Update [2005-8-30 17:18:59 by BooMan]: They are closing the Superdome because they do not have enough food, water, or medical care. I have no idea where they are going to take the people.
Robert Plant sang about it, but I never thought I’d see an American city eighty percent under water.
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If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s going to break
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s going to break
A-when the levee breaks, have no place to stay…
Cryin’ won’t help ya, prayin’ won’t do ya no good
Now, cryin’ won’t help ya, prayin’ won’t do ya no good
A-when the levee breaks, mama, you got to move, a-woo-hoo
Cryin’ and praying’ wont help, but the people of New Orleans need all the assistance we can provide.
New, terrifying floods swept through the heart of New Orleans. Water blanketed 80 percent of one of the nation’s largest, most popular cities. And yet fires raged.
Medics transformed part of the Superdome into a triage center. Looters roamed. Martial law was declared in two parishes close to New Orleans.
The awful panorama of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation stretched across four coastal states, and a rag-tag, numbed army of refugees searched desperately for the bare necessities of life — water, food, shelter and, to escape from it all, gasoline.
”There’s nowhere, nowhere to go,” said Robert Smith, a truck driver who fled New Orleans with his family of six and ended up stranded on Interstate 10 near Gulfport, Miss. “There’s nowhere to eat, get gas or stay.”
I recommend sending your donations to the Red Cross. Other organizations can be contacted here.
It looks like virtually the entire city is going to need to be rebuilt. Nothing like this has happened in the USA since the San Francisco fire a hundred years ago. People will need places to stay for an extended period of time. Anyone that has space to offer should consider offering it to people that cannot go back to their homes.
I’ve stayed tuned in all day to the streaming video from WWL-TV. They haven’t even begun to estimate fatalities in New Orleans. They’re too busy trying to reach stranded survivors.
This is utter horror.
They are now closing and evacuating the Superdome. I just saw a reporter interviewing a victim who lost his wife and she was crying as she was reporting. This is so terrible, and just when we thought the worst might not happen. Everyone one who is able to donate, please do what you can. This is a terrrible tragedy. Heartbreaking.
Don’t worry, EVERYBODY!
President Bush is returning a day early from his vacation to oversee the federal response! WOOHOO!
You know the only reason he’s leaving Crawford is that it’s too close to the actual tragedy and labor. In DC he gets to add another few hundred miles worth of buffer between him and anything like “hard work”.
I’ve heard this on the Randi Rhodes show too … this is from Real History Lisa, via e-mail:
And i heard that Cafferty was PISSED that Bush was still on vacation and playing golf yesterday.
Why are they closing the Superdome?
Couldn’t they fly in supplies / drop them off from helicopters or something?
I thought there was an emergency medical facility set up in the Superdome! I heard that on the radio yesterday.
They are evacuating due to the lack of electricity, a/c, and sewage facilities among other things, is what I have been hearing.
You’re right, Diane, but also because of the rising water. Susan, they do have the emergency medical evacuees there, but they can’t stay there now. The walkway they were using as a staging area is under water.
[nod] If I understand correctly, the emergency shelter at the Superdome was a temporary expediency for those who waited too long or were otherwise unable to get to a proper shelter. The emergency medical “facility” at the ‘dome was, I gather, little more than a temporary stop-over for the people that they had to move out a hospital quickly when the levees broke and the water started rising.
Really, the logistics involved are much more complicated than most people can imagine. We’re talking about an entire major metropolitan area and the surrounding area. Pretty much the entire infrastructure that keeps the whole thing going is simply not working, and may not work again for weeks or longer. The power, the water supply, sanitation, etc, etc. Hell, most of the roads aren’t useable.
People forget this, but cities are fragile. New Orleans has been broken. They might be able to put it back together again, sort of, but right now it’s unliveable.
You’re so right — the scope of it is difficult to comprehend. Also, with the widespread damage to the region, even when they get the patients out, they’re not sure where to take them. The surrounding hospitals are strained.
I’m not sure the magnitude of this situation can be exaggerated at this point. The governor held a press conference just awhile ago, and besides evacuating the superdome and other shelters, they are basically telling people they’re on their own. The situation is far beyond their ability to handle it. No one even knows what to do. It’s heart breaking.
There is now no question in my mind that this is going to go down in the training books as ‘The Horrible Example.’
I ain’t even going to comment on how dumb it is to establish a ‘shelter of last resort’ below sea level.
That’s why it was a shelter of last resort. It pretty much needed to be centrally located for the people who waited too long (or where unable for some reason) to get to a proper shelter, and pretty much anyplace centrally located in New Orleans is below sea level.
which is the highest level.
I had such a dark feeling watching them herd people into the Superdome thinking it looked like a trap. It is located at the deep section of “The Bowl.”
150 mph winds were too.
I was thinking that they could have been moved after the wind died down.
The city was virtually created by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Warnings about NOLA’s vulnerability have been ignored for years. Here is the documentary “Journey to Planet Earth, Rivers of Destiny, New Orleans, Louisiana.”
http://www.pbs.org/journeytoplanetearth/hope/neworleans.html
Scientists tell us that the levees are causing Louisiana’s coastal wetlands to fall apart. Just a few years ago, a bay was a sugar beet farm; a marina, a pasture for grazing cattle.
October 2004.
They have to evacuate the city b/c it is uninhabitable. Those that haven’t drowned, will be at risk for a whole host of disease. There is no medical care, hell no access to medical care. Hospitals are flooding, and working on b-up generators do not have access to many tx options such as suction etc.
There is confusion on the streets with no communication. People in one neighbourhood don’t know what is happening a few streets over b/c no local communication is possible (with no phone lines, no local cell towers).
There is only one road in … and it is being used for ER use only.
There is no food and if there were, no where to store it.
There are no sanitation facilities working … no way to pump sewage away from living conditions.
It is simply uninhabitable.
They will have to evacuate the superdome, d/t the conditions Diane mentioned above. Plus, they most likely don’t have enough police/military/security persons to monitor 60 000 people.
Looters are now fighting against the police who are chasing them. Read a report that one looter shot at a police officer (link).
An update on power restoration (link),
And to top that off, just read on Americablog that Bush …
This is a MAJOR disaster. And he is just now calling for interagency conferencing? Totally, totally inappropriate.
Also read that fuel – natural gas and oil – are floating on the water. Natural gas is bubbling up through the water in some places. And some buildings are actually alight right now.
It is a disaster of major proportions.
Plus, it is likely that many people have drowned in their own homes when the surge came (it came quickly), and these bodies will also be contributing to disease via water…
It is heartbreaking.
so much for homeland security. The folks that usually help are all in Iraq. What is wrong with this country. This idiot that they call their president is too busy trying to boost the support for his failure in Iraq that he cannot be bothered. He was golfing in arizona the day before the hurricane hit. WAKE UP AMERICA! We do not have a leader. We haven’t for over five years now.
Sending money to the Redcross now so I won’t start screaming in my office.
Well, here’s one they’re not plastering all over CNN. According to the Times-Picayune weblog on NOLA.com, the police were joining in the looting. They describe a scene from the WalMart on Tchoupitoulas Street:
Well, no WONDER they’re too busy to help with rescue efforts then!
Sorry, I am in just full snark mode, it’s a defensive mechanism — I’m sure most of the cops are doing their best, but this situation is going to get totally out of control in a hurry, ’cause hell, most of the local cops probably lost their houses, posessions, etc. too. And I know that they don’t get paid squat, especially not compared to all of the Homeland Security bigwigs.
And I don’t know — call me a moral relativist — but I just can’t get too upset about people looting a Wal-Mart in the face of such devestation and uncertainty and impending poverty/homelessness…..
I’m with you, and I don’t mean to bash the police, either. I’m just pointing out that these things happen — all the moralizing on the news is getting to me. And they actually had opened the WalMart for people to get food and supplies, which I thought was nice.
I think the situation is beyond that now, though. I think they should have known this earlier and freed up the police yesterday to help with the rescues — as soon as the levee broke, the property was a lost cause. It’s been frustrating listening to them focus on the looting all day. Realization now seems to be dawning on them.
I just heard some airhead anchor on CNN say how DISGUSTING it was that people behave this way in the face of a national disaster. I’m sorry but this is not “doing the best they can” this is blatant INABILITY to empathize (and that’s the nice way of putting it).
The other thing that is irritating me is the almost incessant focus on NO — what about rural LA?? What about Mississippi? Alabama?
I heard the SAME thing on MSNBC … the female pouffy-haired anchor went on and on about it … I was so pissed off, I fired off e-mails to MSNBC and told them to fucking stop it.
(Can almost see why the police would be looting — NOBODY KNOWS where their next meal is coming from! And the police are probably worried sick about their families.)
It is mostly about a hypothetical scenario of a Hurricane Category 5 hitting New Orleans.
[my emphases]
TRANSCRIPT
September 20, 2002
LINK
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_neworleans.html
and all we have is this piss poor response — there is no fucking excuse for this. None.
And you’ve got the “news” media treating it like one big reality show — I think they have totally lost all connection with real life (excepting those that are actually there, of course, I would love to see one of them take down an anchor on the air).
I am sickened, just sickened. Have been all day. Even T’ai Chi didn’t help much.
Bush I was infamous for having screwed up FEMA with political appointees so that recovery from hurricanes in his admin was bungled and dragged out for many months. FEMA reform was part of Clinton’s early admin as I recall.
Meanwhile, the N.O. situation really is going to turn out a lot worse than it looked from the initial lowered impact level. It didn’t take 200 mph to damage the dome roof significantly, and it didn’t take a broad topping of the levees to trigger serious breeches.
Starting today we’re experiencing everything I was lamenting about our tsunami response. There should have been a Dunkirk armada of helicopters and thousands of small boats on the streets starting yesterday afternoon to fish all the trapped people out of houses and running supplies–especially fresh water–around to those who weren’t in imminent danger.
If 1% of that population were yachtsmen moored for a regatta, there’d be a small navy of water taxis ferrying people and supplies through the harbor. Our expectations for this kind of disaster should be 10 times higher because we have all the know-how to deliver much better response. And because so much long term personal and property damage can be avoided by immediate action.
Did you all hear CNN’s Jean Masserve last night trying to maintain composure, talking about hearing the dogs and people crying in the night for help?
One dimension of this is going to be the class/income breakdown of those who will suffer the worst.
Another dimension is the whereabouts of the National Guard, some of which include police/fire service people, MIA over in the desert.
The snarky good news: between all the strandings and the looting, we have proven indisputably to the Middle East and Islamic peoples that our incompetence at providing security in Iraq was nothing prejudicial–everyone can see that we don’t know how to provide security for our own people either.
<big sigh….>
The response to this devastation has been so slow, so uncomprehending of the magnitude of the situation that I find myself gasping for breath while watching the cable news coverage. No one has yet asked exactly what is going to happen to a couple of million displaced people who have no homes or jobs or prospects for future security. There are insufficient police and National Guard to assist the refugees from this storm. I think we’re about to see anarchy across three states and many more people will die in confusion and desperate confrontations. This is all too horrible; the needle of my numbed outrage meter is starting to twitch…
I fear you’re right about the degree of the fallout in the aftermath.
I remember South Florida after Andrew. I was fortunate enough to have been in North Miami and we did fine at my place, but I had friends in Homestead. I’d tried to talk them into coming to my place but they’d refused and their experience was just horrific. When we took them supplies after the storm the whole area down there looked like something out of one of those post-apocalyptic B-grade movies. There was no good FEMA or state response so bands of locals were roving the streets with their own rifles and sidearms to try to keep peace and order. And this thing in NO is obviously going to be worse than that was.
Disasters like this bring out the best in some folks, and the worst in others.
I always suspect that there is a group of folks that are just waiting for chaos to hit in some form so they can play out their little post-apocalyptic-B-grade-movie fantasies — people imitating movies that imitate people. But maybe that’s because I’m not a big fan of humanity in general.
Or maybe it’s because I’ve known a higher proportion of total loons than most people. Dunno.
Today’s beer intake could also be an influence, I suppose, and I shouldn’t rule it out.
Watching WWL’s anchorpeople talking cheerfully about “Well, we’re all sitting here waiting to find out when we can go home…” I get the sense that most people don’t get it.
WWL mentioning rumors of rioting and hostage-taking among prisoners being held outside flooded prisons near New Orleans.
This is just unbelievable, the more you listen, every minute something that makes you think it’s sliding into chaos.
I don’t think these TV anchors realize how bad things really are.
I didn’t write it…haven’t checked NRO either…
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Look at what Jonah Goldberg just wrote over at NRO about this:
“I think it’s time to face facts. That place is going to be a Mad Max/thunderdome Waterworld/Lord of the Flies horror show within the next few hours. My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents. While you’re working on that, find the biggest guy you can and when he’s not expecting it beat him senseless. Gather young fighters around you and tell the womenfolk you will feed and protect any female who agrees to participate without question in your plans to repopulate the earth with a race of gilled-supermen. It’s never too soon to be prepared.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Me: How about we beat Jonah Goldberg senseless?!
I mean, I work in the film industry – can’t this moron tell the difference?
is how a CNN reporter is quoting a N.O. resident who’d watched the surge come through, because of all the broken wood debris it carried.
It’s a memory I’d forgotten till I saw some of the tsunami inland footage last winter.
After we spent a day in a powerboat ferrying recovery teams around Lake Erie marinas during the closing phase of Hurricane Agnes, next day we inched out into the Lake. Harbors and waters out half a mile around river mouths were like a giant lumber town log boom–packed trees, broken pilings, pieces of buildings and docks, dead rats and pets. It was incredible, and this was a storm that had become only a fraction of a full strength hurricane.
I’m getting a real sinking feeling in my gut about the town going Fallujah due to trapped populations and lack of security.
FWIW, when the last hurricane hit the North Carolina coast, the Salvation Army was a lot more helpful than the Red Cross in the town my family is from. That’s not to diss the RC, but they are all about emergency disaster management. The longer-term work that goes on afterwards isn’t their focus. Other organizations do that, and should be remembered when making your donations. The Salvation Army, while not nearly as high-profile as the Red Cross, does a lot of that stuff, and they do it well enough that I’m obliged to get over my usual strong resistance to religious charities.
From Crooks & Liars on CNN host Jack Cafferty:
the devestation with that in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’ve heard that twice in the last ten minutes.
Does anyone else here find that comparison completely bogus?? (Oh, not to mention utterly insensitive.)
From WWL,
I agree!
Where do they find these air-heads anyway. What ever happened to real reporters and real journalists.
And if it’s the same one I saw she was lecturing some guy on Bourbon St who’d stayed to take care of his animals. Saying, to effect, “Have you learned your lesson now!”
Who does she think she is to be lecturing people?
I know high school kids who could do a better job of reporting than these twits.
I hardly watch TV anymore, now I am reminded why, again.
Oddly enough, the shelter of last resort has to be the safest, well-equipped, well-stocked, & etc.
_Really, the logistics involved are much more complicated than most people can imagine. _
Yup. Even with a transportation infrastucture (I seem to keep using that word, sorry) it is difficult. Without one, and without pre-stocked supplies, you can bag it. Ain’t gonna happen.
Yeah, I keep thinking “great you stole a tv, now where the heck are you going to plug it in and watch it?” Seems to me they have bigger problems…
On my drive in to the city this afternoon, the NPR news report was quoting one of the disaster relief folks as saying that this was the equivalent of a nuclear holocaust without the radiation.
I am afraid the fatalities are going to be much higher than we’ve ever seen before.
How are they evacuating the people from the Superdome?
I have been giving a lot of thought to a statement that Mayor said…he said that he was glad that the city hit 80% evacuation because a city could be rebuilt. While I agree with that in principal, I can’t help but wonder why we should ever rebuild New Orleans. It is 10 ft. below sea level in an area prone to hurricanes. It makes no sense. Rebuild on higher groud and let the delta do its thing. Every 50 years or so, New Orleans gets hit with a major flooding, and with global warming, that is only going to increase in requency and possibly magnitude. I do know that it has historic and cultural significance, but to preserve that heritage, we need to take it out of harms way. Maybe this is easier said than done, but I really think this storm is a wake up call and we need to start moving our cities to safer ground.
please give credit where credit is due for the song “When the Levee Breaks”
Sad that we only know some traditional African-American music because some white guys sang it!