Posted on 09/05/2005 10:45:35 AM PDT by SauronOfMordor
The U.S. Public Health Service said a prison morgue near New Orleans was expecting 1,000 to 2,000 bodies. And more than 125 were known dead in Mississippi.
[snip]
And the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, warned that there will be gruesome sights in the days ahead.
"We need to prepare the country for what's coming," Chertoff told Fox News . "We are going to uncover people who died hiding in the houses, maybe got caught in the floods. It is going to be as ugly a scene as you can imagine."
Meanwhile, help for the living was an uphill battle in some places.
A convoy of 100 surgeons and paramedics in a state-of-the-art mobile hospital was marooned in rural Mississippi as of Sunday, AP reported, because Louisiana officials would not let them into the New Orleans area.
"We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here," said one of the frustrated surgeons, Dr. Preston "Chip" Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That government officials can't straighten out the mess and get them assigned to a relief effort now that they're just a few miles away "is just mind-boggling," he told AP.
Other doctors also complained that their offers of help were turned away. A primary care physician from Ohio said he had called and e-mailed the HHS after seeing a notice on the American Medical Association's Web site about volunteer doctors being needed. An e-mail reply told him to watch CNN Sunday night where Leavitt was to announce a Web address for doctors to enter their names in a database.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
According to another thread it is Bush's fault. I'm still battling the authors of those posts.
Bush's fault...
The City of New Orleans has reportedly ordered 60,000 body bags.
It's beginning to look like Nagin and Blanco and their cronies can't read. Otherwise Nagin and Blanco would have been aware, I imagine, of this study which shows that poorer people do not move out of a hurricane's path as often as less poor people do, and special steps need to be taken to protect them.
Citizen Hurricane Evacuation Behavior in Southeastern Louisiana: A Twelve Parish Survey
Released by The Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Taskforce, July 2005.
The study concluded (page 6) that
The number of low income residents who remain in harm’s way illustrates the need for both
education about the need to travel far enough1
and
providing evacuation assistance to those without means2
1. I don't think Nagin emphatically told his poorer constituents that they needed to evacuate at a distance, to high land, rather than take shelter in a friend's "stronger" home.
2. I know I don't have to ask if Nagin sent buses to evacuate his poorer constituents.
Maybe they should just look around there in Mississippi for something to do, there's plenty of hurting people right there.
" The incompetence of NO and LA officials in mind-boggling "
I watched one of the " major " nightly newscasts last night- Naugin and Blanco were not mentioned once .
IMHO- A criminal probe should be launched into these two-they had legally mandated responsibilities and
if they did not fulfill those responsibilities because of incompetence a/o political considerations-they should go to jail.
If Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki had behaved like Naugin and Blanco, the " MSM " would be calling for their heads, but, since the entire state is run by Democrats-the media cover up continues.
According to Nagin, there are only 50,000 unaccounted for, and only a percentage (hopefully a small one) of that number are dead. He wouldn't order 60,000 body bags for shock value, would he?
"well, as an actual witness to the insanity that has been going on, I strongly STRONLY advise you to stay wherever the #### you're at, xxxx. Do not come home, not even to help with the 'rebuilding', as that won't even start for MONTHS. there are dead bodies EVERYWHERE. The water, and everything it has touched is CONTAMINATED (that is the nice way to say it), there is nothing here. Yeah, your place probably made out ok, but there is nothing left around it. These animals have shot at rescue workers, at US, and make all the jokes about nopd as you want, we have been here, sleeping on the floor, ####ting and pissing in garbage cans, with no running water or electricity for days, and we have been trying to help people as we do this. as for looters, I am 110% with you when you say 'food and water'... only, these mother ####ers are looting footlocker for jerseys, taking beer and cigarettes from winn dixie, and are most surely taking dvd players, looting BLOCKBUSTER (as we all know, these mother ####ers are fully aware there are so many life saving things in that mother ####ing place)...
Amy called yesterday, in tears. She has been convoying fuel and actually had to run someone over who was attacking the vehicle with weapons. she is done. police officers are killing themselves and being killed, the animals are setting historic ####ing buildings on canal street on fire. roving 'gangs' are literally breaking into peoples houses, raping women and killing the families. what the ####!!!
Why would anyone want to come here? I understand it is our home, it is where we come from, where we were raised, etc. you just have no idea the thigns we've seen here, this is NOT the new orleans you know and love. I know and understand that you, xxxx especially are not going to believe it or sympathize with it, but I assure you, I am not in the least bit exaggerating. this place, let me just say... military people say it is worse than somalia. LOL? I don't ####ing know what to compare it to.
People have lost EVERYTHING. and some still refuse to leave, as if they have a choice! power and water will not be restored for months. the national guard and military, who still by the way have not supplied us with ANYTHING in the way of food or water, we've had to get that on our own, is going to literally have to go door to door, clearing houses and looking for bodies. the military has requested 60,000 body bags... SIXTY THOUSAND!!! and that may not be enough from what I'm understanding!!! My uncle, who is a dr. working out of east jefferson, is literally appalled at the thought that they are allowing people from jefferson back in on monday to "check on their stuff"... the disease that is in the air and water, the lack of running water, people are going to ####ing RIOT....
I promise you, stay where you're at. our chief told us yesterday that financial help is on the way, that 90 billion is coming to us (the city), and that new orleans will be a great place to call home in 2 to 5 ####ing YEARS!!!! Please, don't misunderstand me, help is welcome. I, however, strongly recommend leaving this job to the people that are qualified, the people with the proper inoculations, the proper training, the experience to handle it.
This is no florida, this is nothing that anyone could imagine. I'm taking pictures and video, but this #### is just like I'm trapped in a really ####ing bad movie... day after tomorrow bad. I am carrying an AR-15 or a shotgun with me at all times. And of course, my two attack chihuahua's, who I am offering up to anyone who can possibly take care of them for me while we are stuck here in this... I really need that more than any####ingthing else.
I love you all and hope to god you are all safe and can find jobs. I suggest staying as far away from the city, even state, as you possibly can. evacuees are just overflowing the state lines, and opportunity will be scarce. ....., stay in ..... , ros and hope... go as far away as you can. if we do get the time off, we are going to dc for a couple of days. love you all, write back if you can. just now got some super generator at "fort apache", whatever... being able to send the email is definitely a nice ####ing treat. would give it up for a working toilet, though."
ping
New bumper sticker: Nagin/Blanco Killed more people than Saddam Hussien.
Drowning New Orleans - Sunday, September 04, 2005
NEW ORLEANS, October 2001
T he boxes are stacked eight feet high and line the walls of the large, windowless room. Inside them are new body bags, 10,000 in all.
If a big, slow-moving hurricane crossed the Gulf of Mexico on the right track, it would drive a sea surge that would drown New Orleans under 20 feet of water.
"As the water recedes," says Walter Maestri, a local emergency management director, "we expect to find a lot of dead bodies."
New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms.
The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the Gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now, another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh -- an area the size of Manhattan -- will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes.
Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping 1 million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible, because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes.
Scientists at Louisiana State University, who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die. The body bags wouldn't go very far.
A direct hit is inevitable. Large hurricanes come close every year. In 1965, Hurricane Betsy put parts of the city under eight feet of water. In 1992, monstrous Hurricane Andrew missed the city by only 100 miles. In 1998, Hurricane Georges veered east at the last moment but still caused billions of dollars of damage.
At fault are natural processes that have been artificially accelerated by human tinkering: levying rivers, draining wetlands, dredging channels and cutting canals through marshes. Ironically, scientists and engineers say the only hope is more manipulation, although they don't necessarily agree on which proposed projects to pursue.
{SNIP}
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=1477845%2C1
I suspect what will emerge from this eventually is that the Homeland Security Act had a major flaw in leaving authority in the hands of local officials. While it seemed like a reasonable idea at the time, especially in the wake of 9/11, no one imagined that those officals would manipulate relief efforts to shift blame for over/under reaction and thus avoid political fall out.
Corrected LINK : http://www.al.com/opinion/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1125825553122680.xml&coll=3
Incompetence? I lean more to malfeasance at this point.Democrats (including "objective" journalists) are second guessers, not leaders. A leader makes decisions and stands up for them; a second guesser only complains. Madam Governor is more concerned about her authority than anything else; that's been the stumbling block from day one. Federalism means that if you elect a Democratic governor who cares about being somebody more than about the welfare of the people of your state, you are in deep doo-doo if a crisis hits.
She asks for federal troops - and demands that they be under her control! Sorry, federal troops (out-of-state NG, same difference) mean federal control. If you don't want federal control, don't let your state get into so much trouble that it needs federal troops. But that was too much trouble; she and the mayor couldn't even hold civil order in place for three days 'til the cavalry arrived - and even then she bitches.
Unidentified "officials" again.
Actually this sounds more like something FEMA would do.
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