Mike's Noise

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 [email protected], 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.