Katrina's aftermath

Damn....uhh...I dunno. Follow the blog then and NOLA.com. But I'm sure you're doing that already.

is this still true? i know that there was a major crackdown on police corruption about a decade ago, and a complete top-to-bottom restructuring of the police department. have the changes stuck at all?

The Craigslist postings didn't improve my mood much.

As far as I know, yes. They're still the lowest paid in the nation.

http://www.nola.com/cgi-bin/prxy/photogalleries/nph-cache.cgi/cache=3000;/nola/images/3684/2075007.jpg

Just got a firsthand account that the water is creeping up Napoleon Ave. A friend who lives at Baronne and Marengo confirmed that the water is just starting to come up Marengo St. towards St. Charles. Four of them there are leaving town as I write this. After reports that downtown has devolved into complete and total anarchy, I am fearing for their safety at the hands of mercenary carjackers trying to get out of town. Fortunately my friends are armed.

i've heard that rookie cops make something like $13,000 a year. that's even less than the average entry-level starting salary in tucson (another very poor city -- jobs that would easily net $35k/yr in new york were netting about $18k).

Not politicize this? Fuck that shit. Someone is to blame. There is hell to pay.

i'll repost what chris posted on the other thread: the washington post article by the director of the king county, washington dept. of emergency management.

Destroying FEMA
By Eric Holdeman
Tuesday, August 30, 2005; A17

SEATTLE -- In the days to come, as the nation and the people along the Gulf Coast work to cope with the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we will be reminded anew, how important it is to have a federal agency capable of dealing with natural catastrophes of this sort. This is an immense human tragedy, one that will work hardship on millions of people. It is beyond the capabilities of state and local government to deal with. It requires a national response.

Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, at this moment, the country's premier agency for dealing with such events -- FEMA -- is being, in effect, systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security.

Apparently homeland security now consists almost entirely of protection against terrorist acts. How else to explain why the Federal Emergency Management Agency will no longer be responsible for disaster preparedness? Given our country's long record of natural disasters, how much sense does this make?

What follows is an obituary for what was once considered the preeminent example of a federal agency doing good for the American public in times of trouble, such as the present.

FEMA was born in 1979, the offspring of a number of federal agencies that had been functioning in an independent and uncoordinated manner to protect the country against natural disasters and nuclear holocaust. In its early years FEMA grew and matured, with formal programs being developed to respond to large-scale disasters and with extensive planning for what is called "continuity of government."

The creation of the federal agency encouraged states, counties and cities to convert from their civil defense organizations and also to establish emergency management agencies to do the requisite planning for disasters. Over time, a philosophy of "all-hazards disaster preparedness" was developed that sought to conserve resources by producing single plans that were applicable to many types of events.

But it was Hurricane Andrew, which hit Florida in 1992, that really energized FEMA. The year after that catastrophic storm, President Bill Clinton appointed James Lee Witt to be director of the agency. Witt was the first professional emergency manager to run the agency. Showing a serious regard for the cost of natural disasters in both economic impact and lives lost or disrupted, Witt reoriented FEMA from civil defense preparations to a focus on natural disaster preparedness and disaster mitigation. In an effort to reduce the repeated loss of property and lives every time a disaster struck, he started a disaster mitigation effort called "Project Impact." FEMA was elevated to a Cabinet-level agency, in recognition of its important responsibilities coordinating efforts across departmental and governmental lines.

Witt fought for federal funding to support the new program. At its height, only $20 million was allocated to the national effort, but it worked wonders. One of the best examples of the impact the program had here in the central Puget Sound area and in western Washington state was in protecting people at the time of the Nisqually earthquake on Feb. 28, 2001. Homes had been retrofitted for earthquakes and schools were protected from high-impact structural hazards. Those involved with Project Impact thought it ironic that the day of that quake was also the day that the then-new president chose to announce that Project Impact would be discontinued.

Indeed, the advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA. The newly appointed leadership of the agency showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed Witt. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Soon FEMA was being absorbed into the "homeland security borg."

This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission.

FEMA will be survived by state and local emergency management offices, which are confused about how they fit into the national picture. That's because the focus of the national effort remains terrorism, even if the Department of Homeland Security still talks about "all-hazards preparedness." Those of us in the business of dealing with emergencies find ourselves with no national leadership and no mentors. We are being forced to fend for ourselves, making do with the "homeland security" mission. Our "all-hazards" approaches have been decimated by the administration's preoccupation with terrorism.

To be sure, America may well be hit by another major terrorist attack, and we must be prepared for such an event. But I can guarantee you that hurricanes like the one that ripped into Louisiana and Mississippi yesterday, along with tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, windstorms, mudslides, power outages, fires and perhaps a pandemic flu will have to be dealt with on a weekly and daily basis throughout this country. They are coming for sure, sooner or later, even as we are, to an unconscionable degree, weakening our ability to respond to them.

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20050830/capt.capm10208301856.bush__capm102.jpg

What can they do? There's no airports available. The ports are all a mess. The roads are in pieces.

>Why are there hundreds or thousands of people just walking the highways with no other way to evacuate and nowhere to go? <

Some are poor. Some people's cars are ruined. Some never had them to begin with. Even if there were cars or buses or whatever, they may not be able to make it through the roads.

>Why can't vehicles be sent in to transport them somewhere?<

See above.

>Why aren't there more makeshift shelters in non-affected areas (or are there?) <

I'm sure there's tons of shelters. But they're just that. Shelters. They're already beginning on building refugee camps in Texas for the million or so displaced in Louisiana alone. There's simply not that many places to go.

>And why wasn't there a better evacuation plan in place to begin with
with all our homeland security-preparedness at whatnot? <

Evacuation orders were given with what, Sunday evening? If you waited till then to get out, well, it was only about 15 hours until the hurricane hit. For 1.3 million people. On only a couple freeways. There's just not going to be any easy way to get that many people out of one area to, say, 60 miles away. Its impossible to come up with one.

>And do we really not have enough troops to go in because of Iraq or is that not true.<

Not true. Pretty much every state in the Southeast, and soon enough, the US, is sending troops in. There will be more than enough.

Obviously, there's all sorts of issues, like how the levee upgrades were being managed. But almost anything like that isn't pushed ahead sans political gridlock and BS in this country unless people see bodies. I'm sure it will be convienent to blame George Bush for all this, and I'm no great fan of him, but this has always, always been an issue in New Orleans. Now, then, 10 years ago, 100 years ago, etc.

Will it? How? How is blaming anyone for this convenient?

Well, look already. People are posting pictures of him playing guitar. Do I think that was a smart photo op to take? Hell no. Is there a whole lot that George Bush can do at this point to fix issues in New Orleans? No. Is it solely the fault of George Bush that the levees weren't improved to the point where they were flood and hurricane proof (and who knows if the new levees even would be?)? No. So what's the point in blaming him solely (after all, where's the pictures of Louisiana's governor?) for what's happening? Well, you tell me.

nice to see people are reaching out and offering to let total strangers into their home:

http://photos24.flickr.com/38773217_1c7c38d560_o.jpg

Big Guitar
No, but I saw it on TV. My wife said it was the Hard Rock Casino in Gulfport. Most of the stuff they show, she seems to be able to identify from memory.

this is the guy who cut short a vacation to go sign a fucking useless terri schaivo related bill. made a rather large show of it. one person. already essentially dead. what is he or his advisors thinking to do that today? no blame for a hurricane hitting a city built below sea level, but c'mon... utterly moronic.

xposts

OK.

No.

http://photos32.flickr.com/38736100_688097b767_o.jpg

Again, its a stupid thing to do not to be in Washington or New Orleans. I entirely agree. He should at least look like he's doing something, rather than all of us watching WWL see the anchors and officials there say "gee, I hope the President comes soon". That's not the point. We're already discussing whether or not its the result of global warming, which, while perhaps there are climate changes that make hurricanes more likely now (though no one actually knows one way or the other), really doesn't matter because there's been hurricanes as long as time itself has been recorded.

What the hell? How could that possibly still be upright and in one piece?

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars. (Much of the research here is from Nexis, which is why some articles aren't linked.)

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:

The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.

"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."

That June, with the 2004 hurricane seasion starting, the Corps' Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don’t get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can’t stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn’t that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can’t raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season, as you probably recall, was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane- and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs. According to New Orleans CityBusiness this June 5:

The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7 million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay salaries but little else.

"We'll do some design work. We'll design the contracts and get them ready to go if we get the money. But we don't have the money to put the work in the field, and that's the problem," Naomi said.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount.

But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said.

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late. One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer was a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach. The levee failure appears to be causing a human tragedy of epic proportions:

"We probably have 80 percent of our city under water; with some sections of our city the water is as deep as 20 feet. Both airports are underwater," Mayor Ray Nagin told a radio interviewer.

i am not as well-versed as i'd like to be in the biohistory of the basin but i'd imagine that it's a problem that's existed as long as the army corps of engineers, morelike.

Louisiana could have tried to raise the money itself, but instead argued with the government over funding until it was too late.

SELA was a government program that, voila, became an under-funded mandate (like many programs during the bush administration). nor do i think it is necessarily "fair" to claim that louisiana should carry the burden alone considering the federal government as far as i can tell, thru the corps of engineers, was responsible for maintaining the canal and pump system.

Hell, the work could have been done a decade or more ago; everyone was aware of the problem then, and nothing was done.

SELA was started 10 years ago. something was done.

The only thing it proves is that politicians will argue as the world falls apart around them, and probably afterwards too.

not quite what i'm inferring but to each his own.

xpost - alan there's a topicality and urgency that was present to it after recent hurricane seasons, even drudge had a 'nola endangered' hed that he's trumping now, and despite this bush still ignored reality, still cut funding, still persisted in his attempts to dismantle fema, still continued chipping away at this country's readiness and security. his fuckups here are merely a small part of a much larger pattern.