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AP Warned of New Orleans Disaster
NewsMax ^ | 9/3/05 | NewsMax

Posted on 09/03/2005 12:34:27 PM PDT by wagglebee

Just last year the Associated Press predicted all of the failures that have became part of the Katrina tragedy - but the story was about another hurricane, Hurricane Ivan.

When Ivan aimed its fury at the Big Easy, the AP detailed what could happen if the hurricane slammed into New Orleans.

In the case of Ivan, serious problems were caused by a lack of planning for a cataclysmic storm, yet with Katrina on the horizon, the lessons of Ivan were all but forgotten.

A feckless state governor and New Orleans' mayor repeated the same mistakes they made with Ivan, and hundreds of thousands of largely poor people were forced to endure conditions that one associates with the Third World - not the richest nation on the planet.

The disaster in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will come as no surprise to those who recall a September 19, 2004 Associated Press report.

Wrote the AP: "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."

Eventually, tens of thousands of New Orleanans were directed to the Superdome - where no food, water or living facilities were provided for the massive number of refugees expected to remain there for at least several days. Fortunately few arrived.

Noted the AP then: "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."

Noting that much of the city lies below sea level, only kept dry by a system of pumps and levees, the AP recalled that as Hurricane Ivan approached the Gulf coast from the Gulf of Mexico, the city - warned by forecasters that a direct hit could send torrents of Mississippi River backwash over the city's levees, creating a 20-foot-deep cesspool of human and industrial waste - urged more than a million people to flee the wrath of the oncoming storm.

But nobody told them how to flee Ivan.

As happened before Katrina struck, residents who had cars took to the highways while the AP reported 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.'

"'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,'" Joe Cook of the New Orleans ACLU told the AP.

In the case of Katrina, there was huge fleet of school buses the mayor could have dispatched to aid in evacuating people unable to leave on their own. Instead, the buses sat in parking lots that later flooded, making them unusable when tens of thousands were stranded in the flooded city.

Dealing with safeguarding the city's population had always been a problem, the AP recalled, adding that the situation was worse at the time of Ivan since the Red Cross had stopped providing shelters in New Orleans for hurricanes rated above Category 2. Stronger hurricanes were deemed too dangerous, and Ivan was a much more powerful Category 4.

In the case of Ivan, city officials first said they would provide no shelter, then just as they later did with Katrina, they 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 as Ivan approached, but said the evacuation was the top priority.

"Our main focus is to get the people out of the city," she told the AP.

"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."

Noted the AP story: "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 just as happened after Katrina, the AP reported there were problems, including theft and vandalism.

With Ivan approaching, far fewer took refuge from the storm - an estimated 1,100 - at the Superdome, and there was far greater security: 300 National Guardsmen.

Wrote the AP of the Ivan debacle: "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 believed 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 [Mayor] 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 it appears that nothing had been changed by the time Katrina made its appearance in the Gulf.

After Ivan, Blanco and other state officials boasted 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."

After Katrina struck, however, escape routes out of the city were clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic, leaving some motorists on the road when the Hurricane arrived.

A new photo from AP shows a huge fleet of school buses lined up in a now flooded parking lot - what appears to be enough transportation sufficient to have evacuated many of those stranded in the city and left to endure unimaginable conditions - transportation that the mayor failed to use when there was still time to use it.

The lessons of Ivan were never learned, and the people of New Orleans paid the price.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cary; hurricaneivan; incompetence; katrina; katrinafailures; neworleans
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To: Cyber Liberty
You may want to read the US Army Corps on Engineers website to learn about their obligations.
81 posted on 09/03/2005 4:47:47 PM PDT by IronMan04
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To: IronMan04
Sorry, but that is just BS. They have received tons of money just since 9/11 for ER stuff. Maybe not replacing the levees but absolutely for ER and this is an ER problem.

Unless it's on an interstate, pot holes are a local problem. But, come to think of it, with the outrageous national highway bills I would believe they even got money for that.

Now I can believe they used the money for other purposes.
82 posted on 09/03/2005 5:03:37 PM PDT by WHBates
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To: IronMan04

Crack a good link right on up and I will. Until then, common sense rules, you drool.


83 posted on 09/03/2005 5:05:10 PM PDT by Cyber Liberty (© 2005, Ravin' Lunatic since 4/98)
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To: Cyber Liberty

http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/whoweare/index.asp



New Orleans District

Responsibilities of the New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, are almost entirely in civil works. Flood control, navigation and the environment are the big jobs. About 1,000 of our more than 1,300 employees are headquartered along the Mississippi River in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. Our district covers 30,000 square miles (map) of south Louisiana, from Alexandria to the Gulf. Our program for fiscal year 2005 is about $462 million through April, including $57 million of emergency supplemental appropriations.

Geography puts us in the unusual position of facing three distinct flood threats: (1) Mississippi River and other stream floods, (2) rain floods, especially in areas ringed by levees such as metropolitan New Orleans and (3) hurricane storm surges. Corps flood reduction projects address each threat.

In navigation, we keep open the largest port complex on earth, measured by cargo tonnage, from Baton Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico. To maintain navigation channels we use depth-finding boats, dredges and structures. The latter include revetment, jetties and dikes. The district dredged 66 million cubic yards in fiscal year 2003, more than 38 percent of Corps dredging nationwide.

The district role in environmental protection and restoration is expanding. We chair a task force created by the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA); have completed two large freshwater diversion projects; are restoring flows in the Atchafalaya Basin; and are leading a multi-agency study for an ambitious project (LCA) to restore Louisiana's coastal ecosystem. We also regulate wetlands and navigable waters.


84 posted on 09/03/2005 5:56:27 PM PDT by IronMan04
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To: WHBates
Interestingly the US Army Corps of Engineers claims to have the primary responsibility for maintaining the Levee System.

Now, it has been a long time since I sat in a high school civics class but I do not seem to recall that the part of the Constitution that grants the power of authority and funding to the US Army Corps of Engineers to the Mayor of New Orleans.

www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/whoweare/index.asp
85 posted on 09/03/2005 6:03:15 PM PDT by IronMan04
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To: WHBates
Interestingly the US Army Corps of Engineers claims to have the primary responsibility for maintaining the Levee System.

Now, it has been a long time since I sat in a high school civics class but I do not seem to recall that the part of the Constitution that grants the power of authority and funding to the US Army Corps of Engineers to the Mayor of New Orleans.

www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/whoweare/index.asp
86 posted on 09/03/2005 6:03:16 PM PDT by IronMan04
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To: IronMan04
I am not sure if you were able to catch the Mayor's press conference at 9:00 Monday morning. I watched it live while still in the City. He said, everyone needs to get out now. He was serious and somber when making the statement.

9:00 Monday morning?! And you were still there? What time did the hurricane come in? There were warnings as early as Saturday. Katrina was a Cat-5 on Saturday. Go back and read the original article that this thread was about: The Director of the National Hurricane Service warned your mayor on Saturday night. On Monday, the mayor says get out now and he was "serious and somber when making the statement". Why didn't he say that earlier? You just made my point: Your mayor is inept.

Since this evacuation was in your eyes a failure could you please point me to an event where a million people were evacuated from one metropolitan area along two roads in less than 48 hours?

I didn't say the evacuation was a failure. I said your local government dropped the ball waiting for the president to make decisions they should have made--such as ordering an evacuation in the first place--and now they're blaming him for the outcome. Your mayor did not give New Orleans citizens 48 hours of notice. And whether he wants to or not, he must accept responsibility for his hesitation. Not to mention the hundreds of school buses that you maintain would have just "complicated matters" that are now sitting in a flooded lot. And the lack of planning for food and water for the people that went to the Superdome and the Convention Center. As I said before, your local officials complaining 48 hours after the fact that it's taking too long to get food and water into a flooded city when no attempt to get supplies into the city before the flooding occurred is reprehensible. The mayor knew people would go there. So did the governor. Why didn't they take steps to get at least some supplies in place? Because they didn't plan ahead. Or they didn't have the money. Either way they are responsible for that.

But, please answer this for me if you will? Did the City of New Orleans' Evacuation Plan include the use of school buses or not? If not, why not? And if so, why weren't they? Your explanation on why they wern't used makes no sense and I think you know that--having to leave your home under these circumstances I know has to have been terrible so I suspect your statement was not well thought out. However, since you seem to be an apologist for Mayor Nagin, perhaps you can answer these questions on his behalf...

87 posted on 09/03/2005 6:12:56 PM PDT by blake6900 (YOUR AD HERE)
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To: wagglebee
Local politicians knew what the problems were three years ago.

October 2002

Gimme Shelter

Writing an editorial with a hurricane aimed at your state is a bit like putting a message in a bottle. At presstime, Hurricane Lili was predicted to slam into the Gulf Coast by the time this newspaper is published and distributed. Indications are that Lili, which began its trek in our direction while we were still battening down for Tropical Storm Isidore, is headed to southwest Louisiana. Of course, we have no foolproof way of predicting just where Lili will hit and with what effect.

Yet Isidore and Lili have reminded us of one certainty: there is too much unfinished business on evacuation routes out of South Louisiana.

Isidore quickly flooded major escape routes from Interstate-10 West in New Orleans and state Highway 1 at Port Fouchon, the state's busiest oil and gas port. Hundreds of thousands of people were unable to get out of the way of potential harm. Now, one unfortunate consequence of Isidore is the undermining of public confidence in our government and emergency officials' ability to adequately protect our lives and property.

In New Orleans, residents found it hard to believe that emergency officials still had not prepared emergency evacuation alternative routes to overcome the notoriously flood-prone road dip underneath the Southern Railroad trestle at I-10. Moreover, four years after 1.5 million people fled southeast Louisiana to escape Hurricane Georges -- the largest evacuation in the history of the Gulf Coast -- construction of a pumping station for the dip is still 20 months from completion. That's two hurricane seasons away.

Authorities seemed to have learned some quick, painful lessons from the public response to Isidore. State Sen. Francis Heitmeier, chair of the House transportation committee, spoke for many public officials and emergency planners last week when he acknowledged, "We got caught with our pants down." With Lili bearing down on the coast, Heitmeier and other state officials stepped up efforts to design alternative escape routes. Meanwhile, while the sun was still shining, municipal authorities from Grand Isle northward openly discussed, and thereby tacitly encouraged, early "voluntary" evacuations.

On Sept. 28, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu called a hurricane preparedness meeting of top officials from Orleans, St. Tammany, Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes. Landrieu's visitor, Sen. Jim Jeffords (Ind-Vt.), who chairs a Senate committee that is working on $280 billion national transportation and public works appropriations bill, heard concerns such as the need for multi-million dollar emergency back-up generators for pumping stations, flood protection for evacuation routes, and a light rail system to evacuate the indigent and disabled. The hastily called summit was certainly a good photo op for Landrieu, who is seeking re-election. But it was also a good idea, and it should serve as a model for future regional cooperation on disasters.

Isidore also provided Mayor Ray Nagin his first experience with the city's Office of Emergency Preparedness atop City Hall. Nagin noted that an estimated 100,000 residents of the city rely on public transportation, and he said he hopes federal support for a future light rail system will enable the city to evacuate these residents to Louis Armstrong International Airport and points beyond.

In addition, Nagin deplored the "patchwork of networks among the parishes in terms of [emergency] communications and technology." We expect police and emergency agencies to be talking to each other on the same radio channel during an emergency. Apparently, they were not, at least not during Isidore. Nagin is correct to worry publicly about such a lack of coordination, and we share his concern.

Following Isidore, Jefferson Parish President Tim Coulon dryly observed: "Here in Louisiana, floods are not an act of God, they are a politician's fault." Thanks to a federally funded flood prevention project, the suburban parish is better protected than when Coulon took office in 1995, he said. Still, Coulon, added, the parish is in the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) top 10 for "most flood plain regions."

Coulon noted that, during Isidore, one pump went out of commission with no back-up generator. "Each [back-up] costs $2 million," he said. "Unlike some people would suggest, I can't got to Home Depot or Lowe's to get a replacement."

Landrieu recently won a Senate committee's approval for $9 million in federal funds for two highway upgrades critical for future evacuations: $4.5 million for two-lane Louisiana 1, the only evacuation route for Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and much of Lafourche Parish. An equal amount will fund the construction of the southern extension of Interstate 49, linking the West Bank Expressway to the city of Lafayette. Landrieu's projects come for a vote in the full Senate at a date to be announced, an aide to the senator said. Both measures deserve the bi-partisan support of every Louisianan.

As Coulon said emotionally of hurricane protection requests, "It's not pork barrel; it's real life." With Lili bearing down on the Louisiana coastline, that's the message we need to send out any way we can.

88 posted on 09/03/2005 6:23:07 PM PDT by Hamiltonian
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To: IronMan04
What does that have to do with anything? If the failure of the levee system was caused by malfeasance of the Corps then it will come out but this had nothing to do with that.

This had to do with ER planing of the actual event they knew would/could happen. The Governor of LA and below her the Mayor had everything to do with it. LA got ton's of money to deal with it and didn't.

BTW, NO and LA have, for sixty or more years, been very happy to let the Corp handle things.
89 posted on 09/03/2005 6:38:55 PM PDT by WHBates
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To: Polybius
The "Hurricane Pam" scenario called for the evacuation of New Orleans BEFORE New Orleans was destroyed and FEMA's job was to then come in and clean up the mess.

Great link! but the FEMA plan covered more than cleanup.

"We made great progress this week in our preparedness efforts," said Ron Castleman, FEMA Regional Director. "Disaster response teams developed action plans in critical areas such as search and rescue, medical care, sheltering, temporary housing, school restoration and debris management. These plans are essential for quick response to a hurricane but will also help in other emergencies."

90 posted on 09/03/2005 6:45:15 PM PDT by Cboldt
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To: wagglebee
Well gee, I declare here that Miami Florida should be careful of a hurricane within the next year.... If it hits I am a prophet, if it doesn't I was just being prudent.
91 posted on 09/03/2005 6:47:47 PM PDT by Porterville (Liberal Babyboomers will by anything that stinks of hippy.... So crap on a stick and sell baby sell)
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To: IronMan04
Interestingly the US Army Corps of Engineers claims to have the primary responsibility for maintaining the Levee System.

Yes, it is interesting...except your post doesn't say that.

92 posted on 09/03/2005 7:08:31 PM PDT by blake6900 (YOUR AD HERE)
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To: blake6900
Perhaps you missed the first sentence:

Responsibilities of the New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, are almost entirely in civil works. Flood control, navigation and the environment are the big jobs.

93 posted on 09/03/2005 7:52:04 PM PDT by IronMan04
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To: WHBates

If the Levee would have held, the flooding would not have occured on this scale.


94 posted on 09/03/2005 7:53:08 PM PDT by IronMan04
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To: WHBates

If the Levee would have held, the flooding would not have occured on this scale.


95 posted on 09/03/2005 7:53:13 PM PDT by IronMan04
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To: IronMan04
"If the Levee would have held, the flooding would not have occured on this scale."

Your point is what? If the sun doesn't rise today/tomorrow I'll be cold. If wishing made money I'd be rich

These people were in charge of disaster recovery and were given a set of risks to include in the plan. They just didn't do it or couldn't execute the plan they devised.
96 posted on 09/03/2005 8:17:29 PM PDT by WHBates
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To: WHBates
It is no secret that New Orleans was third world long before this hurricane. The infrastructure has been defunct for years. The state knew that, the Feds have known that.
Even with that evacuating 1,000,000 in less than 48 hours on two roads is a great success and has never been done before in the history of the United States.
97 posted on 09/03/2005 8:31:18 PM PDT by IronMan04
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To: wagglebee
Yes, wagglebee.

Mistakes and lies about a *plan* to evacuate the citizenry OUT of the city beforehand. Pathetic.

98 posted on 09/03/2005 8:42:10 PM PDT by Miss Behave (Beloved daughter of Miss Creant, super sister of danged Miss Ology, and proud mother of Miss Hap.)
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To: IronMan04
I agree about the success but not sure about your numbers. I think the entire region has done a wonderful thing. What people don't seem to understand is how massive the damage is. From Mobile to NO, it's massive.

However, had a plan been in place or executed, even marginally, in NO things would be much better.
99 posted on 09/03/2005 8:52:20 PM PDT by WHBates
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To: WHBates

NOLA Metro is around 1.2 million.


100 posted on 09/03/2005 8:58:17 PM PDT by IronMan04
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