As a public health catastrophe unfolded in New Orleans, hospitals in the Crescent City sank further into disaster, airlifting babies without their parents to other states and struggling with more sick people appearing at their doors.
Charity and University hospitals evacuated
Dangerous, unsanitary conditions spread across the city, much of which now sits in a murky stew of germs.
The federal government declared a public health emergency for the Gulf Coast region, promising 40 medical centers with up to 10,000 beds and thousands of doctors and nurses for the hurricane-ravaged area.
BREAKING NEWS – e. coli bacteria
More to follow below the fold »»
Living on Earth’s Jeff Young talks with Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst for the EPA, who says the city’s construction and lack of environmental enforcement made the storm’s damage worse than it could have been.
KAUFMAN: You have a large amount of hazardous materials in the area. Industrial discharges to the sewers have now been released. Sewage that would go into the sewers and into wastewater treatment plants, all of that is being released. You have oil and gas from gasoline stations, and waste oils that have been released. You’ve got household hazardous materials; you’ve got pesticides; you’ve got chemicals. There’s a lot of hazardous materials storage areas in the area. So what you have is a witch’s brew of water that not only contains bacteria and viruses from sewage, but you also have heavy metals and other toxic hazardous materials.
A man carries a baby through the
flooded streets of New Orleans.
Photo: Jeremy L. Grisham, U.S. Navy
YOUNG: How is this exacerbated by the environmental regulation and enforcement in that area in years past?
KAUFMAN: What’s happened over the years because of the power of the major industry in Louisiana – which is oil, gas, and chemical – the environmental enforcement regulations to prevent releases if a catastrophe occurred are very weak in its enforcement. And so, you don’t have the kind of precautions that you would need for such an environmentally-sensitive area being brought to bear.
[…] and so you had a tremendous population growth in areas that are very environmentally fragile, that are weakened in environmental regulation enforcement in terms of hazardous material control, and it was a crisis waiting to happen.
And frankly, folks down there were living on borrowed time and, unfortunately, time ran out with Katrina. And now all the environmental hazards, or the worst-case scenarios, occurred, and now we’re seeing the results of bad planning which made for this catastrophe.
“We’ve identified 2,600 beds in hospitals in the 12-state area. In addition to that, we’ve identified 40,000 beds nationwide, should they be needed,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt.
Storm survivors, particularly in New Orleans where floodwaters remain, face a cauldron of infectious agents, public health experts said. “You can think of floodwaters as diluted sewage,” said Mark Sobsey, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of North Carolina. Whatever infections people carry go into sewage and can be expected to show up in floodwaters. That includes common diarrheal germs including hepatitis A and Norwalk virus.
“We are gravely concerned about the potential for cholera, typhoid and dehydrating diseases that could come as a result of the stagnant water and the conditions,” said Leavitt.
However, officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health experts said cholera and typhoid are not considered to be high risks in the area. CDC officials suggested Leavitt was simply mentioning examples of diseases that could arise from contaminated food and water.
Some experts said worries about catching illnesses from being near dead animals or human bodies are somewhat overblown. “People who are alive can give you a whole lot more diseases than people who are dead,” said Richard Garfield, a Columbia University professor of international clinical nursing who helped coordinate medical care in Indonesia after the tsunami.
Mosquito-borne diseases may start to emerge within days. West Nile virus and dengue fever are both potential risks following a situation like the one in coastal Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Officials also cited carbon monoxide poisoning risks to people using generators and stoves.
“One of the things they have got to do – we’ve got to plead for – is to make sure that when these hospitals get evacuated, the National Guard or somebody is there putting major security around these hospitals, or they’re going to get ransacked. And it’s going to make a bad situation even worse,” said John Matessino, president of the Louisiana Hospital Association.
He said the four hospitals in New Orleans’ central business district – Tulane, Charity, University and the VA hospital – had the worst problem with would-be looters.
[Links added and emphasis are mine – new creve coeur]
Dr. Julie Gerberding - Director
Center for Disease Control (CDC)
- NOLA Aftermath :: Disease and Chemical Pollutants
- WH Proposal :: $71m Cut Hurricane & Flood Funding
- Bush’s Post 9/11 Response Plan Big Failure
- Disasters George Bush Wrought – Analysis and Update
- “They don’t have a clue what’s going on down there,”
Mayor Ray Nagin told WWL-AM radio Thursday night. - NOLA – THE BIG ONE
Georges Sept. 1998 — A major hurricane could decimate the region, but flooding from even a moderate storm could kill thousands. It’s just a matter of time. - NG | DHS Orders :: Red Cross Not Allowed In NOLA ◊
cross-posted by Oui @BooMan
● evacuees at the Superdome
● shelter at Hirsch Coliseum
● prescription help for all.
VIDEO News – Unedited Report from Inside New Orleans:
Update [2005-9-6 3:40:37 by Oui]:
WASHINGTON (AP) Sept. 3, 2005 — Sewage and chemicals are mixed into a potentially toxic bathtub soaking New Orleans, posing the threat of disease for residents forced to wade in Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters.
“Probably the more immediate health risk to the people is that whatever was in the sewer is in the water,” said John Pardue, director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. “Whatever bacterial or viral diseases that people put into the system before the flooding is now in the water.”
Along with the sewage in the floodwater is a witches’ brew of chemicals from a variety of sources, including leaking fuels and oils from gas stations and submerged cars, paints and solvents from small businesses and household cleaners and pesticides from peoples’ homes.
But the biggest chemical plants and refineries to the south and east of the city were spared a direct hit by the hurricane.
If that had happened, breaches in large tanks and other industrial facilities might have spewed heavy petroleum, hydrocarbons and chlorine gas.
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Officials with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) who flew over the Gulf Coast from Florida to Louisiana stated that most of the Chandeleur chain of barrier islands — the first line of storm defense for eastern Louisiana and western Mississippi — appears to be gone.
Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost about 1,900 square miles of marsh and swamp, and stands to see another 700 square miles slip away by 2050 if drastic measures aren’t taken. Much of the marsh already gone was south of New Orleans, moving the city closer and closer to the Gulf of Mexico and consequently closer to hurricane storm surge.
Scientists blame both man and nature, for erosion of the Mississippi River’s delta: oil speculators, massive clear cutting of coastal forests, oil drilling, buildup of the coast and construction of levees on the Mississippi. Also due to climate effects, combined with a rise in sea levels and the sinking of land caused by shifting geologic faults.
Louisiana officials began trying to stem the loss only in the last 15 years, and now want Washington to not only help upgrade its flood protection system, but also help to restore its coastline. Until now, restoring the coast and improving the levees and floodgates were mostly seen as two projects.
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Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
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The next stage of human misery should not be overlooked. Just as the 9/11 WTC disaster with pollutants in air and dust, I listened to national Dutch radio this morning on the recovery after a flood disaster. In the comparison with the Storm Surge Disaster in Holland of 1953 comes to mind, I will publish a diary soon. Specialist point to a grave concern, the Dutch just needed to recover agricultural land left by salt sea water, a job they have performed for centuries.
In New Orleans, all the flooded areas will be polluted by chemicals and toxic materials. Even today residents and rescue workers alike should take preventive action not only saving lives, but become aware of harmful health effects in the near future.
The European Union with much stricter EPA regulation, have the specialists to deal with clean up operations of these pollutants. The US government will more likely take more draconic action by suspension of EPA rules!
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From what my uncle-in-law tells me, Geberding used to be more effective before the advent of DHS, and that these days she often spouts political talking points instead of public saftey information…
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~ Cross-posted from dKos by new creve coeur ~
BTW Plutonium Page – an excellent contribution with diary!
Added link to Tulane National Primate Center is expanding biocontainment lab
I kept it in memory – haven’t had a chance to research this.
Just googled on my comment title and found ::
The Bush/Cheney Assault on Science (1) Hmm … EPA
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It’s called “Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America”. It has moved to Number Eleven on Amazon-dot-com’s best-seller list.
The book describes the history and politics behind a flood that forced almost a (m) million people to evacuate their homes. Some have estimated that the death toll may have been in the thousands.
The book is an account of how engineers had tried to control the Mississippi for the preceding hundred years and the conflicting theories about how to do that, the attempts and relative success prior to 1927, and how those attempts failed ultimately in ’27. The subsequent flooding produced the worst national disaster in American history, resulting in an unknown number of deaths, assumed to be in the thousands.
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Officials with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) who flew over the Gulf Coast from Florida to Louisiana stated that most of the Chandeleur chain of barrier islands — the first line of storm defense for eastern Louisiana and western Mississippi — appears to be gone.
“Hazardous Waste Areas :: Everyone Needs to Get Out!”
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NEW ORLEANS Sept. 5, 2005 — After a hurricane, we need to take special precautions to maintain public health. Disease may spread through drinking contaminated water, exposure to sewage, or living in a closed environment. Please observe the following health precautions to help keep you and your family healthy:
Excellent overview – continues …
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I was 7 yrs old, living just a few kilometers inland behind safe dunes along the North Sea coast. The Northwestern storm had been hammering our house with gusty blasts for many hours. During the night, everyone was awakenend and collected in a safer and large room on the first floor. We spend the rest of the night telling stories, keeping the spirits high and prayed and hoped we’ll all be safe.
My dad had inspected the house earlier, and from the noise had already suspected most of the clay tiles were blown off the roof. It was too dangerous to be outside. Sunday morning, my dad and my older brothers crossed the dunes to reach the beach and watched in amazement the damage along the coastline. Sand dunes stretching for kilometers in length, had lost massive parts of their protection and were recovered by the North Sea during the storm at high tide. The waves had pounded the beaches for more than a day.
Later during the day, emergency tidings on national radio brought news of dike breaches all over the province of Zeeland, Zuid-Holland and Brabant. The polders were flooded and men, women, elderly and children were fighting their battle to survive.
The flood disaster wich unfolded would be known in Dutch history as the “Watersnoodramp 1953”.
<click on photo to enlarge>
Two days after full moon: high spring tide on Sunday morning 03:24am. Many dikes have already been breached or broken, in some places across a mile wide. The dike along the Hollandsche IJssel protecting 3 million people, just barely holds during the night.
Sunday morning: delta Zeeland has become a giant inland sea stretching from horizon to horizon. The tide recedes and many flee the lower areas to higher ground.
Sunday afternoon: second high tide, sea water reaches much higher than during the night forcing residents to seek refuge on the roof tops. Many homes and buildings collapse. Today just a few local rescue missions have started, reconnaisance flight overhead. Not many in Holland are aware that the agricultural polders Schouwen Duiveland, Goeree Overflakkee and Tholen are inundated.
Sunday night: the first fishing vessels from Urk, North-Eastern part of the Netherlands, reach Zeeland to begin rescue missions.
Monday February 2: The rescue missions have started, vessels, boats anything that floats enters the delta of Zeeland, and food and relief aid are dropped from the air in the villages and small towns.
Tuesday February 3: Most victims are being evacuated. Hundreds of boats and small ships reach the region. Military are part of the rescue missions. After this day no one drowns, the immediate disaster is over!
Boat used to safe dike from break
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Flood Surge Disaster – Watersnoodramp 1953
Photos & Video
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in a last ditch attempt to rescue others, often strangers, families – elderly – children. Brave men in possession of an automobile or a truck, died in an attempt to escape oncoming seawater, gushing through the dikes into the polders, saving fellow men. The church bells were sounded as a sign the dikes broke and all should seek high ground or evacuate immediately while the storm was still raging.
A statistic illustrating the ultimate attempt to save your fellow man – interesting to compare with the risk FEMA had taken to save the desolate, the poor and sick residents of the city of New Orleans.
A comparison in humanity society has evolved in the last fifty years?
Families Drowned and Rescued
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In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader
They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.
Hurricane Katrina evacuee Jai'Lynn Butlerholds her stuffed animal.
The Helicopter Didn’t Come Back
While the children were transported to Baton Rouge, their parents wound up in Texas. Days passed without contact. On Sunday, Williams was elated. “All I know is I just want to see my kids,” she said. “Everything else will just fall into place.”
At 3 p.m. Sunday, social workers said goodbye to the children who now had names: Deamonte Love; Darynael Love; Zoria Love and her brother Tyreek. The girl who cried “Gabby!” was Gabrielle Janae Alexander. The girl they called Peanut was Degahney Carter. And the boy whom they called G was actually Lee–Leewood Moore Jr.
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After a catastrophic 1953 flood,the Dutch built an elaborate
flood-control system. ABC News
The flood led to dramatic changes. The Netherlands spent $8 billion over 30 years fortifying the coastline with a sophisticated system of dikes, dams and levees.
Dutch law now requires that coastal defenses protect against the worst storm imaginable.
Ted Sluiter, a spokesman for Waterland Neeltje Jans, a recreational park and information center set up at the base of a major dam, said the hydraulic sea wall that is considered the crown jewel of the system would protect the country against all but a biblical flood. The dam is constructed in a way that protects the region’s wetlands, environmental-sensitive areas that serve as natural storm buffers.
“Without those, Holland will just disappear,” Sluiter said. “So, it has to be a Dutch discipline, hydraulic engineering.”
The hydraulic sea wall is 130 feet high and nearly six miles long. It’s basically a giant steel curtain that can be opened or closed, depending on the water level. One dam alone took more than a decade to build.
Down the North Sea coast, there’s a giant door that can seal off shipping lanes in an emergency. Each arm is as long as the Eiffel Tower and twice as heavy. A computer is programmed to close the door as soon as the water rises 6 feet.
The Dutch system is at least 50 times stronger than the coastal defenses surrounding New Orleans. “To the Dutch standards, New Orleans was not very well-protected,” said Huib de Vriend, director of Delta Hydraulics, a company that puts together the heavy machinery involved in some of the flood-control projects.
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