> […] long lines at some pumps and spot prices
> approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

Oh get a grip. That’s barely two thirds of what we pay here in the UK.

September 1, 2005 @ 10:10 am | Comment

Obviously we in the US have been spoiled by cheap oil (relatively) for decades. But such rapid, steep spikes in prices wreak havoc on an already battered economy and affect every aspect of American life.

September 1, 2005 @ 10:21 am | Comment

Yes I realise that. But the underlying mentality that cheap oil is a god-given right just touched a raw nerve for me.

In any case, I do wish the people of New Orleans well and that they’ll pull through it all unscathed.

September 1, 2005 @ 10:46 am | Comment

Just a speculation here, but wouldn’t it be best to at least wait until the bodies are burried before we turn to political opportunism?

This is shameful. I was having fun visiting here and learning a bit and engaging a bit, but this … I feel dirty by association. All of the other blogs I frequent are posting charity links, disseminating information, trying to match the homeless with homes and so on. Then I come here and see this.

I will leave you now (which will no doubt please you), with this parting thought:

If your first reaction in a disaster is to find someone to blame – rather than finding ways to help the victims – then you have built a life, a way of thinking, that can never be happy. Giving can make you happy, vicious hatred cannot.

September 1, 2005 @ 10:52 am | Comment

Opening up homes of the well-to-do to hurricane refugees is a great idea and is the best parent news MommyCool.com has heard. So many kids need a school right now.

September 1, 2005 @ 11:29 am | Comment

Rob, I donated to the Red Cross yesterday, I’m going to continue to donate, if I had more than a one bedroom house I’d take in a refugee myself.

But I am absolutely, utterly furious about this.

Please understand, for many of us this is the bitterly predictable culmination of 5 years of greed, hubris, horribly misplaced priorities, bad decision-making and utter incompetence.

FEMA’s disaster relief function has been cut to the bone by this administration. Programs to mitigate flooding, repair and strengthen levees, plan for hurricanes of this magnitude, slashed in half. National Guard troops needed at home, fighting a useless war in Iraq.

And poverty-stricken New Orleans residents are trapped in a corpse-infested sewer with no food or water for days.

And the best President Nero can come up with is a chipper “America will be stronger”?! He plays golf and goofs around with country singers while his countrymen drown?

“Anger” doesn’t begin to cover my response.

September 1, 2005 @ 12:48 pm | Comment

Here’s a quote from today’s AP:

Outside the Convention Center, the sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of storm refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry people broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered with a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

“I don’t treat my dog like that,” 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. “I buried my dog.” He added: “You can do everything for other countries but you can’t do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can’t get them down here.”

September 1, 2005 @ 12:57 pm | Comment

And you know who shares responsibility for the National Guard being in Iraq instead of in New Orleans? Every able bodied American under age 35 who “supports the war” but did not enlist in the Army. The deficit in National Guard numbers is due to low recruitment numbers all around.
The least any good Republican could have done, would have been to join the National Guard to “support the troops” AND to help to “defend the homeland” against disasters such as this.
But many of those Republicans are Social Darwinists who think the dead of New Orleans deserved to die – because if they had more money then they would have lived elsewhere. No problem, no injustice.
The poor deserve to die – both God and Darwin told us so.

September 1, 2005 @ 7:29 pm | Comment

I agree with Rob, there is a lot of blame to be passed around, but now isn’t the time for bickering and finger pointing.

The government is at fault here, I don’t think anybody questions that, but to quote a CNN article, there’s some blame for the people who didn’t heed the evacuation warnings too.

State officials believe Katrina and its aftermath killed “thousands” of people in New Orleans and surrounding parishes, but no official count had been compiled, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said Thursday.

Brown said those who ignored the city’s mandatory evacuation order bore some responsibility.

“I think the death toll may go into the thousands and, unfortunately, that’s going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings,” Michael Brown told CNN.

September 1, 2005 @ 7:29 pm | Comment

I’ve said this before elsewhere, but it bears repeating here. The Constitution says the President must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Nothing there last time I checked about the President fixing damage from hurricanes, or for that matter, providing leadership. He’s the President, not El Presidente.

And as for “demanding better from our commander in chief”, two things:

1)
unless we’re all in the military, he isn’t our commander in chief.

2)
What are you going to demand he do? Land in the city and start bailing water? Open the White House to refugees? Shake his fist at the heavens and order the water to recede?

People, this guy has enough of a Messiah complex. Don’t encourage him to think he should do more.

September 1, 2005 @ 8:03 pm | Comment

Also, I would encourage those who are kind enough to donate to donate to national relief agencies like the Salvation Army because when you donate to the Red Cross you are donating to an international organization which is great, but the donations intended for a specific cause may very well go to something else. I believe we saw that after 9/11.

Here is a listing of multiple relief funds.

September 1, 2005 @ 8:16 pm | Comment

He has always been contemptuous of initiatives to protect the environment, OI. He was warned by a Republican senior official at the the Army Engineers he was courting disaster by slashing budgets for the levees. Enough said.

Obviously no one expects him to stop a hurricane. But his handling of this mess was atrocious by any standard, and even the good old boys at National Review are saying so. No one can defend him this time. Well, you can but you’ll appear kind of silly.

September 1, 2005 @ 8:37 pm | Comment

I agree with Rob, there is a lot of blame to be passed around, but now isn’t the time for bickering and finger pointing.

Bullshit. If not now, when? As Wolcott puts it:

No, this is the time for politics, none better, because I can tell you just from being out of NY a few days that a lot of people in this country are shocked and sobered by New Orleans, but they’re also worried and pissed off. They’re making the connection between the money, manpower, and resources expended in Iraq and how raggedy-ass the rescue effort has been in the Gulf. If you don’t say it now when people’s nerves are raw and they’re paying full attention, it’ll be too late once the waters receded and the media-emoting “healing process” begins.

Read his entire post (linked in my post above)and the two articles to which he links. Then come back and tell us we should once more give the shrub a free pass. There is never accountability here, especially when we don’t demand it. We have to learn from our past mistakes of letting him off the hook under the mantra,”Now is not the time…”

September 1, 2005 @ 8:42 pm | Comment

I’m reminded of the last line of Bush’s ghastly, apocalyptic speech at his 2001 inauguration. How creepy it was, and how apposite symbolically here. His final line was:

“An angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.”

September 1, 2005 @ 8:47 pm | Comment

Richard, I’m not defending the President, I’m saying it’s sad when the first impulse of educated Americans is to look for leadership from a governmental father-figure.

Granddad used to talk about the need for a strong leader as well, but that was code for “Musollini was a good man.”

I know modern Presidents have come to think of themselves in those terms, but a free people shouldn’t encourage that tendency.

September 1, 2005 @ 8:48 pm | Comment

That is the president’s No. 1 responsibility. He is a communicator. Reagan, for all his faults, would have been infinitely greater this past week, because he knew how to communicate and assure. That is 80 percent of a president’s job. In a time of huge national crisis we look to our president for answers and hope. If he cannot offer inspiration and provide answers, FDR-style, he is a failure.

Andrew Sullivan, a mere two years ago Bush’s most strident supporter, shows us this is not partisan bickering.

This has morphed from a natural disaster into a social meltdown. The Lousiana governor seems overwhelmed (Barbour seems much more effective); New Orlean’s civic authorities seem non-existent (and bear responsibility for the insufficient preparation for this potential and widely predicted nightmare); and the president’s response has been decidedly weak. His call to restrain from using gas was, well, Carteresque. It seems to me inconceivable that we cannot impose basic law and order in a major American city five days after a hurricane has hit. This is a very basic governmental responsibility and all I can say is that I see no evidence of competence or effectiveness so far. FEMA had no solid evacuation plan? The feds had no plans to maintain order in such a situation? The explosion of complete lawlessness is beginning to make Haiti look like a pleasant place to live. This is America? Where order is so distant that snipers can prevent the evacuation of a hospital? The fundamental reason for my inability to support a second Bush term was his demonstrated incompetence in performing the basic functions of government. It seems to me that the people of New Orleans are now as much a victim of this as the people of Iraq. I guess we can merely be thankful that Rumsfeld hasn’t yet appeared to say “Stuff happens.” Yes, it does. When your government seems unable to do the most basic things required of it.

In the weeks ahead we will all learn just how much of the misery was unnecessary, and how, as with the “Osama determined to strike in the US” memo, the Bush people were too busy with their own questionable agenda to protect their citizens.

September 1, 2005 @ 8:59 pm | Comment

Richard,

I stand by my comment.

I said nothing about giving anyone a free pass to anything. I just think such energy could be better utilized if it were focused on helping those poor people RIGHT NOW.

BTW, the Red Cross is offering online tutorial courses to train volunteers for a 10 day tour to help with the relief efforts in the areas affected by the hurricane.

Got time?

September 1, 2005 @ 9:00 pm | Comment

“I gotta tell you something, we got five or six hundred letters before the show actually went on the air, and no one – no one – is saying the government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching and calamatous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I’m 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can’t sandwiches be dropped to those people in the Superdome. What is going on? This is Thursday! This storm happened 5 days ago. This is a disgrace. And don’t think the world isn’t watching. This is the government that the taxpayers are paying for, and it’s fallen right flat on its face as far as I can see, in the way it’s handled this thing.”

– Jack Cafferty, CNN

September 1, 2005 @ 9:01 pm | Comment

Finally, please read these words carefully. Then tell me we shouldn’t be looking for someone to blame. Not to scapegoat, but if someone fucked up, why put up a wall of silence?

Despite continuous warnings that a catastrophic hurricane could hit New Orleans, the Bush administration and Congress in recent years have repeatedly denied full funding for hurricane preparation and flood control.
That has delayed construction of levees around the city and stymied an ambitious project to improve drainage in New Orleans’ neighborhoods.

For instance, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers requested $27 million for this fiscal year to pay for hurricane-protection projects around Lake Pontchartrain. The Bush administration countered with $3.9 million, and Congress eventually provided $5.7 million, according to figures provided by the office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).
…

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t still be flooded, but I do feel that if it had been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have,” said Michael Parker, a former Republican Mississippi congressman who headed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from October 2001 until March 2002, when he was ousted after publicly criticizing a Bush administration proposal to cut the corps’ budget.

September 1, 2005 @ 9:05 pm | Comment

Gordon, I donated already. I have enough energy to do what I can to help AND to criticize. As soon as you wait to criticize, Bush slips away like an eel. For once, our Vacationer in Chief needs to be put on the spot. Exposing why lives were lost and helping to shelter and feed the victims are not mutually exclusive activities.

September 1, 2005 @ 9:10 pm | Comment

More:

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. “The New Orleans hurricane scenario,” The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, “may be the deadliest of all.” It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago – and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you’d expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help – and help wasn’t provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn’t they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government’s response.

But let’s wait a while. Maybe there was a good reason for Bush to ignore the warnings, like he did with 911. By “warnings,” I don’t just mean the FEMA memo, but also the weather reports on CNN.

September 1, 2005 @ 9:17 pm | Comment

I agree with the sentiment that certain people will blame Bush if it rains, but I got to say…I’m pretty stunned at how utterly ineptly the administration has handled this. My girlfriend — who isn’t American — said to me today, “Who could believe this could happen in the US? Why isn’t anyone doing anything?” I didn’t have an answer for that.

One thought: if this were a terrorist attack instead of a hurricane?? Just shows you how ill-prepared the US is on the homefront.

September 1, 2005 @ 9:21 pm | Comment

You’re wrong about the idea that the president’s number one responsibility is being a communicator.
The responsibilities of the President are spelled out clearly in the Constitution and nowhere does it say anything like that.

“In a time of huge national crisis we look to our president for answers and hope.”

Maybe you do, and perhaps others do as well, but that doesn’t make it his primary job, as defined in the constitution. Personally, I think you may as well look to God or the The Great Pumpkin for answers and hope. You’d probably get a better response.

September 1, 2005 @ 10:10 pm | Comment

I had alot to say on this, so I posted it.

I’m mad as Jack, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!

Hey Gordon, where’s that Red Cross 10 day tour tutorial? I have the time, the question is can I get my butt down to Nawlins.

September 1, 2005 @ 10:11 pm | Comment

Here’s more on wetlands erosion in Louisiana, courtesy of Sidney Blumenthal:

A year ago the US army corps of engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, the Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. Operated by the corps of engineers, levees and pumping stations were strengthened and renovated. In 2001, when George Bush became president, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely potential disasters – after a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. By 2004, the Bush administration cut the corps of engineers’ request for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80%. By the beginning of this year, the administration’s additional cuts, reduced by 44% since 2001, forced the corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate debated adding funds for fixing levees, but it was too late.

September 1, 2005 @ 10:18 pm | Comment

oi, anyone who says the president’s key role is not communication is ignorant of what leadership is. Leadership IS communication and the hallmark of every great president has been their ability to communicate, explain, inspire, move and rally his citizens. This is not something defined in the constitution because it is the self-evident quality of every great leader. You point to one great leader in history who was a terrible communicator, I dare you. Leadership is all about communicating. No communicating, no leadership. This applies to great generals, corporate CEOs, diplomats, anyone in a leadership capacity.

Dave, thanks for that great link. All the evidence is there indicating they were warned about the levees. And just as in 2001, Bush states idiotically that no one could have predicted the levees might break. Hell, it was all over CNN for two days in a row before the strom hit, as well as in myriad documents from tthe Army Corps of Engineers which constitute a true smoking gun. No way out this time. But I’m sure Bush will find a way to wiggle his way to safety and find sanctuary in his neverending vacation.

September 1, 2005 @ 10:27 pm | Comment

I got another one from the Baltimore Sun over on my site, and I’d like to point out Jack Cafferty also made a comment about this being about race and socioeconomic class – where did you find the transcript of what he said, Richard?

September 1, 2005 @ 10:33 pm | Comment

Sorry, here’s the link.

September 1, 2005 @ 10:43 pm | Comment

Also, Salon has devoted pretty much the whole site to Katrina, on issues like race and poverty, lack of FEMA funding and that Louisiana’s hurricane plan apparently had nothing laid out in the event Nawlins was flooded.

September 1, 2005 @ 10:45 pm | Comment

Cheers.

September 1, 2005 @ 10:48 pm | Comment

Silly question: Why does the federal gov’t pay for those levees instead of the state of Louisiana?

September 1, 2005 @ 11:52 pm | Comment

I am ashamed. I never thought I’d would see an American metropolis left helpless for so long. I never thought we, as a nation, would be so ineffectual in the face of disaster. I never thought, just a couple of years after creating the Department of Homeland Security, that we would be revealed to be so insecure.

For all our talk, and all our pretensions as a Great Power, we allowed ourselves to be cast back into the abyss of banana-republic incompetence through our collective negelect of the real risks to our country.

When we’re all someday sick of having our fears played on for political gain, perhaps we can find more constructive ways to make sure the people of the US are truly safe and secure in the face of the real threats facing the country.

This is arguably worse than 9/11, but without an evil, human face to attach to it to motivate a nationwide response (even a misguided one). A year from now, will we still remember this? Or will we have reduced it to a commemoration and memorial and be complacent again, waiting for the next disaster to strike?

September 2, 2005 @ 12:28 am | Comment

Sean, America’s wetlands and coastal protections are managed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, these projects transcend state lines.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:28 am | Comment

My understanding is that the state of LA pays as well, but these kinds of infrastructure projects fall under the domain of the Feds primarily.

Please remember that most of the people who did not evacuate New Orleans are very poor, living below the poverty level. They don’t have cars. They live paycheck to paycheck (if they have jobs). They simply didn’t have the money to leave town, and once they left, where would they go?

And here’s another thing: under the Bush administration, FEMA has been cut to the bone, subsumed into Homeland Security, with their whole mandate of dealing with natural disasters downplayed in favor of anti-terrorism. here’s an excerpt from article from the Director of King County Wash. Office of Emergency Management:

This is an immense human tragedy, one that will work hardship on millions of people. It is beyond the capabilities of state and local government to deal with. It requires a national response.

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

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

There’s another Post article today, quoting all kinds of officials and politicians, who are all in essence saying, “where the hell is the Federal Government?” This includes “Rep. Charles W. Boustany Jr., (R-La.), said he spent the past 48 hours urging the Bush administration to send help. “I started making calls and trying to impress upon the White House and others that something needed to be done,” he said. “The state resources were being overwhelmed, and we needed direct federal assistance, command and control, and security — all three of which are lacking.”

Here’s another quote:

Martha A. Madden, former secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, said she believes a critical systemic breakdown occurred the moment the levee broke. She said contingency plans have been in place for decades but were either ignored or improperly executed.

Madden, now a national security and environmental consultant, said the lack of immediate federal help, specifically in the form of military assistance, was “incomprehensible.”

“How many people are going to die, per hour, before you get 40,000 troops in there?” Madden asked yesterday. “I think it has cost lives. . . . They can go into Iraq and do this and do that, but they can’t drop some food on Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now? It’s just mind-boggling.”

There’s plenty of blame to go around, no doubt. But the bottom line is, this is a national disaster, involving an entire region of this country. I’m sorry, it’s the President’s job to f**king lead.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:38 am | Comment

I remember exactly one inspirational speech from GWB: Standing on the rubble of the WTC. That was good. That was the moment. Clearly he hasn’t quite let it go. Pity he couldn’t summon some of that resolve and common touch for Katrina.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:53 am | Comment

“Murika’s gonna be stronger, Will.”

September 2, 2005 @ 1:28 am | Comment

I’m trying to cling onto that hope, Lisa, in all honesty. And I think the country will heal. And so will New Orleans. But I agree with the pundits and commentators who say this is going to open wounds of class and race in America. In the long term, if we can work through those issues, that might be the route to a stronger America. In the near term, it seems like the route to a lot of heartbreak and tension, which will demand the kind of leadership that we seem to lack these days.

Some crises bind us together. Some divide us. I wonder which this will be?

September 2, 2005 @ 1:40 am | Comment

Actually, I’m going for the “bind us” option. I have been compulsively watching the cable news. I saw a spot with a young white guy, from Biloxi. They played Bush’s first speech, and then the reporter on the spot asked the kid what he thought. This kid was furious. He said, “President Bush shouldn’t be President no more.”

Also, I have never seen so many cable news reporters and anchor people as livid with fury and despair as I have the last couple of days. They are SCREAMING: “Why can’t they get water and food to these people? This is a national disgrace!” Some of these are pretty conservative people in general (check out crooksandliars.com for great video snippets).

The thing is, I watched so much of that footage, and the people left behind in New Orleans, the vast majority of them were helping each other, taking care of each other, counting on the government to keep their promises and provide help and even after that wasn’t happening, they weren’t being violent, they just wanted some f**king help, because they’d lost everything and they hadn’t eaten and they didn’t have water and they were watching people DIE in front of them.

Irony of ironies, the MSNBC cameraman said that the only person providing any leadership at the New Orleans convention center was…wait for it…Harry Connick Jr.

The next right-winger who slams “Hollywood” can kiss my entertainment industry ass.

September 2, 2005 @ 1:55 am | Comment

Damn, I wish I were in America. My hotel in Shanghai has only Chinese cable, and watching CCTV you’d never know America was reeling from this catastrophe. I can’t imagine the devastation; the last time i saw CNN, they were saying New orleans had been spared as the hurricane veered east and it seemed like a fairy tale ending. Now it seems like my favorite city in America (with NYC) is gone, maybe forever. It’s incomprehensible. And after all the zillions we’ve poured into homeland security, the fact that we cannot help these victims will be America’s shame for years to come. Evacuation and handling of refugees is fundamental to homeland security, and it appears we are more vulnerable to disaster than ever. will this force America to wake up?

September 2, 2005 @ 2:17 am | Comment

Richard, in all my life I can’t remember anything like this. Even 9/11 pales in comparison. Maybe in part because New Orleans seems like the horribly predictable outcome of 5 years of the Bush Administration, as I said above.

go to http://www.crooksandliars.com – they have some great video clips. Also boomantribune.com has been putting up great diaries the last couple of days.

but yeah. this is an entire city, destroyed. New orleans. one of the most amazing cities in the world. how is it possible?

People are actually saying things like, we shouldn’t rebuild it.

September 2, 2005 @ 2:26 am | Comment

To be honest, Richard, part of me wishes I was back in China. I got back exactly two weeks ago and I’m rubbernecking CNN at 4 AM. What exactly did I come back to?

September 2, 2005 @ 2:39 am | Comment

It’s nice to see that Houston, my old college town, is coming to the rescue: My Hero Is a Bus Thief.

Houston knows the difference between those who steal buses and those who steal televisions, shoot at rescue workers, or who stick up hospital pharmacists for drugs.

I hope the National Guard does too, since they’ve got “shoot to kill” orders.

September 2, 2005 @ 2:48 am | Comment

Hey guys, the Feds paying for pretty much everything makes sense now. I still think it ought to be regulated and paid for by Louisiana itself, as they have (had) a lot more at stake, but that what happens when you federalize everything (and then stop paying for it).

People are actually saying things like, we shouldn’t rebuild it.

Actually, it depends on who we’re talking about when we say “we”. I think there’s plenty of interest for people to go back and start building again, but I’m not sure how much money the government should inject into it. I’m not sure how sustainable the city is with the levees. (Yes, Holland does it, but as my GF told me, “Holland doesn’t have hurricanes.”)

September 2, 2005 @ 2:51 am | Comment

AGGH! Went to Boing Boing and saw this:

FEMA points Katrina aid $ to Pat “kill Hugo Chavez!” Robertson
BB reader Bill Scannell says,
FEMA is directing Katrina donations to none other than the Rev. Pat Robertson. FEMA has released to the media and on its Web site a list of suggested charities to help the storm’s hundreds of thousands of victims. The Red Cross is first on the list. The Rev. Pat Robertson’s “Operation Blessing” is next on the list.

*shudder*

Besides that, there’s an anonymous email from a rescue worker who has been on the ground for the past 5 days.

The news is on right now. Some of the team members are watching coverage for the first time since Sunday night. They’re pretty fucking pissed off.

They haven’t realized the lack of control that the big emergency operations people are dealing with. They follow orders of the local guys and just do the best they can to save people, save people, save people.

They are only just now seeing that once they risk their necks to save people, the next level of the system isn’t in place yet and that the people have to start a whole new struggle to stay alive. Morale is getting low. These guys are tired; they’ve been working no-stop since we got here. They have mandatory rest breaks, but you don’t really rest during them; you’re too busy sharing stories and just looking around in disbelief. I can’t tell you how many of these guys just come over to me at any given time that they’re not in a boat or in the air, put their arms around me and cry.

There have been times on this journey I have hated being here because I can’t be doing what these guys are doing, what I used to do, what I dreamed of and loved for so long. But that’s not the feeling I have when I sit up against a cement wall, in filthy water, and a guy I’ve known for years cuddles up in me and sobs. I know that’s not the way the public may want to think about their rescuers and their heroes, but that’s how it is.

Swinging an axe and breaking into an attic to see if there’s anyone there to save and finding a dead family of four instead will bring tears to even the most stoic of people.

In other news, they’re rigging the Astrodome with phones and computers. Everybody keep your eyes peeled for Live From the Dome blogs.

September 2, 2005 @ 2:57 am | Comment

I’d just like to extend my sympathies to our American friends. This is a terrible disaster, and I hope the survivors get relief ASAP.

It does appear that this could have been averted, though no one can be sure. I hope this will serve as a wake-up call to those people who deny that mankind can or should do anything to stop climate change. At the very least we should not be redeploying flood-defence funds to start wars.

September 2, 2005 @ 6:35 am | Comment

On a separate note, I think that the US needs fuel taxes to be brought in at some point to do something about the insane oil consumption there. Because the large consumption is what leads to problems with supply having such an effect on the economy.

You guys are going to have to get a proper public transport system up and running. I know it’ll cost a lot, but better to do something while you can, rather than wait until it’s too late. It appears that the reason all those people stayed behind seems to be that they couldn’t actually get out.

September 2, 2005 @ 6:40 am | Comment

so far from what i know, a large part of the tragedy should attribute to the system rather than somebody like GW, i.e., how the government functions in front of such a disaster, i call it the “disfunctions of democracy”

and germany’s der spiegel magazine offers some different angles to view the issue:

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/

September 2, 2005 @ 7:23 am | Comment

Bingfeng, that is such bullsh1t. In normal times, American disaster response has been the best in the world. But all of the agencies designed to deal with disaster and the troops and manpower needed on the ground have been diverted to the War on Terror – oh, excuse me, “the Global Struggle Against violent extremism” – and had budgets decimated by that and tax cuts for the weathy.

It’s a “dysfunction of democracy” only in that a significant number of American people voted to let these robber barons into office.

If I am misinterpreting your words, please forgive me. My emotions are very raw at the moment.

September 2, 2005 @ 10:08 am | Comment

In the weeks ahead we will all learn just how much of the misery was unnecessary, and how, as with the “Osama determined to strike in the US” memo, the Bush people were too busy with their own questionable agenda to protect their citizens.

The hilarity of this statement. Why wait the 2 weeks? You haven’t. Of course you don’t really mean to wait, your simply saying that what comes out in the weeks after this disaster will prove your assumptions.

Given your shrill hysterics on anything Bush, it would seem that you are the least qualified to pass or make rational judgements on what is going on in New Orleans with regards to governmental policy.

One point. To say that in anyway this disaster, probably the worst natural disaster in US history, is the sole responsibility of president Bush is patently absurd. It has never been a secret to scientist and engineers( rational thinkers ) that a cat 4 or 5 hurricane would probably wipe out New Orleans. The existing levees, built decades ago, are only of cat 3 construction.

So, in that light, the most sensible thing to do would be to upgrade the levees for the statistically probably cat 4 or 5 hurricane. Is is right to blame the Bush administration for that? You bet. But then you would also need to pass blame down through to decades of neglect, including your beloved 8 years of the Clinton administration and the Louisiana voter. The existence of cat 4 and 5 hurricanes did not spring into existence with the Bush administration.

Use your head.

September 2, 2005 @ 10:26 am | Comment

Verity, do the research. The SELA project was funded during the Clinton Administration. Bush Administration cut it after 9/11. Follow the links in the “Day After Tomorrow” thread below (and read the update to that post about SELA) and also some of the links in this comment thread for the defunding of FEMA.

None of these things would have prevented catastrophic damage from Katrina. But they undoubtedly would have prevented at least SOME of the damage, and saved many lives.

The Bush Administration’s response has been a disaster at all levels.

September 2, 2005 @ 10:35 am | Comment

In normal times, American disaster response has been the best in the world. But all of the agencies designed to deal with disaster and the troops and manpower needed on the ground have been diverted to the War on Terror – oh, excuse me, “the Global Struggle Against violent extremism” – and had budgets decimated by that and tax cuts for the weathy.

Think about what your saying. New Orleans is not a normal disaster. It is one of epic proportions and unprecedented in American history. What government agency, which you claim existed before the WOT has ever dealt with a disaster of this magnitude?

The only dysfunction I see here is yourself. Successful democracies are built on rational thinking, which both you and Richard clearly are lacking. To say what you have, when the situation is chaotic and hazy to even the people on the ground, shows a rather obvious lack of perspective and historical grounding. Unfortunately, this will be the tone in the coming weeks and I don’t really blame any particular ideology, be it Democratic or Repbulican for this, it simply reveals the state of a shaky foundation.

September 2, 2005 @ 10:40 am | Comment

Verity, do the research. The SELA project was funded during the Clinton Administration. Bush Administration cut it after 9/11. Follow the links in the “Day After Tomorrow” thread below (and read the update to that post about SELA) and also some of the links in this comment thread for the defunding of FEMA

Research, my dear, is science. The article you’ve linked to is partisian tripe, and doesn’t address my issue, which is one of neglect, politics, and human nature.

How about we reference *science* instead, in this Scientific American article written in October of 2001, not August 31, 2005. The money quote:

Since the late 1980s Louisiana’s senators have made various pleas to Congress to fund massive remedial work. But they were not backed by a unified voice. L.S.U. had its surge models, and the Corps had others. Despite agreement on general solutions, competition abounded as to whose specific projects would be most effective. The Corps sometimes painted academics’ cries about disaster as veiled pitches for research money. Academia occasionally retorted that the Corps’s solution to everything was to bulldoze more dirt and pour more concrete, without scientific rationale. Meanwhile oystermen and shrimpers complained that the proposals from both the scientists and the engineers would ruin their fishing grounds.

The problem is obviously decades old and *none* of the solutions to date would have spared in Katrina’s wrath.

So, who needs to do the ‘research’?

September 2, 2005 @ 10:54 am | Comment

More science based research for you Lisa. Written in 2003. Bone up! And notice, none of this would have helped against Katrina. But it’s still all Bush’s fault!

Today New Orleans rests within a bowl formed by 16 ft (4.9 m) tall levees, locks, floodgates, and seawalls, the edge of the bowl extending for hundreds of miles. It is bisected from west to east by the Mississippi River, which is also contained within massive engineered embankments. Water flows through and all around the city while its residents go about their daily routines. A system of levees forming a ring around the northern half of the city to protect it from surging waters in Lake Pontchartrain is set to be completed within the next decade. Construction of a similar system around the southern half of the city will probably take several years longer than that.

But almost 40 years after beginning these projects, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the midst of reassessing them on the basis of an ominous question: Are the protective barriers high enough?

September 2, 2005 @ 11:01 am | Comment

Verity, go ahead, say what you want, think what you want. I honestly don’t give a rat’s ass.

September 2, 2005 @ 11:53 am | Comment

Verity, while you obviously seem to be a quite intelligent commenter, have you no grace or tact? I think you have a good point that Bush couldn’t really have done anything about the state of the levees, at least quickly enough to have defended New Orleans from Katrina. But for godsakes man, peoples nerves are frayed – the condescending tone is simply boorish.

Besides that, I’ll grant you the levees. But how about the fact that Bush downgraded FEMA from a cabinet level agency and slashed their budget? How about the fact that CNN and Fox News had people in place the day before the hurricane hit, yet the National Guard didn’t materialize until today? Given the science we all knew, and due to, yes, as you point out, neglect, politics and human nature making the result of Katrina unavoidable and a foregone conclusion, why were resources not put in place on Saturday to be ready to confront that foregone conclusion? I don’t think Bush is the only one to blame, but he bears certainly bears some – the fact that he said that no one could have predicted this means one of two things: he’s ignorant of the science and rationality that you’re lecturing us on or he’s a liar. Neither is suitable for a president. The buck stops with him.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:06 pm | Comment

I know you don’t. That’s okay. You are beyond logic and reason.

But hopefully, the other 5 people that frequent this site will see the rationality of the articles I posted because that’s will be needed to truly get to the root problems of this disaster, not juvenile cliches.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:06 pm | Comment

Dave,

I am blunt. It’s the most effective may to get through hysteria, which in anycase, hasn’t had any effect on Lisa. The people of New Orleans have my sympathy and my money.

*But*, my boorishness is minor compared to the hysterical rants of not only the posters here, but of much of the chattering classes elsewhere, before the facts of the case have been layed out.

The problems, and by extension the massive loss of life will be repeated unless people can rationally and logically get to the root of the problem, which isn’t Bush.

I will leave the judgement of the short term problems that have befallen NO to time and facts as they emerge, which they clearly have not yet.

I will say that funding is no way correlates to solutions. Those articles I posted clearly state that the solutions to these problems are taking decades, not the 5 years of the Bush Administration. *Nothing* to date or in the works for the next decade could have spared NO this calamity. Period.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:16 pm | Comment

Okay, first, I said repeatedly that even if all of these projects had been fully funded, this would still be a disaster. But odds are it would not be such a total, horrific disaster.

Verity, I’m watching mainstream media, MSNBC at the moment. The failure to adequately fund flood control projects and disaster management is a huge topic. People are dying in the streets. The inadequacy of the Federal response is beyond belief, and EVERYONE can see it. Except, apparently, you.

If you are so contemptuous of this site, then I suggest you stop visiting and commenting here. Otherwise I’m forced to conclude that you’re just another troll, shilling for a morally bankrupt Administration.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:19 pm | Comment

Oh, and here’s our Commander In Chief’s response:

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach in the levees.” George W. Bush, September 1, 2005

And one more thing. I am not your “dear.” The next piece of condescension that comes out of your keyboard and I am banning you, per Richard’s guidelines above.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:33 pm | Comment

Verity, clearly I disagree with you about being blunt with people who are, by their own admission, upset and angry. I’ve noticed that angry people usually refuse to listen to blunt people, not because they are right, but because they sound like a**holes.

Your evidence, however, clearly points out that people had anticipated that the levees could not withstand a cat 3, let alone a cat 5. There were various opinions about how to improve the levees, and all of them pointed to long time lines. So prevention was pretty much impossible.

However, the fact that this was anticipated, despite the fact that Bush told Diane Sawyer no one saw it coming, should have led to a clear plan last week when they saw the hurricane coming. We know its coming. We know the city can’t withstand it. We know there will be flooding and the wetlands are no longer there to slow down the storm. We should mobilize assistance as close to the affected area as possible without jeopardizing the rescue forces themselves, and enter immediately. That should have been the rational plan to deal with the scientific realities you’re talking about.

And no one did it. No one in the administration did it. The administration of the delegator. No, Bush is not the root of the problem. But he proved himself incapable of getting to the root of the problem himself. And that makes him a failed leader.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:36 pm | Comment

Okay, first, I said repeatedly that even if all of these projects had been fully funded, this would still be a disaster. But odds are it would not be such a total, horrific disaster.

You’ve said many things, including this:

“Please understand, for many of us this is the bitterly predictable culmination of 5 years of greed, hubris, horribly misplaced priorities, bad decision-making and utter incompetence.”

I’ll let that stand on it’s own.

Otherwise I’m forced to conclude that you’re just another troll, shilling for a morally bankrupt Administration.

Which of course aptly describes yourself, but the irony I’m sure escapes you. I am a shill for no one, least of all the Bush administration. No one is forcing you to do anything, simply asking you to be reasonable.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:43 pm | Comment

come on, verity snob is absolutely right and he, unlike other lisa and others, has remained tactful throughout his arguments and.

Quite frankly, it doesn’t take much for the US government haters to blame Bush for everything and right now he is a convenient target.

Everyone should read verity snob’s post above concerning the geological situation of New Orleans. What the hell could Bush or anyone could have done about that? Natural disasters are acts of god.

Other lisa, your anti-Bush extremism has gone way too far this time. You are making a complete fool out of yourself.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:44 pm | Comment

other lisa: “And one more thing. I am not your “dear.” The next piece of condescension that comes out of your keyboard and I am banning you, per Richard’s guidelines above.”

verity snob is grinding your pathetic arguments to dust and showing you to be the blinded fool that you are and yet all you can say is “Stop calling me ‘dear'” or I will ban your IP?

Hahahahahaha. How utterly pathetic.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:51 pm | Comment

Dave,

That should have been the rational plan to deal with the scientific realities you’re talking about.

I completely agree. But the posts from both Lisa and Richard aren’t addressing this. They’re addressing funding issues over the last 5 years that would have in no way affected the outcome.

But that being said, there really isn’t a plan for hurricanes. They are erratic and unpredictable( I’ve been through three ). The huge logistical problems of New Orleans are unique and can’t be solved in days or weeks. Were talking about the destruction of a major US City, with hundreds of thousands of refugees. An unprecendented event. The people most responsible for solutions for New Orleans are the local and state governments, then as resources require, the Federal Government.

I’d say there’s been a failure across the board, but some of those failures are simply beyond planning and have to be dealt with on the fly. Let’s posit that the Feds had come up with a plan to save New Orleans and the hurricane simply switched course and destroys Miami. Then what?

I’m curious as to what short term planning and solutions you would have found plausible.

September 2, 2005 @ 12:52 pm | Comment

And Dave,

The most obvious solution would seem to me to order everyone out of New Orleans. No people, no deaths, right?

Then that begs the obvious question what about people who don’t have cars? The poor and elderly? I would suspect that in order to respond to that situation you would need to know about it. As far as I know neither the Govenor or Mayor of Lousiana/NO requested or sought transportation of people who wanted to leave but couldn’t.

September 2, 2005 @ 1:08 pm | Comment

I think I just laid that out. A cat 5, based on the projections of both the Corps and LSU, would result in enormous damage to New Orleans. Two days before it hit it was on a collision course with New Orleans – at the time, it appeared it would hit dead on, which would have been even more destructive. Food, water and relief workers would obviously be necessary. Transportation would have certainly been considered. FEMA ranked such an event as one the most likely and most deadly disasters that could happen in the continental U.S. at any time. So the scale of destruction could at least be guestimated. Resources could have been placed in, say, Houston and Atlanta for rapid deployment on Saturday and Sunday. With helicopters and C-130s, which they are using now, those resources could have reached whatever part of the Gulf that was in the most dire trouble, and the logistics and organization necessary would already be in place.

The mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana and several other officials have expressed repeatedly that they asked for assistance that did not come rapidly enough. It’s not clear yet if they asked early enough, but FEMA is the one that did the studies, had the data, could project the outcome and plan accordingly. They clearly did not. FEMA is a federal agency under the command of a Bush appointee. Bush has far more authority and power to send transportation for the poor, food for the hungry, drinking water and medicine on a massive scale than the limited resources of some of the poorest states in the nation. Clearly the administration bears some responsibility for failing to carry out the plan I’m suggesting, which, given the data you’ve quoted and similiar reports, shouldn’t have taken a rocket scientist.

And RC, I fail to see the tact in words like “dysfunction”, “pathetic”, “my dear”, “blinded fool”, “shrill hysterics”, and dismissing an Editor & Publisher article by a Pulitzer Prize winner as “partisan tripe”. Secondly, I repeat my point that two wrongs do not make a right; responding to raw emotions with more raw emotions does not encourage rational discussion, it inflames. Third, Lisa and Richard are moderators here. They have every right to voice their anger and frustration here. We, on the other hand, are guests. If you don’t like the atmosphere, why are you here?

September 2, 2005 @ 1:14 pm | Comment

Thanks, Dave.

And RC, I’ll add that Verity isn’t addressing my argument. And that actually, I didn’t post the NYT article we are all responding to here. Plus should I repeat for a third time and echo Dave – ? This would have been a disaster regardless. But it didn’t need to be this bad.

September 2, 2005 @ 1:23 pm | Comment

Dave,

Those resources you mentioned were already in place, at military bases in Texas and the other surrounding states.

The problem isn’t assests I think. But communication between all levels of local, state, and federal governments. There were reports of New Orleans police officers turning in their badges and leaving the streets to the thugs. This is turn made it that much more difficult to perform search and rescue operations because of people shooting and firing and vehicles and aircraft. Throw in the fact that the now subsidized FEMA( to Homeland Security ) has never been through this type of disaster, except through small, localized drills, then I think it’s very hard to make a clear cut judgement as to the effectiveness of the solutions your proposing. Someone was streaming a localized band of the Louisina National Guard and various Emergency responders on shoutcast.com, and it was *chaotic*. But I completely agree that Bush should be held responsible, but the problem is much larger than Bush and it transcends political ideologies.

But, I’m sure there will be hearings and commitees to get to the bottom of all this, and in the end it won’t do much good. People mostly learn from experience, not bureaucracy.

And I don’t see the how Will Bunch’s Pulitzer has anything to do with the article he wrote. I judged the article on it’s merits, which imo, it’s lacking.

September 2, 2005 @ 2:06 pm | Comment

And I agree that there’s lots of non-ideological blame to go around. But there are direct links to this crisis and the Bush administration’s ideology – reflected by their spending priorities & their environmental policies.

And yes, the environmental problems that contributed to this are debatable, of long-standing and beyond the ability of any Administration to correct in its term – but admitting there are problems would be a good start.

September 2, 2005 @ 2:20 pm | Comment

So the assets were there. And they weren’t mobilized. They could have been in the way I described, because they should have been braced for the worst as projected by all those scientists in the Corps and LSU. The police have been turning in their badges, yes. Bracing for a worst case scenario would involve assuming that infrastructure would completely break down, since the simulations of 1999 apparently showed a great deal of New Orleans underwater, with the subterranean pump systems failing. In which case I think the police being relatively ineffective would also be predictable, not only because of desertion, (alot of them are probably out protecting their own families), but also because of a lack of communications, fuel and electricity. It was no secret that New Orleans was one of the most crime ridden, violent cities in America and one could imagine a catastrophic disaster would exacerbate that problem. This scenario was imaginable, and the job of disaster relief groups is to be prepared for the worst imaginable.

I don’t see how you get that FEMA has never been through this type of disaster. They’ve dealt with hurricanes before, they’ve dealt with earthquakes. Sure, this one is a doozy on a scale not seen before – but its not like they’re the local volunteer fire company.

However, if you’re emphasizing the fact that they’ve never done this sort thing before as a subsidiary of HS, then I completely agree they’ve never flexed those new bureaucracies yet. That, too, Bush bears some responsibility for.

As for Will Bunch, great, you think its lacking. Show me how. Don’t contemptuously dismiss it as “tripe”, as if any “rational” person would agree. Let’s keep this to Queensbury Rules.

September 2, 2005 @ 2:30 pm | Comment

“verity snob is grinding your pathetic arguments to dust and showing you to be the blinded fool that you are and yet all you can say is “Stop calling me ‘dear'” or I will ban your IP?

Hahahahahaha. How utterly pathetic.”

Thank you, Dave, for pointing out that the above hardly qualifies as tact, on any planet. I’m surprised that RC didn’t add “You stupid, stupid humans!” while he was at it.

The inability of the current Administration to admit that there are problems or that they bear any responsibility for it IS an issue that needs addressing.

All other issues aside, I, for one, will never forget the contrast between Bush playing golf while his countrymen died. That’s not what a leader should do.

September 2, 2005 @ 2:33 pm | Comment

FEMA has never handled the destruction of a large American city. They’ve drilled, since being subsumed into HS, on biological and nuclear terror threats, but of course that only minimally prepares them for the real thing. And Katrina is pretty damn close.

As for Will Bunch, first I think from all indications, it’s clear the the levee breach that occured happened because the levee broke(duh!) and it broke because it wasn’t built nor had been reinforced to withstand a cat 4,5 hurricane. Now Bunch cites SELA, which has nothing to do with upgrading levies to withstand those types of hurricanes. It’s a flood control project that was initiated in response to a severe rainstorm The projects goals are to build pump stations, raise the sinking levy walls, and strengthen them in certain places. In the article he lists a lot of funding shortages, which conviently start in 2003, ignoring the fact that SELA was started in 1995. He also ignores the fact that a large portion of SELA’s funding comes from Louisiana itself. And the fact that Congress sets the budget, not Bush.

So in essence, SELA wouldn’t have prevented what happened. Bunch must know this, so I can only attribute it to political bias. And of course it immediately shows up on the NY Times, and Daily Kos where everyone who reads it will toss it around as if it means much. It’s bad journalism and misinformation. And if you’ve ever read Will Bunch’s blog, there should be no question as to whether he has the ability to report a situation that involves Bush with impartiality.

September 2, 2005 @ 5:16 pm | Comment

From Salon.com:

…FEMA is not the only agency that found itself bled of required funding by White House decisions after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Shortly after the attacks, the Army Corps of Engineers found itself facing deep cuts in funding for the largest flood control and drainage program in the New Orleans area. In the first full budget year after the attacks, the Bush administration funded the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA, at only 20 percent of the Corps’ request of $100 million. In fiscal year 2004, the White House funding came in at 17 percent of the request.

For each of these years, Congress, with the support of the Louisiana delegation, appropriated more money, but funding still came in far below the requirements. Work was delayed. Contractors worked without pay. Whole projects were put off. Local project managers complained that New Orleans was competing with the war in Iraq for funding. “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle Homeland Security and the war in Iraq,” Walter Maestri, the emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the Times-Picayune in 2004. Of the $500 million requested for levees, pumping stations and new drainage canals between 2001 and 2005, only $249 million passed out of Congress. As recently as March, the Corps warned in a briefing memo that the funding shortfalls “will significantly increase the cost of the project, delay project completion and delay project benefits.”

“If the Army Corps capabilities for the SELA program had been fully funded, there is no question that Jefferson Parish and New Orleans would be in a much better position to remove the water on the streets once the pumps start working,” says Hunter Johnston, a lobbyist for Johnston and Associates who worked to secure the money.

It is too early to tell, however, whether the additional funding would have prevented the levee breaches and overruns that have flooded New Orleans. Scientists, journalists and public officials have been warning for decades that New Orleans could not withstand a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. Even SELA, which was started in the mid-1990s after flooding caused billions in damage, was designed to protect against smaller storms, though planners said it would reduce damages of “larger events.”

The same concerns have been voiced to justify more spending to restore Louisiana’s coastline, which has been sinking into the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of one football field every half hour. “Something needed to be done to protect the Louisiana coast for an eventuality not unlike this,” says Chris Paolino, a spokesman for Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-La. “For the most part, it has been an unheeded cry by Louisiana.” As recently as June, the Bush administration told the Senate that it opposed a provision in the energy bill that gave Gulf states about $1 billion to shore up their coastal protections, including possible levee and pump work. Despite the objections, Congress kept the provision in the final bill, but the money won’t begin to arrive in states like Louisiana and Mississippi until 2008.

The scale of such funding is almost laughable now, considering the scope of the devastation in southern Louisiana and Mississippi. Politicians and lobbyists are just beginning to turn their attention to the massive cleanup and reconstruction bill, which will likely take years and cost tens of billions of dollars. But observers like Tolbert hope that the nation’s leaders learn some lessons from the experience.

The blame, he says, lies not with the local and federal officials who warned for decades of the coming disaster. It lies with those elected officials who refused to sign the checks. “The country deserves better than that,” he says.

Sorry about the confusing way this is broken up, the comments don’t seem to like large blockquotes.

September 2, 2005 @ 5:50 pm | Comment

Verity Snob – you need a new handle. I see plenty of snobbery, but not enough verity. For example, you state: “FEMA has never handled the destruction of a large American city.”

Uh, what happened in New York on September 11? While the city was not flooded with water, it was flooded with a layer of dust so toxic we’re still dealing with its aftereffects.

And FEMA has been around a long, long time. Their SOLE JOB is to prepare for emergencies just such as this, according to FEMA’s own Web site:

“FEMA Mission

“DISASTER. It strikes anytime, anywhere. It takes many forms — a hurricane, an earthquake, a tornado, a flood, a fire or a hazardous spill, an act of nature or an act of terrorism. It builds over days or weeks, or hits suddenly, without warning. Every year, millions of Americans face disaster, and its terrifying consequences.

“On March 1, 2003, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). FEMA’s continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates proactive mitigation activities, trains first responders, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration.”

So how can we say oh, poor FEMA, they didn’t know? They have an entire Hurricane department. And they went through a five-day exercise for “Hurricane Pam” in July of 2004. (http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=13051)

Here’s the first bit from that page:

BATON ROUGE, La. — Hurricane Pam brought sustained winds of 120 mph, up to 20 inches of rain in parts of southeast Louisiana and storm surge that topped levees in the New Orleans area. More than one million residents evacuated and Hurricane Pam destroyed 500,000-600,000 buildings. Emergency officials from 50 parish, state, federal and volunteer organizations faced this scenario during a five-day exercise held this week at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge.

The exercise used realistic weather and damage information developed by the National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the LSU Hurricane Center and other state and federal agencies to help officials develop joint response plans for a catastrophic hurricane in Louisiana.

“We made great progress this week in our preparedness efforts,” said Ron Castleman, FEMA Regional Director. “Disaster response teams developed action plans in critical areas such as search and rescue, medical care, sheltering, temporary housing, school restoration and debris management. These plans are essential for quick response to a hurricane but will also help in other emergencies.”

“Hurricane planning in Louisiana will continue,” said Colonel Michael L. Brown, Deputy Director for Emergency Preparedness, Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. “Over the next 60 days, we will polish the action plans developed during the Hurricane Pam exercise. We have also determined where to focus our efforts in the future.”

I just heard a FEMA official on CBS say “FEMA’s going to take it in the shorts – we’re not doing enough.” That from the horse’s own mouth.

September 2, 2005 @ 7:35 pm | Comment

Verity’s bad news. He is claiming this is a liberal thing, partisan swiping at Bush. Not true at all. Some of the most vocal criticism is coming from the right and from Republicans in the red states. This is not kneejerk anti-Bush stupidity. And it’s not just the slashing of funds and the failure of homeland security, but also the leadership gap, the “What-me-worry” grin and bullshit slogans that actually make things worse for the agonized victims on the ground (“We’ll emerge from this stronger” – easy to say from the golfcourse.)

September 2, 2005 @ 8:21 pm | Comment

A little sleuthing reveals that Verity Snob is a troll who has been coming here over the past ten days using multiple aliases and IP addresses trying to stir things up and get a rise out of people. Lisa, feel free to delete at will.

September 2, 2005 @ 8:23 pm | Comment

other lisa,

i understand your feeling.

some chinese experts compared the ways how american fed government and chinese government reacted to disasters and concluded that there are some defects in the american system in front of such disasters.

i agree with you that the current adminstration and GW didn’t act in a proper way, but i think the most important problem is not leadership issue but a well-designed system for disasters like this.

it’s just too easy to blame somebody or some organization but not so easy to find out the root cause.

September 2, 2005 @ 8:44 pm | Comment

In the fisrt place I wanted to give a comment on this all, the politics and espacially about Bingfeng’s mentioning about the “dysfuktioning of democrcy” but right now I just don’t feel that anything I could say would be accurate.
You Americans deal with your governmet about this issue. I don’t feel in a position to comment on this.
I only can say that my feelings are with the people in the disaster areas.

September 2, 2005 @ 9:30 pm | Comment

I’m glad the snob posted an article from an objective site like the National Review and not a “nice impartial site” like Salon. Wow.

>> are decades old and didn’t suddenly appear with the Bush administration

Hmmm. Sounds familiar. the Bush admin. bears no blame for 9/11 either because al Qeada also did not “suddenly appear with the Bush administration.” (that was Clinton’s fault). Oh yeah, same on Iraq. Same on the Taliban. And on and on.

This is pretty basic: the federal government took 5 days (and counting) to muster up any sort of response; Americans are starving in the streets and getting raped and shot at by gangs because of it. (But that, of course, is because NO was “soft on crime” before the hurricane. Has to be the most idiotic thing I have heard yet, by the way).

If Clinton or Kerry were in charge right now, articles of impeachment would have already been drafted by Delay and co., so let’s stop pretending here.

The Bush administration’s biggest problem is simply that it is inept and incompetent. In Iraq or NO.

September 2, 2005 @ 9:57 pm | Comment

I think that verity has certainly added to the quality of argument here by raising some very valid points. For my part, I don’t see that the level of debate going on nationally is going to get any less partisan. The responsibility for this mess goes from the Mayor’s office in New Orleans, up to the Governor’s office, and from there up to both the Congress and the White House, and through more than a few federal agencies. All are going to be doing their best to clear themselves, and pass the blame elsewhere. Strictly speaking, the Fed’s don’t get involved in state matters until the states turn to them for help. So the President’s men are likely to point out that until such a request reached the Oval office, their hands were tied. Well, speaking strictly within a federal context, that is true. Yet the President is from a neighboring state that has suffered its own disastrous hurricanes, and leadership involves more than responding. It ideally involves vision, and a capacity to recognize when immediate action is required. From my superficial knowledge of the facts to date, it appears that he failed to visualize what this storm would do, and ask the hard questions of those in his administration who should have been “leaning forward in their foxholes”, anticipating what this storm would do. Pinning that rose on him does not absolve those in state, parish, and city government of their failures. It merely marks him as a mediocre president, and we seem to have seen a lot of those over the past thirty years. Perhaps that is why our politics are so partisan.

September 2, 2005 @ 10:01 pm | Comment

Hang on a minute, let’s get straight on FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers experience with coordinating flood and hurricane monitoring, prevention, control and relief.

FEMA History

FEMA can trace its beginnings to the Congressional Act of 1803. This act, generally considered the first piece of disaster legislation, provided assistance to a New Hampshire town following an extensive fire. In the century that followed, ad hoc legislation was passed more than 100 times…

By the 1930s, when the federal approach to problems became popular, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was given authority to make disaster loans for repair and reconstruction of certain public facilities following an earthquake, and later, other types of disasters. In 1934, the Bureau of Public Roads was given authority to provide funding for highways and bridges damaged by natural disasters. The Flood Control Act, which gave the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers greater authority to implement flood control projects, was also passed.

The 1960s and early 1970s brought massive disasters requiring major federal response and recovery operations by the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration, established within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Hurricane Carla struck in 1962, Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Agnes in 1972. The Alaskan Earthquake hit in 1964 and the San Fernando Earthquake rocked Southern California in 1971.

So we can point to the FDAA as the first full blooded ancestor of FEMA. Let’s just look at a couple of these hurricanes of the 60s and 70s.

MEMORABLE GULF COAST HURRICANES OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Hurricane Carla, September 10. 1961: Hurricane Carla was the largest and most intense Gulf Coast hurricane in decades. On September 8, Carla’s center took aim at the Texas coast. By the 9th, Carla’s circulation enveloped the entire Gulf of Mexico with fringe effects along all Gulf Coast states. On the 9th, the largest mass evacuation to that date occurred, as an estimated one-half million residents of low coastal areas and islands off Texas and Louisiana were evacuated to higher ground. As the center approached Texas on the 10th, winds near the center were estimated at 150 mph. Reconnaissance aircraft indicated a central pressure of 931 mb just prior to its striking the coast. Only 46 lost their lives because of early warnings. Severe damage along a wide expanse of the Texas coast was caused by unusually prolonged winds,high tides and flooding from torrential rains. Damage was about $2 billion in 1990 dollars. (about $3 billion 2005 dollars)

Hurricane Betsy, September 8-9, 1965: Betsy developed from a tropical depression on August 26 east of the Windward Islands and intensified as it moved west… The eye arrived at Grand Isle, LA, the evening of September 9th. The eye was 40 miles in diameter on the Louisiana coast.

Great devastation was caused by high water on the central Gulf Coast from the point where the center made landfall to Mobile, Alabama. Evacuation advice prompted 300,000 people in Louisiana to seek safe shelter. However, 58 people lost their lives because of winds and floods in that state. There were four deaths in Florida; other lives were lost in the adjacent waters of the Gulf and the Atlantic. The total of 75 deaths in Betsy was the greatest loss of life along the Gulf coast since Audrey in 1957. Highest sustained winds of 136 mph were rec.orded at Port Sulphur, LA, with gusts to 160 mph reported along the Gulf Coast. Betsy’s damages in 1990 dollars, amount to $6.5 billion ($10 billion 2005 dollars), the third costliest U.S. hurricane of the 20th Century. Only the Atlantic coast’s Hugo (1989) and Andrew (1992), with more than $7 billion, ($10.5 billion)and $25 billion ($37.5 billion)respectively, exceed Betsy’s devastation.

And the San Fernando Earthquake? Freeways and hospitals collapsed, and electricity, phones and water all went out. Seen that before, huh?

And then there’s Andrew, under the modern day (pre-Homeland Security) FEMA. And there was looting and violence then too.

Yes, clearly Katrina is unprecedented in scale. But the components of FEMA have long history of experience to pull from. They have learned many lessons, and so should we all. Policymakers, in particular, should have learned them already. We’ve dealt with Cat 5s, we’ve dealt with riots/looting/lawlessness, we’ve dealt with the flooding and we’ve dealt with the loss of infrastructure. We should have, in disaster planning, assumed we would have to deal with any and all of these things, and had the ability to deal with it standing by. FEMA had the models; did decisionmakers look at them? Did decisionmakers look at the history? Did decisionmakers do what is their job, to take the big picture and also think about public order and communications. Decisionmakers are supposed to be coordinators, and Bush as president is in the ultimate position of coordination. And apparently he decided to start doing that… Thursday.

September 2, 2005 @ 11:15 pm | Comment

Uh… posting problem here

September 2, 2005 @ 11:45 pm | Comment

Hang on a minute, let’s get straight on FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers experience with coordinating flood and hurricane monitoring, prevention, control and relief.

FEMA History

FEMA can trace its beginnings to the Congressional Act of 1803. This act, generally considered the first piece of disaster legislation, provided assistance to a New Hampshire town following an extensive fire. In the century that followed, ad hoc legislation was passed more than 100 times…

By the 1930s, when the federal approach to problems became popular, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was given authority to make disaster loans for repair and reconstruction of certain public facilities following an earthquake, and later, other types of disasters. In 1934, the Bureau of Public Roads was given authority to provide funding for highways and bridges damaged by natural disasters. The Flood Control Act, which gave the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers greater authority to implement flood control projects, was also passed.

The 1960s and early 1970s brought massive disasters requiring major federal response and recovery operations by the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration, established within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Hurricane Carla struck in 1962, Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Agnes in 1972. The Alaskan Earthquake hit in 1964 and the San Fernando Earthquake rocked Southern California in 1971.

So we can point to the FDAA as the first full blooded ancestor of FEMA. Let’s just look at a couple of these hurricanes of the 60s and 70s.

MEMORABLE GULF COAST HURRICANES OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Hurricane Carla, September 10. 1961: Hurricane Carla was the largest and most intense Gulf Coast hurricane in decades. On September 8, Carla’s center took aim at the Texas coast. By the 9th, Carla’s circulation enveloped the entire Gulf of Mexico with fringe effects along all Gulf Coast states. On the 9th, the largest mass evacuation to that date occurred, as an estimated one-half million residents of low coastal areas and islands off Texas and Louisiana were evacuated to higher ground. As the center approached Texas on the 10th, winds near the center were estimated at 150 mph. Reconnaissance aircraft indicated a central pressure of 931 mb just prior to its striking the coast. Only 46 lost their lives because of early warnings. Severe damage along a wide expanse of the Texas coast was caused by unusually prolonged winds,high tides and flooding from torrential rains. Damage was about $2 billion in 1990 dollars. (about $3 billion 2005 dollars)

September 2, 2005 @ 11:47 pm | Comment

Hurricane Betsy, September 8-9, 1965: Betsy developed from a tropical depression on August 26 east of the Windward Islands and intensified as it moved west… The eye arrived at Grand Isle, LA, the evening of September 9th. The eye was 40 miles in diameter on the Louisiana coast.

Great devastation was caused by high water on the central Gulf Coast from the point where the center made landfall to Mobile, Alabama. Evacuation advice prompted 300,000 people in Louisiana to seek safe shelter. However, 58 people lost their lives because of winds and floods in that state. There were four deaths in Florida; other lives were lost in the adjacent waters of the Gulf and the Atlantic. The total of 75 deaths in Betsy was the greatest loss of life along the Gulf coast since Audrey in 1957. Highest sustained winds of 136 mph were rec.orded at Port Sulphur, LA, with gusts to 160 mph reported along the Gulf Coast. Betsy’s damages in 1990 dollars, amount to $6.5 billion ($10 billion 2005 dollars), the third costliest U.S. hurricane of the 20th Century. Only the Atlantic coast’s Hugo (1989) and Andrew (1992), with more than $7 billion, ($10.5 billion)and $25 billion ($37.5 billion)respectively, exceed Betsy’s devastation.

And the San Fernando Earthquake? Freeways and hospitals collapsed, and electricity, phones and water all went out. Seen that before, huh?

And then there’s Andrew, under the modern day (pre-Homeland Security) FEMA. And there was looting and violence then too.

Yes, clearly Katrina is unprecedented in scale. But the components of FEMA have long history of experience to pull from. They have learned many lessons, and so should we all. Policymakers, in particular, should have learned them already. We’ve dealt with Cat 5s, we’ve dealt with riots/looting/lawlessness, we’ve dealt with the flooding and we’ve dealt with the loss of infrastructure. We should have, in disaster planning, assumed we would have to deal with any and all of these things, and had the ability to deal with it standing by. FEMA had the models; did decisionmakers look at them? Did decisionmakers look at the history? Did decisionmakers do what is their job, to take the big picture and also think about public order and communications. Decisionmakers are supposed to be coordinators, and Bush as president is in the ultimate position of coordination. And apparently he decided to start doing that… Thursday.

September 2, 2005 @ 11:48 pm | Comment

And you know what? Five days to get water to people who had gathered at a designated shelter? What the fuck is that about? Bush only NOW tours the area? Makes jokes about how they’re going to rebuild Trent Lott’s house and it’ll be even more beautiful than before, and he’s looking forward to sitting on the porch?! People are dying of dehydration on the streets of New Orleans. What is WRONG with this guy?! Honestly. He said today, “I’m gonna be leavin’ in a minute, but I want you to know, I understand…” and he says, “I understand that this is gonna take more than one day of attention to fix.”

Oh my god. Is that it? Is this the first time he’s run up against something where he finally realizes it’s not something he can knock off between work-outs?

And the head of FEMA tells a CNN anchorwoman yesterday that “we didn’t know” there were thousands of desperate people gathered at the convention center? No wonder Paula Zahn (Paula Zahn!) ripped him a new one! We all knew about it. All you had to do was watch CNN or MSNBC for a few minutes. How in hell could he not know?

There’s just no excuse, none. This kind of disaster is what the Federal government is for. The Bush administration has gutted almost every public service function of our government, and this is the result.

And it’s not just New Orleans. I heard a woman, a white woman from the sound of her, a nurse, who was talking about the horror of trying to help her injured neighbors, whose wounds were becoming infected, and she had no resources, no help, no sign of the government. And the reporter asked her if she’d heard that President Bush was touring the area, and what she’d like to say to him. Her voice was shaking. She said, “I heard people say how it might make us feel better, if the President came down and gave us all hugs. Well, we need a lot more than hugs.”

And I heard another old country guy, who when asked what he would like to say to the President, said, “Bring our troops home from Iraq. We need them here.”

These are not “liberals.” They’re probably not even Democrats. They are Southern Americans who appear to have realized that they’ve been sold a bill of goods.

Please cut me some slack for my emotionalism here. I’m not generally a person who argues from this sort of place. But I have never in my life been so upset by something that didn’t directly happen to me or my loved ones. This is a fuck-up of monumental proportions. And it’s the culmination of five years of fuck-ups, and too many people have died as a consequence. In Iraq, and here in America.

September 3, 2005 @ 12:19 am | Comment

Rubbish.

For everyone’s information, Verity Snob posted some superb comments here blowing away the half-baked arguments of Other Lisa and they were myteriously deleted by with Other Lisa. Richard or Martyn.

Why? Because he had you against the wall with his points? It certainly looks like it to me.

I hope he’s allowed to respond. Otherwise, you’ve deleted an excellent commenter from this site. It’s a big loss.

September 3, 2005 @ 11:18 am | Comment

I smell a familiar IP address…

September 3, 2005 @ 3:11 pm | Comment

Your own?

September 3, 2005 @ 4:49 pm | Comment

Rick, I didn’t delete them.

You forgot to mention that these “superb” arguments were also insulting and specious.

You know what? I just get tired of arguing. You guys say the same stuff, it’s no more relevant the fifth time around than it was the first. You resort to personal attacks and insults when you run out of any other ammunition.

And rather than firing back with some insults of my own, I decided I’d rather take a nice, long walk.

September 3, 2005 @ 7:33 pm | Comment