Hurricane Center Director Tells Paper He Briefed Brown and Chertoff on Danger of Severe Flooding

Editor and Publisher ^ | September 04, 2005 | E&P Staff

[OldFriend]

Thank your hubby for us, and thank you too.

[BeeDayVee]

Alabama and Mississippi requested a declaration of emergency and got it, and Blanco refused to do so for fear of total federal government control (thats what I was led to believe). At this time, there is still no official state of emergency in Louisiana.

Is this true??

[Loyal Buckeye]

N.O. should have been evacuated. The weaknesses in the levee were well known, as was the liklihood of flooding.

The facts demonstrate that a reasonable person would have evacuated the city for all who would go, but it was not done.

[Clara Lou]

Hmmmm... anyone with a brain knew that, once Katrina crossed Florida and started gaining strength, it would be a deadly storm. I haven't heard that Brown and Chertoff said they didn't know that. What are you up to?? *sniff, sniff* I smell ZOT.

[LPM1888]

The flow of aid and NG was never interrupted, there were no discontinuities, they were flowing since Saturday.

Is that why people were dieing of dehydration at the Convention Center.

[joesnuffy]

It was the environ mentalists who kept the Corps of Engineers from doing work necessary to shore up levees and dikes...

The greenies were impediments to necessary work and kept it from being done..using the courts...and liberal politicians

Wanna know who really killed those people?...crooked politicians and the environmental movement.. While the ACLU and NEA made sure the rabble were sufficiently brainwashed with the hatred of white skin dogma...and the righteousness of looting,stealing, and killing..

This whole disaster stinks of the leftists in America...

imo

[AliVeritas]

You know, I don't get your point with this story.
Did they discuss the surge higher than the levee...yes.
Did they discuss all three levees being breached...no.
Even my ten year old knows it's a world of difference.

The federal government cannot take over states rights unless requested. On the other hand, if it didn't hit and Bush had took it upon himself to issue emergency and mandatory evac (which he did, which is for funds and FEMA can coordinate... they didn't want help), different category), he would be accused of being a dictator, trampling over state's rights, up for impeachment (yet again) and generally not minding his business.

Nagin issued the warning around 11 am Sunday from Baton Rouge, after he flew out and closed the airports.
Blanco's first time back to the area was when Bush went.

[Tarpon]

Did anyone need briefing, I just saw it on TV and said run.

It was obvious to everyone, but the most dense that Katrina was a bad one.

Our Gov has his own meteorologist to track these things, they even have SWFT mud, it's the water management folks, floods and drainage, use their computers to do our own track predictions.

[danamco]

"We were briefing them way before landfall," Mayfield said. "It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped."


The biggest difference is according to the lady on cnn ("constantly negative news") that President Bush late Monday night sneaked down into NO and personally opened the levees so that many black people would drown. You see he never have had any black people in his cabinet.
In our area we would watch Max Maynsfield several time every day on tv, and I never heard him say that the levees would break open. But that is not the problem, that happened AFTER the hurricane had passed by NO. Had the mandatory evacuation plan been executed, the city would virtually been empty and lost of lives would have been substantial less! So the bucks still stops at the mayor, governor and their democratic cohorts because the got caught up in internal red tapes!!!

[kms61]

It's already been established that Nagin and Blanco dropped the ball. But there were MANY at the federal level who were not prepared for this. Chief among them Chertoff and Brown.

Because it happened under a GOP administration, a lot of people here are going to deny, deny, deny that there was any problem with the Federal response. That's the perfect way to make sure nothing changes, and when some city is destroyed by an Al Qaeda bomb, the feds STILL won't be prepared for it.

Don't think it can happen to your city? It can and will. Time to put aside the partisanship and let the chips fall where they may, even on FR.

[Fresh Wind]

Mayfield called Nagin:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1476538/posts

[LPM1888]

Brown and Chertoff have made statements claiming that they were not aware of the danger to New Orleans. Do your own research.

[VeniVidiVici]

It's been known for years that a cat 4/5 hurricane could breach the levees. Did people suddenly forget when this one came around?

I think the problem comes in where New Orleans officials were busy slapping themselves on the back (once again) when Katrina cleared out from the coast that they had dodged yet another bullet.

Only later was it they looked on in disbelief as the levees started breaking well after Katrina was gone.

Then to top it off, rescuers tried going in by boat Tuesday morning and were met with gun fire. Who the hell is going to send in anyone till after the threat has been cleared? I suppose the proper response for you would have been to drop the 82d into downtown NO at that point in time?

Remember initial news reports on 9/11 as the planes were slamming into the WTC and the Pentagon? The number of planes grew, along with the target list, and the number of casualties was around 50,000.

Yeah, better to react without knowing for sure what we are reacting to.

[jennyjenny]

The point is that Chertoff and Brown were aware of the dangers to New Orleans but now they are lying about their lack of action.

As long as they are in charge of the Department of Homeland Security and Fema we are all at risk if we are hit by a disaster.

Not me. If I'm told to evacuate and take 3-5 days of food and water with me, that's what I'm going to do. If I'm not mistaken, that's what they told everyone to do this time.

[liberallarry]

Why did Bush have to call Blanco and Nagin to twist their arms to order an evacuation?

This is tricky. Nagin, and everyone else, was warning residents to evacuate at least from the '27th. What was ordered on Sunday was a mandatory evacuation which was unprecedented...and which could not be enforced. See www.metafilter.com for the details (if that doesn't get you to the thread let me know and maybe I can find the link which I posted on another thread).

The issue of the unused buses is also tricky. Every plan I've seen called for those who couldn't evacuate on their own to be transported to the Superdome and other shelters within the city. That's what was done. Those unused buses could have been used to transport somewhere between 25,000 and 75,000 people out out of the city - depending on the number of round-trips - but they had no place to go. No shelters had been set up to receive them. Had this been done and the debacle not materialized Nagin would have been severely criticized for panicking and killing people. In hindsight it was the right move...but only in hindsight.

[Strategerist]

Had the mandatory evacuation plan been executed, the city would virtually been empty

The term "mandatory" is irrelevant. There's no such thing as going door to door and forcing people to evac at gunpoint in this or any other hurricane evac situation.

And the majority of the people who stayed, stayed because they chose to and had no intention of leaving.

[roses of sharon]

So Chertoff, Brown, and Bush, all delayed because they loved watching blacks die.

I knew there was a conspiracy here somewhere.

I will take notes from now on, and hopefully you, me and the MSM can catch them in another lie, because we KNOW that they were all lounging around doing nothing while Blacks died.

This is a fact that I heard on TV, so it MUST be true.

[pageonetoo]

Chertoff and Brown were briefed on Katrina. Now they are lieing about.

What did they lie about?

The flooding came two days later... and NO and LA officials sat in their bunker cowering...

[syriacus]

What exactly did Brown do incorrectly?