Posted on 09/02/2005 8:41:24 AM PDT by Raebie
Ivan exposes flaws in N.O.'s disaster plans 05:09 PM CDT on Sunday, September 19, 2004
By KEVIN McGILL Associated Press
Those who had the money to flee Hurricane Ivan ran into hours-long traffic jams. Those too poor to leave the city had to find their own shelter - a policy that was eventually reversed, but only a few hours before the deadly storm struck land.
New Orleans dodged the knockout punch many feared from the hurricane, but the storm exposed what some say are significant flaws in the Big Easy's civil disaster plans.
Much of New Orleans is below sea level, kept dry by a system of pumps and levees. As Ivan charged through the Gulf of Mexico, more than a million people were urged to flee. Forecasters warned that a direct hit on the city could send torrents of Mississippi River backwash over the city's levees, creating a 20-foot-deep cesspool of human and industrial waste.
Residents with cars took to the highways. Others wondered what to do.
"They say evacuate, but they don't say how I'm supposed to do that," Latonya Hill, 57, said at the time. "If I can't walk it or get there on the bus, I don't go. I don't got a car. My daughter don't either."
Advocates for the poor were indignant.
"If the government asks people to evacuate, the government has some responsibility to provide an option for those people who can't evacuate and are at the whim of Mother Nature," said Joe Cook of the New Orleans ACLU.
It's always been a problem, but the situation is worse now that the Red Cross has stopped providing shelters in New Orleans for hurricanes rated above Category 2. Stronger hurricanes are too dangerous, and Ivan was a much more powerful Category 4.
In this case, city officials first said they would provide no shelter, then agreed that the state-owned Louisiana Superdome would open to those with special medical needs. Only Wednesday afternoon, with Ivan just hours away, did the city open the 20-story-high domed stadium to the public.
Mayor Ray Nagin's spokeswoman, Tanzie Jones, insisted that there was no reluctance at City Hall to open the Superdome, but said the evacuation was the top priority.
"Our main focus is to get the people out of the city," she said.
Callers to talk radio complained about the late decision to open up the dome, but the mayor said he would do nothing different.
"We did the compassionate thing by opening the shelter," Nagin said. "We wanted to make sure we didn't have a repeat performance of what happened before. We didn't want to see people cooped up in the Superdome for days."
When another dangerous hurricane, Georges, appeared headed for the city in 1998, the Superdome was opened as a shelter and an estimated 14,000 people poured in. But there were problems, including theft and vandalism.
This time far fewer took refuge from the storm - an estimated 1,100 - at the Superdome and there was far greater security: 300 National Guardsmen.
The main safety measure - getting people out of town - raised its own problems.
More than 1 million people tried to leave the city and surrounding suburbs on Tuesday, creating a traffic jam as bad as or worse than the evacuation that followed Georges. In the afternoon, state police took action, reversing inbound lanes on southeastern Louisiana interstates to provide more escape routes. Bottlenecks persisted, however.
Col. Henry Whitehorn, head of state police, said he believes his agency acted appropriately, but also acknowledged he never expected a seven-hour-long crawl for the 60 miles between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
It was so bad that some broadcasters were telling people to stay home, that they had missed their window of opportunity to leave. They claimed the interstates had turned into parking lots where trapped people could die in a storm surge.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Nagin both acknowledged the need to improve traffic flow and said state police should consider reversing highway lanes earlier. They also promised meetings with governments in neighboring localities and state transportation officials to improve evacuation plans.
But Blanco and other state officials stressed that, while irritating, the clogged escape routes got people out of the most vulnerable areas.
"We were able to get people out," state Commissioner of Administration Jerry Luke LeBlanc said. "It was successful. There was frustration, yes. But we got people out of harm's way."
"NAGEL is a National Disgrace"
"NAGEL is a National Disgrace"
>Wow! Blame without Bush. Someone may finally be asking exactly what NO has been doing for the last 4 years with the federal revenue that most major cities recieved as part of Homeland Security. This would seem most important for New Orleans since it is not only a hurricane zone...it is a major artery for production and distribution of oil.<
This is what happens when you have a giant, fragile metropolis that has been controlled by corruption for decades, for generations.
All the tax money in the world is useless, if you give socialists control over its use.
Florida is constantly making adjustments to its evacuation plans and procedures as well as major changes to buildings codes. I am sure they will make adjustments based on Katrina's lessons. Why didn't Louisiana if this was an apparent issue?
Am I the first one to wonder why don't these people move away to a safer place? They have been convinced by somebody that 1) the danger isn't real, 2) even if the disaster does happen, Gubment will come gitcha, and 3) if you vote for me, all your wildest dreams will come true.
I find it remarkable that the authorities waited so long before opening up the incoming lanes to outgoing traffic. Nothing like demanding an evacuation, and then making the process more of an ordeal for those who comply.
Many of these people depended on transportation. I understand that. I do believe that the city of NO had the responsibility to transport them out. At first, I heard on TV that they were to be taken to shelters outside the city. I have wondered why that never took place. Ray Nagin should be prosecuted for criminal negligence.
Holy Poop. This was their strategy: "Well, it didn't work last time but let's do it again"???
ping your list here!
We wondered that to. Evacuations should have started on Saturday. Normally, I'm not sure that I would do that, but when you have a city that is below sea level and levees that are known not to withstand Cat 4 hurricanes and above, then you simply have to move earlier and quicker. NO officials seem to not understand the demands of their city, other than getting in on the corruption. We heard that traffic lanes were going to be changed many, many hours before they actually did. Total incompetence. Criminal negligence.
The buses weren't lined up, but the lawyers will be. John Edwards must be foaming at the mouth.
What's worse is Mayor Nagin said they had an improved plan AFTER the Ivan fiasco. What's CRIMINAL is that they did not call for mandatory evacuation until LESS THAN 24 hours before Katrina made landfall. After the call for the mandatory evacuation was made, they should have used all those school buses, that we now see sitting in water, to go through the neighborhoods BEFORE the storm hit and move people out of the city.
The reason Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco are screaming that the federal government failed is to draw attention away from the fact that they had no plan, improved or otherwise.
The incompetence of these two people and their staffs have literally cost thousands of people their lives. Two of my loved ones were there in New Orleans waiting for the mayor to call for the evacuation. I got on the phone to my daughter on Friday and told them not to wait, it would cost them their lives. She thought I was over-reacting when I told her it would be up to them to save their own lives. I'm so glad they got out early.
Are they corrupt or simply incompetent?
...for future reference.
BUMP!
Bookmarked....excellent.
The self-centered, semper me Louisiana Democrats have embarassed this entire nation! The Democrats make the sludge and muck floating around New Orleans look clean.
Me too.
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