The Battle of New Orleans: Even in America, civil order is more fragile than we think.

Wall Street Opinion Journal Friday, September 2, 2005

Of all the bad news from New Orleans, the most disturbing has been the reports of spreading disorder, with looting, marauding gangs and even sniper fire at helicopters and rescue workers. Americans sometimes expect their government to do far too much–such as ensure low gasoline prices–but they do have a right to expect that it will at least provide for the safety of its citizens, even or perhaps especially in a crisis.

One reason for the New Orleans breakdown is the size of the calamity, whose growing severity caught nearly everyone by surprise. Louisiana National Guard troops that were deployed initially for rescue and relief efforts weren’t available for the more basic duties of public security. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is also geared to providing relief, not order, and only yesterday did the federal government begin to focus on the potential anarchy. Among our political leaders, only Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour seemed to appreciate the genuine risk of disorder, with his early warnings that looters would not be given the benefit of the doubt.

By the way, the allegation that enough National Guard troops aren’t available because many are deployed in Iraq doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. The Louisiana Guard has something like 3,500 men and women deployed in Iraq, but that leaves another 8,000 or so troops available for post-Katrina duty, and neighboring states undamaged by the hurricane have still others who could be called upon. All told, the Pentagon now estimates that 30,000 National Guard troops will be deployed along the Gulf coast, and another 3,000 regular Army soldiers to pursue the armed gangs on the loose. Our advice is: Do whatever it takes.

One frequent reaction we heard yesterday is that the disorder in New Orleans is typical of Third World countries, something that was thought could never happen in America. This happens to overlook a fair chunk of U.S. history, some of it relatively recent, including riots and violence. But it is also a sign of complacency born of prosperity and the resilience of our legal and civic institutions.

This battle of New Orleans should remind us that civic order, even in America, is more fragile than we like to think. After this week and amid the continuing threat of terrorism, our political leaders at all levels are going to have to think harder about how to maintain order in the next crisis.

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63 thoughts on “The Battle of New Orleans: Even in America, civil order is more fragile than we think.”

  1. The awful thing is that it has been known for decades that a disaster like this was likely to happen someday, but such plans as were drawn up simply took no account of the existence of poor people. The first part of the plan was: with a hurricane approaching, people should get in their cars and drive somewhere else. A terrific solution for middle class people who own cars and can afford to spend a week in a motel eating at Denny’s every day. But where were the plans to deploy hundreds of buses to get the poorest citizens out of the city to shelters? There were none. “Let them go to the Superdome” was the plan. So there was a plan for how to take care of all the poor people of New Orleans at the Superdome for a week? Nope. Nobody seems to have thought about how that would work. The people who are suffering are the ones who were simply invisible to the disaster planners. Were they invisible because they were poor, because they were black, or a combination of both? I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. It mustn’t happen again.

  2. Matthias, this is not accurate I think. The lack of planning did not occur because the people remaining in New Orleans were poor, but for other reasons. It’s true that the poor suffered the most, but everyone in New Orleans is facing tragedy. Houses are gone. Jobs are gone. Thousands (several hundred thousand?) of people have to relocate for months, years perhaps, including the middle class. Denny’s will get old pretty quick, and the money the middle class might have for that week in a hotel is going to dry up very fast with no more income coming in.

    This is not a rich-poor or black-white issue, regardless what Jesse Jackson and a few others are now saying. This is a failure of leadership. The Mayor of New Orleans, and the Governor of Louisianna did not heed the warnings and thus failed to prepare.

  3. Him, NO Officials ignored warning on evacuation problems

    Evacution planning is the responsibility of local government because they know their cities and areas best. Evacuation planning means having established evacuation routes identified and publicized to the public. It also means having law enforcement direct evacuation traffic out of a city. Lastly, it means providing for those who lack transportion out of the disaster area. The Mayor of New Orleans did nothing and was totally unprepared. He should resign. Please look at this article published in the leading NO newspaper two years before this disaster.

    http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf?/washingaway/leftbehind_1.html
    LEFT BEHIND
    Once it?s certain a major storm is about to hit, evacuation offers the best chance for survival. But for those who wait, getting out will become nearly impossible as the few routes out of town grow hopelessly clogged. And 100,000 people without transportation will be especially threatened.

    By John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein
    Staff writers
    A flooded underpass on I-10 westbound near the Orleans/Jefferson parish line was a critical choke point during Tropical Storm Frances.
    (FILE PHOTO BY ALEX BRANDON / The Times-Picayune)

    CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE

    Hurricane evacuations rarely go as planned. Storm tracks are hard to predict, and roads are not designed to handle the traffic flow, so huge traffic jams are a common result. In 1998 it took six hours for people leaving the New Orleans area in advance of Hurricane Georges to reach Baton Rouge, 80 miles away. The following year, Hurricane Floyd?s constantly changing course spurred evacuations and bumper-to-bumper traffic on highways from Florida to North Carolina.

    Moving entire populations out of harm?s way is a time-consuming and unpredictable operation complicated by geography, demographics, human psychology, the limits of weather forecasting, and transportation problems that tie many cities in knots even in perfect weather.

    Like every coastal area vulnerable to hurricanes, south Louisiana faces these challenges. But the Louisiana delta also has it worse than other coastal areas.

    Because the entire region is susceptible to storm-surge flooding, hurricanes pose more danger to those left behind than in places where the coastal profile is higher.

    “Evacuation is what?s necessary: evacuation, evacuation, evacuation,” Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness Director Walter Maestri said. “We anticipate that (even) with refuges of last resort in place, some 5 (percent) to 10 percent of the individuals who remain in the face of catastrophic storms are going to lose their lives.”

    The region?s sinking coast and rising flood risk also make the task of getting people out harder than it is elsewhere. South Louisiana presents some of the most daunting evacuation problems in the United States because:

    The region?s large population, including more than 1 million people in the New Orleans area, requires a 72- to 84-hour window for evacuation, well ahead of the time that forecasters can accurately predict a storm?s track and strength.
    Few north-south escape routes exist to move residents away from the coast, and many of those include low-lying sections that can flood days before a hurricane makes landfall.
    Evacuees must travel more than 80 miles to reach high ground, meaning more cars on the highways for a longer time as the storm approaches.
    A large population of low-income residents do not own cars and would have to depend on an untested emergency public transportation system to evacuate them.
    Much of the area is below sea level and vulnerable to catastrophic flooding. Based on the danger to refugees and workers, the Red Cross has decided not to operate shelters south of the Interstate 10-Interstate 12 corridor, leaving refuges of last resort that offer only minimal protection and no food or bedding.
    Emergency officials say they have made improvements since Hurricane Georges, but the changes have yet to be tested under real-world conditions, and many obstacles remain.

  4. Bush personally urged Blanco to order evacuation

    Read the whole article. The Mayor of NO asked people to “bring their own food” to the Superdome, that is a great plan isn’t it.

    Nolo.com
    Mandatory evacuation ordered for New Orleans
    8/28/2005, 10:48 a.m. CT
    The Associated Press

    NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? In the face of a catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, a mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday for New Orleans by Mayor Ray Nagin.

    Acknowledging that large numbers of people, many of them stranded tourists, would be unable to leave, the city set up 10 places of last resort for people to go, including the Superdome.

    The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could leave the city should. He exempted hotels from the evacuation order because airlines had already cancelled all flights.

    Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.

    “There doesn’t seem to be any relief in sight,” Blanco said.

    She said Interstate 10, which was converted Saturday so that all lanes headed one-way out of town, was total gridlock.

    “We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared,” Nagin said.

    The storm surge most likely could topple the city’s levee system, which protect it from surrounding waters of Lake Pontchartrain, the Mississippi River and marshes, the mayor said. The bowl-shaped city must pump water out during normal times, and the hurricane threatened pump power.

    Previous hurricanes evacuations in New Orleans were always voluntary, because so many people don’t have the means of getting out. Some are too poor and there is always a French Quarter full of tourists who get caught.

    “This is a once in a lifetime event,” the mayor said. “The city of New Orleans has never seen a hurricane of this magnitude hit it directly,” the mayor said.

    He told those who had to move to the Superdome to come with enough food for several days and with blankets. He said it will be a very uncomfortable place and encouraged everybody who could to get out.

    Nagin said police and firefighters would spread out throughout the city sounding sirens and using bullhorns to tell residents to get out. He also said police would have the authority to comandeer any vehicle or building that could be used for evacuation or shelter.

    The Superdome was already taking in people with special problems. It opened about 8 a.m. and people on walkers, some with oxygen tanks, began checking in.

    In a neighborhood in central city, a group of residents sat on a porch. It was almost a party atmosphere.

    “We’re not evacuating,” said Julie Paul, 57. “None of us have any place to go. We’re counting on the Superdome. That’s our lifesaver.”

    She said they’d spent the last couple of hurricanes there. They would wait for a friend who has a van to take them, because none has cars.

    At a nearby gas station, Linda Young, 37, was tanking up her car.

    “I’m really scared. I’ve been through hurricanes, but this one scares me. I think everybody needs to get out,” she said.

    She said they planned to leave Saturday but couldn’t get gas, and didn’t want to go without it, so got up early and got in a gas line.

    In the suburbs, evacuations were under way.

    “That sun is shining too bright for this to be happening,” said Joyce Tillis, manager of the Holiday Inn Select at the airport in the suburbs as she called the more than 140 guests to tell them the hotel was under a mandatory evacuation. “It’s too nice a day.”

    Tillis lives inside the flood zone in the community of Avondale. She said she called her three daughters and told them to get out. “If I’m stuck, I’m stuck,” Tillis said. “I’d rather save my second generation if I can.”

  5. Mayor’s homicidal negligence

    There is abundant meteorological evidence and warning that should have prompted the Mayor and the Governor to order mandatory evacuation before Sunday. A single additional day or two additional days could have saved thousands of lives. The Mayor told people to go to the Superdome and to “bring their own food.” It is clear that he was totally clueless about the magnitude of the problem and what HIS DUTIES WERE. After the storm hit he was grandstanding to the media by Tuesday. Undoubtedly to cover his own homicidal negligence and dereliction of duty.

    This better be investigated and he had better be called to account.

    See the meteorological documentation of the negligence:
    http://www.brendanloy.com/page2.html#112503014191605809

  6. There cannot be a potential disaster scenerio in history that has received more study, planning and sense of inevitability than this one. There is virtually nothing in this disaster that was not anticipated by those who have studied it. Thirty years ago, in a previous career in EMS, I attended disaster conferences where the subjects of New Orleans, Lake Pontchartrain, hurricanes and levees were the center of discussion.

    This is an outright abdication on the part of the Mayor, Governor, State Legislature, Congress and the President of the United States. Warnings were ignored. Priorities misplaced. Trust violated.

    A $315 million bridge to Gravina Island in Alaska (population 50) that is to be taller than the Brooklyn Bridge was seen as more important than $100 million to repair a levee where the threat was real and verified.

    We have spent $192 billion and thousands of lives chasing a threat in the desert that turned out to be virtually non-existent. All this debt will kill us.

    Mayor Nagin, Governor Blanco and President Bush should be held accountable for this abominable failing to protect thousands against a real threat. This was not like the imaginary threats in Iraq that sucked up all the money (to say nothing of the Army Corps. of Engineers) leaving little for the levee.

  7. Lloyd, Funding is a red herring according to levee engineer, Mayor could have saved lives

    One decision, by one person, at the right time, could have saved 10,000’s of thousands of lives. If the Mayor of NO had ordered evacuation two or even one day earlier than he did, thousands could have been saved. He was careless and negligent and he is spewing blame on everyone else to divert attention from his responsibility. In an earlier note, I provided proof that the meteorologists had warned public officials of the devastation to come. I provided proof that Bush had to call Blanco and URGE her to declare mandatory evacuation. This decision alone cost lives, thousands of them.

    We do have a system in this country, that for the most part, works. Local governments have the first responsibility for identifying and acting on problems. Obviously, they may need substantial help from the federal government.

    In a previous note 22 I provide a copy of a newspaper interview with an engineer who has been involved in building and maintaining the levee system in NO. He categorically states that the so-called budget cuts had nothing to do with the levee failure. The levees that failed were NOT, repeat NOT, those which were subject to the so-called budget cuts on the federeal leve. See copy of article repeated at the end of this comment.

    Here is another copy of that newspaper article.

    Essentially, all the officials involved thought that a category 4 or category 5 hurricane would occur only once every 100 years. Public structures were not designed to stand up to them. Delays in construction did not contribute to the problem because the delay did not affect the segment where the levees actually broke.

    http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12539792.htm

    NEW ORLEANS
    Floods unavoidable, Army engineers say
    The Army Corp of Engineers said recent studies on strengthening New Orleans? levee system, designed decades ago, had not made much progress.
    BY PETER CAREY
    Knight Ridder News Service

    The levee system that protected New Orleans from hurricane-spawned surges along Lake Pontchartrain was never designed to survive a storm the size of Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

    The levees were built to withstand only a Category 3 storm, something projections suggested would strike New Orleans only once every two or three centuries, the commander of the corps, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, told reporters during a conference call. Katrina was a Category 4 storm.

    ??Unfortunately, that occurred in this case,’? Strock said.

    OLD TECHNOLOGY

    Strock said the levee system?s design was settled on a quarter of a century ago, before the current numerical system of classifying storms was in widespread use. He said studies had begun recently on strengthening the system to protect against Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, but hadn?t progressed very far.

    Strock said that despite a May report by the Corps? Louisiana district that a lack of federal funding had slowed construction of hurricane protection, nothing the Corps could have done recently would have prevented Katrina from flooding New Orleans.

    ??The levee projects that failed were at full project design and were not really going to be improved,’? Strock said.

    `EVERYBODY KNEW?

    Strock?s comments drew immediate criticism from flood-protection advocates, who said that the Corps? May report was a call for action and a complaint about insufficient funding, and that no action took place.

    ??The Corps knew, everybody knew, that the levees had limited capability,’? said Joseph Suhayda, a retired director of the Louisiana State University?s Water Resources and Research Institute.

    ??Because of exercises and simulations, we knew that the consequences of overtopping [water coming over the levees] would be disastrous. People were playing with matches in the fireworks factory and it went off,’? he said.

    Suhayda, an expert in coastal oceanography, said, ?the fact the levee failed is not according to design. If it was overtopped, it?s because it was lower in that spot than other spots. The fact that it was only designed for a Category 3 meant it was going to get overtopped. I knew that. They knew that. There were limits.’?

    NO SECURITY?

    Some critics Thursday questioned the usefulness of levees, saying that all of them fail eventually.

    ??There are lots of ways for levees to fail. Overtopping is just one of them,’? said Michael Lindell, of Texas A&M University?s Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center. ?There?s a lot of smoke screen about `low probabilities.? Low probabilities just means ?Takes a long time.? ??

    Strock said stopping the flow of water over the levees has proved to be ??a very challenging effort.’? Engineers have been unable to reach the levees and have had to draw up plans based only on observations from the air. ??We, too, are victims in this situation,’? he said.

    In Louisiana, Army Corps officials said they hoped that one break, in what?s known as the 17th Street Canal, might be closed by the end of Thursday, but that a second break in the London Avenue canal is proving more intractable.

    Short sections of the walls that protected the city from Lake Pontchartrain caved in under storm surges, including an area that recently had been strengthened.

    A fact sheet issued by the Corps in May said that seven construction projects in New Orleans had been stalled for lack of funding. It noted that the budget proposed by President Bush for 2005 was $3 million and called that amount insufficient to fund new construction contracts.

    MONEY CRUNCH

    ??We could spend $20 million if the funds were provided,’? the fact sheet said. Two major pump stations needed to be protected against hurricane storm surges, the fact sheet said, but the budgets for 2005 and 2006 ?will prevent the corps from addressing these pressing needs.’?

    Acknowledging delays in construction, Corps officials in Louisiana said that those projects weren?t where the failures occurred. ??They did not contribute to the flooding of the city,’? said Al Naomi, a senior project manager.

    ??The design was not adequate to protect against a storm of this nature,’? he said. ?We were not authorized to provide protection to Category 4 or 5 design.’?

  8. Lousiana had no plan to evacuate immobile poor

    The Mayor had to know this, it was the Lousiana State evacuation plan for New Orleans

    source:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1762948,00.html

    DISASTER experts said yesterday that the anarchy that engulfed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was in large part caused by an absence of plans to evacuate the poor.
    Officials say that about 100,000 of the 500,000 residents of New Orleans live on or below the poverty line, or are elderly and sick, mostly in African-American neighbourhoods. But after years of anticipating a hurricane, officials in effect ignored that this ?low-mobility? population would have neither the money nor the transport to flee.

    Brian Wolshon, a former consultant on the state?s evacuation plan, told The New York Times that at disaster planning meetings, whenever the question was raised about how to evacuate the poor and infirm, ?the answer was often silence?.

  9. Official NO emergency plan indicts Mayor

    Notice that by Tuesday the Mayor of New Orleans had essentially thrown up his hands and collapsed. But his own emergency plan dictates that the City needed 72 hours to evacuate from a CATEGORY 3 hurricane. Katrina was Cateogry 5 and the Mayor started the evacuation ONE DAY BEFORE. This doomed those in the inner city who were in hospitals or sick or pregnant or economically immoble. This mayor has got to be praying that no one reads his plan.

    Here is a link to the official NO emergency plan:
    http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=46&tabid=26

    CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS

    Under the direction of the Mayor, the Office of Emergency Preparedness will coordinate activities in accordance with the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan to assure the coordination of training programs for all planning, support, and response agencies. Departments, authorities, agencies, municipalities, and all private response organizations bear the responsibility of ensuring their personnel are sufficiently trained.

    The Office of Emergency Preparedness will coordinate training provided by the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Schedules of state emergency management training will be provided to all appropriate agencies. Applications for LOEP/FEMA courses will be submitted to the Director, Office of Emergency Preparedness for approval and submittal to LOEP.

    . Evacuation Time Requirements

    Using information developed as part of the Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Task Force and other research, the City of New Orleans has established a maximum acceptable hurricane evacuation time standard for a Category 3 storm event of 72 hours. This is based on clearance time or is the time required to clear all vehicles evacuating in response to a hurricane situation from area roadways. Clearance time begins when the first evacuating vehicle enters the road network and ends when the last evacuating vehicle reaches its destination.

    Clearance time also includes the time required by evacuees to secure their homes and prepare to leave (mobilization time); the time spent by evacuees traveling along the road network (travel time); and the time spent by evacuees waiting along the road network due to traffic congestion (delay time). Clearance time does not refer to the time a single vehicle spends traveling on the road network. Evacuation notices or orders will be issued during three stages prior to gale force winds making landfall.

  10. Missourian writes: “Evacution planning is the responsibility of local government because they know their cities and areas best. Evacuation planning means having established evacuation routes identified and publicized to the public. It also means having law enforcement direct evacuation traffic out of a city. Lastly, it means providing for those who lack transportion out of the disaster area.”

    There no doubt were failures at all levels. But local resources can only be expected to go so far. Let’s say that the mayor decides to evacuate everyone who can’t get out on his or her own. From what I hear that’s about 100,000 people. Let’s say that a bus can carry 50 people. That equates to 2,000 bus trips. This of course presumes that all of these people are ambulatory, which we know is not true. In fact, you’re going up have to transport a number of people with serious medical problems.

    And you need to transport all of these people maybe 300 to 500 miles away from New Orleans, probably toward Texas. So that means San Antonio or Houston. Those are pretty long bus trips, so you’re probably only going to get 1 trip per day out of each bus.

    If you want these people to leave 4 days in advance, that means we need around 500 buses in order to make the 2,00 trips.

    If you’re going to feed all of these people, that’s 300,000 meals per day, plus water. And as we drop everyone off, what happens then? We have tens of thousands of evacuees wandering around? And somehow all of this is supposed to be organized by the mayor of New Orleans? I don’t think so. Anything large-scale like this is where the feds come in.

    But really, my impression isn’t that people were upset because everyone wasn’t evacuated. They were upset because there were some fairly small things that weren’t taken care of. When you have 1,000 people living on a freeway overpass for three days without food and water, and the feds can’t address that, something is wrong. When the networks can get crews and equipment in position all over the region, but the military can’t move an infantry company into the French Quarter three days after the disaster, something is wrong.

    Last night a Fox News reporter was at the N.O. convention center. He said that there were a few police around his area, basically protecting him and his crew, but that as far as the eye could see there were no other police or soldiers present. This is where 2,000 refugees had gathered. This was after all the federal officials had been giving high fives and patting each other on the back over what a great job they were doing, and how smoothly the relief efforts were going.

    Today I heard a fellow on TV describing conditions at one evacuation center that had 6,000 people. At first there were no showers available for people who hadn’t bathed in nearly a week. Then showers were set up, but there were no towels. This, more than a week after we knew the storm was heading to the gulf coast, and five days after the actual disaster.

    Again, this is where the feds come in. But they have been awfully slow to respond throughout the whole situation. It even took several days for a decision to dispatch a hospital ship to the region. There didn’t seem to be a sense of urgency.

    Chewing on the local people is a great way to take the heat off of Bush. But he’s been in charge of the federal government for years, and supposedly we’ve had this big program to beef up federal emergency response resources. The director of FEMA is Bush’s former campaign manager, and had no prior disaster management experience. Oh well.

  11. Missourian,

    I agree that some simple, timely decisions would have saved many lives. It would be reductionist to suggest any one or two causes for this tragedy.

    Before FEMA was even created, people charged with disaster preparedness were obsessessed with the levee problems around New Orleans. Two days ago, a representative of the Army Corps of Engineers (whose name escapes me) stated that a lack of funding, design shortcomings and the loss of Corps engineers to the rebuilding of Iraq all contributed to the disaster. There were no surpises here. The threat was obvious. The solution wasn’t funded because it wasn’t a priority for the right people.

    If the levees were expected to fail, then either the levees should have been rebuilt or the city closed.

    Allowing a city that is below sea level to grow while there is an acceptance of the notion that the levees would not hold, is just grinding, abject stupidity. If you can’t make the levees withstand all possible scenarios, don’t rebuild the city. You don’t have to be a Mensan to know this.

  12. Note 12 Lloyd,

    We are not really in great disagreement. A tragedy of this magnitude cannot occur unless a large number of bad decisions are made. There we agree.

    HOWEVER, I have ALSO DOCUMENTED that the meteorologists at state and national weather services reported to the Mayor that at least a category 3 hurrican was coming to New Orleans. BY THE MAYORS OWN EMERGENCY PLAN, a category 3 hurricane required a 72 hour notice for mandatory evacuation to be effective. You have to agree that even one extra day for the mandatory evacuation could have saved thousands of lives. This is DIRECTLY, EXPRESSLY and WHOLLY the responsibility of the MAYOR OF NEW ORLEANS. The facts are that it was BUSH that had to call Lousisiana Governr BLANCO who in turn prodded the MAYOR.

    Was the Mayor soley responsible for the long-standing vulnerable position of the City? No, but, no other public official has the PRIMARY DUTY TO CARE FOR NEW ORLEANS. Perhaps you are aware of the long-history of nepotism and political cronyism in New Orleans that makes the former Mayor Daily of Chicago look like a piker. The Mayor is incompetent at best.

    There are immediate causes, intermediate causes and root causes of the NO problem. Yes, if you go back in time, say two years, every government official who was responsible for the city of N.O. failed to act on an obvious problem. I have supplied to this site a copy of the articles published by the Times-Picayune which quite precisely predicted a disaster just like this. Starting first with the Mayor, then with the Governor and then with some federal officials, all of them ignored the problem.

    I have also posted a article quoting an engineer who actually worked on the levees, that the so-called funding shortfall did not affect the levees that broke. You may also not be aware that some federal funding to New Orleans had been curtailed BECAUSE FEDERAL AUDITS showed graft and misuse of federal grant monies. This is also the Mayor’s problem.

    By the way, I am a Mensan.

  13. Unprofessional conduct

    Early in the week the Mayor engaged in some irresponsible comments that appeared to condone looting, and by Tuesday, he had clearly lost his composure and any semblance of ability to lead. He had been reduced to the status of near hysteria, screaming profanities at a news interviewer. This is not leadership and it did contribute to a sense of chaos and helplessness WHICH helped the forces of disorder and crime and undercut the efforts of public servants trying to hold public order together against impossible odds.

  14. Jim, you are correct. Local resources can go only so far. This is why local officials, if they see a potential shortfall in local resources, ask for federal help before the tragedy hits, as many of them do. The key here is planning which, by emerging acounts, NO had but did not execute properly.

    When Charley hit Florida, nobody could tell where it would land so mandatory evacuations were ordered two days before the storm hit all along the Florida west coast, from Marco Island to Tampa. The maps indicate how far inland the waters from a storm surge can reach and all the people in those areas were ordered out. Loss of life was a lot less than it otherwise might have been. Fort Myers Beach was devastated, but no one died because no one was there. So were Sanibel and Captiva, but everyone was gone. You might remember the eye of Charlie tore right through Captiva. I went there three weeks after the storm. You really cannot comprehend the devastation until you see it.

    We had three days of warning, and on the second day I put on the hurricane shutters. Everyone in my neighborhood was ready, food, radio, etc. and we all weathered it well. I live in a new neighborhood so the building codes are such that homes weather hurricanes much better than they once did (the roof is attached to the foundation with steel rods, for example).

    I’m not convinced the city could not have been evacuated with a proper plan. The city has hundreds of school buses. They could have been mobilized. They would not have gotten everyone out, but they could have substantially reduced the population needing shelters like the Superdome.

    You have to figure at least two days for any order or any plan to become effective. When you look at the timing of things in NO it roughly obeys this rule. Two days were needed to respond to the hurricane, two more days were needed to respond to the flooding. That’s four days. Help started arriving in appreciable ways on the fifth day.

    There is no way to get around this, short of having an entire garrison of aid workers on continuous alert, but even then it would take a day to get them to the disaster site and another to set up. Airports are closed, roads are blocked by trees or flooding, they need to eat and sleep, etc.

    Again, with proper planning and execution much of this could have been avoided. Command centers should have been chosen, food distribution points stocked, law enforcement prepared, staging areas cleared, before the hurricane hit. None of this was done.

  15. Note 15 Mayor sent people to the Astrodome with no provision for food or medicine

    The Mayor told people with no place to go to seek shelter in the Astrodome, but, they had to bring their own food. When the levees broke people could not stop to bring food and arrived at the Astrodome wet,exhausted, hungry and in some cases sick. The Mayor totally ignored the 100,000 low income people that could be expected to show up at the Astrodome and failed to have supplies in place for them. No one knows the New Orleans neighborhoods and population charactertistics and distributions better than the New Orleans mayor, that is why he is assigned primary responsiblity for developing a workable evacuation plan. The execution of that plan may require outside help, but, creation of a workable plan is the Mayor’s job for good reason.

  16. Missourian, Regrettably I am not a Mensan and I can’t even play one online.

    I agree that we are not that far apart. Incompetent local politicians, weaned in incestuous political environments where the greater good is not necessarily the objective, can be very destructive. This incompetence usually rears its ugly head with issues such as budget shortfalls or maybe some kickbacks. They rarely involve category 4 hurricanes and the potential loss of thousands of lives but the basic concept still operates.

    I would also argue that the term “funding shortfall” should be applied to the entire design, construction and maintenance of a system of levees that do not become the Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the citizenry.

  17. Knowledge and Utter Failure to Act to Protect the Most Vulnerable

    From WAPO: Washington Post

    But if blame is to be laid and lessons are to be drawn, one point stands out as irrefutable: Emergency planners must focus much more on the fate of that part of the population that — for reasons of poverty, infirmity, distrust of officialdom, lack of transportation or lack of information — cannot be counted on to leave their homes after an evacuation order.

    Tragically, authorities in New Orleans were aware of this problem. Certainly the numbers were known. Shirley Laska, an environmental and disaster sociologist at the University of New Orleans, had only recently calculated that some 57,000 New Orleans Parish households, or approximately 125,000 people, did not have access to cars or other private transportation. In the months before the storm, the city’s emergency planners did debate the challenges posed by these numbers, which are much higher than in other hurricane-prone parts of the country, such as Florida.

    Because a rapid organization of so many buses would have been impractical, the city’s emergency managers considered the use of trains and cruise ships. The New Orleans charity Operation Brother’s Keeper had tried to get church congregations to match up car-owners with the carless, and it had produced a DVD on the subject of hurricane evacuations that was to be distributed later this month. Unfortunately, none of these plans was advanced enough to have had much impact this week.

    Instead the city decided to use the Superdome as a “shelter of last resort.” Following that decision, a major mistake was made: Not enough food, water or portable toilets were made available to accommodate the enormous number of people who turned up. No one in the federal, state or city governments appears to have been prepared for the possibility that thousands would be forced to stay there nearly a week. With some forethought, the National Guard troops who arrived yesterday could have been en route before, or even immediately after, the storm. Five days was too long to tell people to wait without supplies.

    The question now is whether other major U.S. cities have focused on their immobile and impoverished residents to the degree that they should. Much of the emergency preparedness literature that has appeared on the Internet and elsewhere has focused on driving, on evacuation routes and on portable supplies. The events in New Orleans should force homeland security officials across the country to understand that this is not enough: Some thought must also be given to the fate of people who cannot or will not leave. The National Guard and FEMA should anticipate that some will remain behind, and food and water should be set aside for them. If fingers are to be pointed in the wake of this tragedy, this is one direction to point them.

    Comment: The “National Guard” and “FEMA” should anticipate that some will remain behind? What about city officials who had NO PLAN except to expect 125,000 poor people to a poorly staffed sports stadium? Excuse me.
    Notice how quickly WAPO concludes that bus transporation was “impractical.” They are using buses now aren’t they? The City could have posted and advertised emergency bus pick-up stations in the City. They could have advertised on TV where these pick-up spots were and marked them in the street. WAPO certainly goes easy on black Democratic mayors, can you imagine the outrage if this had been say…. Haley Barbour?

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  18. Note 17 Lloyd, is there is any justice the Mayor should be run out of town

    I think we have touched on the “funding shortfall” thing several times. First, there is a quote from one of the local engineers that participated in the maintenance of the levee system. He stated that none of the planners at any level thought that it was necessary to plan for anything beyond a Category 3. They thought that the change of a category 4 or category 5 was too remote. Second, there are quotes from local engineers that state that the so-called “funding shortfall” did not affect or involve the actual levees that failed.

    Lastly, I have worked for a large city government that had responsibility for building and maintaining streets, bridges, drainage systems and the like. While the city always WANTED federal funding, it was always free to proceed with its own funds. If certain improvements in the levee were needed TO SAVE LIVES then the city and the state had a duty to GO FORWARD WITHOUT FEDERAL FUNDS. The economy has been very good in the last couple of years. The State and the City could have and SHOULD HAVE found the funds to do what was necessary to protect the City.

    I am well aware that anyone can claim anything on line, I did send Fr. Jacobse a description of my academic degrees and a means to confirm my professional credentials. I asked him to refrain from making them public as they would identify me to a number of people.

    I am outraged at the mayor based on his criminal incompetence and the deaths his criminal incompetence caused but beyond his sins of omissions, he affirmatively contributed to the chaos by his reckless, borderline hysterical and childish comments. He deserves all the criticism he gets and more. As the WAPO article pointed out New Orleans officials were fully aware of the plight of at least 125,000 people and they couldn’t come up with a solution. It it had been their families and their nieghborhoods they would have.

  19. Parking lots full of unused buses

    Drude Report has aerial photos of fleets of unused buses parked in New Orleans, unmoved and now flood damaged. Funny the Mayor couldn’t find them. The Mayor knows the truth and he must be having a hard time sleeping at night. There have got to be inquiries and he can’t cover all this up.

  20. New Orleans Police Drop to 800

    If Japan Today is a reliable source the New Orleans Police Report has shrunk from 1700 to 800 as a result of the flood. See http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=8&id=348160. Some may have been flood victims, some may have had family as flood victims, but, I don’t think that accounts for a loss of 1100. Many quit without notice or took off their badges and faded away.
    Given the enormity of the situation, losing 1100 local police officers was a disaster in itself.

    Some sources reported that police joined in looting. Don’t have reference. Believable but still a rumor at this point.

  21. Thankfully the Orthodox Church has offered its generous financial assistance and prayers. I’ve also been waiting for these comments, and I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed!

    “New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion — it’s free of all of those things now,” Shanks says. “God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there — and now we’re going to start over again.”

    While many of [our] fellow right-wing Christians bicker over whether it was a Great Flood aimed at homosexuals or abortionists, I think one thing is clear: when it comes to poor black people without food or drinkable water, the Lord has quite an axe to grind.

  22. Note 21: Note: The links attached do not necessarily represent my views on anything, and some may find them bordering on bad taste.

  23. I’m inclined to remove the post James. Some of it is gutter stuff. It adds nothing to the debate. If your contributions do not represent your opinion, and if they are in bad taste (which some of it is), why did you pass them along?

  24. Re: “gutter stuff,” I agree that the comments about God sending the hurricane to “purge” New Orleans of sin is gutter theology/theodicy – but I also think Christians need to know what’s out there in terms of supposedly Christian “explanations” for catastophic events. I heard similar comments on local radio, just today.

    The Baptist site James quotes a New Orleans Baptist pastor, who “is adamant. Christians, he says, need to confront sin.”

    Of course we do. We need to confront our *own* sin. How does the other man quoted on that page conclude that God’s wrath is directed at the “Southern decadents” in NO rather, than at himself and his family or colleages? In the old witch trials, drowning was a sign of innocence – is it now a sign of particular depravity?

    Or, for those who believe God sends hurricanes (illness, etc) to punish sin, do they simply accept the “collateral damage,” as if God is an inept military strategist who can’t help destroying a lot of lives sort of incidentally, to make a point … or is every victim being individually punished (not just those in NO, of course – the devastation covers extends far beyond the city).

    This kind of thinking literally demonizes God.

  25. The catasrophy in New Orleans is not a political issue and I am fed up with everyone who is attempting to treat it as such. I had to walk away from two people in my own parish today who were so incensed with Bush for his failure (right after liturgy). Frankly, if it is anybody’s fault, it is mine. I’ve know for years that if a hurricane of sufficient size were to hit New Orleans, disaster would follow in its wake, so has every thinking, knowledgable person in this country. Have any of us done anything. Have any of us talked to people in power to help diaster perparedness in our own communities or in the nation? I haven’t. I’m too busy, too involved in other things, too something. It’s somebody else’s responsibility right? Frankly, IMO it is all a bunch of (excuse the phrase) intellecutal masterbation!

    In the 1950’s Wichita, KS where I am from, recognized it had a flooding problem. Practcially every spring when the rains came, the downtown area would flood. One courageous city commissioner led the fight to build a floodway around the city to divert overflow. The floodway was derisively called the Big Ditch. Despite being called all kinds of fool, etc. he persisted. The Big Ditch was built. Millon’s of dollars have been saved because of it. Yes, a lot of federal money helped build it, but without the local leadership of one man, it would not have happened. The people of Wichita would most likely still be dithering every spring about the floods and why doesn’t someone else do something.

    The buck does not stop with the President, it doesn’t stop with the Mayor or the Governor or anybody else but me. So if you want to vent your political anger, your feelings of personal impotence and general outrage on me, feel free. But guess what people, after all the “righteous anger” and great intellectual analysis of the situation (without any facts to speak of of course), people still need help, lots of help and they will need help for years to come. I’ve given some money, now I have to figure out what else I can do to make up for my years of apathy.

  26. Missourian writes: “Drude Report has aerial photos of fleets of unused buses parked in New Orleans, unmoved and now flood damaged. Funny the Mayor couldn’t find them.”

    The Washington Post reported that buses were considered, but that it would have taken 2,000 of them, far more than what was available.

    No doubt there were failures at various levels, but it’s important remember that post-9/11 the federal government has primary responsibility for responding to these situations. This, for example, is from the web site of the Department of Homeland Security:

    “In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort.”
    http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/theme_home2.jsp

    Here’s some quotations from a recent Washington Post article:
    —————————————-
    “This is what the department was supposed to be all about,” said Clark Kent Ervin, DHS’s former inspector general. “Instead, it obviously raises very serious, troubling questions about whether the government would be prepared if this were a terrorist attack.”

    “It’s such an irony I hate to say it, but we have less capability today than we did on September 11,” said a veteran FEMA official involved in the hurricane response. “We are so much less than what we were in 2000,” added another senior FEMA official. “We’ve lost a lot of what we were able to do then.”

    ” . . . last Tuesday . . . New Orleans was drowning and DHS officials were still hours away from invoking the department’s highest crisis status for the catastrophe . . .”

    The federal system that was perfected in the ’90s has been deconstructed,” said Bullock. Citing a study that found that the United States now spends $180 million a year to fend off natural hazards vs. $20 billion annually against terrorism, Bullock said, “FEMA has been marginalized. . . . There is one focus and the focus is on terrorism.”

    New leaders such as Allbaugh were critical of FEMA’s natural disaster focus and lectured senior managers about the need to adjust to the post-9/11 fear of terrorism. So did his friend Michael D. Brown, a lawyer with no previous disaster management experience whom Allbaugh brought in as his deputy and who now has the top FEMA post. “Allbaugh’s quote was ‘You don’t get it,’ ” recalled the senior FEMA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “If you brought up natural disasters, you were accused of being a pre-9/11 thinker.”

    Jack Harrald, director of the Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management at George Washington University, said FEMA’s natural disaster focus was nearly liquidated.

    On the Friday before Katrina hit, when it was already a Category 2 hurricane rapidly gathering force in the Gulf, a veteran FEMA employee arrived at the newly activated Washington headquarters for the storm. Inside, there was surprisingly little action. “It was like nobody’s turning the key to start the engine,” the official recalled.

    But DHS did not ask the U.S. military to assist in pre-hurricane evacuation efforts, despite well-known estimates that a major hurricane would cause levees in New Orleans to fail. In an interview, the general charged with operations for the military’s Northern Command said such a request to help with the evacuation “did not come our way.”
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article
    /2005/09/03/AR2005090301653.html?sub=AR

  27. quote:
    “In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st …”

    *That* explains it – either the disaster has to occur on or just before March 1, or we have a long time to wait.

    Seriously, all this discussion about local vs federal responsibility is side-stepping the definition and supposed mission of the DHS. For all the worry about violations of civil liberties in the name of enhanced security and more coordinated response to emergencies, we aren’t seeing the coordination … why do we think the response to a terrorist attack would be any better? Would lack of DHS response in that case also be blamed on local authorities?

  28. Note 24. No Juli. If the hurricane is indeed a judgement, it judges everyone. The “gutter stuff” dealt with the second link.

  29. Note 25. Michael, how is it your fault? Responsibility for inaction lies with the leadership. If you lived in NO and were passive, maybe you could take some of the blame. Otherwise I don’t see how you would at all be culpable.

    I’ve seen disaster relief and you should nnow that Federal authorites never take over a relief effort. They work in concert with local and state authorities. They took over in NO because local and state leadership proved to be nonexistent. Where things are organized and plans followed, things work out relatively well.

    When all is said and done we will hear how it could have been avoided. But keep in mind too that these things never work perfectly. A lot depends on the victims of natural disasters themselves, how they behave, how people help each other, etc. The rapes, murders, shootings, as well as the lack of local leadership indicates that a lot of corruption existed beforehand — social and institutional. This I am sure was not factored into any Federal response, and is still not being factored into the post-mortem as far as I see.

    Regarding the 2000 buses, if every bus makes 2 trips you only need thousand. If they make 3, you only need about 700. The same with the food supply. With a three day warning the Superdome could have been stocked for five days. Houston outfitted their stadium in two days. It did not take a federal mandate to make this happen. It does however take planning, such as assigning trucks, staging areas, relief workers, etc. That the mayor told the people they had to bring their own food borders on criminally negligent, IMO. Clearly he was hoping the storm would just blow over.

    Also, not too sure if the FEMA rep knows what he is talking about. FEMA is crucial in Florida. Ever since Andrew they have been doing a relatively good job. The FEMA he is describing and the one that I see, while far from perfect, is not the same FEMA.

    Note 27. Juli, I’m not sure how the Fed’s would respond in a terrorist attack, but it would be chaotic for while. But again, natural disasters are primarily a state responsibility. The Governor calls out the Guard, requests help from other states, etc. If you want to argue that this should change, fine. But local administration, when it’s competent, is crucial. They know the lay of the land.

    It really ought not to have been that difficult to arange an evacuation. Plans were in place. They just were not followed. Had they been followed, the discussion would be more about the physical devastation, not the human tragedy we witnessed.

  30. The situation IS political and I didn’t do it. To one degree or another, many people just didn’t do their jobs.

    This wasn’t a bolt from the blue. It has been studied from every possible angle for decades. The levee system did exactly what informed people have been saying it would do under these conditions. It just didn’t matter enough to the right people.

    I pay taxes to a government that claims to use them for the common good. I couldn’t build the Hoover dam by myself and I will not except even a hint of personal blame for this debacle. Governments show their priorities by their expenditures. It was obviously more important to project power in Iraq than build a category 5 hurricane-proof levee system around New Orleans.

    An immutable fact of life: If it is a REAL priority, it gets done.

  31. Fr. Hans writes: “I’ve seen disaster relief and you should know that Federal authorites never take over a relief effort. They work in concert with local and state authorities.”

    Not necessarily under the current policies. “Incidents of National Significance” are very different from the more “routine” disaster. From the Department of Homeland Security web site:

    “For those events that rise to the level of an Incident of National Significance, DHS provides operational and/or resource coordination for Federal support to on-scene incident command structures. The NRP [National Response Plan] provides mechanisms for expedited and proactive Federal support to ensure critical life-saving assistance and incident containment capabilities are in place to respond quickly and efficiently to catastrophic incidents. These are high-impact, low-probability incidents, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks that result in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions.”

    “The NRP provides the policies and processes for coordinating Federal support activities that address the short-term, direct effects of an incident. These activities include immediate actions to preserve life, property, and the environment; meet basic human needs; and maintain the social, economic, and political structure of the affected community.” [emphasis mine]

    DHS announced in January 2005 that the National Response Plan had been completed.

    According to the National Response Plan, the plan can be activated under several conditions including at the request of a federal agency, when state and local resources have been overwhelmed and assistance is requested, when more than one federal agency in substantially involved in an incident, or when “the Secretary has been directed to assume incident management responsibilities by the president.

    The plan specifically says that “If the president determines that an emergency exists where the primary responsibility for response rests with the Government of the United States . . . the president may unilaterally direct the provision of assistance under the act, and will, if practicable, consult with the governor of the state.” Note that the president doesn’t have to wait for a request, or ask permission. He only “consults” “if practicable.”

    In other words, we can’t say that the president’s hands were somehow tied, or that he had to wait around for a request. Had the president — in the face of a cat 5 hurricane possibly wiping a large American city off the map — wanted DHS to take over the response, he could have. If DHS didn’t like the New Orleans evacuation plan or the way it was being executed, they could easily have gotten the authority to take over command of the response. DHS is supposed to be able to provide immediate, short-term assistance as well as long-term recovery.

    Hurricane Katrina is a perfect example of why you want to have a federal department such as DHS in the first place. A federal response from beginning to end would have been entirely appropriate and consistent with the National Response Plan. At the very beginning Bush could have said, “look, this is too big and too critical for the state and local officials; I’m taking over.” But he didn’t. He spent two more days on vacation.

  32. Jim, obviously you have never lived through a severe natural disaster. Let me reitterate: if local leadership is not present, Federal help will be only marginal at first. There is simply no way to administer relief without local leadership. Who knows your town better? A cop who works there or a cop from Cleveland?

  33. What the New York Times Thought About Flood Control Funding in New Orleans

    From NYT April 13th, 2005
    immediate source: eurota.blogspot.com

    Anyone who cares about responsible budgeting and the health of America’s rivers and wetlands should pay attention to a bill now before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. The bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and other water-related projects — this at a time when President Bush is asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other important domestic programs. Among these projects is a $2.7 billion boondoggle on the Mississippi River that has twice flunked inspection by the National Academy of Sciences.
    The Government Accountability Office and other watchdogs accuse the corps of routinely inflating the economic benefits of its projects. And environmentalists blame it for turning free-flowing rivers into lifeless canals and destroying millions of acres of wetlands — usually in the name of flood control and navigation but mostly to satisfy Congress’s appetite for pork.
    This is a bad piece of legislation.

    Comment: The NYT is in full hue and cry and bashing Bush for not pushing this legislation into law.

  34. What emergency workers needs to know can only be provided by local authorities

    Assume that 1000’s of emergency workers arrive from another state, prepped and ready to go. Where should they go? To the areas of greatest need? What are those areas? Hmm, maybe hospitals, nursing homes, medical clinics, elementary schools for starters. Who would know where those are? The mayor and police of the affected town. What is the best evacuation route? You would have to ask the mayor and local town authorities. Where are the neightborhoods which house those too poor to have a car? Again, you would have to ask the mayor or local town authority. This is why the planning for evacuation is the responsibility of local mayors and local officials.

  35. Federal response from beginning to end?

    Jim writes:
    Hurricane Katrina is a perfect example of why you want to have a federal department such as DHS in the first place. A federal response from beginning to end would have been entirely appropriate and consistent with the National Response Plan. At the very beginning Bush could have said, ?look, this is too big and too critical for the state and local officials; I?m taking over.? But he didn?t. He spent two more days on vacation.

    *****************************
    BUSH DID INTERVENE he call Blanco and pleaded with her on FRIDAY before the storm hit on MONDAY to require MANDATORY EVACUATION.

    Let’s assume that after that phone call he decided to “take over.” As of Friday, the hurricane was Category 3 and could have landed any number of different places within a 200 mile stretch of coastline. Exactly WHERE along this 200 mile stretch should Bush have directed aid workers? New Orleans? Biloxi? Somewhere else? Apparently we have to elect supernaturally prescient Presidents. Let’s add this to the list of required attributes during the next election.

    Bush Derangement Syndrome: the belief that all evil in the world stems from Bush.

  36. “And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, ‘Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’. But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.’ And they went on to another village. Luke 9:54-56

    It is dangerous to ascribe anger as men know it to the Almighty. He is not as capricious as the Greek/Roman Pantheons.

    “New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion, it’s free of all of those things now”

    This sounds to me like a place where He would go immediately if He were to appear on earth. (To the eschatological Police, I meant it as metaphor.)

  37. Jim, What if Bush had send federal aid on Sunday night

    Remember the first disaster was the hurricane itself with punishing winds and rain on Monday, the second disaster was the breaking of the levees on Tuesday. Water was still RISING on Wednesday and did not stabilize until Thursday or Friday.

    No one could help anyone on MONDAY. Helicopters cannot rescue people WHILE a HURRICANE IS GOING ON. They cannot fly in that weather. Trucks cannot navigate the streets. That is why authorities order people out. The emergency rescuers would have become victims themselves and supplies and equipment would have been trashed into garbage.

    Anybody and anything inside the fishbowl of New Orleans proper on Tuesday when the SECOND DISASTER STRUCK, that being, the collapse of the levees, would have been WASHED AWAY. This would have destroyed the means to help the survivors.

    When a mandatory evacuation is ordered, the police and fire and medical rescue crews leave the region. Why? Because if they stay the very people and equipment needed to help will be destroyed. This is why authorities sternly warn those people who choose to stay despite mandatory evacuation that they are doing so at their own risk and that the government will not answer 911 calls or attempt rescues UNTIL the government calls an all clear.

    The Mayor of New Orleans fully knew, from his own planning committee, as I have documented from the Washington Post, that he had at least 125,000 who could not leave downtown, fishbowl New Orleans. He fully knew that these people were pre-dominantly black. He left fleets of buses parked in the city, which were destroyed and made unavailable to help people, either to evacuate before it was too late, OR to leave the city. He should have called for a mandatory evacuation on Saturday and sent buses into the inner city to get people out. He is responsible for all those people being trapped in old, run-down wooden structures totally unable to protect them from two disasters, the hurricane and the flood.

    Is Bush supposed to have the neighborhood characteristics of every city in the United States memorized? He is not Sheriff of the United States, he is President. Local officials have to be relied upon to take the lead and direct the allocation of resources, federal resources if needed, but they have to be relied upon to take the lead in their own communities. How could Bush have been expected to shoulder into New Orleans on Saturday and put those elderly and poor people on buses to get them out of there? How Jim?

  38. Lloyd, the internet is a festival of lunacy

    If you have some spare time, the internet is an endless festival of lunacy. You can find websites devoted to all sorts of illogical and nonsensical political and religious ideas, including some disturbing and hateful ideas. Some people think it is fun to look these things up and catalgue them. I don’t think it is worth the time. I would only consider or resopnd to quotes from recognized religious authorities or spokesman. Anyone can call themselves a “pastor” or “reverend” there is no law preventing it. Responding to the irrational, offbeat or hateful sites gives the authors a dignity and a forum they don’t deserve.

  39. Jim, which federal agency do you want to entrust all emergency response to?

    I am sure, Jim , that when you think about entrusting our safety to emergency responders you are thinking of something like the Army’s 82Airborne, but, what you would probably get is something like the I.R.S. In order to have federal emergency responders available for DOMESTIC emergencies we would have to create almost a second Army, Navy and Air Force, because we need to use our existing Army, Navy and Air Force to defend the country. Do you really want to shift that responsiblity upward to the feds? Imagine the additional cost, breathtaking.

  40. Have there been reports of violence outside of New Orleans

    Outside of New Orleans have there been reports of violence against police or National Guard? I don’t think so. There may have been looting, but, I am not aware of anyone turning a gun on police officer.

  41. WAPO admits locals dissolved

    Other federal and state officials pointed to Louisiana’s failure to measure up to national disaster response standards, noting that the federal plan advises state and local emergency managers not to expect federal aid for 72 to 96 hours, and base their own preparedness efforts on the need to be self-sufficient for at least that period. “Fundamentally the first breakdown occurred at the local level,” said one state official who works with FEMA. “Did the city have the situational awareness of what was going on within its borders? The answer was no.”

    Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301653_4.html

  42. Missourian writes: “Jim, What if Bush had send federal aid on Sunday night.”

    How about Friday?

    Red Cross was there. Salvation Army was there. The news media were able to send crews into many parts of the region. They remained safe and in many cases were the only source of information. How about sending military communication teams in advance of the storm? Then after the storm you have some idea of what is going on. How about staging medical resources, food, and water, just outside the area? If you know that thousands of people are heading into the Superdome, how about delivering a couple hundred soldiers and 20 tons of food and water?

    Missourian writes: “Is Bush supposed to have the neighborhood characteristics of every city in the United States memorized?”

    No, but his Department of Homeland Security is supposed to take both preventive and preparatory action. The possible destruction of New Orleans was one of three major disasters specifically noted and studied by federal officials, the other two being a terrorist attack in New York and an earthquake in San Francisco. The exact direction of the hurricane was unknown, but the consequences of a strike on New Orleans have been known for years.

    The evacuation for which you hold the mayor responsible could just as easily have been ordered by DHS using military vehicles, school buses, trains, or whatever. In other words, at the first sign of trouble the president had the authority to completely bypass state and local officials, consulting with them if he wanted to, and put command of the situation in the hands of DHS. DHS would have had the authority to deploy military vehicles, commandeer buses, or whatever. They could have had hundreds of troops standing by outside the area to take control of the unflooded areas after the hurricane. (The looters certainly didn’t have any trouble taking control of those areas.) They could have flown in tons of food and water by helicopter. They could have had communications teams on the ground (the same way that the media had news teams on the ground.) It wouldn’t have been perfect, but it would have been something.

    If the potential destruction of a major American city is not an “incident of national significance,” then what is? If the president wouldn’t invoke the provisions of the National Response Plan in those circumstances, then when would he? If DHS can’t fulfill their mission of providing “immediate, short-term” relief in such a situation, then why are they in the relief business?

    All I can say is that things must look different from Crawford, Texas.

  43. Missourian writes: “Jim, which federal agency do you want to entrust all emergency response to?”

    The Department of Homeland Security has primary responsibility for disaster prevention, preparation, response, and recovery at the federal level. The National Response Plan acknowledges that disasters should be handled at the lowest level practical, in particular at the state, local, and tribal levels. But “incidents of national significance” are different, and require a different level of response from the feds. We already have a department, DHS, that is supposed to be able to handle that.

  44. Note 44 Weren’t you complaining precisely about the DHS?

    Hasn’t your entire discussion been a complaint against the DHS? You true argument is that DHS was too slow to recognize that Hurricane Katrina was what you consider to be a “incident of national significance.” So you want the DHS, which you criticize as acting too slowly, to have more responsibility assigned to it.

    Do you want to expand DHS to be responsible for flood prevention? We will have to add a great deal of civil engineers to the payroll to supervise and oversee all the water treatment and water table control devices in the country.

    As Gomer of Mayberry would say “Gollllllleee” I’m confused.

  45. Note 41. This is exactly what I wrote earlier. It takes 1 day to endure the storm, another day for local relief efforts to start, the third to fourth day FEMA and other out of state agencies (such as powerline workers, etc.) to get to work. These times are not arbitrary. It is the fastest it can be done.

    When Charlie hit Florida, we saw some out of state power workers as soon as three days. They were put on standby and started toward Florida in their trucks but had to stay out of the storm’s path in order to protect the equipment. When you don’t know where the storm will track, it usually means they are a long way away — out of state mostly. Better to wait though than have the trucks destroyed.

    You have to figure at least five days of no power, no phone, nothing except a battery powered radio. If you are lucky things get restored earlier. Remember with no power gas pumps don’t work; grocery stores operate only on generator power thus no refrigeration; traffic control is gone, etc. If you suffer a direct hit, it can be weeks before anything is restored. We had power restored in five days.

  46. When do you want DHS to step in?

    Do you want DHS to step in whenever a category 3 hurricane is in the Gulf of Mexico? Category 4? Category 5?

    Do you want DHS to step when:

    1) 18th century cities have been built BELOW SEA LEVEL, AND

    2) when the local authorities know that the inner city is sinking 8 inches a year due to subsidence, AND

    3) when local authorities have allowed CONCENTRATIONS OF IMMOBILE BLACK AND POOR PEOPLE in PUBLIC HOUSING PROJECTS INSIDE CITY LIMITS TO PROVIDE A STEADY POOL OF DEMOCRATIC VOTES in an otherwise conservative state, AND

    4) the Mayor refuses to order a mandatory evacuation when the hurricane force hits Category 3 untilonly 18 hours before landfall even though the President called the governor and urged a mandatory evacuation at least 48 hours earlier, AND

    5) when the evacuation, according to the Mayor’s own plan, would require a minimum of 72 hours tocollect the poor, the old and the infirm AND

    5) when the Mayor’s own planning committee knows that the levees were only built to withstand category 3 hurricanes without catastrophic failure AND

    7) when the Mayor has available public and private fleets of buses within his own city, which he fails to use to evacuate the approximately 125,000 inner city poor who have no transporation, which he knows from the report of his own planning commission

    8) when the local police force is known nationwide as corrupt and when only 800 of a 1700 member police force show up for work?

    9) when the Mayor publicly excuses looting and the police publicly join in looting?

    10) when the depraved and venal local citizens shoot at medical evaucation helicopters thereby humiliating and embarassing every American citizen in the eyes of the world.

    11) when the Mayor of the largest city looses any shred of decorum and dignity and publicly swears at other elected officials as the consequences of his incompetence float in the streets beneath his window in the Hyatt Hotel where he is safely protected by a squard of police officers diverted from helping the dying public outside.

    SURE FINE WITH ME.

  47. Forseeability of Immobile Population

    This is what the former Mayor of New Orleans stated on MSNBS Meet the Press

    MR. MORIAL: When I was mayor in ’98, we orchestrated the first evacuation of the city during Hurricane Georges. After the evacuation, we did a public opinion poll, or a poll of the citizens of the city, which demonstrated that 50 percent, approximately, evacuated. About 20 to 25 percent found themselves in shelters of last resort, which were the dome, the Convention Center, and then another 25 percent refused to go. It was always foreseeable that there would be those that would not leave. There was a marker here, Hurricane Georges going forward, that led, I must admit to, for example, changes in the city’s hurricane evacuation plan which contraflowed the interstate, which, if that had not occurred, the tragedy may have even been greater.

    So under these circumstances, faced with what we’re faced, it was foreseeable that people would not be able to evacuate. Many of the people you saw at the Convention Center or the dome didn’t have cars, didn’t have means, didn’t have money. And also, let’s not forget, there were many who have now evacuated to hotels whose money is short, their jobs are gone. This requires a massive undertaking by our government on behalf of our own citizens. These are not, Tim, refugees. Let’s not refer to them as refugees. They’re citizens. They’re survivors.

    Comment? What provision did the current Mayor make for those who could not evacuate? He told them to walk through a Category 3 or higher hurricane to get to the Superdome and to bring their own food and water with them. Good planning, I’d say for nearly 125,000 potential people in one understaffed football stadium.
    Good planning. At the same time, fleets of buses sitting in parking lots were destroyed by the flood.

  48. Missourian writes: “Hasn’t your entire discussion been a complaint against the DHS? You true argument is that DHS was too slow to recognize that Hurricane Katrina was what you consider to be a ‘incident of national significance.’ So you want the DHS, which you criticize as acting too slowly, to have more responsibility assigned to it.”

    My criticism is twofold: first, that the relevant provisions of the national response plan should have been invoked early on. Second, that DHS should have been capable of the comprehensive response called for in the plan. You didn’t like the mayor’s response, but ironically, it is likely that the mayor’s flimsy response was no worse and probably much better than what DHS would have come up with.

    Think of it this way: if a massive disaster strikes where you live, what kind of capability do you hope DHS has?

    Missourian: “Do you want DHS to step in whenever a category 3 hurricane is in the Gulf of Mexico? Category 4? Category 5?
    Do you want DHS to step when:
    1) 18th century cities have been built BELOW SEA LEVEL, AND,” etc.

    It’s not what I think that matters. The National Response Plan defines what constitutes an “incident of national significance,” and details the actions that the president and DHS can take. Your party runs the country; the man you voted for appointed the head of DHS and has ultimate authority over that agency. If you don’t like the plan, your argument is with them, not me. They had a plan that covered the very situation that was supposed to be addressed by the plan. They had the authority to intervene at any moment, as early as they liked, whether or not any state or local official wanted them to.

    I’m sorry that N.O. resides below sea level. I’m sorry that a significant percentage of the nation’s energy and goods comes through there. I’m sorry that so many poor people live there. But that’s the reality on the ground, the reality that DHS has to plan for.

    Fr. Hans writes: “This is exactly what I wrote earlier. It takes 1 day to endure the storm, another day for local relief efforts to start, the third to fourth day FEMA and other out of state agencies (such as powerline workers, etc.) to get to work. These times are not arbitrary. It is the fastest it can be done.”

    The National Response Plan authorizes the DHS to take immediate and short-term actions in response to a disaster. It authorizes them to take over total command of incident response in the case of ANY incident of national significance. I’ve already posted the exact enabling language in the plan, and the conditions under which it can be invoked, so I won’t belabor the point here.

    Fr. Hans: “When Charlie hit Florida . . . ”

    With all due respect, that’s ancient history in the disaster response world. As of this year the federal role in disaster preparation, planning and response was greatly expanded, as were the expectations for both DHS and FEMA. With the larger incidents, it’s a completely different game now.

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