Swearing it is, then.

[lederhosen]

Fucking hell.

Rescue services yesterday began the huge task of evacuating the arena and the rest of the city, although the plan to remove thousands of survivors had to be suspended when shots were reportedly fired at helicopters.

Most of the people waiting to be saved told remarkable stories of fear and desperation but none more than those who had been in the Superdome.

"We pee on the floor. We are like animals," said Taffany Smith, as she cradled her three-week-old son, Terry. In her right hand she carried a half-full bottle of formula provided by rescuers. Baby supplies were running low; one mother said she was given two nappies and told to scrape them off when they got dirty and use them again.

At least two people, including a child, were reportedly raped in the night and at least three people died, including one man who jumped 15 metres to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for.

The hurricane left most of southern Louisiana without power, and the arena was not spared. An emergency generator kept some lights on but quickly failed. The sanitation gave out early as well, and the dome soon filled with the overpowering stench of human waste, made worse by the swampy heat.

"There is faeces on the walls," Bryan Hebert said. "There is faeces all over the place."

And here:

The evacuation of patients from Charity Hospital was halted after the facility came under sniper fire, while groups of armed men wandered the streets, buildings smoldered and people picked through stores for what they could find.

...A police officer working in downtown New Orleans said police were siphoning gas from abandoned vehicles in an effort to keep their squad cars running.

The officer said police are "on their own" for food and water, scrounging up what they can from anybody who is generous enough to give them some -- and that they have no communication whatsoever.

...President Bush, in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," said that their [sic] should be "zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this."

You *fuckwit*. By all means, if they're threatening others or ripping off TVs, jewellery and the like, the National Guard and the cops can shoot on sight as far as I'm concerned. But a lot of the people who've been looting have been doing it for food, water, medical supplies, diapers, because you gouged the levee programs so badly the city flooded, and you gouged National Guard and FEMA so badly that they can't even keep order in the designated emergency shelter or keep people fed. And this is with several days' *notice* of impending disaster. Earthquakes and terrorists don't give that kind of warning. No bloody wonder many of those who couldn't get out of the city preferred to take their chances in their own homes.

Congratulations, George W. You're the first president in living memory to lose a major US city.

Comments

[sarin-girl.livejournal.com]

that's soo heartbreaking to read about : (

[madcatapult.livejournal.com]

gouged

You meant gauged, yes? :p

Congratulations, George W. You're the first president in living memory to lose a major US city.

Best quote going so far.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

You meant gauged, yes?

No, 'gouged' - in the 'forcibly scooped money out of' sense. I think this idiom's more common in US English than it is over here, and I'm a bit of a mongrel in that regard :-)

[morinon.livejournal.com]

Actually, the 'gouging' had been going on for 30 years, and was less in the President's hands, more in Congress'.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I'm talking specifically about stuff like this: "In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness...

As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said.""

Congress may well have played a part in that; I don't know the details. But Iraq and tax cuts were Bush's babies, and while levees could always have done with more, they were *savagely* cut in the last couple of years, because those things had to be paid for.

[panacea1.livejournal.com]

Not that I particularly relish being a Gloomy Susie, but if one really wants brown trouser syndrome one ought to consider that - geography aside - the socioeconomic issues in New Orleans and coastal Mississippi (Gulfport/Biloxi) are everywhere in America. This happened here - but how different will it be when a big quake hits greater Los Angeles? (Very, one would hope, but my confidence in FEMA is pretty much nil at this point.)

[revaladdinsane.livejournal.com]

About the same thing that happens every time a big quake hits L.A. Except hopefully a bit less next time.

We've gotten to the point where MOST of our stuff is earthquake-safe.

O'course, this depends on what you mean by a "big" quake.

[panacea1.livejournal.com]

Category is to hurricane like Richter Scale is to earthquake :-) Okay, probably not exactly in the scientific sense, but a cat 3 storm has the destructive potential of maybe a 5.5 or 6 quake -- it'll take down stuff that's shoddily built or in disrepair, but well made and well maintained structures will hold up with minor to moderate damage.

A strong cat 5 storm is more like a 9 or 9.5 quake. Thank god we haven't seen one of those lately. Katrina *almost* was one - but weakened and changed course at the last minute.

Katrina was somewhere in the middle. Call it comparable to a 7.5 or 8? Does that sound remotely accurate?

And as with quakes, the storm damage spreads out from the center, getting less the further you go from landfall/epicenter -- but not always in an intuitively obvious way. Compare the structural-damage video of coastal Mississippi to that in New Orleans, and you see what I mean.

[revaladdinsane.livejournal.com]

To the best of my knowledge, after the '94 Northridge quake, there was a decision to upgrade the earthquake readiness scale on all buildings & highways (due to one of the highways collpasing). It's unknown if they can handle an upwards of an 8 or 9, because we don't have any sort of real comparison data.

I'm not sure if the Richter/Category scale works, really. A jaded Californian might not even notice a sub-5 quake, depending on where they are. (I was outside during one of the big late 80's L.A. quakes and didn't feel a thing.)

Also, with the frequency of California quakes, it hasn't allowed the pressure to build for a 6+ quake very often. So we're lucky in that regard.

Just in case, after the '94 quake, I've always made sure that there's nothing on my walls that can fall on me & hurt me if I were sleeping (as was almost the case then.)

[panacea1.livejournal.com]

I haven't lived in hurricane country for almost ten years and I still get nervous if I don't have a pantry full of nonperishables and a couple jugs of bottled water on hand. (Which was very helpful when my unemployment ran out, but that's another story.)

A long-time gulf coast resident won't woof about a cat 1 or even a 2, usually, unless they live in a mobile home or right on the coast. Andrew (92) was a cat 3 when it got to Louisiana and yeah, it made a big mess and power was out for a week in Baton Rouge, but it was the kind of thing you could get over in a few weeks unless you were unlucky enough to live in a flood zone or get hit by one of the twisters it spawned. You board up the windows, make sure your pantry's well stocked, and ride it out.

Until the big one hits.

[waitingman.livejournal.com]

Should it really be so surprising that George W has sent in the National Guard & they're proving to be ineffective?

After all, it's the same policy as has been employed in Iraq... under-equipped & ill-informed men with guns wandering around totally overwhelmed by forces beyond their control & just looking for people to shoot at.

[nachoha.livejournal.com]

Congratulations, George W. You're the first president in living memory to lose a major US city.

May I point out that major US city's *have* had this level of destruction before, for example you might have heard of a little something called the Great Chicago Fire? Dumb as he may be the man does not control the weather and is not responisble for building a city below sea level on the coast of an area that gets yearly hurricanes.

[revaladdinsane.livejournal.com]

However, they knew that if a 'cane like this hit what some of thw major problems would be, such as the levees breaking. But instead of putting any effort into improvement, the funds for that kept going elsewhere.

[miasnape.livejournal.com]

By the way, the previous (Kiss My White, Irish Ass) comment was from me - I, apparently, wasn't logged in. Didn't want miss out on doing the lj equivalant of saying it to your face.

[binxcat.livejournal.com]

Even though he did not build the city below sea level, he (and many who came before him) did not provide for adequate construction or safety in the event of a category 4 or 5 hurricane. The city was not made to stand up to this, but it could have been and should have been if someone had been paying attention - and not just W.

And unlike the Great Chicago Fire, everyone knew that this was coming. They even predicted worst-case scenarios of New Orleans flooding, and feared up until the last possible moment that it would happen as the result of a direct hit (instead it happened indirectly, and Mississipi got nailed full-force instead). If people knew, or at least knew that there was a strong possibility, why was relief not mobilized earlier? Why are the plans being drawn up now, rather than in the days - even the hours - prior to Katrina's landfall?

[b-phil.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, how would MORE police and paramedics stuck in the city with no gas or communcations have been better? (assuming that you're refering to New Orleans cops and paramedics) Since they're apparantly very limited in their ability to move around or coordinate with eachother, I don't see how merely increasing the number of them would have helped a great deal.

Also, mobilizing the relief BEFORE the hurricane has stopped actively destroying the city could seem rather dangerous. Also, how do you know they WEREN'T drawing up plans to help the place? (If you have a cite for someone in the know actually saying that they weren't drawing up plans, provide it and I'll withdraw this argument)

Also, it seems very possible that many folks just didn't properly grasp the concept of what a hurricane this powerful would do. I've been in two or three typhoons in my life, but none of them was bigger than a Category 3, and this was in a country where it's just assumed from the get-go that anything you build WILL get hit by storms, earthquakes, and possibly even volcanic eruptions. I had no idea that this hurricane would be this bad when it hit, which is a bit stunning to me, because it seems that if a somewhat different set of weather fronts had been around, Kat could have just sailed right into my chunk of the world instead of the next state over.

[binxcat.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, how would MORE police and paramedics stuck in the city with no gas or communcations have been better?

I didn't say anything about additional police or paramedics.

Also, mobilizing the relief BEFORE the hurricane has stopped actively destroying the city could seem rather dangerous.

I also did not suggest that relief should have been mobilized while the hurricane was actively hitting the cities. I agree with you, that would have been assinine. However, from all news sources that I have seen or heard (including the radio interview with the mayor of New Orleans), it appears that tucks carrying supplies and buses to help transport out the victims only began to arrive in full force today.


Also, how do you know they WEREN'T drawing up plans to help the place?

Fair enough. You are correct. I do not know that they were not drawing up plans. But if plans were in place, they were either piss-poor plans or piss-poorly executed.


Also, it seems very possible that many folks just didn't properly grasp the concept of what a hurricane this powerful would do.

Perhaps, but many folks did. There were projections of the worst possible case scenario. Weather experts were predicting the distinct possibility of Very Bad Things. Sure, it was possible that it could have taken a different path, and I firmly believe that those paths should have been planned for as well.

I'm not suggesting that the National Guard should have been sitting at the city limits of Biloxi and New Orleans, ready to charge in as soon as the last storm cloud rolled away, but the overall response of our national agencies has been absolutely pathetic. Aid has been too slow in coming. We watched this thing coming in across the Gulf, and be it a category 3, 4, or 5, it should simply not have taken four days to deliver clean water.

[panacea1.livejournal.com]

What would have made sense would be to have had trucks full of bottled water, MREs, tarps, medical supplies, construction supplies, etc. stationed and ready to go last weekend - in Memphis and Atlanta, where they could head into whatever area the storm hit. Ditto putting medical personnel and Nat'l guard units on alert that they might get called up for hurricane duty. (I have no idea whether this happens.) I'm rather surprised this wasn't arranged, really, given that storms hitting the gulf coast is pretty much an annual event and sometimes more than that. (look at Florida last year, they got four of them.)

Maybe the powers tha be will get it together next summer.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Since they're apparantly very limited in their ability to move around or coordinate with eachother,

Which is *exactly* the problem; coordination has been piss-poor for a disaster that had been a well-known risk for years, and had several days' notice.

Also, it seems very possible that many folks just didn't properly grasp the concept of what a hurricane this powerful would do.

June 2003, Civil Engineering Magazine: "The design of the original levees, which dates to the 1960s, was based on rudimentary storm modeling that, it is now realized, might underestimate the threat of a potential hurricane. Even if the modeling was adequate, however, the levees were designed to withstand only forces associated with a fast-moving hurricane that, according to the National Weather Service’s Saffir-Simpson scale, would be placed in category 3. If a lingering category 3 storm—or a stronger storm, say, category 4 or 5—were to hit the city, much of New Orleans could find itself under more than 20 ft (6 m) of water."

September 2002, American Radioworks: "Until a couple months ago, Suhayda ran a prominent research center at Louisiana State University. They've developed the most detailed computer models that anybody's ever used to predict how hurricanes could affect this region. Studies suggest that there's roughly a one in six chance that a killer hurricane will strike New Orleans over the next 50 years.

Suhayda is still extending his stick as he describes what he is doing, "It's well above the second floor, just about to the rooftop."

It's hard to comprehend.

"Yes," agrees Suyahada, "it is really, to think that that much water would occur in this city during a catastrophic storm."

Do you expect this kind of hurricane—this kind of flooding—will hit New Orleans in our lifetime?

"Well I would say the probability is yes," says Suyahada. "In terms of past experience, we've had three storms that were near misses—that could have done at least something close to this."

Basically, the part of New Orleans that most Americans—most people around the world—think is New Orleans, would disappear.

Suyhayda agrees, "It would, that's right.""

December 2001, Houston Chronicle: "...earlier this year the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country.

The other two? A massive earthquake in San Francisco, and, almost prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York City.

The New Orleans hurricane scenario may be the deadliest of all.

In the face of an approaching storm, scientists say, the city's less-than-adequate evacuation routes would strand 250,000 people or more, and probably kill one of 10 left behind as the city drowned under 20 feet of water. Thousands of refugees could land in Houston..."

October 2001, Scientific American: "A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city."

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

May I point out that major US city's *have* had this level of destruction before, for example you might have heard of a little something called the Great Chicago Fire?

Which part of "in living memory" is causing confusion here?

(Hint: Great Chicago Fire took place in 1871;

Dumb as he may be the man does not control the weather and is not responisble for building a city below sea level on the coast of an area that gets yearly hurricanes.

Nope; he sure as hell does have a lot of control over funding, though, and there was an *awful* lot of money taken out of the levee-building programs to fund our ill-conceived adventures in Iraq.

If you don't think it's viable to go on protecting New Orleans, fine, *make* that decision. Declare that federal funding for protection etc will cease. Make arrangements well in advance so the nation's economy isn't severely damaged by sudden loss of one of its biggest ports. Organise a relocation program for those who can't go elsewhere on their own resources, so you don't get the massive social disruption and death toll that inevitably occurs when thousands of refugees show up in the nearest town above water.

But don't treat it as a gamble where you can cut the programs below safe levels, do a half-arsed job, and hope that the next big one won't hit for a few year, when some other President will have to carry the can.

[jspurlin.livejournal.com]

so how, specifically, is this W's fault? the weather is a fator. Congress is a factor. The voters of Louisiana, who didn't vote in the money for heavier levees, are a factor.

This is a shame, and a disaster, but it rests on many, many more shoulders than just George W. Bush's.

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

The voters of Louisiana, who didn't vote in the money for heavier levees, are a factor.

I keep hearing this. And given that the median income of the state of Louisiana is significantly lower than the median income of the country as a whole, I keep wondering where this extra money was going to come from--especially when state and local governments have been slashing their budgets since 2001 due to cuts in the amount of money they get from the federal government.

No, Bush isn't solely to blame. But even the $70 million that was earmarked for shoring up the levees that was cut from the Army Corps of Engineers budget in June 2005 might have helped. Instead, the money went towards an unnecessary war. 1/3 of the Louisiana National Guard would have been available to be deployed immediately instead of being in Iraq. The money for first responders that's been cut every year since 9/11 could have paid for more police, fire, and paramedic services.

There's plenty of blame to go around, but a lot of the problem is a direct result of the policies that this administration has pursued for four years.

[b-phil.livejournal.com]

Dude, don't you know? It's his fault because he's *George W. Bush.*

*takes off his irony hat*

[temujin9.livejournal.com]

It's also the fault of people he appointed, like the FEMA Director (http://www.fema.gov/about/bios/brown.shtm) who didn't know about the refugees in the Superdome until Thursday (http://www.livejournal.com/community/metaquotes/3834946.html).