Thoughts on Katrina
Aug. 31st, 2005 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lawnrrdThere are a whole bunch of things going through my mind about Katrina and its aftermath. Here are some of them in no particular order.
From the NY Times web site:
When is the federal government going to stop using tax money to pay people to live and work where floods are likely to kill them and destroy their homes?
People don't buy or build houses if they can't get mortgages. People can't get mortgages if they can't get insurance. But without the federally subsidized program, people couldn't have afforded flood insurance. Which means fewer mortgages, fewer homes, fewer residents, and, after a catastrophic hurricane, fewer floating bodies.
(Of course, poor people may be living in unmortgaged shacks. But with a smaller community, there are also likely to be fewer of them.)
Anyone who is not checking out![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
interdictor's journal should be. He and his team are on the eleventh floor of an office building in New Orleans, keeping DirectNIC up and running with a diesel generator. They sometimes put up a live feed.
The thing that disgusts me the most about American culture may very well be that most Americans would disapprove of sending a couple of helicopter gunships to decisively take care of this problem.
On September 11, 2001, my wife and I lived in Manhattan, about 2 miles from the World Trade Center. The lights in our apartment didn't flicker, the water and sewers worked perfectly (and, for that matter, so did my ATM card), and closing the bridges and tunnels for a couple of days was a mild inconvenience at worst.
I don't know anything about experiencing a disaster firsthand.
Various people who are outraged by everything that George Bush does are now outraged by a photograph of him smiling and playing a guitar at a public appearance on Monday. It is not clear to me what else the President of the United States should have been doing. He has ordered to the military and federal civilian authorities to deploy and start helping, presumably in coordination with state and local governments. Should he personally fly to Baton Rouge and, by his (and the army that must constantly attend him) presence, disrupt the operations of the state and local officials? Should he be reviewing reports that do not yet exist? Should he watch CNN constantly, again, disrupting state and local officials with constant questions about what he sees?
For that matter, a big deal is being made about how he didn't immediately return to Washington. Does anyone seriously believe that, for now, there is anything he can do from the White House that he can't do from Crawford?
Nearly everything that has happened—and worse—had been predicted by apparently-non-crackpotty scientists long ago. Arguments have raged and will continue to rage about what the federal government should have paid for, what the Army Corps of Engineers should have done, and what the State should have paid for. But the risks have been known for years, maybe decades. Whatever the progress on various remedies, the city of New Orleans and the state should have planned to cope with this possibility with what they had.
It seems that they didn't. A former mayor of New Orleans said on CNN this morning that he had thought there was a plan. Why didn't he know?
I like to think that here in New York we have a Plan.
I don't believe in any gods or even in the possibility of such. But I look at the devastation and suffering and sometimes wish that I had something more to say than that my thoughts and best wishes are with the dying and the bereaved, the hurt and the hungry, the suffering and the destitute. It sounds so cold next to, "I am praying for you," but, on second thought, maybe for me that is prayer.
From the NY Times web site:
Parishes east of the city were also battered. The president of Plaquemines Parish, on the southeastern tip of Louisiana, announced that the lower half of the parish had been reclaimed by the river.
When is the federal government going to stop using tax money to pay people to live and work where floods are likely to kill them and destroy their homes?
People don't buy or build houses if they can't get mortgages. People can't get mortgages if they can't get insurance. But without the federally subsidized program, people couldn't have afforded flood insurance. Which means fewer mortgages, fewer homes, fewer residents, and, after a catastrophic hurricane, fewer floating bodies.
(Of course, poor people may be living in unmortgaged shacks. But with a smaller community, there are also likely to be fewer of them.)
Anyone who is not checking out
interdictor's journal should be. He and his team are on the eleventh floor of an office building in New Orleans, keeping DirectNIC up and running with a diesel generator. They sometimes put up a live feed.The thing that disgusts me the most about American culture may very well be that most Americans would disapprove of sending a couple of helicopter gunships to decisively take care of this problem.
On September 11, 2001, my wife and I lived in Manhattan, about 2 miles from the World Trade Center. The lights in our apartment didn't flicker, the water and sewers worked perfectly (and, for that matter, so did my ATM card), and closing the bridges and tunnels for a couple of days was a mild inconvenience at worst.
I don't know anything about experiencing a disaster firsthand.
Various people who are outraged by everything that George Bush does are now outraged by a photograph of him smiling and playing a guitar at a public appearance on Monday. It is not clear to me what else the President of the United States should have been doing. He has ordered to the military and federal civilian authorities to deploy and start helping, presumably in coordination with state and local governments. Should he personally fly to Baton Rouge and, by his (and the army that must constantly attend him) presence, disrupt the operations of the state and local officials? Should he be reviewing reports that do not yet exist? Should he watch CNN constantly, again, disrupting state and local officials with constant questions about what he sees?
For that matter, a big deal is being made about how he didn't immediately return to Washington. Does anyone seriously believe that, for now, there is anything he can do from the White House that he can't do from Crawford?
Nearly everything that has happened—and worse—had been predicted by apparently-non-crackpotty scientists long ago. Arguments have raged and will continue to rage about what the federal government should have paid for, what the Army Corps of Engineers should have done, and what the State should have paid for. But the risks have been known for years, maybe decades. Whatever the progress on various remedies, the city of New Orleans and the state should have planned to cope with this possibility with what they had.
It seems that they didn't. A former mayor of New Orleans said on CNN this morning that he had thought there was a plan. Why didn't he know?
I like to think that here in New York we have a Plan.
I don't believe in any gods or even in the possibility of such. But I look at the devastation and suffering and sometimes wish that I had something more to say than that my thoughts and best wishes are with the dying and the bereaved, the hurt and the hungry, the suffering and the destitute. It sounds so cold next to, "I am praying for you," but, on second thought, maybe for me that is prayer.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 04:48 pm (UTC)As the symbolic leader of the country, it would be in his best interest I think, to show at least some symbolic empathy, but we know he's not capable of grasping that, so it's no big surprise or shock to me that he's gamboling around in california playing the gee-tar and acting the fool. It gives fuel to his critics, but they already have so much to work with anyway, it just seems almost a waste of attention and energy to focus on that.
But as to New Orleans and their levee breaks and the fact that the risks have been known for years--true. And they were planning for it and working on it with what they thought they had. But you can point the finger at Bush and his neocons for this one--
From 'Editor & Publisher'
Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELAdropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.
On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
....The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late.
One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.
The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."
Full text of article here. (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313)
no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 07:42 pm (UTC)Maybe he also lacks the emotional depth that in itself would make him show different feelings. That too would be bad. But I don't know if he lacks it, and I think that only the people who know him personally are competent to tell.
But much of the outrage seems not to be based, not on any lack of compassion or understanding on the President's part, but on his failure to manage his media relations in the face of the crisis. Maybe I'm being unfair here, but I suspect that, had he rushed back to the White House or to some other war room, these same critics would now be blasting him for trying to make himself seem effective despite the limits on how he can help.
As for the levee issue, I had already seen that article, and that's not really about the point that I was making. What I was saying is that the levees were in whatever condition that they were in, and the city planners knew it. Did they have a plan for dealing with the aftermath of a major hurricane, besides hoping that it wouldn't come before the levees were further built up? I have seen some reports in the MSM that they didn't, really.
If those reports are accurate, they show a profound, morally culpable negligence on the part of city officials. If they are inaccurate, I'd be grateful for a link to the facts.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 08:11 pm (UTC)Nah, I don't think so. The man's job approval ratings are apparently down around the neighborhood of where Nixon's were just before his resignation. Even an awful lot of Republicans are pretty disgusted right now, I think. When you've got that many people down on you, it's hard to do anything right and there's no shortage of people willing to claim that anything you do is wrong. Doesn't mean they're mistaken necessarily, but it has more to do with the predictability of human nature than any basis in reality.
As for holding local government accountable, I don't know about that. Sure, they knew what they had to work with, but it seems overly optimistic to try and have too detailed of a plan in the face of something as unpredictable as this. If you ask the mayor of New Orleans though, they apparently had SOME kind of plan for dealing with the problems, they just couldn't get cooperation or coordination:
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- A day after Hurricane Katrina dealt a devastating blow to the Big Easy, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Tuesday night blasted what he called a lack of coordination in relief efforts for setting behind the city's recovery.
"There is way too many fricking ... cooks in the kitchen," Nagin said in a phone interview with WAPT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi, fuming over what he said were scuttled plans to plug a 200-yard breach near the 17th Street Canal, allowing Lake Pontchartrain to spill into the central business district.
....
The National Weather Service reported a breach along the Industrial Canal levee at Tennessee Street, in southeast New Orleans, on Monday. Local reports later said the levee was overtopped, not breached, but the Corps of Engineers reported it Tuesday afternoon as having been breached.
But Nagin said a repair attempt was supposed to have been made Tuesday.
According to the mayor, Black Hawk helicopters were scheduled to pick up and drop massive 3,000-pound sandbags in the 17th Street Canal breach, but were diverted on rescue missions. Nagin said neglecting to fix the problem has set the city behind by at least a month.
"I had laid out like an eight-week to ten-week timeline where we could get the city back in semblance of order. It's probably been pushed back another four weeks as a result of this," Nagin said.
"That four weeks is going to stop all commerce in the city of New Orleans. It also impacts the nation, because no domestic oil production will happen in southeast Louisiana."
Nagin said he expects relief efforts in the city to improve as New Orleans, the National Guard and FEMA combine their command centers for better communication, followup and accountability.
---------------
Apparently they diverted the copters that could have helped seal the breach into rescue operations instead. An admirable seeming decision in the heat of the moment, but in the big picture they might have saved more lives by sealing the levee and stopping the water, if it was possible to do so.
Ultimately when it comes down to a major act of nature type of disaster, you can criticize the planning all you want, because it could always have been better SOMEHOW, but you might as well mount the fickle finger of blame on a spinner and just see where it stops.