Fellow blogger Matt Drachenberg of Overtaken by Events is deeply worried about his mother-in-law, who is trapped in a nursing home just west of New Orleans. He writes:
I just had a very frank conversation with the administrator of Jefferson Healthcare, (where my mother-in-law is trapped). They were forced to make a decision yesterday as far as evacuation. Mr. Ray was honest enough to tell me that, had he had all of the information, he would have made a different decision, but as it stands, my wife’s mother will be riding out Katrina in a one-story bulding, with a broken pelvis, requiring a serious regimen of prescription medication.I really wanted to get angry about this conversation. However, once I realized that, should my wife lose her mother, Mr. Ray would also be dead, I found it impossible to be upset. I thanked him for his service and his commitment and said that he’d be in our prayers. There are people in that facility that make less in a year than a lot of people make in a week of Blogads, but they’re staying with the patients to which they’ve made a commitment.
Read that again — they made their decision yesterday, and would have decided differently if they had better information — and explain to me again how the mayor of New Orleans didn’t completely f**k this up. Does anyone doubt that, if he had ordered a mandatory evacuation yesterday morning, the nursing home would have made a different decision, and Matt’s mother-in-law would be safe now?
In other news, Jolie, a Louisianan who commented here under the name “Dr. J” last night, wrote me this e-mail about two hours ago, at 5:39 PM:
We just got our first feeder band in Hammond, LA north of Lake Ponchatrain. Our last houseguest has just arrived, so I guess we can hunker down for a long 24 hour stretch. I will keep you up on things until we lose electricity.
I’m praying for all of them: Matt’s mother-in-law, Jolie and his houseguests, and all the thousands of other souls whose lives are in grave peril.
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Categories: Hurricane Katrina
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August 28th, 2005 at 8:37:17 pm
Brendan–
I don’t disagree with your assessment. My only point is that, without knowing what a mandatory evacuation would look like, I’m not sure we can say with certainty how different things would be.
I mean, would folks have responded? You’ve been saying for hours–days–that this was going to be bad. The info was out there; why would another announcement from the Mayor have changed anything?
And if the mandatory portion of things would have meant committing National Guardsmen to pull people out of their homes instead of helping with the evacuation or other essential tasks, I’m not sure that would help.
But that’s beside the larger point that you and others rightly emphasize: Was there really no better plan in place than what we’re seeing?
Not to be flippant, but it reminds me of the scene in Ghostbusters when one of the character’s plan to capture the ghost consisted of yelling “Get him!”
Here, the plan seemed to consist of someone yelling, “Get out!”–and maybe too late at that.
Could they have loaded up Amtrak and other railroad cars with folks yesterday and shipped them out? Could they have used the Mississippi to send some folks up the river?
We’ll watch and pray with those left in harm’s way.
August 28th, 2005 at 8:47:55 pm
Jefferson Parish is not part of New Orleans. It sits right next to it but is not under the same local government. The mayor’s decision would have no authority there. I can not understand why people wait until mandatory evacuation to leave. All anyone needed to know was known yesterday. People may pay for making poor decisions.
August 28th, 2005 at 9:00:10 pm
If I see a Category 5 storm that looks to be coming right up my driveway, I’m not waiting for the mayor to tell me to evacuate.
If the administrator was that worried, then he should have evacuated the facility. Blaming the non-evacuation on the mayor is a cop-out. (At least that’s what I’m getting from this post).
It’s not like this storm appeared out of the blue yesterday and people had no clue it was coming. It’s been on the news for almost a week.
I’m not defending the mayor, but hindsight is always 20/20.
August 28th, 2005 at 9:02:00 pm
I am not talking in hindsight. I was telling people on FRIDAY NIGHT, on this very blog, that they needed to leave. I also assumed Friday night, that the mayor would order the city to evacuate Saturday morning, because that’s what he should have done. It was obviously necessary. That, too, is reflected in my archives, just scroll down or check Page 2. The mayor completely fucked up, and it is not “hindsight” to say so. It was contemporaneously obvious that he was doing the wrong thing.
August 28th, 2005 at 9:02:58 pm
Adam, it is not whether the mayor’s evac orders would have requires Mr. Ray to evacuate, but whether the gravity of the situation and the information to go along with that evac order would have persuaded many to indeed leave. Mr. Ray does not sound like a stupid man who wants to live in the edge–with a bunch of grannies under his responsibility–he sounds like the kind of man who would have had his whole facility–staff and grannies–evacuated, and he would be alive Tuesday. Now, I am not so sure this man is going to be alive on Tuesday.
August 28th, 2005 at 9:03:29 pm
P.S. The nursing home folks also made a bad decision. But I expect more of government officials than I do of random people. Government officials should have been reading between the lines of the discussion when this was “only” a Cat. 3 and realizing, as the rest of us did, that it would almost certainly reach Cat. 4 and quite possibly Cat. 5 intensity today. And then they should have sent out unequivocal signals: LEAVE NOW. Not “get ready to leave now, and I’ll tell you tomorrow whether you should actually leave,” which is essentially what the mayor said.
August 28th, 2005 at 9:05:07 pm
Thanks Adam, I’m sure we’ll take solace in the fact that the NO officials weren’t involved. Your geography lesson is invaluable.
August 28th, 2005 at 9:08:12 pm
Here’s what I wrote on Friday night at 11:22 PM:
I’m not a meteorologist. I’m just an amateur weather enthusiast, a law-student blogger who happens to be a hurricane buff. But if I lived in New Orleans, I would definitely leave at this point. Tonight. Barring a major change in the forecast, I expect the evacuation orders to come tomorrow. That will produce massive traffic jams and general confusion. My advice? Beat the rush; get out now. For it is imperative to get out. Katrina probably won’t destroy New Orleans — but it could. So if anyone in New Orleans is reading this, I’d personally advise you to get the hell out of dodge.
Note I said, “I expect the evacuation orders to come tomorrow [Saturday].” Honestly, it didn’t even occur to me that they wouldn’t come until Sunday! But at any rate, why the hell was I, a law student blogger, more on the ball than the mayor of New Orleans?
Now, tell me again about how hindsight is 20/20. Because I’m thinking that the need to evacuate was already crystal-clear on Friday night, when I wrote that.
August 28th, 2005 at 9:10:43 pm
Mark, people should not be expected to be hurracane bufffs like Brendan. The local government should have seen what Brendan saw, should have been alarmed, and should have tried its best to evacuate all residents. They pay people to do this for a living for God’s sake!! Besides, are you going to lon onto bloy.com and go, yeah, gotta pack up now! Or are you going to wait for the local authorities–supposedly the people who know best–to tell you to pack up? Unfortunately, many people fall under the former, and I am glad to see that Greg, NOpundit and Che and her cat Bea did get out, partly because they listened to Brendan.
Local government officials and the media should have been more pro-active about this. I am not going to ascribe some legal responsibility to the media here, but if the government will not inform its citizens that armagedon is coming Sunday night, then I think the news should have.
The mayour fucked up and the media didn’t help it much. I hope he lives to see the disaster his city is going to be so he can realize the enormity of his failure. I am not going to blame everything on the mayor, but he surely did not do everything he could.
August 28th, 2005 at 9:21:02 pm
The Jefferson Parish EM director is all over an old CNN show about a major hurricane causing “KYAGB” damage… how that position did not filter down thru local government mystifies me.
August 28th, 2005 at 9:25:56 pm
I guess my main point is that the entire region held the decison to leave. It was not unique to New Orleans. Also, those of us that live in this region (I am from Mississippi used to live in Ocean Springs now live in Jackson) should have a good handle on when to leave as we deal with the issue every hurricane season. Also, they roll out the worst case story for New Orleans every year. Everyone knows the “bowl” scenario. While the Mayor may have waited to long, the decision not to evacuate a facility like the one described is inexcusable.
I have been watching WWL and the reporting has basically turned to resignation and prayer. Kind off scary.
August 28th, 2005 at 9:31:33 pm
I get this conflicting reports on the mood of the locals. Someone said earlier that the serious tone of the mayor was apocaliptic and he had to tone it down–this before he called for the mandatory evac. Now, Adam says he is a local and people should know better than to wait for the mayor to call the evac. The mayor made a mistake, and so did everyone who stayed then–the mayor for aparently toning down his rethoric to fit the mood of the population, and the people who stayed because they knew what they were staying for. I wihs that was enough to make me stop feeling so frustrated about it, pissed basically, but it is not enough. It is basically their fault they are going to die, but I still think it is super sad, grrrr.
August 28th, 2005 at 10:18:29 pm
Something else to bitch at the NO/South LA officials about - why was the contra-flow system (that allowed outbound travel on both sides of the highway) stopped? The eye is 7 hours from landfall, the highways are still packed, and there’s another 4-5 lanes of roads on each interstate not being used. This makes no sense to me (although I suppose there could be a rational explanation).
August 28th, 2005 at 10:19:46 pm
I recently read about a simulation assesement which concluded that New Orleans would take 72 hours to evacuate 60-70% of the population.
When was it that the manditory evacuation order was disseminated by authorities?
+-24 hours before landfall?
Unless the public record is not privy to some essential bit of information that changes the equation, it appears as if the NOLA disastar mitigation system is lacking in practical math skills.
Also, a quick media surf reveals that the Superdome is being widely characterized as a “shelter of last resort”. A rather disturbing term that seems to have originated from a recent American Red Cross assesment which found no area within the New Orleans levee system to be suitable for their use as a designated shelter.
Shelter of last resort indeed.
What I haven’t been able to ferret out is a proper civil engineering wind load rating for the structure of said “shelter of last resort”.
CNN’s [unsourced] assertion that the Superdome is good to 200MPH does not cut it when most civil structures -especially those built to 1974 standards- are not built to codes that ensure safety for 100yr events such as this catastrophic storm.
If I or my loved ones were forced to seek safety in some “shelter of last resort”, I’d sure as hell want to know what the actual positive and negative pressure loadings were for the roof and wall structure. Preferably as of yesterday.
Apparently, the Red Cross assesment team had access to those figures.
The day-late-dollar-short decision making process looks very much like it has broken down on at least a couple of key logistical issues…With potentially disasterous consequences for the people of the city.
My thoughts and prayers are with everyone who will shortly be feeling Katrina’s wrath.
Godspeed.
August 28th, 2005 at 10:41:10 pm
Sounds like Matt’s mother-in-law’s facility needs a more capable administrator. Hmmmm, maybe one that could make a decision for himself and the sake of others; the ones who’s lives are entrusted to him. I personally rode out 3 of the 4 Florida storms last year. All three went over where I lived. Charley’s tornado that crept in our back yard was frightening enough until I met Frances. Frances’ winds threw a temper fit and collapsed part of the house in on me as an old Grandfather Oak tree fell through the roof. Frances stayed for 4 days. I started to believe she was there for the theme parks. Oh and lets not forget Jeannne! She destroyed my hometown and stranded us in the house for 3 days with no way out. Many many huge trees down and flooded driveways made leaving impossible. Nothing finer than an exercise regimen of constant chainsawing for 3 days while standing in thigh deep water - YIPPEE For those riding out the storm on the coast……..Don’t forget to say hello to my best friend that was killed in an accident 5 years ago. Best of luck - not the smartest thing to do!!!
Signed,
Are You Experienced!