Katrina Exposes Poverty and Race relations

[Makalakumu]

Unless it has to do with global warming eh...

If the conjucture and assumption shown so far in this thread is a form of your "proof" I would say my bar is much higher.

Especially with global warming...

If I just pointed at the events and said that it was racist, there wouldn't be much behind the claim. However, by providing a historical context that stretched all of the way back to Reconstruction, I was able to show that this type of thing is nothing new. Then, by providing a regional context, I was able to show that not only is this type of thing nothing new, but it is pervasive. Lastly, by pulling in the opinions of local experts, I think I've legitimized my claim with a little scholarly might.

I guess if your bar is higher, that is fine, but I think that this is probably a enough for most people. I know that if I were writing a paper for one of my professors, this information would probably be enough....or at least I hope it would.

 

[Makalakumu]

So...what? We shouldnt allow people to move because its racist and classist? Your "soft science" seems to have some scary undercurrents in its ultimate solution it seems.

No, we just need to take this into account when planning for things like this. People who are physically and economically vulnerable have a hard time leaving everything and it takes lots of money to come up with the structure it would take to evacuate them. Money is something a city filled with poor people doesn't have.

 

[Makalakumu]

Actually, 346 buses multiplied by 50 people capacity (very conservative estimate) is 17,300. That is only on a single run and almost everybody. But let's say you can only evacuate 10,000 people per run (I'm really letting you off easy...a carrying capacity of only 28 people??? That's far too low...). That's still only two trips to fit 20,000 people.

20,000 is probably way to low for an estimation of the people who were left behind or stayed. I've seen estimate of up to 80,000. 20,000 is still more then enough though. Think about this...packing old, sick, and poor people on the bus with all of their stuff including clothing, medical equipment, and whatever else...28 people would be a very full bus indeed. I would expect less.

Further, there wasn't time for two trips. The highways were gridlocked. And I'm wondering if there was anyone around to drive the busses. People in emergencies tend to take care of their families.

So...unless every single person with no exceptions was evacuated, you wouldn't be satsified? With the ability to evacuate 15,000 people or so per trip, why weren't they employed before the hurricane hit? Are you suggesting it was poor planning on the city's part?

The city can be faulted for some of this, but the **** spreads thinly. Cuba somehow gets everyone out when they evacuate and I think its because they have a strong plan and everyone knows what they have to do at all levels. The national government moves in and coordinates everything and they move even the poor and the old.

Also, now you're talking about after the levees broke. So the city gets "a pass" and doesn't have to worry about anything before, but you have no problem bashing Bush in this specific regard?

The city doesn't get a pass. Neither does the state. Neither does President Bush. Blame spreads throughout the whole system in my opinion.

Further, why weren't precautions taken to move the buses to higher ground, according to their disaster plan? That's the city's sterling job, I assume. The disaster plan depends on those city resources that the city squandered.

It would be nice to see some documentation that would show...

a. the city had all of the resources it needed to get everyone out.
b. the city wasted this money.

So far, from what I've seen, the city was woefully underfunded and it needed a profound amount of help.

Regarding Colten:
At about 3:16, the reporter asked what was at the heart of the present case. She asked specifically (in breathless tones), is it racist?

He replied that "one could not say there was a racial bias" as most of the city administration was black.

Again, this is incorrect. The reporter asked, "so, is this an issue of class, poverty, or race, or is this something else?"

That is a pretty fair question and far cry from what you described.

Dr. Colten's response was, "since most of the city officials were black, there was no bias on their part, however, when it came to mobility out of the city, there was bias..."

Further, right before the segment in question, Dr. Colten talks about how elevation, class, and race has always been an issue with the poorest and the blackest living the lowest and the more affluent whites living the highest.

This is what is meant by the media bias. I'll use your term. A "soft" media bias.

No, this is what is known as a distorting paraphrase. You are coloring the conversation to show what you want it to show and then you are ignoring the parts that contradict your line of reasoning.

The description of the file said this: "Craig E. Colten, professor of geography and anthropology at Louisiana State University, says race played a role in the New Orleans' level of preparedness for Hurricane Katrina."

And this is totally accurate given the context of the conversation.

But you have to listen to figure out the racial factor was fifty or sixty years ago, not in the present situation as is largely implied by the timing and placement of this piece...(Of course, there are also hard instances of media bias...but we're not going to go there) Not that I really expected much from NPR.

This is also untrue. Dr. Colten lays out present day examples of bias and inequality. White flight was part of the problem, but it wasn't the whole problem as you are trying to make it out to be. Dr. Colten said there was a bias in the way people lived in New Orleans and that there was a bias in the way people could evacuate.

He said there was a bias built into the human mobility...the mobility 50 years ago...His point was that the wealthier people who no longer lived in New Orleans could provide much better for themselves. Well, of course.

The bias in mobility that Dr. Colten referred to, dealth with mobility during the evacuation.

Well, I guess that's the difference in thinking between the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps conservatism and you-can't-do-anything-on-your-own-welfare-state-dependency.

Most people who pull-themselves-up-by-the-bootstraps were standing on a mountain of privilege. This notion is largely a myth. I won't argue about wellfare dependency, though, I see that everyday at my line of work.

When I say political will, I mean in the hands of the politicians AND the people. Addressing the politicians: I've already shown you how easy it was for them to attain massive amounts of pork-barrel spending. You keep refusing to admit it though. That's okay, time is on the side of those with facts.

The "pork barrel spending" referred to above dealt with a lot of civil works projects like building locks, dredging canals and other things the Corps does. These projects weren't requested by city officials, they were part of the Corps agenda.

Here is a general rule, pork barrel spending goes to people who have the most influence. Poor people have no influence, no power.

The people didn't deem it important enough. Instead, they thought they should just depend on some other government source (federal), once again proving the danger of a welfare system. If there was political will, they would have petitioned their officials and legislators. That is how democracy works. If there was political will, the politicians would have spent less time worrying about a Corps project that cost $748 million to allow for increased barge traffic despite there being evidence that traffic was decreasing. They could have then used the barest fraction of this to easily fulfill the money the Corps requested for levees (again...the levees which broke were upgraded to concrete and weren't planned on being upgraded further.

Political will has very little to do with politics anymore. Politics is all about influence peddling and money. If you have money, you have power, and you have a voice. If you don't have it, then, you have no power.

This isn't a question of will. Talk to anyone down there and they'll say they want to protect their homes from floods, do they have the power to get it done? No. Why? Because they are poor.

Lets take a look at your example...the $748 million to improve canals and increase barge traffic. Powerful business lobbyists went to Washington to get this project in the works. Why? Because they stand to make a lot of money from its completion. The congressmen wrote it into the budget. Why? Because of all the donations these same interests make in their campaigns.

Do the poor have this type of influence to advocate for their needs? No. Are the needs of their homes and lives more important then the needs of these powerful interests? I would say yes. City officials also thought so and they worked hard to lobby for their constintuents...and it all fell on deaf ears.

This isn't a wellfare state argument. Its about priorities. Its about who has power and who doesn't. And it illustrates the sad state of democracy today. The influence of corporate power trumps the needs of the people.

 

[7starmantis]

Speaking of your "soft racism" you said this:

You can show that it exists. It just takes more time.

But yet your saying now that it exists. Your not saying in a few months or years we will see racism in this disaster, but that its appearent now. You keep tossing these keywords out like "historical context" but yet you haven't really truly shown a connection. Your saying, "Katrina has exposed poverty and racism, only it will take time to prove it"? What will show your "soft racism" exists in more time?

Is this how you feel in this instance?

In your case, yes. You readily admit you have seen no hard facts of racism:

This kind of evidence may exist, but I haven't seen anything.

you pick apart the links and "proof" of those apposing your way of thinking by saying:

A newspaper article and an msn article hardly qualify for the above criteria.

yet when I asked for proof or evidence you responded:

read the newspaper or surf the internet

You have also stated your historical context shows:

The pattern is that over and over again, the people who lose the most, including their lives, are poor and black.

yet if we really want ot look at true historical context thats not really true, we allready talked (in the other thread you abandoned) about the native americans. You know how many african americans live in america today? Do you know how many Comanche "Americans" live in the US? I'm not trying to make this a game between black and indian, but lets not color our history to show what we want it to.

So, in your case, yes. I think you are trying very hard to hold on to racism in this situation.

It all depends on the historical, regional, and local context.

Which you have yet to really prove have a conection to this issue. Saying there is a historical, regional, and local context is not proving a connection.

Well, I agree with you there, but in many cases, "proof" is relative, even in science. Sometimes we set our bars rather arbitrarily. I'm asking where your "bar" is.

You kept saying this to me as well. Maybe the real question should be, where is your bar set?

When the levees broke, the water rose quickly. Besides, it wasn't enough to get everyone out.

Um...what is your deffinition of "quickly"? The bus scenario you offered with 300 busses, even at your painfully low 28 people per bus (which was way off compared to the busses that actually acrried people out) in 24 hours how many runs do you think they could have made? Lets be painfully low...maybe 4? Thats 40,000 people. At a capacity of 50 that would be almost 70,000 people. Now, you said the waters rose quickly, but according to the photo documentary I offered earlier, we can see actual photographs that show the water did not rise too fast to evacuate 70,000 people the first day it started to flood. But of course the city would have had to do that. There is a picture from day 2 that shows bars opening up "to go" stands to sell off a bit of theri inventory, I see white and black people in line on dry streets. Even during day 3 the water didn't rise above knee level. In fact the pictures show many dry areas including all of the french quarter. Evne if the city had failed it residents soo bad as to only start evacuations on day 3 when they noticed the water, they could have evacuated our 70,000 pretty easily. It wasn't until day 4 (during the day) that the water was reaching beyond knee deep. Then it rose pretty quickly.

This isn't a wellfare state argument. Its about priorities. Its about who has power and who doesn't. And it illustrates the sad state of democracy today. The influence of corporate power trumps the needs of the people.

Also, it has been consistantly shown that they have never had enough money in the city for flood control, from local, state, and federal levels.

:idunno:

The bottom line is when do people stop expecting others to take acre of them and rescue them?

7sm

 

[Makalakumu]

You are cutting and pasting things together that were not part of the same situation. They have different contexts. This is sound byte politics now and I'm not going to play.

You have not addressed the real argument and you refuse to look at anything that I post.

You think that I have an opinion and I am unwilling to look at it any other way, but this blatently shows that you too are guilty of this.

The proof is in the pudding. I've shown the historical problem. I've given you an overview the problem in a regional sense. I've pulled in expert analysis to support my view. And, I've used reports on current events to support my view.

There isn't much to discuss until you start attacking this argument.

 

[Makalakumu]

The bottom line is when do people stop expecting others to take acre of them and rescue them?

When they are too old or sick or poor to get out on their own. Otherwise one might as well let them die.

 

[7starmantis]

You are cutting and pasting things together that were not part of the same situation. They have different contexts. This is sound byte politics now and I'm not going to play.

You have not addressed the real argument and you refuse to look at anything that I post.

You think that I have an opinion and I am unwilling to look at it any other way, but this blatently shows that you too are guilty of this.

The proof is in the pudding. I've shown the historical problem. I've given you an overview the problem in a regional sense. I've pulled in expert analysis to support my view. And, I've used reports on current events to support my view.

There isn't much to discuss until you start attacking this argument.

This is too much for me to prove, I'm taking my ball and going home. Or maybe I'll just start another thread to try and loose the pure facts shown to me in these past two.

7sm

 

[Tgace]

Nice use of your resources there Mr. Mayor....Blame it on the Feds.

 

[Shorin Ryuu]

20,000 is probably way to low for an estimation of the people who were left behind or stayed. I've seen estimate of up to 80,000. 20,000 is still more then enough though. Think about this...packing old, sick, and poor people on the bus with all of their stuff including clothing, medical equipment, and whatever else...28 people would be a very full bus indeed. I would expect less.

Further, there wasn't time for two trips. The highways were gridlocked. And I'm wondering if there was anyone around to drive the busses. People in emergencies tend to take care of their families.

That's an aspect of city planning that wasn't carried out. It is part of their evacuation plan. These buses were not used even before the levees broke, as they were sitting in the parking lots doing nothing. At any rate, I love how now you say there wasn't enough time. Once the levees broke, there wasn't enough time to realize that "hey, maybe we should leave". You absolve the city officials of their evacuation plan because they didn't have to realize the magnitude of the hurricane until after the levees started to break. On the other hand, you use the same argument against Bush. That he should've known about it even though the city officials apparently didn't deem it necessary.

But just so you know, there are pictures of around 400 buses sitting unused in large pools of water in various places. At least 255 in one (people have counted) and 146 in another (people have counted). Google search can show you them. Use the controls to recenter and rezoom as you like. You can get down to individual bus resolution or better.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=New+Orleans,+LA&ll=29.968598,-90.089189&spn=0.006110,0.009958&t=e&hl=en

This one is on Canal Street, not even a mile away from the Superdome. They are municipally owned buses.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=New+Orleans,+LA&ll=30.000594,-90.033131&spn=0.005190,0.007145&t=k&hl=en

On the lower left side, you'll see the 255 buses. The links take you to a "before" shot. Click on the red Katrina button to see the "after" shot.

There are also isolated lots here and there (13 buses here, 8 buses there, etc.)
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=New+Orleans,+LA&ll=30.000594,-90.033131&spn=0.005190,0.007145&t=k&hl=en

(13 buses near the middle of the lower left quadrant...expand the picture to full size to see the resolution).

There are probably even more buses that we haven't seen...

So these are all buses that weren't even being used. That means either the city used none of their buses as a resource or they had even more that they used.

I think they used at least some, because if you look at Almonaster facility, their parking lot is almost empty. It's in the bottom right of the second link I provided. It is also only a few blocks away from the at least 255 buses in the other lot.

The city can be faulted for some of this, but the **** spreads thinly. Cuba somehow gets everyone out when they evacuate and I think its because they have a strong plan and everyone knows what they have to do at all levels. The national government moves in and coordinates everything and they move even the poor and the old.

This to me is always such an amusing argument. I've never quite understood the far left's admiration of Cuba. First of all, a country the size of Cuba would have an easier time doing anything. Second of all, Cuba is a communist country so of course they have "a strong plan and everyone knows what they have to do at all levels." Of course "The national government moves in and coordinates everything and they move even the poor and the old." That "admirable" disaster planning comes with the string of them having that same amount of control over everything. Do you want that? I didn't think so...(some liberals I know do, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt).

The city doesn't get a pass. Neither does the state. Neither does President Bush. Blame spreads throughout the whole system in my opinion.

But here's my problem with your assignation of blame. You tend to just gloss over the first two levels witih a nod and reserve the majority of it for Bush when nearly all the factors we are discussing are local politics.

Again, this is incorrect. The reporter asked, "so, is this an issue of class, poverty, or race, or is this something else?"

I'm not sure what exactly you are thinking...any one who wants to can doublecheck this here:


"So is this at its heart a question about class, is it about poor people, is it racist?"

That are her exact words. It starts at around 3:16. I left out the other questions the first time I quoted it because his first response dealt directly with racism at the present time. I didn't imply that her question was biased, only that she did ask specifically about race (with a dramatic pause before she asked the last segment of her question).

His response was:

"That the city administration is now largely African American one could not say there is a racial bias there, I think that vigorous efforts to make sure all citizens were protected, but there, there is a bias built-in in human mobility. Many whites moved first to Jefferson Parish, the immediately upstream suburban parish during the fifties and sixties. They've been able to develop a fairly secure drainage system themselves and levee protection. So there is, class and, and wealth do play a big part in people's ability to respond and certainly those people with the least means lose everything."

I didn't leave anything out. I didn't paraphrase. I copied word-for-word.

In other words, the only racial component was decades ago. That is a very thin argument. Yet you wouldn't know this if you only looked at the description of the file. Again, after 4 or 5 decades, if a city government can not provide for the welfare of its city without outside help, that government is corrupt, inept, and has no business being in power. Why were they still in power? Because the people kept electing them. They kept putting them in office because they kept relying on that welfare check, on the policies of socialism.

As far as richer communities being more able to provide for themselves, that makes sense. The question is, what kind of politics promotes richer communities and the uplifting of the poor? Sadly, for you, it isn't the welfare state and the economically crippling policies of the far left. Sadly for the residents of New Orleans, it wasn't those policies either.

Dr. Colten's response was, "since most of the city officials were black, there was no bias on their part, however, when it came to mobility out of the city, there was bias..."

Again, this is only a cursory look at what he says and very misleading. You've accused me trying to manipulate the argumen. As I mentioned above where I put down his whole response to the question, the human mobility factor he is referring to is decades ago.

Further, right before the segment in question, Dr. Colten talks about how elevation, class, and race has always been an issue with the poorest and the blackest living the lowest and the more affluent whites living the highest.

In journalism, this would be criticized for being a vague statement. You see, you can't use the word "always been an issue" in conjunction with several nouns unless each and every one of them has always been an issue (including now). If you said "Dr. Colten talks about how economic disparity affects how people can prepare for flood relief", then I would agree. That just makes sense. Those with more money can prepare more.

But race isn't the issue now. The fact that most of the poor are black is irrelevant in terms of playing the race card. It is poor logic to simply link those "based on the historical context" as you always seem to be doing, whether that is hard or soft racism. Did Dr. Colten ever say those people are poor because they are black? No. His argument deals more with economic disparity rather than race. And again, the question is why, after 4 or 5 decades could a city not improve its tax base? Welfare system and corrupt politicians are the answer.

No, this is what is known as a distorting paraphrase. You are coloring the conversation to show what you want it to show and then you are ignoring the parts that contradict your line of reasoning.

I've addressed, ironically, how it is you who are the one doing this further above.

This is also untrue. Dr. Colten lays out present day examples of bias and inequality. White flight was part of the problem, but it wasn't the whole problem as you are trying to make it out to be. Dr. Colten said there was a bias in the way people lived in New Orleans and that there was a bias in the way people could evacuate.

Those things were economics, not race. Again, correlation is not causation unless it is significat, as you said. But even if there is a one-to-one correlation, that is not significant. You know that. It is only significant if tested for other variables. Obviously, we can't do that with history. But the variable that plays such a huge role in determining the economic welfare of those people is the local government. They didn't do a good job.

The bias in mobility that Dr. Colten referred to, dealth with mobility during the evacuation.

See further above where I disproved your point. The only "evacuation bias" was based on wealth, not race.

Most people who pull-themselves-up-by-the-bootstraps were standing on a mountain of privilege. This notion is largely a myth.

A mountain of privilege? How? I'm talking about people that grew up poor, forced themselves to work, and managed to break free from poverty. The operative word here is "work".

I won't argue about wellfare dependency, though, I see that everyday at my line of work.

I'm glad we can at least agree on something.

Political will has very little to do with politics anymore. Politics is all about influence peddling and money. If you have money, you have power, and you have a voice. If you don't have it, then, you have no power.

This isn't a question of will. Talk to anyone down there and they'll say they want to protect their homes from floods, do they have the power to get it done? No. Why? Because they are poor.

Again that's the sense of dependency on the government and inability to help themselves. How many of them, if they even vote, ever talked to their representatives? How many of them, if they even vote, ever discussed levee funding? Or were they more concerned about their welfare check? If there was political will in the people, they wouldn't tolerate politicians who couldn't get anything done. There is a difference between saying "gee, I wish someone would do something about these canals" and political will.

Lets take a look at your example...the $748 million to improve canals and increase barge traffic. Powerful business lobbyists went to Washington to get this project in the works. Why? Because they stand to make a lot of money from its completion. The congressmen wrote it into the budget. Why? Because of all the donations these same interests make in their campaigns.

Actually, you're slightly out of order. Inept politicians went to Washington with the idea first to gain as much pork as possible.

Do the poor have this type of influence to advocate for their needs? No. Are the needs of their homes and lives more important then the needs of these powerful interests? I would say yes. City officials also thought so and they worked hard to lobby for their constintuents...and it all fell on deaf ears.

The poor have the most important influence: their vote. They didn't use their vote (and other democratic means like petition) to get the message to politicians that they won't get elected if they don't get money for flood control they won't get re-elected (rather than all the other massive pork that was at least 34 times the amount the Corps requested total for flood control, and that's only the large industrial lock). Instead, they limited themselves to voting for who would provide them with a check. As for the city officials it doesn't appear they worked hard to lobby for constituents at all. Show me where they did so.

This isn't a wellfare state argument. Its about priorities. Its about who has power and who doesn't. And it illustrates the sad state of democracy today. The influence of corporate power trumps the needs of the people.

The people have one trump card that will overturn any corporate interest. That card is the vote (not to mention other ways of getting politician's attention). Your statement is the typical liberal "the people have no power" argument. Now, I'm not saying this next thought is your own. You're not a politician. But there is a tendency amongst Democratic politicians to treat the poor and minority votes as guaranteed. (Republicans often do the same for their "core constituency" as well) Therefore they don't have to do as much to "help" them in a very real sense. In this case, Democratic politicians saw little need to spend their political capital on projects that would ingratiate them to their poor constituency as they already had their vote thanks to their welfare policies. The only way the poor and minorities can get the Democratic attention is through the vote and petition. We've noticed a trend where more poor and minorities are voting Republican, nation-wide, as a result of the Democratic Party taking their vote for granted. I'm not sure if the Democratic Party will take serious notice or not...

So why did I go off on that seeming tangent? Again, there is always political influence from the people. It is a matter of having political will that makes the difference. As I said, there was no political will amongst the people.

 

[Makalakumu]

Nice use of your resources there Mr. Mayor....Blame it on the Feds.

Blame spreads thinly because the problem was systemic. This picture makes it painfully obvious that the city shares some of it. The key word is shares...

 

[Shorin Ryuu]

EDIT: Nevermind. I want upnorthkyosa to answer the other questions first...no sense letting him slip out of this one.

 

[Makalakumu]

EDIT: Nevermind. I want upnorthkyosa to answer the other questions first...no sense letting him slip out of this one.

This will take a while...but as of now, I think that you have written down the most complete quotation of Dr. Colten's comments. I need to sit down with a pencil and paper to verify it. Good work.

Meanwhile see this article...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9286534/

 

[Tgace]

Blame spreads thinly because the problem was systemic. This picture makes it painfully obvious that the city shares some of it. The key word is shares...

If you had the time and means to get EVERYBODY out without the national guard or the feds having to be called in but didnt, I think you get a larger share....If the city would have evacuated everybody the rest would be a non issue...

 

[Tgace]

All this **** is 20/20 hindsight. In reality, NOBODY, rich, poor, politicians, feds etc. gave a damn about the levees or flood control. Now that the inevitable has happened, EVERYBODY now cares and everybody is pointing fingers at everyone but themselves...

 

[Tgace]

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/08/26/fema_learned_from_hurricane_andrew_in_1992?mode=PF

It took four days for FEMA to get its first people into South Florida after Andrew. I can't remember any reasonable person berating the President for FEMA's "slow" response after Andrew.

 

[Shorin Ryuu]

Meanwhile see this article...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9286534/

Unsurprisingly, the article does address many of the things I have brought up. Unfortunately, it tends to front and rear-load criticisms of the federal government, both in terms of the entire articles itself as well as the top and bottoms of each page and the headings. The vast majority of these criticisms are actually claims, not facts. In fact, I am almost puzzled that you would cite this article as supporting your claim. You probably fell into the trap of skimming and headline reading. As most the media knows that is what most people do, I'm not surprised that is the impression you got from this article...


I will go through and point out what is wrong and right with this article...that will be my last post in these threads for a while. I don't have time to debate ALL weekend (although I've wasted much of my time already doing so). I urge everyone to read this analysis.

The practice run for a New Orleans apocalypse had been commissioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the federal government's designated disaster shop. But the funding ran out and the doomsday scenario became just another prescient -- but buried -- government report. Now, practice was over.

And Pam's lessons had not been learned.

The practice run was commissioned by FEMA. In other words, a city operation that is the responsibility of the city to take care of. The article makes it sound like it was FEMA's responsibility to bear the sole financial responsibility of funding. But, we've already locked horns over the funding issue. I agree that the city did not learn the lessons.

And once floodwaters rose, as had been long predicted, the rescue teams, medical personnel and emergency power necessary to fight back were nowhere to be found.

Sadly, the standard of journalism has been reduced to making statements without all the backing or explanation. Nowhere to be found? I've already cited in these posts where they all were and what they were doing.

But just as a tidbit from the timeline I and others (Tgace) have cited:
Aircraft in position to help assess the damage and carry out rescues:

Aircraft are positioned from Hammond to the Texas border ready to fly behind the storm to check damage after it passes over New Orleans, said Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau, head of the Louisiana National Guard.

Search and rescue operations are being coordinated by the Guard with the state Wildlife and Fisheries Department and Coast Guard poised to help search for survivors stranded by the storm. Guardsmen are also deployed at the Jackson Barracks ready to head into the city using high-water vehicles, Landreneau said.

This was Monday morning, before the hurricane hit.

But it was an infuriating time of challenge when government seemed unable to meet its basic compact with its citizens. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, an entirely new Department of Homeland Security had been created, charged with doing better the next time, whether the crisis was another terrorist attack or not. Its new plan for safeguarding the nation, unveiled just this year, clearly spelled out the need to take charge in assisting state and local governments sure to be "overwhelmed" by a cataclysmic event.

I appreciate the righteous indignation of the authors. But what they don't let you know is that DHS is organized along the federal system. In other words, the DHS that was there was state and local level.

FEMA was still the lead disaster agency, as it had been since 1979, but was now just a piece of DHS.

Yes and no. FEMA's original purpose was just to help people file aid claims afterwards. I'll address this later.

That evening, shortly before Max Mayfield made his call to Walter Maestri, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) declared a state of emergency. However, unlike her Gulf state neighbors, she neglected to tap a nationwide governor's network known as the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which is designed to rush supplies to disaster areas.

State-level is at fault.

When talk turned to New Orleans, Mayfield mentioned the possibility of water overwhelming the levees; his center soon forecast a storm surge as high as 25 feet, far above the 17-foot clearance for most of the city's storm protection. "Clearly on Saturday, we knew it was going to be the Big One," recalled Jack Colley, Texas's veteran disaster man. "We were very convinced this was going to be a very catastrophic event."

In this quote and others, they continually mention how Mayfield, director of the NHC, knew about the danger. Why didn't the city and state make the specific requests?

Nagin said that by daybreak, he might have to order the first mandatory evacuation in New Orleans history, although his staff was still checking whether that would pose liability problems for the city. Nagin did not tell everyone to leave immediately, because the regional plan called for the suburbs to empty out first, but he did urge residents in particularly low-lying areas to "start moving -- right now, as a matter of fact." He said the Superdome would be open as a shelter of last resort, but essentially he told tourists stranded in the Big Easy that they were out of luck.

If everything was so urgent, why didn't Nagin order the "voluntary evacuation" until 5 pm Saturday and the mandatory evacuation until the next morning? He was worried about the political capital implications for hotels and businesses. In other words, not for the poor, as you said in other articles. Political will?

In addition, he told everyone to bring food for several days...most did not.

Oh, in many cases, it is a relatively short walk (5 miles in some cases) to the airport...not everyone can make that walk, but the vast, vast majority could...

In fact, while the last regularly scheduled train out of town had left a few hours earlier, Amtrak had decided to run a "dead-head" train that evening to move equipment out of the city. It was headed for high ground in Macomb, Miss., and it had room for several hundred passengers. "We offered the city the opportunity to take evacuees out of harm's way," said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black. "The city declined."

So the ghost train left New Orleans at 8:30 p.m., with no passengers on board.

Once again, the city is at fault.

That night, Mayfield picked up his phone again, to make sure Govs. Blanco and Barbour understood the potential for disaster. "I wanted to be able to go to sleep that night," he said. He told Barbour that Katrina had the potential to be a "Camille-like storm," referring to the August 1969 hurricane with 200-mph winds, and warned Blanco that this one would be a "big, big deal." Blanco was still unsure that Nagin fully understood, and urged Mayfield to call him personally.

"I told him, 'This is going to be a defining moment for a lot of people,' " Mayfield recalled.

City at fault again.

Aug. 28: ‘We sat here for five days waiting. Nothing!’

A superficial reading of this quote makes it look like nothing was done in the 5 days before evacuation by the federal government...

Nagin also announced that the city had set up 10 refuges of last resort, and promised that public buses would pick up stragglers in a dozen locations to take them to the Superdome and other shelters. But he never mentioned the numbers that had haunted experts for years, the estimated 100,000 city residents without their own transportation. And he never mentioned that the state's comprehensive disaster plan, written in 2000 and posted on a state Web site, called for buses to take people out of the city once the governor declared a state of emergency.

I've talked about these buses before...

By late Sunday, as millions of people in the Gulf region sought a safe place to hunker down, hundreds of shelter beds upstate lay empty. "We could have taken a lot more," said Joe Becker, senior vice president for preparedness and response at the Red Cross. "The problem was transportation." The New Orleans plan for public buses that would take people upstate was never implemented, and while many residents did manage to get out of town -- about 80 percent, the mayor said -- tens of thousands did not.

"Once a mandatory evacuation was ordered, those buses should have been leaving those parishes with those people on them," said Chip Johnson, chief of emergency operations in Avoyelles Parish, who helped put together the plan. In Avoyelles alone, there was room for at least 200 or 300 more on Sunday night before the storm, and more shelters could have opened if necessary. "I don't know why that didn't happen."

Again, the buses not being used...

At the Superdome, city officials reckoned that 9,000 people had arrived by evening to ride out the storm. FEMA had sent seven trailers full of food and water -- enough, it estimated, to supply two days of food for as many as 22,000 people and three days of water for 30,000. Ebbert said he knew conditions in the Superdome would be "horrible," but Hurricane Pam had predicted a massive federal response within two days, and Ebbert said the city's plan was to "hang in there for 48 hours and wait for the cavalry."

So FEMA was doing what it could...it already provided aid beforehand. Why wasn't more provided? I've already addressed before how state and local officials refused Red Cross aid because they didn't want to encourage people to stay in the shelters...

Around midnight, at the last of the day's many conference calls, local officials ticked off their final requests for FEMA and the state. Maestri specifically asked for medical units, mortuary units, ice, water, power and National Guard troops. "We laid it all out," he recalled. "And then we sat here for five days waiting. Nothing!"

An understandably emotional statement. His job wasn't an enviable one. But if he is saying no action was taken by the federal government for five days, that is an outright, bald-faced lie. I've already listed before where action was taken. Interestingly enough, Nagin makes a statement the next day where he says he is going to give FEMA a "hell of a list"...as if they didn't give them one before...I'm unsure if the journalists may or may not have messed up their facts.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana around 6 a.m. Central time, and within an hour, New Orleans Mayor Nagin was hearing reports of water breaking through his city's levees. At 8:14 a.m., the National Weather Service reported a levee breach along the Industrial Canal, and warned that the Ninth Ward was likely to experience extremely severe flooding...[skip]...Now the waters were rising. And nobody in charge seemed to know it.

Either they did or didn't. Nagin was in charge and he apparently had reports. But later on, they say "nobody in charge seemed to know it". There is a difference between seeming and reality. It is an intentionally loaded word.

The federal disaster response plan hinges on transportation and communication, but National Guard officials in Louisiana and Mississippi had no contingency plan if they were disrupted; they had only one satellite phone for the entire Mississippi coast, because the others were in Iraq. The New Orleans police managed to notify the corps that the 17th Street floodwall near Lake Pontchartrain had busted, and Col. Richard Wagenaar, the top corps official in New Orleans, tried to drive to the site to check it out. But he couldn't get through because of high water, trees and other obstacles on the road.

Federal disaster plan. Meaning it employs the local and state resources of the area. Meaning Nagin and others wasted those (flooded buses, for example). The article conveniently leaves out when the Guard was notified though. I wonder why. They seem pretty good at indicating other times.

The federal interagency team seemed to recognize the urgency of the crisis at a meeting that morning, discussing the potential for six months of flooding in New Orleans, and a preliminary Department of Energy conclusion that as many as 2,000 of 6,500 oil and gas platforms in the Gulf could be affected. But before noon, FEMA's Brown sent a remarkably mild memo to Chertoff, politely requesting 1,000 employees to be ready to head south "within 48 hours." Brown's memo suggested that recruits bring mosquito repellent, sunscreen and cash, because "ATMs may not be working."

This is my favorite one. These are not 1,000 aid and relief employees to be working on the ground with relief efforts. These are people who are to fulfill FEMA's original mandate: paper pushers. In other words, they are people whose job it is to help people fill out post-rescue aid forms, such as insurance and damage claims and the like. But the news makes it sound like they are essential rescue or aid personnel and the federal government was giving some sort of callous response.

As water poured into the city, as many as 20,000 more residents poured into the Superdome. "People started coming out of the woodwork," Ebbert said. The stadium was hot and fetid, and tempers were flaring. Ebbert said he told FEMA that night that the city would need buses to evacuate 30,000 people. "It just took a long time," he said.

Where are those buses? Underwater. The city failed to follow the evacuation plan and ensure they would be useable.

Just as note for you, At 3:00 PM, Director Ebbett said “Everybody who had a way or wanted to get out of the way of this storm was able to. For some that didn’t, it was their last night on this earth.’’ He also said that the city had 100 boats to carry out search and rescue operations.

Around 6 p.m., as Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin were about to hold a news conference in Baton Rouge to discuss the damage, Blanco's communications director whispered that the president was on the line. The governor returned to a windowless office in her situation room and pleaded with the president for assistance. "We need your help," she said. "We need everything you've got."

Oh really? Why did she keep refusing to allow a full takeover by the federal government then? Why didn't she allow full access to everything by relief agencies like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army?

Blanco ordered the Superdome evacuated, but Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana's emergency preparedness chief, grew frustrated at FEMA's inability to send buses to move people out. "We'd call and say: 'Where are the buses?' " he recalled, shaking his head. "They have a tracking system and they'd say: 'We sent 349.' But we didn't see them."

Meanwhile, all the buses less than a mile away were completely flooded and useless. Once again, the city's fault for lack of planning and coordination. Could it be these were the same buses FEMA was thinking about? Perhaps. I don't know for sure. Regardless, those buses could have done so much had they been taken care of by the city.

In the drowning city, chaos erupted. Looting was widespread, sometimes in full view of outnumbered police and often unarmed National Guard troops. Hundreds of New Orleans police officers quit. Others performed their duties courageously, and so did many state and federal personnel, but for now they focused on rescue and recovery. In general, the cavalry was nowhere to be seen, and everyone seemed to know it....At this point, Blanco believed she had long since asked for the maximum possible help from the federal government. But the military was not specifically asked for its assistance.

"In general, the cavalry was nowhere to be seen, and everyone seemed to know it." Again, a statement more appropriate to an editorial than anything else. The military was not specifically asked for its assistance. Blanco screws up again. As it regards to this criticism by the article, you couldn't use active duty troops thanks to posse comitatus as they were talking about law and order.

And unbeknownst to FEMA, a new circle of hell was opening downtown, as the New Orleans convention center filled with an estimated 25,000 evacuees, many of them unable to get to the flooded area around the Superdome. There was no food, no water and no feds.

It was quoted all over the mainstream media about how Brown didn't know about the Convention Center. You want to know why? It wasn't until Tuesday, 30 August that New Orleans officials discussed using the convention center for evacuees. It wasn't part of the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, nor was it listed in any public statements anywhere. There has been no evidence that city officials ever told FEMA or state officials from the DHS that they planned on using it. Again, the city's fault. But "no food, no water and no feds" doesn't let you in on that essential detail.

New Orleans as a city had all but ceased to exist. Nagin spoke of "thousands" dead. Blanco publicly pleaded for 40,000 National Guard troops. In a conference call with Guard officials in the region, Blum asked if they had what they needed. They said no. "They said that this is bigger than anything we've ever seen or imagined," Blum recalled. "This had touched them personally. Even at that time they didn't have a full sense of what they were dealing with." Blum immediately arranged a videoconference with every adjutant general around the country, and 3,000 Guard troops streamed into New Orleans over the next 24 hours, enough to replace the entire city police force. By Saturday, the Guard would have 30,000 troops in the region.[/quote]
That's a quick response, if you ask me. That doesn't include the over 4,000 Guard in Louisiana already.

The article then goes to talk about how seriously the Bush administration was taking this...and then later,

But assistance that was available was often blocked. In the Gulf, not 100 miles away from New Orleans, sat the 844-foot USS Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms and beds for 600 patients. Starting Wednesday, Amtrak offered to run a twice-a-day shuttle for as many as 600 evacuees from a rail yard west of New Orleans to Lafayette, La. The first run was not organized until Saturday. Officials then told Amtrak they would not require any more trains.

Way to go, local officials.

But a fierce debate erupted, said an administration official who participated in the meetings and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, centering on whether Bush could order a federal takeover of the relief effort with or without Blanco's approval. White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., recalled from his Maine vacation, broached the question with Blanco, a senior White House official said. Later, the president called from the Oval Office to press the same idea. Both times, Blanco balked.

What does his vacation have to do with it? It's just yet another jab at the administration. At any rate, Blanco is still (31 August) refusing to allow full federal commitment.

At the convention center, thousands had gathered by Thursday without supplies. There were no buses and none on the way. Nagin, almost in tears, issued a "desperate SOS."

The irony of that sickens me.

But official Washington seemed not to be watching the televised chaos. Bush was still insisting the storm and catastrophic flooding his own government had foretold was a surprise. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he said.

Doesn't this contrast with this statement earlier in the article?:

Army Corps officials were trying to close the gaps in the levees, but their hurried efforts to stem the flow were hampered by a lack of supplies. They could not find 10-ton sandbags or the slings they needed to drop the bags from helicopters; most of their personnel had evacuated, and so had their local contractors. "We didn't expect any breaches," Dan Hitchings of the agency's Mississippi Valley Division later explained. "We didn't think we were going to have a wall down." The corps tried to drop smaller sandbags into the 17th Street breach, but they simply floated away with the current.

Later, in another television interview, Brown insisted that everything was "under control." And though the crowds had started to flock to the convention center two days earlier, Brown said: "We learned about the convention center today."

I've already addressed how this source neglects to mention it wasn't until Tuesday, 30 August that New Orleans officials discussed using the convention center for evacuees. It wasn't part of the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, nor was it listed in any public statements anywhere. There has been no evidence that city officials ever told FEMA or state officials from the DHS that they planned on using it.

All in all, sloppy journalism mixed with bias leads to grossly misleading timelines like this one. Not that I expected any better from a Washington Post article.

 

[7starmantis]

Thsi is ridiculous. Any point not complimenting upnorth's point is just simply ignored. I'll be leaving now.

7sm

 

[arnisador]

Blame spreads thinly because the problem was systemic. This picture makes it painfully obvious that the city shares some of it. The key word is shares...

All this **** is 20/20 hindsight. In reality, NOBODY, rich, poor, politicians, feds etc. gave a damn about the levees or flood control. Now that the inevitable has happened, EVERYBODY now cares and everybody is pointing fingers at everyone but themselves...

Yup. Lots of blame to go around. Human nature and mother nature are both to blame, I say.

No one was willing to deal with it because it wasn't a clear and present danger. It was too easy to play politics as usual and hope for the best.

I'm just not surprised. Are our schools safe for kids? Is all lead paint and asbestos gone? Is no one starving on the streets of NYC? All sorts of serious problems get ignored if no one is advocating strongly enough for them in DC. It's business as usual. Does it suck? Yes. But is it new or different here? No. The hurricane just puts it all in stark relief.

 

[Tgace]

Things will never be perfect. Take care of all those situations and someone will complain that some other problems are being ignored. How many people here NOW arguing that the levees were neglected ever even thought of them a year ago? If the gvt. spent the billions on them a decade ago someone would have been complaining that that money should have gone to alternate energy research and emissions reduction programs. It was up to the city and the state gvts. to fight for the money and assign that money to their programs. Apparently they didnt fight hard enough (I never heard any hue and cry over it till now) and/or spent what they did get on something else...

 

[MA-Caver]

You get looting like this everywhere. It's nothing special about N.O. or its residents.

I dunno, I mean even the Walmart gets cleaned out... even by COPS... as this video shows. Arrests are made here as well but not many... I couldn't help but notice that 99% of the looters were of the african american race. Is that a social commentary or is that just something of a statistic because a large percentage of the population of N.O. is black?

There is one phunny in the video, early on it shows a guy trying to bust out some windows and isn't doing a great job at it. I was like, geez guy either aim better or find a bigger window...