accountability for the unnatural disaster
Aziz Poonawalla
Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of NOLA were the first, "natural" disaster to strike our nation this week. I have argued that the Administration and the President in particular cannot be blamed for this in my last post (and Dean's followup post is one I agree with nearly 100%. If you are going to assign blame for disaster #1, then why limit yourself to the top?). Also recommended is hilzoy's take at Obsidian Wings (especially the closing two paras).
The second disaster this week however has been "un-natural" - or rather, self-inflicted. It's the humanitarian disaster unfolding now, a situation which a full five days after the hurricane still shows no sign of amelioration. An amazing blog, run by a manager at DirectNIC.com who is blogging live from a downtown NOLA location, has the following report:
Three days ago, police and national guard troops told citizens to head toward the Crescent City Connection Bridge to await transportation out of the area. The citizens trekked over to the Convention Center and waited for the buses which they were told would take them to Houston or Alabama or somewhere else, out of this area.
It's been 3 days, and the buses have yet to appear.
Although obviously he has no exact count, he estimates more than 10,000 people are packed into and around and outside the convention center still waiting for the buses. They had no food, no water, and no medicine for the last three days, until today, when the National Guard drove over the bridge above them, and tossed out supplies over the side crashing down to the ground below. Much of the supplies were destroyed from the drop. Many people tried to catch the supplies to protect them before they hit the ground. Some offered to walk all the way around up the bridge and bring the supplies down, but any attempt to approach the police or national guard resulted in weapons being aimed at them.
There are many infants and elderly people among them, as well as many people who were injured jumping out of windows to escape flood water and the like — all of them in dire straights.
Any attempt to flag down police results in being told to get away at gunpoint. Hour after hour they watch buses pass by filled with people from other areas. Tensions are very high, and there has been at least one murder and several fights. 8 or 9 dead people have been stored in a freezer in the area, and 2 of these dead people are kids.
The people are so desperate that they're doing anything they can think of to impress the authorities enough to bring some buses. These things include standing in single file lines with the eldery in front, women and children next; sweeping up the area and cleaning the windows and anything else that would show the people are not barbarians.
The buses never stop.
Before the supplies were pitched off the bridge today, people had to break into buildings in the area to try to find food and water for their families. There was not enough. This spurred many families to break into cars to try to escape the city. There was no police response to the auto thefts until the mob reached the rich area — Saulet Condos — once they tried to get cars from there... well then the whole swat teams began showing up with rifles pointed. Snipers got on the roof and told people to get back.
He reports that the conditions are horrendous. Heat, mosquitoes and utter misery. The smell, he says, is "horrific."
He says it's the slowest mandatory evacuation ever, and he wants to know why they were told to go to the Convention Center area in the first place; furthermore, he reports that many of them with cell phones have contacts willing to come rescue them, but people are not being allowed through to pick them up.
The degraded condition of humanity at the convention center has been verified from numerous sources on the ground, includin this report from the AP, as well as today's edition of the Houston Chronicle which has just heart-breaking photos inside. Here are some photos via Yahoo News from the convention center area (GRAPHIC):
(The Interdictor blog has been an amazing read for the past few days. If you haven't heard of Camp Crystal, you need to head over there right now and start reading from Katrina day 1's archives)
What does Michael Chertoff, director of homeland security have to say about the situation at the Convention Center? Listen to an interview of him yesterday on NPR. Chertoff had no clue that there were people at the convention center. This is one day after it was reported on CNN. Here's a partial transcript (via Tom More) of the Chertoff interview:
What about Mike Brown, director of FEMA? He was interviewed by Paula Zahn on CNN. She also learns that the federal givernment had no idea anbout the people at the convention center until just yesterday. Transcript via CNN's site follows:
FYI, Zahn interviewed Senator Landrieau next and was not exactly deferential. Go, girl :)
Meanwhile - Israel says it can have a team on the ground in 24 hours, other nations have also pledged aid. However, the Administration sent some seriously mixed signals:
With offers from the four corners of the globe pouring in, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided “no offer that can help alleviate the suffering of the people in the afflicted area will be refused,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday.
However, in Moscow, a Russian official said the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency had rejected a Russian offer to dispatch rescue teams and other aid.
...
Still, (President) Bush told ABC-TV: “I’m not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn’t asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country’s going to rise up and take care of it.”
“You know,” he said, “we would love help, but we’re going to take care of our own business as well, and there’s no doubt in my mind we’ll succeed.
Canadian aid has not yet been accepted, despite being offered, according to Canadian General Rick Hillier:
The Canadian military put troops on standby and prepared to load a ship with gear and equipment that could be useful in the aftermath of the great storm that wrecked much of the American Gulf Coast and devastated New Orleans. [...] Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defence staff, said he spoke with his American counterpart, Gen. Dick Myers, to offer assistance.
He said Myers thanked him, but said the Pentagon is still analyzing what is needed.
Hillier said the military's Disaster Assistance Response Team or DART, which can provide medical care, power and clean water, could head south on 48 hours notice.
Why does all this matter? Am I just being negative? partisan? Am I blaming first with no aim beyond scoring political points? Let the noted liberal bleeding heart Jonah Goldberg answer on my behalf:
HERE'S A QUESTION
Bush should prep for now: What if the levees broke because of a terrorist attack instead of a hurricane? Would our disaster response have been better? If so why? And if it would have been no different, is that good enough?
Posted at 12:25 PM
All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:
- Katrina Stupidity
- Michael Brown
- Barone On Katrina...
- Holding People Accountable
- accountability for the unnatural disaster
- Class
- Holding Politicians Accountable
- Defending the President
Now, one of the things that's been noted today is that one of the nightmares has been an all but total communications blackout, which no one had anticipated or known what to deal with. Radio towers were down, which means police and fire radios didn't work. Cellular towers were down--nothing there either. Land lines? Hahahahahaah.
Thus much of the state, local, and federal people have been running around unable to communicate--or to put it more succinctly, forced to use communications that no one's had to live with for decades so no one knows how to use it efficiently (i.e. couriers and such) or limited CB radio.
There is an easy solution for this of course--Iridium phones--but amazingly, I heard a FEMA guy talking this morning on the news about all sorts of things they were thinking about, but neither he nor anyone else mentioned this option. Seems to me like they should be standard equipment for emergencies just such as this.
Ironically, we are back to a situation where we've been in the past: sometimes, the news media is out ahead of the actual government officials who don't have time to watch TV. Or the people on the ground don't watch TV, but the people higher up are watching TV and they assume the people downstairs know what's on TV--situations like the convention center for example. I can all but see the conversation: "You didn't know there were people there? It was on CNN man!"
This morning NPR was reporting that two hospitals are only miles from where national guard people are, but no one from the guard's been there. Once again, this has to be a communications issue.
Frankly the reporters who are there who have satellite uplink ought to be doing more to help--and might if someone thought to ask....
What emergencies such as this?
But I was thinking this morning that emergency personnel should be equipped with satellite phones in the future. Of course, that costs money, and many localities don't spend money on public safety issues like that. "Radio works, why do we need satellite phones?"
What part of "unprededented disaster" don't they understand? Hint: It's the "Unprecedented" part.
With no communications, city officials could not realistically contact anyone outside. That's why the mayor was reduced to using runners to get information to/from WLL-TV while it was still on the air. How could he have been realistically expected to coordinate any efforts? Even the police radios were non-functioning, an event that had not been anticipated.
With the city unable to get information, how is it expected that the city could relay information to higher authorities, state or federal?
Believe it or not, while FEMA certainly does watch what CNN reports, it does not necessarily take CNN reports as actionable information. Nor is it reasonable to expect someone at the top of relief efforts to know every detail of what's going on. Chertoff and FEMA are working the big picture, not the snapshot.
Just because TV reports that a "warehouse fire could be releasing toxic smoke all across NO" doesn't make that a fact. TV reporters were, in some instances, better informed than local officials--or even federal officials--because they had an independent communications network.
There are plenty of lessons to be learned in hindsight from this, but to start throwing rocks because all eventualities were not anticipated, is cheesy.
Put yourself in the role of the Mayor, Governor, head of FEMA. Which of the multiple critical emergencies are you going to deal with first? The fact is that you have limited resources. If you do A, B, and C, then you don't have the wherewithall to do M, N, and O, forget about X, Y, and Z. And as a consequence of your action, people are going to die. It doesn't matter which set you choose, people will die. The best you can do is try to minimize deaths--you can't avoid them.
What's more important, stopping looters or pulling people off roofs? What's more important, moving people off roofs or trying to move a block of 25K people out of town ASAP? What's more important, having flushing toilets or moving dead bodies off of highways?
Even the federal gov't did not have 20K helicopters to move everyone out quickly. It didn't have the fuel to fly 20K helicopters in that area. It didn't have the six crew members needed for each of those 20K helicopters.
It did not pre-build tent cities for 300K people to inhabit. It did not spend the money to build 70-foot levees to protect against a potential, but unprecedented, storm. It did not have the money to close the city of NO fifty years ago because it's simply stupid to build below sea level if you don't have to.
Sure, politics plays a role, but money plays a bigger role. Why isn't the government moving all people out of Los Angeles, right now? It's a wise preventative measure, because we know, with absolute certainty, that LA is going to be destroyed by an earthquake, if not now, then sometime in the future.
Catastrophes are not simple problems with simple answers. For the morons on cable TV to claim otherwise only demonstrates how stupid they really are.
Iridium went bankrupt over 10 years ago. The company no longer maintains the satellites and will not guarantee service. Nor will they sell you a phone.
You can buy an Iridium phone (at about $1K each), but it's unsupported. It will continue to work--maybe--as long as the satellites work. But no body is going to repair the satellites as they break down or de-orbit.
DOD has its own satellite commo, as do the TV stations. Maybe the federal government needs to put up a satellite dedicated to state and local government commo?
And in response to the suggestion that the tragedy is being overblown by teh media somehow, LOOK AT THE PICTURES I POSTED. (which were transmitted across supposedly non-existent communications infrastructure). Thats realdespair and frustration from having gone THREE DAYS without food. The delays have been SNAFUBAR^10^6. Theres no excuse making that can be done.
those faces rae being bused into my city hourly. I se convoys of busses on eth highways here in Houston constantly, with the same faces. Those buses go straight past where i work, and now ar being sent out to San Antonio and Dallas - but its a TRICKLE.
Didnt have time to snag the audio, but go listen to Mayor Nagin's meltdown yesterday ifyou can find it. Dean referred to it in his post.
I stand corrected. Iridium seems to be back in business.
If the levees had been bombed... well actually, it probably would have been nowhere near as bad, actually. You'd have to have enormous bombs all along it set off all at once, AND do it while there happened to be a hurricane going on.
people with cell phones were at hte convention center - with lovedones ON THE LINE - but they couldnt get rescue because no one is allowed into eth city. As reported this morning in the local paper, the relatives of these people are here in Houston talking to their lovedones at the convention center, hearing them deteriorate ON the PHONE. cell comm is clearly not down.
The presumption here seems to be that all these different agencies should be able to respond to a disaster of unprecedented scale within hours instead of days. I'm not sure it's excuse-making to say that, simply grounded reality. The snapshots the press can take are probably being duplicated a thousand places the press isn't there to take pictures of. Our people can't be everywhere all at once.
BTW, the President agrees with my assessments. He just gave a brief talk to the press before leaving for NOLA aerial tour, and explicitly said that "the results are not acceptable."
Great, someone forgot the convention center. So the convention center was more important than a thousand other places where countless more people were suffering that CNN wasn't there cover, because.... well because it was on CNN?
There needs to be a point here where we let people do their jobs and where we all learn from it.
This whole convention center business sticks in my craw, as if those people are more important because they're on CNN but the people not on CNN aren't. There are two hospitals jammed with people that haven't been on TV cameras yet, should FEMA have prioritized them first? I imagine there are schools all over the city with people trying to shelter in them, should FEMA have hit them first? Or just whatever CNN points their camera at at any given moment?
This cry babying to the feds for rescue is simply pathetic.
The "First Responders" are the responsibility of the local and state governments. If is THEIR responsibility to be prepared and execute emergency plans.
The Federal government HAS NO AUTHORITY to step in to take over if The People have elected incompetents. That is, of course, until the local and state leadership have allowed things to get so bad that the Feds do find it necessary to step in.
I am so FURIOUS at all of this. 80% of this could have been prevented. I doubt anyone will remember this come the next LOCAL election, but my God, if you elect nincompoops to run your city, what do you think is going to happen when a catastrophe strikes?
I guess I am a cry baby in some respects - because for me this boils down to the very last point. If it werent for that last point, articulated by crybaby Jonah Goldberg, my opinion might be different.
But its been 4 years since 9-11, and the five-day delay in response actions - of which the convention center is just one symptom - is being noted by our enemies.
That meant that the mayors and governors had free reign to institute Marshall Law, commandeer private and public vehicles to evacuate the city, evacuate hospitals, etc. etc.
Did you see how many cars and buses are under water in New Orleans??
In the event of a catastrophe people are responsible. The MILITIA and every citizen is responsible for getting organized and helping.
How many of those people, standing on roof tops, were injured? Why weren't they creating chains of people to rescue their neighbors? Why weren't citizen groups immediately formed to distribute food and tend to the injured and infirmed?
This is not a breakdown in government. This is a breakdown in people. When catastrophe strikes, the government is NOT going to be able to help you. There is no promise that they will--there should be no expectation that they can mobilize any assistance for weeks. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN.
Every vehicle under water in the city of New Orleans or in the effected regions is a signal that PEOPLE were unwilling to take care of themselves. Every public bus under water is a sign of how incompetent the local government was in dealing with this.
It takes 3-4 days to mobilize troops into these areas. That's how long it takes.
We've been told since the third grade that everyone should have emergency evacuation plans in the event of a catostrophe or fire. You need three days worth of food and water.
The people of New Orleans were told, were given MANDATORY evacuation orders. THEY DID NOT LEAVE.
Those incapable of leaving on their own should have had public transport made available to them. THAT is what is in the emergency plans THAT WERE NOT implemented when there was still time.
This is NOT a Federal matter. It is a STATE matter. PERIOD. The people of every city and state are responsible for their own messes. They didn't have properly trained First Responders? THAT IS THEIR OWN FAULT.
The question of responsibility does come in here: should FEMA be prepared to come in and set up instant radio towers? Is that in their mission? It's supposed to be primarily a coordination entity. Obviously they can ask the military to do that, but I would expect the military to take at least a day or two to respond to that once they determined it was needed.
Aziz: Five days? Now you really are stretching. Clinton said it best--they didn't realize it was going to be more than hurricane damage until the levees broke. You're working too hard to find people to blame. Heads will roll eh? Good way to convince people that no one should work for FEMA.
It's chaos. The faith seems to be, if only the Feds were better, chaos would end within hours.
Is the real solution here to be... what? We should watch and learn and try to help. But at some point why are we thinking that we know all the answers here or that the brilliant central planners in DC would do it right if we just gave them a better mandate or something?
John Cole, hardly a whiny liberal bleeding heart, put it far better:
People in NOLA right now are NOt there because they chose to be.
Hmm. I saw an eight-mile long convoy rolling into town this morning on the fifth day. I guess they just "popped up" today? What about all those buses that have already filled the astrodome yesterday, day FOUR? What about the over 2,000 helicopter rescues that were performed in days 2-3? Or the National Guard troops who were in New Orleans when the hurricane hit?
NOT TO MENTION the destruction in Alabama and Miss. that needs to be taken care of.
Seriously, this finger-pointing is total B.S.
It is also, however, certainly the case that neither the mayor nor the governor mobilized the resources they could have asked for until it was far too late. Nor did things they should have done on their own.
Now the blame goes to FEMA? What? Mrs. du Toit has it right. The areas were PRE-DECLARED disaster zones before the hurricane EVEN HIT. The Governor and the Mayor could have asked for all sorts of things AND THEY DID NOT.
Now we blame FEMA? Aziz, go read Robert's editorials. This is getting ridiculous. The entire fault is the people at FEMA who've been doing their jobs exactly as they're supposed to, dealing with a situation bigger than anyone in this country has ever faced, and the bitch is that we haven't figured out how to deploy the Canadians and the Israelis yet? That we didn't PRE-DEPLOY the military as well? That the military isn't wherever CNN has its cameras at the moment?
These folks spent days first trying to rescue people, then trying to restore order... oh fuck it. No one should ever work for the Federal government, EVER. If you aren't mindreaders and aren't ready to fix the biggest natural disaster in American history within 72 hours, and can't instantly teleport to wherever CNN has its cameras, you're an incompetent bunch of boobs?
Not that I'm worth anything, but I was screaming on my blog on SUNDAY that they weren't evacuating the cities. Where were the school buses? Why weren't they at the projects, loading up the people who wouldn't leave on their own? Why weren't neighborhood and floor wardens evacuating the elderly? It took New Orleans FOUR hours to get people into a damn building! It doesn't matter how good the plans are at the Federal level if the people in the city or town elect nincompoops.
I'm serious. The Mayor of New Orleans should be in jail. The Governor of Louisiana should be IN JAIL. Their incompetence was criminal.
That is what the Mayor and Governors are supposed to do. Not a single bus was commandeered.
On Sunday the evacuation highways were still running two-way traffic. What does that tell you about the management of the State of Louisiana? This babbling idiot Governor.. my god... I could strangle her myself, but THE PEOPLE of Lousiana elected that fool. And then, when the people elect imcompetants, they blame the President for the disaster? They have some SERIOUS soul searching to do.
The worst aspect of this to me is the total breakdown of civilization. The National Guard should-have-been/should-be there. (do research before telling me they're all in Iraq, please)
I saw a bunch of gun shops when I was there last. The two I remember best, in the French Quarter, had huge amounts of old guns, many 50-100 years old so we're not talking about muzzle loaders or black-powder weapons, but modern enough weapons. They're probably in the hands of the bad folks running around. People who see the opportunity to act however they please with no authorities to stop them.
The forces of civilization need the heaviest firepower or there will be no civilization.
This is what FEMA is paid to do. Planning for this is what they are paid to do. They've shown themselves to be incompetent, imo.
I could have driven a truckload of stuff to NOLA on Monday. Why are the professionals just getting there now? If people could wade themselves out on Monday, why couldn't the Guard be wading in?
As to pre-emptively evacuating hospitals, that's not something you would do because you would lose a lot of people in any such evacuation. You don't do that until you *know* the alternative is worse, and that's going to be after the fact. What I want to know is, why wasn't there any effective effort to take care of it? That should have been done on Monday. It's still not done.
As to working for the Feds, if you can't do it right, no, I don't want you working for the Feds. If we had what looked like a halfway-effective plan that we were having trouble executing 100%, that would be very understandable and I would be the first cutting slack. What it looks like is that there was no effective plan whatsoever. No slack deserved.
Technically, Monday was not the day to be on the road, since THE HURRICANE WAS HITTING ON MONDAY! If the guard had waded in on Monday, they'd have had to wade right back out because the levee didn't break until Tuesday morning, and the city started flooding again.
As to the evacuation, I'll repeat what I've heard from emergency management professionals. new Orleans is a beeyatch to evacuate. It would take at least 72 hours to evacuate the city. The problem was, they didn't have 72 hours. Hurricanes don't track that far in advance. Hospitals don't evacuate easily, either.
And for all the refugees being poor folk, there were plenty of people in the Hyatt across the road, not to mention all the "heroic" tv crews.
Here's my take on the preparedness problem. This thread is as excellent a discussion as I've seen on the response problem.
Great armchair quarterbacking. Try doing a difficult job when you have a bunch of carpers screaming at you. Kind of reminds me of the sports parents who scream at their kid 'cause he hit a double and not a home run.
How the devil do any of you know if they are being incompetent or not? Has it occurred to anyone that this may be the fastest any response could be considering the bloody storm was the size of a state or two? That the place is a unbelievable mess for miles inland? That roads have disappeared, that aids to navigation are gone, landmarks are gone, river and coastal channels are not where they are supposed to be? That all maps and charts are-in a day-out of date and ridiculously wrong? That airports are destroyed, fuel stocks are contaminated?
That railroad lines are wiped out?
That the relief forces have to be supplied, housed, cared for or they are no bloody use - along with providing for the relief of refugees in a huge swath of three states? Any idea where they should have prepositioned relief supplies and forces in the area so that they would be immediately available and yet not be destroyed by the storm?
Do any of you have any idea what the magnitude of this is? Pull an atlas out and look at the Gulf Coast. Use a pencil to check off the extent of storm damage, and then look at population statistics and come back here and tell me how the devil anyone person manages that, let alone coordinates a myriad of state and local agencies and meshes them with the Feds, even assuming that they all have had ICS training?
Sweet Jeebus on a pogo-stick, this makes a mass amphibious operation look like a cake-walk. At least then only bad guys are shooting at you. Here, mother nature wants to take out your butt.
Now, get real, people.
Let's not forget that some people were so poor, sick, elderly, or deranged that they had no cars to leave the city, there were no buses, they had no where to go, and couldn't afford to pay to stay once they got there. IMO the government of the city of New Orleans failed them. Housing them for days on end in a sports stadium with thugs and criminals is just plain nuts.
This isn't Monday morning Quarterbacking, it's 2nd Quarter, 99 yards to go quarterbacking.
And I'm no Donovan McNabb...
BTW, read the Corner today, especially Goldberg. He's on my wavelength.
I'm far more sympathetic to your views, Mrs Du Toit, than you realize - especially given this.
We can wait.
Oh, and these examples also have to stand up to scrutiny from the political machine when the Big One doesn't hit, and the levees don't fail, because that's how things usually work out, and it's impossible for them to treat every hurricane as if it'll destroy New Orleans; nobody's willing to fund them enough.
And, of course, you must remember that FEMA can't act unless the state/local government tells it to. Stupid "laws".
Lot harder to second-guess now, isn't it? It's sure easy to say "do stuff better", though, huh?
...
On another note, last night someone tried to tell me that FEMA and Bush were incompetent because they didn't order an instant airdrop (from cargo planes!) of MREs and water, just randomly over the whole city, into the flood waters. Because if they were competent, they'd know the currents and let the supplies float to people! And because obviously they can just drop MREs and water bottles from a plane without having them land on anyone and kill them. Because magic, basically.
I swear, I don't know what world some people live in. It must be a nice place, but I don't see how you can get there from here.
Later.
Disclosure: I'm a volunteer coordinator for MEMA (The Missouri Emergency Management Agency), I've been through three major floods and a few big storms that generated enough tornado damage to get the affected counties disaster relief. Believe me when I tell you what we are seeing from FEMA now is light years ahead of what I've seen from them in the past. Typically it took two to three days just to get the disaster declaration, then another two to three to get FEMA deployed, and of course by then the local guys had been on the ground working around the clock for five or six days and we were more than happy to dump everything in FEMA’s lap. That’s the way the system is designed. Bush saw that and tried to skip a few steps to speed things up, he pre-declared the areas disaster areas and that's significant - I'll explain later - but IMO what we are seeing in NO is the result of a convergence of factors:
First, the storm damage was bad, but the flooding has made relief efforts ten times harder than anything they could have imagined. Everyone knew that a Cat 4/5 storm could breach the levies, no one suspected that the breach would come from an internal canal flood wall that had just recently been upgraded. Second, Mayor Nagin’s performance has been absolutely pathetic. This is the worst case of poor planning and criminal incompetence I've ever seen. Like I said, Bush declared the gulf coast area a Federal Disaster area on Saturday - two days before Katrina hit. That freed up FEMA resources for local and state coordinators to call on and allowed for the pre-positioning of supplies so they could be rapidly deployed to the affected areas. If the Mayor and the Governor don't take advantage of this opportunity Bush is to blame? Right. Mayor Nagin waited until the last minute to call for an evacuation of the city, but the poorest people could not evacuate - why weren't school busses used to get them out of town? Mayor Nagin made the last minute decision to declare the Superdome and Convention centers as refuge relocation points - why weren't they stocked with water, food, bedding, generators, and fuel? Why weren't hospitals offered additional resources by the Mayors office? Mayor Nagin made the decision to allow looting and told the police to focus on Search and Rescue, but looting hinders S&R efforts (as we've seen) and no one I know could believe that decision. Hell, it’s emergency management 101, preserving order preserves life.
Like I said, there’s plenty of blame to go around, Blanco deserves her share too as, and honestly once FEMA realized that they were dealing with a boatload of incompetents they should have just taken over and let the locals bitch about "federal interference" to CNN, they'll do that anyway, but ultimately IMO the real culprit in the aftermath here is Nagin, the man is criminally incompetent and should be removed from the scene before he causes more damage.
self
local
state
region
national
The FIRST response is for as many people as possible to evacuate, self-supply, plan, etc. This is what was done. The weather service
put out a warning. GET OUT, STOCK UP - a major catastrophic event is on the way. News programs were blaring for days, THIS HAS
THE POTENTIAL TO BE THE BIG ONE. I've been following Accuweather for years, since my folks live in a Hurricane prone area. They
are almost always DEAD ON with accurate prediction and potentialities. Since the folks know that they may be in the path of a Hurricane (Charley landed 10 miles south of them) at any time, they have had a plan for the 25 years they've lived in Fla. No matter how remote the possibility for harm, they implement it each and every time. "Better to be safe, than sorry" is a motto they live by. Not once do they express dismay that they evacuated and the storm spared them, only relief that they dodged another bullet. They not only wish to provide for themselves but recognize that by doing so, they are
one less couple emergency workers need to worry about. In any discussion about emergency response - the public's responsibility to take care of themselves should be a front and foremost priority. Without the cooperation of the MILLIONS of responsible citizens in the region who heeded evacuation
orders and planned for disaster - imagine what we would be facing today.
Next comes local response. This is where they need to plan for those who can not or will not fend for themselves. Their priority needs to go to those
who can NOT fend for themselves. Sick/old/children. Those who will not will hopefully become those that will when they find out where they are on the priority list, else they suffer the consequences of being left to the resources further up the chain.
State, regional and fed. The further up the chain, the longer the response time, it's a simple matter of logistics.
You are all so outraged by this most basic fact. Outrage will not change it.
Try as I might, I can't see anyway around the fact that the lesson to be learned in all this is to RELY ON YOURSELF. The broader lesson for society
is that building a cycle and mentality of dependency is the surest path to greater disasters. Try as I might, I can only see that the people who were most
devastated by the impact of Katrina were those who relied on being taken care of, whether they were black/white poor/rich, that's who is logically going
to be impacted the most.
Thank God and Kudos to all who left and fended for themselves. All those who packed up and left. All those who gave your elderly neighbor a ride. All those who took in dislocated relatives and friends. All those who stocked up and holed up. All those who donated supplies. All those
who relieved the burden on the relief chain.
Thank God for all those responding after the storm.
You are to be commended.
For every bus you see under water that is 40 people that would not have needed to be rescued.
FORTY PEOPLE.
The death of thousands is on the hands on the Mayor New Orleans. Only he had the authority to actually put meat to the mandatory evacuation order.
For every car that was not commandered that is FOUR people who could have escaped.
They had the analysis reports. The news media read the probable outcome to anyone who was listening. They predicted everything that has happened so far and it was read to us on SATURDAY.
It's just too much. I don't have words.
Why in hell did this stupid bastard of a mayor of New Orleans order those buses into some practical use over the weekend -- at the same time that he ordered the mandatory evacuation of the city? Each such bus can carry about 40 people. That means 200 buses, each making a single round trip, can evacuate 8000 people from the low parts of New Orleans to some place on higher ground north of the city. Two such round-trips could have taken out nearly all the people who showed up at the SuperDrome to await the horrors of that followed later in the week.
Working around the clock, the fleet of school buses could have picked up and carried out everyone in the city who had not been able to drive out in their own autos or find other transportation. And all this could have been accomplished before hurricane Katrina hit the coastline and long before the flood waters oozing into the city from Lake Pontchartrain had flooded the city deep enough to make bus travel through the streets impossible. In fact, some of the bus transporting could have been done between the time the hurricane winds abated and the streets had become impossibly flooded.
But the mayor did nothing but whine and bitch out the federal government. Because this stupid and incompetent bastard failed to act, many people died, and help that could have been given to many of the elderly, sick, very young and others not in position to fend for themselves, has been diverted into an after-the-fact hodgepodge effort to drive into still flooded neighborhoods to pull out survivors.
I would not only impeach this bastard. I think I would try and imprison him for gross malfeasance and nonfeasance of office.
I have said in another post to Dean's World that blame ought not to be assigned, but that people ought to just get on with the job of completing the evacuation, cleanup, reestablishment of sewer, water, gas and electric services.
But that was before I saw the photograph of all the New Orleans school buses lined up pathetically in that New Orleans parking lot. Sort of like the US fighter aircraft parked in neat rows on all the airfields on Oahu island in Hawaii, awaiting destruction at the hands of the Imperial Navy of Japan in December 1941.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I guess the mayor didn't want to take on the unions by utilizing non-union drivers.
It's Not Going To Happen To Me Syndrome.
Ask the average American do they have a disaster plan. And I betcha momma's homemade buttermilk biscuits that they don't. Why? Because we are comfortable in our place in the world. Nothing happens bad here. This isn't Somalia, Bosnia, Israel, Iraq, etc. This is the ultra stable United States of America. I went off on a big rant on my blog about this being an American Failure. Not Bush's failure. This a fundamental failure in the way we view potential disasters. We should ALWAYS practice the "Better Safe than Sorry" philosophy at any cost. But we don't and our fellow Americans in the Gulf Coast must suffer and die. This is a horrific lesson to learn. We must do better in the future. And I think President Bush realized that with his words today. Good man.
In the meantime, we have to do our best to alleviate the suffering of our Gulf Coast citizens.
So what was the stupid sonofabitch hizzonor the mayor doing all that time with all the wasted resources available to him? Waiting to blame the federal government for tardy response to his emergency?
Now that I have given some thoughts to all this, I say fuck him forever.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I agree. It is criminally funny. Mayor Nagin does, or did, seem to be suffering from "It's Not Going To Happen To Me Syndrome." Also you raise a valid point, the average American doesn't have a disaster plan. Heck, I see it all the time - the average American has become so fat, dumb, and happy with regards to disaster preparedness that they just assume the government will take care of everything for them.
You definitely saw that here with Katrina. I remember one anecdote that illustrates this perfectly: Since Mayor Nagin waited until the last minute to declare the Superdome as a shelter, he asked everyone coming to bring at least three days food and water for themselves, as well as any prescription meds they might need - this is exactly what everyone should have on hand for an emergency. Anyway, a middle aged woman who arrives at the Superdome carrying nothing but her purse and a bottle of diet coke. When asked why she didn't bring water and food with her she replied,"Oh, I'm sure someone will have all that ready for us." Typical.
There is one major difference however, between the average American and Mayor Nagin, the Mayor doesn't get the luxury of being an average American. It's actually in the job description as Mayor that he is responsible for the city of New Orleans disaster preparedness. If there's one person who's not allowed to beg off because the didn't think it was going to happen to them, it's him.
Oh, as for moving people using school buses? We've done that for numerous floods. In fact it's one of the fundamentals of managing displaced persons given that every community has a school and every school has a number of buses, well, it's pretty much a no-brainer.
Um, I'm not sure what 2-hour circuit you were looking at. I saw ribbons of lights leading out of N.O. all night Saturday and Sunday that were basically stopped on I-10. To suggest that these busses would have been able to make a 2-hour circuit without some sort of dedicated lane is ludicrous. And where were all of these people going to go? They were just going to drop 25,000 people off in the rain 1 hour away?
I agree that buses and school buses should have been used in this "mandatory" evacuation. but I think we all need to be a little bit more realistic about the transportation system in N.O. 72 hours, people. That's how much time it takes to evacuate N.O. Nagin declared the evacuation Saturday. Saturday to Sunday (24 hours) Sunday to Monday at 7 a.m. (12 hours). That's 36 hours. Nagin really should have called for the mandatory evacuation Friday, but hindsight is 20/20.
In addition, they could have EASILY reversed the inbound traffic lanes, which they NEVER did.
Nonetheless, the mayor of New Orleans could have exercized the emergency authority to have mobilized many hundreds -- possibly 500 or more -- school buses or public transit buses and organized them in shuttle runs to evacuate people out of the zone that they knew in advance was likely to flood.
I am sure that everyone who suggested this has assumed that under any such plan, one outbound lane would be reserved for buses carrying large numbers of passengers. Remember, local police can change any such rules during such a major emergency.
If you study history, you may recall two individuals much greater than this wastrel of a mayor. These were the French generals in the early days of World War I, who, on their own authority commandeered the taxicabs and some private buses in Paris and used them to ferry troops to the front line during the battle of the Marne river in early September 1914. These were general Cesaire Joffre and Joseph Gallieni, whose quick thinking helped win the battle that saved the French army and France itself from almost certain German conquest.
There are situations in which one man in the leadership willing to exercise intelligence and initiative is worth thousands of loudmouth politicians pointing fingers at one another after a significant part of the population of a large city has been trapped by floodwaters, and trapped to no small degree by their inactivities at a time when they could have gotten these people to higher ground.
But the mayor of New Orleans is not such a man, and ought to be removed from office because of his obvious inadequacies in a time of national emergency.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
1. The mandatory evacuation call went out on Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m. (a fact I am only now aware of, for some reason I thought it was Saturday morning that the mandatory evacuation was called for). The hurricane made LANDFALL at about 7 a.m. Monday. You're telling me you're going to get approx. 100,000 people out of New Orleans in deteriorating weather conditions in less than 24 hours?
2. The road conditions were locked up on every major highway going out of N.O. Repeat after me: THERE WAS NO PLAN in place for evacuating this way, especially in the collapsed time frame. Also recall that there were only two directions to go: west and north. From what I read, all lanes were supposed to have been in "contraflow" mode to help evacuation.
3. In addition to the abovementioned *obvious* realities of attempting the bus evacuation, there are also issues of finding suitable bus drivers, places to drop all the people, and getting everyone to the designated pick-up areas of New Orleans. As it was, buses were attempting to round up folks to take them to the Superdome, and didn't get all that done.
While I have my qualms with Mayor Nagin (the late hour of the evacuation order being first among them), this bus plan was a non-starter and should not be held against him.
And FWIW, last time I checked, Paris in WWI wasn't under 6 feet of water with the entire infrastructure shot to hell.
Neither was New Orleans on Sunday. . or Saturday when the state of emergency was declared.
You'd have gotten more people out using the buses than was accomplished by leaving them sitting there to flood over. But apparently that would have involved something called a "plan."
Are you confident in your own local officials when/if a disaster strikes? I don't live far from Dean (Romulus, Michigan) and I have no confidence in the current mayor or the person running against him. As I said and will continue to say; this is an American Failure. We need to change our way of thinking in regards to disaster preparedness and how we elect local politicians. Be real with me a second people: how many people actually pay close attention to local politicial races? Hmm...
Suddenly I have a sinking feeling.
I would bet the ones shooting at rescuers want to be there.
Some people (not here) seem to be acting as if this is the first huge hurricane to hit the US. Funny thing is that things were no where near as bad when Andrew (a comparable storm) flattened large parts of Miami. I wonder why? Could it possibly that that part of Southern Florida had a plan of action for just such an eventuality since hurricanes are a frequent visitor?
You are right. There was no plan. But WHY was there no plan? And WHO is responsible on a local level for such developing such a plan if not the city's management? And WHO runs the city's management if not the mayor?
After the flood waters shut off access to the city streets, some of the victims and those claiming to speak for them (and to bleme the president of the United States for their plight) were all but screaming for instant means to remove all these people from the New Orleans Superdome. "Where are the buses? Where are the buees?"
But the buees were there ready to be used. All day last Sunday. Hundreds of buses parked in neat rows by employees of the New Orleans school district. Buses presumably no longer in use by the city transit authority once mandatory evacuation had been ordered.
So why where these buses not put to use the entirety of that Sunday after the unprepared mayor announced that mandatory evacuation of all citizens at -- what time of the day did you say -- 9:30am? How many evacuees could some 500 buses remove from the city of New Orleans from 9:30am Sunday until 6am Monday, if 40 people can be loaded on each bus?
Were the roads out of New Orleans blocked? Probably. But why was there no plan to use local police and state police to keep one lane each way free solely for mass-trasit evacuation vehicles? And there are dozens of routes out of any modern American city, all with paved highways. Why was there no plan to have these all mapped out and ready to use?
Can you or anyone else claim it was easier to bring help to people trapped in a statium with no electric power, no light, no fresh water, no flushing toilets, no easy means of access by road, than it would have been to help all these people if they had been evacuated in time to higher ground? Where other transportation modes could have been used to disperse them out further to locations where all the utilities still funcioned and there was no universe of flood water to stop direct road access?
And what about the future? Does anybody -- including you -- think that any serious purpose is served simply by pumping the water out of the greater New Orleans human wastewater sump, cleaning up the mess, rebuilding human habitations once again at 10-20 feet below sea level, surrounded by all but boundless and always-threatening bodies of water?
Because there will be a next time for a category 4 or category 5 hurricane that shall fill up the greater New Orleans wastewater sump. Again and again and again. As has been happening since the continents and oceans on this planet assumed their present shape hundreds of millions of years ago.
And who is to say for sure that one day there will not be a category 6 or category 7 hurricane? Who knows what kinds of ocean storms of hitherto-unmeasured ferocity have not beset the southeast part of north America in the eons of time before we began carefully measuring and tracking these storms?
Remember. If it happened once it almost certainly WILL happen again. And even if nobody knows if anything more severe can occur, does that guarantee inhabitants of the greater New Orleans wastwater sump will not one day be drowned en masse by tidal waves that will overtake them before they can be evacuated to higher ground.
"Higher ground". That is the key to survival -- and the only key -- in the face of such natural catastrophes.
And if everybody in this country is expected to pay out of the national treasure as much as $50 billion or even more than that amount in foolish attempts to restore such a mis-planned and pathetic city, then a responsible government should insist that any and all reconstruction money be spent relocating large parts of New Orleans and its population to higher ground.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I know there was no plan. That was part of my point. But also, you say this:
And what about the future? Does anybody -- including you -- think that any serious purpose is served simply by pumping the water out of the greater New Orleans human wastewater sump, cleaning up the mess, rebuilding human habitations once again at 10-20 feet below sea level, surrounded by all but boundless and always-threatening bodies of water?
I don't. I think they should rebuild new orleans (if they're determined to do so) on the other side of the lake, along the I-12 corridor. Use some of that new Kelo power the SCOTUS gave them to give land grants to any N.O. resident willing to relocate. Then bulldoze everything that doesn't have a national historical monument designation in the old city.
I don't lay all of this at Nagin's feet. He's a newbie, really, relying on the infrastructure of politicians in N.O. for support. He was leaning on a weak reed.
1. Bill Clinton suggested that NO survived the hurricane but it was the backflow from the Missisippi waters that caused at least one levee to break on Tuesday, hence the flooding.
2. A survivor, a man who lived near a broken levee who lost his entire family claims that he saw two floating barges slam into one levee causing it to breakup.
3. A former LA congressman claims that in 1999 before GWB, democrats filibustered a bill which included appropriations for upgrading the levee infrastructure.
Has no one heard of hitching a ride?
There were a LOT of cars on their way out of the city.