The Story of the Hurricane - After a Period of Self-Suppression, the Horrific Story Spurs the Press

The New York Observer ^ | 9/12/2005 | Sheelah Kolhatkar, Rebecca Dana

[anymouse]

Long but good read.

[Polybius]

“When you’re confronted with American citizens who are doing the right thing and are neglected and abandoned, it makes you mad. It made me mad.”

In case any liberal news media reporters are lurking on FreeRepublic and are wondering who abandoned those people........... Here are the facts spoon-fed to you.

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NOBODY was supposed to be left trapped in the New Orleans flood bowl death trap as 200,000 low-income residents were as a result of the gross and possibly criminal negligence on the part of the Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, who failed to follow their own evacuation plan prior to the landfall of Katrina.

New Orleans is in a Storm Surge Zone, below sea level, and surrounded by levies that were only designed to withstand storms lass than a slow-moving Category 3 hurricane. That means that any person staying in New Orleans during a Category 3 or higher hurricane is facing a very high risk of death. Katrina was forecast as a Category 5 and hit as a Category 4.

What Is "Storm Surge" and Why It Matters.

The 2004 Hurricane Pam Exercise was modeled on a catastrophic destruction of New Orleans after only a slow-moving Category 3 hurricane. It was based on the assumption that there had been a complete evacuation of New Orleans. Shelters outside of the New Orleans flood bowl had already been identified:

The interagency shelter group identified the need for about 1,000 shelters for a catastrophic disaster. The shelter team identified 784 shelters and has developed plans for locating the remaining shelters.

Hurricane Pam Exercise Concludes.(2004 New Orleans Disaster Prediction)

President Bush requested that Governor Blanco allow the Federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, and Governor Blanco, for political reasons, refused:

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday..........The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they had been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals", said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.

The Southeast Louisiana Evacuation plan supplement, revised in 2000, page 13, read paragraph 5, stated:

5. The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.

In spite of that, over four hundred New Orleans publicly owned buses, as counted by members of FreeRepublic on post-Katrina satellite images, remained parked in neat rows and 200,000 low-income New Orleans residents were left trapped in the ¡§New Orleans flood bowl¡¨ (as scientists call it) in the face of the incoming storm surge.

Those 400+ buses, at 70 passengers per bus, could have taken 28,000 of those low-income citizens per trip out of New Orleans on the inbound lanes that the Governor and Mayor inexplicably left unused during the evacuation.

As a result, 200,000 of the poorest residents of New Orleans were left trapped din a disaster waiting to happen with no where to go but the Superdome.

While 800,000 of New Orleans' residents with private transportation were being saved, 200,000 of New Orleans', low-income residents were left abandoned by the Governor and the Mayor in the New Orleans flood bowl to face a Category 4 Hurricane Storm Surge.

If the levies had failed catastrophically instead of at a few certain point as they did, the death toll would have reached Hiroshima proportions.

[clee1]

A GOOD read????

More leftist Bush-bashing is a good read?

What have you been smoking???

[CondorFlight]

“When you’re confronted with American citizens who are doing the right thing and are neglected and abandoned, it makes you mad. It made me mad.”

Is shooting at your rescuers 'doing the right thing'?
Is repelling a force of 80 police coming with rescue supplies the right thing?
Is parking 145 school buses 1.2 miles from the Convention Center and not using them but letting them be destroyed by the water, doing the right thing?
Is the governor forbidding the Red Cross to deliver food and aid to the Convention Center and the Superdome doing the right thing?
But it's all Bush's fault, right?

[battlegearboat]

Yeah, it's all Bus's fault.

[Paleo Conservative]

If the levies had failed catastrophically instead of at a few certain point as they did, the death toll would have reached Hiroshima proportions.

If the storm had been Cat 5 and hit NO directly, the storm surge would have overtopped the levees.

[Nathan Zachary]

Good job Polybius. We need to put the facts together and send them out to every radio station and news outlet, and spread it over the internet to counter the BS the communist media is spreading.

[dfwgator]

SUVs can drive themselves, why can't Busses?

[anymouse]

Interesting to see how the media reports on it's own reporting operations.

Of course the lamestream media is going to bash President Bush - and the Sun will continue to rise in the East. That doesn't mean you can't step over the cow patties and spot the flowers growing among the usual liberal clap-trap.

[clee1]

Sorry, but I am tired of swimming through a cesspool of liberal diarrhea-of-the-mouth(or pen) to find that all-too-rare flower.

[Nathan Zachary]

"With a 13-man crew sleeping in a pair of R.V.’s, Mr. Cooper and his team wake at dawn and troll through the city looking for stories,

instead of helping people.

That says it all.

[clee1]

Don't you know that reproters are only supposed to "tell" the stories; not be part of them themselves?

Except when they can fabricate stories to bash Bush, of course.

[Bostton1]

Why didn't the groups try walking to shelters outside of NO? Why sit there and wait for your local government to kill you?

[mercy]

My sentiments exactly.

I couldn't stand to read it. I skimmed.

Hate Bush Inc. ad absurd-um.

Reporters are outraged at the evil around them ..... "it must be Bush's fault". Effing morons. They care SO much. They want to help the poor poor suffering people .... so do they pin the blame where it belongs? Do they do the right thing to obtain justice for the aggrieved evacuees? Noooooooooo. They use the evacuees pain and suffering for their own political ends.

Political looters.

[conservative in nyc]

“We came in originally with a FEMA convoy on Monday night,” said Ralph Blumenthal, the second New York Times reporter in New Orleans. ”It took about four or five hours. We got lost a few times … there was a lot of confusion. It was very dark, and they didn’t know the way. There were a lot of downed lines and a lot of water.

“We got into New Orleans, into a temporary base of operations that FEMA set up at 11 p.m. It looked very scary. There were no lights on; from what you could see, there were a couple of fires burning. The convoy had to stop several times. Some of the trucks couldn’t pass under wires safely.”

That can't possibly be true. We all know FEMA was nowhere near New Orleans any time after the hurricane.

[Nathan Zachary]

There were 279 school buses in that lot.
The city buses in another pic (the white ones) were 175, and there are a total of 2000 in NO. which could have been utilized in the days before Katrina hit land.

The media is trying extremely hard to ignore the facts in their blame game, it's up to us to expose them to as many people as we can. We CANNOT let the media get away with this fraud.

[Cedar]

“'A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine,'he wrote in the Times, describing the scene at the Superdome a day before Mr. Bury had arrived. 'Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers.'"

Can't see the federal government being blamed for this.

Why did this 2 yr. old child's parents let her sleep in urine??

And drugs and teenagers out of control? Who's to blame -- FEMA?

Not for these actions.

[clee1]

Political whores.

[anymouse]

We have a winner. Even the media is tired of sensational reporters using hurricane victims as props.

[Between the Lines]

"I saw a woman walking up the Huey Long Bridge with a baby, and she wanted us to take her away, and I couldn't," Mr. Christenson continued. "There was no one to help her. She was crying, and you could see how tired she was. And all she wanted was some help for her baby..."

Yes YOU, Mr. Christienson could have helped that poor woman. You had a truck and YOU could have taken her to safety. For all of your sanctimonious BS you are no better than any other person or organization that you condemn for not being there to help. Except for one big difference, you were there and you did nothing. That makes you worse than them and it also makes you a hypocrite.

If anything bad happened to that poor woman or her child there is only you to blame.