I really am going to take that “day off” I keep talking about, but first, a brief note to any new visitors who are coming here after reading this morning’s article in the New York Times (or CNET News or the Long Beach Press-Telegram).
First of all, welcome to my blog! :)
Second of all, understand this: my early dire warnings that Katrina could destroy New Orleans do not suggest some sort of amazing predictive ability on my part, nor am I some hack who had a hunch and made a guess that just happened to come true. This was no fluke. I was basing my statements on solid, publicly available information — National Hurricane Center advisories, computer models, etc. — combined with a long-standing, well-justified apprehension about hurricane threats to New Orleans. I say “well-justified” because the catastrophic potential of a major hurricane striking the Big Easy had been widely known for many years. So when I saw Katrina turn southwestward last Thursday, I was immediately concerned, and when I saw the computer model predictions shift westward on Friday morning, I was downright alarmed. When the official National Hurricane Center track caught up with the computer models at 10:00 PM Friday, and the NHC declared the new, New Orleans-centered track a high-confidence forecast, I knew this was the gravest threat to New Orleans in my lifetime, and it was time to start seriously thinking about evacuations. This was Friday night, and what’s extraordinary isn’t that I saw the gravity of the threat, it’s that so many others seemingly didn’t.
In the Times article, I am quoted as “acknowledging” that “I am more willing to pull the trigger because I don’t have to deal with the consequences if they had had an evacuation and the storm hadn’t hit. It’s easy for me to sit here and say, ‘Everyone leave.’ ” That’s an accurate statement, and I’m glad I said it. But I wish I had added something along the lines of: “That said, given how grave and potentially deadly this particular threat was, I feel that ‘pulling the trigger’ on Saturday morning was clearly necessary, not just in hindsight but based on what was known at the time. For whatever reason, Mayor Nagin delayed the mandatory evacuation until Sunday morning, and that was a very bad decision on his part.” (I wrote at the time: “I can’t emphasize enough what a bad decision I think it is for New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to delay the mandatory evacuation order until tomorrow morning. … Will Ray Nagin go down in history as the mayor who fiddled while New Orleans drowned? Could be.”)
It is true, as some have pointed out in comments, that Katrina was not “likely” to hit New Orleans as of Saturday morning, or even Sunday morning for that matter. New Orleans was the hurricane’s most likely target — it remained in the crosshairs of the official forecast track all weekend — but in terms of statistical strike probabilities, even the most likely target at 24-48 hours out still has a less-than-50% chance of getting hit, thanks to the uncertainties inherent in hurricane forecasting. However, given the technology that we currently have, you simply could not have a greater threat to a specific location, 48 hours before landfall, than the threat that New Orleans faced on Saturday morning. It was, as I said, a “high-confidence forecast,” and one with enormously catastrophic potential. Thus, if an evacuation was not appropriate then, then it follows that an evacuation must never be appropriate at 48 hours. And that can’t be, because really, 48 hours is already too late; studies have long shown that it would take 72 hours to completely empty the city of New Orleans. So unless the city’s hurricane strategy was to throw up its hands and say, “there’s nothing we can do,” a mandatory evacuation — school buses and all — was most certainly called for on Saturday morning. As I wrote on Saturday afternoon, “If you knew there was a 10 percent chance terrorists were going to set off a nuclear bomb in your city on Monday, would you stick around, or would you evacuate? That’s essentially equivalent to what you’re dealing with here. I sure as hell would leave.”
Finally, one last point. As horrible as the catastrophe has been, please realize that it actually could have been far worse. What occurred was not the long-feared “worst-case scenario,” which involved not a levee breach equalizing the water level in Lake Ponchartrain and “Lake New Orleans,” but rather a storm surge over-topping the levees and causing the water level in “Lake New Orleans,” hemmed in by the still-intact levees, to rise substantially higher than the water level in the lake. If the storm had wobbled a meteorologically insignificant 20 or 30 miles to the west, and/or had not weakened from a Category 5 to a Category 4 at the last minute, that scenario would have occurred, and instead of a slowly developing 10-20 foot flood, New Orleans would have suffered a rapidly developing 30-40 foot flood. (Jackson Square would have been underwater, whereas in the real-world scenario it remained high and dry.) The whole thing would have happened Monday morning, and at the same time as the city was rapidly and massively flooding, the devastating winds that demolished the Mississippi coastline would have been tearing New Orleans apart instead. All of those attics where people took shelter would have been either submerged or shattered to bits. The French Quarter would have been swamped, instead of mostly surviving the flood. Second-floor generators in hospitals might well have drowned. Bottom line, there would be a lot fewer refugees and a lot more corpses.
I do not say this to minimize what actually occurred in New Orleans. Far from it! What occurred is plenty bad enough; it’s one of the two worst natural disasters in American history as it is, without any hypothetical scenarios worsening it. The reason I’m pointing out the “it could have been worse” scenario is to reiterate the absolute absurdity of statements by the likes of Michael Chertoff and Michael Brown that they were somehow “surprised” by how bad Katrina’s devastation was. If that’s true, they’re criminally incompetent, and if it’s not true, they’re lying to the public in the name of political spin. If they were surprised by anything, it should have been by the fact that New Orleans didn’t get it even worse.
So, there you have it. That’s my postscript to the Times article. And now, I’m going to take the rest of the day off from blogging, barring some real breaking news or something else unforeseen, so that I can get caught up on my school work. See y’all Tuesday!
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Categories: Hurricane Katrina
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September 5th, 2005 at 11:15:37 am
I’m glad I found this blog…wonderful job! I’ll be sure to continue to check in.
Thanks for this post…
September 5th, 2005 at 11:17:32 am
It looks like I picked the wrong week to give up reading The New York Times. :)
September 5th, 2005 at 11:23:05 am
Good points, but keep in mind that Nagin wanted to make the evacuation mandatory on Saturday, but was checking into the legal ramifications for doing that. Apparently, people can sue you if you give a mandatory evacuation that turns out to be a false alarm. People lose business, come back to find their houses looted, and other complications. Thats why Nagins didnt call for a mandatory evacuation on Saturday, although he did call for a voluntary evacuation.
Keep in mind also that more people left New Orleans than left Biloxi-Gulfport, which received more of a direct hit from the storm.
September 5th, 2005 at 11:24:32 am
Wow - just learned on CNN that there’s been a power play going on — LA’s incompetent governor, last seen about a week ago, crying, has been refusing to turn over command of her Nat’l Guard to the Feds, despite the White House’s insistance, b/c she didn’t want to be seen as a mere cog (or something like that). No doubt, this explains a lot of the sheer incompetence of the LA NG.
Because at a time like this, that’s what really matters — a governor’s self esteem.
September 5th, 2005 at 11:33:12 am
Source: Riehl World View
You Mean THAT Jimmy Carter?
Seems as while former President Jimmy Carter has been off globetrotting in and around others elections and disasters - he may have forgotten this part of his legacy. Point being, from a project funding perspective, no specific administration over the last thirty years is anymore culpable for the floods in New Orleans, than another.
New Orleans Levee System Not Designed for Katrina-Force Storm
The complaints and problems with corps funding go back to the Carter administration, and presidents since then have tried to draw money from the agency’s projects to pay for other priorities.
Mike Parker, a former Mississippi congressman who left as civilian head of the corps in 2002 after criticizing the White House budget office, said the funding problems occurred through Democratic and Republican administrations.
“The corps requested money to complete the projects through the years, but the funding level wasn’t given to them in order to do it,” he said. It’s the Bush administration taking the brunt of the heat now. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said New Orleans got an infusion of money for flood control projects in the late 1990s.
“There was less money spent after that huge project, as, of course, there would be,” Blunt said. “Any time you do a big building project, when that project’s over, the next year you spend less money.” Blunt suggested there might be a limit to the amount that federal programs can do.
September 5th, 2005 at 11:38:23 am
Nagin wanted to make the evacuation mandatory on Saturday, but was checking into the legal ramifications for doing that.
If true, this is absolutely not, by any stretch of the imagination, an excuse. In fact, it would only add to the list of damning failures by Nagin. The fact that he finally ordered the evacuation obviously means that any “checking into” the issue revealed that he could, in fact, order it. So why the hell hadn’t he already checked?!? He should have checked into this last year, when Ivan was threatening. Hell, he should have checked the moment he was sworn in as mayor. New Orleans has always known it faces this sort of threat. To be hamstrung by a lack of knowledge about the legal ramifications of a mandatory evacuation is totally unacceptable.
Also… I seriously question your premise. Of course, “people can sue you” for anything they want, but can they win? I seriously doubt it. Do you have anything to back that up? Can you cite something? If this is what Nagin’s office was really worried about, it seems like total paranoia to me.
September 5th, 2005 at 11:47:31 am
Not to give a running CNN commentary, but OMG, Nagin — the massively incompetent mayor whose poor judgement and lack of preparedness has killed thousands and contributed to the huge burden the rest of us now share — is giving this tall tale of how he was managing a meeting, telling the President and Governor that they need to sit down and sort things out, while he bravely hustled 3-star generals out the door to ensure their privacy. Good God.
September 5th, 2005 at 11:51:14 am
I agree totally with brendan’s response “Of course, “people can sue you” for anything they want, but can they win? I seriously doubt it.”
I think in a post 9/11 world the judicial system would not give too much leeway for individuals trying to sue the government for efforts to save their asses from giant national disasters.
September 5th, 2005 at 11:52:56 am
On a side note, not that i like people making a buck off of tragedy, but i’d really like to read a book that might be written by new orleans police officers about what has gone on. I’d like to hear about the efforts out on the streets on the city…
September 5th, 2005 at 11:58:40 am
Holy crap! Congratulations!!! It’s not every day one gets recognized in what is arguably the best newspaper in the country!
I have to say, I love the quote they got from Kaus: “Loy’s blog for the past week is a pretty extraordinary document … it should maybe be in the Smithsonian, if you can put a blog in the Smithsonian.”
Now that’s high praise, my friend.
And to add one Brendan-like comment: Woo-Hoo!
September 5th, 2005 at 12:03:19 pm
Here is part of what Nagin was calling for prior to the hurricane striking…
The link is below
Mayor Urges Storm Preparations
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, in a joint afternoon news conference with Gov. Kathleen Blanco, warned residents to take Katrina seriously. Hoping for yet another near miss could be deadly, he said.
ìThis is not a test. This is the real deal,î Nagin said. ìThings could change, but as of right now, New Orleans is definitely the target for this hurricane.î
The mayor said he would stick with the stateÃs evacuation plan and not officially call for residents to leave until 30 hours before expected landfall, allowing residents in low-lying surrounding areas to leave first. But he recommended residents in low-lying areas of the city, such as Algiers and the 9th Ward, get a heard start.
ìWe want you to take this a little more seriously and start moving ó right now, as a matter of fact,î Nagin said.
Entergy officials said the company has geared up for disaster with about 7,500 line repair workers and tree-trimmers ready to mobilize. ItÃs impossible to say how long power could be out if the city gets a direct hit, but other cities have had outages lasting more than month.
Nagin said the city would open the Superdome as a shelter of last resort for evacuees with special needs. He advised anyone planning to stay there to bring there own food, drinks and other comforts such as folding chairs, as if planning to go camping.
ìNo weapons, no large items, and bring small quanties of food for three or four days, to be safe,î he said.
Police Chief Eddie Compass said he and Nagin will likely call a curfew at some point, and would station police officers at shopping centers to prevent looting.
ìLooters will be dealt with severly and harshly and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,î he said.
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html#075222
its nearly at the bottom
Also in that link, it says Nagin called for a mandatory evacuation at 9:30 AM Sunday.
Whether its mandatory or not, what is hard to understand about “The mayor said he would stick with the stateÃs evacuation plan and not officially call for residents to leave until 30 hours before expected landfall, allowing residents in low-lying surrounding areas to leave first. But he recommended residents in low-lying areas of the city, such as Algiers and the 9th Ward, get a heard start.
ìWe want you to take this a little more seriously and start moving ó right now, as a matter of fact,î Nagin said.”
September 5th, 2005 at 12:03:54 pm
just learned on CNN that there’s been a power play going on
Actually, Washington Post reported about that yesterday. See sixth paragraph.
September 5th, 2005 at 12:04:54 pm
Great blog and I confess I’m one of the people who thought you were just postulating possibilities. One thing where I think you are incorrect: there is no real plan anywhere in the known universe to evacuate a large city. It cannot be done. Period. In each of our cities there are a very large number of poor and people who don’t have transportation for one reason or another. Evacuate Manhattan and the five boroughs? Los Angeles and the ten localities that comprise it? Evacuate San Diego with its huge illegal (and poor) population. I’m emailing the details of a New Orleans evac to save your bandwidth.
September 5th, 2005 at 12:05:14 pm
Brendan: greetings from Mishawaka.
September 5th, 2005 at 12:13:39 pm
OK, you ain’t got no email address posted. My analysis of the evac impossibilty is posted here.
September 5th, 2005 at 12:36:54 pm
Please read this link also, all the way through…
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1125213007249320.xml
September 5th, 2005 at 12:41:17 pm
Read this also, before you place all of the blame on the mayor and the govenor…
Why did the Bush Administration fail to act according to the National Response Plan they created in December of 2004 to deal with an incident like Katrina?
What do you do when the words on the paper don’t match the action in the field? People are dying today in New Orleans because of the failure to provide immediate aid are dead in part because of the negligence of Michael Chertoff. That is a harsh judgment, but if you will take time to read the National Response Plan that was signed into effect in December of 2004 there is no other reasonable conclusion.
The current effort by the Bush Administration to blame the victims in Louisiana and Mississippi is bad enough, but they are in big trouble once Americans take the time to understand that they the Administration ignored it’s own plan for dealing with a threat like Katrina. Why did they fail to implement the plan until it was too late to save lives along the Gulf Coast?
Don’t take my word for it, read the plan yourself. You can download it at http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRPbaseplan.pdf
The National Response Plan was accepted and implemented by Bush Administration in December 2004. According to the PREFACE, President Bush, “directed the development of a new National Response Plan (NRP) to align Federal coordination structures, capabilities, and resources into a unified, all discipline, and all-hazards approach to domestic incident management. . . .The end result is vastly improved coordination among Federal, State, local, and tribal organizations to help save lives and protect America’s communities by increasing the speed, effectiveness, and efficiency of incident management.”
Efforts by Chertoff and other Administration spinmeisters to pin the blame on the delayed response on State and local authorities does not hold water. Although the NRP recognizes that State and local authorities have a responsibility to ask for help, the NRP correctly provides a provision to take proactive steps to deal with a threat. On page 43 of the NRP the section is titled, “Proactive Federal Response to Catastrophic Events” (which I have copied and pasted below:
The NRP establishes policies, procedures, and mechanisms for proactive Federal response to catastrophic events. A catastrophic event is any natural or manmade incident, including terrorism, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions. A catastrophic event could result in sustained national impacts over a prolonged period of time; almost immediately exceeds resources normally available to State, local, tribal, and private-sector authorities in the impacted area; and significantly interrupts governmental operations and emergency services to such an extent that national security could be threatened. All catastrophic events are Incidents of National Significance.
Implementation of Proactive Federal Response Protocols
Protocols for proactive Federal response are most likely to be implemented for catastrophic events involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive weapons of mass destruction, or large magnitude earthquakes or other natural or technological disasters in or near heavily populated areas.
Guiding Principles for Proactive Federal Response
Guiding principles for proactive Federal response include the following:
■ The primary mission is to save lives; protect critical infrastructure, property, and the environment; contain the event; and preserve national security.
■ Standard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of
catastrophic magnitude.
■ Identified Federal response resources will deploy and begin necessary operations as required to commence life-safety activities.
■ Notification and full coordination with States will occur, but the coordination process must not delay or impede the rapid deployment and use of critical resources. States are urged to notify and coordinate with local governments regarding a proactive Federal response.
■ State and local governments are encouraged to conduct collaborative planning with the Federal Government as a part of “steady-state” preparedness for catastrophic incidents.
Implementation Mechanisms for Proactive
Federal Response to Catastrophic Events
The NRP Catastrophic Incident Supplement (described in the Catastrophic Incident Annex) addresses resource and procedural implications of catastrophic events to ensure the rapid and efficient delivery of resources and assets, including special teams, equipment, and supplies that provide critical lifesaving support and incident containment capabilities. These assets may be so specialized or costly that they are either not available or are in insufficient quantities in most localities.
The procedures outlined in the NRP Catastrophic Incident Supplement are based on the following:
■ The pre-identification of Federal assets and capabilities;
■ The strategic location of pre-identified assets for rapid deployment; and
■ The use of pre-scripted mission assignments for Stafford Act declarations, or individual agency authority and funding, to expedite deployment upon notification by DHS (in accordance with procedures established in the NRP Catastrophic Incident Supplement) of a potential catastrophic event.
Agencies responsible for these assets will keep DHS apprised, through the HSOC, of their ongoing status and location until the JFO is established. Upon arrival at the scene, Federal assets will coordinate with the Unified Command, the SFLEO, and the JFO (or its forward elements) when established. Demobilization processes, including full coordination with the JFO Coordination Group, are initiated either when the mission is completed or when it is determined the magnitude of the event does not warrant continued use of the asset.
While the Bush Administration is to be commended for coming up with a plan for dealing with terrorism and large scale disasters, it must be condemned for its abject failure to implement the NRP. And, specific heads must role starting with Michael Chertoff and the head of FEMA.
September 5th, 2005 at 12:50:32 pm
Howard,
I just read your “analysis”, and quite frankly, it’s retarded. You may be good at math, but when you plug in bogus numbers based on faulty premises, you can come up with any result you want.
First of all, you pull the number 250,000 out of where? I think maybe 1/10th of that were incapable of evacuating themselves. Considering the city is only 500,00 strong, I think that the estimates of the number of people left behind is much smaller. We can round up and call it 40K people. Using your math (50 people per bus, eight hours out of dodge), the city is still saving 1/2 of the people that otherwise could not evacuate themselves in plenty of time before the hurricane if they started on Sunday. If they started on Saturday, they could have come back to get the rest and gone back in the same day because it would not have taken eight hours, as you suggest.
Either way, it is ridiculous for you to say that because they city couldn’t evacuate all of them, they should not have tried to evacuate half. Here’s a hypothetical. I’ve got a boat, and I can take two people across a river. You and three of your family members are on one bank certain to die because of a giant monster that’s coming to eat you. You would find completely unacceptable my decision not to take any of you across because you won’t all fit in the boat. You would beg and plead that I at least take two of you, right? Those two lives are valuable to you. The twenty thousand lives, which you suggest were all that could be evacuated in a timely manner, are valuable to others.
That they couldn’t save everyone is no excuse not to save some.
September 5th, 2005 at 12:58:04 pm
JH -
I cannot fathom that you and other numbnut conservatives are trying to blame this mess on Jimmy Carter.
May I remind you that there have been three Republican Presidents (two of them two-termers) who have been in charge since the 70s?
Good God! Have some friggin’ pride.
September 5th, 2005 at 1:03:16 pm
Razzy -
Sounds to me like there was a plan and Nagin was following it. Now the plan may have sucked and may have been wrong. And, because of a lack of imagination, foresight, or both, Nagin didn’t bring all the resources to bear to help the poor of New Orleans. Regardless, it begs the question - what was FEMA’s plan? And did Michael Brown follow that?
September 5th, 2005 at 1:04:52 pm
Greetings from a SMC grad! I found your site through Instapundit.
Regarding your comment about Chertoff, I listened to the press conference and was left with a different impression than yours. I don’t think that Chertoff thought this situation was worse than the worst-case scenario of water overlapping the levees from a massive storm surge. Clearly, in that case, the loss of life would have been higher since it would have been sudden and violent.
Rather, what I think he was speaking to was the fact that no one thought that the levees would have collapsed, particularly at a site that was recently upgraded. As we have seen, the breaches are difficult if not impossible to fix when the water was rushing through. So rather than a sudden death, people are left stranded to suffer, in many cases, a slow death since rescuing people by boat and helicopter in the immediate aftermath, is not quick.
Again, I don’t think he was surprised by Katrina’s devastation, but rather I think he was referring to the type of levee failure contemplated, height instead of collapse.
September 5th, 2005 at 1:04:57 pm
Howard-
A fucking week ahead of landfall? Be serious. NOBODY would do that - including Giuliani.
September 5th, 2005 at 1:08:16 pm
Brendan,
From reading your blog, I know you’re no fan of FEMA being a part of the Homeland Security department. But don’t bash Bush because of that! Remember, he didn’t even WANT that department in the first place(1). The Department of Homeland Security is a creation of Congress in response to 9/11. It wasn’t until the meddlesome shuffling of the deck chairs became inevitable that Bush caved. The result is that the Coast Guard and FEMA got hijacked and inserted into another level of bureaucracy.
And to the commenters on Nagin and the mandatory evacuation, read this AP article written the Sunday morning BEFORE the hurricane:
“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.” (2)
So is that why Nagin finally ordered a mandatory evacuation?
(1)http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=118263
(2)http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisiana/index.ssf?base/news-18/1125239940201382.xml&storylist=louisiana
September 5th, 2005 at 1:17:40 pm
FYI-
Blanco declared a “State of Emergency” on August 26th. This is the closest Louisiana has to martial law…
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Press_Release_detail.asp?id=973
September 5th, 2005 at 1:18:55 pm
Great work — your coverage has been outstanding and congratulations on the press. Your thoughts about this not being the worst case scenario echo some of mine
You made my best of blogs list for Katrina in today’s post (although, like Ed at WeatherGuide, I respectfully disagreed with your position on the New Orleans mayor). Keep up the good work.
September 5th, 2005 at 1:35:34 pm
oddnut,
The bottom line is that an evacuation is mandatory or voluntary, people need to get the hell out. The evacuation rate in New Orleans was much better than the rate in the hardest hit areas of Mississippi.
Some people wont leave, no matter what. Some of them stay behind because they dont want their houses looted, and some stay behind just so they can loot. Others stay behind because they dont take it seriously enough.
September 5th, 2005 at 2:03:02 pm
I thought I saw on CBS news (yeh, I know) Sunday morning that the force of the hurricane with respect to NO was only a category 2. Under this scenario the levies should have held.
Is it possible that money previously allocated for purposes of maintaining the levies was used improperly?
September 5th, 2005 at 2:46:35 pm
Howard
The link has been posted in various comment threads to a plan that was IN PLACE for New Orleans for exactly this sort of situation. It involved calling for mandatory evacuations much earlier and using resources such as city and school busses to evacuate those who couldn’t get out themselves. BTW this meant evacuating them OUT of the city, not in the city to places like the Superdome.
So basically, you are wrong, there was a plan, the Major just failed to follow it.
September 5th, 2005 at 3:08:11 pm
This is all Jimmy Carter’s fault. He attracts hurricanes like a magnet.
September 5th, 2005 at 3:12:15 pm
Most of what you wrote is worthwhile, but I have a question on one point. I am curious to see how you knew on Friday night, that this was the gravest threat to New Orleans in your lifetime? The official probability was only 17% at that time. The hurricane strength was fairly low (about 100 mph) The forcast strength was a minimal cat 3 (115 MPH). I live in Houston, and have been following hurricanes for years. I have seen a number of storms threaten New Orleans 2-3 days out. Allen, for example, was a cat 5 3 days out, and was first forcast to hit New Orleans. Andrew was thought to hit New Orleans, and was much stronger when it emerged into the Gulf than Katrina was. I also remember a number of other storms that “just missed” a direct hit. I’m not sure how old you are, but in the last 20 years, there were about 5-10 storms that threatened New Orleans as much as Katrina did Friday night.
September 5th, 2005 at 3:46:09 pm
Dan M., so you scale things back the day before if the storm turns. You can’t hold off until the strike probability reaches 100% because the lead time is too much. You have to accept the occassional false alarm.
Me thinks leadership in LA is like the Mayor of Amity Island “we’ll have the greatest tourist season ever”
BTW, I was very impressed with Gen. Honore. He doesn;t seem to take any merde, and that’s exactly what they need right now
September 5th, 2005 at 4:00:03 pm
The following was posted by dailykos.
The Last Time America Lost a City
by SensibleShoes
Mon Sep 5th, 2005 at 12:22:26 PDT
[Promoted from the diaries with minor edits by DavidNYC.]
This post is actually by my brother, CaliforniaShoes. He’s comparing the government reaction this past week to the government reaction the last time an American city was destroyed - San Francisco, April 18, 1906.
The earthquake struck at 5:13 AM.
By 7 AM federal troops had reported to the mayor.
By 8 AM they were patrolling the entire downtown area and searching for survivors.
The second quake struck at 8:14 AM.
By 10:05 AM the USS Chicago was on its way from San Diego to San Francisco; by 10:30 the USS Preble had landed a medical team and set up an emergency hospital.
By 11 AM large parts of the city were on fire; troops continued to arrive throughout the day, evacuating people from the areas threatened by fire to emergency shelters and Golden Gate Park.
St. Mary’s hospital was destroyed by the fire at 1 PM, with no loss of life, the staff and patients having already been evacuated across the bay to Oakland.
By 3 PM troops had shot several looters, and dynamited buildings to make a firebreak; by five they had buried dozens of corpses, the morgue and the police pistol range being unable to hold any more.
At 8:40 PM General Funston requested emergency housing - tents and shelters - from the War Department in Washington; all of the tents in the U.S. Army were on their way to San Francisco by 4:55 AM the next morning.
Prisoners were evacuated to Alcatraz, and by April 20 (two days after the earthquake) the USS Chicago had reached San Francisco, where it evacuated 20,000 refugees.
Of course, the technology of the day was fairly primitive, and the U.S. was a much poorer country. No doubt we could move more quickly today.
September 5th, 2005 at 5:11:45 pm
Our technology’s better these days, yes, but dealing with the aftermath of an earthquake is a lot easier than dealing with the aftermath of a flood. The access to the city is much greater (perhaps the roads are ripped up, but it’s a lot easier to drive over broken roads/unpaved earth than it is to drive over water), the continuing source of damage is much easier to fight (firebreaks can be built far faster than can retaining walls, and are more amenable to help from untrained hands), downed power lines aren’t lethal at anywhere near the same distance away, you can actually see the obstacles on dry land whereas water can obscure lethal traps quite easily, and so on. I certainly think some of the response to this disaster could have been better myself, but I don’t think it’s exactly fair to compare response times from floods to earthquakes, as the former are simply a lot more difficult to deal with than the latter.
September 5th, 2005 at 5:16:03 pm
JH -
It would be interesting to see if this is 100% true. If so, our response time isn’t as bad as it was 100 years ago. It is much worse.
September 5th, 2005 at 5:19:05 pm
Mike-
It doesn’t matter if this is a flood or earthquake. US military assets weren’t deployed to the area until FRIDAY! Five days after the hurricane! The Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security and would have been reporting up the chain of command to Chertoff about what was happening on the ground. There is no excuse for the Feds’ delay.
September 5th, 2005 at 5:21:36 pm
Katrina: Ray Nagin on 60 Communists er ah . . . Minutes
Crooks and Liars has the video of Ray Nagin on 60 Minutes this past Sunday. Oh goodness the interviewer wanted him to blame Bush so bad I think he was about to explode with ìJUST BLAME BUSH FOR THE LOVE OF GODî.
Nagin did blame the government for not deciding who had jurisdiction of the area, the state or the feds. However, Nagin did not bring up the subject that he had the chance to rescue people with buses but didnÃt.
Go to Crooks and Liars to download the video.
September 5th, 2005 at 5:26:53 pm
saw your comment thought it was good
paul
September 5th, 2005 at 5:58:21 pm
Three factors contributed to the post-hurricane mess: 1) the people who chose not to evacuate; 2) the State and local authorities who failed to order a mandatory evacuation of the areas most likely to flood; and 3) FEMA for not acting as quickly as possible to address the problems created by #1 and #2. Nevertheless, the first large convoys of food and water arrived in NO about 72 hours after the hurricane passed. That was about the same amount of time that it took for them to arrive in my town last year after Hurricane Charley destroyed it. In other words, despite all the snafus, help got there at the tail end of the 72 hour window. IMO, that is remarkable.
September 5th, 2005 at 6:07:40 pm
Great Job Brendan - Hang in there.
Please consider promoting this petition in response. WE can do something good for the people of NOLA.
http://www.petitiononline.com/tru56ppa/petition.html
nola4nola.blogspot.com
September 5th, 2005 at 6:28:20 pm
Max, I’m not saying that the response was there fast enough*, I’m saying that we should limit our criticisms to fair comparisons. I’ve had my hometown declared a federal disaster area myself before, and received a much faster response even though the risk of death was several orders of magnitude less than it is in the Gulf Coast these days, but that’s not a fair comparison either–the disaster was a blizzard, which is probably the natural disaster that’s easiest to clean up (competing only with tornados, which are far more destructive to their victims, but present much less of a problem to those whose homes aren’t destroyed). The main reasons that we got a faster response was that a) it was a lot easier to deal with and b) the affected area primarily needed money so that it could pay the existing local plow drivers (and those who came in from a neighboring city) overtime to get things cleared, not federal manpower–money gets released a lot faster than boots arrive, not that the federal government cares more about the people trapped in Buffalo than those trapped in New Orleans.
*though given that it’s standard for FEMA to tell everyone to expect to be on their own for 72-96 hours after a disaster strikes, Friday isn’t out of the ballpark–landfall was Monday morning, after all, so Friday’s at the 96 hour range. Friday is 4 days after Monday, not 5, Max. If we’re going to criticize federal response for being too slow, then let’s criticize those standards, not just this specific incident as a racist response on the part of the feds.
September 5th, 2005 at 6:32:15 pm
Jesus Christ, isn’t it possible to blame the whole lot of them that screwed up? Instead of cherry-picking the people you want blamed because you want some sort of political advantage?! Bush SCREWED UP at the federal level, and Blanco and Nagin SCREWED UP at the state and local level. The sooner you partisan HACKS come to terms with that, the sooner we can get to the bottom of who’s to blame, and consequently what to do about it.
September 5th, 2005 at 7:42:10 pm
FYI: LA Governor bringing in former FEMA Director and Clinton Appointee James Lee Witt to direct State-Federal efforts. Thank god, finally…an adult running things. Here’s the permalink:
http://raywert.blogspot.com/2005/09/breaking-news-getting-some-james-lee.html
September 5th, 2005 at 7:53:16 pm
“Jesus Christ, isn’t it possible to blame the whole lot of them that screwed up?”
I’ve been saying that from the start. They should all lose their jobs over this.
September 5th, 2005 at 7:57:12 pm
Mike-
On another link here I posted how FEMA responded to Hurricane Floyd under Clinton. Clinton declared a state of emergency before the Hurrican hit and then ordered Mandatory Evacuations and had FEMA coordinate them. To stem local carping, he used FEMA funds to compensate the communities for the cost of the evacuations. He did this 72 hours before the Hurricane hit. Only 70 people died in Floyd as a result (Clinton moved 3 million people in the largest mass evacuation in U.S. history).
You tell me. What has changed from 1999 when this happened to today?
September 5th, 2005 at 8:02:53 pm
rick-
Per my other posts, Clinton used FEMA to mass evacuate ahead of Hurricane Floyd. Clinton did this because he had James Lee Witt working for him. Unlike Michael Brown, a clueless lawyer who can’t manage a horse show, Witt has years of experience dealing with natural disasters. Witt knows that no local politician wants to take the heat for a mandatory evacuation if the storm doesn’t end up hitting. Clinton, a real leader, took the responsibility so local leaders had political cover.
Bush, on the other hand, continues to run away from responsibility (Hell, he isn’t even responsible for the War in Iraq. Saddam or God or somebody else must be). Clinton took responsibility and saved lives. Bush immediately had his surrogates look for people to blame.
September 5th, 2005 at 8:11:57 pm
Even Trent Lott is turning on Bush…
“After a one-on-one meeting with Bush in Poplarville, Lott said: “I am demanding help for the people of Mississippi to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.”
…Yep. Three days ago Lott was all pro-Bush. Now, with the people of Mississippi screaming at him, he is changing his tune. Expect Haley Barbour to follow suit (if he is smart politically).
September 5th, 2005 at 8:22:43 pm
1. You should be in charge of FEMA. But, you will do much better in a private economy.
2. Even the French Intelligence forecast 72 hours earlier that New Orleans was in danger and
mobilized the French Navy in the Caribbean”
3.
September 5th, 2005 at 8:25:32 pm
Brendan:
Lighten up a little on Mayor Nagin. Although probably an example of the Peter Principal, he did about as well as anyone could under the circumstances. According to the NYT there were buses to evacuate people, but for whatever reason there were only a few used. At least he knew when he and the governor were overwhelmed and yelled for the Cavalry. Things started to happen when General Honore and the U.S. Army got there, but the National Guard was already on the way and got there about the same time–and just who is it that is in charge of the Guard? The Guard is charged with response to natural disasters, not the Army–by law.
I was disappointed with your knee jerk reaction to my NOAA emails poosted at http://www.haloscan.com/comments/trojanloy/112562993949381291/#166290 without checking the facts. They were based on over 5 decades of experience with these storms beginning with Florence in 1953 when I was 10 years old–
http://www.mcema.net/gclfhurricanes.html .
Perhaps it would be useful to discuss the psycology of evacuation. The former mayor of NO said just last night on NBC that a survey done after Georges indicated that 25% would not leave under any circumstances. Most of the ones being rescued from the rooftops are men who stayed behind. All over TV you see women asking about their fathers, husbands, uncles or brothers whom they begged to leave but would not. It is very difficult for some people to walk off and leave everything they have behind and come back to nothing, especially when anything that might survive could be stolen by looters. The less you have sometimes makes this more difficult, because you do not have the means to replace it. Also, the longer you have weathered many storms and false alarms, the easier it is to rationalize that you can ride it out. Recent residents leave more quickly. These folks, usually men, have to be absolutely convinced beyond doubt that their life is in the balance.
This is what I mean by “lulled to sleep”. It is easy to rationalize that the storm will hit 100 miles away and that you can ride it out at home when you have been through Camille. Especially, when NOAA changes their track data 3-5 hours before landfall. Faith Hill said, with pictures, on the fund raising concert that people were out swimming on the beaches of Biloxi on Sunday. By the time the warning was given of a direct hit on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, IT WAS TOO LATE TO LEAVE. That is why I am so upset at NOAA. The result was total distruction of the coast and unnecessary loss of life.
After living through over 50 years of these storms, I believe I have enough experience to know what I am talking about.
I have NEVER evacuated not even for Opal http://www.geocities.com/hurricanene/hurricaneopal.htm and probably would not even with a cat 5 bearing down on us because of my livestock, but then it’s just me and I don’t live in a fish bowl surrounded by water or on a coast with a shallow bay. These folks have to take some part of the responsibility for their actions, at least those that got an accurate and timely warning.
September 5th, 2005 at 8:42:55 pm
Observing from Memphis and having family and friends in the affected area to get first-hand info from, this is what I surmise (given that you care :-P )
1) Nagin ordered an evacuation, sent people with bullhorns into the poorest neighborhoods to spread the word. More than 80% of the metro area evacuated - that’s almost 900,000 people! (1.1 million in the metro area) It was, to my knowledge, the most successful evac for a hurricane ever. Imagine is he hadn’t managed that feat!
2) Blanco declared a state of emergency on the 26th - 3 days before landfall, which shows McClellan to be a liar (the press sec. says she has “yet” to declare a state of emergency)
3) Blanco refused to nationalize the LA NG for a variety of reasons, one of which was to keep LA in the loop and to attempt to prevent a war zone mentality from setting in among the troops - she didn’t want her citizens seen as “insurgents” as opposed to the victims they are. I seriously doubt it was to appease her ego. God how crass to even suggest that. (and on related note - so the gov. cried - big deal. Aside from the human aspect, that is her state, her people. She cares. I see that as a strength - to have empathy and sympathy for others. It is a damn sight better than referring to the victims, all American citizens, as “people from that part of the world” and reminiscing about his drunken college days and Trent Lott’s antebellum home as the President did 3 or 4 days after the event.)
4) Landrieu was the first to blast the feds for a lack of response - she was on national networks as early as Monday afternoon calling for fed assistance - as was Nagin, Blanco, Jindal, and Vittner. FEMA and the Bushies contend that LA officials have never asked for help - maybe they technically didn’t. But they sure as hell begged.
5) It really easy to sit in Minnesota or Indiana and presume to know something about the inner workings of a state and city government, to judge its citizens and the competency of its officials. Few of you were on the ground with these people when the storm hit and I venture to guess most of you are not from Louisiana, much less New Orleans. Unless you observed first hand the horror of the aftermath of that storm with them, were in their heads as they made decisions, or are a resident or ex-pat of that fair state, I really don’t see how any of you have the right to castigate or blame. (That said - federal officials and agencies are fair game because they are national level and we are all Americans.)
I agree with Clinton - there needs to be an investigation into this - an open and honest evaluation of the failings of all levels of government. Thankfully few Americans have ever had the misfortune of experiencing a catastrophe of this magnitude. But I don’t think blaming the victims, including the beleagured governments of LA, MS, and NO, is productive.
September 5th, 2005 at 8:45:01 pm
I have never supported Bush or his family. These are the people who gave America the Phoenizx Project, The Hunt Brotehrs, the S&L scandal, the hanging chad, Florida election smears, Ohio election woes, the filthiest air, a war in Iraq, Desert Storm. What can be expected of them, any of them. Just follow Bush around and pay attention to his mannerisms, his rhetoric and what’s to be expected? Why are people surprized by this white-knucklin’ drunk who was fortunate enough to latch onto the desperate Laura. Come one…the guy is a lonely caricature hungout there as a last ditch effot by Republicans to steal an election and send American men and women off to war. Like I said, I don’t support Busdh but we can’t pin the Katrina disaster just on the president. This is a governmental fiasco. It’s a disgrace. Poor black people and poor white people perishing in droves.
September 5th, 2005 at 9:18:01 pm
steven nisenfeld -
Don’t forget Barbara “Let Them Eat Cake” Bush…
Drudge reported that Barbara Bush said this today….
“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this (she chuckles slightly)–this is working very well for them.”
September 5th, 2005 at 9:29:44 pm
More food for thought. This is what the conservative “news” site Newsmax had to say about Putin and the Kursk disaster…
Only on Friday, six days after the accident took place, did Putin break off his vacation and head back to Moscow.
…Newsmax was critical of Putin. Does that same standard apply to Bush?
September 5th, 2005 at 9:50:03 pm
Congrats on the recognition. As troubled as I am by the disaster, the finger pointing and the coverage of it is dismaying on top of it.
The fact is, there is no excuse for any finger pointing on anyone’s part at this point. I’ve read alot of criticism on this blog about Nagin - you won’t hear a peep of it on CNN by the way - but it clearly is unfair to second guess his actions since if people weren’t leaving already, they weren’t going to be any more persuaded by a Greyhound bus pulling up in their front yeard. I was watching this guy tug a fishing boat through his neighborhood looking for his mother on Monday (a week later) and he still isn’t interested in leaving because he doesn’t want to become completely dependent on aid for his own housing. Second guessing Nagin is a fruitles sport; I can understand it happenning because he and others have been opening their collective traps, taking pot-shots at the President which is as easy as it is wrong.
You want to figure out what went wrong and appoint a commission??? Its simple, you had vehicles built for land and routes filled with water. If the combination of fed, state and local officials thought they could bring in supplies immediately on trucks in the middle of a flood, they’re acting like they don’t know where they live.
A couple of weeks ago I started reading a book by Brian Fagan titled The Long Summer which details the potential impact of climate change on civilization. I don’t get 5 pages into the book without a recounting of how the inhabitants of New Orleans have been figuratively and literally pushing water uphill for 300 years:
- Founded in 1718; first flood swamped dwellings within months
- 1724: law passed requiring foundations on all homes to be raised
- 1735 & 1785: flods occurred again at intervals long enough apart for inhabitants to forget the experience before it occurs again
- 1812: by this time, over 300 km of levees constructed primarily to protect plantation land
- mid 1850s: most levees at least 2m high
- 1850: 32 levees breached causing mass devastation
- 1879: Miss River Commission formed
- 1882: flood breachs 282 levees in worst flooding of the 19th century; flood water spreads out 110 km
- 1927: flood kills over 200; waters cover 93 sq km of homes and farms
- 1928: Flood Control Act passed appropriating millions of dollars for building river defenses; this included building more, larger levees, and a dam and lock system to redirect the river away from New Orlean’s port
As Fagan aptly analyzes, “…we have not erased our vulnerability but merely traded up in scale…Today, the fate of a city of a million people and many billions of dollars of infrastructure depends on our control of half of a continent’s worth of increasingly restless river water [not even thinking about the hurricanes!!]. New Orleans is safe against the flood that comes once every hundred years. As for the thousand year flood or the ten-thousand year one, we can only hope for the best”.
Well, Mr. Fagan now we know. And as you point out Brendan, it was not the worst case scenario by a long shot…
September 5th, 2005 at 10:40:40 pm
Congratulations on your national attention. I’m a NDLS grad who came across your site about 9 months ago. (I started reading it because I have a son named Brendan who has red hair.) I’m glad I have continued to check in daily — I called my family and friends about Katrina very early after you brought it to my attention. Congratulations and good luck as a 2L and with your OCIs.
September 6th, 2005 at 2:27:54 am
Duncan, mayor Nagin screwed up royally. He didn’t order an evacuation soon enough, he didn’t implement the plan that was in place to deal with a situation like this. 255 busses sitting in a parking lot doing nothing when they could have been used to evacute people is on his head. Pure and simple.
September 6th, 2005 at 7:29:42 am
Given that anyone would have gotten on the buses, where, exactly, were they to have gone? Every shelter and hotel between the coast and Memphis was full before the storm hit and Memphis is 6 hours away on a good day. Traffic was at a stand-still- there was a great fear among my family that they would be sitting on I-10 when the storm blew ashore - and they left early. So - yeah there were buses - that could have just as easily become coffins. Could of, Would of, Should of.
September 6th, 2005 at 9:50:08 am
dixiechick
So which is it? First you say that he ordered a succesful evacuation, then you say the busses couldn’t have helped because the streets were too clogged. And do you know WHY they were so clogged?
Because Nagin waited until a mere 24 hours before the hurricane hit to order the evacuation!!!
And if you expect me to believe that there was no where people could have been taken to temporarily within a few hours of New Orleans then I have to really question the state of Lousianna. I’m guessing that schools down there have gymnasiums? What about health clubs? auditorums? bowling alleys? movie theaters? football fields?
No, the sad truth is thousands are dead because Nagin screwed up big time.
September 6th, 2005 at 11:31:36 am
Unless you observed first hand the horror of the aftermath of that storm with them, were in their heads as they made decisions, or are a resident or ex-pat of that fair state, I really don’t see how any of you have the right to castigate or blame.
First, we have every right in the world to express our opinion.
Second, as compassionate people we have a right to question the actions of leaders, especially when it leads to death and loss like this.
Often it is the people who are removed from the tragedy who are able to be most objective about it.
September 6th, 2005 at 11:42:55 am
Dear Brendan, Because of that New York Times article your blog site is my introduction to blogging. Wow, I am finding so much varied and interest information there. Of course your site is now one of my favorites.
By the look of the long list of replies to your welcome statement I’ll be lucky if you read this.
Anyway, I’ll tune in more often.
Thank you for the wonderful introduction.
One question; how does one find out about other blog sites? So far mine has been through the papers.
Surely looks like a labor of love.
Take care,
Peggy W
September 6th, 2005 at 11:54:01 am
Peggy,
Check out InstaPundit.com. He is the king of the blogs, and links to lots of good sites, so he’s a good starting point. Also, take a look at my “blogroll,” on the lefthand side of my homepage. Welcome to the blogosphere! :)
September 6th, 2005 at 6:45:46 pm
David:
“Pure and simple”. I agree 1000%. I think I was one of the first on this blog to mention the picture of the buses.