Katrina Live Threads, Part XV

Various ^ | 4 September 2005 | Various

[NautiNurse]

U.S. commercial air carriers continue transporting tens of thousands of evacuees from the New Orleans airport to destinations throughout the nation.

Rooftop air rescue efforts continue. One rescue chopper crashed late today. Crew members are reported safe. Gunmen who fired upon bridge repair contractors were killed by law enforcement.

To date, an estimated 70 countries and U.S. businesses have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars, supplies, food and equipment to assist the United States' efforts in Katrina's aftermath. Lt. General Honore described the damage to Mississippi today, "all infrastructure south of Jackson, MS is either damaged or destroyed." Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice visited the devastated areas, and attended Sunday church services in Mobile, Alabama.

Elsewhere, Sean Penn's rescue boat, sans plug and full of his personal entourage,reportedly sank during launch in New Orleans. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) threatened to punch President Bush, and Jefferson Parish President Broussard decried that the bureaucracy of FEMA has committed murder.

Links to various news, local and state government websites:

WLOX TV Biloxi, Gulfport, Pascagula has link to locate family and friends
2theAdvocate - Baton Rouge Includes Slidell, St. John Parish, St. Bernard Parish updates, and other locations.
NOLA.com
Inside Houma Today includes shelter and volunteer updates
WLBT.com Jackson MS
WALA Channel 4 Mobile, AL Includes links to distribution centers, Emergency Ops, etc.
Sun-Herald Gulfport MS Includes link to town by town reports
Gulfport News via Topix.net
WAFB Baton Rouge
Mobile Register via al.com
Mississippi updates via Jackson Ledger
Lafayette LA Daily Advertiser
Pensacola News Journal
St Bernard Local Government
Alabama Homeland Security Volunteers can sign up online
Alabama DOT
Alabama.gov
Louisiana Homeland Security
Louisiana State Police road closure info
State of Mississippi Website has traffic alerts, emergency contact numbers

New Orleans Emergency Operations Center - is now open:
504-463-1000
504-463-1001
504-463-1002

Streaming Video:

All information is subject to change. Many stations are relying on their corporate parents to configure and maintain Internet streaming. Because of the intense interest in the feeds, they may be unavailable at times because of network congestion or a problem feeding the video to the streaming servers.

WWL-TV New Orleans - WWL-TV is operating from studios at Louisiana Public Broadcasting. CBS has a relay during the morning and afternoon. When available, use the CBS relay first as they have greater streaming capacity. They have a secondary stream from Yahoo. WWL-TV is also offering a special low-bandwidth audio-only stream for dial-up users.

WDSU-TV New Orleans - The news staff has started to return to temporary news studios near New Orleans. However, expect evening coverage from Hearst-Argyle sister stations WAPT Jackson and WESH Orlando when the New Orleans staff needs to take a break.

WGNO-TV New Orleans - New Orleans' ABC affiliate has returned to the air with WBRZ-TV and launched video streaming with continuous Katrina coverage.

WPMI-TV Mobile, AL - WPMI is webcasting from 5:30am - 10:30pm CDT. When off air, you can view pre-recorded reports on demand. This feed is often unreliable.

WKRG-TV Mobile, AL - This station is providing good coverage of the situation to the east in Mississippi and Alabama. However, the station is now signing off at around 10:30pm CDT like WWL and WPMI.

WJTV-TV Jackson, MS - The CBS affiliate in Jackson is providing live coverage for both the Jackson area and south Mississippi (knowing a lot of media in that area is off the air).

WFAA-TV Dallas, TX - WFAA-TV is here because Dallas is one of the evacuation cities.

United Radio From New Orleans: WWL-AM, WNOE-FM, "KISS-FM," WRNO-FM, WYLD-FM, and WJBO-AM (Clear Channel & Entercom) who have joined forces as United Radio From New Orleans, and they are streaming.

Gulf Coast Storm Network (Clear Channel Radio) - Clear Channel offers radio listeners across the gulf coast access to a simulcast emergency radio service. This service seems primarily focused on Alabama and Mississippi, but does cover Louisiana to some degree.

Related FR Threads:

FYI: Hurricane Katrina Freeper SIGN IN Thread FReeper Check In thread
Discussion Thread - Hurricane Katrina - What Went Wrong?!?
Post Hurricane Katrina IMAGES Here
Katrina Link Archives Nice work by backhoe
Mary Landrieu-"I'll Punch Bush"
Sean Penn's Rescue Bid Sinks
Hurricane Katrina HOUSING Thread
Martial Law Declared in New Orleans

Due to the number of requests to assist, the following list of some charities is provided.
This is not intended as an endorsement for any of the charities.

www.redcross.org or 1-800 HELP NOW - note: website is slow, and lines are busy
Salvation Army - 1-800-SAL-ARMY or Salvation Army currently looking for in-state volunteers - (888)363-2769
Operation Blessing: (800) 436-6348.
America's Second Harvest: (800) 344-8070.
Catholic Charities USA: (800) 919-9338, or www.catholiccharitiesusa.org.
Christian Reformed World Relief Committee: (800) 848-5818.
Church World Service: (800) 297-1516 or online at www.churchworldservice. org.
Lutheran Disaster Response: (800) 638-3522.
Nazarene Disaster Response: (888) 256-5886.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance: (800) 872-3283.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is accepting donations at its 3,800 stores and Web site, www.walmart.com.
National Black Home Educators Resource Association http://www.nbhera.org/ Southern Baptist: NAMB - http://www.namb.net/
Samaritan's Purse - http://www.samaritanspurse.org/

Previous Threads:
Katrina Live Thread, Part XIV
Katrina Live Thread, Part XIII
Katrina Live Thread, Party XII
Katrina Live Thread, Part XI
Katrina Live Thread, Part X
Katrina Live Thread, Part IX
Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part VIII
Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part VII
Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part VI
Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part V
Hurricane Katrina, Live Thread, Part IV
Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part III
Katrina Live Thread, Part II
Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part I
Tropical Storm 12

[DrewsMum]

Check out the guy on fox, he just told em about how LA and NO screwed up,,,,,,

[buickmackane]

Why would they create a no fly zone around the disaster area.

I asked myself the same question, after reading posts on the New Orleans Tourist Forum on VirtualTourist.com from a guy with a flight services business in Lafayette who claimed that he has been trying to offer assistance and keeps getting blown off. I can't post the link because the thread just got pulled; this pilot is very frustrated and his posts tended to turn into stream-of-consciousness rants that were somewhat hard to decipher. I only wish I had cut-and-pasted the pertinent parts of them earlier.

VirtualTourist.com seems to be pro-Red Cross donations only, so I have a feeling that the response I posted with specific local addresses will be pulled momentarily. But as long as one person sees it and is prompted to act, then my mission is accomplished!

[STARWISE]

LOL ... please explain the facts to her, if you can.

[Txsleuth]

Hey--I ain't proud....if those two countries want to send us $$$$ I say bring it on !!!!

BTW, I just heard a few minutes of Alan Colmes radio show..and he played a tape of Barbara Bush down in the Astrodome today...she said something about how nice it was to be able to help the people from NO..and how for some of them, it would be a new start, because they didn't have much there, before.

Well, Alan just is going off on her...calling her insensitive, IMPLYING that these people NEEDED help. He just thinks she is awful... I feel like calling and telling him that Barbara Bush is speaking the TRUTH.

[STARWISE]

"I know I don't need to make any other introduction other than `Mr. President,'" Blanco said tersely, turning the microphone over to Bush after praising emergency management officials during a stop with Bush at an emergency operations center.

"This is one of these disasters that will test our soul and test our spirit, but we're going to show the world once again that not only can we survive but we will be stronger and better for it," Bush said after taking the microphone.

Blanco late Monday sought to tone down suggestions of a rift.

"We'd like to stop the voices out there trying to create a divide," she said. "There is no divide. We're all in this together. Every leader in this nation wants to see this problem solved."

Bush echoed Blanco's praise for rescue workers. "I hope that makes you feel good to know you have saved lives," Bush said, promising state, local and federal officials that he would fix anything that isn't going right. "This is just the beginning of a huge effort," he said.

The president, looking choked up as he finished his brief remarks, nodded at Blanco and kissed her on the cheek. She nodded back and both left the podium, headed for separate spots in the crowd.

Blanco has refused to sign over control of the National Guard to the federal government and has turned to a Clinton administration official, former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief James Lee Witt, to help run relief efforts.

Blanco was not told when Bush would visit the state, nor was she immediately invited to meet him or travel with him. Blanco's office didn't know Bush was coming until told by reporters. Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said the White House reached out to Blanco's office on Sunday, but didn't hear back. White House staff in Louisiana spoke with Blanco early Monday, he said.

Making his third visit to the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged states, Bush stopped first at the Bethany World Prayer Center, a huge hall half covered with pallets and half filled with dining tables. Blanco visited at the same time, but she and Bush kept apart as they walked around talking to people.

During his stop at Bethany, several people ran up to meet Bush and get autographs as he and first lady Laura Bush wandered around the room. But just as many hung back and looked on.

"I need answers," said Mildred Brown, who has been there since Tuesday with her husband, mother-in-law and cousin. "I'm not interested in handshaking. I'm not interested in photo ops. This is going to take a lot of money."

Bush, Blanco Reveal Strained Relationship

===============================================

How he's able to hold his anger before swine is just incredible. .... God bless President George W. Bush.

[DrewsMum]

I try to talk to her, but she says "I'm not going to debate you" and when asked why she says "because you have an answer for everything...." my response to her was "and you don't...enough said"

[Miss Behave]

From the link you posted:

Mr. Judkins is one of the officials in charge of evacuating the Hampton Roads region around Newport News, Va. These coastal communities, unlike New Orleans, are not below sea level, but they're much better prepared for a hurricane. Officials have plans to run school buses and borrow other buses to evacuate those without cars, and they keep registries of the people who need special help."

Great. But hey Howlin, are you ready to eat crow yet about your insistence that the city buses were planned for and used to evacuate the citizenry OUT of the city of New Orleans prior to Katrina's arrival?

A poster, early on, noted the many buses just sitting there in the water, and said: "There was no plan to get the people on buses out of the city."

You quickly and shortly replied back to the poster:

"You are wrong. They used city buses."And a little later insisted: "There were buses picking up people all over the city."

You have NEVER backed up your claim or offered that YOU might be WRONG, despite subsequent questions to you regarding it, and were clueless on where those city buses went after they evacuated the citizenry OUT of the city. You offered nothing else to your claim.

[Arizona Carolyn]

WOW ~~ how are the rats going to keep that covered up? Even with the punch Bush in the nose stuff, that will get out!

[DrewsMum]

Alan better leave Barbara alone,,,,before she starts kickin butt and checkin names and I bet she could take him and his scrawny self too,,,,

[Brad’s Gramma]

:)

[Txsleuth]

hmmmmmm---

I am wondering why Mildred Brown is so worried about the money...what did she lose, a mansion and five cars???

Was that when Pres. Bush was with T. D. Jakes? He has a humungous church about 30 minutes from where I live...my goodness...the parking lot is the size of a small town!

[jbstrick]

I am not sure how to take your comments.

It is good news to see them step up and help out.

[plushaye]

Someone posted they saw the Nagin interview on CNN international. I think they said it was on in Japan.. It's not making any other MSM news, of course. The worm has turned. Nagin is turning on Blanco so this is getting very interesting...

[Howlin]

What the hell are you talking about?

They most certainly did use city buses all day Saturday to evacuated people from neigbhorhoods all over NO. There were 10 collection points in the city to pick them up.

And since you're acting like such an A$$, I'll return the reply: it's completely bad form to drag arguments from thread to thread.

And with that tone, I'm not offering JACK CRAP to you. You sound like a bitter person.

[Spktyr]

No offense, just short circuiting any potential bigotry or the perennial "about time they paid us back" comment.

[hipaatwo]

Get a load of this:

New Orleans Black Community Leaders Charge Racism in Government Neglect of Hurricane Survivors

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

September 5, 2005, 3:30 p.m. CST



Press conference:

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

4:00 p.m. CST outside the Reliance Center at Kirby and McNee



New Orleans Black Community Leaders Charge Racism in Government Neglect of Hurricane Survivors

Press conference to announce plan to save lives and

demand role in rebuilding effort

HOUSTON – A national alliance of black community leaders will announce the formation of a New Orleans People’s Committee to demand a decision-making role in the short-term care of hurricane survivors and long-term rebuilding of New Orleans.

Community Labor United (CLU), a New Orleans coalition of labor and community activists, has put out a call to activists and organizations across the country to work on a “people’s campaign” of community redevelopment. Organizing efforts will take place across hundreds of temporary shelters.

The population of New Orleans is 67 percent black and over 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, reflecting the current demographic of hurricane survivors displaced all over the South.

While the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the White House, and Governor Blanco attempt to regain the public’s trust by evading the question of who’s to blame, a short and long-term plan for New Orleans hurricane survivors has remained in a political vault of silence.

“This is plain, ugly, real racism,” states Curtis Muhammad, CLU Organizing Director. “While some politicians and organizations might skirt around the issue of race, we in New Orleans are not afraid to call it what it is. The moral values of our government is to ‘shoot to kill’ hungry, thirsty black hurricane survivors for trying to live through the aftermath. This is not just immoral—this has turned a natural disaster into a man-made disaster, fueled by racism.”

Leaders of CLU, in alliance with nearly twenty other local organizations and several national organizations will discuss their plan at a press conference on Tuesday, September 6, 2005, at 4:00 p.m. CST outside the Reliance Center at Kirby and McNee. The coalition will announce:



· The formation of the New Orleans People’s Committee composed of hurricane survivors from each of the shelters, which will:

1. Demand to oversee FEMA, the Red Cross, and other organizations collecting resources on behalf of the black community of New Orleans

2. Demand decision-making power in the long-term redevelopment of New Orleans

· Issue a national call for volunteers to assist with housing, healthcare, education, and legal matters for the duration of the displacement



Tax-exempt donations for the People’s Committee and the national coalition can be made out to: Young People’s Project, 440 N. Mills St., Suite 200, Jackson, MS 39202 or visit www.qecr.org .



Community Labor United is a coalition of progressive organizations in New Orleans formed in 1998. Their mission is to build organizational unity and support efforts that address poverty, racism, and education. CLU organized in the areas hardest hit by the hurricane.

Curtis Muhammad is a veteran Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer and co-founder of CLU.

For more information, please contact:

Curtis Muhammad

Community Labor United (CLU)

muhammadcurtis@bellsouth.net

Becky Belcore

Quality Education as a Civil Right (QECR)
bbelcore@hotmail.com

http://minorjive.typepad.com/hungryblues/2005/09/new_or...

[DrewsMum]

I'm not trying to get in y'all spiff here,,,,but the busses in the pics that were flooded were school busses and aren't ya;ll talkin about city busses???

[Spktyr]

They used the city buses to take people to "shelters of last resort." At no point did they use buses (or any other mass transit system) to try to get people *out* of the city.

[Miss Behave]

EXACTLY.

[plushaye]

Remember when Frist said he was going to call hearings about the slowness of disaster response? Some FReepers said he was turning against the President. Others said he was implicitly threatening the LA Democrats because he would also be exposing their corruption. Turns out the latter was true, according to the American Spectator's Prowler. It has shut up the Dems. They have stopped calling for an investigation.

---

FRISKED BY FRIST
Sen. Bill Frist rode to the rescue in more ways than one last week, with his call for a comprehensive congressional investigation into the failings of planning and execution of preparing for Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing relief effort.

Frist's efforts weren't intended as a slam at President Bush, who has taken a pummeling in the media from Democrats in Congress, their operatives, and cooperative journalists who were willing to set facts aside for the opportunity to create a political fire storm around the Republican president.

Instead, Frist's call for an investigation sent many Democrats running for cover. "If you look at the history of appropriations and funding of federal dollars, no delegation served their state and major cities better than Louisiana," says a Senate staffer. "In the end, if the Democrats want to place blame, they know the behavior of their party members, for a generation really the only party in power in New Orleans and Louisiana, is damning, and they don't want to draw any more attention to the issue than the media wants to."

Senate Appropriations Committee staff late last week were drawing up statistics on just where the hundreds of millions of dollars set aside for New Orleans over the years, on everything from community support, federal policing dollars, emergency preparedness, and levy control and modernization.

"Let's put it this way," says an Appropriations staffer. "There is a fair degree of certainty up here that dollars that should have gone for projects and programs that might have been helpful in New Orleans' time of need was never used for those purposes. If I were a local politician or a state or local bureaucrat down there, I'd be nervous about now."

Further lost in the aftermath of Katrina's furor was the fact that neither New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin nor Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco had wanted to order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, a city of 485,000 people. Both politicians had been avoiding the issue until Saturday, August 27, when President Bush called both Democrats and, according to congressional and White House sources, essentially demanded that a mandatory evacuation be ordered. The order was made on the 28th.

At a news conference announcing the evacuation, Nagin also went on the record predicting that the storm's surge would top the city's protective levees, yet in the aftermath, Nagin was quick to place blame for the levees on Washington.

"There is absolutely no question that federal support should have been put into place sooner and that we were caught flat-footed," says a Homeland Security Department staffer. "But when everything is said and done, nobody is going to want to be in the way of the political fallout that comes from a thorough investigation of what happened down there. And that includes Democrats."

By late Sunday, what had emerged was a picture less to do with Washington, and far more to do with incompetence on the state and local level. Federal emergency preparedness officials were poring over Louisiana's and New Orleans' emergency plans. "There is a very good reason everyone down there has clammed up about beating on the President," says the Homeland Security staffer. "The only people who continue to do it are the likes of [Tim] Russert and the New York Times, and they are just feeding off the tragedy for political gain, nothing more. In the end, it's the very people they have been listening to for the past week that they will have to put under a microscope."

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8699