is a government failure. The subsidizing of flood insurance for low lying areas is government failure, the inability to strengthen the levees in NO is a government failure, as is the long standing corruption of NO officials and police force. The political parties share the blame for these failures, certainly. I'm not sure though, that the responsibility for the failure of this week's response doesn't rest squarely on the shoulders of those in federal power. And I'd say that no matter what side of the aisle they were from.

[joe]

I find the NTU's web page really confusing.

Has flood control and wetlands restoration in LA been included in their annual list of pork projects? Anyone? Rick Barton?

[Della]

I'm British and I don't understand why all these flood defenses build by the Army Corps of Engineers in any case.

In Britain flood defenses are built by private companies usually under contract to individuals or the local government, having soldiers do it and having it co-ordinated at a national level all seems rather silly, and is just indicative of the American habit of militarising civilian activities for constitutional or other reasons (such has the freeways being a military program).

[BigPhil]

Just remember ....

Kerry's hurricane would have been much worse.

[R C Dean]

I'm not sure though, that the responsibility for the failure of this week's response doesn't rest squarely on the shoulders of those in federal power.

First, I'm not so sure that there is really as much of a failure to respond here as there is a failure to meet expectations. I think it is very legitimate to question what those expectations were and how reasonable they are.

First, its not like this catastrophe is limited to NO. There is a very wide swathe of devastated country around NO that is both (a) soaking up response resources and (b) preventing those resources from getting to NO, which happens to be pretty inaccessible right about now.

Second, this thing hit NO Monday morning, and no real response was possible during the day on Monday because the storm was ongoing. The levees didn't collapse until very late Monday, if memory serves.

So, as of right now, we are in day 4 of the response time. Things are bad, sure, but given the other needs diverting resources and the lack of accessibility to NO, is it reasonable to expect that things should be much different than they are on the fourth day of the disaster?

Maybe so, but I don't think its automatic that, after (a) the storm creates a regional disaster wrapped around (b) the collapsing levee disaster, that everything is going to be all hunky dory barely 4 days into the response.

I suspect that one of the major handicaps that NO had to deal with, both pre and post storm, is the apparent ineptitude, lack of professionalism, and corruption of both its political class and its cops. If I was looking for a failure, that is where I would start, because they have front-line responsibility for the failed evacuation and the breakdown of law and order since the storm.

[Isaac Bartram]

Della

While it is called the US Army Corps of Engineers, and is in fact under Army command, most of its engineers and administrators are civilian employees. The Corps has had responsibility for navigable waterways, harbors and flood control since the 1790s. It was pretty much an arbitrary decision on the part of the politicians at the time.

It generally acts as the Engineer on projects. All the work is contracted out to private firms. This has predictably resulted in a huge constituency of engineering and construction firms and trade unions reliant on federal spending in these areas.

[MP]

R C,

Once this was recognized as the major calamity that it is, someone should have stepped up to the plate and said "I'm going to cut through the bullshit, take charge, take responsibility, and see that things get done." Of course, they couldn't have seen to every detail, but erecting the wall of denial that people such as Michael Chertoff did is completely unacceptable. From a Federalist perspective, it should have been the three governors banding together and coodinating 24/7. But others may think coordination was best to be done by DC. In any event, someone should be at point directing this. Remember Rudy during 9/11? He was the face of Government during the whole thing. There was no doubt who was running the show then and who was answerable for issues.

[Linda Richman]

The Army Corp of Engineers is neither the Army, a Corp, nor Engineers. Discuss.

[Tom Crick]

"The subsidizing of flood insurance for low lying areas is government failure..."

I think there's some common misperceptions about how FEMA and flood insurance work.

...FEMA issues floodmaps--you can look at it at you local city engineer's office. ...And what the maps typically show is 100 year floodplains. You cannot build in a floodplain, and no one will sell you flood insurance while you're in a floodplain. In order to build in a floodplain, you have to raise the elevation of your property so that the buildings are out of the floodplain.

...In addition to floodplains, there's also a floodway. FEMA will not allow you to raise the elevation of your property if it's inside a floodway--doing so would extend the boundary of the 100 year floodplain. Hence, you cannot put a structure inside a floodway. ...or, that is, you cannot get a Letter of Map Revision inside a floodway, which means you can't get insurance or, from most cities, a Certificate of Occupancy.

The question is, then, what to do with structures that were built inside a floodway or floodplain, for instance, 150 years ago. Being in a floodplain only means that there's more than a 1% chance that the area in question will be under more than a foot of water once every hundred years. Shouldn't properties in such areas be able to get insurance?

Floodplains also take things like levees and flood channels into consideration--indeed, just because an area is under sea level, doesn't mean it's in a floodplain. It's entirely possible that huge parts of NO are in a floodplain on the FEMA map, but I haven't heard that confirmed yet.

What is clear, to me anyway, is that the government shouldn't be in the business of subsidizing flood insurance. Should the government be in the business of telling people where they can and can't build?

...As a faithful libertarian, I'd say probably not. ...But as a human being with feelings, I realize that's a tough argument to make with so many bodies still in the water.

[Shannon Love]

I don't think the levees that failed where constructed or maintained by the Federal government. Louisiana has a Byzantine system of levee tax districts each of which supports a different levee. Each levee district has overtime become fiefs for local politicians. Money obstensively raised for use by the levee is often redirected to other projects and Louisiana's corruption problems are legendary.

Since the levees failed under conditions that they should have withstood I think it probable that we will find that local political decisions that led to poor design and maintenance are responsible.

[ChicagoTom]

Since the levees failed under conditions that they should have withstood ...

I was under the impression that the levees were designed to withstand a CAT-3 storm and Katrina was CAT-4 bordering on CAT-5. So the levees could not have been expected to hold.

One would think that a plan for what happens if a levee fails/breaks would have been laid out by someone. It seems it wasn't.

[Timothy]

Joe: NTU is, itself, kind of confusing. I did a phone interview with them when I was looking for jobs. I couldn't afford to make the trip out there for an in-person one, nor could I have afforded to move to DC at the time, nor could I have afforded to live on the paltry salary they'd offer (a little more than half what I make at the bank, and I live in a city with a much lower Cost of living than DC). I do think they often have a point, though.

[Tom Crick]

"Since the levees failed under conditions that they should have withstood I think it probable that we will find that local political decisions that led to poor design and maintenance are responsible."

My understanding is that the levees that failed were designed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane--not Category 5. If I'm off on that, I'd appreciated being corrected--with a reference, please.

[Shannon Love]

Della,

The Army Corp of Engineers is responsible for waterways for two historical reasons. First, the Constitution places all navigable waters under Federal jurisdiction. Up until the Civil War and even beyond, the Federal government was almost entirely nothing but the military and the postal service. The postal service wasn't really up to the job.

The Army got involved due to critical military nature of waterways in 18th and 19th centuries. The first major levees and dikes were constructed to protect the forts that controlled major waterways. The Army Corp of Engineers developed more experience than any other organization in waterway management and engineering. When the New Deal came along they seemed the obvious choice to get the big job of reshaping the waterways of the mid-West.

As noted above, the ACE isn't really a military organization anymore. The name reflects its evolutionary origins and not its place in the government org chart.

[Ammonium]

The mayor said that there were 250 national guard in New Orleans.

Where was the rest of the national guard???

This is the biggest breakdown. Without enough guard supplies cannot be distributed and order cannot be maintained, especially with the quality of the New Orleans police.

Has anybody asked the governor why so few national guard were there before the the First army took command (which is likely unconstitutional and/or unlawful).

She cannot blame Iraq for this. There are a lot more than 250 national guard still in Louisiana. You can't blame the logistics of getting into New Orleans. There is a road into New Orleans.

250 national guard is probably about what they had at the Superdome before the hurricane came.

[coarsetad]

Bush said earlier today that "nobody anticipated the levees failing", are you kidding me!, that has to be one of the most things I have ever heard come out a politicians mouth.
Bush is a clueless moron.
and thats no spin!

[ChicagoTom]

To add to coarsetad's comment :

Here is someone who knew/anticipated it.

[Isaac Bartram]

ChicagoTom

The levees did fail because of wind or the storm surge per se.

The worst of the storm had passed when the first failure occured and the storm was gone by the time the second failure occured.

The failures occured due to overtopping due to the raised water level (a combination of rainfall and storm surge).

The damage in Miss and AL were directly from storm surge driven by the high winds on the east side of the eye which acted essentially as a tsunami (although it is not the same thing).

[truthcat]

You see three guys grabbing stuff and carting them away on a floating piece of wood, and you think "evil looters" but maybe you follow them, and find out they have 13 kids, and 5 old folks between them to feed......... where does looting start and rummaging for survival end.......

[TJ]

Visit the library for the 02/05 issue of Natural History magazine to see just how full of it the President is. No one saw this coming? Try reading the article by Shea Penland of the U. of New Orleans. That man has been talking about this stuff for years.

(Unfortunately it's not online, due to some snafu or another at the magazine. But I've emailed my old boss to try to get it up on the magazine's website.)

You can also visit http://www.coast2050.gov for plenty more than you could possibly want to read on the subject, especially now that that study is moot--no, not quite moot, but vindicated.

[WackyWeirdo]

The governments slow response is indeed a trajedy, but the most frightening aspect is the response of the people. Hopefully as things clear up we'll hear stories of people banding together and solving the problems themselves. However, when I hear people complaining about dead bodies lying around and lack of order I have to wonder why they didn't take matters into their own hands. There seem to be plenty of intact buildings which would have served just fine as a temporary morge. Also, these people are neighbors and members of the same community and it wasn't strong enough to deter opportunistic assholes from spreading violence. Perhaps this is what happens when you rely too long on the government to solve your problems for you. In any case, one could say this is a failure of the government, but in our democracy this is a failure of the people. Hopefully its just a result of the intelligent folks evacuating in response to the warnings.

Maybe that's a bit cruel, having myself never endured anything near what they've gone through... What do you think?

[Swill]

where does looting start and rummaging for survival end......

foraging for survival-related essentials such as food, water, clothing, tents, blankets, radios, batteries, and child-related items such as diapers?..."

Unless you are a French border guard, what kind of survival items are a new pair of Nikes and a carton of cigarettes? At the very least can one agree that television sets and beer qualify as looting or is that too fine a hair to split?

[Isaac Bartram]

Oh, and the overtopping occured because a section of the wall was low. Probably due to settlement which may or may not be due to inadequate inspection and maintenance. which in turn may or may not be due inadequate funding.

However I did hear an interview with a COE engineer who pretty much said no reconstruction would have occurred even if they had got all the funding they wanted. The only thing that was delayed was an engineering study of the levees.

[Godfrey]

ChicagoTom:

Funny clip, but I feel obliged to point out that it says nothing about levees breaking, only overflowing. Oh nooooooo...

[TJ]

WW--

Yes, we can all admit that there was some breakdown of self-reliance on the part of some. But imagine you're hungry, dehydrated, filthy, surrounded by armed gangs, surrounded by water, and it's 95 degrees with 100% humidity. And you just walked for a day or two through waist-high water to get to the only dry land in the city. You might not have that much energy left to drag equally filthy dead bodies around. (As you'll notice, though, people were covering the bodies.) You also might not have that much energy left to wage a guerilla war, especially if you don't have something to match up against your opponents' semiautomatic rifles (if the press clips about kalashnikovs etc. are to be believed). Action movies aside, I wouldn't want to pick that fight if all I was toting was a 9mm or a shotgun, and I certainly wouldn't want to try with a claw hammer.

Furthermore?back to the morgue?what do you know about that section of New Orleans? Probably as little as I do. But if the convention center there is surrounded by the same sorts of stuff that surround convention centers in cities where I have lived, everything is locked down and indifferent to the needs of humans. Who's to say there was a convenient place to stack dead bodies?

[Shannon Love]

ChicagoTom,

My understanding is that the levees were not over-topped i.e. the water did not flow over the top of the levee. Rather they appear to have collapsed internally. The storm surge needed to top the levee was something like 28 ft and they only got 18.

Overtopping has always been a concern. Lake Pontchartrain is only about 25 feet deep and is very susceptible to storm surges. However, that should only happen at the peak of the hurricane.

I think Bush's statement in context was that nobody expected the levees to fail after the storm surge which is what happened. At that point they only had to hold back high water levels. Everybody had been holding their breath but as Katrina passed by without breaking the levee everybody thought the worst was passed and then "pop."

Here is some relevant information:

Levees built by the federal Army Corps of Engineers, which took on a major flood-control role after the 1927 deluge, are typically engineered to high standards and are quite strong. Most levees along the main Mississippi River channel are federally constructed. But in some areas, including around Lake Pontchartrain, some levees were built privately or by local governments and may not have the same degree of engineering.

Those are the kind that break," said Mr. Rogers, noting that in a 1993 Mississippi River flood in the Midwest, only 17 of 79 levees that failed were federally built.It is rare for floodwaters to "overtop" levees, as they usually succumb first to "under seepage," in which water seeps underneath from the river side and emerges on the land side. Sometimes the severe pressure causes soil within the levee to liquefy in a phenomenon known as "sand boils," which often precede structural failure.

Improvements to New Orleans's levee system have been somewhat piecemeal because such work is very expensive. For example, designs have been completed to reinforce the pumping stations with walls to prevent the backflow of water into the city during heavy storms. But as of less than a year ago, just one of three major drainage canals had received such reinforcements. Levee district officials couldn't be reached Tuesday to provide an update.

I think we will find that bad maintenance of the levees caused the problem.

[joe]

Tom Crick,

"Being in a floodplain only means that there's more than a 1% chance that the area in question will be under more than a foot of water once every hundred years."

I think you misspoke. The 100 year floodplain is the area that will be flooded during the most severe storm that will occur, on average, in 100 years. There is, therefore, a 1% chance this storm will occur every year, NOT a 1% chance that it will occur every 100 years.

[Swill]

imagine you're hungry, dehydrated, filthy, surrounded by armed gangs, surrounded by water, and it's 95 degrees with 100% humidity

Imagine instead that as a resident of a coastal community that has a strong likelihood of a direct hurricane strike you collected together the recommended food and water supplies, batteries, medication and all of the other fineries, maybe even went out and purchased a generator (a hurricane kit as we call them here in Florida). Better yet, imagine you followed the evacuation order and left town.

You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one

[Akira MacKenzie]

Pat Robertson politicizes Katrina

NOW what did he do? The only thing I've heard that that one of the Admin's recommended charities is run by him. Has he put his Penny Loafers in his big fat maw... again... this week?

[TJ]

Bartram--

Settlement is an inevitable part of building on fluvial sediment and then cutting the land off from the river that deposited the sediment. The sediments compress over time, and without annual floods to deposit more sediment, the surface gets lower. Again, I strongly recommend reading Penland's stuff, either in the magazine or on coast2050.

Obviously there would be no way to restore annual floods to New Orleans. But, as a result of that, there had to be adequate work done on the levees, and there had to be barrier islands to absorb some of the energy of the storm. The upstream levee system, all the way to Iowa, is what is responsible for the elimination of Louisiana's coastal wetlands. (It both prevents flooding and sediment deposition in the delta as well as increasing the river's rate of flow; the greater speed discourages deposition until the river gets way out in the gulf.) Furthermore, wetlands were being intentionally destroyed as well as inadvertently eliminated.

Did Bush exacerbate this? Sure--he cut funding for the COE and eliminated wetland protections. As much as I'm a libertarian, I'm not a Bush apologist, and his policies did make the situation worse. But he's not the only one who bears responsibility--in fact, he's just the latest in a long line of fools who think that nature can be fundamentally controlled. (I suppose that's what one gets for reading Genesis 1:28, and believing it's true.) I'm not encouraging surrender to nature, but I think it wise, and not humble, to learn from nature what we can, and act accordingly--and in this case, what nature was teaching was that New Orleans and surrounding areas have long been teetering on the brink, and we have now helped nature push that poor city over.

[Xrashtiks]

To Wacky Weirdo; it sounds like you've been watching Fox all day. From the reports I'm getting from my friend, (a PhD flown into downtown NO by FEMA yesterday,) the looting is being wildly overstated and sensationalized, and even Bush has been using it irresponsibly as spin. This is from a generally un-biased fellow who is at ground zero right now.

As for the statements in the blog post, I don't know where it came from, but I can tell you the paragraph with the Tikrit reference was cannibalized from an open letter written by Michael Moore, published on http://www.CommonDreams.org this morning.

Speaking of cannibalism, Drudge is now reporting that some is occuring in downtown...this is hardly the time to be shooting people for swiping a pair of sneakers. All of those businesses are going to declare a total loss anyway. For Christ's sake, let them loot! People haven't eaten in four days. Looting should not be anyone's focus right now.

[swill]

this is hardly the time to be shooting people for swiping a pair of sneakers...For Christ's sake, let them loot! People haven't eaten in four days

People are eating sneakers?

[MaxiPad]

Swill you are retarded, and obviously too privileged for your own good. 30% of NO is below the poverty level. These are the people who are stuck there right now. They could barely eat when everything was fine, and don't even have cars. Who the fuck are you, Michael Brown?

[Tom Crick]

"There is, therefore, a 1% chance this storm will occur every year, NOT a 1% chance that it will occur every 100 years."

Indeed, I was tryin' to say that it's likely to be flooded once every 100 years--but a 1% chance in any given year is the right way to say it. ...Thanks!

[Shannon Love]

Looks like I was wrong about the overtopping.

From wikipedia:

On August 30 at 1:30 a.m. CDT, CNN (via the vice president of Tulane University Medical Center) reported that a levee on the 17th Street Canal, which connects into Lake Pontchartrain, suffered a two city-block wide breach.
John Hall, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, later said that the floodwall on top of the canal levee had been overtopped by the storm surge. The water cascading over the wall eventually undermined the wall base, causing it to collapse outwards. Repairs are complicated by the presence of the low Hammond Highway bridge and a hurricane barrier on the lake side of the breach, which are impeding access by barges and heavy equipment.

[TJ]

Swill

No shit, it was a bad idea to stay in New Orleans when the order came down to leave. If I had been poor, owned no car, and didn't have fare for the bus, I would have walked. I walked home on 9/11, and I walked 10 miles to get home on the day of the blackout. But some people are stupid, some lazy, some want to stick with their property, some refuse to leave the elderly, some refuse to believe that this storm would be any worse than previous ones, some poor, and some ignorant--some stayed.

Let's be honest--it's not like we're talking about the goddamn middle class here. A lot of these people are dirt poor, and the idea that they would have the money to spend on your hurricane kit is ridiculous. Some family that pulls in $12,000 a year--where do they get money for a gas generator? Where do they store a 55 gallon drum of gas in a three-room shotgun house? Where do they keep $200 in emergency cash, when that's what they spend each week on their family?

I'm no bleeding heart. But you have to realize that the level of preparedness you expect is beyond the pale for the people who got trapped. Some upperclass jackass stayed behind to guard his art collection in a mansion on St Charles Ave? Smack him upside the head for me. But it is absurd to denigrate the poor for lacking the resources to get out of town, when they hardly have the resources for day to day living.

[swill]

MaxiPad,

You are what you wear. Clinically speaking I am not retarded. As for privileged I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth baby. What I have, I earned.

Michael Brown?? You lost me.

Who the fuck am I? Just a guy who thinks that most people are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, but after generations of government obliteration of their natural instincts for self-preservation have become weeping weaklings at the teat of the federal government.

Peace out.

[Swill]

Survival kit contents check:

Price of a gallon of water? $.25
Price of a couple of cans of Dinty Moore? $2.79
Price of a pair of AA's? $1.50
Price of a couple of votives? $2.00
Price of a roll of duct tape? $1.39

Riding the storm out with a full belly and a full bladder? Priceless.

With the exception of the generator, which is the least necessary item in a hurricane kit, all extremely affordable at any income. If you are under the delusion that every single penny that these people had went to items of a higher priority than the above then ignorance does not begin to explain your understanding of the human condition.

Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas (Dallas) with all that stuff.

[Rhywun]

weeping weaklings at the teat of the federal government.

And the humanitarian of the year award goes to...

[joe]

Tom Crick,

I've heard this storm referred to as the 500 year storm. Do you know anything along those lines?

[joe]

"Price of a gallon of water? $.25
Price of a couple of cans of Dinty Moore? $2.79
Price of a pair of AA's? $1.50
Price of a couple of votives? $2.00
Price of a roll of duct tape? $1.39"

Watching your nice little package of essential float down the 24 foot deep river that used to be your street when the rickity house you live in collapses? Priceless.

[Jadagul]

Joe, a little morbid, but that was awesome.

[Tom Crick]

"I've heard this storm referred to as the 500 year storm. Do you know anything along those lines?"

I know that part of the LOMR process involves doing hydrology studies for both 100 and 500 year flood lines. They may be referring to the fact that water crossed the 500 year flood line.

...But, once again, it seems to me that any hydrology study to set the flood lines would have to assume that the darn levee ain't gonna break. I would think that if your infrastructure fails--if the levee breaks--flood lines and Base Flood Elevations wouldn't mean anything. That's why I'm not so sure the FEMA Flood Insurance Study program is to blame for this.

[Steve]

swill,

You can't see why someone trapped in a flooded city might need a new pair of shoes?

[deron]

I can't bring myself place fault with Bush for any of this. That's about the best thing I can say for him. The threat to N.O. was always there, and newer, higher, better levees are a bandaide for the problem that N.O. can only hold off the tide until something bigger hits.

I can't blame anyone, but I don't think anyones distinguished themselves with their leadership skills either.

It's really a shame that the N.O., Louisiana, and the country doesn't have a Rudy Guiliani around to take the lead in our latest disaster.

[joe]

I know the definition of the 500 year storm, Tom. I'm wondering if you'd seen any references to this being it.

[joe]

I still can't figure out why the leftists who send the mailing to Tim want the people in New Orleans to be strafed by helicopters.

[Tom Crick]

"I know the definition of the 500 year storm, Tom. I'm wondering if you'd seen any references to this being it."

No, I haven't.

...But if I did, considering that they draw the lines with infrastructure in mind, I'd question whether such an infrastructure failure constitutes a 500 year flood.

[Native of Louisiana]

Della,
It may seem silly to you, since you are comparing British flood control of local areas to the centuries old control of a major river serving the central United States in transportation and shipping. Twenty-five percent of the United States' import and export shipments are served by the ports in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Flood control of the entire river system crosses multiple state boundaries. THAT's why the government is involved. Get your facts straight before you blow off steam comparing apples to oranges!

Native of Louisiana

[Native of Louisiana]

The quote below is part of an email from my sister in Louisiana. Josh is her son. My brother is an electrician in Louisiana. He has been based in Slidell (north of New Orleans) since Tuesday; he has a National Guard accompany him as he works, since workers are being shot at in New Orleans.
"I just got off of the phone with Josh. He's been in New Orleans since Tuesday, an MP with the Louisiana National Guard.

He's is a war zone...has only gotten a couple of hours sleep - a few minutes at a time - but doing fine. They're undermanned, so when he does get a few minutes down time, he spends it helping others on duty...they're all helping one another. He's spent his time between the superdome, the convention center and on a blackhawk providing security for search and rescue.

He has had his gear stolen (including flack jacket and night goggles), and has been in dangerous situations such as only 4 providing security for one feeding line for 40,000 and not enough food to feed everyone. And loads of complaints about getting food that's cold. There's no communication to call for backup if situations get out of control.

There's an ongoing gang war on the third floor. People have weapons and drugs and alcohol - in spite of checkpoints to enter the dome. There are fights, fires and near riots. He said that yes, he has been in a situation of face to face confrontation and has had his weapon cocked, but didn't have to pull the trigger.

I told him what was being presented on the televisions. He said that yes, people were tired and hungry and frustrated, the stench is horrible, but there have been people who have walked up to him personally and thanked him for helping. He said that he thanked them for telling him that. The morale of all of the guardsmen is really low.

I told him to hang on, there were reinforcements that should be on the ground soon. He's unsure when he will be home, and said that even if they offered a day or two break, he'd rather stay and finish the job than leave and know he'd have to return to the situation.

He promised to call if he could, and asked us to please be careful here, because our communities are not going to be safe any more."

[professor]

My sympathies to the good member of LA NG above. Reality is a welcome relief from principles and hypotheticals and theories. A question: if some looters make all New Orleanians looters then don't some cowards make all uniformed personnel cowards? Or is that reasoning too complex for this website?

Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences

by Larry Bradshaw & Lorrie Beth Slonsky [both paramedics and musicians who lead Village Harmony, an internationally touring youth singing group]

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at
the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display
case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without
electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were
beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked
up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside
Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and
hungry.

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and
the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative.
The cops could have broken one small window and distributed
the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic
manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse,
temporarily chasing away the looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived
home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or
look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video
images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists
looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of
the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the
"victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we
witnessed,were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief
effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a
fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged,
nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised
thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity
we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took
over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing
air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who
rescued folks stuck in elevators.
Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue
their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who
helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City.
And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising
communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members
of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for
the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the
French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like
ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter
from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends
outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources
including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the
City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because
none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with
$25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did
not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did
have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12
hours standing outside, sharing the limited water,food, and clothes we had.
We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born
babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the
buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived
to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was
dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime
as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked
their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the
convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the
City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would
not be allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had
descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole.The guards further told us
that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also
descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing
anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2
shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that
that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us.
This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile
"law enforcement".

We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and
were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not
have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass
meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police
command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute
a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us
that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp.
In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our
group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain
Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had
buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowed cheered and began to
move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had
been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there
were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated
emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great
excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center,many locals
saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We
told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few
belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in
strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and
others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up
the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did
not dampen our enthusiasm. As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna
sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close
enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent
the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and
dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the
sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police
commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there
were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there
was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank
was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in
their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not
crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the
rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to
build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the
center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we
would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an
elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to
be seen buses.

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same
trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned
away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no,others to be
verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented
and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the only
two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way
across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses,
moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed
with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water deliverytruck
and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the
freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight
turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure
with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and
creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the
rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a
storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for
privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even
organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of
C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When
individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for
yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or
food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look
out for each other, working together and constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in
the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and theugliness
would not have set in.

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families
and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80
or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was
talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news
organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked
what they were going to do about all those families living up on the
freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us.Some of
us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was
correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his
patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking
freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow
away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck
with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law
enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed
into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob"
or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was
impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered
once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought
refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We
were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely,
we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law,curfew
and shoot-to-kill policies.

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New
Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search
and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a
ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the
limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large
section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and
were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The
airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of
humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed
briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast
guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.

There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort
continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were
forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have
air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two
filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any
possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were
subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated
at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food
had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat
for hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not
carrying any communicable diseases.

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt
reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give
her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us
money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief
effort was callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need
be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.

Posted by: David L Steinhardt on September 09, 2005 at 11:43AM