From the Washington Post:
“The only thing I can say to them is I hope they have a hotel room, and it’s a least on the third floor and up,” Nagin said [to tourists on Saturday before Katrina hit]. “Unfortunately, unless they can rent a car to get out of town, which I doubt they can at this point, they’re probably in the position of riding the storm out.”In fact, while the last regularly scheduled train out of town had left a few hours earlier, Amtrak had decided to run a “dead-head” train that evening to move equipment out of the city. It was headed for high ground in Macomb, Miss., and it had room for several hundred passengers. “We offered the city the opportunity to take evacuees out of harm’s way,” said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black. “The city declined.”
So the ghost train left New Orleans at 8:30 p.m., with no passengers on board.
There are no words for the outrage.
P.S. There’s this, too: “Nagin said [Saturday] that by daybreak, he might have to order the first mandatory evacuation in New Orleans history, although his staff was still checking whether that would pose liability problems for the city.” WHY THE HECK HADN’T THEY “CHECKED” BEFORE?!?! That’s unbelievable!!! They’d known for decades that a storm like this would inevitably head their way someday — and it never occurred to them to check whether a mandatory evacuation order would cause liability problems?!?
P.P.S. And this:
By late Sunday, as millions of people in the Gulf region sought a safe place to hunker down, hundreds of shelter beds upstate lay empty. “We could have taken a lot more,” said Joe Becker, senior vice president for preparedness and response at the Red Cross. “The problem was transportation.” The New Orleans plan for public buses that would take people upstate was never implemented, and while many residents did manage to get out of town — about 80 percent, the mayor said — tens of thousands did not.
Why were the plans never implemented? Because they were a sham, apparently. The city “never intended to follow that plan — and knew many residents would stay behind.” The city’s director of “emergency management” (HA!), Terry Ebbert, said, “We always knew we did not have the means to evacuate the city.” So they decided NOT TO EVEN TRY, even after they had lied to the public by having a sham evacuation plan on the books for years. At least that’s what I’m getting from the Post’s article. Alternative explanations, anyone?
I don’t mean to let the federal government off the hook, either. Proving that Michael Brown’s inexpicable belief that this would be a “typical hurricane” had practical consequences, there this lovely tidbit of information:
At that point [midday Sunday], FEMA had already stockpiled for immediate distribution 2.7 million liters of water, 1.3 million meals ready to eat and 17 million pounds of ice, a Department of Homeland Security official said. But Louisiana received a relatively small portion of the supplies; for example, Alabama got more than five times as much water for distribution. “It was what they would move for a normal hurricane — business as usual versus a superstorm,” concluded Mark Ghilarducci, a former FEMA official now working as a consultant for Blanco.
Also… some new information here, as opposed to elaborating on themes I’ve been sounding for days… it seems that the levee breaches should not have taken anyone by surprise, at any point. The notion that New Orleans had “dodged the bullet” was the product of misinformation, not of delayed breaches. To wit:
Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana around 6 a.m. Central time, and within an hour, New Orleans Mayor Nagin was hearing reports of water breaking through his city’s levees. At 8:14 a.m., the National Weather Service reported a levee breach along the Industrial Canal, and warned that the Ninth Ward was likely to experience extremely severe flooding. A protective floodwall along Lake Pontchartrain had given way as well, which meant that billions of gallons of water were draining into the city.… Now the waters were rising. And nobody in charge seemed to know it.
On Saturday, according to Army Corps homeland security chief Ed Hecker, the corps had warned FEMA that Katrina would probably send water over the levees, and quite possibly breach them. [Doesn’t that mean President Bush lied when he said “we never expected the levees to breach”? Just asking. -ed.] On Sunday, the Army Corps’s Riley had told the FEMA videoconference that a plan was in place to repair levee damage once the storm passed.
But now the power was out, roads were unnavigable, and communication was practically nonexistent … The federal disaster response plan hinges on transportation and communication, but National Guard officials in Louisiana and Mississippi had no contingency plan if they were disrupted; they had only one satellite phone for the entire Mississippi coast, because the others were in Iraq.
That last bit will be politically damaging, to say the least. But to me, this isn’t about Iraq. The satellite phones were needed in Iraq; fine. So they should have bought more of ‘em!
And here’s another indication of the total incompetence at the top of FEMA and the Homeland Security Department:
But in public, Brown and Chertoff gave no such indication of the cataclysm, later saying they were not told until midday [Tuesday] that the levee breaches were irreparable and would flood the city.
THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE NEEDED TO BE “TOLD”!!! THAT IS AN OBVIOUS FACT!!! New Orleans is below sea level; of course levee breaches would flood the city!! I knew that instinctively, the moment I heard that a breach had happened. So did Mike Wiser, who responded dramatically when I told him over IM late Monday night what had happened: “My God.” Why do a law-school blogger and a biology student have a greater degree of common sense in disaster planning than the directors of emergency management in this country?
It gets even worse, though, because FEMA was not only failing to grasp the enormity of the situation; they were actually putting out misinformation:
William Lokey, FEMA’s coordinator on the ground, declared that morning: “I don’t want to alarm everybody that New Orleans is filling up like a bowl. That is just not happening.”
It would be funny, if it wasn’t real.
P.P.P.S. Some more outrageous stuff. This is on Thursday now, three days after the storm hit:
Meanwhile, St. Bernard Parish was still marooned. Out of 28,000 structures in the parish, only 52 were undamaged, and as many as 5,000 were simply gone. Every day since the storm, Ingargiola had waited for the federal government to bring food, water, electricity, anything. “They didn’t hear from me for four days, and they didn’t come to look for us,” Ingargiola recalled. “Did they think we were okay?”Anger was also rising at federal officials, who often seemed to be getting in the way. At Louis Armstrong International Airport, commercial airlines had been flying in supplies and taking out evacuees since Monday. But on Thursday, after FEMA took over the evacuation, aviation director Roy A. Williams complained that “we are packed with evacuees and the planes are not being loaded and there are gaps of two or three hours when no planes are arriving.” Eventually, he started fielding “calls from airlines saying, ‘Well, we are being told by FEMA that you don’t need any planes.’ And of course we need planes. I had thousands of people on the concourses.”
There’s much more, each detail more unbelievable than the last. Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: The locals f***ed up, check. The feds f***ed up, check. But let’s not forget Governor Blanco! She majorly f***ed up, too!
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Categories: Hurricane Katrina
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September 11th, 2005 at 6:10:23 pm
With a Mayor like Nagin, who needs enemies? My God Nagin should be put up on murder charges!
How could ANY person turn away an escape route like that? What was he thinking? Scratch that he is an idiot who WAS NOT THINKING ARGGGG
Gee how nice it would have been to get a few people from say the local hospital onto that train. Oh Nagin will pay sooner or later he will pay.
September 11th, 2005 at 6:17:26 pm
I think it’s pretty clear that he can’t expect to be mayor for much longer. NOLA has an election coming up in February, which may not actually be held, but if any ’special elections’ post-recovery are held, he’ll undoubtedly be dumped.
September 11th, 2005 at 6:56:36 pm
Can you prosecute an elected official from criminal ineptitude? I’m not sure, but this might be a case for it.
September 11th, 2005 at 7:01:03 pm
Ya know before the storm hit I heard Nagin say they were providing busses to get people out of town that did not have cars. What a LIAR!
I am personally sick of hearing people talk about the poor people of New Orleans as if they were dumb for not leaving for god sake they could not leave.
I wish some reports would interview the
the “Refugees” and find out if any of them actually had a chance to take a bus out… because I just do not believe it and think Nagin lied to the media to tell it what it wanted to hear.
To me that is pre meditated murder.
September 11th, 2005 at 7:04:29 pm
I’m not sure why you’d expect any more competency from someone who was a gofer to a city manager of an affluent town of less than 75,000. The biggest emergencies they’ve had there were a couple of minor tornadoes and a post office shooting.
I wouldn’t necessarily place any faith in Brown’s passing any relevant information up the chain, either.
September 11th, 2005 at 7:13:12 pm
I don’t think anyone did their jobs. As for Nagin, he did dispatch some school buses, but obviously not nearly enough. The part about the Amtrak is disturbing. At the very least he should have made that option available to people in the low-lying areas.
As for Bush’s comments, I think they are absurd. New Orleans’ levees breaking is one of the top three scenarios the Department of Homeland Security has identified. Bush either lied or he has remained willfully ignorant of the threats to the country he governs. In either case, it is not acceptable.
September 11th, 2005 at 7:18:50 pm
Have you seen the latest photo-op of Bush? He’s on a friggin’ aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Mexico.
Hey, Mr. President. The city is called “New Orleans!” It is a CITY! It is not an airplane hangar in Alabama, or a hastily organized photo-op in an uninhabited part of Biloxi, or a walk across a tarmack 100 yards away from the cameras with the governor of LA and the Mayor of NO. Get on a friggin’ Hummer and drive down Canal Street. If someone calls you an a-hole, so be it. Be a damn man.
September 11th, 2005 at 7:47:50 pm
As we survey the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina, one thing becomes painfully obvious. Our governments (federal, state, local) are approaching Third-World levels of incompetence.
On second thought, maybe incompetence is the wrong word. Perhaps they are competent in the wrong areas. Our governments are staffed with people who are competent at enforcing the bureaucratic regulations that provide jobs for them and people like them. They are competent at shifting responsibility for tough decisions to other people, other departments. They are competent at finding or creating well-paid positions to pay off the political hacks who helped them get their even-better-paid positions.
In the absence of crisis, few people notice how inadequate these systems have become. In a crisis, when we demand effective, decisive performance from all these people, we suddenly see the shortcomings.
This is what happens in Third World countries governed by people who are competent at enriching themselves through public service. People in those countries generally expect next to nothing from their governments. Expectations rise only during crisis–and then there is an uproar about how inept the government is.
In the Third World, the uproar dies down and everything goes back to the very bad state that passes for normal.
Will the same thing happen here? Or do we have enough public spirit, enough civic pride, to demand change? This is not a liberal vs. conservative, red vs. blue issue.
Homeland Security was recently placed in charge of response to epidemic–a threat that public health officials believe is certain to come, when Asian bird flu viruses undergo their inevitable mutations and begin to pass from human to human in airborne form.
If these people display the kind of sluggishness they demonstrated in New Orleans, hundreds of thousands of people are going to die.
Maybe this is the Bush plan for saving Social Security.
September 11th, 2005 at 7:49:10 pm
My God. It seems I knew more about what would happen than:
A: Nagin
B: Govenore Branco
C: Michael Brown
D: Chertoff
E: Bush
And as to my credentials I:
A: Live in the UK
B: Live in a country sans hurricanes
C: Merely read Sunday suppliments, current affairs news and geographical magazines
D: Had only my wits as a common sensical chap who has just over a layman’s knowledge of geography.
Quite unbelievable. Michael Brown should be sacked in name as well as deed, as well as Chertoff, and Bush should apologise for earlier misinformation.
And this is from a chap who said, “give Bush a chance on the reaction front,” as late as tuesday morning.
September 11th, 2005 at 8:06:19 pm
And as to my credentials I:
A: Live in the UK
B: Live in a country sans hurricanes
C: Merely read Sunday suppliments, current affairs news and geographical magazines
D: Had only my wits as a common sensical chap who has just over a layman’s knowledge of geography.
And yet you still sound more qualified to be FEMA director than does Michael Brown.
September 11th, 2005 at 8:18:26 pm
Picture Mayor Nagin as a bantam rooster strutting and preening and crowing from the lower branches of a minor bush and then going ballistic because the swill going down the drain refuses to go clockwise and you begin to see the real man.
Hell, if you BBQ him, he isn’t even an appetizer. In my day, he was a perfect candidate for a combination of Pizza and Lasgana which we called “pizangna.” What a man!
September 11th, 2005 at 8:21:44 pm
david Stacy -
WTF???
September 11th, 2005 at 8:24:42 pm
Did anyone find it “Wrong” that Nagin spent hours with OPRAH rather than tending to his city?
Nagin was star struch and just oh so thrilled to hang with the “O”
If this country can put marth Stewart in prison than they can surley put Nagin behind bars.
September 11th, 2005 at 8:25:37 pm
LOL MadMaqx those were my thought WTF is david talking about????
September 11th, 2005 at 9:02:38 pm
Hmmm. How about governor blanco too? Nice side by side cells.
September 11th, 2005 at 9:03:50 pm
Just awful. I voted for Bush, but Jeez. As for Nagin, the less said the better. He was criminally incompetent. There’s blame enough to go around.
One thing I want to say, though. After the blame game, then what? As an engineering professor, I am quite aware of the problem of trying to impress upon people the value of safety. Unusual occurences just do not capture people’s attention.
What I’m trying to say is that this is how people behave. Let’s say there had been a complete evacuation, and Nagin did a perfect job. Guess what? If the levees hadn’t breeched, everyone would be griping about Nagin. He’d be a laughingstock, thrown out on his ear in the next election. The heroes of the moment would be those who defiantly rode out the storm.
Brown was adequate last year with the Florida hurricanes. He couldn’t handle the storm of the century. Should Bush have replaced him before the storm hit? How can you tell if someone is up to the task of handling the storm of the century? After all, things went smoothly last year.
I doubt, frankly, if most of these lawyer/politician types know that water flows downhill. Scientific knowledge is atrocious in the US. They never needed to know it before. What they do know is that one mistaken call and you’re out. Remember the swine flu? It was a big deal, and Pres. Ford ordered mandatory vaccinations. The epidemic never developed. One would think that was a good thing, but Ford lost the election to Carter, and the mandatory order was an issue that cut negatively against Ford.
That’s what our politicians remember.
So by all means let’s have finger-pointing and a blame game. Just don’t expect all of the posturing to accomplish anything. Unless we can all agree on how to respond to a near emergency - one that might happen but doesn’t - and reward politicians appropriately, we won’t get anywhere.
That’s the debate we should have.
September 11th, 2005 at 9:16:08 pm
Dick, you make some excellent points. I intend to write a post soon addressing some of these broader issues.
September 11th, 2005 at 9:24:35 pm
John Stark,
Thanks for your insightful comments. It’s clear that there were failures and incompetence on every level. But I still believe that Nagin, like the Captain of the Titanic ignoring warnings of ice in the area, is the most culpable of all.
And it certainly scare me that the Dept. of Homeland Security would be a critical line of defense if an epidemic stikes the US. I’ve reached the conclusion that, as in the 1918 flu pandemic, it will be primarily up to local officials to try to contain the epidemic.
September 11th, 2005 at 9:26:44 pm
Dick,
I agree with your comments. After being an operational meteorologist for thirty years, it is still frustrating for me to give information to the “decision makers” I work for. It is often difficult (or impossible) to distiguish between a probability and a possibility. My customers are experts in Operational Risk Management. There is almost always some risk involved in what they do. There job is to get it done anyway. I know that. Part of my job is to help them mitigate adverse weather factors. Still, it’s frustrating at times when a forecast is ignored because weather is not an “exact science”.
Along those same lines, I’d also take issue with the Editor’s “Bush lied” meme. There’s a helluva difference between weather folks suggesting that the levees “might” be topped and someone else saying they expected it. If you buy a ticket to the state lottery, you might win. If you expect to win, you’re a fool (or as they say ” :”A lottery is a tax on folks who are poor at math.”)
September 11th, 2005 at 9:41:53 pm
Unlike Peter Evans, I have survived a direct hit from a Category 4 hurricane. So, here’s my perspective.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. IMO, the failures of the State and local authorities at pre-storm education and evacuation are more egregious than FEMA’s attempts at a cure. When your city and State are in the projected path cone of Cat 5 hurricane 24 hours from your shore, you evacuate no questions asked. When faced with the strongest storm of their generation, Blanco and Nagin choked. Both became incapable of making the hard decision. They sought solace in excuses and the possibilities that the storm would not hit them dead on.
As to the discovery of the levee breach, two things. First, a breach can mean two things: a) an overflow or b) a break in the levee. Second, it is impossible to get help to the levee in the middle of a hurricane until the winds die down. High profile vehicles will be overturned in heavy winds. (In FL, my state, they tell you in advance that rescue vehicles will not venture out when the winds exceed 40 MPH.) Helicopters would have much trouble retaining stability even in Cat 1 winds. you don’t send your rescue teams out in periods of high danger to them.
As to the levees themselves. They may have failed in winds of Cat 3 or less. The speed of hurricane winds decrease the farther from the eye you’re located. Also, the winds are faster higher above the ground than at the ground. In my town last year, as little as a one mile difference in distance from the eye meant being hit by Cat 2 or cat 4 winds. Also, the taller buildings in the slower wind areas sustained more damage than one story homes in the same area.
When it became certain that the eye of Katrina would pass miles to the east of NO, the authorities could have surmised (incorrectly as it turned out) that the levees would be hit with Cat 3 or less winds and storm surge. Again, the issue not really publicized anywhere is: Did the levees actually fail in winds that they were designed to withstand?
As to communications. Everyone should have learned from the 2004 hurricane season that communications would fail. As to the guy in St. Bernard’s Parish, why didn’t he have a satellite phone? The local government could have bought a few and maintained an account for about $2,000 down and $100 per month. But, you then run into the question of battery life. Sat phones don’t have long lasting batteries.
Finally, again, despite all these snafus, FEMA got lots of aid to NO in about 72-96 hours. That’s about how long it took them to get the stuff to us last year. We had 100,000 people in our county alone affected by the hurricane. All of our hospitals were hit hard. So, why is there a big blame game going about Katrina where a similar number of people in NO have been displaced and inconvenienced? Was it the fact that our county voted for Bush in 2000?
I think many of the critics are a bunch of hypocrites, whiners and political opportunists.
September 11th, 2005 at 9:59:29 pm
Just seconding what rick said. (SW Florian.)
September 11th, 2005 at 10:07:41 pm
POINT eaisly confused:
The media reported that NO did provide buses before Katrina.
They were not evacuation buses but buses to the shelter at the Dome.
September 11th, 2005 at 10:08:31 pm
I have lived in New Orleans the last 8 years. We left 24 hours before Katrina hit and got to St. Louis safely. I am very thankful that we are safe and that our places of work were Uptown and escaped major damage. Our home had 5-6 feet of water in the streets, so we will have some work to do when we go back.
I have to say that the amount of misinformation and finger pointing going on is a bit ridiculous.
Nagin is actually a very good mayor who came in a few years ago, cut down on a lot of corruption and has done more to repair the streets of New Orleans in the last few years than was done in the previous 20. He also was trying to work with a public school system with all kinds of problems.
It is not surprising that a natural disaster of such scale caused problems that took several days to even begin to tackle. There could have been better preparation and quicker action and there is enough blame to go around at local, state, and national levels.
The things that bother me the most are the stories of trucks and help being turned back. But I do not know if those are even true. Several of the stories coming out about what happened in the Superdome as far as rapes and stories of murdered children in the COnvention Center are not true according to N.O. police officials. There were attempted rapes in the Superdome is the official story. In People magazine today, a local N.O. singer(who apparently was assaulted and may be under extreme mental duress now) and other eye witnesses claimed that they saw dead babies heads sticking out of roofs and alligators grabbing people in the streets. Ummmm, somehow that doesn’t ring true to me ….
And the incessant chatter about the toxic gumbo of the flood waters and how even after it dries up, it will be toxic for years. Sure, the water is contaminated with bacteria and you can get a nasty infection if you have a cut or if you drink the water or get it in your nose. If you get it in your eye, you may get pink eye. But give me a break. It is not as bad as the water many people around the world deal with day in and day out. And the chemical contamination part is mainly speculation. I say this as a chemist.
Back to Nagin. I have no idea since I have not seen him on the news much lately, but he was saying it could be a few thousand dead and then this number of 10,000 popped up. I can easily suppose that he may have feared this or said it could be 1 to 10 thousand and then the media just took the higher estimate and started hyping that number. Nagin has said a few things when he was excited and upset that were his fears or were exaggerations, etc. but normally he is a very calm and collected person and pretty sharp, so I think he is getting a bad rap.
The last thing I want to say, and the real reason I posted is that most people seem to not realize that there are a few pieces of the equation they are missing.
One, this was almost a worst case scenario. It was definitely a storm of the century. Sure it could have hit directly and caused worse flooding and killed more people instantly, but in terms of the area affected and number of people stranded, it is without precedent in this country. Huge logistic problems.
Second, we only had a few days warning on this storm. Often, we have 5-7 days. In either case, it is hard to make a decision to evacuate until a few days before the storm arrives. It is hugely expensive and disruptive if evacuations are called and then the storm misses. In my 8 years in N.O. I already have seen 2 or 3 near misses that were forecast to be Category 4 or 5 heading straight at N.O. such as Georges and Lily.
I agree with the previous response about the problems with calling evacuations and then having the storm not hit. Then you have wasted all kinds of money and people will say that the mayor panicked, etc.
So here is my final two cents: The city is extremely poor and can not afford and does not have the means to evacuate 200,000 people 2-3 times a year whenever a hurricane may hit.
It was actually very impressive that they called a mandatory evacuation 24 hrs. early, and that Bush made it a disaster area before the storm even hit. It is impressive that maybe 1.2 million people of 1.5 million in the greater N.O. area actually evacuated. But these pictures of a few hundred school buses that could have been used or that a few hundred people could have gotten on a train are off-base.
A bus can probably only hold 40-50 adults. To get 100,000 or 200,000 people out requires 2,000 to 5,000 buses, not a few hundred. The picture is bigger than the 40-50 thousand people in the Superdome and Convention center. And you only have 24 hours or 48 hours, so you can’t make multiple trips. It took us 9 hours to get to Jackson, MS instead of the usual 3 hours. And you can’t just evacuate 200,000 people 2-3 days early every time it looks like a hurrican may hit the city. Also, would you really evacuate 100 preemie babies on a train before you even knew if the storm would hit for sure? Think of the liability if some babies died and the storm missed the city. My wife was up till 4AM and Lily was still projected to hit N.O. maybe as a Category 5, until a few hours before it hit, it went 50-100 miles west and came ashore as a Cat. 2
So it’s easy to see why people delay and how easy it would be to waste millions of dollars every year if we tried to evacuate and be completely safe. This is why I waited until 24 hours before to leave. You get burned when you leave and waste 3 days of your life and then the hurricane turns and hits elsewhere.
It’s also why we only brought a few days of clothes with us.
Just my semi-random thoughts.
September 11th, 2005 at 10:08:58 pm
“And here’s another indication of the total incompetence at the top of FEMA and the Homeland Security Department:
But in public, Brown and Chertoff gave no such indication of the cataclysm, later saying they were not told until midday [Tuesday] that the levee breaches were irreparable and would flood the city.
THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE NEEDED TO BE “TOLD”!!! THAT IS AN OBVIOUS FACT!!! New Orleans is below sea level; of course levee breaches would flood the city!!”
I think what they needed to be told was that the breach was irreparable, not that the city would be flooded. That puts a different light on it…
September 11th, 2005 at 10:19:01 pm
[Doesn’t that mean President Bush lied when he said “we never expected the levees to breach”? Just asking. -ed.]
The answer to your question is NO. Bush was TELLING THE TRUTH.
From the NYTimes:
Government Saw Flood Risk but Not Levee Failure
By SCOTT SHANE and ERIC LIPTON
New York Times
“Army Corps personnel, in charge of maintaining the levees in New Orleans, started to secure the locks, floodgates and other equipment, said Greg Breerwood, deputy district engineer for project management at the Army Corps of Engineers.
“We knew if it was going to be a Category 5, some levees and some flood walls would be overtopped,” he said. “We never did think they would actually be breached.”
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050902/ZNYT02/509020792
The Army Corps - the federal government entity in charge of the levees - did NOT think that the levees would be breached.
Hence - Bush was ENTIRELY CORRECT: the federal government did not EXPECT the levees to be breached. The fact that the actually ended up to be breached does not change that fact.
September 11th, 2005 at 10:25:03 pm
Thank you, Bill, for the much needed insight from a New Orleans native. I, too, am a native, although I now live in San Francisco. And Mayor Nagin is the best thing that has happened to that city in decades; I shudder to think how much more awful things would have been under prior corrupt mayoral administrations.
September 11th, 2005 at 10:42:15 pm
Heres another link that puts a different “spin” on FEMA’s “failures”.
http://www.proteinwisdom.com/index.php/weblog/entry/19000/
September 11th, 2005 at 11:09:36 pm
Another random thought (see my post above) for those assuming Bush should have over-ruled the governor and declared an insurrection or riot and federalized the National Guard.
If you take a look at your various home-owner’s, and I believe auto and flood insurance policies, most of them have disclaimer’s that allow the insurance companies to avoid paying damages in the case of riot or insurrection. So if a president does do this he is screwing alot of people out of money from their insurance companies. So, I for one am glad that he did not do this. I will need that money to repair my house over the next few months!
Bill
September 11th, 2005 at 11:22:30 pm
Blanco delayed signing a temporary order allowing doctors from other states to practice in LA, so they could help people without being put in prison. Doctors from all over the USA were sitting there waiting while she dawdled. What is wrong with that woman?
http://illumiblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/something-you-cant-blame-on-bush.html
Many LA residents must be regretting they didn’t vote for Bobby Jindal….
September 11th, 2005 at 11:30:56 pm
Good lord! You’re all being manipulated by the media and the Demos. Maybe I missed it, but has it occurred to anyone Brown handled all the hurricanes that hit FL last year with no problems? Two years ago we were hit with a Cat. 1 and FEMA was on the scene the next day.
Maybe–just maybe–there’s another agenda at work. D’ya think? Buried near the bottom of this article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/10/AR2005091001016_pf.html
is this:
“Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg briefed a group of Capitol Hill Democrats last week on the political fallout of Katrina, telling them Bush is losing support and that Democrats stand to benefit from the public’s discontent next November if they manage the Katrina aftermath shrewdly, participants said.” (Emphasis mine.)
People were still clinging to their rooftops and the Demos were already planning to “manage” all of us.
And Terry Ebbert sounds a bit disappointed here. (Hint, it’s GOOD news.)
http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/D8CGVPL00.html
“Alarming predictions of as many as 10,000 dead in New Orleans may have been greatly exaggerated, with authorities saying Friday that the first street-by-street sweep of the swamped city revealed far fewer corpses than feared.
“Some of the catastrophic deaths that some people predicted may not have occurred,” said Col. Terry Ebbert, the city’s homeland security chief. He declined to give a revised estimate. But he added: “Numbers so far are relatively minor as compared to the dire projections of 10,000.”
Gee…too bad, huh? 10,000 bodybags would have been sooo much better to “manage” us poor ignorant masses.
September 11th, 2005 at 11:41:44 pm
Harrison, it’s absolutely absurd to say that Ebbert is “disappointed” in the lower death toll. Absurd. There is NO support for that in his statement. He is not implying, you are inferring — and your inference is unbelieveably callous and irresponsible. Shame on you.
September 12th, 2005 at 1:12:02 am
Walken, Nagin may or may not be better than past mayors. I can’t opine as I’m not from N.O. But, not having a plan to evacuate special needs patients, not evacuating hospitals, not requiring tourists evacuate 48 before the storm (vertical evacuation…now that’s a plan), etc. - these are not tremendously expensive, they just take planning. If a f*cked up city like Miami can handle that, any city can.
Anyway, did anybody see the Time article about the levees? There’s debate that the breaks might have been caused by leaks due to shoddy construction or maintenance. It also said the 17th St. Canal levee (which was responsible for the majority of hte flooding, according to the article) was recently shored up, so there was no reason it should have failed in Cat 3 winds (which was all that the area experienced).
September 12th, 2005 at 1:15:45 am
I too am a New Orleans native and heard good things about Nagin. However, that doesn’t mean he responded well in this situation. He has passed the blame immensely and been over concerned with his media presence.
As for the governor. On the days preceding and following the storm, if there was a choice between the dim bulb, political hack (but likely not too corrupt) Blanco and the thoroughly, world class corrupt but smart Edwin Edwards, I’d take Edwards. He’d have bribed the pope to get buses to the city. He’d have seen it as an opportunity to have N.O. kiss his a## for the rest of his life.
September 12th, 2005 at 7:40:33 am
Brendan,
Your comment about Ebberts is correct. However, once Nagin lost his cool on the Today Show on Sept 1st, the partisan witch-hunters came out like a pack of vultures. And they have come mainly from the partisan left based upon their pathological hatred of this President.
I said that they are hypocrites because, if their shrill criticism is based truly upon some principled concern about hurricane relief, they should have been out last year with the same vigor when Hurricane Charley destroyed much of Sanibel and Captiva islands, Charlotte, DeSoto, Glades, Hardee and Hendry Counties in Florida on August 13, 2004. Their silence last year was deafening then and even more pronounced today.
If FEMA’s 3-5 day response to Katrina’s impact in New Orleans was unacceptable, then it should have been unacceptable for us last year. If this year’s snafus in New Orleans are unacceptable, why weren’t last year’s similar snafus unacceptable to these same left wing political hacks? Because we sure endured as many of them last year.
I can only surmise one answer for this obvious hypocrisy. Most of us weren’t their kind of people; i.e, people who voted for Gore in 2000. Where I see only people, these hyper-critics see voters. Therefore, while Ebberts was not disappointed, I bet many of the moveon crowd were/are dejected now that it is becoming increasingly clear that the vast majority of those body bags won’t be needed.
But where we they last year when Hurricane Charley destroyed the shelter of last resort in Arcadia, FL? They were likely sipping their martinis in Georgetown laughing at the calamity that befell all those redneck Bush voters. At least, that’s how their hysteria this year strikes this victim of Hurricane Charley.
Yes, I am very, very disappointed and angry at their inability to set aside partisanship for the time that it will take to restore New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast.
September 12th, 2005 at 9:21:20 am
Bill-
Great comments!! I love hearing from someone that was there and knows the city and officials before all of this hit. I really feellike the city wasnt prepared though, and that is the job of its officials. Fact is for all of the great things he has done there are so many that have died due to them dropping the ball. I always say the true test of a person is to be dead wrong and then watch how they handle themselves afterward. I cant say I am impressed with any of them, can you?
I certainly dont want to discount what Nagin has done to help the city, in fact it is a relief to hear that he was doing a good job. I would just really love to see someone stepup to the plate and say that this was a mess and implement the meansto getting a better plan in motion. With a check list and facts as to what and how to do it and the cities responsibilities. Granted there isnt much of a city, but I hope that there are plans underway now to build a better and stronger NO. (should I hold my breathe?)
September 12th, 2005 at 10:27:44 am
You’re blowing your meme. It was sounding like all FEMA’s fault all of the time over here. Are we back to idiot Mayor now?
September 12th, 2005 at 10:44:52 am
Nagin is actually a very good mayor who came in a few years ago, cut down on a lot of corruption and has done more to repair the streets of New Orleans in the last few years than was done in the previous 20.
Good to know that when the flood waters finally recede, New Orleans will have some of the best paved streets in America.
September 12th, 2005 at 11:10:58 am
Very true andrew and a more blunt at the point I was trying to make. Love you guys.
September 12th, 2005 at 12:23:48 pm
David R. Block, it is FEMA’s fault, and Nagin, and Blanco, and Bush, and Chertoff. With something this screwed up there is plenty of blame to go around.
September 12th, 2005 at 1:03:44 pm
Nagin, Blanco and Landrieu refuse to accept that their lack of action killed people. Those buses sat in water when they could of been used to evacuate people. Could you imagine how mad the Libs would of been if Bush had stepped in and taken over? He would of been stealing Louisiana and enslaving the people there or something as stupid.
Good Gawd and Kennedy would of had a stroke, Hillary would be spitten nails and Landieu would split her pants.
September 12th, 2005 at 1:05:41 pm
When I read how Nagin turned down AMTRAK’s offer to take people out befoe the storm, it became even more clear how much he failed his city. Any rational person would have not only accepted that offer, but then asked for non-stop shuttle trains to get people out.
But what eveyone still needs to see is his WWL-TV inteview on Sunday AFTER he was forced to order a ‘mandatory’ evacuation of the city.
He spent most of the time DOWNPLAYING the affects of the storm to the point of lying by saying there would be no toxic flood waters, saying that even with a Cat. 5 hit, any flood waters would be gone in two weeks and that both power and water service would be back within one to two weeks.
Either he was lying - or he is insane.
Remember - he had just said only hours before at the presss conferrence that he expected the leeves to fail.
And he still said NOTHING about how to get people OUT of New Orleans, and, again, this was just hours after he had said the leeves would likely fail.
Someone needs to get a copy of that interview and post it on-line, along with what he said after he - finally announced, long after he already knew the truth - that he leeves had failed and the city was about to flood and he - again - made no arangements to get people out of harm’s way.
This even though in some areas only had to be moved only a half-dozen blocks and often less than a mile or two to get to an area above flood waters.
Plus once he knew the ‘evacuation centers were being surrodunded by water - why did he not then at least get food and water delivered by trucks when they could still drive there?
And why was the presss silent - then and now - about what he said on Sunday znd his failure to act on Tuesday?
The press is second on the list of guilty parties, second only to Ray Nagin.
September 12th, 2005 at 2:02:27 pm
“Good to know that when the flood waters finally recede, New Orleans will have some of the best paved streets in America.”
Well, before Katrina it probably had the worst. If you’ve had to drive on them your whole life, you’d know how important this is to New Orleanians.
September 12th, 2005 at 3:25:22 pm
I too am a New Orleans resident, and have been for 8+ years.
I’d just like to pipe up and say that almost EVERYONE I’ve spoken to or heard from that actually lives in New Orleans and understands how it works, is proud of and in full support of Mayor Nagin. He has done more for that city than anyone thought possible his last three years in office, and has been a strong voice for us these last two weeks.
You may be flippant about the streets being repaved, but you certainly don’t understand what it was like to live with them in the condition they were in. For the people of New Orleans, having streets they could drive on without popping tires or bottoming out cars was of high necessity for daily need.
It’s quite easy to say what New Orleans did or did not need, but the fact of the matter remains: if you didn’t live there, you have very little idea of what you’re talking about.
I love my city, but it was in dire need of help before Katrina even hit. Poverty, illiteracy, deplorable schools.. that’s just the start. I worked for the city; when my library’s leaky roof flooded a printer and ruined it, we couldn’t afford to get a new one. THAT is the reality of New Orleans.
Yes, he made mistakes. EVERYONE did. But who on earth could have been fully prepared for what happened in New Orleans?
As for the Amtrack offer: In an interview on “Meet the Press”, Nagin repeatedly said that he knew of no such offer, and had in fact looked into using the trains, and was told they were booked up through September. I can’t say that this is the absolute truth, but neither can I say that Amtrack’s story is the absolute truth, either. Can any of you?
September 12th, 2005 at 3:38:51 pm
Uh, wasn’t it on MTP that Nagin said this is the first he’s heard of the Amtrak offer? If that’s true, then Nagin can hardly be responsible for “turning down” an offer he had not heard before.
I think even Redstate.org refutes this point by mentioning that Blanco may have been the one to turn down Amtrak’s offer.
September 12th, 2005 at 3:42:41 pm
“It’s quite easy to say what New Orleans did or did not need, but the fact of the matter remains: if you didn’t live there, you have very little idea of what you’re talking about.”
I hear you on that one!
September 13th, 2005 at 12:14:44 am
“But who on earth could have been fully prepared for what happened in New Orleans?”
No one, I’ll give you that. But not even evacuating hospital ICUs????
September 13th, 2005 at 1:39:27 am
“But who on earth could have been fully prepared for what happened in New Orleans?”
Would have been nice if someone was even REMOTELY prepared.
September 13th, 2005 at 4:39:48 pm
Our main complaint was that Nagin and Blanco didn’t even follow their own Emergency Operation Policies - it was already written down all they had to do was read them and follow the step by step directions…. No, they decided to wing it, then when the shit hit the fan they started SCREAMING about the failures of the FEDS…. just to cover up their own colossal failures….
To be screaming that you need 500 buses to evacuate when you have a photo of that many that were left to drown in flood waters…. WTF?????? That is incompetence… and just becasue they were screaming it now doesn’t change the fact that it was listed in their EOP, all they had to do was read it. INEXCUSABLE!!! If they made a safety decision based upon rolling the political dice - then they have no reason to scream at the feds for their own failures!
You heard Blanco and Nagin screaming about supplies not being sent in, there wasn’t water and food at the Superdome, etc., etc…. Yet when the Red Cross arrived the day after with food and water they were turned away from the Superdome by the State Homeland Security personnel at the checkpoint because ‘they didn’t want to encourage the people to stay at the Superdome’…. WTF????? If you turn away food and water sent by the FEDS why are you screaming that you aren’t getting anything?????
There are lots of these kinds ‘mistakes’, and understanding that things happen during a crisis…. but to SCREAM blame on somebody else because you’re an idiot is INEXCUSABLE….
September 15th, 2005 at 4:16:20 pm
While we all sit here and point fingers at local officials all the way down to mayor Nagin, I wonder how many people realize this: 1)We are all of course looking at this with the benefit of hindsight.
2) None of us were there to witness any of this. 3) Blaming the mayor is like blaming the branch manager of a bank when the bank gets robbed by a group of highly skilled professional bank robbers. 4) How well would you or I have done given the same training in the same situation, with the same amount of warning and preperation 5) How many people realize that whatever the lower levels of government did or did not do, in the aftermath of a catastrophy like hurricane Katrina the only resource availible when all else has failed is the Federal Government. 6) How many people realize that this storm was unpercedented in size and ferocity and it caught our geovernment with it’s pants down. 7)How many of us realize that if we don’t learn from this complete breakdown of our civil support structure (no matter who’s fault it was), next time might be the last time we get a chance to do anything.
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:42:30 am
Looking over these posts a little over a month after they were written; how many ppl can honestly say that what they wrote still looks somewhat sensible today? Imagine reading these posts a year from now.