Katrina Disaster

[CharleyH]

Doc asked a much more pertinent question on another thread regarding changes in US policy between Katrina and 9/11. I am surprised it got buried. Perhaps change is not something people enjoy discussing.

 

[rgraham666]

It's a case of the monkey pissing into the cash register. It all runs into money.

The basic thrust of political theory in the Anglo-American polities is that government is too big, too expensive and too much of a pain in the ass to be maintained at current levels.

It had to go and we've been dismantling it for a generation now.

But all actions have consequences and the problems around Katrina are the consequences of our decision.

 

[NoJo]

The UK used to have a Civil Defence organisation largely staffed by volunteers. It has been abolished.

We used to have a Territorial Army, fairly numerous, locally based, mainly staffed by volunteers. It has been turned into a very much smaller low-cost substitute for regular troops and some units are in Iraq. Just like the US's National Guard.

Although we have never had anything like New Orleans, I think we would be equally incompetent in our first responses because the command structures and organisation no longer exist. Locally, riverine flooding in recent years showed a lack of the basics including sandbags and an inadequate distribution system. Home owners were collecting empty bags and filling them from their gardens - if they could get through the floods to the bag store.

We have the supplies. We have the transport. We DON'T have the people. Those trained for disaster relief are very few and have no resources to call on beyond themselves.

Og

I wonder if we'd turn on each other, Lord of The Flies style, though.

(But I keep remembering that the area of devastation is the size of the *whole* of Britain)

As I posted on the first day after the flooding, the real shock to me is to see the level of poverty is in the U.S. It really is pretty disgusting, like looking in a kitchen of a fancy restaurant and seeing all the cockroaches.

The US a fundamentally a land where greed is the norm, with a real problem when it comes to welfare. Although the UK is not what it used to be, I think it's pretty clear that Britain and much of Europe has a far stronger tradition of government repsonsibility for state welfare .

 

[dr_mabeuse]

As I posted on the first day after the flooding, the real shock to me is to see the level of poverty is in the U.S. It really is pretty disgusting, like looking in a kitchen of a fancy restaurant and seeing all the cockroaches.

The US a fundamentally a land where greed is the norm, with a real problem when it comes to welfare. Although the UK is not what it used to be, I think it's pretty clear that Britain and much of Europe has a far stronger tradition of government repsonsibility for state welfare .

That's exactly right. One of the things this disaster has done is shake things up so you see the whole sordid mess.

Over the last 20 years politicians have done a great job of sweeping poverty under the rug and turning greed and selfishness into a civic virtue. If those people in New Orleans are poor and black, well, it's their own damned fault. They should have known better. They should have seen to it that they were born rich and white.

We've shown ourselves to be entirely capable of crushing and occupying another nation halfway around the world without breaking a sweat, but totally unable to get food and water 60 miles to our own people because of this, that, and the other thing.

It is like seeing the cockroaches at the banquet, only it's not the poor who are the vermin.

 

[shereads]

It's no coincidence that the gap between America's richest and poorest cititzens is at its highest level since the era of the Robber Barons, under the administration that fought to eliminate the estate tax.

The function of the tax was to inhibit the development of an upper class powered by inherited wealth. It was misrepresented as being responsible for the disappearance of "family farms."

Poverty is a necessary component of an aristocracy.

 

[rgraham666]

Over the last 20 years politicians have done a great job of sweeping poverty under the rug and turning greed and selfishness into a civic virtue.

So did the Bourbons and the Romanovs.

And where are they now?

 

[popcorn2721]

The mayor of N.O. says could be as many as 10,000 dead....what do you guys think?


Sep 5, 11:46 PM (ET)

By DOUG SIMPSON

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A week after Hurricane Katrina swept through, engineers plugged the levee break that had swamped much of the city and floodwaters began to recede, but along with the good news came the mayor's direst prediction yet: as many as 10,000 dead

 

[minsue]

The mayor of N.O. says could be as many as 10,000 dead....what do you guys think?

What do we think?

 

[Dar~]

I think it's definite possibility. Its horrifying though.

 

[cantdog]

Even a small "disaster," enough to temporarily swamp local resources, means no one gets to expect treatment as usual. That is, the waiting times and the way triage is done have to change. This one, as everyone has noticed, is big. What that means is that no one will be able to grab a phone an 911 up and ambulance in under a half hour. Waits will be long. Triage will be radically different: walking wounded may have long long waits, even after someone manages to hook them up with a treatment facility. The difficulties we've seen with communication, where available help has no where specific to go because no one locally to them has knowledge of a site with needs? These things are entirely typical where part ofd the problem is that the communications systems are compromised.

Not every such case, by far, is the result of unclear chains of command, or any incompetence. It is usually the ordinary concomitant of chaos.

 

[LadyJeanne]

That water that's being pumped out of NO, that water reporters have described as a toxic soup of chemicals and oil and ickiness, is that being pumped back into Lake Pontchartrain??



Does anyone know?

 

[Couture]

That water that's being pumped out of NO, that water reporters have described as a toxic soup of chemicals and oil and ickiness, is that being pumped back into Lake Pontchartrain??



Does anyone know?

It has to go somewhere. And better there than in the streets.

There have been several lakes and waterways that have been incredibly contamintated. Luckily, nature is pretty efficient at breaking down that nasty ickiness.

 

[sophia jane]

That water that's being pumped out of NO, that water reporters have described as a toxic soup of chemicals and oil and ickiness, is that being pumped back into Lake Pontchartrain??



Does anyone know?

From msnbc:
BATON ROUGE, La. - The brew of chemicals and human waste in the New Orleans floodwaters will have to be pumped into the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain, raising the specter of an environmental disaster on the heels of Hurricane Katrina, experts say.

The dire need to rid the drowned city of water could trigger fish kills and poison the delicate wetlands near New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi.

State and federal agencies have just begun water-quality testing but environmental experts say the vile, stagnant chemical soup that sits in the streets of the city known as The Big Easy will contain traces of everything imaginable.

“Go home and identify all the chemicals in your house. It’s a very long list,” said Ivor van Heerden, head of a Louisiana State University center that studies the public health impacts of hurricanes.

“And that’s just in a home. Imagine what’s in an industrial plant,” he said. “Or a sewage plant.”

Gasoline, diesel, anti-freeze, bleach, human waste, acids, alcohols and a host of other substances must be washed out of homes, factories, refineries, hospitals and other buildings.

“There is a disease risk," Mike McDaniel, head of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, told reporters Tuesday. He added, though, that it was premature to call the floodwaters toxic, and that better data should be available Thursday.

“Initial indications are that they are showing large numbers of contaminants,” McDaniel said. “We are taking samples ... We expect you're going to see quantities of fuel and gasoline. There are sheens wherever you look.”

Rupture dangers
In Metairie, east of New Orleans, the floodwater is tea-colored, murky and smells of burnt sulfur. A thin film of oil is visible in the water.

Those who have waded into it say they could see only about 1 to 2 inches into the depths and that there was significant debris on and below the surface.

Experts said the longer water sat in the streets, the greater the chance gasoline and chemical tanks — as well as common containers holding anything from bleach to shampoo — would rupture.

Officials have said it may take up to 80 days to clear the water from New Orleans and surrounding parishes.

Van Heerden and Rodney Mallett, communications director for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, say there do not appear to be any choices other than to pump the water into Lake Pontchartrain or the Mississippi River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, a key maritime spawning ground.

“I don’t see how we could treat all that water,” Mallett said.

The result could be an second wave of disaster for southern Louisiana, said Harold Zeliger, a Florida-based chemical toxicologist and water quality consultant.

“In effect, it’s going to kill everything in those waters,” he said.

How much water New Orleans holds is open to question.

Van Heerden estimates it is billions of gallons. LSU researchers will use satellite imagery and computer modeling to get a better fix on the quantity.

Rush to get it out
Bio-remediation — cleaning up the water — would require the time and expense of constructing huge storage facilities, considered an impossibility, especially with the public clamor to get the water out quickly.

Mallett said the Department of Environmental Quality was in the unfortunate position of being responsible for protecting the environment in a situation where that did not seem possible.

“We’re not happy about it. But for the sake of civilization and lives, probably the best thing to do is pump the water out,” he said.

The water will leave behind more trouble — a city filled with mold, some of it toxic, the experts said. After other floods, researchers found many buildings had to be stripped back to concrete, or razed.

“If you have a building half full of water, everything above the water is growing mold. When it dries out, the rest grows mold,” Zeliger said. “Most of the buildings will have to be destroyed.”

 

[shereads]

Even a small "disaster," enough to temporarily swamp local resources, means no one gets to expect treatment as usual. That is, the waiting times and the way triage is done have to change. This one, as everyone has noticed, is big. What that means is that no one will be able to grab a phone an 911 up and ambulance in under a half hour. Waits will be long. Triage will be radically different: walking wounded may have long long waits, even after someone manages to hook them up with a treatment facility. The difficulties we've seen with communication, where available help has no where specific to go because no one locally to them has knowledge of a site with needs? These things are entirely typical where part ofd the problem is that the communications systems are compromised.

Not every such case, by far, is the result of unclear chains of command, or any incompetence. It is usually the ordinary concomitant of chaos.

Or as the president said, "I don't think anyone expected the levees to be breached."

Right.

Yes, it's the largest disaster in our history but to my knowledge, it's also the only disaster to have been predicted accurately with the government's own computer model, right down to the number of people who wouldn't evacuate until the flooding began. It was interesting to watch the director of Homeland Security tapdance around Tim Russert's questions on Meet the Press last Sunday.

Russert quoted the president's statement, above. Then he quoted an article from the New Orleans Times Picayune that related in precise detail what would happen, according to the theoretical "Hurricane Pam" in the model, when (not if) a major hurricane hit New Orleans. He asked how the president could possibly have been so misinformed when this had been such a major issue for so long.

The director, unruffled, said he thought what the president really meant was that when the storm passed on Monday without breachiing the levees, "we were all surprised to wake up Tuesday morning and see headlines saying the levees had been beached."

(Why the director of America's coordinated civil defense didn't learn the levees were breached until he read it in the newspaper is a question I wished Russert had asked.)

Russert, for a change, interrupted as rudely as a non-imbedded journalist and restated the key question:

FEMA knew the levees would only withstand a category 3 storm. A category 4 was predicted. You all had access, as did the president, to a computer model that confirmed the scope of the disaster that had been predicted for more than a decade.

Why wait to find out if the levees were breached before beginning the process of putting in place the necessary number of buses, boats, helicopters and supplies for a the 200,000-person rescue and recovery operation that was predicted in your own model?

I'd add another WTF question, in addition to the one of why the director of Homeland Security wasn't up all night waiting for news about the levees: Why would the FEMA director need to learn from NBC News that 20,000 went to the convention center to await evacuation? What were the helicopters overhead reporting, if not the locations of crowds of refugees?

Edited to add:

Today we were promised "accountability" by the same president who promised that anyone in the White House connected with the outing of Valerie Plame would be held accountable. In this case, he has promised to head the investigation himself. Since he's the person whose lack of concern was so clearly evident when he attended a fundraising dinner the night of the storm, how qualfied is he to determine who is and is not accountable in "the blame game" he's been so reluctant to undertake?

The people who proclaim most vehemently that it's not time to point fingers are the ones who know they failed.

 

[LadyJeanne]

Today we were promised "accountability" by the same president who promised that anyone in the White House connected with the outing of Valerie Plame would be held accountable. In this case, he has promised to head the investigation himself. Since he's the person whose lack of concern was so clearly evident when he attended a fundraising dinner the night of the storm, how qualfied is he to determine who is and is not accountable in "the blame game" he's been so reluctant to undertake?

Uh, he's already made it apparent through his appointments of FEMA and DHS directors that experience isn't necessary for leadership positions in his administration. So it makes perfect sense that GWB would now be leading the investigation.

 

[cantdog]

Yes, shereads, you and Russert have valid points. That sort of thing is a subject for legitimate anger. The conditions before the actual storm had been discussed. Everyone concerned knew what to do about them, concretely. Indeed, some of it was in train; the Corps and others had ongoing projects. Those projects were eviscerated by this administration, funding cut off. FEMA itself was subsumed into an anti-terror program and systematically dismantled by this administration. This is worthy of recrimination. It determined both the severity of the problem, at least in Louisiana (although it was solely the storm which did that in Mississippi). It also determined that Tom Ridge's hodgepodge of spooks and informers was in charge of hurricane relief.

A generation of dismantling big government set the conditions for and the limits on government response. The guard did well, but the promise of 40,000 is still not met. The figure is still only 35,000 in all affected states, total. The Coast Guard was professional, admirable, superb. But they are not large enough to do it all, nor in fact should they be, likely enough.

But the incidents attending the actual work on the ground needs some evaluation before we can know what parts were incompetence, what parts merely chaos. Some of that stuff will turn out to have been preventable, and not merely in hindsight, where a lot of it would have happened no matter what.

I was amazed how much of a stopper a few snipers were to the efforts down there. Firefighters risk their asses all the time and go in anyhow, and not for great pay, either. They get sniped at, too, on the fire ground, and they go in anyway. People setting fires for insurance fraud will lay traps in the buildings to slow down extinguishment, including sawing big holes in the floor designed to drop the men into the flames a floor or more below, and they go in anyway.

Weird Harold says a few snipers cost 48 hours. Damn. Once we knew where there were snipers, having a few thousand National Guard Iraq vets on hand, what the hell is everything taking 48 hours for? Those snipers don't have the vests and the automatic weapons the Guard and the SWAT people do. Does SWAT training tell you never stand in water to do SWAT work? Or were all the SWATs and Guards on the Texas side of the river?

Historically, each such large disaster makes a big change in people's perceptions of their government and their country, and a political upheaval follows in the wake of them. This looks like no exception. A lot of people are angry. Some are even angry at the right things. Being angry at "people who build on a flood plain" is asinine, but being angry at people who cut funding for levee repair? Yep.

 

[LadyJeanne]

Weird Harold says a few snipers cost 48 hours. Damn. Once we knew where there were snipers, having a few thousand National Guard Iraq vets on hand, what the hell is everything taking 48 hours for? Those snipers don't have the vests and the automatic weapons the Guard and the SWAT people do. Does SWAT training tell you never stand in water to do SWAT work? Or were all the SWATs and Guards on the Texas side of the river?

Even if they were on the Texas side, journalists were using I-90 and the bridge to drive into NO from the west side of the River. Not to mention, don't those people train to parachute into situations?

 

[shereads]

When is the time for finger-pointing?

An excerpt from Eugene Robinson's column in today's Washington Post:

Now what?

Every city and town in Louisiana that wasn't blasted by the hurricane is full of evacuees. Then there are the tens of thousands in Texas and the multitudes scattered across neighboring states. Their host communities have the best of intentions, but many won't be able to stand the added drain on resources indefinitely. Where will these people go? Why wasn't there a plan?

That's when I start my finger-pointing, because a few days in and around this ground zero have convinced me that there are two things the federal government failed to do, and that for these failures there's ultimately no one to blame but the president.

First, an administration that since Sept. 11, 2001, has told us a major terrorist strike is inevitable should have had in place a well-elaborated plan for evacuating a major American city. Even if there wasn't a specific plan for New Orleans -- although it was clear that a breach of the city's levees was one of the likeliest natural catastrophes -- there should have been a generic plan. George W. Bush told us time and again that our cities were threatened. Shouldn't he have ordered up a plan to get people out?

Second, someone should have thought about what to do with hundreds of thousands of evacuees, both in the days after a disaster and in the long term. As people flooded out of New Orleans, it was officials at the state and local level who rose to the challenge, making it up as they went along. Bring a bunch of people to the Astrodome. We have a vacant hotel that we can use. Send a hundred or so down to our church and we'll do the best we can.

Tent cities aren't a happy option, but neither is haphazard improvisation. Is the problem the Bush administration's ideological fervor for small government? Does the White House really believe that primary responsibility should fall on volunteers, church groups and individuals? Or is it just stunning incompetence and lack of foresight?

At the big shelter here in Baton Rouge on Sunday, some student volunteers from Louisiana State University took a group of children outside to get some air. The kids were using sheets of cardboard as sleds and surfboards, zooming down the grassy levee next to the Mississippi River and then scampering back uphill for another ride. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the scene warmed your heart. But those college students are going to have to go back to their classes, and then how will those kids from New Orleans spend their days?

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

 

[cantdog]

Yeah. It reads like everyone just flapped their hands when the sniping was reported. I don't get that, but there is already an investigatory body formed in congress about all this shit. It's chaired by a Republican, but the choice of chairperson gives me hope.

 

[shereads]

It has to go somewhere. And better there than in the streets.

There have been several lakes and waterways that have been incredibly contamintated. Luckily, nature is pretty efficient at breaking down that nasty ickiness.

A system to pre-clean the water is one of the smart things that might have been done during the decade that this disaster was accurately predicted.

In Florida, where we are officially warned not to consume fish caught in the Everglades, and where the coral reefs are being covered with algae nourished by fertilizer run-off, there's no evidence that bodies of water clean themselves of contamination.

 

[shereads]

Even if they were on the Texas side, journalists were using I-90 and the bridge to drive into NO from the west side of the River. Not to mention, don't those people train to parachute into situations?

Entertainer Harry Connick Jr. ("the closest thing to a statesman on the ground in New Orleans last week," according to a Wash. Post columnist, was able to arrive in New Orleans after learning of the disaster, tour downtown, deliver a small supply of food and water, and visit the convention center while federal officials were still claming there was no way to get to the refugees.

An NBC crew leaving the city saw a parade of 18-wheelers from Walmart entering the city to bring donated supplies. While the feds were still claiming access to the city was limited.

Limited to whom?

 

[lucky-E-leven]

Entertainer Harry Connick Jr. ("the closest thing to a statesman on the ground in New Orleans last week," according to a Wash. Post columnist, was able to arrive in New Orleans after learning of the disaster, tour downtown, deliver a small supply of food and water, and visit the convention center while federal officials were still claming there was no way to get to the refugees.

An NBC crew leaving the city saw a parade of 18-wheelers from Walmart entering the city to bring donated supplies. While the feds were still claiming access to the city was limited.

Limited to whom?

Mayhap they were busy with Mr. Rehnquist?

 

[Guest]

You Suck!

Everyone has command of hind sight, and an opinion on how this tragedy could have been handled in better ways. You can sit there in your safe home and look at the aftermath of one of nature’s most powerful reminders that we are but small insignificant beings on this planet and bitch about everything in your ignorant bliss.
You suck you stupid bastards!.....Do you think you can run a country better?
It’s easy to look back and say this and that should have been done.
Are you clairvoyant? If so why didn’t you stop this from happening? Why didn’t you go to New Orleans and make the poor leave in the face of impending disaster?
True, mistakes were made and relief was slow to come, but it came when it was possible!
Who the fuck do you think you are that you could have done better?
I’m so sick of the liberal pricks who think they can save the world……If you can? why have you not done so? You sit on your fat asses and criticize like you are some supreme being….give me a fucking break.
You suck just as much as the relief effort!

America is the strongest country in the world and we are not perfect. But constantly we are under the scrutiny of other nations that can’t even pay their WW II debts.
“I say Shut the Fuck up and pay your debt for us saving your ass countless times….then maybe you have the right to talk your shit.
America is the only country in the world that tries to right the wrong and help make the world a better place….when you can say the same, then you can talk…other wise shut the hell up! And be glad we exist to save your sorry asses next time you are about to be taken over by a foreign power.

Oh and by the way you Americans who are bitching….you suck also! If you can do a better job..... go run for office and prove it!

 

[Couture]

A system to pre-clean the water is one of the smart things that might have been done during the decade that this disaster was accurately predicted.

In Florida, where we are officially warned not to consume fish caught in the Everglades, and where the coral reefs are being covered with algae nourished by fertilizer run-off, there's no evidence that bodies of water clean themselves of contamination.

Never fear Sher, the President has determined that golf courses are better for the environment than wetlands. It's only a matter of time before you have enough golf courses built in Florida to leech the contaminents out of the water and provide a buffer zone to flooding.

This is great news indeed!

 

[LadyJeanne]

Entertainer Harry Connick Jr. ("the closest thing to a statesman on the ground in New Orleans last week," according to a Wash. Post columnist, was able to arrive in New Orleans after learning of the disaster, tour downtown, deliver a small supply of food and water, and visit the convention center while federal officials were still claming there was no way to get to the refugees.

An NBC crew leaving the city saw a parade of 18-wheelers from Walmart entering the city to bring donated supplies. While the feds were still claiming access to the city was limited.

Limited to whom?

Yes, I saw Harry on one of the cable shows - he was walking around the Quarter on Thursday.

I-90 runs right by the Convention Center. Right there. You could stand on the freeway and drop stuff down. Better yet, let the people trapped in the Convention Center walk up the frickin' ramp, onto the freeway, and over to Gretna, which was not flooded like NO. I-10 is elevated and runs right past the Superdome, and merges right onto I-90. So, basically, there was an easy, overland, not flooded ROAD available to both the Convention Center and Superdome.

And yet people were forced to die there. If WE saw this on TV and on Google's nice little sattelite map, WTF were our leaders looking at as they flew over?