Posted on 12/05/2005 5:49:30 PM PST by LA Woman3
What good is a drill if you don't learn from it? The tens of thousands of pages of documents that Governor Blanco opened up to the public after a congressional request show the state and city of New Orleans had practiced hurricane disaster, and that neither had corrected problems revealed in those drills. From the hour-by-hour records now coming out of the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness comes a look at the nightmare that the state on paper had prepared for, but on the ground had never truly expected.
Back in July 2004, Hurricane Pam was throwing a fake Category Three storm at Louisiana. At the time, FEMA Regional Director Ron Castleman said, "If this were true to life, we'd be seeing high winds outside right now, beginning to have difficulties in reaching people, search and rescue would already be an issue that we're dealing with."
Just two months later, an after-action review of the Category Four Hurricane Ivan would begin to reveal the initial cracks in the system that would splinter the state.
"Telephones: trouble transferring calls," the review noted. "Need better communication between the state and parish OEP's."
But this year, by those last fateful days in August, the city of New Orleans' emergency evacuation plan itself seemed to see the future but not prepare for it.
According to the plan, "The maximum acceptable hurricane evacuation time standard for a Category 3 storm is 72 hours..."
The mayor and the governor called for the mandatory evacuation for Katrina less than 24 hours before the storm hit, and one haunting sentence in the plan seemed to be all but forgotten:
"Approximately 100,000 citizens of New Orleans do not have means of personal transportation."
With landfall, the documents sent by Blanco to Congess show a hell unfolding on Earth, which one troopers would time and time again have to verify to believe. With only 200 national guardsmen at the Superdome, and only a handful of highwater vehicles in Orleans Parish, by Tuesday, the day after the storm, the state had taken more than 1,000 calls for assistance -- mostly from people trapped either in attics or on rooftops.
Still, the state reports it was logging offers of help from other agencies "into a database for consideration should the need arise." By the next day, August 31st, the number of calls for help was up to 1,900. People were trapped on roofs, oil platforms were missing, railcars were leaking hazardous materials, and Methodist Hospital in New Orleans was reporting all phone lines down and no food or medicine left.
September 1st, the records show a mother from Atlanta calling that her son and other officers were holed up, trying to fend off looters... that "two New Orleans police officers were shot at 3800 Canal Boulevard" and "200 students are stranded in a second floor cafeteria at Dillard University." On the roof of the Civic Auditorium in Chalmette, an official reports"45 people are alive and 14 dead."
The next day, with explosions and fires breaking out, the NOPD's Homeland Security Director reports "crime widespread in the city," and "large amounts of violent offenses by armed gangs."
10,000 were trapped in the Superdome, and 25,000 in the convention center... where officers are under fire.
A state police log shows this reaction once desperately-needed lights were delivered that day to the convention center: "Upon arrival, officers observed there was no military presence or police presence at the center. Feeling it unsafe to leave the lights unprotected, the lights were transported back to the command post for safe keeping." Just an indication of the confusion reigning behind the phone lines at the state's nerve centers and at police stations around the New Orleans area.
9 News will bring you more on these e-mails as we continue to comb through them.
"Approximately 100,000 citizens of New Orleans do not have means of personal transportation."
Stand by for NEWS! I can just hear the voice of Paul Harvey.
please get everyone over here.
Ping
This is some important new information. It is too bad there are so many hot topics going on. More people need to see this.
You know, Blanco may think that this release of e-mails will vindicate her, but it looks to me like it will only reveal the state and local government's incompetence.
Agreed. Glad you are here. The part about 100,000 not having transportation and Nagin not using the school buses while they were still above water is HOT.
ping!
Good.
There is no way that FEMA would have been able to help without the locals having their Sh!t together! Nagin and Blanco need to be brought up on murder charges!
And the thing is, I'm sure she had all the "bad stuff" erased before turning it over. Just imagine what's not there anymore.
One wonders what Blanco's "National Surrogates" will do with this.
At a minimum, it was criminal neglect of government officials but also of a community that drove off to evacuate and left many to drown.
it is already starting
Recall Nagin gently suggested that people take a train "to anywhere" even though the last train had already left the station--empty.
Wow, I just looked at your home page. You really have kept up, haven't you. I'll have to review.
I still think it's stunning to compare the reponse of FL and AL to that of LA. I know FL didn't flood, but, gee whiz, haven't they been hit with 4 major storms in the past two years? I have friends who travel to FL on business and they invariably comment on the "blue tarp roofs" visisble from the air. I remeber being at Purdue in 1978 when the blizzard hit. 4 feet of snow, temps at minus 15F and 45 MPH winds. I never saw anyone from FEMA, although when they shut the school down (first time in 78 years) our major concern was getting to the local liquor store, which, predictably, was damn near sold out(at 10 A.M.). Ended up drinking Black Label beer and cherry vodka.
Yuk.
It looks like there just may be too much evidence of Blanco's incompetence for even the media to spin, soft peddle and/or sweep under the rug, though she's clearly hoping for that and the media's giving it the old college try.
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