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Donate to the Salvation Army’s Katrina relief effort! Or choose whatever charity you prefer, but donate! (The whole blogosphere is uniting for the relief effort today. Explanation here. Alternative charity suggestions welcome in comments. And don’t forget to consider “matching funds” if you work for a company that does that.)

Guestblogger David “corpus callosum” Kreutz

Under normal circumstances I’m sure Brendan would be blogging about this, but tonight marked the begging of the college football season. The surprise of the night is the game between Washington State and Idaho. The Vandals of Idaho, who have struggled ever since moving up to Div. I have amanged to stay within striking distance of the heavily favored Cougars, the score is currently 31-19 WSU with a little over 1 quarter to go. Typically the game is a blow out. Idaho is in its first season as a member of the WAC and are coached by former USC assistant Nick Holt.

Other highlights:
FINISHED

Oregon 38
Houston 24

UConn 38
Buffalo 0

South Car. 24
Central Fla. 15

IN PROGRESS

Minnesota 24
Tulsa 3
9:21 3rd Qt

ASU 28
Temple 2
Halftime

For more, check out ESPN.

“Officials at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, say the facility is full and cannot accept any more New Orleans hurricane refugees.“

More as it comes, people.

Brian (Briandot)

Apparently the FEMA director Michael Brown thinks the victims are partly to blame.

OK, OK: Yes, if you didn’t get the hell out of New Orleans if you could, then maybe you bear some responsibility. Folks who wanted to “ride out the storm” or thought it “couldn’t happen here” were asking to be proved stupid.

However, given the various discussions about those who may have not had the ability to leave, or had strong disincentives to do so — like simply being too poor — I think his comments are somewhat heartless. As any fool who realizes he made an oops, Brown qualified his statements:

“I don’t make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans.” he said.

“And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there.”

I think Brendan would strongly disagree: the evacuation order came late; no efforts to provide for evacuees who lacked transportation for the mandatory evacuation were made; and the city failed to prepare for the inevitable despite the direst of warnings. After given a bit of a workover by CNN reporters, Brown admitted that “Now is not the time to be blaming,” despite the fact that he had done precisely that.

Brian (Briandot)

One week ago, at this very hour, Category 1 Hurricane Katrina was moving southwestward over the Florida peninsula, having taken an unexpected left turn that would, a few hours later, bring her back over the bathtub-like waters of the Gulf of Mexico much quicker and further south than had been forecasted.

The implications of emerging quicker than expected are obvious; she had less time to weaken over land, which made her stronger than forecast when she hit the Gulf waters, so she took less time to get re-organized and begin intensifying into a monstrous major hurricane. The implications of emerging further south than expected are perhaps slightly less apparent to the non-meteorologically inclined, but ultimately even more important: the southward drift meant Katrina’s track had shifted to the “left,” which, because of the near-inevitability of recurvature, translates to a landfall point further to the west.

Thus, at 11:09 PM on Thursday, I wrote:

What makes me nervous is that Katrina’s southwestward turn and refusal to weaken makes a New Orleans doomsday scenario considerably more plausible than it seemed just a few hours ago. Still unlikely, but more likely than it was.

Would that I had been wrong.

Alas, it took the media quite some time to catch on to what was happening. Even as the computer models shifted Friday morning to match my hunch, the MSM storyline was still “Katrina aims for second Florida landfall,” and God help ‘em, they were sticking with the storyline. Personally, I think this had something to do with the fact that it was a Friday in August, which is like the ultimate no-news day, so no one was paying attention. Regardless of the cause, people in Louisiana slept while their fates were sealed by upper-level steering currents.

Few people really started taking the New Orleans threat seriously until Saturday, and of course, the mandatory evacuation inexplicably was not ordered until Sunday. But for those who were paying attention, it was already apparent one week ago tonight that the deadly risk to New Orleans was increasing. (By early afternoon Friday, I would declare, “New Orleans in peril.” By Friday night, I would advise New Orleans residents to leave.)

Anyway… the point of this post isn’t to proclaim, “I told you so,” but rather, to make some crucial points relevant to the accountability debate. One of the things that is driving me absolutely nuts is seeing various talking heads asking why we “didn’t see this coming” and public officials (e.g., Governor Blanco) saying things like “This is worse than our worst fears.” News flash: NO, IT ISN’T!!! This exact scenario — in fact, one considerably worse, bizarre as that may seem — had been envisioned for years. And it wasn’t just seen as a possibility; it was seen, quite rightly, as a certainty. It was going to happen eventually. We knew this.

And yet now that it’s happened, some people who know better (or should) have the gall (or the inexcusable ignorance) to make public statements which pretend that the severity of this crisis was some unexpected bolt out of the blue, that it was worse than we thought it could be. That is a categorical lie, and we, the public, should not stand for it. I feel it is too early to get too much into the “blame game” at this point, but I will not countenance outright lies that will distort the public’s understanding of the accountability issues that much eventually be addressed.

If Governor Blanco had been reading my blog on September 14, 2004, she would have read a post called “Ivan: Worse than 9/11?,” in which I prayed that Ivan would make the predicted right-hand turn (which it ultimately did), because otherwise, New Orleans would face the apocalyptic scenario described in an article by the Times-Picayune some months earlier:

Emergency officials’ worst-case scenario [is] hundreds of billions of gallons of lake water pouring over the levees into an area averaging 5 feet below sea level with no natural means of drainage.

That would turn the city and the east bank of Jefferson Parish into a lake as much as 30 feet deep, fouled with chemicals and waste from ruined septic systems, businesses and homes. Such a flood could trap hundreds of thousands of people in buildings and in vehicles.

Sound familiar? Now, tell me again how Katrina is “worse than our worst fears,” or how we “didn’t see it coming.”

In that same post about Ivan, I also boldfaced a quote from Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness Director Walter Maestri: “Imagine the city of New Orleans closed for four to six months.” Again: sound familiar? And I noted, “It’s going to happen eventually: ‘In a given year…the risk of the lakefront levees being topped is less than 1 in 300. But over the life of a 30-year mortgage, statistically that risk approaches 9 percent.’ So it’s a matter of ‘when,’ not ‘if.’ But here’s hoping — fervently hoping — that ‘when’ isn’t Thursday morning.”

As it turned out, of course, “when” was not that Thursday morning, but rather, this past Monday morning.

Looking back at my Ivan archives, a particularly prescient — and thus chilling — quote comes from this post: “I wonder how close the eye has to get to New Orleans before a sort of ‘apocalypse lite’ might occur, even without a direct hit by the right front quadrant.” That’s exactly what happened on Monday, and the resulting apocalyptic situation doesn’t seem very “lite,” does it?

A few more relevant posts about Ivan: here (”That giant sucking sound you hear is New Orleans holding its breath”), here (”the Big Easy dodges another bullet and survives its (eventually inevitable) nightmare scenario for another day”), here (”New Orleans survives to see another day. Thank God.”), and here (”Near-miss Ivan proves New Orleans isn’t ready for the Big One”). And then, earlier this year, as Dennis meandered in the Gulf, there was this post (”A direct hit on New Orleans by a major hurricane would, as we’ve discussed before, be very, very, very bad. Like 100,000 deaths bad. Like the complete destruction of an entire city bad. So, no matter where you live, pray that it goes somewhere other than New Orleans.”), this post (”A direct hit on New Orleans, the worst-case scenario for Hurricane Dennis, now appears extremely unlikely. Thank God.”), and this post (”there is no specific meteorological phenomenon that steers storms away from New Orleans and Mobile Bay. It just keeps happening, by pure dumb luck, and someday, inevitably, that luck is going to run out.”).

Again, the point of all this is not to say “I told you so” or to suggest that “I saw it coming when no one else did.” On the contrary, the point is that I, along with everyone else who was actually paying attention, saw this coming. Precisely this (indeed, something worse than this). And yet New Orleans fiddled and did nothing to protect its citizens from the inevitable.

I’ll leave it at that, for now, and not get into which “heads should roll,” because as I said, I feel it’s a bit early for the full-on “blame game” (though I reserve the right to change my mind about that at any time :). But, bottom line, don’t let anyone deceive you into thinking that the full scope of this tragedy was unforeseen or unforeseeable. It was foreseeable and it was foreseen — every last awful detail of it.

‘Twould seem that Al-Qaeda has officially claimed responsibility for the July 7 London bombing. You know, as if you had any real doubt. And it wasn’t some anonymous twit trying to make a name for himself; apparently Al-Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri was on video. (My Arabic is rusty, so I guess I’ll have to trust the translation and transcription by Reuters.)

Brian (Briandot)
(a.k.a. the Lean, Mean, CNN-readin’ machine)

I might disagree with the guy on a lot of things, but Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) asks a good question: ‘What precautions do you take?’

Hastert has asked the very legitimate question of whether it’s reasonable to rebuild an entire metropolis after such a disaster:

It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that’s seven feet under sea level, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said of federal assistance for hurricane-devastated New Orleans.

“It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed,” the Illinois Republican said in an interview Wednesday with the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA) was displeased, to say the least. Hastert later backed away from his statement, releasing another that said he was in fact not questioning whether New Orleans should be rebuilt, although I find it hard to read his prior statement as anything else.

I get the distinct sense that any legislation that comes up to rebuild New Orleans will pass unanimously, or nearly so; however, I’d urge a little more thought before signing a blank check. (But I guess I’m no senator yet, so I guess it doesn’t much matter what I think.)

Brian (Briandot)

Following up on Becky’s earlier comment about the “so gay” Anderson Cooper (yeah, probably), apparently he isn’t too afraid to rip into a politician or two; Wonkette (that’s something the crowd here probably doesn’t read much, but bear with me) reports:

Mary Landrieu goes on about how great Bill Frist is. Anderson Cooper responds that it’s hard to take politicians thanking each other when rats are gnawing dead bodies in the streets. We were sort of waiting for an anchor to go native, and Cooper does it in the best possible way. He says “people are ashamed.” Maybe more people should be.

Indeed. Given some of the questions about the competence of government following the disaster — and I’d like to note that I do not necessarily agree with such sentiments — I certainly understand Cooper’s frustration.

Video supposedly available here, for those inclined to check it out.

Brian (Briandot)

Here is a list of law schools who are willing to host visiting students from Tulane and Loyola law schools. At this point, NDLS is not on the list. (Hat tip: Notre Dame 1L Chai Ri Park.)

Also, Is That Legal? has set up Katrina group blogs for the Tulane Law and Loyola Law communities.

P.S. Somebody raised the issue of what caliber of schools were willing to suddenly open their doors to students from Tulane (ranked #41 on the U.S. News list) and Loyola (a Tier 3 school). I mean no offense to students of those schools, and besides, we all know the U.S. News rankings are meaningless anyway :), but I just wanted to address this question. There are five schools ranked as high or higher than Notre Dame who are on the list of schools accepting “refugee” students: Stanford (#3), Duke (#11), University of Texas (#15), Washington & Lee (#22), and Washington University in St. Louis (#24). Also, the list includes schools in places as far away from New Orleans as Seattle and Boston. Just saying.

I might as well be channelling CNN.

Looks like there was at least one happy moment in the devastation: among the chaos and confusion, a man was reunited with his family: “after wandering in the woods, lost and confused, sometimes in water up to his neck,” Jason Marcussen was found, and rejoined his wife and daughter. Even in the ensuing chaos of New Orleans, I’m sure being together makes all the difference.

Hopefully one of many.

Brian (Briandot)

Matt Drachenberg is “utterly desperate for any information” about his mother-in-law and others who lived at the Jefferson Healthcare nursing home (2200 Jefferson Highway). He writes via e-mail: “We have absolutely no idea where my mother-in-law is. The director of the Chateau homes believes they have been evacuated, but NOBODY, not even the red cross or the state knows where they are.” On his blog, he explains:

I just got off the phone with a man is Dallas who is Director of several nursing homes in Jefferson Parish. He has been trying to help us for the last twenty-four hours to find out anything about Vicky’s mom, even though the nursing home she is in is not one of his.

To the best of his knowledge, all of the homes have been evacuated. But the information on Jefferson Healthcare is not concrete.

Now the really frightening part. He told me that when they went today to evacuate their facility in Kenner, a mob of people with guns tried to swarm the bus because they heard their was food and water aboard. The local police apparently able to get them out.

We are, in a very real way, utterly desperate for any information about the location of the patients who lived at Jefferson Healthcare (2200 Jefferson Highway). the man I mentioned above has even contacted the state and other government agencies, and nobody knows where they are.

If you can help, please email us (katrina.guest@gmail.com), post in the comments or you can call me at 479.200.4257. Anytime, day or night.

My “light and high beauty” post earlier today seemed to be pretty popular, so here are some more pretty pictures that I’ve taken around campus the last couple of days:

Not to take away from the compassion and attention that the Katrina disaster duly requires, but the rest of the world is having its own fun time with the weather. Asia in particular is experiencing a typhoon season similar to our hurricane season.

Typhoon Haitang killed 12 people in July, and now the one that just blew through — Typhoon Talim — killed at least 2, including: “A car-rental firm employee [who] was blown off the seventh storey of a multilevel car park late on Wednesday in Miaoli city in north Taiwan while checking on the company’s fleet.” It’s now moving toward China; Eastern Zhejiang province had evacuated more than 290,000 people.

Also, storms from monsoons in India have killed several hundred people there. While there were deaths from the storm itself, like New Orleans many of the deaths are from post-storm building collapses and disease, and flooding from the Ghaghra River. Particularly vulnerable are children; several were simply washed away, and now encephalitis spread by disease-carrying mosquitoes is claiming more. All in all, more than 300,000 people are said to be affected in India’s most populous state.

Just a sober reminder that tragedy can strike anywhere.

Brian (Briandot)

UPDATE BY BRENDAN: Also, Tropical Depression Lee and Tropical Depression 14 are out there in the Atlantic. Luckily, both seem unlikely to threaten land.

I understand the concern that we shouldn’t put pets’ lives before people’s, and as someone who used to be allergic to cats and dogs, I understand that concern too… but still, this strikes me as horrible:

Pets were not allowed on the bus, and when a police officer confiscated a little boy’s dog, the child cried until he vomited. “Snowball, snowball,” he cried.

Yikes.

I’m about to go on the air on Hugh Hewitt. Listen online here.

UPDATE: Done. I was able to record an audio clip, which I’ll post later.

I gave Charles a shout-out during the interview. Anyone coming here after listening to the interview and looking for the URL of his blog, here it is. And here is more on his drives to New Orleans.

And now, to class.

UPDATE 2: An audio clip of the interview is already online here and here.