Mike's Noise

Katrinamania

This is the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.  In a few weeks it will be the five year anniversary of 9/11.  Interestingly, when it comes to discussing that awful day of terror, five years is "too soon."  Yet there seems to be no apprehension about discussing the death and destruction of Hurricane Katrina after only one year.  My opinion?  It's a chance for Democrats to dominate the news cycle for 24 hours and continually remind you that "George Bush hates black people."  And no one is going to give up an opportunity like that.

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(ADDED: Actually, most of the coverage I saw was pretty much devoid of anti-Bush bias, which I found rather surprising.  So I'll admit I was wrong about that prediction.)

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If you want to really know what happened a year ago, check out my Hurricane Katrina blog archive.  Click the link, scroll down to the bottom and start reading.  You'll find pretty much everything there:  the utter failure of the City of New Orleans to evacuate its indigent citizens, the complete collapse of New Orleans police and emergency response network, the grossly misleading and inaccurate reporting of the mainstream media (babies being raped and bodies stacked to the ceiling at the Superdome), the heroic and downright awe-inspiring rescue missions mounted by the National Guard, the idiocy of Sean Penn, the kooky conspiracy theories of Louis Farrakhan and Spike Lee, the failures and waste of FEMA, the utter incompetence of the Army Corps of Engineers, and egregious finger pointing by federal, state, and local officials.

And don't forget the efforts of conservative bloggers to raise money for Katrina victims, while the left half of the blogosphere was engaged in full-tilt foaming-at-the-mouth Bush-bashing; the suffering of thousands in Alabama and Mississippi and in the suburbs surrounding New Orleans, who lost everything but whose stories were ignored because they failed to ignite a sufficient amount of Bush hatred; the thousands of volunteers who donated money, facilities, clothes and commodities, and time to help Katrina survivors; the cities like Houston who opened their doors to over 100,000 Katrina evacuees; the thousands of volunteers, mostly from churches, who have journeyed to New Orleans over the last 9 months and have helped hundreds of families clean out and rebuild their homes; and the struggling survivors who have returned to New Orleans and faced mold, slime, garbage, and a host of other ills as they try to rebuild their lives.

God bless the people of New Orleans.  Keep them in your prayers; they are still going to need them for some time.

ADDED: WizBang blogger Paul, an engineer and New Orleans resident, has compiled perhaps the best archive of writings about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina on the web.  His ultimate Katrina post presents a smoking gun home video that shows, conclusively, that the water levels at 17th Street Canal Floodwall were NOT at a critically-high level when the floodwall broke.  The wall was -- literally -- undermined by only a slight increase from the normal level of water.  It began seeping from underneath, then began to erode away and finally collapsed completely.

Besides the now-accepted (but criminally under-reported) conclusion that the Army Corps of Engineers built a poorly designed floodwall system -- and was therefore responsible for the flooding of New Orleans -- this video seems to underscore the fact that Katrina actually saved lives in New Orleans.  Why?  The approaching hurricane spurred the activation of emergency shelters and evacuation efforts before the flood occured.  Had the wall broken at another time (which now seems very likely) then tens of thousands would have died and rescue operations would have taken weeks longer.  Frightening indeed.

(Several WizBang commenters pointed out that other areas of the city were flooded by overspill or storm surge occurring at other containment walls.  Although Katrina caused only a moderate amount of wind damage in New Orleans, it did pack a pretty good storm surge.  But Paul's post seems to clearly show that the 17th Street floodwall, the one whose breach flooded most of the heart of N. O., collapsed without a significant increase in the water level.)

No good deed goes unpunished

Here is an interesting New York Times article that describes the strain felt by Texans who absorbed hundreds of thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees, and then took a direct hit from Hurricane Rita.

In East Texas, state officials are seeking roughly $1 billion in new federal block-grant money to house people whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Rita.

Texas officials concede that their coast was not pummeled nearly as badly as their neighbors in Louisiana, but they argue that their residents did not evacuate and were now trying to live in squalid, mold-infested conditions.

"I have been to the Ninth Ward," said Mark Viator, chairman of the Recovery Coalition of Southeast Texas, speaking of the most devastated neighborhood in New Orleans. "There is debris in the Ninth Ward, but you don't have people. We say, send the money where the people are."

Henry Bowie, who lives in Port Arthur, a city with high unemployment and many poor residents, is the sort of person Mr. Viator thinks should get federal housing money. His house is a patchwork of broken roofing, and light is visible through the floorboards because the house is off its foundation. Black mold grows up the sides of the walls, but Mr. Bowie, who undergoes dialysis three times a week, remains there with his wife and teenage son.

... Mayor Guy N. Goodson of Beaumont, where thousands of homes were damaged, said he would like to see federal reimbursements for debris removal there rise to 90 percent of costs from 75 percent, equaling what it was in Louisiana. Mayor Goodson said his area suffered inattention because its residents had done the right thing: evacuating and rebuilding without complaint after Hurricane Rita cut its path.

"There is a great disjoinder in people's minds about disaster," he said. "You see wildfires, you see a tornado, and who can forget the pictures of the Ninth Ward. A vast majority of our area is wind damage. And unfortunately from a sensory standpoint, people just don't coordinate these two very similar disasters."

There's much more in the article about the problems Houston is facing, but I chose to excerpt some details about southeast Texas.  I'm a native of that area, and I have seen firsthand the destruction that Hurricane Rita caused.  Like the people living in Mississippi, the sensationalism-driven news media has simply ignored the plight of this area.  But it is real.

A final thought -- all of the people living in water-damaged and mold-infested housing along the Gulf Coast in the wake of these two hurricanes are going to provide doctors and other medical professionals with a living laboratory of diseases and health ailments caused by exposure to mold and chronically damp environments.  Many people (particularly in the construction and insurance industries) have dismissed the idea of mold-related diseases as a fantasy cooked up by greedy lawyers.  We'll see if they change their minds now.

Houston suffering from "compassion fatigue"

MSNBC/Newsweek is reporting that the city of Houston, whose schools, healthcare services, law enforcement, and housing have been over-burdened by, at times, up to 150,000 refugees from New Orleans, is nearing the breaking point.  The article calls it "compassion fatigue."

These situations only expose the dire circumstances that existed in New Orleans before Katrina struck.  Through its acclaim as a party town, New Orleans was able to keep tourists away from is impoverished neighborhoods and was largely able to sweep unemployment, shiftlessness, drug and gang activity, and the hopelessness of its residents under the rug for nearly a century.  Katrina blew the lid off these problems, and the refugee situation has exported them en masse to communities that are unable to absorb so many problem citizens on such short notice.

Many people suggested that Katrina was the best thing to ever happen to the poor people of New Orleans, since it forced them out of communities saturated with generational poverty and into situations where their chances of finding work and becoming productive members of society was greatly improved.  That sentiment is probably true, but it still doesn't account for the almost insurmountable difficulties involved in a radical lifestyle change.  Someone who has spent all their lives in generational poverty would find working and living on their own to be as difficult a task as trying to survive in a foreign country without being able to speak or understand the language.

These people, most of them with good hearts but without the skills or understanding to survive and prosper by themselves, need not only our prayers but our willingness to physically involve ourselves in their lives -- teaching them responsibility and stewardship, serving as role models, and offering to be advocates for them when they need help.

On a related note, Father John Whiteford notes the impending meltdown of Texas' welfare system here and here.

AP floats "misinformation=disinformation" meme in Katrina video controversy

UPDATE 3-4-06: From the Nelson Muntz "Ha-Ha!" department, WizBang Blog notes this retraction by the Associated Press after being hammered by bloggers for two days:

Clarification: Katrina-Video story
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) _ In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.

The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.

Behold, the power of the blog.
_________________________________________________

All you need to know about the Bush Administration hack-job perpetrated by the AP and disguised as a "news" story is contained in the links below:

WizBang: ReWriting Katrina History, AP Style
PowerLine: More Leaks; This Time, Katrina

The AP claims to have acquired "new" video footage of briefings and teleconferences held during the six days prior to the August 30th landfall of Hurricane Katrina and attended by President Bush along with various state and federal government officials.  Funny, I thought Bush was on "vacation," "clueless" and "out of touch" before Katrina struck.  Silly me.

But according to the White House, complete transcripts of the exact same meetings have been available for months.  Isn't it funny that the mainstream media can't seem to get excited about a story unless they have pictures to look at?  (Unless those pictures are cartoons of Mohammed.)

This AP story is simply a venue for a new strategy: zeroing in on one word uttered by the President, and then building a flimsy case to prove that the word was uttered in error.  Then they will try to hold him "accountable" for making those grievous errors.  And I'll bet that sooner or later, one of those misstatements will be turned into an impeachable offense.

In their story, the AP sets up Bush by noting that after New Orleans flooded, he remarked "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."  Then the AP goes into great pains to discuss how many times the New Orleans levee system was discussed in the pre-landfall briefings.  Trouble is, the aspect of levee failure that was discussed was overspill, or "topping," not disintegration, or "breaching."  Over at Captain's Quarters blog, Ed Morrisey pored through pages of transcripts available through the New York Times and found the word "breach" appearing only one time.

In the normal course of human events, misstatements are routinely made, usually due to confusion or ambiguity with respect to factual circumstances.  Perfect case in point: today the AP released video of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco assuring the President and his staff that preliminary reports indicated that there were no levee breaches.

There is a vast gulf of difference between misinformation and disinformation, whose only purpose is deliberate deception.  Disinformation is usually a crime; misinformation, even when it is damaging, usually isn't.  And we will all be much better off if we don't try to change that.

FEMA - not exactly a heck of a job

I couldn't let this story go by without a few comments.  From the "tell us something we don't already know" department ...

Audits: Millions of dollars in Katrina aid wasted

WASHINGTON - In its rush to provide Katrina disaster aid, the Federal Emergency Management Agency wasted millions of dollars and overpaid for hotel rooms, including $438-a-day lodging in New York City, government investigators said Monday.

Reports released by the Government Accountability Office and the Homeland Security Department’s office of inspector general detail a series of accounting flaws, fraud or mismanagement in their initial review of how $85 billion in federal aid is being spent.

The two audits found that up to 900,000 of the 2.5 million applicants who received aid under FEMA’s emergency cash assistance program — which included the $2,000 debit cards given to evacuees — were based on duplicate or invalid Social Security numbers, or false addresses and names.

Nine hundred thousand out of 2.5 million -- that's over one third of them, folks.  Ready for more?

The audits included these findings:

• The $2,000 debit cards issued to hurricane evacuees for emergency supplies were often used for purchases unrelated to disaster aid, including: adult entertainment, gambling, a $450 tattoo, a .45-caliber handgun for $1,300 and a diamond engagement ring for $1,100.
• There was little or no verification of the names, addresses or Social Security numbers of applicants registering by phone or the Internet for the $2,000 in aid, resulting in thousands of checks issued to those with duplicate or bogus information.
• Duplicate payments were made to about 5,000 of the nearly 11,000 debit card recipients who received Katrina aid, first with debit cards and then again via electronic bank transfer. (That's NEARLY HALF. -Mike.)
• Although FEMA says it bought 114,341 trailers for $1.7 billion, discrepancies abound in FEMA’s documentation of the number ordered, received and occupied, making it difficult to ascertain the exact units available or whether government-owned property was otherwise accounted for.
• FEMA may have bought too many temporary homes — 24,967 manufactured homes obtained for $857.8 million and 1,295 modular homes at $40 million — resulting in 10,777 such homes sitting empty in Hope, Ark., in sinking mud without proper storage. “It was unclear how the decision was made,” the Homeland Security audit stated.

How about pure bloody incompetence?  That sounds like a plausible explanation to me.

Of course bloggers were all over the stories about Katrina victims friviolously spending their $2,000 handouts last October.

And I seem to distinctly remember liberals trying to smear anyone who would dare question the appropriation of Hurricane Katrina relief funds as racists who hate America.  As Glenn Reynolds would say, "heh."

To Build or Not To Build

A solemn look at the problems facing New Orleans can be found in this current Time Magazine article.  As someone who has done government paperwork in the past, all I can say is, "Welcome to the world of US Federal Government contracts."

I suppose liberals are going to have to choose between two possible outcomes in The Big Easy:

1)  Fast-track the recovery and restoration efforts by suspending competitive bidding, and thus allow eeeeevil Bu$hCo conspirators like Halliburton to make money

2)  Reinstate competitive bidding and let much of the city crumble from mold and wet rot while government bean counters squabble over bids, subsidies, quotas, and the like.

On second thought, they won't.  It's just too much fun to be able to blame Bush for everything.

New Orleans has an unenviable dilemma -- restore a historic though largely blighted city to an ill-conceived and dangerous location, or rebuild residential areas in safer zones that either already exist or that can be engineered by embarking on a massive landfill project.

Whatever New Orleans officials decide, I sincerely hope that they don't allow something like this to happen again.

The FEMA emails

Michelle Malkin has images of the email exchanges between FEMA headquarters and FEMA agents on the ground in New Orleans, as Hurricane Katrina wrecked havoc in New Orleans.  Go read them now.

Overall they paint a rather grim picture for FEMA, providing direct evidence that FEMA had agents in the field before and during the flood who kept in constant contact with headquarters and who gave them hourly reports on the dire situation in the city and in the Superdome.  They also reveal that the FEMA PR team was more concerned with providing FEMA director Michael Brown with a cozy restaurant meal and a coast-to-coast TV interview than with getting him to New Orleans to personally manage the disaster response.

But was the New Orleans debacle all Michael Brown's fault?  His online resume states,

... Brown has led Homeland Security’s response to more than 164 presidentially declared disasters and emergencies, including the 2003 Columbia Shuttle disaster and the California wildfires in 2003. In 2004, Mr. Brown led FEMA’s thousands of dedicated disaster workers during the most active hurricane season in over 100 years, as FEMA delivered aid more quickly and more efficiently than ever before.

And that's a valid point that no one brings up.  Brown supervised the Federal responses to hundreds of declared disasters, and none of them dissolved into the swamp of utter incompetence that we saw in New Orleans.  In fact, I'd be willing to bet money that most of Brown's harshest critics (particularly Democrats) had never even heard of Michael Brown before Katrina.

So what really happened?

I believe that evidence clearly indicates that the City of New Orleans was completely unprepared for a major disaster.  This was, realistically, probably the first time that FEMA encountered such utter incompetence among local authorities, and such unwillingness among residents to recognize the magnitude of the potential disaster. 

Michael Brown failed to realized the seriousness of the New Orleans situation, partly as a result of poor communication within FEMA, but mostly because neither he nor anyone else in Washington had ever imagined that local authorities could have been so completely incapable of immediate disaster response.

Having said that, it's now time to jump on FEMA for a while. 

First of all, if your job is disaster response, doesn't it make sense that you would approach your job always assuming that the worst will happen?  Brown's lax attitude about the situation doesn't exactly inspire confidence that he would be able to handle another such crisis any better.

Secondly, we've dumped billions of dollars into "Homeland Security" during the last three years, and a fair-sized chunk of that money was supposed to be earmarked for disaster response coordination efforts between local and Federal authorities.  I thought that this meant that Federal teams were supposed to get together with local municipalities, review disaster response plans, and set up coordinated responses.  Maybe I was wrong.  It is obvious that no one at FEMA understood how ill-prepared the city of New Orleans was, or how stubborn and recalcitrant the New Orleans residents would be.  By the time the city started flooding, it was too late.

If anything, this whole episode proves conclusively that if you sit around waiting for the government to bail you out of every problem you are in, then you are in big trouble. 

It also proves that life doesn't give us a do-over.  Or a second chance to make a good impression.  FEMA is forever scarred by the behavior of Michael Brown.  Shame on him.

"Millions More" insanity begins

Whenever Louis Farrakhan steps up to a microphone, you can almost always be sure that he is going to say something like this:

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan fueled a rumor that explosives, not Hurricane Katrina, broke New Orleans' dikes and flooded poor African American neighborhoods.

"A member of the Army Corps of Engineers saw burn marks on the concrete," Farrakhan told reporters, describing an e-mail he had received.

"They found two types of explosives used by the military," he said, without naming the source, adding that an eight-meter (25-foot) crater had been blown in the dike.

Farrakhan said locals had reported sounds of explosions, among other things, leading him to believe the rumors should be investigated.

"Wickedness exists in high places," he said. "The duty of the government is to prove the rumor to be false or that these suspicions are true." (emphasis added)

Actually, Mr. Farrakhan, the duty of leaders (as you consider yourself to be) is to refrain from making such idiotic and outlandish statements.  It is not the duty of government to waste its time trying to argue with stupidity.

This type of rhetoric is destructive and helps no one.

With regard to my previous post about this weekend's "Millions More March," organized by Farrakahn, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not in any way against blacks coming together as a community or affirming one another.

What I am against, however, are meetings like this one, whose sole focus seems to be to blame President Bush and white people in general for every problem that blacks struggle with today.

I am particularly upset by the hateful rhetoric used by black leaders with reference to white Americans and the Republican party.  Go back and read any of the great speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, or his letters and writings, and you will not find him referring to white leaders of his day as Nazis or Klansmen.  King certainly had every right to compare men like Bull Connor to Hitler, but he didn't.  Modern day civil rights leaders have become so obsessed with tearing down whites that they have lost the focus of their movement's origin, which was peace and welfare among all men.

Black leaders are also obsessed with encouraging continual animosity toward white people for acts that took place 150 years ago and longer.  Slavery was an ugly stain on humanity, but it was one that was practiced on every continent and by every civilization until the nineteenth century.  It was the white Christian Europeans and Americans who worked for a world-wide end to the slave trade.  Insinuating that I or other white Americans somehow have a price to pay for something that happened so long ago is wrong and destructive.  Germany rid itself of Naziism and Japan rid itself of its imperial warlords within a generation.  They moved on.  It's time that black leaders encouraged their people to do the same.

And it's also time that black leaders began working to end the cultural isolation of their people, particularly the inner city poor.  The dysfunctional and destructive habits of poor inner city blacks have been turned into high-dollar pop culture by the film and record industries.  They promote a lifestyle of gangs, sexual promiscuity, drugs, and broken families that is complete with its own language, clothing, and music.  A handful have gotten rich off the misery of millions.  Why doesn't the black leadership recognize this and work to stop it?

Cultural isolation also foments racism because it limits meaningful contact between blacks and whites.  The poor blacks living in the inner city rarely ever come in physical contact with whites, with the exception of interventions by white police officers, social workers, and the judicial system.  This only serves to perpetuate the stereotypes of whites as an evil menace whose systems serve only to punish and humiliate blacks.  Why doesn't the black leadership recognize this and work to integrate whites into black society in a meaningful way?  I can tell you that there are millions of whites who would jump at the chance to befriend, mentor, and love the members of the black community, especially the children who are so much at risk.  I'm one of them.  All we ask for is a real chance.

Any gathering of black leaders that recognizes these problems and works to honestly correct them will always have my undying support.

But today's mainstream black leadership makes those things seem like an impossibility.

You tell me who suffers because of it.

Got 'im - "Man charged with firing gun at rescue helicopter arrested"

From WWL television:

      A man who allegedly fired a weapon at a rescue helicopter in the day following Hurricane Katrina's hit on New Orleans has been indicted by a federal grand jury.  

      Wendell Bailey, 20, of New Orleans, was charged with firearms possession by a felon and firing upon a military aircraft, prosecutors said. The grand jury accused Bailey of shooting through the window of his apartment as a helicopter flew over his neighborhood.    

      Authorities said they found two revolvers and a box of ammunition under a mattress in his apartment. The charges carry up to 30 years in prison and $500,000 in fines.    

      Bailey had been previously convicted of cocaine distribution, authorities said.

Bus photos prove the ineptness of Nagin, New Orleans officials

Everyone remembers this now-famous photo of the New Orleans school buses in the flooded parking lot, and the hullabaloo that followed when we realized that the city could have used those buses to evacuate stranded refugees from the Superdome:

But if you haven't been reading WizBang, then you don't know the whole story.  Wizblogger Paul, who is a New Orleans native, first broke this story last Tuesday after poring over satellite photos of New Orleans.  It seems that the city had at least 60 school buses parked in the Algiers Bus Barn, where they remained dry throughout the storm and flood, and were only a few minutes away from the Superdome.  Here is a detail of the satellite photo:

Then on Friday, Paul posted yet another satellite photo showing 150 City of New Orleans RTA buses parked at the Poland Avenue Wharf, also high and dry, and also just a few minutes away from the Superdome.  Here is the new photo:

To put this all into perspective, here is a satellite photo that I found some weeks ago via a link from Donald Sensing.  This high-resolution photo shows most of the city of New Orleans, and it shows all three groups of buses in question.  It will also help you to understand why the failure of New Orleans city officials to even have a plan to utilize these buses to transport refugees out of the city before the storm struck should be considered a crime.  I have marked pertinent areas with red squares.  (Warning: high-res image, 3 Mb download)

Paul from WizBang says,

They could have easily put 140 people per city bus. Or, to do the math, they could have moved 21,000 people in a single trip. There were an estimated 20,000 in the Dome. Between these buses and the 60 previously found school busses in Algiers, they could have made it in 1 trip with room to spare.

This -perhaps better than any other example- shows why local officials are in charge of first response and not the feds. Local officials (ahem, the Mayor) should have known who to call. Once they knew there were busses on the wharf, they should have known they were just minutes from the Dome and the areas around the river never floods. (The convention center is also on the river and everyone knew it was fine) Locals know their area (or should) and -in any other city- can manage the response better than some bureaucrat flown in from Washington. Instead of trying to find a solution, Nagin whined that he was a victim.

If Nagin had used the resources available to him properly, he could have had the Dome evacuated by Tuesday at noon and much of the chaos that broke out in the city would have been avoided. But he didn't.

Exactly.  And if either Ray Nagin or Kathleen Blanco run for re-election, they are fools.  Period.

New Orleans updates, and thoughts on our obsession with racism

John Fund's Monday Wall Street Journal expose on Louisiana politics, "A Swamp of Corruption," has been getting a lot of exposure from online writers.  Also worth reading is this Baltimore Sun item: "Louisiana Officials Indicted Before Katrina Hit."  Fitting in nicely with both articles is this item posted by Paul at WizBang:

Less than a month before Hurricane Katrina wrecked the Orleans Levee Board's finances and left the levees it maintains in shambles, board President Jim Huey requested and got nearly $100,000 in back pay that the agency's hired legal advisers - one of whom is a relative of his wife- determined he was entitled to receive.

The payment for about $96,000, which was made without approval from the board or its staff attorney, came on the advice of Gerard Metzger and George Carmouche, two contract lawyers with close ties to Huey, who was originally appointed by former Gov. Edwin Edwards in 1992 and reappointed by Govs. Mike Foster and Kathleen Blanco. Carmouche, of Baton Rouge, is a first cousin of Huey's wife, Becky Metzger of Metairie, and has been a close friend of Huey's since the two attended high school together at Holy Cross.

After cursory research, board officials indicated several months ago that Huey, who has no formal administrative duties, was not eligible for any compensation beyond the $75 per diem that board members can receive for each day they work on agency business.

State lawmakers also rejected the extra pay for Huey. In the waning hours of the Legislature's 2005 session, state Sen. Francis Heitmeier, a Huey ally, tried unsuccessfully to make Huey eligible for a $60,000 annual salary by inserting the pay provision into an unrelated piece of legislation.

It makes my head hurt when I think about Louisiana lawmakers demanding $250 billion from the United States government to rebuild their state, and knowing full well most of that money will end up being spent on pork projects or lining the pockets of state fat-cats via "brother-in-law" deals and embezzlement.

FEMA - Your tax dollars at work

Here are two stories illustrating the incomprehensible bureaucratic monstrosity that is FEMA:

First, Drudge linked to this bizarre story from the UK Mirror Online:

HUNDREDS of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned.

US red tape is stopping it from reaching hungry evacuees.

Instead tons of the badly needed Nato ration packs, the same as those eaten by British troops in Iraq, has been condemned as unfit for human consumption.

... The food, which cost British taxpayers millions, is sitting idle in a huge warehouse after the Food and Drug Agency recalled it when it had already left to be distributed.

Scores of lorries headed back to a warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, to dump it at an FDA incineration plant.

The Ministry of Defence in London said last night that 400,000 operational ration packs had been shipped to the US.

But officials blamed the US Department of Agriculture, which impounded the shipment under regulations relating to the import and export of meat.

The aid worker, who would not be named, said: "This is the most appalling act of sickening senselessness while people starve.

"The FDA has recalled aid from Britain because it has been condemned as unfit for human consumption, despite the fact that these are Nato approved rations of exactly the same type fed to British soldiers in Iraq.

Even if this is an FDA screw up, isn't it FEMA's responsibility to coordinate the delivery and distribution of supplies to devistated areas?  If there are problems with supplies getting to where they are needed, FEMA ought to be able to step in, correct government snafus, and avoid utterly embarassing episodes like this one.

And providing us with a great example of how an undeniably large portion of the $200 billion earmarked for Federal hurricane relief and rebuilding efforts will probably be spent, Michelle Malkin links to this story:

The federal government is diverting hundreds of truckloads of bagged ice cubes from the Gulf Coast hurricane relief effort to cold storage in Portland and other cities.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency says it has more ice than it can use in the hurricane zone and wants to keep it in storage for use in a future emergency. But critics, including some truck drivers who have been paid $800 a day while hauling the same loads for a week or more, say the process seems like a waste of taxpayers' money.

"The $9,000 they're paying me to move this load should have gone to some family down there," said Loren Reeves, who hauled his load of ice from Long Island, N.Y., to Alabama before being sent to Maine. "There is definitely millions being wasted that could go to people who need it.

In my online research into FEMA and its associated problems, many of which, incidentally, far pre-date the current Bush administration, I ran across an interesting 1995 article first published in the Washington Monthly.  The article concerns the reforms that the Clinton administration emplaced within FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Andrew.  But I was struck by this paragraph:

One of the most maddening problems with FEMA, the critics said, was the constant bureaucratic delay. FEMA workers would routinely hold up vital aid requests because the proper forms were not filled out or certain signatures had not been included. "If we had asked for a certain resource this way we could have gotten it," said Kate Hale, director of the Dade County Emergency Services of her experience after Hurricane Andrew, "but FEMA would say that we hadn't framed the question properly.... FEMA's employees appeared to be terrified at making a mistake, so they'd rather do nothing than make a mistake because a mistake could cost them their career."

Apparently the more things change, the more they stay the same.  As much as I recognize the need for better preparedness and disaster relief efforts by our government, the pragmatist in me understands that large bureaucracies simply can't get the job done. 

It's too bad that virtually no one in the government cares more about the needs of others than about their own cushy jobs.

UPDATE:  A few alert bloggers have noted (and a Google news search seems to confirm) that no one except for the Mirror is carrying the food incineration story, and that no one else has independently confirmed it.  But my point still holds - if FEMA was on top of things, such a story could easily be debunked by federal officials if it wasn't true.

When compassion is not enough ...

From IowaHawk, a master of satire, we learn of a new charity effort for the victims of Hurricane Katrina:

Two weeks ago, millions of Americans watched in horror as the city of New Orleans was savaged by the relentless, pollution-fueled fury of Hurricane Katrina. Later, we witnessed the human rights atrocity as George Bush's incompetent racist henchmen dynamited the levees, unleashing a tidal wave of contaminated Halliburton turdwater which forced thousands of our fellow citizens to flee into the dank slave ship-like bowels of the Superdome.

Now, as the floodwaters recede, the survivors of Bush/Katrina face an even greater danger: the danger of complacency. Even as you read this, Chimpy's pals in FEMA and the Red Cross are buying off evacuees with food and cheap blankets and debit cards, slowly robbing the survivors of God's most precious gift -- the gift of focused political rage.

The statistics are staggering. If we do not act soon, tens of thousands of Katrina victims will soon succumb to false hope. Many will return to Louisiana and begin rebuilding, lacking even the most basic idea of BushCo's culpability. Worse, many other poor and minority survivors will remain where they are, anonymously absorbed into the overwhelmingly Repugnican districts that were suspiciously ready to "set up" evacuee "help" "centers."

That's why we in the online progressive community have teamed up to form the Angels of Indignation, a new charity dedicated to getting the survivors of Bush/Katrina disaster back off their feet and on the road to class action.  Angels of Indignation is proudly supported by a coalition of some of the top reality-based political sites -- sites like FrenzyBloc, RetardedChimp, Don't Bogart That Truth, BushTard, ConspiraScream, Puke Uprising, Dubyacide, Sanity Underground, Zit Popper, ScreamPukeRageScream, Screamette, and my own online community diary, The Daily Shriek.

Read the whole thing.  And please give whatever you can afford.

Environmentalists toppled the New Orleans levee system

UPDATE: Here is a fascinating and timely article published in National Geographic a year ago that outlines the problems caused by Louisiana's sinking coastline, explores the environmental impact of dredging and levee-building activities, and gives a stunning fictionalized account of what type of damage a direct hurricane strike on the New Orleans area coastline would cause.
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Here's a damning article from the Los Angeles Times, which investigates numerous lawsuits filed by and environmental wacko outfit called Save Our Wetlands.  The Times asks:

In the wake of Hurricane Betsy 40 years ago, Congress approved a massive hurricane barrier to protect New Orleans from storm surges that could inundate the city.

But the project, signed into law by President Johnson, was derailed in 1977 by an environmental lawsuit. Now the question is: Could that barrier have protected New Orleans from the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina?

According to blogger Stephen Bainbridge, SOWL's website proudly proclaims:

While politicians talk, SOWL sues! SOWL has been involved in countless lawsuits involving Lake Ponchartrain on every subject....from the New Orleans Levee Board Airport Expansion Plan, Bucktown Marina Expansion Plan, New Orleans Mosquito Control Drainage schemes in wetlands of New Orleans East, Eden Isle Subdivision on the north shores of Lake Ponchartrain, Orlanda Subdivision, Corps of Engineers Hurricane Barrier Project, shell dredging in Lake Ponchartrain, Waterford Nuclear Plant...to the Marathon Oil Company canals in the wetlands of St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes. ... SOWL has always fought bitterly against the United States Army Corps of Engineers. (emphasis added)

Save our wetlands -- kill our citizens.

Engineers routinely employ a tool known as risk analysis.  All actions have consequences, and before any major engineering project begins, someone spends a considerable amount of time studying consequences and deciding if a project's benefits will outweigh its undesirable qualities.  Every project will have undesirable qualities.  Sometimes these qualities outweigh the good and the project is scrapped.  More often, engineers are forced to redesign their project in order to minimize negative impacts.  And no risk analysis will be perfect, because it is conducted by humans, who make mistakes and who have biases and agendas.

But purely agenda-driven wackos (and I call them "wackos" because they are ideologues who don't give a rip about reality or science) can't see beyond the tips of their own noses.  They are blinded by their faith in Gaia (or whatever other Deity they worship - Marxism, Creationism, jihadism) and just like the people who partied while Noah built his ark, they willfully ignore any evidence that their beliefs might -- just might -- be very wrong, and therefore create enormously dangerous circumstances. 

In the overall scheme of things, mankind surely has dominion over the Earth.  When man builds a city or a dam or a bridge, he alters the natural environment.  But if wackos decide that "preserving the environment" takes precedence over basic safety measures, and governments agree with them, or just get tired of fighting them, then they should understand that people will die as a result.  And they have no one to blame but themselves. (h/t Michelle Malkin)

Related: If you want to see the prime example of environmental rule-making costing human lives, visit JunkScience.com's infamous Malaria Clock page.

Remember folks, it's not about heartless, evil capitalists killing warm, fuzzy, cute little indigenous creatures in order to line their pockets with money.  It's about environmentalists deciding -- for us -- that preserving the natural habitat of a warm, fuzzy, cute little indigenous creature is far more important than using technology at our disposal to save human lives.  We should at least be given the chance to decide those things for ourselves.

The Katrina Blame Game

As far as ongoing blogging related to the Katrina mess goes, no one is doing a better job of rounding up facts than WizBang.  One of their bloggers, Paul, is a resident of the greater New Orleans area, so he has a personal stake in what happens next.  Among the things that WizBang is covering ...

Hurricane Katrina Response - A Photographic Timeline (courtesy of FreeRepublic member WolfStar)

A discussion of the (now more strongly substantiated) story about Louisiana state officials refusing to allow the Red Cross to deliver food and water to the Superdome, fearing that it would attract survivors to the shelter.

More discussion (with news story links) of the steps the President took before Katrina hit , including declaring Louisiana a disaster area and personally urging Gov. Blanco to order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans.

And here's more:

Donald Sensing posted a good recap of the NOAA weather forecasts of August 26 - August 29.  He uses this information as the basis of an extended post which explores whether or not an evacuation of New Orleans could have reasonably been accomplished, based on what we knew during that time period.

A Free Republic reader posted an extensive analysis of the published disaster preparedness plans for the state of Louisiana, Orleans Parish, and the City of New Orleans.  He wonders why the plans were not followed.

New Orleans was not a spotless city before Katrina arrived.  The police department struggled with gangs, drugs, and the prevalent perception in minority communities that law enforcement unfairly targeted blacks.

A New York Times article from Friday Sept. 9 details the dithering and bickering between the White House and the Louisiana Governor's Office.  It's a must-read. (added 9-10-05)

Despite the political leanings of my blogging, I am tremendously saddened to see Democrats almost literally jump with joy at the chance to use the Katrina disaster to trash the Bush administration and further engage in race baiting.  Accusing the Bush administration of somehow fostering a conspiracy specifically geared to kill as many blacks as possible in New Orleans is the epitome of evil.  Does anyone wonder why we still have so much racial tension in this country?  One needn't look any further than today's reprehensible Democrat and "civil rights" leaders in order to learn why.

I have been blogging and reading countless blog entries on both the Left and Right sides of the blogosphere, and I can say without reservation that the two communities could not have been more distinct in their responses to the storm.  The Left immediately started Bush-bashing when the first news reports of storm damage to the Superdome and widespread flooding around New Orleans came rolling in.  It was only after the Right threw their weight into a massive, multi-million dollar fundraising effort involving hundreds of blogs and dozens of charities that the Left took some time off from Bush-bashing and began to promote fundraising and relief efforts.

Right now, the leadership of the Democratic party and their acolytes on the Internet seem much more concerned with damaging the President than with taking a long, hard look at the facts presented in my links above.  They also seem much more concerned with exploiting storm victims than with helping them.

Democrats have already proposed "hearings" in order to determine what went wrong.  This effort is doomed from the start - both the Mayor and the Police Superintendent of New Orleans are black and the governor of Louisiana is a Democrat.  The Democrat leadership is already neck-deep in their "It's all Bush's fault" and "Republican racists killed poor blacks" memes and they simply will not engage in any effort that might prove that their storyline is wrong.  Think the Democrats will demand a tearful apology from Mayor Nagin or Gov. Blanco?  Think again.

Then add the fact that when representatives of government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA testify, their main goal will be to save their own skins.  Bureaucracies, no matter how benevolent they may be, always evolve into political behemoths whose primary function is their own survival.  What are the real chances that anyone would throw away a lifetime of  government service just to expose inefficiency or incompetence?  Whistle blowers and trouble makers are the kiss of death to big government, and anyone who doesn't keep his mouth shut will become "toxic" for the rest of his working life.

I suppose that all of this proves that politics and big government are never the answers for the deeply rooted problems of mankind.  Our secular leadership will never be responsible enough to truly prepare for the worst that can happen, or to respond in an appropriate fashion when either acts of nature or man cause death and destruction.

I'm reminded of the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 24:

(38) "For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; (39) and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man." (43) "But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into." (NIV)

Can there be any question, now, why Jesus Christ ministered to individuals, and preached to his Disciples about loving their enemies and feeding the hungry, instead of becoming a political activist and trying to reshape the Roman Empire into the Kingdom of God?

Despite all of the terrible circumstances surrounding Hurricane Katrina, I have marveled at the ways that God's grace has manifested itself through countless churches, charities, and individuals, all of whom have provided assistance and comfort to the storm's victims, and all at a person-to-person level.  No "blame game."  No evaluation of who "really" deserves help.  These actions are what truly embodies the Kingdom of God here on earth, and they are the doorway through which God's grace and salvation will move into the lives of countless individuals.

And no government, no matter how benevolent, can ever accomplish that.

Other Christians blogging: 

Stones Cry Out:  "No Excuse for Racial Hatred," "A Dozen Thoughts on the Katrina Crisis Thus Far"
Double Toothpicks: "The Failure of Local Government," "A Federal Solution or No Solution"
The Anchoress: "Echoes of Madam DeFarge"

Amateur Radio operators relaying messages from Katrina survivors

(Steve Bragg from Double Toothpicks sent me this note at the end of last week.  My apologies for not posting it sooner.)

I'm an amateur radio operator, one of those guys that likes to put up antennas and talk in acronyms on strange-looking radio sets. Our finest hour is when disaster strikes; in fact, Congress has declared us a national resource in time of emergency.

    If you or a friend needs to get a message to or from friends or family in the areas where communications are affected by Katrina, you'll want to go to this page, which an amateur radio friend in Oklahoma from the W5IAS Amateur Radio Club passed along.  The Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network:

Hurricane Katrina Emergency Health & Welfare Message Page

    If this doesn't work, or if your friend doesn't have Web access, you can use the telephone or email:

Contact Pete KF5RD, via email at kf5rd@intergate.com, or by telephone between 8 AM and 10 PM at 918.437.4846

    If you're a blogger, please spread the word. Amateur Radio works when no other communication device does. This could mean the difference between worry and "thank God they're safe."

I know that communications are still spotty in the New Orleans area, with power still out and cell phones only working intermittently.  A big thank you to amateur radio "hams" like Steve Bragg who help to keep the communication lines open in times of emergency.

Star Power - Sean Penn edition

WAIT!!  THERE's MORE!!

Sean was packin' too.  Looks awfully sexy toting that big scary shotgun around, doesn't he?

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You gotta love those Hollywood celebs.  Not content with just sitting around and letting the military (and by fiat, the eeeevil President Chimpy McHitlerburton) get all the glory for saving lives in New Orleans, they've got to do their part too!

I mean, really, how hard could it be to rent a boat, float through the Big Easy with your personal entourage and photographer along, and rescue a few helpless souls?

(* Ahem *)

Sean Penn's Hurricane Katrina rescue boat just wasn't sound enough to help those in New Orleans. Penn had planned to rescue children waylaid by Katrina's flood waters, but apparently forgot to plug in a hole in the bottom of his vessel, which began filling with water seconds after its launch the other day, reports the Melbourne Herald Sun. The star was seen wearing what appeared to be a white flak jacket and frantically bailing water out with a red plastic cup. When the motor didn't start, Penn and his entourage — including a personal photographer — were forced to use paddles to propel themselves down a flooded street.

Of course the true irony here is that Penn starred recently in a movie called "Mystic River."  Apparently, there are a lot more things besides rivers that are a mystery to Sean Penn.

Yep, the Democrats surely need to pack the 2006 ballot with Hollywood celebs.  They're our only hope.  Heck, if Bush wants to save face, he should appoint Penn as the new chief of FEMA, after Michael Brown resigns (hint-hint-wink-wink-nudge-nudge).  Then we can all be assured that we'll never have a nationwide shortage of red cups.

Come to think of it, it seems that former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge left red cups out of the items he suggested for a national disaster survival kit.  Maybe if he would have suggested red cups instead of duct tape, the Democrats would have respected him more.

Nah, forget I just said that.

(In all seriousness, I don't have any animosity for Harry Connick Jr., who has been in his home town of New Orleans for a week now and really seems earnest in his efforts to help out his people.)

For what it's worth - my opinion on New Orleans

Some random thoughts about the happenings this week ... (Updates added as well)

First, two important words: disaster preparedness.

New Orleans apparently has no idea what disaster preparedness means.  Examples:

• No plan to provide food, water, and medical care for the refugees at the Super dome.  To lock up 10 to 20,000 people in a building and leave them there to die with virtually no assistance is unconscionable, and I hope somebody gets hung out to dry for it.

• No plan to provide law enforcement during the flood.  The NOPD completely fell apart after the flood.  In fact, there was no law enforcement in the entire city until the Louisiana National Guard arrived.  This is inexcusable.  Here's a link to the a Saturday Sept. 3 press conference given by General Blum, commander of the Louisiana National Guard.  Blum responded to charges that there was a "delay" in getting the National Guard deployed in Louisiana as an MP force.  Blum patiently explained that the state government must request the presence of the Guard, and then must authorize (essentially 'deputize') the Guard to perform law enforcement.  The Guard must then evaluate the situation in order to determine the best response.  And in Louisiana, it took a few days to collect all the troops who had been evacuated from the storm area and get them deployed.  Blum stated:
  
  You have to remember how this thing started. Before the hurricane hit there were 5,000 National Guardsmen in Mississippi and 5,000 National Guardsmen—excuse me. Let me correct the record. There were 2,500 National Guardsmen in Mississippi and almost 4,000 National Guardsmen in Louisiana that were sheltered and taken out of the affected area so as soon as the storm passed they could immediately go into the area and start their search and lifesaving work, and stand up their command and control apparatus, and start standing up the vital functions that would be required such as providing food, water, shelter and security for the people of the town. So it was phased in. There was no delay.

  The real issue, particularly in New Orleans, is that no one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans. Once that assessment was made, that the normal 1500 man police force in New Orleans was substantially degraded, which contributed obviously to less police presence and less police capability, then the requirement became obvious and that’s when we started flowing military police into the theater.

• No plan to evacuate indigent citizens.  New Orleans has a disproportionately high poor minority population, something like one third of the city.  This is not a secret.  It is also not a stretch to assume that these people would not be able to get out without assistance.  Yet nothing was available for them.  Whoever was responsible for this (the Mayor???) should face criminal charges:            
  

  

• No plan to communicate with citizens or help them mobilize and survive after the flood.  Again, inexcusable.

I say "no plan" because obviously nothing that went on in New Orleans after August 29 resembled a planned, organized response. 

These are sobering observations, and a lot of people will dismiss them offhand because the answers to these problems are much more difficult than "blame Bush for everything!!!"  But if we want to keep a Katrina-sized disaster from happening again, we need to make sure that none of these things is likely to occur the next time a major city gets wiped out by a hurricane.

Second, how does this disaster encourage any confidence whatsoever in the US Department of Homeland Security (ditto for FEMA) which was supposed to have put together a fantastic array of disaster contingency plans?   If New Orleans had theirs, they certainly didn't follow it.  And did I mention that Al Quaeda is surely taking a lot of notes right now?

Third, I've had it with the Bush-bashing crowd.  Here is a brief refutation of all the Left's worthless talking points:

1)  New Orleans has been flooded, people.  FLOODED.  Water has been rising since Tuesday.  That means no roads, no phones, no electricity, no airport.  No one, even with the best of intentions, could get in by land until Friday.  Helicopters still have virtually nowhere to land or to drop their supplies.  How smart is it to drop supplies into ten feet of water?  It is the responsibility of the City of New Orleans to plan for these things ahead of time and have supplies and a distribution system ready before a disaster occurs.   Just think about it, okay?

2)  Consider the time line.  Today is Saturday Sept. 3.  The storm struck Monday Aug. 29.  The consensus among EVERYONE Monday evening was that New Orleans had been spared.  The levee breaks didn't occur until Tuesday.  Federal troops were ordered in on Friday Sept. 2.  Even if Federal troops had been ordered into NO on Tuesday, before the widespread looting and anarchy began, they would not have been able to arrive until Thursday or Friday.  And if President Bush ordered armed federal troops into the town before the rioting, or had usurped the authority of the Louisiana governor and issued an order federalizing the Louisiana National Guard, he would have been accused of enacting an evil neo-con plan to use the military to suppress and kill minorities. Jesse Jackson would have called it "Selma all over again."

3)  The Louisiana National Guard is under the control of Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, not President Bush.  Only she can order the deployment of her National Guard troops.  If you're mad because they weren't mobilized and in place when the storm hit, then blame her.  Of course, if she had sent in the National Guard before the storm, she would have been accused of using military force to violate the civil rights of poor minorities.  Also, only about 1/4 of the Louisiana National Guard is currently deployed overseas.  And their "equipment" which is currently in Iraq (tanks, field artillery, armored bulldozers, armored personnel carriers) would be useless during a widespread flood.

4)  The levee system in Louisiana has been under "redesign" and "re-evaluation" for forty years.  If you're going to blame the President for the failure of the levee, then the list is pretty long - Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43.  Also, the 17th Street Canal levee failed in an area which had just been reinforced (reported by the New York Times) and quite frankly, engineers are stunned that it failed.  Funding requests for levee work were cut back by the Bush 43 administration, but also by the Clinton administration.  Maybe this was why Bill Clinton was so quick to counter criticism of the Federal government's management of the levee system.

EURota has a nice collection of MSM quotes from the 1990's which innumerate problems in flood control systems that existed during the Clinton administration, as well as quotes from a NYT piece from April of this year which refers to $17 billion dollars earmarked for Army Corps of Engineers flood control projects as "pork" and accuses the Corps of "routinely inflating the economic benefits of its projects."

5) (Updated) And now there's this ... Read it all:

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state’s emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. (emphasis added)

And here's another WaPo article on problems with FEMA and disaster preparedness:

Other federal and state officials pointed to Louisiana's failure to measure up to national disaster response standards, noting that the federal plan advises state and local emergency managers not to expect federal aid for 72 to 96 hours, and base their own preparedness efforts on the need to be self-sufficient for at least that period. "Fundamentally the first breakdown occurred at the local level," said one state official who works with FEMA. "Did the city have the situational awareness of what was going on within its borders? The answer was no." (emphasis added)

Fourth, what will become of New Orleans?

The primary business of New Orleans is tourism.  One of the reasons for the poor economic status of New Orleans is that it has very little to offer in the way of good paying jobs.  Tourism-related jobs mostly consist of hourly jobs in the service industry (restaurants, hotels, museums, etc.).  There is no way that the tourism industry, which will be shut down for months, possibly a year or more, can support the return of most of the city's population.  This is going to be a big, big problem.

Then there is the problem of flooding.  Outside of the historic French Quarter district, and other places of historic and academic interest, it makes little sense to rebuild the city in a location that has a 100% guarantee of being completely flooded again.  I know enough about the insurance industry to know that they plan for catastrophic events.  They have actuarial tables which compute the probability of events occurring and estimate how much they will cost.  And a soon as a catastrophic event actually does occur, the probabilities of it occurring again in the near future rise dramatically.  New Orleans could flood next year, or 50 years from now, or 200 years from now.  But I would be stunned if insurance companies would cover any buildings (other than the exceptions that I mentioned above) that were built back in a location that was certain to flood again.

The majority of New Orleans' minority community is poor, and lived in aging, run-down housing.  As much as I grieve for the citizens of the city of New Orleans and their loss of community, it just doesn't make sense to move that many impoverished people back to a city where they will probably have even less of a chance to financially recover.  Building tens of thousands of units of Section 8 housing in a flood-prone region and moving hundreds of thousands of indigent residents into those housing units, with even less hope of finding good jobs than they had before, just seems cruel and insane.  Also, residents who move away will have to re-establish themselves (housing, jobs, schools, etc.) in new communities if they want to survive.  They can't wait months or years for New Orleans to be restored.

I have been thinking a lot lately about Galveston, Texas and how they survived the great hurricane of 1900.  Most of Galveston's 6000 victims perished because the storm surge flooded the island.  In response, Galveston built a seawall to break the storm surge, and pumped literally millions of cubic yards of slimy, smelly dredging sludge into the low portions of the island.  After the sludge hardened, it raised the grade of the island to an elevation above sea level.  Then, the island was built back.  Will New Orleans try something similar when they attempt to build back at least some new neighborhoods and infrastructure?

Finally, the timeline for rebuilding is going to be lengthy.  Pumping out the city could take months.  And then there will be alligators, snakes, rats, mosquitoes, and huge amounts of mold, mildew, and fungus to deal with.  Bulldozing dilapidated structures (houses, buildings, roadways, etc.) and hauling off the debris will take months more.  Restoring the electrical, telephone, water, and sewer systems will take months.  Cleaning, drying out, decontaminating, and restoring structures which survived the flood damage will take months, and this has to be done after the city is dry and after at least some of the infrastructure is restored.  This is going to be a long, hard journey for everyone involved.

 

Worthwhile reads on the Katrina disaster

Update Sept. 4

Michelle Malkin posts a roundup of good news links and a few small miracles.

Michelle Malkin's other post today is heart-wrenching: children who died or have been separated from their parents due to the Katrina chaos.

Chrenkoff posts a must-read email from a reader outlining the differences between the competent government leadership in Mississippi and the three-ring-circus running New Orleans.
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Michele Catalano at A Small Victory is blogging good news coming from New Orleans and the efforts of those in neighboring cities to care for the Katrina refugees.

Robert N. Going at Live Journal writes, Rudy The Great.  How many more people would be alive in New Orleans today if they had a "Rudy" for mayor?

LaShawn Barber finally really blows her top.

Donald Sensing's posts on shoot to kill orders, the meaning of martial law, and the US military's prescribed role in domestic intervention, are must-reads.

Karl Maher wonders if New Orleans will be around next year.

For a good laugh (or to raise your blood pressure) Chrenkoff has a roundup of left-wing, blame-Bush-for-everything moonbattery.  And another roundup of just plain stupid quotes.

Oklahoma City relief efforts for Katrina refugees

Here is a partial list of refugee aid available for Katrina survivors who are in Oklahoma City:

Services:

The Victory House (1900 NE 36th St., 405-427-4452) is currently accepting Katrina refugees.  Victory House is providing temporary housing, meals, and residence assistance. 

Oklahoma City University is offering free tuition to any student effected by Hurricane Katrina.  Visit this link for more details: http://www.okcu.edu/news/Katrina.asp

Messiah Lutheran School (3600 NW Expressway, 405-946-0681) will be offering free tuition for pre-K through 6th grade students.

Numerous other churches and charities are working on relief efforts as well.  This entry will be updated as I get more information.

Donations:

The Victory House is in dire need of the following:

• folding chairs

• laundry soap

• non-perishable food

• clothing

• helpers - to unload supplies and assist with refugees

I would also suggest that as many people as possible assemble and donate "crisis care kits" similar to the ones offered by Heart To Heart, International.  A Crisis Care Kit is a 2-gallon ziplock bag that contains:

• One new hand towel
• One new washcloth
• One wide-tooth comb
• One small bottle of shampoo
• One new individually wrapped toothbrush
• One travel size tube of toothpaste
• Ten adhesive bandages
• One individually wrapped bath size bar of soap
• One plastic travel size soap dish
• Two one-gallon size zipper seal bags

These simple items are vitally important to individuals in order for them to maintain simple personal hygiene.  Alternatively, bulk donations of any of the items on this list will be a great help.

Infant Crisis Services (1933 NW 39th Street, 405-528-3663) is partnering with The Victory House and is currently accepting any items (formula, food, blankets, clothing, toys, etc.) used for the care of infants and young children.

A lot of good stuff going on behind the scenes here ... hopefully we'll have some state agencies on board by the first of next week ... they can provide some real large-scale assistance in terms of housing, employment, and food/medical insurance aid.

Nazarene Compassionate Ministries Disaster Response for Hurricane Katrina

* Masthead Blog Post for Nazarene Compassionate Ministries / Nazarene Disaster Response *
Hurricane Katrina Blog for Relief Day, Sept. 1, 2005

Other bloggers/Nazarenes supporting:  Mark Soper, BNPositive, Tick Marks, Yorkie Blog, Potter's Perspective

NZ Bear's master blogroll for Blog For Relief Day

Instapundit's blogroll for Blog for Relief Day

Michelle Malkin's list of corporate donations and other charity activity

_________________________________________________

• Nazarene Compassionate Ministries home page

• Nazarene Compassionate Ministries Hurricane Katrina Response news page

• Nazarene Compassionate Ministries Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts

• Nazarene Compassionate Ministries Magazine

• The Church of the Nazarene and their Wesleyan heritage of compassion and charity

• ... more about the Church of the Nazarene ...
• My local Nazarene congreagation

Nazarene Disaster Response is an outreach of Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, sponsored by the Church of the Nazarene, a Wesleyan holiness Christian denomination headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. Nazarene Compassionate Ministries currently supports over 100 projects in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, India, North and South America, and Iraq.

Persons and churches wishing to make a donation for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts can mark their checks payable to General Treasurer, Church of the Nazarene with "ACM1799 Hurricane Katrina Relief” in the memo line.

In the US, make checks payable to: General Treasurer and mail to:

General Treasurer
Church of the Nazarene
6401 The Paseo
Kansas City, MO 64131

In Canada, make checks payable to: Church of the Nazarene and mail to:

Church of the Nazarene Canada
20 Regan Road, Unit 9
Brampton, Ontario L7A 1C3

Credit card donations accepted here: http://www.ncm.org/checks/contribute_ACM1799.html

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(Mike's Noise had a little over 300 visitors on Blog For Relief Day.  Thanks everybody!)

Technorati Tags: flood aid  hurricane katrina  Nazarene Hurricane Relief

New Orleans - an out of control 'hell'

Ever wondered what Hell will really look like?

Those trapped in the city faced an increasingly lawless environment, as law enforcement agencies found themselves overwhelmed with widespread looting. Looters swarmed the Wal-mart on Tchoupitoulas Street, often bypassing the food and drink section to steal wide-screen TVs, jewelry, bicycles and computers. Watching the sordid display and shaking his head in disgust, one firefighter said of the scene: "It’s a f---- hurricane, what are you do[ing] with a basketball goal?" Police regained control at about 3 p.m., after clearing the store with armed patrol. One shotgun-toting Third District detective described the looting as "ferocious."

"And it’s going to get worse as the days progress," he said.

In Uptown, one the few areas that remained dry, a bearded man patrolled Oak Street near the boarded-up Maple Leaf Bar, a sawed-off shotgun slung over his shoulder. The owners of a hardware store sat in folding chairs, pistols at the ready.

Uptown resident Keith Williams started his own security patrol, driving around in his Ford pickup with his newly purchased handgun. Earlier in the day, Williams said he had seen the body of a gunshot victim near the corner of Leonidas and Hickory streets.

"What I want to know is why we don’t have paratroopers with machine guns on every street," Williams said.

Or maybe this ...

Late Tuesday, Gov. Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher described a disturbing scene unfolding in uptown New Orleans, where looters were trying to break into Children's Hospital.

Bottcher said the director of the hospital fears for the safety of the staff and the 100 kids inside the hospital. The director said the hospital is locked, but that the looters were trying to break in and had gathered outside the facility.

The director has sought help from the police, but, due to rising flood waters, police have not been able to respond.

Bottcher said Blanco has been told of the situation and has informed the National Guard. However, Bottcher said, the National Guard has also been unable to respond.

Two of the most disturbing aspects of mankind's sinful nature are our willingness to covet, and our appetite for revenge.  We're seeing these two traits exemplified without restraint right now in New Orleans.

As I blogged earlier, the residents of New Orleans are disproportionately poor.  About 1/3 of the residents live below the poverty level.  Most of these are black.  They have lived this way for generation upon generation, back to the days following Reconstruction.  They are mostly working poor, depending on hourly jobs to barely make ends meet.

One of the most challenging aspects of working with the perpetually poor is that they hold a deeply ingrained belief that someone or something else -- "the man", "the system" -- is responsible for their plight.  They feel that they are trapped in a world where the priviledged strive to keep everyone else down, and they are convinced that, save for winning a lottery or becoming successful in show business or sports, they will always be poor for the rest of their lives.  Such irrational beliefs often foster and perpetuate wild conspiracy theories - "George Bush and the CIA invented crack cocaine to kill black people," etc.  And being poorly educated, for the most part, doesn't help.

Now that something threatens to destroy the only world that they know -- jobs, family, community, neighbors, homes -- what are they to do?  The anger and resentment that the impoverished feel toward the larger world, a resentment that is nurtured by inadequate education and poverty-exploiting civil rights leaders, is usually dampened by law enforcement.  But when law enforcement fails, literally all "hell" breaks loose, and the poor exact their "revenge."  Looting becomes less about finding food, and more about getting even.  For these people, a stolen TV or Gameboy represents a piece of the dream that has been denied to them by the rich white man. 

But what do they do next?

I find it utterly amazing that those in the middle of such a tempest of destruction and suffering can make pure materialism their most important priority.  It's fascinating to watch people carrying looted items on their heads because the streets are flooded waist-high.  What on earth are they going to do with television sets or a microwave ovens when their houses are being washed away?  Hasn't anyone thought any of this through? 

Sadly the answer is "no."  Impoverished people in the United States have long been obsessed with materialism.  Crime is rampant in inner city neighborhoods because youths place such a high priority on expensive, showy items -- cars, jewelry, shoes, electronics, etc.  For them, it is less of an evil to break the law by stealing or selling drugs than it is to go without the "bling."

Impoverished people in America also consistently fail to plan beyond the immediate future.  There are a variety of reasons for this, not the least of which is the gigantic government entitlement safety net that we have created.  The idea seems to be, irregardless of how frivolously I spend my pocket money, the state will always be there to pay for my food, rent, and doctor bills.

But now the system in New Orleans has completely broken down, and the destruction has reached such an ultimate level that there is nothing but hopelessness and despair for many of its citizens.  No one can magically replace their belongings, or guarantee them a job, or even restore t