Mayor of New Orleans requests haste-People to write letters.

[Anonymous]

I will write a letter about how it is that people have warned for years that Katrina might actually visit upon NO the very problems if no one in power actually helped the area get ready.

Sure there are drills, simulations, plans and soothing press conferences.

But when the curtains rise and the orchestra tunes up.. show time. Everyone was asleep at the switch except those who actually took the trouble of getting out of town before Katrina hit.

There will be more storms in the future. We will continue to experience losses of this scale until we as a people understand how best to save a threatened city in a efficient manner. BEFORE such a storm as Katrina arrives.

It is hard to arrange for upgrades and repairs to flood control when the sun is shining. After all it is a nice day outside, let's go visit the pheasants in the park (Which is below water with a hurricane a few days out) and see how everyone is doing. Dont worry about the leaky roof today. Someone can deal with that another time.

I have had experiences where I would eat breakfast in the morning at the foot of a mountain pass in 80 degree weather. Listening to NOAA about the major winter storm at the top of the pass. Then go outside to the truck and get the chains, winter jacket/gloves etc.. ready while folks laughed about it.

When I get to the pass I face winter ready. The ones who laughed at me are now in the shoulders fighting to get traction where there is none and asking for heat, food and water.

I dont know too much about Government doings and pay little attention these days. All I know is we as the people need to watch for these storms and take action ourselves such as evacuating when necessary.. We dont need to wait for Humpty Dumpty to break.

[Anonymous]

an excellent article you should all read.....

APOCALYPSE NOW IN NEW ORLEANS
By Bryan Preston · September 05, 2005 12:13 AM

The JYB guy here, best known most recently for blogging about buses, specifically the hundreds and hundreds of buses that the city of New Orleans failed to use to evacuate its most disadvantaged citizens out of harm's way before hurricane Katrina hit last week. Tens of thousands of New Orleans' residents could have been spared the worst of the past week and many might still be alive today if the city had actually activated its plan to use its own vehicles--school and commuter buses--to give them a ride. But the plan was never activated, though the city was fully aware of the plight of its citizens after hurricane Ivan nearly struck it last year. And of course the city had known that it was sinking into the gooey soil of the Mississippi delta for decades. New Orleans knew that it was living on borrowed time. But it partied on, eating, drinking and being merry, knowing that tomorrow it might well die.

Instead of acknowledging the faults that lie at city level and stepping in to organize relief efforts, Louisiana and New Orleans officials spent most of last week lashing out at the Bush administration, though its response was three times faster than the response to hurricane Andrew just 13 years ago. Government actually got quicker at doing something, in spite of the massive increase in the number of lawyers on the public dime in the intervening years. The locals blamed the feds even though the administration, whatever its faults, was ahead of all local officials when it came to declaring a state of emergency and requesting a mandatory evacuation. A massive butt-covering exercise is underway in Louisiana as I write, so massive it is second only to the actual relief and law and order efforts going on in the vast Katrina destruction zone.

Here's Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, threatening to punch President Bush if local officials come under any criticism.

Here's a local New Orleans official bizarrely suggesting that the head of the government needs to be "chainsawed off."

These officials and dozens like them all across Louisiana are trying to shift blame to Washington for their own failures.

The buses I mentioned earlier and have blogged about extensively all weekend are evidence of and a symbol for those failures. They sit unused and waterlogged, their empty seats representing lives lost to the flood. Their useless presence in flooded parking lots demonstrate that the best plan is useless if it's never implemented. And they fact of their unuse demonstrates a deeper pathology at work in New Orleans government: The entire thing was rotted from the inside out. New Orleans' government was a disaster waiting to happen.

One of my readers at the JYB pointed this out in the process of bugging me about drivers. This reader wanted to know where all the drivers were supposed to come from to drive those buses full of people out of the city. I replied that the answer was obvious--they're school buses, use school bus drivers, contact them via a phone tree, make emergency driving part of their job. Turns out it's not so easy as that. The New Orleans school system is, to put it mildly, a basket case:

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students return to class Thursday in a school system in such turmoil that no one is sure how many employees it has, the new budget is millions of dollars out of balance, and the buildings are old and deteriorating.

The story, dated August 18, 2005, goes on from there to detail the fiscal horror show that is the New Orleans school system. Read it when you're not in the mood for a good laugh. Read it when you're in the mood to slug someone, and you'll slug them twice as hard. Sen. Landrieu should read it and then sit down chanting "serenity now." If you've ever paid taxes to the city of New Orleans, you've been had. And the fact is, through federal education programs chances are we have all paid tax dollars that have been disappeared by that awful system. We have all been had.

We can't lay all of the blame for this sorry state of affairs at Mayor Ray Nagin's feet (though he's almost entirely to blame for the city's pathetic response to the current crisis). He's only been in office for three years, and to his credit he has tried to reform the city's government. But the fact is that a school system that doesn't even know how many employees it has won't be in a position to reach bus drivers when they're needed to ferry thousands of people out of the path of a hell storm like Katrina.

New Orleans' city government was an abscess. I say "was," by the way, because for all intents and purposes it ceased to exist some time last week--probably at about the same time the local officials realized that their multiple failures were bound to lead to major loss of life. Its emergency management czar, one Terry Ebbert, squealed about an absence of command and control over the relief effort, when it was his job to establi***hat command and control. The police department is two-thirds gone after about 1,000 officers deserted in the face of the flood and the looters--some of whom were police officers themselves. Mayor Nagin sent up a profanity-laced diatribe against the federal government that should have been delivered in front of a mirror. The abscess at city hall failed its citizens. It is guilty of gross negligence leading to death for many of its most vulnerable citizens. As the wretched condition of its school system demonstrates, long before it collapsed last week, the municipal government of New Orleans was a total and unmitigated disgrace.

[gabe]

Jay,

Just to be clear,

I do not disagree with you that disaster response is, largely, a federal problem. Although I think each local municipality has a duty to plan ahead with the federal government to make sure the planned response is adequate.

My only contention regarding the federal government is the building of the levies. I just cannot buy the argument that, if the federal government doesn't do it, we can't do it on our own. My understanding of the failure to upgrade several of the levies was that the Feds wouldn't put up the money. I think the levies protect New Orleans and New Orleans should be the one putting up the money and if the Feds don't they either (1) need to nag the feds until they do or (2) pay for it themselves.

Gabe

[grandeman]

QUOTE: Originally posted by donclark
Louisiana has a history of a lot of corrupt government.

Well, that's a well known fact. Heck, just look at the population base they have to draw "leaders" from. Aren't they the one's shooting at rescue helos, looting, murdering, raping and such? What a sad state of affairs.[V] This ain't the America I know. I hope there's a congressional investigation and, when the facts come out, the LA governor and NO mayor have some serious answering to do.

[Anonymous]

The mayor is just pissed because buses were supposed to evacuate people, and they are all UNDERWATER IN NEW ORLEANS. idiots...

[jeaton]

I guess all of you who feel that this whole thing is a local problem are entitled to your opinion. Obviously I do not agree. A fairly well develpoed plan was designed to mitigate the effects of a storm like Katrina. It included steps that would allow the lower Mississippi Delta and Gulf barrier Islands to rebuild and man made enhancements to the levy systems. The price tag was $13 billion, much of which would be federal funds and it was decided that that was just too much money.

Experts are now guessing that the recovery costs will run as high as $100 billion. I don't think that anyone has even ventured a guess as to what portion of that will come from the Federal Government or any other government, but I guarantee that anybody that owns real property (buildings) will see big increases in their property insurance bills. So you don't own property? Better hope you have a landlord willing to absorb the increase without increasing the rent.

I am not going to suggest that any massive infrastructure work could have prevented all the the damage. My point is that one way or the other, we all wind up paying big bucks.

And Dan, I won't jump on FEMA any more, but I will reserve my rath for the people who were responsible for taking FEMA from a "johnny on the spot" organization doing the job it was assigned to a place that seems to have lost the Rollidex with the phone numbers for the providers of emergency response services.

Jay Eaton

[Anonymous]

Louisiana has a history of a lot of corrupt government. Notice in today's issue of Time magazine that a lot of funds for disaster planning and relief were misappropriated, in other words stolen.... No wonder there wasn't much local planning at either the city or state level....

It appears from the pictures in Time magazine, that busses the National Gurad had to be leased from a private coach company to evacuate the refugees out of New Orleans. Whey weren't the school busses used before the storm to evacuate the people who couldn't afford cars, planes, trains, and busses?

I have a feeling that the first paragraph had something to do with the lack of funds of the second paragraph.... Louisiana's corrupt government.....

It also appears in Mississippi and Alabama FEMA and the local authorities had good plans to meet this disaster. However, in Louisiana and New Orleans, it appears there hasn't been a lot of cooperation in the past, and in the present.....

Reread the third paragraph.....

[dmcclendon]

As I stated in another forum. BE PREPARED it starts at HOME. I saw the program on I believe the Discovery channel about the potential disaster for NO from flooding. I think the mayor and local officals missed it. If I remember correctly the National Weather service told everyone that a BIG Storm was on the way and BE PREPARED. As written by several posts you do not put your rescue equipment or people in harms way. If that had been done there really would have been problems.

[Anonymous]

This time line is interesting, obviously it would have been the ACE to construct barrier enhancements

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007023.php

[jeaton]

From the Washington Post

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9166337/

Jay

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by donclark

As far as the National Guard is concerned, why weren't the LA guard in place before the storm hit? As far as the New Orleans police and fire department is concerned, why are half of them missing?

It's simple Don, President Bush was expected to plan all this out for them, they were too busy getting their Point The Finger Speeches ready. dharmon is right, if the levee was not capable of containing, why not have a backup plan. I just don't get the (as dharmon said) 3 little pigs approach and why Mississippi was able to get their NG's out in the area or ready, but yet NO and LA just sat their waiting for someone else to take care of this terrible mess or call out their NG's. Maybe the local and state government isn't aware of how all this works. I blame LA and NO for allowing their own people to be caught in this tragedy.

[Anonymous]

As far as the National Guard is concerned, why weren't the LA guard in place before the storm hit? As far as the New Orleans police and fire department is concerned, why are half of them missing?

[dharmon]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton

Gabe

With regard to the New Orleans levies, their construction and maintenance has and continues to be the job of the Corp of Engineers. From what I read, the governments of both New Orleans and Louisiana, and other involved organizations have been asking for significant improvements in the levy system. It is alleged that as director of the Bush Administration's Office of Management and Budget the Govenor, Mitch Daniels was very aggressive in pushing reductions in the Corp of Engineers budgets, perhaps all part of the ideological view that tax cuts the most important thing and maintenance of infrastructure can be reduced.

You could argue that each locality should be responsible for handling any disaster that befalls them, but when destruction becomes so complete, will not the locality have lost the resources for dealing with the initial emergency? Further, if people need to be evacuated and relocated, won't the destroyed location need to go outside for help? Do you really expect that all of the half million New Orleanians have or could fine a place to go and stay if they can't live at home? FEMA was established to have the contingency plans in place and the people to get the ball rolling. Since being transfered to the Homeland Security Department, they too have been subject to budget cuts and manpower reductions.

I am sorry but I have to disagree with your view that all this is a local responsibility. State and local gevernments have participated in disaster planning and drills, and that certainly should continue, but they do not have the power and authority to go beyond there jurisdictional lines. Ask the mayor of Gary if, on having to evacuate Gary, he could call and tell the mayor of Indianapolis that his city has to take care of 20,000 folks from Gary.

Jay

JIm is right in that the Corps of Engineers is responsible for the levy system along the navigable waters. So yes they were responsible for constructuion and maintenance of both sides. The Lake Ponchatrain levies were under a different program, for flood control. So if you are are local government and you don't think it's sufficient, you scream and carry on until someone fixes it. If not you plan for the worst. The worst happened and they did not plan for it. Again the straw house analogy. Sometime you have to take a little action on you own to prevent these things, not rely on someone else. As this whole ordeal seems to be a case of someone else's problem.

I'm done.......I presume that everyone here will be quitting their jobs, and joining FEMA or volunteering for the National Guard or Red Cross, since they can do it better....PUT UP OR SHUT UP.....

[daveklepper]

Has anybody seen any report of Mineta and rescue? Hasn't the big problem for the people in the Astradome and elsewhere transportation? What is Mineta doing?

Note that if this horror had occured in 1965, the major railroads would have had perhaps a thousand coaches and sleepers in a eighty to a hundred trains scheduled to leave the New Orleand Union Passenger Terminal every ten minutes before the flood gates across the tracks were closed, and the poor people of the city, without transportation of their own, and too poor to fly, would have been offered trips to safety.

Amtrak could have made a contribution if it was in good shape and if Mineta had been on the job. Lives would have been saved. But it did make a small contribution to saving lives anyway and now is providing some rescue services.

[Junctionfan]

Yardgoat46; yes I do. I fear many things in this world but I do not run from them. Sooner or later I must deal with precipitous problems. Now enough of the sabre-rattling because it doesn't impress me.

[Anonymous]

yardgoat46 wrote:

"Hi Jim SP9033 ..... How do the lower Mississippi levees aid in navigation? Can you point me to the material at the Corps' web site ..... I don't know where exactly to look. I know that a theory has often been brought up that .... if a levee system increases the volume of a section of the river, then it will scour the channel, keeping it clear. But I thought that civil engineers could not prove it, and the theory has always been dismissed. Aren't levees for flood protection, and dredging for navigation?"

No, I wasn't thinking about that at all, I was thinking about River meander and that levees because of flood control keep the river in course.

For those interested, here is a nice short history on levees, and river control:

http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/features/feature25/msriver.html

Also, here is a link to the Army Corp of Engineer's site:

http://www.usace.army.mil/

Jim

[Anonymous]

Hi, Gabe .........from what I have read, and info from present and (possibly more importantly) former technical employees of the Corps, and interested elected officials, neither of the levees that failed (Industrial or 17th St) were ever slated for improvements.

There have been a few flood protection projects under way for years now, and funding has been a growing problem, but even if *all* the monies that were ever requested were made available all along the way, the city would still be under water today. Have you read otherwise?

Hi Jim SP9033 ..... How do the lower Mississippi levees aid in navigation? Can you point me to the material at the Corps' web site ..... I don't know where exactly to look. I know that a theory has often been brought up that .... if a levee system increases the volume of a section of the river, then it will scour the channel, keeping it clear. But I thought that civil engineers could not prove it, and the theory has always been dismissed. Aren't levees for flood protection, and dredging for navigation?

Junctionfan ...... you called me stupid in your post. I wonder if you have the cojanes to call a man stupid to his face. Something tells me you don't. How many times does a coward die in his lifetime, Drew?

Jim

PS... I really am interested in what you guys have to say. My father's side of the family is from south Louisiana (LaFourche Parish) ..... two of his sisters got trapped in Camille's storm surge and drowned. So, I sometimes read up about the Mississippi River and its interactions with Louisiana and Mississippi.

[jeaton]

Gabe

With regard to the New Orleans levies, their construction and maintenance has and continues to be the job of the Corp of Engineers. From what I read, the governments of both New Orleans and Louisiana, and other involved organizations have been asking for significant improvements in the levy system. It is alleged that as director of the Bush Administration's Office of Management and Budget the Govenor, Mitch Daniels was very aggressive in pushing reductions in the Corp of Engineers budgets, perhaps all part of the ideological view that tax cuts the most important thing and maintenance of infrastructure can be reduced.

You could argue that each locality should be responsible for handling any disaster that befalls them, but when destruction becomes so complete, will not the locality have lost the resources for dealing with the initial emergency? Further, if people need to be evacuated and relocated, won't the destroyed location need to go outside for help? Do you really expect that all of the half million New Orleanians have or could fine a place to go and stay if they can't live at home? FEMA was established to have the contingency plans in place and the people to get the ball rolling. Since being transfered to the Homeland Security Department, they too have been subject to budget cuts and manpower reductions.

I am sorry but I have to disagree with your view that all this is a local responsibility. State and local gevernments have participated in disaster planning and drills, and that certainly should continue, but they do not have the power and authority to go beyond there jurisdictional lines. Ask the mayor of Gary if, on having to evacuate Gary, he could call and tell the mayor of Indianapolis that his city has to take care of 20,000 folks from Gary.

Jay

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe

If a city has a local problem, they are responsible for addressing it.

Gabe

Gabe, while I certainly agree with you from an economic POV, the actual fact's of the matter may be a great deal more complex.

I guess what you are saying is (in essance) if the A.C.E. built a dike and levy system capable of withstanding a category 3 hurricane, and practical knowledge indicates that these improvements should be up to category 5 specs, that the City was negligent for failing to install enhancements necessary to meet the cat5 requirements?

Well, are we sure that doing so was within the authority of the city>

The shipping of the Mississippi river is of concern to MANY states, and consequently I have to suspect that anything the City set out to do would be mired in federal involvement. Especially with the federally installed improvements already in place, just proving that the remedial enhancements to be added would not impact the federally performed work already done in a negative or unforseen way , would no doubt be a lengthy headache to endure.

Abstractly, suppose the CNO decided they wanted to put in a hydro electric dam and generator across the entire Mississippi, at their milepost along the waterway. What do think their chances of finding approval would be? (yes it's an absurd example, but it illustrates the inevitability that the Fed would be LARGELY invovled in any work the city hoped to do)

One other item that mighr weigh into the equation of whether the city would even be allowed to perform work of the scope that would be necessary,.. can be found by example right here closer to home in Indiana.

There is a small river behind my house. Indiana state law specifies that IF the waterway is deemed navigable by the state, then my property line is at the waters edge. In contrast, if the waterway is not considered navigable (by the state) then my property line is (assuming I only own land on one side) at the center of the stream.

BUT BUT BUT! The Federal Govt DOES consider the stream behind my house to be "navigable"...so, guess where that puts my property line ...anyway... at the water line.

I was in the process of putting in a cement pier behinfd my house, and found that because of the federal aspect, the permitting process, with all the filings etc would cost 10 times as much as the actual value of th work I was going to perform, so instead I opted for a 'non-permanant ' structure, that did not require such close scrutiny.

I can only imagine that the obstacles faced by any entity planning on doing work of the scale required to bring NO up to cat 5 standards would be so many magnitudes of order greater, that it would effectively be prohibitive.

There would always be some expert in some dept somewhere with profound objection to the means manner and method of work planned, refusing to give his approval.

Of course, that is an assumption on my part...but I'll bet it is a good one.

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