Don't blame only feds (MUST READ: NO Cops, Mayor Nagin To Blame)

NY Daily News ^ | 9/7/05

[linkinpunk]

Don't blame only feds

Crime rate, inept pols leveled New Orleans before the storm

Let's take a break from the joy of Bush bashing to reveal the dirty little secret of New Orleans: Its local government deserves an F for its planning and response to Katrina. And one other thing: The New Orleans police force would be a joke if it weren't a disgrace. Yes, I know it's impolitic to say such things while the suffering in the Big Easy is fresh and many cops risked their lives to save others. But now is the time to blow the whistle on the story line being repeated by rote across America: That the federal government ignored New Orleans because most of its residents are black and poor.

That narrative has all the accuracy of a historic novel: it takes two undisputed facts - the feds were slow and New Orleans is largely black and poor - and weaves in pure fiction to make the desired link.

The charge of racism-inspired foot-dragging isn't just nonsense. It's pernicious nonsense, as in destructive and malicious. You know that's a fact because loony Howard Dean, the Democratic Party boss, is now peddling it. He's joined by Jesse Jackson, who said the squalor in New Orleans "looks like the hull of a slave ship." Oh, please.

If even a smidgen of the racism charges are true, President Bush should be shot. But before we give him his blindfold, let's look at New Orleans before Katrina.

Start with crime. That looters ran unchecked after the hurricane isn't surprising when you consider that criminals have had the run of the city for years.

It is a perennial contender for Murder Capital. The 264 homicides last year were a drop of only 11 from 2003 - and the first decline in five years.

New Orleans, with fewer than 500,000 people, had almost half the murders of New York, which had 570 homicides last year in a city of more than 8 million. Put another way, if New York had New Orleans' murder rate, we would have more than 4,200 murders a year.

That the New Orleans police are hardly the Finest was proven by a shocking report yesterday: Nearly a third of New Orleans cops - some 500 of the 1,600 - are now unaccounted for. The department says some quit, but it doesn't know where most of them are.

The top cop, Eddie Compass, has responded by offering all officers paid vacations to Las Vegas and Atlanta. Yes, that's right - he is pulling all cops off the street, even while bodies lie in the open. Never in New York.

Then there's Mayor Ray Nagin, a Democrat, who has blamed everybody but himself. Maybe he has forgotten his plans for dealing with Katrina.

Last July, his office prepared DVDs warning that, if the city ever had to be evacuated, residents were on their own. According toa July 24 article in The Times-Picayune (spotted by the Web's Drudge Report), "Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation."

"You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you," one official said of the message.

And how's this for preparation? Cops were told not to work on the day Katrina hit, one officer told The New York Times, but "to come in the next day, to save money on their budget."

By all means, let's investigate what went wrong in New Orleans. Let's start in City Hall.

[LOC1]

People in the US seem to expect federal disaster relief effort to be flawless, no mater the circumstances.

Federal emergency relief plans for hurricanes assume that the local and state governments would be competent, and that the federal government would play a supporting role at the request of the local governments. That model worked fairly well during 9/11, for last year's four hurricanes in Florida, and for the Mississippi and Alabama gulf coast regions during hurricane Katrina.

However, federal plans apparently do not provide for the contingency that the local and state governments would be worse than incompetent, and would, in fact, actually hinder response to the disaster. It took too long for the feds to adjust to the required change in role from "support of local efforts" to "primary responder" in New Orleans following hurricane Katrina.

Nevertheless, the US public expects the federal government emergency response to be flawless, no mater what the circumstances. Therefore, President Bush is, in effect, being bashed for not anticipating the inadequate performance of the New Orleans mayor and the governor of Louisiana.

At the risk of being flamed, that particular criticism may have merit. Federal emergency response, in the broad sense, should not depend on the competence of first responders. We need to rethink our model for federal disaster relief.

Right now, the feds are the third tier, following local and the state response. There needs to be the legal and structural mechanism for the feds to jump into the primary role quickly when it is apparent the the local and state governments are unable to act, or incompetent in their ability to act.

[linkinpunk]

Federal emergency response, in the broad sense, should not depend on the competence of first responders.

I think we can learn from NO what kind of support you can expect from the feds if locals do not respond.

But keep in mind, helecoptering our 6 victims at a time takes A LOT more time and effort than bussing 100 per trip.

[Mo1]

And how's this for preparation? Cops were told not to work on the day Katrina hit, one officer told The New York Times, but "to come in the next day, to save money on their budget."
By all means, let's investigate what went wrong in New Orleans. Let's start in City Hall.

Yep .. Bring on the investigations

[Huck]

Blame blame blame. What an ugly spectacle. I think I've finally reached the point where my country embarasses me. Don't get me wrong. I love America and what it's supposed to stand for. But this is really making me want to hurl.

[BushCountry]

[Dog]

Look for the demand for hearings to be quietly dropped.

[ncountylee]

no way, Liberman will roll Collins and it's not going to be pretty. Hope her staff can hold her together.

[Dane]

Looks like the NY Daily News editorial board gets it, but it will be ignored by ABC,CBS,NBC,CNN, MSNBC,NPR, and some on FR etc.etc.

[Mo1]

Look for the demand for hearings to be quietly dropped.

Too late .. the dogs are already out of the gate

[kellynla]

Oh, I saw plenty of N'awlins cops in the Walmarts stealing merchandise. LOL

[poinq]

You all are missing the most important item. (although I think those pictures of busses are pretty revealing.)

Read this: Last year they used the Super Dome as a shelter from Ivan and the same things happened with fewer people. This was written in NO last November...

http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/o/nov04/nov04c.html
Natural Hazards Observer
Vol. XXIX No. 2 November 2004
Next Page | Table of Contents
Disasters Waiting to Happen . . . Sixth in a Series
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, author Shirley Laska can be reached at 2005RSS@louisiana.edu.

What if Hurricane Ivan Had Not
Missed New Orleans?

---

Author’s Note: This column was originally intended to be the final disaster in the “Disasters Waiting to Happen” series. As I was developing the hypothetical situation depicting a devastating hurricane striking New Orleans, Louisiana, the disaster waiting to happen threatened to become a reality: Hurricane Ivan, a category 4 hurricane (with 140 mph winds) fluctuating to a category 5 (up to 155 mph winds), was slowly moving directly toward New Orleans. Forecasters were predicting a one-in-four chance that Ivan would remain on this direct path and would be an “extreme storm” at landfall. In reality, the storm veered to the north and made landfall east of Mobile Bay, Alabama, causing devastation and destruction well into the central Gulf shoreline and throughout the Southeast and the Mid-Atlantic states.

What if Ivan Had Hit New Orleans?
New Orleans was spared, this time, but had it not been, Hurricane Ivan would have:

Pushed a 17-foot storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain;

Caused the levees between the lake and the city to overtop and fill the city “bowl” with water from lake levee to river levee, in some places as deep as 20 feet;

Flooded the north shore suburbs of Lake Pontchartrain with waters pushing as much as seven miles inland; and

Inundated inhabited areas south of the Mississippi River.
Up to 80 percent of the structures in these flooded areas would have been severely damaged from wind and water. The potential for such extensive flooding and the resulting damage is the result of a levee system that is unable to keep up with the increasing flood threats from a rapidly eroding coastline and thus unable to protect the ever-subsiding landscape.

Evacuation Challenges
Researchers have estimated that prior to a “big one,” approximately 700,000 residents of the greater New Orleans area (out of 1.2 million) would evacuate. In the case of Hurricane Ivan, officials estimate that up to 600,000 evacuated from metropolitan New Orleans between daybreak on Monday, September 13 and noon on Wednesday, September 15, when the storm turned and major roads finally started to clear.

To aid in the evacuation, transportation officials instituted contraflow evacuation for the first time in the area’s history whereby both lanes of a 12-mile stretch of Interstate 10 were used to facilitate the significantly increased outbound flow of traffic toward the northwest and Baton Rouge. The distance of the contraflow was limited due to state police concerns about the need for staff to close the exits. And, although officials were initially pleased with the results, evacuees felt the short distance merely shifted the location of the major jams.

These feelings were justified by the amount of time it took residents to evacuate—up to 11 hours to go the distance usually traveled in less than 1.5. For many who evacuated into Texas, total evacuation time frequently exceeded 20 hours. Since the storm, a consensus has developed that to alleviate this congestion much more secondary highway coordination is necessary throughout the state, contraflow needs to be considered for much greater distances, residents who are able and willing to evacuate early must be doubly encouraged to do so, families with multiple cars need to be discouraged from taking more than one unless they are needed to accommodate evacuees, and all modes of transportation in their various configurations must be fully considered for the contributions they can make to a safe and effective evacuation.

The major challenge to evacuation is the extremely limited number of evacuation routes, which is the result of the same topography and hydrology responsible for the area’s high level of hurricane risk. The presence of the Mississippi River, several lakes and bays, and associated marshes and swamps necessitates very expensive roadway construction techniques that are generally destructive to the environment, making the addition of more arteries increasingly challenging. This problem of limited evacuation routes also plagues the rest of the delta plain of southeast and south central Louisiana.


The fact that 600,000 residents evacuated means an equal number did not. Recent evacuation surveys show that two thirds of nonevacuees with the means to evacuate chose not to leave because they felt safe in their homes. Other nonevacuees with means relied on a cultural tradition of not leaving or were discouraged by negative experiences with past evacuations.

For those without means, the medically challenged, residents without personal transportation, and the homeless, evacuation requires significant assistance. The medically challenged often rely on life support equipment and are in such fragile states of health that they can only be moved short distances to medically equipped shelters. While a large storm-resistant structure with appropriate equipment has yet to be constructed or retrofitted, the Superdome was used to shelter nonevacuees during Ivan.

Residents who did not have personal transportation were unable to evacuate even if they wanted to. Approximately 120,000 residents (51,000 housing units x 2.4 persons/unit) do not have cars. A proposal made after the evacuation for Hurricane Georges to use public transit buses to assist in their evacuation out of the city was not implemented for Ivan. If Ivan had struck New Orleans directly it is estimated that 40-60,000 residents of the area would have perished.

Unwilling to merely accept this reality, emergency managers and representatives of nongovernmental disaster organizations, local universities, and faith based organizations have formed a working group to engage additional faith-based organizations in developing ride-sharing programs between congregation members with cars and those without. In the wake of Ivan’s near miss, this faith-based initiative has become a catalyst in the movement to make evacuation assistance for marginalized groups (those without means of evacuation) a top priority for all levels of government.

To the Rescue
If a hurricane of a magnitude similar to Ivan does strike New Orleans, the challenges surrounding rescue efforts for those who have not evacuated will be different from other coastal areas. Rescue teams would have to don special breathing equipment to protect themselves from floodwaters contaminated with chemicals and toxins released from commercial sources within the city and the petrochemical plants that dot the river’s edge. Additionally, tank cars carrying hazardous materials, which constantly pass through the city, would likely be damaged, leaking their contents into the floodwater and adding to the “brew.” The floodwater could become so polluted that the Environmental Protection Agency might consider it to be hazardous waste and prohibit it from being pumped out of the leveed areas into the lake and marshes until treated.

Regional and national rescue resources would have to respond as rapidly as possible and would require augmentation by local private vessels (assuming some survived). And, even with this help, federal and state governments have estimated that it would take 10 days to rescue all those stranded within the city. No shelters within the city would be free of risk from rising water. Because of this threat, the American Red Cross will not open shelters in New Orleans during hurricanes greater than category 2; staffing them would put employees and volunteers at risk. For Ivan, only the Superdome was made available as a refuge of last resort for the medically challenged and the homeless.

The Aftermath
In this hypothetical storm scenario, it is estimated that it would take nine weeks to pump the water out of the city, and only then could assessments begin to determine what buildings were habitable or salvageable. Sewer, water, and the extensive forced drainage pumping systems would be damaged. National authorities would be scrambling to build tent cities to house the hundreds of thousands of refugees unable to return to their homes and without other relocation options. In the aftermath of such a disaster, New Orleans would be dramatically different, and likely extremely diminished, from what it is today. Unlike the posthurricane development surges that have occurred in coastal beach communities, the cost of rebuilding the city of New Orleans’ dramatically damaged infrastructure would reduce the likelihood of a similar economic recovery. And, the unique culture of this American original that contributed jazz and so much more to the American culture would be lost.

Accepting the Reality

[pawdoggie]

Look for the demand for hearings to be quietly dropped.

Sorry, Old Bean, but Her Eminence, Hillary, was on "Good Morning America" this A.M. calling for a 9-11 style, "independent...non-political" commission to investigate the Federal response to Katrina. That means lights, cameras, a "moderate" Republican chairman, "Jersey-Girl" clones (the "Bayou Girls"?), sobbing victims, and a complete white-wash of the city and state response. My money says her Heinous gets what she wants.

[conservativecorner]

EVACUATION PLAN

I have now reviewed a copy of the State of Louisiana Emergency Operations Plan. This 45-page document says that "The Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation and Sheltering Plan is intended to provide a framework within which the parishes can coordinate their actions with State government in order to deal with a catastrophic hurricane."

Here are some of the items I found in this operations plan:

The evacuation plan states that "Local transportation resources should be marshaled and public transportation plans implemented as needed. Announce the location of staging areas for people who need transportation. Public transportation will concentrate on moving people from the staging areas to safety in host parishes with priority given to people with special needs." It also says that the Governor will "Mobilize State transportation resources to aid in the evacuation of people who have mobility and/or health problems. Deploy to support risk area parishes."

It certainly looks like it was the responsibility of the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans to make sure that people, and that includes poor people, were evacuated. It didn't happen. So ... it's Bush's fault?

http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html

[OldFriend]

The feds were magnificent but THE BIG LIE just keeps rolling along, like the Mississippi.

[freeperfromnj]

This is shocking coming from the Daily News.

[OldFriend]

Sure, let's have the federal government come into a state and take over without permission.

Against the law, so what!

Grow up, the law is there for a good reason.

I notice that the dems are willing to give that power to President Bush which says a lot, but I would not want to set such a precedence. Can you truthfully say you would want slick willie or john kerry with that power.

THINK!!!

[OldFriend]

Your country embarrasses you. Move somewhere better and stop thinking with your emotions and use your head.

[OldFriend]

She's back off already. My guess is that she voted FOR the Homeland Security Dept to include FEMA.

[Cboldt]

Hillary, was on "Good Morning America" this A.M. calling for a 9-11 style, "independent...non-political" commission to investigate the Federal response to Katrina.

Yep - and that will the exact scope, federal only. And the collapse of civil order will be shrugged off as miniscule, rumor, or a combination of those.