Katrina Research

For approximately three weeks beginning on September 7, 2005, I worked with a small group on democraticunderground.com to compile information found online about the Katrina disaster and various responses to it.

Online information has a way of disappearing. We managed to save some interesting items, including info from government sources, the news media, and survivors and including items that may not have been preserved elsewhere.

The info was compiled in a DU forum thread, the text of which is pasted into this page below. The initial post describes the method used to organize the info. It’s followed by a (lengthy) list of topic/post headings, which is followed in turn by the actual posts containing the info.

To minimize arguable copyright violations, the posts usually contain four paragraphs or less, plus a link to the source quoted. The page you are viewing now nonetheless contains nearly 155,000 words; but it would be much longer if the full texts linked to were included.

The organization is only partial – sorry, it was a crisis-driven group effort in a not-so-well adapted medium. So there may be info relating to the same topic in more than one section. To find info on a particular topic, I recommend you do searches for key words, and be sure to search through the whole page.

I apologize that, at least for now, many of the links are truncated and won't work; but there are hundreds of links that would need to be mended, and when I found access to the original thread denied at least from certain directions, I became concerned that it might be worthwhile to preserve a copy of the info, even if incomplete, in this form. To get the full URL for any link, try going to http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=106x22805 and look for it under the applicable post number indicated below. If the full link is not shown, right-click on what there is of it and you should have the option to go to or copy the full link

The first 6th or so of the thread below is just topic headings. The dates in the post headings generally refer to the date on which the info was found, rather than the date of the source.

I do not vouch for the accuracy of the information, which was compiled from a wide array of sources, nor do I necessarily agree with all the comments added by those who posted the information.

Research Thread

(From http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=106x22805)

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 04:07 PM
Original message
DUers Katrina Research Thread: Organized by categories
I am starting this thread to organize information about hurricane Katrina. Please please please help keep this site organized. We need a place where people can find information fast. Here is the design. First I will establish categories as replies to the original post. Each of these will be like a folder. If you have links to articles please put them in the right folder-reply-post. The folder-reply-category-posts will have names such as the following:
Before K: Info about the likely consequences Scientific articles
Befork K: Info about likely consequences madia articles
Before K: What the Government knew
Just before K: Weather and news alerts
Just before K: Govt action..city, state, fed
Before K: FEMA
During K: FEMA
After K: FEMA
If you add any information to these categories, please format the information as follows:
subject line: date first, title of article
message area: link to the article(that has been refreshed), brief description of the article or post from it so that someone can immediately figure out what it is about.
Please use this thread only to organize material into categories. If you do not see your category already listed, please only add new categories if you use the format listed above: pre- K, during K, and after K. Tomorrow we will start a new category called after September 8.
Please also do not use this thread to post replies, comments, or request for information.
Thanks for your understanding and patience while I get this organized. If you want to help in this endeavor, I would love to have your support. I am no Lone Ranger and could use help getting this organized. If you can help, please PM me and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
Thanks so much : grouphug:
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Replies to this thread
Pre K. Weather reports and damage predictions just before storm.
mom cat
Sep-07-05 04:13 PM
#1
Aug 29: Expert: Katrina could unleash disaster...CNN
mom cat
Sep-07-05 04:19 PM
#2
Aug 29: DU thread: New Orleans braces for monster hurricane
mom cat
Sep-07-05 04:28 PM
#3
Buses were used to PU people at 12 locations:
babylonsister
Sep-09-05 08:46 AM
#249
This link is dead...does anyone have a copy of it?
lateo
Sep-19-05 03:02 PM
#538
9/9: Simulation Just Pre-K Predicted 61,290 Dead
snot
Sep-09-05 04:54 PM
#265
2004, pre-election:
babylonsister
Sep-10-05 02:05 PM
#315
Sept 10: Santorum slams pre K weather forecasting!
mom cat
Sep-10-05 09:12 PM
#348
9/11 (orig post 9/5) Prior Knowledge Laundry List
snot
Sep-11-05 12:36 PM
#390
Post K: Aid to NOLA blocked
mom cat
Sep-07-05 04:39 PM
#4
Sept 2: National guard not allowing aid into the city
mom cat
Sep-07-05 04:44 PM
#5
ongoing, Katrina Evacuee Relocation Thread
preciousdove
Sep-07-05 06:19 PM
#6
Timeline of aid prevention and refusal:
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 03:45 AM
#151
Sept 3: Red Cross barred from NOLA
mom cat
Sep-08-05 11:17 AM
#202
Homeland Security
mom cat
Sep-09-05 07:47 PM
#280
9/13 E-mail from friend Re- a Cameraman's View
snot
Sep-13-05 02:14 PM
#433
9/14 Sequel: A Concentration of Horrific Pain, Lots o' Cops Doing Not Much
snot
Sep-14-05 09:52 PM
#481
Sept 2: Daley 'shocked' at federal snub of offers to help
mom cat
Sep-08-05 12:10 PM
#207
Sept 3: New Mexico National Guard delayed
mom cat
Sep-09-05 07:28 PM
#279
Sep 3: Fearing riots, Guard rejects food airdrops
mom cat
Sep-09-05 07:51 PM
#281
Sep 2: Bush: had not requested foreign help and did not need it
mom cat
Sep-09-05 07:58 PM
#282
9/11 (orig post 9/5) FEMA's Rescue Team Cools Heels in Dallas
snot
Sep-11-05 12:58 PM
#400
quod erat demonstrandum: It Was Intentional
understandinglife
Sep-13-05 07:47 PM
#452
more examples of FEMA blocking evacuation and aid
philb
Sep-14-05 09:58 PM
#482
snips from articles on FEMA blocking aid to N. O.
philb
Sep-14-05 10:00 PM
#483
I'll do what I can.
fooj
Sep-07-05 07:39 PM
#7
After K: FEMA
mom cat
Sep-07-05 07:56 PM
#8
Sept 5: Why FEMA turned awal help..daily Kos
mom cat
Sep-07-05 08:16 PM
#9
Sept 5: Fema won't accept Amtrak's help in the evacuation
mom cat
Sep-07-05 08:30 PM
#11
Sept 5: FEMA turns back Walmart trucks etc...NYT
mom cat
Sep-07-05 08:23 PM
#10
FEMA-Homeland Sec block food from Red Cross
mom cat
Sep-07-05 08:34 PM
#12
Sept 2: FEMA turns away morticians
mom cat
Sep-07-05 08:43 PM
#13
Sept3: FEMA blocks 500 boats
mom cat
Sep-07-05 08:47 PM
#14
Sep FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board
mom cat
Sep-07-05 08:53 PM
#15
FEMA attempted to block planes evacuating hospitals
snot
Sep-07-05 10:18 PM
#49
Thread with info re- FEMA refusing or delaying help (all time periods)
snot
Sep-07-05 10:38 PM
#59
From FEMA's website: FEMA's claims process
snot
Sep-07-05 10:45 PM
#64
Offer of help from foreign nations
snot
Sep-07-05 11:55 PM
#91
Glad that you captured this...it is now MIA
mom cat
Sep-08-05 02:19 AM
#139
09/09: more on swedish plane.
skids
Sep-09-05 10:26 AM
#250
Sept 6: Frustrated Firemen hand out flyers for FEMA
mom cat
Sep-08-05 12:13 AM
#93
Report from a Psychologist treating evacuees
snot
Sep-08-05 12:32 AM
#105
Sept 6: Would-be rescuers cool their heels (FEMA's own rescuers)
mom cat
Sep-08-05 12:35 AM
#107
DU thread with multiple links re- FEMA's botched response
snot
Sep-08-05 12:48 AM
#119
1,000 firefighters to be used as community-relations officers for FEMA
snot
Sep-08-05 12:58 AM
#123
A compilation of help rejected by FEMA, mostly After
snot
Sep-08-05 01:05 AM
#125
FEMA diverted copters w/ sandbags to pick up people at a church
snot
Sep-08-05 01:08 AM
#126
***After K: FEMA CHIEF: MICHAEL BROWN
mom cat
Sep-08-05 01:28 AM
#133
Sept 6: FEMA Chief Waited Until After Storm Hit
mom cat
Sep-08-05 01:34 AM
#135
Sept 3: Brown didn't know about the convention center
DrDebug
Sep-10-05 07:29 AM
#306
FEMA Chief Brown Paid Millions in False Claims to Help Bush Win Fla. Votes
mom cat
Sep-10-05 08:25 PM
#333
Sept 6: FEMA Turned Away Aid, Rescue Crews, Cut Emergency Communication
mom cat
Sep-08-05 02:31 AM
#140
Sept 2: Loudoun deputies can't reach FEMA, Louisiana officials
mom cat
Sep-08-05 03:44 AM
#150
Minstrel' boy's post on this
mom cat
Sep-08-05 04:08 AM
#163
CA firefighters (9/11 rescuers) barred from N.O. for a week
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:05 AM
#161
Who redirected helicopters leading to flooding of New Orleans?
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:06 AM
#162
Many cases of hampered rescue efforts
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:30 AM
#170
FEMA Deliberately Sabotaging Hurricane Relief Efforts
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:45 AM
#177
Sept 1: FEMA to rescue workers: Pay for your own gas!
mom cat
Sep-08-05 09:41 AM
#192
Sept 1:THE BOY SCOUTS!! THE FREAKING BOY SCOUTS!!
mom cat
Sep-08-05 10:20 AM
#199
Aug 29: FEMA: First Responders urged not to respond...unless..
mom cat
Sep-08-05 01:01 PM
#213
Amazing story of Gore at NOLA - - details of how FEMA tried to stop him
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 07:28 PM
#234
JP's Maestri said FEMA didn't keep its word
mom cat
Sep-08-05 09:19 PM
#240
9/9 Swedish plane full with aid waiting since 6 days for an US order
snot
Sep-09-05 04:48 PM
#263
Sept 9: Embattled Brown Taken Off Katrina Duty
mom cat
Sep-09-05 04:55 PM
#266
Sept 2: Slow response bewilders former FEMA officials
mom cat
Sep-09-05 05:06 PM
#267
Sept 5: State of Art Mobile Hospital from UNC Turned Away
mom cat
Sep-09-05 05:44 PM
#270
Sept 4: Doctors Hamstrung in Relief Efforts (100's of medical people)
mom cat
Sep-09-05 06:19 PM
#275
9/10 (orig 9/2) Per FAA, not ONE plane reported being shot at
snot
Sep-10-05 09:06 PM
#345
9/10 (orig 9/2) Troops Entering N.O. Find LACK of Violence
snot
Sep-10-05 09:21 PM
#353
See also
snot
Sep-10-05 11:47 PM
#386
9/10 (orig post 9/3) Landrieu Re- FEMA Rejection of Offers, 17th St. Levee
snot
Sep-10-05 10:20 PM
#367
Sept 11: NYT..(no FEMA's failures) Disarray Marked the Path From Hurricane
mom cat
Sep-10-05 10:54 PM
#374
Sept 11: State officials say FEMA too slow on housing
mom cat
Sep-11-05 06:27 PM
#415
Paulson...the new FEMA Director
mom cat
Sep-13-05 06:00 PM
#450
Sept 13 Paulson and duct tape
mom cat
Sep-13-05 06:03 PM
#451
9/13 A Volunteer in Miss.: FEMA Nowhere, but its Obstacles Are Everywhere
snot
Sep-14-05 12:08 AM
#454
Raw Story, from WSJ: Internal docs show feds "bungled" Katrina response
mom cat
Sep-14-05 12:19 AM
#457
9/13 Blanco gives up on FEMA, hires firm herself to recover Louisiana dead
snot
Sep-14-05 12:42 AM
#463
9/14 Firm hired by Blanco is subsidiary of one FEMA would have hired
snot
Sep-14-05 11:43 AM
#479
9/13 Chertoff STILL Impeding FEMA Efforts
snot
Sep-14-05 12:56 AM
#467
9-14 re 9-13: Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows
mom cat
Sep-14-05 09:23 AM
#478
9-14KR Report: 'Confused' Chertoff Delayed Federal Katrina Response
mom cat
Sep-15-05 10:49 AM
#487
9/13 WSJ: Internal docs show feds "bungled" Katrina response
snot
Sep-14-05 01:05 AM
#468
9/14 Man Saved Day 16 Bec. N.G. Lt. Broke FEMA Order Not to Search Homes
snot
Sep-15-05 01:24 AM
#485
9/15 Brown admits calling WH within hours of Katrina's hit
snot
Sep-15-05 09:50 PM
#488
9-15 "Sick and Abandoned" FEMA blocked emergency hospital
mom cat
Sep-15-05 11:07 PM
#490
9-15KR Report: 'Confused' Chertoff Delayed Federal Katrina Response
mom cat
Sep-15-05 11:12 PM
#491
9/16 FEMA Officials Were Shocked @ Failure of Brown & Chertoff to Mobilize
snot
Sep-16-05 03:32 PM
#503
More pieces on similar subject
snot
Sep-17-05 06:14 PM
#516
9/16 FEMA Ordered Dr. to STOP Treating Victims--Watched 2 Die
snot
Sep-17-05 01:08 AM
#507
9/16 Oil Workers Get New Homes Fast
snot
Sep-17-05 01:20 AM
#508
9/16 Criteria for FEMA Aid Not to Be Divulged to Victims???
snot
Sep-17-05 01:34 AM
#509
9/17 NYT: FEMA, Slow to the Rescue, Now Stumbles in Aid Effort
snot
Sep-17-05 02:42 PM
#511
9/17 Michael Moore Rpts His Own Relief Efforts, & FEMA's Complete Absence
snot
Sep-17-05 03:47 PM
#514
9/18 People Are Still Dying and FEMA's Still Ignoring Them
snot
Sep-18-05 04:47 PM
#520
9/18 FEMA ordering ALL recovered bodies be prayed over
snot
Sep-19-05 01:10 PM
#529
9/18 Where Were the 500 FEMA Busses?
snot
Sep-19-05 01:18 PM
#533
8-29-FEMA and the busses
mom cat
Sep-23-05 02:02 PM
#551
Pre K: Scientific info on probable damage
mom cat
Sep-07-05 08:55 PM
#16
Scientific American: Drowning New Orleans
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:17 AM
#96
Popular Mechanics: New Orleans Is Sinking
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:18 AM
#98
Natural Hazards Observer: What if Hurricane Ivan Had Not Missed NO?
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:36 AM
#108
PBS NOW: New Orleans and the Delta
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:37 AM
#109
LSU Study: Would New Orleans Really Flood in a Major Hurricane
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:38 AM
#110
Nat'l Geographic: Gone with the Water
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:41 AM
#112
9/10 (orig 9/2) Models predicted New Orleans disaster, experts say
snot
Sep-10-05 09:01 PM
#343
Pre K: Media articles on probable damage
mom cat
Sep-07-05 08:57 PM
#17
DU thread with multiple links
snot
Sep-08-05 12:46 AM
#116
Pre K: Fed Govt knowledge about probable damage
mom cat
Sep-07-05 08:58 PM
#18
Disaster in the Making (RE FEMA)
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:22 AM
#100
2001, FEMA warned a hurricane at N.O. was one of 3 most likely disasters
snot
Sep-08-05 01:21 AM
#129
Sept 9: Hurricane Simulation Predicted 61,290 Dead (They KNEW!)
mom cat
Sep-09-05 02:23 PM
#256
9/11 (orig post 9/5) Prior Knowledge Laundry List
snot
Sep-11-05 12:37 PM
#391
9/17 Flood Experts Warned Dennis Hastert(R)That Fema Would Fail Floods
snot
Sep-18-05 01:46 AM
#517
9-18-05-!! Flood Experts Warned Dennis Hastert(R)That Fema Would Fail Floo
mom cat
Sep-18-05 11:06 PM
#523
Pre K: State of LA knowledge about probable damage
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:00 PM
#19
PBS NOW transcript The City in a Bowl
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:21 AM
#99
Pre K: Feds block action to prevent NOLA didaster
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:01 PM
#20
Corps of Engineers' Civilian Chief Ousted
Angry Girl
Sep-07-05 11:27 PM
#87
Bush fired head of Corps of Engineers for slamming budget cuts
snot
Sep-08-05 12:51 AM
#120
Aug 31, 2005: Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?
mom cat
Sep-10-05 12:14 PM
#310
9/11 (orig post 9/5) FEMA Action to REDUCE Volunteer Pool
snot
Sep-11-05 12:49 PM
#397
Pre K: Bush guts disaster relief
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:03 PM
#21
NOLA U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Record Cuts
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:24 AM
#102
Disaster in the Making (RE FEMA)
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:25 AM
#103
FEMA packed with W's pals
snot
Sep-08-05 12:42 AM
#114
DU thread with multiple links re- Bush crippling FEMA
snot
Sep-08-05 12:46 AM
#117
Brown's earlier scandal
snot
Sep-08-05 01:24 AM
#131
9/10 (orig 9/2) Brown fired from previous job
snot
Sep-10-05 09:08 PM
#346
9/10 (orig 9/2) More on Brown
snot
Sep-10-05 09:20 PM
#352
9/11 Just when you thought you heard it all about Brownie
snot
Sep-12-05 01:55 AM
#421
Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
snot
Sep-08-05 01:33 AM
#134
Mitigation program eliminated, etc.
snot
Sep-08-05 01:41 AM
#136
July 24, 2005 - Poor : You are on your own (for evaccuation)
mom cat
Sep-08-05 11:05 AM
#201
Sept 1 *** Important timeline on FEMA and the cuts****
mom cat
Sep-08-05 12:31 PM
#209
FEMA Union Prez says Bush weakened FEMA & that FEMA was unprepared
snot
Sep-09-05 12:06 AM
#244
9/9 E-mail fr friend re- Article on Brown & Bush Cronyism/Corruption
snot
Sep-09-05 01:29 PM
#252
Aug 29: Disaster experts: Federal government wasn't ready for Katrina
mom cat
Sep-09-05 04:42 PM
#262
9/10 E-mail fr friend w/ analysis of Brown's resume
snot
Sep-10-05 08:22 PM
#332
Sept10: Texas Republicans on FEMA
mom cat
Sep-10-05 08:52 PM
#339
9/11 (orig post 9/5) From Hurricane Guru Jeff Masters; Evacuation of Poor
snot
Sep-11-05 12:22 PM
#387
9/11 (orig post 9/5) Ex-officials say weakened FEMA botched response
snot
Sep-11-05 12:27 PM
#388
9/19 FEMA Employee Opinions worst I have ever seen, period
snot
Sep-19-05 09:47 PM
#543
Pre K: Clinton builds emergency preparedness
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:04 PM
#22
9/10 E-mail fr friend Comparing Pres'l Actions Re- Hurricanes Past
snot
Sep-10-05 03:08 PM
#316
Just prior to K: Official Fed announcements and declarations
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:19 PM
#23
Dated Aug 27(?):official: White House declaration
mom cat
Sep-08-05 01:31 PM
#215
Sept 8: From the WH press release: BUSH DIDN'T MOVE TO PROTECT NO AT ALL!
mom cat
Sep-08-05 01:36 PM
#216
Katrinatimeline
mom cat
Sep-08-05 02:44 PM
#220
These "missing counties" are included in the 8/29 posting ..
mom cat
Sep-08-05 02:20 PM
#218
Sept 8, 2005...copy of Aug 29 from whitehouse .gov.
mom cat
Sep-08-05 02:27 PM
#219
Disaster declarations
snot
Sep-08-05 11:49 PM
#242
9/10 (orig 9/4) Bush Suspended Posse Comatatus???
snot
Sep-10-05 11:36 PM
#382
9-13: Sen. Warner & Snow: "revise" Posse Comitatus & Insurrection
mom cat
Sep-14-05 01:20 AM
#471
Just prior to K: Announcements and declarations of various states
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:24 PM
#24
DU thread w/ info re- Blanco's announcments August 26 - 28
snot
Sep-07-05 10:02 PM
#44
August 28...Blanco's letter to Bush (trhough the FEMA regional director)
mom cat
Sep-08-05 02:45 AM
#143
Are people seriously buying that "Bush told Blanco first" emergency crap?
mom cat
Sep-08-05 08:08 AM
#184
Yes, they're buying it! Rove/GOP also told WP and Newsweek
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 01:42 PM
#217
Aug Aug 26...Gov Blanco declares state of emergency
mom cat
Sep-08-05 03:08 PM
#222
9/10 (orig 9/3) Debunking the WaPo: Blanco Requested Fed Aid on 8/28!
snot
Sep-10-05 10:30 PM
#371
Natl Hurricane Center's Mayfield held video conf. w/ Bush 8/28
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:57 PM
#212
August 26: Gov, Blanco's press releace: Conference call for aug27
mom cat
Sep-08-05 02:55 PM
#221
Disaster declarations
snot
Sep-08-05 11:50 PM
#243
9/13 Report Confirms Louisiana Took Necessary and Timely Steps
snot
Sep-14-05 12:22 AM
#458
9/13 Nonpartisan Congressiona Rpt finds LA governor took necessary steps
snot
Sep-14-05 12:51 AM
#466
Just prior to and durikg K; What the Bush doing and not doing
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:27 PM
#25
Bush refuses call from Nagin
mom cat
Sep-08-05 07:08 PM
#225
no link found on that site.
mom cat
Sep-23-05 07:35 PM
#553
Great summary of the Bush disregard of the danger: He kept playing!
mom cat
Sep-10-05 01:51 PM
#314
Sept 13, what Bush was doing
mom cat
Sep-13-05 03:15 PM
#442
Just prior to and during K: What top level Bush admins were doing and not
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:29 PM
#26
9-16- Conflicting accounts from top on Katrina response
mom cat
Sep-16-05 12:04 AM
#496
9/18 Where Were the 500 FEMA Busses?
snot
Sep-19-05 01:17 PM
#532
9/18 Rove was in hospital for 24-36 hours; Gov't paralysed
snot
Sep-19-05 01:22 PM
#534
9/22 Chertoff Relied on Commercial Weather Instead of Nat'l Hurricane Ctr
snot
Sep-22-05 09:34 PM
#550
Just prior to and durikg K: What FEMA and Homeland Security were
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:31 PM
#27
MSM last night,-Locals say explosives opened ninth ward levee
snot
Sep-08-05 12:56 AM
#122
8/29 interview with Mike Brown (FEMA)
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:02 AM
#160
9/11 (orig post 9/5) FEMA Action to REDUCE Volunteer Pool
snot
Sep-11-05 12:50 PM
#398
9/13 FEMA operation manual for disaster workers
snot
Sep-13-05 02:20 PM
#435
After K: Bush photo op stories
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:32 PM
#28
Sept 4: Bush tour a 'photo op': Louisiana senator
mom cat
Sep-07-05 11:23 PM
#85
The firefighters' FEMA story -- last paragraph.
skids
Sep-08-05 12:22 AM
#101
Also discussed in this thread
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:52 AM
#182
Sept2: Bush visit halted 3 tons of food being delivered..(Raw Story)
mom cat
Sep-08-05 11:51 AM
#204
Sept2: Bush visit halted 3 tons of food being delivered..(Raw Story)
mom cat
Sep-08-05 11:57 AM
#205
Sept 4: A Bhush with (laura) Bush in NO (feeding stopped)
mom cat
Sep-09-05 07:03 PM
#278
Sept 3: Bush faked levee repair for photo op yesterday
DrDebug
Sep-10-05 07:34 AM
#308
9/10 (orig 9/2) The 2 Black Girls were just visiting Biloxi to shop
snot
Sep-10-05 09:24 PM
#355
9/10 (orig 9/2) How CNN Rptd Biloxi Photo Op vs. German TV
snot
Sep-10-05 09:34 PM
#358
9/10 (orig 9/4) Photo Ops Blocking Relief
snot
Sep-10-05 11:24 PM
#380
9/16 Power ON for Bush's speach, DARKNESS 1 hour later
snot
Sep-16-05 11:01 AM
#498
After K: The collapse if the 17th Street Canaland subsequent flooding
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:34 PM
#29
Sept 4: Mayor blasts failure to patch levee breaches
mom cat
Sep-08-05 09:00 AM
#187
Aug 30: Water rising at 17th St. canal
DrDebug
Sep-10-05 06:52 AM
#302
9-23: The flooding returns to the 9th ward
mom cat
Sep-23-05 05:21 PM
#552
Just prior to and during K... The evaccuation declarations and efforts
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:35 PM
#30
9/9: Report from Aug. 28 Shows Nagin Ordered Busses to Be Used
snot
Sep-09-05 04:51 PM
#264
9/10 (orig 9/2) N.O. Told Poor You're on Your Own Getting Out
snot
Sep-10-05 09:30 PM
#357
9/18 Blanco Still Waiting to Know: Where Were the 500 FEMA Busses?
snot
Sep-19-05 01:15 PM
#531
Just prior to and during K: The people who could not get out
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:37 PM
#31
After K: Delays in military deployment, Eventual deployment
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:41 PM
#32
Pre K: Superdome: Refuge of last resort
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:43 PM
#33
Preparations for use of Superdome 3 days food for 15,000 brought to
mom cat
Sep-09-05 01:34 PM
#254
During K: Superdome - conditions inside and out
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:46 PM
#34
After K: Superdome: Conditions become intolerable
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:47 PM
#35
After K: Superdome..Evaccuation stalled
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:49 PM
#36
Sept 2: Geraldo at the dome
mom cat
Sep-07-05 10:43 PM
#62
Sept 3: Guardsmen Halt Evacuation at Superdome
mom cat
Sep-09-05 05:25 PM
#269
Baby lived and died in Superdom :
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 03:47 AM
#152
9/10 (orig 9/4) Evacuees on Superdome Horrors During Final Days
snot
Sep-10-05 11:07 PM
#375
Military Angry...Bush should have been giving orders
snot
Sep-08-05 12:43 AM
#115
9/10 (orig 9/3) See also these from CNN and BBC:
snot
Sep-10-05 10:26 PM
#369
Officials: Guard Deployment Hurt Response
mom cat
Sep-10-05 06:51 PM
#326
9/10 (from post 9/3?) "As a vet, I can't BELIEVE the lack of response!!!
snot
Sep-10-05 08:47 PM
#338
9/10 (orig 9/2) National Guard Delay (no approval by WH til Thurs!) Likely
snot
Sep-10-05 09:16 PM
#350
9/10 (orig 9/4) Video and Transcript of Local Officials Begging for Help
snot
Sep-10-05 11:21 PM
#379
9/11 (orig post 9/5) Northern Command Was Waiting for Bush Orders
snot
Sep-11-05 12:41 PM
#393
After K: Media hyping violence and "looting"
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:50 PM
#37
Consequences: people stuck on overpass.
skids
Sep-07-05 10:52 PM
#69
Racial bias: European/affluent tourists "looted" too (same article)
skids
Sep-07-05 10:55 PM
#70
Denial of shooting at helicopters buried in the same report
mom cat
Sep-08-05 03:17 AM
#147
9/10 (orig 9/2) Per FAA, not ONE plane reported being shot at
snot
Sep-10-05 09:03 PM
#344
9/10 (orig 9/2) Troops Entering N.O. Find LACK of Violence
snot
Sep-10-05 09:22 PM
#354
After K: Succesful rescue efforts
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:52 PM
#38
Privately organized planes evacuated hospitals
snot
Sep-07-05 10:20 PM
#50
Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded
snot
Sep-07-05 10:37 PM
#58
College student in 2wd Hyundai evacuates 7 people from convention center.
skids
Sep-07-05 10:44 PM
#63
The first Renegade bus
skids
Sep-07-05 10:47 PM
#66
More about Jabbar Gibson and the borowed bus
mom cat
Sep-09-05 06:05 PM
#273
09/06: Sports illustrated article
skids
Sep-08-05 12:38 AM
#111
9/10 (orig 9/4) Gibson May Face Arrest After Bus Escape
snot
Sep-10-05 11:28 PM
#381
9/12 Will Pitt's Girlfriend's Ex-Boyfriend from Krypton
snot
Sep-13-05 01:18 AM
#430
After K: blocked rescue efforts (other than FEMA which is posted above)
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:53 PM
#39
After K: Blocked Escape Efforts
snot
Sep-07-05 11:05 PM
#75
Trapped medical workers in NOLA
snot
Sep-07-05 11:09 PM
#77
Deliberate containment of evacuees in New Orleans
snot
Sep-08-05 01:13 AM
#128
evaccues fired upon to keep then out of a white area:First person account
mom cat
Sep-08-05 03:31 AM
#148
Sept 3: Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans
DrDebug
Sep-10-05 07:26 AM
#305
Guardian: people could get in...Why couldn't the people leave,?
mom cat
Sep-08-05 01:14 PM
#214
9/9 Cops Nearby Admit They Blocked Survivors from Leaving N.O.
snot
Sep-09-05 03:01 PM
#258
an account from News Orleans
mom cat
Sep-10-05 12:01 AM
#300
9/10 (orig 9/2) First Hand Account -- Escape Blocked by Police
snot
Sep-10-05 09:12 PM
#349
Sept 2: Message from a Louisianna relief worker-PLEASE READ!!
mom cat
Sep-08-05 08:46 AM
#186
Aug 31: Flotilla of rescue boats turned back
mom cat
Sep-08-05 10:42 AM
#200
Sept 3: 200 evacuees turned back by National Guard
DrDebug
Sep-10-05 07:32 AM
#307
9/10 (orig 9/4) Blogged Report from Charity Hospital
snot
Sep-10-05 11:17 PM
#378
9-13:re earlier pres diversion of power crews away from hospitals
mom cat
Sep-14-05 01:33 AM
#472
After K: Quotes from Bush, Barbare, and other Bush top admins and
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:55 PM
#40
Sept 9: DeLay to evacuees: 'Is this kind of fun?'
mom cat
Sep-09-05 06:36 PM
#276
Full story on Chronicle's Domeblog
mom cat
Sep-09-05 06:38 PM
#277
09/09: several quotes DU thread.
skids
Sep-09-05 11:25 PM
#297
09/10: 25 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina
skids
Sep-10-05 09:02 AM
#309
Sept 9: A compilation of stupid, insensitive quotes by Repubs re: Katrina
mom cat
Sep-10-05 06:37 PM
#323
Sept 10: DU thread of quotes:
mom cat
Sep-10-05 10:07 PM
#364
Sept 10:Rescuers collect dead, Cheney sounds upbeat
mom cat
Sep-10-05 10:12 PM
#
Sept 10:on our way to getting on top of the whole Katrina exercise. Cheney
mom cat
Sep-10-05 10:22 PM
#368
Barbara Bush's statement
mom cat
Sep-12-05 11:57 AM
#424
Julian Bind: George Bush should put a muzzle on his mother
mom cat
Sep-12-05 11:58 AM
#425
Sep13VID - Bush on CNN: self-congratulatory about his handling of Katrina
mom cat
Sep-13-05 05:43 PM
#448
After K: Statements by Democrats appalled by the rescue efforts
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:57 PM
#41
Sept 8: Pelosi blasts Bush, demands that Brown resign
mom cat
Sep-08-05 06:59 PM
#224
9/18 Clinton holding Bush accountable on Iraq, Katrina and budget
snot
Sep-19-05 01:12 PM
#530
9/19 Edwards calls for return of depression era programs
snot
Sep-19-05 01:36 PM
#536
After K: Statements by repubs appalled by fed - Bush response
mom cat
Sep-07-05 09:59 PM
#42
After K: Statements by media appalled by the fed - Bush responce
mom cat
Sep-07-05 10:00 PM
#43
Sept 3:New Orleans Paper Slams Federal Response on Saturday
mom cat
Sep-07-05 11:18 PM
#82
Sept 2: The big disconnect on New Orleans...CNN
mom cat
Sep-07-05 11:33 PM
#89
Holy shit. Cafferty surmises that the Bush photo op and the convoy
mom cat
Sep-08-05 03:58 AM
#157
Sept 4: CBS takes off the gloves!
mom cat
Sep-09-05 05:53 PM
#271
Sept 4: Face the Nation. PDF transcript containg above quote
mom cat
Sep-09-05 05:56 PM
#272
Sept 4: Sunday papers (including conservative ones) rip Bush hurricane res
mom cat
Sep-09-05 06:12 PM
#274
**Sept 9:Bush Losing Support From His Base **
mom cat
Sep-09-05 10:56 PM
#294
9/10 (orig post 9/2) CNN on Discrepancy Btw Fed Version & Truth
snot
Sep-10-05 09:46 PM
#362
9/11 Newsweek: Good Article Summarizing "How Bush Blew It"
snot
Sep-11-05 01:23 PM
#403
9/16 Show by Ted Koppell going through day by day
snot
Sep-16-05 03:45 PM
#505
9/17 Reaction of European Media
snot
Sep-17-05 03:00 PM
#512
9/19 Scathing Editorial by in Fredericksburg Paper
snot
Sep-19-05 01:37 PM
#537
After K: Statements by citizens appalled by the fed - Bush responce
mom cat
Sep-07-05 10:03 PM
#45
Sept 11: Man in Water in LA Yells: " I voted for that idiot! How Stupid Am
mom cat
Sep-11-05 05:26 PM
#410
Sept 11:Welcome to DU Dr. Ben Marble of "go fuck yourself cheney" fame
mom cat
Sep-11-05 05:32 PM
#411
Julian Bonb: George Bush should put a muzzle on his mother
mom cat
Sep-12-05 11:56 AM
#423
After K: Media articles supporting the Bush - fed responce
mom cat
Sep-07-05 10:13 PM
#46
Where to Point the Fingers (Krauthammer witches and Jews article)
mom cat
Sep-09-05 04:09 PM
#259
Sep 13Wash Post exposed shilling for WH re: Blanco smear, issues retractio
mom cat
Sep-13-05 05:48 PM
#449
After K: Repub support of Bush - fed responce.
mom cat
Sep-07-05 10:14 PM
#47
After K: International Relief : offers made: accepted,refused or stymied
mom cat
Sep-07-05 10:16 PM
#48
Sept 6: Canada, France, U.K. Militaries Dispatch Aid to U.S.
mom cat
Sep-08-05 12:41 AM
#113
60 nations offered help
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:55 AM
#183
Extensive list of all countries (in German)
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 07:21 PM
#230
Sept 7:Offers of Aid Immediate, but U.S. Approval Delayed for Days
mom cat
Sep-08-05 08:20 PM
#238
9/9 Swedish plane full with aid waiting since 6 days for an US order
snot
Sep-09-05 05:11 PM
#268
Sept 2: World mobilises to aid US victims
mom cat
Sep-09-05 08:05 PM
#283
Sept 1: Scott McClellan: "We are NOT requesting international aid."
DrDebug
Sep-10-05 07:00 AM
#303
Sept 10: German plane with Katrina aid turned back from U.S.
mom cat
Sep-10-05 01:02 PM
#312
Original article from Der Speigel...in German
mom cat
Sep-10-05 01:04 PM
#313
9/19 Tons of British Aid to Be Burned
snot
Sep-19-05 09:15 PM
#539
After K: Contracts to Halliburton & other Bush supporters: note if no bid
mom cat
Sep-07-05 10:23 PM
#51
Sept 1: *****YES***** SEPT 1!*****Halliburton hired for storm cleanup*****
mom cat
Sep-08-05 08:33 AM
#185
Sept 4: FEMA privatized hurricane disaster recovery planning
mom cat
Sep-08-05 11:38 AM
#203
Three FEMA contractors arrested for looting in Plaquemines Parish
snot
Sep-08-05 11:47 PM
#241
9/8 Fed contractors won't have to pay "prevailing wage" to workers
snot
Sep-09-05 02:47 PM
#257
9/17 Pres. Failed to Comply w/ Req'ts for Activating Emergency Powers
snot
Sep-17-05 02:40 PM
#510
9/10 (orig post 9/2) Halliburton Contract to Repair Katrina Damage
snot
Sep-10-05 08:59 PM
#341
9/30 Roof tarping scam.
skids
Sep-30-05 01:31 PM
#557
Pre, during and after: The race factor in the disaster
mom cat
Sep-07-05 10:26 PM
#52
Sept 7: Dean Race played role in death toll
mom cat
Sep-07-05 10:58 PM
#71
Sept 8: Molly Ivins on the race card and the "looters"
mom cat
Sep-10-05 08:36 PM
#335
9/11 (orig post 9/5) "It's the blacks..we always worried this would happen
snot
Sep-11-05 12:43 PM
#394
Sep 12: Blasphemy about New Orleans: A god with whom i am not familiar
mom cat
Sep-12-05 03:40 PM
#426
9/12 Spiegel on Fallout for Rove's Designs on the Black Vote
snot
Sep-12-05 10:26 PM
#428
Before, during and after K: Ray Nagin
mom cat
Sep-07-05 10:30 PM
#53
Sept2: Audio of interview with Nagin ... Kos
mom cat
Sep-07-05 10:35 PM
#56
Sept 2: Mayor to Feds: Get off your asses
mom cat
Sep-07-05 10:47 PM
#65
Nagin's Use of N.O. Busses
snot
Sep-08-05 01:00 AM
#124
9/11 Nagin: Only 200 Guardsmen in early days
snot
Sep-11-05 01:16 PM
#401
Attempts to Block Communications
snot
Sep-07-05 10:32 PM
#54
Ham Radio help refused
snot
Sep-07-05 10:40 PM
#60
Evacuees isolated and warned not to talk to media
snot
Sep-07-05 10:42 PM
#61
Telecom Jamming
snot
Sep-07-05 10:48 PM
#67
Cuting of phone lines
mom cat
Sep-09-05 10:21 PM
#292
9/13 Wi-Fi and WiMax to be set up for emergency reconnect
snot
Sep-13-05 02:27 PM
#441
Attempts to Censor or Restrict Media
snot
Sep-07-05 10:32 PM
#55
Media restricted from Astrodome
snot
Sep-07-05 10:36 PM
#57
More problems at Astrodome
snot
Sep-07-05 10:51 PM
#68
Evacuees in lockdown in Colorado
snot
Sep-08-05 12:15 AM
#
Bodies censored
snot
Sep-08-05 12:34 AM
#106
General effort to bar reporters from access to many points of NOLA
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:38 AM
#173
9/9 E-mail from friend re- Patterns of Press Access Denial
snot
Sep-09-05 01:28 PM
#251
Sept 9: Anderson Cooper says CNN gets restraining order (against govt)
mom cat
Sep-09-05 09:15 PM
#286
Amy Goodman..regarding reporters being threatened by military
mom cat
Sep-09-05 09:21 PM
#287
Larry King reporting on CNN request for injunction!
mom cat
Sep-09-05 09:25 PM
#288
Sept 6: U.S. agency blocks photos of New Orleans dead
mom cat
Sep-09-05 10:34 PM
#293
Sept 10:***** U.S. drops banning media from body hunt
mom cat
Sep-10-05 12:51 PM
#311
9/11 (orig post 9/5) FEMAS's Training on Managing the Media
snot
Sep-11-05 12:55 PM
#399
9/13 Democracy Now: "Is Gov't Trying to Stem Tide of Images?
snot
Sep-13-05 02:25 PM
#439
9-13: As bodies recovered, reporters are told 'no photos, no stories'
mom cat
Sep-14-05 01:39 AM
#473
Pre, During & After Timelines
snot
Sep-07-05 10:59 PM
#72
ThinkProgress timeline (found on DU on 9/7)
snot
Sep-07-05 11:00 PM
#73
Washington Monthly FEMA/NOLA timeline
Angry Girl
Sep-07-05 11:32 PM
#88
Talking Points Memo timeline
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:12 AM
#92
AlterNet Blog *Interactive* Timeline "Drowning in a Bathtub"
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:15 AM
#94
Washington Monthly timeline
snot
Sep-08-05 01:25 AM
#132
John Marshall's timeline
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:41 AM
#175
CNN
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:44 AM
#176
WWTV: Updates as they come in on Katrina
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 05:20 PM
#223
Guerilla News Timeline
snot
Sep-09-05 12:11 AM
#245
9/9 Blog with Compilation of Links to Timelines (& may be Useful Sites)
snot
Sep-09-05 01:34 PM
#253
katrinatimeline.org
Shadder
Sep-09-05 04:19 PM
#260
Timeline leading upto the Katrina hitting the Gulf Coas
DrDebug
Sep-09-05 08:05 PM
#284
NOLA: the web blog -timeline of the Times Picayune Excellent
mom cat
Sep-11-05 07:24 PM
#416
Other great Katrina Resources...list websites
mom cat
Sep-07-05 11:01 PM
#74
Crooks and liers: important video doctumentation
mom cat
Sep-07-05 11:06 PM
#76
Lexis-Nexis Hurricane Katrina DATABASE of articles
Angry Girl
Sep-07-05 11:11 PM
#78
And it is free! Free Lexis Nexis for Katrina articles:
mom cat
Sep-08-05 01:22 AM
#130
Katrina timeline...DU's own Shadder..Very Good
mom cat
Sep-07-05 11:12 PM
#79
Everything you wanted to read about K at Spiegel Mag online
snot
Sep-08-05 12:17 AM
#95
wiki links.
skids
Sep-08-05 12:17 AM
#97
Times-Picayune Special 5-Part Report: Washing Away
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:47 AM
#118
IRE Resources for hurricanes + Katrina Aftermath (vast)
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:51 AM
#121
WWL Blog spot...also WWL TV
mom cat
Sep-08-05 01:59 AM
#137
A live blog fron NO throughout the disaster:
mom cat
Sep-08-05 02:15 AM
#138
Global Free Press...Katrina Videos
mom cat
Sep-08-05 03:05 AM
#146
Katrina Audio, video and image archive
mom cat
Sep-08-05 03:35 AM
#149
discussion of this archive
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 07:24 PM
#232
Websites with interesting articles:
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:27 AM
#168
John Marshall
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:39 AM
#174
CBS Katrina disaster blog See links to dates below:
mom cat
Sep-08-05 09:06 AM
#188
Aug 31:CBS Katrina Disaster Blog
mom cat
Sep-08-05 09:16 AM
#189
Sept 1;
mom cat
Sep-08-05 10:04 AM
#196
Sept 2:
mom cat
Sep-08-05 10:07 AM
#197
Sept 3
mom cat
Sep-08-05 10:10 AM
#198
CBS Disaster on the Gulf - home page
mom cat
Sep-08-05 12:04 PM
#206
Yurica re- Katrina--Includes disturbing info re- "End Game"
snot
Sep-09-05 04:35 PM
#261
Snopes.com
snot
Sep-10-05 08:19 PM
#331
9/11 (orig post 9/5) Includes Video & Congressional Transcripts
snot
Sep-11-05 12:47 PM
#396
9/18 Craigslist
snot
Sep-19-05 01:22 AM
#526
Pre K: Sci Info - Sci. Am. article = Drowning New Orleans
Angry Girl
Sep-07-05 11:13 PM
#80
Pre K: What the Gov Knew - PBS NOW: The City in a Bowl
Angry Girl
Sep-07-05 11:15 PM
#81
Pre K: What the Gov Knew - Disaster in the Making (FEMA)
Angry Girl
Sep-07-05 11:18 PM
#83
Pre K: What the Gov Knew - Record NOLA Cuts (June 2005)
Angry Girl
Sep-07-05 11:21 PM
#84
dammit.... I did this ALL wrong. Really sorry MomCat!!!
Angry Girl
Sep-07-05 11:24 PM
#86
Oh dear me!
mom cat
Sep-07-05 11:41 PM
#90
Done! Ignore these dupes pls! (too late to self-delete...)
Angry Girl
Sep-08-05 12:30 AM
#104
Thanks!
mom cat
Sep-08-05 01:09 AM
#127
After K: survivor stories
mom cat
Sep-08-05 02:33 AM
#141
INCREDIBLE First Person Katrina Account
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 07:22 PM
#231
Sept 6: First By the Floods, Then By Martial Law
mom cat
Sep-08-05 07:56 PM
#237
Aug 30: Martial Law Declared in New Orleans; Situation Deteriorating
DrDebug
Sep-10-05 06:49 AM
#301
Bigfoot story
DrDebug
Sep-10-05 07:12 AM
#304
9/10 (orig 9/2) First Hand Account of getting out of N.O.
snot
Sep-10-05 09:10 PM
#347
9/10 (orig 9/4) French Quarter Becomes Oasis of Wary Calm
snot
Sep-10-05 11:12 PM
#376
9/11 (orig post 9/5) Charmaine Neville: Couldn't Afford to Leave
snot
Sep-11-05 12:45 PM
#395
9/11 Account from a friend of a friend
snot
Sep-11-05 03:01 PM
#406
After K: How this disaster affects the poor
mom cat
Sep-08-05 02:34 AM
#142
Sept 2: We Don't See the People in the Rafters
mom cat
Sep-08-05 04:28 AM
#169
Sept 9: Miles Obrien on CNN said the Katrina victims have to sign a waiver
mom cat
Sep-09-05 01:47 PM
#255
Sept 8: New Orleans Population has the Right of Return
mom cat
Sep-10-05 06:14 PM
#320
9/13 WaPo says N.O. Will Not Be Rebuilt
snot
Sep-13-05 02:21 PM
#436
9/13 Argument that BushCo. Intended to "Clean Out" the Poor
snot
Sep-14-05 12:34 AM
#461
Sept 11: Exiles from a city and from a nation ( Cornell West)
mom cat
Sep-14-05 09:44 PM
#480
9/14 Bush wants to waive law banning educational segregation for homeless
snot
Sep-15-05 03:57 AM
#486
9-15 Mental Health Needs of Blacks Acute After Katrina
mom cat
Sep-15-05 11:51 PM
#494
9/19 911 Operators Heard: 'Help me, please don't let me die'
snot
Sep-19-05 10:08 PM
#544
9/19 Most of damaged housing in NO was affordable, low income (HUD)
snot
Sep-20-05 12:43 AM
#545
After K: Impact of Bush's delays
mom cat
Sep-08-05 02:52 AM
#144
Sept 6: Pentagon: USS Bataan Waited Days For Orders to Help Out
mom cat
Sep-08-05 02:56 AM
#145
Sept 3: BBC: Norththern Command awaits for word from Bush
mom cat
Sep-08-05 12:45 PM
#210
BBC video of Sean Kelley's statement
mom cat
Sep-09-05 08:22 PM
#285
Sept 3: BBC: Norththern Command awaits for word from Bush
mom cat
Sep-08-05 12:49 PM
#211
9/10 (orig 9/2) Victims eating corpses to survive???
snot
Sep-10-05 09:37 PM
#359
9/11 Cover-Up: N.O. Will Be Toxic for Decades
snot
Sep-11-05 01:49 PM
#405
9/11 Hospitals Euthanized Rather than Let Patients Die in Agony
snot
Sep-11-05 04:33 PM
#408
9/11 Patients in NO Euthanized
snot
Sep-12-05 01:43 AM
#418
9/13 E-mail from friend Re- a Cameraman's View
snot
Sep-13-05 02:15 PM
#434
9/13 WH Diverted Crews from Power for Hospitals to Power for Pipelines
snot
Sep-14-05 12:25 AM
#459
Before K: Historical parallels. How other hurricans were handled
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 03:48 AM
#153
How Castro handled a hurricane:
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 03:49 AM
#154
how did they deal with the bodies after the tsunami?
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 03:51 AM
#155
Compare FEMA Response to Hurricane in FL 2004
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 03:52 AM
#156
9/10 E-mail fr friend Comparing Pres'l Actions Re- Hurricanes Past
snot
Sep-10-05 03:16 PM
#318
Before K: Who is responsible for what. Organization of federal agencies
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 03:59 AM
#158
National Distaster Plan
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:00 AM
#159
9/11 (orig post 9/5) FEMA contracted IEM to lead planning for hurricane
snot
Sep-11-05 12:31 PM
#389
9/12 An Engineer Re- Who's Responsible for What
snot
Sep-13-05 01:27 AM
#431
9/13 Chertoff Had Authority but Delayed Fed Response
snot
Sep-14-05 12:01 AM
#453
Great DU threads loaded with info
mom cat
Sep-08-05 04:13 AM
#164
Eloriel's thread...Great info!
mom cat
Sep-08-05 04:15 AM
#165
After K: General conditions of the rescue efforts
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:20 AM
#166
Sgt. Paul Accardo, 36, N.O.P.D., commits suicide amid Katrina chaos
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:20 AM
#167
9/10 (orig 9/4) Blogged Report from Charity Hospital
snot
Sep-10-05 11:15 PM
#377
After K: Bush requests federal takeover of NOLA
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:33 AM
#171
3/9/05 Bush requested federal takeover
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:34 AM
#172
Pre K: FEMA
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:47 AM
#178
FEMA was there PRIOR to Hurricane Katrina
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:47 AM
#179
Pre K :FEMA responsibility (per their own documents) in wiki
mom cat
Sep-08-05 12:19 PM
#208
Two Bush 2000 Florida recount aides were rewarded with top FEMA posts
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 07:25 PM
#233
FEMA's Hurricane Pam Exercise 2004: Perfect preparation!
John Doe II
Sep-09-05 03:58 AM
#246
FEMA's Individual Assistance Programs:
John Doe II
Sep-09-05 03:59 AM
#247
Post K: Important articles
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:50 AM
#180
Salt Lake City Tribune, 9/6/05
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 04:50 AM
#181
USA-Today 9/5/05: Bush Responsible For FEMA's Disastrous Failure
John Doe II
Sep-09-05 04:07 AM
#248
FEMA arrives empty-handed: Lafayette, LA
babylonsister
Sep-10-05 09:46 PM
#361
9/19 35-Pages on * Policies that Led to Excessive Deaths, Destruction
snot
Sep-19-05 01:02 PM
#528
Post K: Who will profit
mom cat
Sep-08-05 09:29 AM
#190
Sept 2: Investors bet on Katrina's winners and losers........
mom cat
Sep-08-05 09:58 AM
#195
Halliburton Stock at an All Time High
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 07:13 PM
#226
Sept 8: Old-line families plot the future (of NO)
mom cat
Sep-08-05 07:15 PM
#227
Sept 8: Cashing in ON DISASTER
mom cat
Sep-08-05 07:34 PM
#235
Sept 8: Funeral profiteering
mom cat
Sep-08-05 07:40 PM
#236
Exxon's $10 Billion Fill-Up: Cashing in on Crunch (Quarterly Record)
mom cat
Sep-08-05 08:27 PM
#239
9/9 Private, Armed "Blackwater" Forces patrol while Red Cross Excluded
snot
Sep-10-05 03:15 PM
#317
9/13 Democracy Now on Armed Security Contractors in N.O.
snot
Sep-13-05 02:24 PM
#438
Sept 10: Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals Sat Sep 10,11:03
mom cat
Sep-10-05 04:16 PM
#319
9/12 Same story reported by Wired.com
snot
Sep-12-05 10:15 PM
#427
sept 7:Pat Robertson's Katrina Cash
mom cat
Sep-10-05 07:44 PM
#328
9/10 Who collects and counts the dead
snot
Sep-10-05 08:32 PM
#334
9/10 The N.O. Gentry
snot
Sep-10-05 08:41 PM
#336
9/10 The N.O. Gentry
snot
Sep-10-05 08:41 PM
#337
9/10 (orig post 9/2) Halliburton Contract to Repair Katrina Damage
snot
Sep-10-05 08:57 PM
#340
Sept 10: DU thread on the profiteering issues and * talking points
mom cat
Sep-10-05 09:01 PM
#342
Deleted message
Name removed
Sep-10-05 09:41 PM
#360
9/11 ‘They’ are trying to take our city from us.
snot
Sep-12-05 01:58 AM
#422
9/13 Firms with Bush Ties Snagging Deals
snot
Sep-13-05 02:26 PM
#440
9-14:NYT: DHS Official Vows Investigation of No-Bid Relief Contracts
mom cat
Sep-14-05 02:47 AM
#476
9-14 (FERC) Regulators to aid hurricane-hit utilities (Bush Supporters)
mom cat
Sep-14-05 03:10 AM
#477
9/16 America's Biggest Recovery Program: New Deal for the Rich
snot
Sep-16-05 11:08 AM
#500
9/18 "OPEC" meetings about draining/screwing Americans
snot
Sep-18-05 04:58 PM
#521
Looking for a Corpse to Make a Case
mom cat
Sep-18-05 11:17 PM
#524
9/19 "Disaster Profiteering Act" H.R.3766
snot
Sep-19-05 09:18 PM
#540
9/19 Katrina Reconstruction = Rove 2006 GOP Congressional Slush Fund?
snot
Sep-19-05 09:19 PM
#541
"The Red Cross Money Pit"
mom cat
Sep-25-05 03:22 PM
#554
Post K: Katrina and links to global warming
mom cat
Sep-08-05 09:31 AM
#191
The contents above should be in a separate post.
mom cat
Sep-08-05 09:48 AM
#193
Al Gore: On Katrina, Global Warming
mom cat
Sep-13-05 03:45 PM
#447
9-16 Hurricane Intensity Linked to Climate Change
mom cat
Sep-15-05 11:55 PM
#495
Just before K: Govt action: Army Corps of Engineer contracts
suegeo
Sep-08-05 09:57 AM
#194
Post K: Conditions of evacuated survivors
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 07:18 PM
#228
Oklahoma FEMA camp
John Doe II
Sep-08-05 07:19 PM
#229
9/10 (orig post 9/3) Evacuees Housed in Ark. Toxic Waste Dump?
snot
Sep-10-05 10:15 PM
#366
9/13 FEMA to Set Up Camp Cities to House 200K for 3 Years
snot
Sep-13-05 02:23 PM
#437
9/14 VFP Reaching Those Who Remained--Who Are Doing Better than Evacuees
snot
Sep-15-05 12:56 AM
#484
9/30 Only 109 families placed in FEMA housing, 100's of millions spent.
skids
Sep-30-05 12:08 PM
#556
Levee breeches
mom cat
Sep-09-05 09:39 PM
#289
Sept 4: Mayor blasts failure to patch levee breaches
mom cat
Sep-09-05 09:42 PM
#290
Sept 3: Report from the leevee
mom cat
Sep-09-05 09:54 PM
#291
9/13 E-mail from friend Re- Geologist's View
snot
Sep-13-05 02:10 PM
#432
Blanco V Bush
mom cat
Sep-09-05 11:16 PM
#295
Sept 9: NPR Reports: GW to Blanco"I'll send in the troops if you answer to
mom cat
Sep-09-05 11:20 PM
#296
Sept 9: Audio of the report
mom cat
Sep-09-05 11:37 PM
#298
A Mole in Gov Blanco's office reports
mom cat
Sep-09-05 11:44 PM
#299
9/10 (orig 9/2) National Guard Delay (no approval by WH til Thurs!) Likely
snot
Sep-10-05 09:17 PM
#351
9/10 (orig 9/3) Behind Scenes Struggle; WH Tries to Shift Blame
snot
Sep-10-05 10:28 PM
#370
9/10 (orig 9/4) Bush Suspended Posse Comatatus???
snot
Sep-10-05 11:38 PM
#383
9/11 (orig post 9/5) Northern Command Was Waiting for Bush Orders
snot
Sep-11-05 12:40 PM
#392
9/11 Nagin: Only 200 Guardsmen in early days
snot
Sep-11-05 01:19 PM
#402
9/11 MSNBC: Bush Gets Call From Blanco and Goes to Bed
snot
Sep-11-05 04:29 PM
#407
(self-deleted--wrong place)
snot
Sep-12-05 01:46 AM
#419
9/12 An Engineer Re- Who's Responsible for What
snot
Sep-13-05 01:09 AM
#429
9/18 Blanco says feds pledged buses
snot
Sep-18-05 04:06 AM
#518
9/19 Non-Partisan Report Clears Blanco
snot
Sep-19-05 09:28 PM
#542
Democratic moves to help the victims:
mom cat
Sep-10-05 06:21 PM
#321
Sept 10:John Kerry Offers Major Package of Legislation to Help Small Busin
mom cat
Sep-10-05 06:24 PM
#322
The death toll
mom cat
Sep-10-05 06:42 PM
#324
Sept 10: 50,000 body bags ordered
mom cat
Sep-10-05 06:46 PM
#325
9/10 Who collects and counts the dead
snot
Sep-10-05 10:12 PM
#365
9/11 DU Thread Devoted to Body Count
snot
Sep-12-05 01:21 AM
#417
9/13 FEMA outsources Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping
snot
Sep-14-05 12:15 AM
#455
9-13: BREAKING HARD: FEMA, Bush, SCI, and 1999 Funeralgate as Governor
mom cat
Sep-14-05 01:14 AM
#470
9/13 As bodies recovered, reporters are told 'no photos, no stories'
snot
Sep-14-05 12:16 AM
#456
9/13 Blanco gives up on FEMA, hires firm herself to recover Louisiana dead
snot
Sep-14-05 12:44 AM
#464
9/13 Bush & Body Count Contractor Go Way Back
snot
Sep-14-05 12:46 AM
#465
9/16 Spike in Discovered Corpses as Workers Now Enter Hardest Hit Areas
snot
Sep-16-05 11:47 PM
#506
9/20 Mystery over true death toll in Mississippi
snot
Sep-21-05 01:17 AM
#547
9/20 Story on Body Collectors w/ Nos. of Workers, Teams, Etc.
snot
Sep-21-05 02:28 AM
#548
Katrina commentary in cartoon format
mom cat
Sep-10-05 07:01 PM
#327
Post Katrina Polls
mom cat
Sep-10-05 08:04 PM
#329
Sept 10: Eye of the Political Storm Bush approval at 38%
mom cat
Sep-10-05 08:17 PM
#330
9/15/05 FOX News Poll: Post Katrina, Bush Job Rating at Record Low (41%)
mom cat
Sep-16-05 12:07 AM
#497
9-19-05 Lowest Rating for Bush in Eighth September Poll
mom cat
Sep-18-05 10:46 PM
#522
Bush Katrina Ratings Fall After Speech
mom cat
Sep-18-05 11:22 PM
#525
After K..forced evacuation of NOLA
mom cat
Sep-10-05 09:26 PM
#356
Sept 10: Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
mom cat
Sep-10-05 10:01 PM
#363
Spin, shifting the blame, outright falsehoods and talking points
mom cat
Sep-10-05 10:35 PM
#372
Sept 10: The fake Times-Pycaune article and other lies exposed
mom cat
Sep-10-05 10:39 PM
#373
9/10 (orig 9/4) Bush Admin Peddling Blame Elsewhere
snot
Sep-10-05 11:44 PM
#384
9/10 (orig 9/4) Bush Admin Shifting Blame Elsewhere
snot
Sep-10-05 11:44 PM
#385
9/11 (orig 9/10) RNC Talking Points (per Randi Rhodes)
snot
Sep-11-05 01:35 PM
#404
9/11 A Du'er from LA Explains LA Politics
snot
Sep-12-05 01:51 AM
#420
Sept 13: debunking the "Truth about NO" chain letter
mom cat
Sep-14-05 12:32 AM
#460
9-15NY Times: Karl Rove in charge of Katrina Reconstruction Effort
mom cat
Sep-15-05 11:22 PM
#492
9/16 E-mail Shows Feds Seeking to Blame Environmental Groups
snot
Sep-16-05 03:18 PM
#501
SUPER Spin--So Sick it Attains Hilarity--
snot
Sep-18-05 04:21 AM
#519
BAHAMONDE TESTIMONY: Condemns FEMA Response (LAT, WaPo, NYT & NBC)
Nothing Without Hope
Oct-22-05 12:16 AM
#559
how the animals suffered, official actions that made it worse
mom cat
Sep-11-05 05:22 PM
#409
Sept 11: The water is wide. I can not get across...photos
mom cat
Sep-11-05 05:43 PM
#412
Environmental impact of K...and the Bush denial and cover-up
mom cat
Sep-11-05 06:12 PM
#413
Sep 11:Cover-up: toxic waters 'will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade'
mom cat
Sep-11-05 06:14 PM
#414
9/19 FEMA: "Just scrape off the mold"; cheaper that they die than rebuild
snot
Sep-19-05 12:56 PM
#527
The political aftermath
mom cat
Sep-13-05 03:20 PM
#443
Bush "takes responsibility"
mom cat
Sep-13-05 03:22 PM
#444
9/13 Basically the same story--Bush Takes Responsiblity
snot
Sep-14-05 01:08 AM
#469
Post Katrina Bush power grab and increased repression
mom cat
Sep-14-05 02:28 AM
#474
Sep 13 -Bush says he may need more power in disasters
mom cat
Sep-14-05 02:32 AM
#475
9-16 Conservatives Balk As Spending Soars In Katrina's Wake
mom cat
Sep-15-05 11:40 PM
#493
9/19 Poll Results After Bush N.O. Speech
snot
Sep-19-05 01:33 PM
#535
use to force after K against civilians
mom cat
Sep-13-05 03:29 PM
#445
Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
mom cat
Sep-13-05 03:34 PM
#446
9/13 Move in Senate to "Revise" Posse Comitatus!
snot
Sep-14-05 12:38 AM
#462
9/16 *'s speech: POWER GRAB FOR POTUS AND MILITARY
snot
Sep-16-05 11:05 AM
#499
9/16 This looks like an expanded version of same post
snot
Sep-16-05 03:43 PM
#504
9/16 Bush Power Grab
snot
Sep-16-05 03:26 PM
#502
9/17 (orig. 8/10) Plans: Use of Terrorist Attacks to Justify Martial Law
snot
Sep-17-05 03:16 PM
#513
After K: Reconstruction & $$ Distribution (Other than Who Profits, above)
snot
Sep-15-05 10:46 PM
#489
After K: FEMA Contracts body removal to company that fed corpses to pigs
IanDB1
Sep-17-05 05:46 PM

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 04:13 PM
Response to Original message
1. Pre K. Weather reports and damage predictions just before storm.
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 04:20 PM by mom catPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 04:19 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Aug 29: Expert: Katrina could unleash disaster...CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/28/katrina.doomsday/...
Expert: Katrina could unleash disaster
Monday, August 29, 2005; Posted: 11:54 a.m. EDT (15:54 GMT) Levees, such as this one along Bayou Lafourche, are vulnerable because they're made of earth, an expert says.
-- Flooding from Hurricane Katrina's Monday landfall could wreak catastrophe on New Orleans, overwhelming the city's water and sewage systems and leaving survivors in a bowl of toxic soup, a top hurricane expert said.
more
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 04:28 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. Aug 29: DU thread: New Orleans braces for monster hurricane
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 04:36 PM by mom catWhat DU knew on Aug 29th It is amazing! http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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babylonsister (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 08:46 AM
Response to Reply #3
249. Buses were used to PU people at 12 locations:
Buses were used to pick up people at 12 locations - Prior to storm
Edited on Fri Sep-09-05 04:59 AM by DoYouEverWonder
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Around 112,000 Orleanians do not own cars, according to census data. Nagin urged those people to seek rides with friends, family, neighbors and church members. Those who could not find rides were urged to get to the Superdome as quickly as possible.
Regional Transit Authority buses were scheduled to ferry people to the dome from 12 locations around the city beginning at noon today.
Meantime, to make sure word of the mandatory evacuation gets out, Nagin said that police and fire crews would be driving through neighborhoods Sunday with bullhorns, directing people to leave.
The evacuation order contained exemptions for certain people, including city, state and federal officials, inmates of the parish prison, those in hospitals, tourists staying in hotels and members of the media.
An emergency order Nagin announced Sunday in declaring the mandatory evacuation gives authorities the right to commandeer private buildings and vehicles — including boats — as they see fit.
The mayor did not say which buildings might be seized for public use. For the time being, the Superdome will be used as a “shelter of last resort” for those unable to evacuate the city. If the dome fills to capacity, other buildings could be appropriated, Nagin said.
Nagin said the dome’s availability to residents doesn’t mean that going there is a good idea.http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlo ...

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lateo (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 03:02 PM
Response to Reply #249
538. This link is dead...does anyone have a copy of it?
TIA
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 04:54 PM
Response to Reply #1
265. 9/9: Simulation Just Pre-K Predicted 61,290 Dead
Hurricane Simulation Predicted 61,290 Dead
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
By RON FOURNIER and TED BRIDIS
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050909/ap_on_re_us/katrina... ;_ylt=AotFRjeFf_Ee0quwpSe6Qums0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg
- As Katrina roared into the Gulf of Mexico, emergency planners pored over maps and charts of a hurricane simulation that projected 61,290 dead and 384,257 injured or sick in a catastrophic flood that would leave swaths of southeast Louisiana uninhabitable for more than a year.
These planners were not involved in the frantic preparations for Katrina. By coincidence, they were working on a yearlong project to prepare federal and state officials for a Category 3 hurricane striking New Orleans.
Their fictitious storm eerily foreshadowed the havoc wrought by Category 4 Katrina a few days later, raising questions about whether government leaders did everything possible — as early as possible — to protect New Orleans residents from a well-documented threat.
After watching many of their predictions prove grimly accurate, "Hurricane Pam" planners now hope they were wrong about one detail — the death toll. The 61,290 estimate is six times what New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has warned people to expect.
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babylonsister (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 02:05 PM
Response to Reply #1
315. 2004, pre-election:
EXCLUSIVE!!! FEMA Chief Brown Paid Millions in False Claims to Help Bush W
http://jasonleopold.blogspot.com/2005/09/exclusive-fema ...
snip - Michael Brown, the embattled head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, approved payments in excess of $31 million in taxpayer money to thousands of Florida residents who were unaffected by Hurricane Frances and three other hurricanes last year in an effort to help President Bush win a majority of votes in that state during his reelection campaign, according to published reports. Much more at the above link.
And now we know why George will never fire him.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:12 PM
Response to Reply #1
348. Sept 10: Santorum slams pre K weather forecasting!
Santorum criticizes Weather Service
Has sponsored bill to prevent government weather notices, to benefit private companies, including donor
Saturday, September 10, 2005
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
By Maeve Reston, Post-Gazette National Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Rick Santorum, who has sponsored legislation to limit the information that the National Weather Service can provide to the public, told radio reporters this week that Congress should investigate whether the federal agency's initial warnings on the severity of Hurricane Katrina were adequate.
The Pennsylvania Republican's remarks drew fire from a union representing employees of the National Weather Service, which is a subsidiary of the U.S. Commerce Department's National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. They also were closely scrutinized by Democrats, who have contended that his legislation is intended to benefit private weather companies, at least one of which has contributed to his campaign.
During a conference call that Santorum conducted with Pennsylvania radio reporters Thursday, a public radio correspondent asked him about the weather service's performance in preparing Gulf Coast residents for Hurricane Katrina and whether the rescue and recovery response could have been improved if his legislation had been law.
Santorum said he didn't think the weather service had given "sufficient warning" initially about the hurricane's path or what its impact would be when it hit Florida. He said he was "not going to suggest there were any major errors," but that the adequacy of the warnings should to be investigated along with other aspects of how government agencies have dealt with Katrina.

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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:36 PM
Response to Reply #1
390. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) Prior Knowledge Laundry List
Katrina 'Prior Knowledge' Laundry List:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 04:39 PM
Response to Original message
4. Post K: Aid to NOLA blocked

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 04:44 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. Sept 2: National guard not allowing aid into the city
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 04:49 PM by mom cat
http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/3941.php
National Guard not allowing aid into the city
by SB Friday, Sep. 02, 2005 at 1:11 AM
Also. minstrel Boy's thread on this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

preciousdove (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 06:19 PM
Response to Reply #4
6. ongoing, Katrina Evacuee Relocation Thread
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 06:21 PM by preciousdove
Please post here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:45 AM
Response to Reply #4
151. Timeline of aid prevention and refusal:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 11:17 AM
Response to Reply #4
202. Sept 3: Red Cross barred from NOLA
http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00.html#4...
Disaster FAQs (Red Cross web site)
Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 07:47 PM
Response to Reply #202
280. Homeland Security
LA Homeland Security *confirms* ARC kept out!
by shock
Fri Sep 2nd, 2005 at 21:24:54 PDT
I just called the (Federal) Dept. of Homeland security (202-282-8000) and asked them the following question:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/3/02454/07418
LA Homeland Security *confirms* ARC kept out! "Is it true what the American Red Cross has reported that they have not been allowed into the city of New Orleans by the DHS since Hurricane Katrina because their 'presence would keep people from evacuating'"?
First, they put me on hold. Then I heard 2 beeps and the click that I assume means they were recording me. Then they asked me my name. (I told them, but now I sort of regret it...) Then they transferred me to Chris at the "Law Enforcement Fusion Desk". I read my question again.
snip
Then I asked who at the DHS was responsible for the policy that kept the Red Cross out.
He said that would have to be Michael Chertoff.

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snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 02:14 PM
Response to Reply #202
433. 9/13 E-mail from friend Re- a Cameraman's View
(He mentions that the Red Cross COULD easily get in if they wanted to, but that they and most of the media seemed to be afraid--but that it wasn't really that dangerous, because all the cameraman encountered while criss-crossing the city were exhausted pleas for help.)
Katrina: a cameraman's journal in NOLA <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/13/katrina_a_camerama... >
Xeni Jardin:
Excerpt from a personal diary written by a friend who's a news cameraman working in New Orleans. Name and affiliation withheld by request. This was written on Sunday, September 4th, six days after the storm hit.
New Orleans - The Real Story
It’s September 4th in New Orleans, and unfortunately - no one is getting it right, not the Feds, the State, the Local folks or the media. I’m sure that many people are trying, but for what ever reason- it is a rotting, deteriorating mess.
I’m only writing this because of what I watched on tv last night. It was the first chance I’ve had to see some of the coverage and what I watched was pathetic. I sensed it yesterday when, amongst the chaos of the unfolding disaster, you realized some of the differences between what is happening here compared to major calamities we’ve endured recently.
There are almost no news crews in the field trying to cover the story. Hundreds, if not thousands of media people are in the region - but I have driven back and forth through some of the worst neighborhoods in the city and you don’t see them. You don’t see the National Guard…..you don’t see ANYONE, except for the poor unfortunate souls wandering the streets looking for food or water. Many of them are on their last legs; they are literally not long for this world. It is surreal; it’s like a zombie scene from Dawn of the Dead. It’s disgraceful that in our times, we are seeing the complete disintegration of our ability to care for our own.
This is a racist issue, there’s no other way to look at it. These are the poorest of the poor. The people left behind in New Orleans are there for one reason only; they had no means to remove themselves from the city. Everyone who could get out, got out.
What’s missing from the rescue is apparent to anyone. A simple plan. It’s like no one ever gave it a real thought. Simple things like storage of emergency rations, clothing, tents, etc. in strategic locations….communications that allow different entities to talk to one another, emergency plans and routing for moving large numbers of people (easily done with the hundreds of public and school transit buses available locally), and the list goes on. Everyone on the street that I have met is so grateful for anything that you can give them. You have to be careful or you could start a riot just giving away a bottle of water.
Driving or walking through the flood area, you see people in the shadows on every block. As you walk around - they come out and they are so dehydrated, carrying babies, or leading you to their father or their mother or a friend who needs help. They all say that they want to get out; they just don’t have a way. And they uniformly complain about the police not stopping to help. Over and over you hear the same thing....”They just drawin’ down on people”, meaning they are pulling their guns.
I can only judge from what I saw, but in walking through the worst areas, every looter I saw was taking food and water. They could be shot for entering supermarkets, which by the way are mostly fully stocked with food, water, juices and soda. It’s disgraceful, it’s been almost a week and yet there seems as though no one in Washington, or Baton Rouge who gets the enormity of what is unfolding.
There are dead bodies on the street. Yesterday, I watched as a man tried to flag down a cop. There was a middle aged woman who had been dead for days, and yet no authority seems concerned. We can see that there was no plan for the living, but you would think that there would be some respect for the dead. When he was finally able to get a cop to stop - not an easy thing to do since they drive through at such high speed…. the cop said that they didn’t care about removing bodies. Someone’s mother, or child, she was still there late last night as I drove out.
I have driven from one end of New Orleans to the other - a drive of over 7 miles, and repeatedly not seen one cop, guardsman, trooper…. And where is the Red Cross? Not ONE. Everyone on the street says, “Where’s the Red Cross? I gave them so much money after 9/11 and the tsunami - where’s the Red Cross”. The cops I’ve asked say they are not here because they are afraid. The Red Cross says that the authorities are not letting them in the city. I find that hard to believe. The police can’t even secure a few blocks, let alone keep the Red Cross out. Helping victims in New Orleans is exactly why the Red Cross was created.
People are dying, I’ve seen it personally, and the main organization we look to is no where to be seen. Just like the media who sit on a safe block, or hang around the Superdome or the convention center because it is safe, maybe they are shunning the poor because they are scared. If they are being truthful, then they should take a stand, and deploy their personnel. Otherwise, they are complicit in an ill conceived plot to starve survivors out.
What is particularly sad to me is that I’m no hero. I’m basically a coward, but I don’t find anyone I’ve met on the street to be threatening. They are suffering and desperate and no one has uttered a word other then “help me” or “thank you”.
I watched one of these news robots on the air last night standing at Camp and Canal Street - where it is safe - doing a national live shot saying that “everything is in place now” and “food is being distributed”, and “the National Guard is deployed in force….on the street” - it was pure fiction. This guy hasn’t left the safety of his air conditioned trailer complete with Subway sandwiches (from Baton Rouge) and Gatorade. It’s pathetic.
One can only hope that our Federal officials will get a handle on the Herculean task ahead and that the citizenry will hold them responsible for the unnecessary loss of life.
As for the media… do a little fact checking, read more than one paper. Stay away from CNN, MSNBC and Fox. NPR and Nightline do a good job of looking beyond the headlines. By the way, The Salvation Army is here and they have been able to help in some places. This is a racist/socioeconomic situation.
We all know that if it were somewhere else, like an affluent resort town or a Bush county in Florida, things would be different. Yes, there was looting and gunfire, and there are criminals out there, but they were a small minority of the population. There were tens of thousands of poor, black folk who stayed out of it, and they are still waiting today for any kind of help.
Image <http://flickr.com/photos/ioerror/42603081/ > : Razorwire first, supplies second. Shot by Jacob Appelbaum.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 09:52 PM
Response to Reply #433
481. 9/14 Sequel: A Concentration of Horrific Pain, Lots o' Cops Doing Not Much
Katrina: a TV cameraman's diary, part two. <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/14/katrina_a_tv_camer... >
Xeni Jardin:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeljohnson/42526114/ >
Part two of a diary written by a friend who's a television news cameraman working in New Orleans.
New Orleans - September 9th
I’ve been here in New Orleans a week and on a daily basis I’m witnessing the staggering expanse of Katrina’s destruction. I’ve driven over a thousand miles around the city and the individual tragedies stretch from block to block. Whether traveling by air boat (remember the tv show “Flipper”?) or Humvee or by foot, every single street contains the remnants of someone’s life. Endless debris fields - entire life savings. The wreckage crosses all economic lines.
A particularly tragic moment was walking through personal items left behind at the Louisiana Superdome. Most of the people who were evacuated there are dirt poor. They live on the street or in shacks or tenements in this city that has more than it’s share of poverty. Their lives could easily be stored in a shopping cart or suitcase. As the Bush administration was shamed into action, this sad cargo was loaded onto buses - but told to leave behind anything that couldn’t fit on their laps. They were not even allowed to take their pets, which is one of the many reasons people have stayed behind in their homes. Cats and particularly dogs were roaming through the empty parking lot of the Superdome looking for their owners. National Guardsmen took some as pets and mascots on their “deuce and a half” cargo trucks.
There are still thousands of residents who remain in their homes. Some are doing ok, they have water and food, and are willing to do what it takes to stick it out. It seems as though they will eventually have to leave. The cops and army troops are now well deployed and some are handing out water and small amounts of food, mostly MRE’s. They don’t want anyone to become too comfortable, and it seems as though they will soon start to remove people.
I witnessed an emotional scene yesterday as a Louisiana state senator traveled through his district talking to firemen and cops. He spoke to some of his constituents as they alighted from boats that had just plucked them from their flooded homes in St. Bernard Parish. As the senator was introducing himself to a woman holding a small dog, the tension was immediate. “Why do we have to leave? This is all we have. I don’t want to go, this is my home. My sister is dead, and now you want to send me somewhere but you don’t know where, why are you doing this to me?” The desperation and fear is so personal, I feel unworthy even witnessing such deep heartfelt pain. But it is everywhere and it is the same scene over and over - and there is nothing that anyone can say or do that will make it any better. Everyone here is suffering the loss of a relative or friend or home or a job. And it goes on for miles and miles and miles.
What is striking is the incredible toll Katrina has taken emotionally. We often tend to focus on the dollar amount, the material costs and time. It’s as though all of the emotion and suffering is compounded by the shear enormity of the disaster. It’s hard to put into words just how much pain is concentrated in this region. So many people have lost their homes, their possessions, and loved ones.
I keep returning to the scene last Thursday at an overpass on I-10 in Metarie, just outside New Orleans. Every minute or so, a helicopter would land with flood survivors stunned and confused, many in tears having been plucked from their roof after days without food or water. Some were angry, not knowing where their loved ones were, or whether they were even alive. Many would just suffer in silence sitting under the hot sun. If you were lucky - you had an umbrella or a piece of cardboard for shade. These are poor people and for some of them this disaster is another chapter in a life of poverty that they have come to accept….quietly.
For others, suffering quietly was not their choice, and they were drawn to me as if carrying a tv camera meant that I had the answers. Where are we going? What are we going to do? Where is my baby? Why are the cops aiming their guns at us? So much emotion packed into such a small area, it was as if the world was literally coming to an end in one spot. You can’t imagine what it was like to see so much tragedy unfold in one small place. By 3pm there were close to 3,000 people, the lucky ones seeking shelter in the shade under an overpass. Elderly people, newborn babies, diabetics, amputees, heatstroke victims, and no more than 8 or 10 paramedics overwhelmed by hundreds victims, some of whom looked as though they were dying. It’s an eerie feeling driving or boating through the empty city knowing that these are the souls that once inhabited these empty homes and streets. And so many that didn’t make it out are left behind - some of them rotting on the sidewalk even today.
The lack of a plan is still the big story. Who is in charge? What is going to be done first? What are the goals? Evacuation? No evacuation? The New Orleans Police Department is trying to rebuild itself, and the National Guard seems to be the most organized. But there are way too many cops from as far away as Reno driving around with shotguns and M-16’s.
This is like a giant summer camp for law enforcement. There are hundreds of black and whites, armored cars, assault vehicles, and lawmen carrying every type of firearm ever made. It’s as though every police chief in the country put 20 officers in 5 cars and sent them to New Orleans - on overtime.
Of course, many are helping, but some have no orders or task to complete. So they drive around all day taking pictures, and then they go and sleep in their cars with the engine running and the air conditioning on. They are sightseers with guns taking “happy snaps” to show to all the folks at home. Complete with long tales of how they saved New Orleans.
Previously:
A cameraman's journal in NOLA <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/13/katrina_a_camerama... >
Image <http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeljohnson/42526114/ > : New Orleans, shot September 11 by Joel Johnson <http://joeljohnson.com/ > .
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:10 PM
Response to Reply #4
207. Sept 2: Daley 'shocked' at federal snub of offers to help
Daley 'shocked' at federal snub of offers to help
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050902dale...
Tribune staff reports
Published September 2, 2005, 10:24 PM CDTFrustration about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina has reached Chicago City Hall, as Mayor Richard Daley today noted a tepid response by federal officials to the city's offers of disaster aid.
The city is willing to send hundreds of personnel, including firefighters and police, and dozens of vehicles to assist on the storm-battered Gulf Coast, but so far the Federal Emergency Management Agency has requested only a single tank truck, Daley said.
"I was shocked," he said.
"We are ready to provide considerably more help than they have requested," the mayor said, barely able to contain his anger during a City Hall news conference. "We are just waiting for the call."
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 07:28 PM
Response to Reply #4
279. Sept 3: New Mexico National Guard delayed
Edited on Fri Sep-09-05 07:29 PM by mom cat
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050903/ap_on_re_us/katrina...
Congress Likely to Probe Guard Response By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer
Sat Sep 3, 6:38 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Another 10,000 National Guard troops are being sent to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, raising their number to about 40,000, but questions linger about the speed with which troops were deployed. Several states ready and willing to send National Guard troops to the rescue in New Orleans didn't get the go-ahead until days after the storm struck — a delay nearly certain to be investigated by Congress.
Edit for sp.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.
California troops just began arriving in Louisiana on Friday, three days after flood waters devastated New Orleans and chaos broke out.
In fact,
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 07:51 PM
Response to Reply #4
281. Sep 3: Fearing riots, Guard rejects food airdrops
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=...
Fearing riots, Guard rejects food airdrops
Officials exploring other options for delivering supplies
By Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, September 3, 2005

ARLINGTON, Va. — Authorities are avoiding airdropping provisions into New Orleans — the traditional way of supplying disaster victims — out of fear of sparking riots, a state official said.
While the military has used helicopters to drop provisions to some stranded in New Orleans, authorities have not launched the massive supply airdrops seen in Afghanistan at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Several C-130 Hercules aircraft are stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base, but authorities have not ordered them to drop supplies to flood victims, Arkansas Air National Guard officials said.
Airdropping supplies could actually worsen the situation, said Army National Guard Lt. Kevin Cowan, with the state Office of Emergency Preparedness.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 07:58 PM
Response to Reply #4
282. Sep 2: Bush: had not requested foreign help and did not need it
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2... /
FOREIGN ASSISTANCE
US sends mixed signals on accepting aid from abroad
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | September 2, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The offers of foreign aid keep pouring in: helicopters from Canada, cash from Japan, tents and military aircraft from France -- even oil from Venezuela, a political foe. At least 25 countries have offered humanitarian assistance to the United States to recover from Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters in US history.
But despite the increasingly desperate situation on the ground, the Bush administration has sent mixed signals about whether it will take these global well-wishers up on their offers.
President Bush indicated yesterday morning that the United States had not requested foreign help and didn't need it.
''I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we haven't asked for it," Bush told ABC's ''Good Morning America." ''I do suspect a lot of sympathy, and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country is going to rise up and take care of it. You know, we love help, but we're going to take care of our own business, as well."Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:58 PM
Response to Reply #4
400. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) FEMA's Rescue Team Cools Heels in Dallas
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Would-be rescuers cool their heels (FEMA urban search/rescue)
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/katrin...
They have been trimming one another's hair, lounging on hotel chairs, chatting on cellphones. They've been up at dawn, exercising in front of the hotel, trying to stay busy.
What they haven't been doing is dangling from helicopters over flooded neighborhoods or going into half-collapsed buildings searching for hurricane victims to rescue.
The 83 members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Urban Search and Rescue team from Orange County, Calif., have been told to stay downtown at the Hyatt Regency Dallas at Reunion.
The reason for the extended holdover? Team members were told that conditions were too chaotic in New Orleans, which has been plagued by violence and reports of gunfire aimed at rescuers, and the National Guard needed more time to restore order. In addition, problems getting supplies to the rescue crews already there, as well as victims, had not been worked out.
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understandinglife (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 07:47 PM
Response to Reply #4
452. quod erat demonstrandum: It Was Intentional
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... Peace.
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philb (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 09:58 PM
Response to Reply #4
482. more examples of FEMA blocking evacuation and aid
FEMA Blocking Relief Efforts - Compilation of Mainstream and Alternative Press reports
FEMA Blocks Katrina Aid from Chicago
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/09/07/fema/index...
Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm
FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e
FEMA turns away experienced firefighters
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/105538/7048
FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec...
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/ruthgroup/112613655425... /
FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec... FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/3/171718/0826
FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509 ..
FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15147862&BRD=
FEMA turns away generators
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html
FEMA: "First Responders Urged Not To Respond"
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470
FEMA Blocks Journalists From Photographing Katrina's Victims
Journalist Groups Protest FEMA Ban on Photos of Dead
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_di...
FEMA blocks volunteer firefighters from helping Katrina victims Friday, Sep. 2, 2005
http://www.gazette.net/stories/090205/montcou165700_319... FEMA blocks dead body examination in NOLA
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012192.html

FEMA locks Mac users from hurricane relief http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=12557
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philb (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 10:00 PM
Response to Reply #482
483. snips from articles on FEMA blocking aid to N. O.
Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parrish, appeared this Sunday on Meet the Press. He made some extremely serious charges that officials at FEMA had actively interfered in assistance efforts in his Parrish. Responding to host Tim Russert’s questions on local and state-level accountability, he said:
Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790 /
FEMA cut the communication lines in Jefferson Parish 1 day before the Hurricane hit and the sherriff had to reconnect them and put armed guards to prevent FEMA from trying to cut the lines again. Wal-Mart had food and water ready to take to the victims before the aftermath and FEMA stopped them before they reached Jefferson Parish. http://forums.officer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35819 WASHINGTON -- The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina already had struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region -- and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.
Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on the morning of Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.
The same day he wrote Chertoff, Brown also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts.
Meanwhile, the airline industry said the government's request for help evacuating storm victims didn't come until late Thursday afternoon. The president of the Air Transport Association, James May, said the Homeland Security Department called then to ask if the group could participate in an airlift for refugees. Wednesday, September 07, 2005 BY TED BRIDIS Associated Press

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fooj (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 07:39 PM
Response to Original message
7. I'll do what I can.
Recommend.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 07:56 PM
Response to Original message
8. After K: FEMA

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 08:16 PM
Response to Reply #8
9. Sept 5: Why FEMA turned awal help..daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/105538/7048
Why FEMA turned away help
by Ducktape
Mon Sep 5th, 2005 at 07:55:38 PDT
For days after the disaster, help and volunteers of all sorts headed for New Orleans with relief supplies and expertise, only to be stopped and turned away by FEMA.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 08:30 PM
Response to Reply #9
11. Sept 5: Fema won't accept Amtrak's help in the evacuation
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Main page content:
Federal agency 'slow' to accept business help
By FT Reporters in New York
Published: September 5 2005 03:00 | Last updated: September 5 2005 03:00
From Wal-Mart's satellite-based communications systems to FedEx's aircraft, US business has in some cases managed to provide a swifter response to the initial impact of hurricane Katrina than the federal and state authorities.But critics of the handling of the crisis by government agencies said they were slow in accepting offers of help.
Mary Landrieu, the Democratic US senator from Louisiana, accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of having "dragging its feet" when Amtrak offered trains to evacuate victimsPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 08:23 PM
Response to Reply #8
10. Sept 5: FEMA turns back Walmart trucks etc...NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec...
The Fallout
After Failures, Government Officials Play Blame Game
E-Mail This
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Reprints
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: September 5, 2005
This article was reported by Scott Shane, Eric Lipton and Christopher Drew and written by Mr. Shane.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 - As the Bush administration tried to show a more forceful effort to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, government officials on Sunday escalated their criticism and sniping over who was to blame for the problems plaguing the initial response.
Skip to next paragraph

Storm and Crisis
Photographs from a devastated region.
• Photographs From Last Week

Retracing the Storm
Faced with a massive disaster, everything fell apart in New Orleans. (Related Article)
• Damage in New Orleans
• Satellite Images Interview With New Orleans Mayor
Mayor C. Ray Nagin's radio interview.
• Transcript

THE SCENE Rescuers' frustrations mounted in New Orleans as people who remained in their homes refused to leave.
• Roadblocks for Medical Aid
THE FALLOUT Officials escalated their criticism over who was to blame for the problems plaguing the initial response.
• The Political Response
ECONOMIC DIVIDE The tales of two families displaced by the disaster expose a chasm between haves and have-nots.
THE POLICE After suicides and desertions, New Orleans is offering officers paid vacations.
NEWSPAPER'S ODYSSEY The Times-Picayune was forced to look for a new home while managing to publish.
HOW TO HELP A partial list of relief organizations and other information on the Web.
YOUR STORY Share your experiences via e-mail or in this forum.
While rescuers were still trying to reach people stranded by the floods, perhaps the only consensus among local, state and federal officials was that the system had failed. Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 08:34 PM
Response to Reply #8
12. FEMA-Homeland Sec block food from Red Cross
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm
Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food
Saturday, September 03, 2005
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same.
Other relief agencies say the area is so damaged and dangerous that they doubted they could conduct mass feeding there now.
"The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans," said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 08:43 PM
Response to Reply #8
13. Sept 2: FEMA turns away morticians
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15147862&
Disaster touches area residents
By JILL ZAREND-KUBATKO, Valley Life Editor September 02, 2005 Tom Dudelston, a funeral director with J. Warren Funeral Services in Casa Grande, had hoped to use vacation to help those who could not escape the blighted area. "I'm trying to go," Dudelston said around 1 p.m. Thursday. "But I have hit some complications I had not expected. I was trying to offer my services with some of my skills. It is kind of pending. I was going to do it to help. I am still hoping I can get in there. I won't know until later today. I have talked with an organization here in Arizona that helps in situations like this. I was hoping I could circumvent that and take care of myself and get in there."
By 3:45 p.m. he had the news he didn't want to hear.
"I am not going anywhere, I spoke with D-MORT, a group of funeral directors and embalmers, and I cannot go," he said, his voice filled with disappointment.
The Associated Press displays daily images in newspapers and on Web sites featuring the dead lying on the ground or seated in chairs, with no one to tend to them. "USA Today talks about the body count and the things that are going on since it has been declared a national disaster area," he explained. "They won't let anyone in there. You have to be FEMA-certified and I am not," he said.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 08:47 PM
Response to Reply #8
14. Sept3: FEMA blocks 500 boats
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/3/171718/0826
Just to give you a sense of just how badly FEMA has f*cked up.
by pelican
Sat Sep 3rd, 2005 at 14:17:18 PDT
This was posted by a Clarkie over at the Securing America:Just to give you a sense of just how badly FEMA has f*cked up.
Posted by Clark Warner on September 3, 2005 - 2:23pm.
This is beyond my comprehension and after spending two frustrating days trying to just get someone to let us help we've FINNALLY been told we can conduct "renegade" boat rescues via the just concluded press conference that Gov. Blanco just held.
Why is this JUST NOW being allowed? Well let's start from the very beginning.
On Wednesday morning a group of approximately 1,000 citizens pulling 500 boats left the Acadiana Mall in Lafayette in the early morning and headed to New Orleans with a police escort from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department. The flotillia of trucks pulling boats stretched over FIVE miles. This citizen rescue group was organized by La. State Senator, Nick Gautreaux from Vermilion Parish. The group was comprised of experienced boaters, licensed fishermen and hunters, people who have spent their entire adult life and teenage years on the waterways of Louisiana.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 08:53 PM
Response to Reply #8
15. Sep FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board
FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/site/premium/acc...
Chicago Tribune...requires registration
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:18 PM
Response to Reply #8
49. FEMA attempted to block planes evacuating hospitals
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 10:21 PM by snot
This story also shows how, with Gore's help, the rescuers ultimately prevailed despite unbelievable obstruction by both FEMA and the military.
http://www.algore.org/index.php?option=com_content&task... :
Gore at NOLA: The Fastercures Airlift From New Orleans
Wednesday, 07 September 2005
From TMP Cafe
by Greg Simon, President FasterCures
On September 3rd and 4th, FasterCures worked with a small dedicated group of people to airlift approximately 270 medical patients and evacuees from the New Orleans airport to hospitals and shelters in Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee. This is the story of how it happened.
On Thursday, September 1st, my friend Jill Chozen of San Francisco called to ask if I could put someone in touch with Al Gore. Dr. David Kline, the father in law of Jill’s friend Denise Kline, was stranded in Charity hospital in New Orleans. The situation was dire and becoming worse by the minute – food and water running out, no power, four feet of water surrounding the hospital and alligators eating corpses outside. David is a neurosurgeon and needed to take his patients out of the hospital as soon as possible. David asked Denise to find Al Gore for help because David knew Gore from operating on Gore’s son after a life threatening auto accident nearly 16 years ago.
I emailed Gore with Denise Kline’s number after speaking to Jill and got an answer immediately. Gore had phoned David in the hospital several times and ascertained that he was now on the way to an Apache Helicopter landing site with his patients. Things were looking up.
The next day, Friday September 2nd, I heard an NPR story that things were getting worse at Charity hospital – they were actually taking in more patients because the other nearby hospital –Tulane—was closed. When I arrived at work, I knew what we had to do –we had to evacuate medical patients from Charity to safety. (Much more at link above . . . )
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:38 PM
Response to Reply #8
59. Thread with info re- FEMA refusing or delaying help (all time periods)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:45 PM
Response to Reply #8
64. From FEMA's website: FEMA's claims process
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:55 PM
Response to Reply #8
91. Offer of help from foreign nations
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
WP,pg1: Offers of Aid Immediate, but U.S. Approval Delayed for Days
Offers of Aid Immediate, but U.S. Approval Delayed for Days
By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 7, 2005; Page A01
Offers of foreign aid worth tens of millions of dollars -- including a Swedish water purification system, a German cellular telephone network and two Canadian rescue ships -- have been delayed for days awaiting review by backlogged federal agencies, according to European diplomats and information collected by the State Department.
Since Hurricane Katrina, more than 90 countries and international organizations offered to assist in recovery efforts for the flood-stricken region, but nearly all endeavors remained mired yesterday in bureaucratic entanglements, in most cases, at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In Germany, a massive telecommunication system and two technicians await the green light to fly to Louisiana, after its donors spent four days searching for someone willing to accept the gift.
"FEMA? That was a lost case," said Mirit Hemy, an executive with the Netherlands-based New Skies Satellite who made the phone calls. "We got zero help, and we lost one week trying to get hold of them."
In Sweden, a transport plane loaded with a water purification system and a cellular network has been ready to take off for four days, while Swedish officials wait for flight clearance. Nearly a week after they were offered, four Canadian rescue vessels and two helicopters have been accepted but probably won't arrive from Halifax, Nova Scotia, until Saturday. The Canadians' offer of search-and-rescue divers has so far gone begging....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20 ...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 02:19 AM
Response to Reply #91
139. Glad that you captured this...it is now MIA
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 02:23 AM by mom cat
We are unable to locate the page you requested.
The page may have moved or may no longer be available
You may also want to try our search
to locate news and information on washingtonpost.com
Edited to add this link to the error message that shows up when you click the WAPO link in the parent post by snot:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/error.html
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skids (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 10:26 AM
Response to Reply #91
250. 09/09: more on swedish plane.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:13 AM
Response to Reply #8
93. Sept 6: Frustrated Firemen hand out flyers for FEMA
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:32 AM
Response to Reply #8
105. Report from a Psychologist treating evacuees
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
(EDITED--see original post for more)
Psychologist working with Katrina refugees tells sad story
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 06:13 PM by Elad
Here is the email I received from my professional organization etree detailing the experience of a psychologist working with the refugees and the horrible experiences they are having. This is the only way we can find out what is really going on.
The email reads --
The following comes from a friend of mine who is a licensed
psychologist. She donated her time and her talent working with Katrina refugees at first, Reunion Arena and then, the Civic Center. This is her first hand account and reaction to what she had to deal with.
Then to the helpers and what is happening there. Turf wars have already sprung up. In the name of "I know better than you do," chaos and wasted energy are multiplying. The Red Cross was initially in charge of certifying the credentials of the helping therapists. After Oklahoma City and the pretenders who arrived there, this seemed like a wonderful clearing house. Everyone who wanted to help had to go through a brief orientation and a thorough checking of credentials. Only licensed professionals were allowed. Driver's licenses were checked for criminal records. This seemed to be a common sense excellent approach to the question of rapists, pedophiles, and other thugs being denied access to a vulnerable population. Actually, things ran better than I expected at
the beginning. Then in came the physicians who I guess felt that their non-existent coursework in this area qualified them to better run things. Immediate chaos, disorganization, and all sorts of ersatz
"helpers" began running around. They grabbed our current Red Cross
badges and then stopped us from going back on the floor to finish seeing our patients without the new badges, which they just happened to be out of. We had an optometrist with prescriptive lenses but no glasses or readers and no idea when he'd ever see any. We had a deaf booth but no deaf helpers. In the midst of all this chaos, thousands and thousands of the walking wounded mixing with the powerless well-intentioned came the whispered word, pandemic. Lots of people are suddenly getting sick, and we have to have precautions. Don't eat or drink or touch the patients.
We only have one bottle of disinfectant in the mental health section, so come back here--the length of the Convention Center--after each patient.
"What of the people who are being cycled out of here?" "What are we
sending into the population?" If people are sick and contagious, where are the precautions to separate the vulnerable? What of precautions such as masks and gloves to keep the medical professionals and first responders safe? All the here and now is suspended in the hope that maybe tomorrow will take care of itself and the worst won't happen.
Those are the question we asked on the first day. NO ONE IS IN CHARGE!!!
Therefore, there is no consistent answer or approach or forethought. I am no infection guru but as soon as I heard on day one that people with no water were forced to drink water with bloated bodies, feces, and rats in it, the thought of cholera, typhoid, and delayed disease immediately occurred to me. What if the fears of disease are correct? People are fanning out throughout America. Where is the CDC?
In the age of computers, we are doing worse than the pencil squibs and the rolls of paper to log in the displaced after World War II. Literacy and computer access seems to be considered as a given for people who have lost it all. Accessing FEMA is through a website. People are in shelters waiting for FEMA to come "in a few days." "Be patient." The Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana pumped my hand and replied to my desperate queries about how to help people find their parents and babies, "Be patient--give us a few days."
I am sure that there is a special ring of hell for the media: The
survivor stories end-on-end for the titillation of the public. I heard Soledad O'Brien say something about the still unrecognized need to address the psychological trauma. I sent a response to the CNN tip-line that there were hordes of every manner of mental health professional working 24/7. CNN's response? Dr. Phil and the stories of the survivors" on Larry King. They went to the guy who lost his clinical license for serious professional infractions to tell the stories? I could see the "entertainer" down there gathering tales of the already exploited so that he and Larry could both pimp their ratings. The real unsung mental health heroes, the counselors, psychologists, social workers and psychiatrists dealing with un-medicated psychosis and severe traumatic responses were represented by Dr. "Keep-It-Real"? We don't need tabloid help from the media. Scream about accountability and point fingers for those who can't. Where is the real help from the media? Help us find those babies and parents and missing family. We have a man in one of the shelters who is caring for four kids. They call him uncle. He is actually the cousin of the fiancé of the mother who is probably dead. The children are silent. They sit and play and weep with open mouths that can't scream. Where is the media to scream for them?
Finally, to hell with this "no blame game." The stories that I know to be true are enough to make me boil. The compassionate foreign doctors who can't find anyone to validate their credentials, the expensive mobile hospital still sitting parked waiting for federal paperwork to move into Louisiana, the five C130s sitting on the Tarmac in San Diego since the night of Katrina, still waiting for orders to move. Where the hell are the beds? We have some old people sleeping on hot plastic pool floats with no sheets. They are still no showers for people who have walked for hours through fetid waters. Their skin is breaking out in rashes. Still no showers. Where the hell are the DeCon showers bought with Homeland Security money that can shower 30 people at a time. The convention centers have no bathing facilities so the filth and skin reactions are getting worse. What of lice? There are no clothes for the really heavy and large. I was reduced to writing the women I knew who went to Weight Watchers to comb their attics for "before" outfits. When I arrived with the sack of my gatherings, I had to engage in a full scale battle and puff myself up to all my red-headed doctor fury to get them distributed to the women still sitting there in their stinking clothes.
The people that survived this tragedy and the people who help them all know one truth. The help and the love and the care that has been
extended to them have been on a citizen-to-citizen basis. The churches,doctors, therapists, and ordinary citizens who are giving all they can in time and resources are managing to band-aid at the most elementary level-neighbor to neighbor. The government has failed!!! We are more vulnerable now than before 9/11 because faith in the system is gone. No system can sustain itself as a viable entity when the citizenry are the walking wounded. Victims implode a system from within and expose its decay. This is the beginning of the end unless we can get a drastic change of philosophy and restore the government to a system "by the people for the people." Right now nobody down here believes we have that.
Anne Gervasi
Euless, TX 76039
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:35 AM
Response to Reply #8
107. Sept 6: Would-be rescuers cool their heels (FEMA's own rescuers)
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 01:01 AM by mom cat
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/katrin...
Would-be rescuers cool their heels
Chaos in New Orleans delays California team eager to enter fray08:56 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News They have been trimming one another's hair, lounging on hotel chairs, chatting on cellphones. They've been up at dawn, exercising in front of the hotel, trying to stay busy.
What they haven't been doing is dangling from helicopters over flooded neighborhoods or going into half-collapsed buildings searching for hurricane victims to rescue.
The 83 members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Urban Search and Rescue team from Orange County, Calif., have been told to stay downtown at the Hyatt Regency Dallas at Reunion. Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:48 AM
Response to Reply #8
119. DU thread with multiple links re- FEMA's botched response
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Note, this post covers a lot of topics so you'll have to scroll down to get to this one.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:58 AM
Response to Reply #8
123. 1,000 firefighters to be used as community-relations officers for FEMA
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197
Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA
By Lisa Rosetta
The Salt Lake Tribune
Firefighters endure a day of FEMA training, which included a course on sexual harassment. Some firefighters say their skills are being wasted. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)
ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA. (MORE)
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:05 AM
Response to Reply #8
125. A compilation of help rejected by FEMA, mostly After
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Can FEMA do anything right?!! Look at this list!
Edited on Tue Sep-06-05 10:39 AM by peabody71
FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e ...
FEMA turns away experienced firefighters http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/105538/7048
FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec ... ;en=1d14ebfbd942a7d0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec ... ;en=1d14ebfbd942a7d0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
FEMA won't let Red Cross deliver food http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm
FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15147862& ;BRD=1817&PAG=461&dept_id=68561&rfi=6
FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/3/171718/0826
FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509 ... ;cset=true
FEMA to Chicago: Send just one truck http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050902dale ...
FEMA turns away generators http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html
FEMA: "First Responders Urged Not To Respond" http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:08 AM
Response to Reply #8
126. FEMA diverted copters w/ sandbags to pick up people at a church
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
FEMA sent Helicopters for LEVEE to Church instead
Edited on Tue Sep-06-05 05:41 PM by DoYouEverWonder
http://www.wdsu.com/weather/4917809/detail.html
Nagin reqeusted helicopters to drop sandbags on the 17th Street Levee when it started showing signs of trouble. NAGIN had the sandbags ready, all he needed was the helicopters.
HS/FEMA told him copters were on the way. They NEVER came. They went to a CHURCH instead.
So to pick up a 1000 people stranded at a CHURCH, 10,000's of peoples and their homes were doomed.
Nagin: Entire City Will Soon Be Underwater
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is "very upset" that an attempt to fix the breach in the levee at the 17th Street canal has failed, and he said the challenges that the city is facing have "escalated to another level."
"The sandbagging that we had hoped would happen didn't materialize today, so the water continued to rise at that particular location," he said.
In an exclusive interview with WDSU anchor Norman Robinson, Nagin said the rising water has caused the generators to stop operating because the water got too high. Due to that, Nagin said he's been advised by the head technician at the sewage and water board that water in the east bank area of Orleans and Jefferson parishes will rise to levels equal to Lake Pontchartrain.
FEMA sent Helicopters for Levee to Church instead.
He said he was told that the helicopters may have been diverted to rescue about 1,000 people in a church, but he is still not sure who gave the order.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:28 AM
Response to Reply #8
133. ***After K: FEMA CHIEF: MICHAEL BROWN

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:34 AM
Response to Reply #133
135. Sept 6: FEMA Chief Waited Until After Storm Hit
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1102744&CMP...
FEMA Chief Waited After Storm to Act, Gave Volunteers 2 Days to Arrive, 'Convey Positive Image'
By TED BRIDIS Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON Sep 6, 2005 — The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.
Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.
Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged Tuesday the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged.Dems Blast Bush Over Hurricane Response
Rehnquist Leaves Conservative Legacy
The Note: Red Versus Blue, Part XXXII
Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as "this near catastrophic event" but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, "Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities." Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

DrDebug (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 07:29 AM
Response to Reply #133
306. Sept 3: Brown didn't know about the convention center
Edited on Sat Sep-10-05 07:29 AM by DrDebug
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/national/nationalspec...
CNN's Paula Zahn was incredulous. "Sir," she said, "you aren't just telling me you just learned that the folks at the convention center didn't have food and water until today, are you? You had no idea they were completely cut off?"
"Paula," Mr. Brown replied unequivocally, "the federal government did not even know about the convention center people until today."
The comment symbolized what some have described as a deeply flawed federal response. President Bush praised Mr. Brown's performance on Friday
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:25 PM
Response to Reply #133
333. FEMA Chief Brown Paid Millions in False Claims to Help Bush Win Fla. Votes
http://jasonleopold.blogspot.com/2005/09/exclusive-fema...
Friday, September 09, 2005
EXCLUSIVE!!! FEMA Chief Brown Paid Millions in False Claims to Help Bush Win Fla. Votes in '04
By Jason Leopold
© 2005 Jason Leopold
Michael Brown, the embattled head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, approved payments in excess of $31 million in taxpayer money to thousands of Florida residents who were unaffected by Hurricane Frances and three other hurricanes last year in an effort to help President Bush win a majority of votes in that state during his reelection campaign, according to published reports.
“Some Homeland Security sources said FEMA's efforts to distribute funds quickly after Frances and three other hurricanes that hit the key political battleground state of Florida in a six-week period last fall were undertaken with a keen awareness of the looming presidential elections,” according to a May 19 Washington Post story.Homeland Security sources told the Post that after the hurricanes that Brown “and his allies him to succeed Tom Ridge as Homeland Security secretary because of their claim that he helped deliver Florida to President Bush by efficiently responding to the Florida hurricanes.” The South Florida Sun-Sentinel uncovered emails from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush that confirmed those allegations and directly implicated Brown as playing politics at the expense of hurricane victims.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 02:31 AM
Response to Reply #8
140. Sept 6: FEMA Turned Away Aid, Rescue Crews, Cut Emergency Communication
Lines.
http://dominionpaper.ca/international_news/2005/09/06/f...
FEMA Turned Away Aid, Rescue Crews, Cut Emergency Communication Lines: Witnesses
Agency draws ire of frustrated volunteers and donors
by Dru Oja Jay
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, several witnesses have alleged that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) turned away volunteers who were ready to help New Orleans residents people trapped in their flooded homes. Other witnesses have said that FEMA turned away offers of aid, prevented water and fuel from reaching people on the ground, and cut emergency communications lines.
The agency has cited security and safety concerns.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:44 AM
Response to Reply #8
150. Sept 2: Loudoun deputies can't reach FEMA, Louisiana officials
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 03:46 AM by mom cat
http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/Web/2005/092005/0902...
Loudoun deputies can't reach FEMA, Louisiana officials
Loudoun County deputies headed for Louisiana told to turn aroundDate published: 9/2/2005 LEESBURG, Va. (AP) - A group of Loudoun County sheriff's deputies heading to Louisiana to help maintain order among hurricane refugees had to turn around at the Virginia border when they couldn't get confirmation from emergency management officials, the Loudoun County sheriff said.
After attempting for 12 hours to reach officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Louisiana Emergency Operations Center, the deputies were told to head home. The group of 22 officers and six emergency medical technicians was expected to arrive back in Leesburg by 2 a.m. Friday, according to a statement from the sheriff's office.
"How many people have to die in the interim while they try to make this happen?" Sheriff Stephen O. Simpson told WRC-TV.
edited to add date
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:08 AM
Response to Reply #150
163. Minstrel' boy's post on this
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:05 AM
Response to Reply #8
161. CA firefighters (9/11 rescuers) barred from N.O. for a weekhttp://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:06 AM
Response to Reply #8
162. Who redirected helicopters leading to flooding of New Orleans?
http://www.bloggledygook.com/bloggledygook/2005/08
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:30 AM
Response to Reply #8
170. Many cases of hampered rescue efforts
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:45 AM
Response to Reply #8
177. FEMA Deliberately Sabotaging Hurricane Relief Effortshttp://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 09:41 AM
Response to Reply #8
192. Sept 1: FEMA to rescue workers: Pay for your own gas!
http://dailykos.com/story/2005/9/1/211114/2959
BREAKING: FEMA to rescue workers: Pay for your own gas!
by MaximusNYC
Thu Sep 1st, 2005 at 18:11:14 PDT
I've previously diaried about how I'm receiving e-mail from CNN viewers because my three-year-old blog, The Situation Room, has the same name as Wolf Blitzer's new show.
This latest message -- addressed to Jack Cafferty -- is one of the most startling I've seen yet:
MaximusNYC's diary :: ::
In today's segment of The Situation Room, you gave a personal response to the federal government's handling (mis-handling) of the unprecedented tragedy in Louisiana. Of specific note is the absence of coordi .nation of the
government's response by means of FEMA.
For your information:
FEMA called in a company that owns and operates a fleet of air boats, to aide with the search and recovery of citizens trying to survive the disaster and who are still in their homes, etc. A friend of mine (from Arkansas) is one of the owner/operators of an air boat in that fleet. He responded to FEMA's request and went down to assist, all at his own expense. When there,
he reported to a FEMA manager or supervisor who told him, and I quote: "We need your assistance and can use your help every day, there's a lot of folks who have not been found. But, you will have to pay for your own gasoline for your air boat."
The cost of gasoline for that air boat, for each day, amounts to approximately $550.00 per day, minimum. With the current gasoline crisis, it could cost considerably more, up to $600 - $700 per day.
This young man volunteered his time AND his boat to help - and was then told by FEMA that he would have to pay, additionally, out of his own pocket, all of the costs for his gasoline - to find the people who were in flooded homes across the entire flooded area in the City of New Orleans, where FEMA is assigned.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 10:20 AM
Response to Reply #8
199. Sept 1:THE BOY SCOUTS!! THE FREAKING BOY SCOUTS!!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
givemebackmycountry (1000+ posts) Thu Sep-01-05 09:05 PM
Original message
THE BOY SCOUTS!! THE FREAKING BOY SCOUTS!!
Did I just hear this hand job asshole from FEMA (with no experience) say the are mobilizing the BOY SCOUTS???
He actually said THE FREAKING BOY SCOUTS!!!
Good GOD who the hell is in charge here????
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Replies to this thread
X They don't even know how to camp in a rain storm LisaM Sep-01-05 09:07 PM #1
X Where exactly did you hear that? skooooo Sep-01-05 09:07 PM #2
X WTF???? KyndCulture Sep-01-05 09:08 PM #3
X On freaking CNN!! givemebackmycountry Sep-01-05 09:09 PM #4
X I heard that - Brown said that - if I could get thru the screen I would donsu Sep-01-05 09:09 PM #5
X "Platoon of Boy Scouts Gunned Down in N.O".... madeline_con Sep-01-05 09:10 PM #6
X Hey a troop of Boy Scouts LiveWire Sep-01-05 09:10 PM #7
X Well, it's more than the adults are doing ... madeline_con Sep-01-05 09:12 PM #10
X but why send in boys to do a mans job in this kind of danger? Sydnie Sep-01-05 09:12 PM #12
X I guess they won't be feeding gays and atheists then, or giving them water NNadir Sep-01-05 09:11 PM #8
X Funneee! madeline_con Sep-01-05 09:12 PM #11
X Not funny, LiveWire Sep-01-05 09:27 PM #28
X Brilliant. We'll send children to go where the cops fear to tread txindy Sep-01-05 09:11 PM #9
X wow just wow. socordsx Sep-01-05 09:13 PM #16
X i am getting boyscouts into it in my area seabeyond Sep-01-05 09:13 PM #13
X agreed justabob Sep-01-05 09:16 PM #23
X They ARE mobilizing scouts justabob Sep-01-05 09:13 PM #14
X after the summer the Boy Scouts had julialnyc Sep-01-05 09:13 PM #15
X My head hurts. Lindsay Sep-01-05 09:14 PM #17
X Well since the NG is in Iraq....... Jacobin Sep-01-05 09:14 PM #18
X I had the same thought MN ChimpH8R Sep-01-05 09:15 PM #20
X No...*This is the scope of *We're* facing? JaneGat Sep-01-05 09:15 PM #19
X They are going to "mobilize" Boy Scouts??? SillyGoose Sep-01-05 09:16 PM #21
X If this wasn't so heartbreaking Libby2 Sep-01-05 09:16 PM #22
X I'm sending my dog. growlypants Sep-01-05 09:17 PM #24
X Hell it least their moto is "BE PREPARED" if they had been in charge demo dutch Sep-01-05 09:18 PM #25
X Is the government so incompetent that NYC Sep-01-05 09:25 PM #26
X The Get Smart rescue team... Javaman Sep-01-05 09:27 PM #27
X The Boy Scouts are also a nickname for the NFL Saints KamaAina Sep-01-05 09:31 PM #29
X Uh, don't they have school they need to be in? Jose Diablo Sep-01-05 10:26 PM #30
X CNN just in: Mr_Jefferson_24 Sep-01-05 10:41 PM #31
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:01 PM
Response to Reply #8
213. Aug 29: FEMA: First Responders urged not to respond...unless..
( This request not to respond unless contacted by State officials came one day after Gov Blanco had sent her request to the president via the FEMA regional office! The request was already made!)
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470
Home » News » 2005
Search FEMA
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USFA Press Releases
Photo Archive First Responders Urged Not To Respond To Hurricane Impact Areas Unless Dispatched By State, Local AuthoritiesRelease Date: August 29, 2005
Release Number: HQ-05-174» More Information on Alabama Hurricane Katrina
» More Information on Mississippi Hurricane Katrina
» More Information on Louisiana Hurricane Katrina
» More Information on Florida Hurricane Katrina» En Español
WASHINGTON D.C. -- Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response and head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), today urged all fire and emergency services departments not to respond to counties and states affected by Hurricane Katrina without being requested and lawfully dispatched by state and local authorities under mutual aid agreements and the Emergency Management Assistance CompactPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:28 PM
Response to Reply #8
234. Amazing story of Gore at NOLA - - details of how FEMA tried to stop him
http://www.algore.org/index.php?option=com_content&task
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 09:19 PM
Response to Reply #8
240. JP's Maestri said FEMA didn't keep its word
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlo...
Friday, September 02, 2005

JP's Maestri said FEMA didn't keep its word
Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer
Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness Director Walter Maestri said Friday night that the Federal Emergency Management Agency reneged on a promise to begin relieving county emergency preparedness staffers 48 hours after Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans metropolitan area.
Maestri’s staff has been working almost around the clock since Katrina approached the Louisiana coastline on Sunday. Today, the staff is
expected to finally switch to a 12 hours on/12 hours off schedule, he said,
adding that they’re both tired and demoralized by the lack of assistance from federal officials.
“We had been told we would be on our own for 48 hours,” Maestri said.
“Prepare to survive and in 48 hours the cavalry would arrive.
“Well, where are they?” he said.
Maestri said the agreement was signed by officials with the Southeastern Louisiana Emergency Preparedness Officials Association, the state and
the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of this year’s Hurricane Pam tabletop exercise. That exercise began the process of writing a series of manuals explaining how to respond to a catastrophic disaster. Financed by FEMA, it included a variety of federal, state and local officials.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 04:48 PM
Response to Reply #8
263. 9/9 Swedish plane full with aid waiting since 6 days for an US order
Not sure if this is FEMA, but . . .
Swedish plane full with aid waiting since 6 days for an US order
Sweden's government spokeman Per Ström criticised the passivity of the US concerning international aid.
Since 6 days (I repeat "six days") a swedish plane carrying equipment to clean water is waiting on a military airport to receive an order from the US where it shall fly to. So far no order has been received.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,373833,00....
(in German)
Here an article a few days before:
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=2018&date=2005090...
Ström said the plane would continue to wait but could take off at any moment if the US wishes so.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 04:55 PM
Response to Reply #8
266. Sept 9: Embattled Brown Taken Off Katrina Duty
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050909/ap...
Embattled Brown Taken Off Katrina Duty
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
41 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, the principal target of harsh criticism of the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, was relieved of his onsite command Friday.
He will be replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, who was overseeing New Orleans relief, recovery and rescue efforts, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced.
Earlier, Brown confirmed the switch. Asked if he was being made a scapegoat for a federal relief effort that has drawn widespread and sharp criticism, Brown told The Associated Press after a long pause: "By the press, yes. By the president, no."
"Michael Brown has done everything he possibly could to coordinate the federal response to this unprecedented challenge," Chertoff told reporters in Baton Rouge, La. Chertoff sidestepped a question on whether the move was the first step toward Brown's leaving FEMA.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 05:06 PM
Response to Reply #8
267. Sept 2: Slow response bewilders former FEMA officialsPosted on Fri, Sep. 02, 2005
Slow response bewilders former FEMA officials
BY FRANK JAMES AND ANDREW MARTIN
Chicago Tribune
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/politics/12549282.h...
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Government disaster officials had an action plan if a major hurricane hit New Orleans. They simply didn't execute it when Hurricane Katrina struck.
Thirteen months before Katrina hit New Orleans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill that Ronald Castleman, then the regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called "a very good exercise."
More than a million residents were "evacuated" in the tabletop scenario as 120-mile-an-hour winds and 20 inches of rain caused widespread flooding that supposedly trapped 300,000 people in the city.
"It was very much an eye-opener," said Castleman, a Republican appointee of President Bush who left FEMA in December for the private sector. "A number of things were identified that we had to deal with, not all of them were solved."

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 05:44 PM
Response to Reply #8
270. Sept 5: State of Art Mobile Hospital from UNC Turned Away
State of Art Mobile Hospital from UNC Turned Away
by Cal45
Mon Sep 5th, 2005 at 14:11:22 PDT
"We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here," said one of the frustrated surgeons, Dr. Preston "Chip" Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That government officials can't straighten out the mess and get them assigned to a relief effort now that they're just a few miles away "is just mind-boggling," he said in a phone interview.
Next door in Mississippi, the North Carolina mobile hospital waiting to help also offered impressive state-of-the-art medical care.
It was developed with millions of tax dollars through the Office of Homeland Security after 9-11. With capacity for 113 beds, it is designed to handle disasters and mass casualties.
State of Art Mobile Hospital from UNC Turned Away
link to original:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/5/171122/0018
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 06:19 PM
Response to Reply #8
275. Sept 4: Doctors Hamstrung in Relief Efforts (100's of medical people)Doctors Hamstrung in Relief Efforts
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050904/D8CDKNCG0.html
Sep 4, 3:31 PM (ET)
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Volunteer physicians are pouring in to care for the sick, but red tape is keeping hundreds of others from caring for Hurricane Katrina survivors while health problems escalate.
Among the doctors stymied from helping out are 100 surgeons and paramedics in a state-of-the-art mobile hospital marooned in rural Mississippi.
"The bell was rung, the e-mails were sent off. ...We all got off work and deployed," said one of the frustrated surgeons, Dr. Preston "Chip" Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here," he said. That government officials can't straighten out the mess and get them assigned to a relief effort now that they're just a few miles away "is just mind-boggling," he said.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:06 PM
Response to Reply #8
345. 9/10 (orig 9/2) Per FAA, not ONE plane reported being shot at
Despite claims that rescue helicopters and planes had to be turned back because they were being shot at . . . .
Planes Did NOT Report Being Shot At
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1087205
Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in
Washington, said she had no such report.
"We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of
them reported being fired on," she said, adding that the FAA was in
contact with the military as well as civilian aircraft.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:21 PM
Response to Reply #8
353. 9/10 (orig 9/2) Troops Entering N.O. Find LACK of Violence
Met by Despair, Not Violence
As they begin to patrol the chaotic city, troops are surprised by what they don't find.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tr ...
The truck lurched through the streets, past buildings burning unabated and MPs in gun turrets. When they stopped to gear up for their arrival at the New Orleans Convention Center, where more than 15,000 people had been living in squalor since Katrina, these words echoed — for the first time, one would imagine — through the intersection of Poydras Avenue and Carondelet Street: "Lock and load!"
"Sixteen in the clip!" one Guardsman shouted, a common refrain used to indicate that rifles are fully loaded.
But when they arrived, they did not find marauding mobs. They did not come under fire. They found people who had lost everything in the storm and, since then, their dignity.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 11:47 PM
Response to Reply #353
386. See also
DU post at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:20 PM
Response to Reply #8
367. 9/10 (orig post 9/3) Landrieu Re- FEMA Rejection of Offers, 17th St. Levee
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlo...
Landrieu slams FEMA
U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, D-La., Saturday accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of failing to accept offers that would have eased post-hurricane problems in New Orleans -- including a plan for the Forest Service to douse fires in the city with aircraft used to fight fire. On Friday, Landrieu asked President Bush to appoint a cabinet-level official to oversee Hurricane Katrina relief and recovery efforts. She reiterated that request on Saturday.
"Yesterday, I was hoping President Bush would come away from his tour
of the regional devastation triggered by Hurricane Katrina with a new
understanding for the magnitude of the suffering and for the abject
failures of the current Federal Emergency Management Agency,"
Landrieu said. "Twenty-four hours later, the President has yet to answer my
call for a cabinet-level official to lead our efforts. Meanwhile, FEMA,
now a shell of what it once was, continues to be overwhelmed by the task at
hand.
Landrieu said that FEMA has inexplicably failed to take advantage of offers of help. "I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims - far more efficiently than buses - FEMA again dragged its feet," Landrieu said. "Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.
Landrieu said that her "greatest disappointment" is the lack of progress fixing the breached 17th Street levee. "Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast - black and white, rich and poor, young and old - deserve far better from their national government," Landrieu said.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:54 PM
Response to Reply #8
374. Sept 11: NYT..(no FEMA's failures) Disarray Marked the Path From Hurricane
Edited on Sat Sep-10-05 11:03 PM by mom cat
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/national/nationalspec...
Disarray Marked the Path From Hurricane to Anarchy
By ERIC LIPTON, CHRISTOPHER DREW, SCOTT SHANE and DAVID ROHDE
Published: September 11, 2005
Excellent detailed analysis of FEMA's failures.
The official autopsies of the flawed response to the catastrophic storm have already begun in Washington, and may offer lessons for dealing with a terrorist attack or even another hurricane this season. But an initial examination of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath demonstrates the extent to which the federal government failed to fulfill the pledge it made after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to face domestic threats as a unified, seamless force.
Instead, the crisis in New Orleans deepened because of a virtual standoff between hesitant federal officials and besieged authorities in Louisiana, interviews with dozens of officials show.
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials expected the state and city to direct their own efforts and ask for help as needed. Leaders in Louisiana and New Orleans, though, were so overwhelmed by the scale of the storm that they were not only unable to manage the crisis, but they were not always exactly sure what they needed. While local officials assumed that Washington would provide rapid and considerable aid, federal officials, weighing legalities and logistics, proceeded at a deliberate pace.
snip
Russ Knocke, press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said that any detailed examination of the response to the storm's assault will uncover shortcomings by many parties. "I don't believe there is one critical error," he said. "There are going to be some missteps that were made by everyone involved."
But Richard A. Falkenrath, a former homeland security adviser in the Bush White House, said the chief federal failure was not anticipating that the city and state would be so compromised. He said the response exposed "false advertising" about how the government has been transformed four years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 06:27 PM
Response to Reply #8
415. Sept 11: State officials say FEMA too slow on housing
State officials say FEMA too slow on housing
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlo...
By Ed Anderson
Baton Rouge bureau
BATON ROUGE – The Federal Emergency Management Agency is moving too slowly in bringing temporary housing into Louisiana for its displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina, state officials complained Sunday.
Col. Jeff Smith, deputy director of the state Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said with tens of thousands of Louisiana residents in evacuation centers in the state and more dispersed around the country, FEMA has not moved swiftly enough to bring in trailers and mobile homes or find vacant apartments or homes for the displaced victims.
“We have a main concern with temporary housing,’’ Smith said. “We don’t feel that process is moving fast enough. There needs to be trailers rolling and things happening that just aren’t happening...This is truly a national issue.’’
Two weeks after disasters struck in other states, FEMA had temporary housing in place for the displaced, Smith said.
“Other states have had trailers set up by this time,’’ Smith said.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 06:00 PM
Response to Reply #8
450. Paulson...the new FEMA Director

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 06:03 PM
Response to Reply #450
451. Sept 13 Paulson and duct tape
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
WilliamPitt (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-12-05 10:47 PM
Original message
Oh, Jesus Baldheaded Christ on a Crutch
The new FEMA guy, Paulson, sounds good....right?
30-year fire rescue guy...right?
Paulson was the guy who recommended "plastic sheeting and duct tape" be used by Americans to protect themselves.
Pardon me while I go fling myself into traffic.

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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:08 AM
Response to Reply #8
454. 9/13 A Volunteer in Miss.: FEMA Nowhere, but its Obstacles Are Everywhere
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
An Attorney's Efforts to provide Legal Aid in Mississippi
The person who wrote this I believe is an attorney. Her name is Karen Lash:
"Below is an op-ed like article about my day in the Mississippi coastal city of Gulfport on Saturday September 10 -- rather than delay getting the word out by submitting it to a newspaper, I'm sending it into cyperspace in the hopes you'll forward it to your friends, and take action on one or more of the bulleted items listed at the end. THANK YOU!
Bureaucracy kills. And in Gulfport, Mississippi, bureaucracy reigns.
I arrived in Jackson, Mississippi from Washington DC last Wednesday, hoping to help the Mississippi Center for Justice coordinate pro bono attorneys, law professors and legal aid offices, an army of whom are ready to respond to the overwhelming need hurricane victims have for legal assistance. In the midst of this effort, two other out-of-state volunteers and I left for the Mississippi coast. Armed with 25 copies of Help After a Disaster, FEMA's applicant guide, and cases of bottled water, we headed south to let people know law schools and lawyers would be providing help with the myriad legal issues they'd be facing.
But when I arrived in Gulfport on Saturday, I was simply not prepared for what I saw. Chaos, devastation and an apparent inability to deliver the most basic help to so many people in so much despair. It was day 13 after Katrina struck, and no one was coordinating the relief effort in one of the poorest communities along the coast.
We never found a resident who had ever seen even one FEMA official. No one had been able to successfully complete 'Registration Intake" via the 1-800 number. Most people we met still didn't have electricity or phone service. We finally heard of one man who got through to FEMA – at 2:30 a.m. But when asked for insurance information he didn't have and didn't know how he could get since he'd lost everything and had no place else to turn, he just broke down and cried. The bureaucracy was killing him.
It's no wonder. The September 11 Clarion-Ledger, Jackson's local paper, reported that U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering (R) had said FEMA needs 10,000 operators to properly staff the phones but Homeland Security regulations require employees to pass security clearance, typically a months-long process. The paper quotes Pickering as concluding 'In other words, the phone line is useless."
Meanwhile, our efforts were complicated because our phones rarely rang -- spotty cell reception. Although I could usually call out, I wasn't able to receive calls.
Again, the Clarion-Leger provided some insight. Representative Pickering's office reported that two days after the hurricane hit, a company offered to launch balloons that would restore cellular phone service in the region – for free. FEMA told him the company would have to go through a typically months-long competitive bidding process. The bureaucracy simply could not be avoided. FEMA representatives were nowhere to be found, but their rules and regulations are everywhere.
We stopped first at the Good Deeds Community Center, a makeshift refuge for 100s of North Gulfport and Turkey Creek residents. Red Cross volunteers told us the Florida church that had been feeding more than 600 residents two hot meals a day was leaving on Sunday and asked if we could track down another mobile kitchen. Without a second thought, we set out to help. But this was crucial stuff. Why were we doing it? Where was FEMA?
That effort had us going to area churches – where we found similar stories. Arkansas church members set up at the Grace Memorial Baptist Church had been serving up hundreds of hot meals since Thursday. They were almost out of food, leaving on Monday, but offered us their several hundred peanut butter and jelly sandwich surplus. We gratefully took it.
Another church in Ocean Springs didn't have a kitchen or cleaning supplies but could send new clothes and canned goods in a truck returning to Kentucky. Everywhere we went people asked for bleach – both to kill the bacteria from raw sewage so they could safely take a bath, and also to stop the spread of black mold that was swallowing the walls of those fortunate enough to still have a home.
The sympathetic workers in the county courthouse had few ideas for us. When asked where FEMA was one responded 'your guess is as good as mine."
Looking for another church we'd heard was preparing large numbers of hot meals, we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in a redzone. We passed the ominous buildings some of which had a bright orange spraypainted 'X" – indicating that the dead bodies still in the building had been identified so rescue workers had moved on. We also passed a van with Indiana license plates, and signs hanging in the windows that read 'CAN'T FIND MY FATHER – PLEASE HELP."
Returning to Good Deeds to report on our progress, we saw a county worker pull up with a truckload of ice. Twenty minutes later, with the truck unattended, no one aware of its precious cargo, and the ice quickly melting in the stifling sun, my colleagues and I hopped into the back of the truck. Yelling 'free ice" we urged people to take as many bags as they could carry and distribute it to neighbors on their way home.
Meanwhile, the onsite Red Cross volunteers gave out the last of their day's food and toy stash from their U-Haul, distraught because without hot food coming on Sunday, Good Deeds would be closed. No one knows what will happen next. There is simply no delivery or distribution system in place. Without the inspiration of leaders from groups like North Gulfport Community Land Trust and Turkey Creek Community Initiatives, and an army of volunteers, nothing would be getting done.
We next drove down Rippy Road, the center of the northern Gulfport community of Turkey Creek, to see firsthand its destruction. The historic residences in this African American neighborhood were part of a settlement built by freed slaves in the Reconstruction Era. Many of those homes are now uninhabitable.
While in another church parking lot, all three of us on separate cellphone conversations, one of my colleagues whooped with delight when she heard that the Kentucky-bound truck had arrived at Good Deeds – 'I'm in the chain gang unloading now" reported the Harrison County Supervisor staffer who has been working 14-hour days for eleven days straight. Unfortunately I had to report that the Long Beach pastor trying to track down a volunteer McDonald's truck could not be located and that no one knew where it had gone. We still had hope the Colorado Springs volunteers we met in the county courthouse could make a miracle happen as they'd promised to look for a mobile kitchen and cleaning supplies.
There's no question that eventually the need for legal services will be top priority and that it will be an on-going effort – likely for years. The Mississippi Bar, clinical law professors and students, and pro bono law firm and legal aid attorneys are continuing their Herculean efforts. Lawyers will be critical. Only they can help people get legal guardianship of the children they now care for, help the newly disabled get SSI benefits, elderly homeowners avoid predatory lenders, families file for bankruptcy, the insured appeal denials of coverage because damage is deemed caused by flood (not covered) not hurricane (which is), and help with myriad other legal issues.
However, the immediate imperative is to cut through the bureaucracy and get the hurricane's victims the most basic of life's needs – now. The United States is the most powerful and richest nation in the history of the world. That power and resources now needs to be used to get life's essentials to thousands of people who are facing chaos, devastation and death. But what we saw, or didn't see, was as potentially devastating. A system that has broken down will bring down all who are in need. Headlines tell us that the relief effort is stepping up, but to the people we met in North Gulfport and Turkey Creek, and hundreds of places like them, those headlines are meaningless.
Please contact your Congressman and Senators and demand the FEMA redtape be cut;
Contact your local churches and synagogues to see how you can help their efforts – be aware the needs change every 36 hours at least so contact with churches in the affected areas is key;
Donate money to community-based organizations and legal aid organizations in the affected states;
Brainstorm new ways to get help to the most affected areas immediately.
Before returning to Jackson, we left the 25 copies of the FEMA guide with the Supervisor's staffer at Good Deeds. She promised to distribute them at Sunday church services. "
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:19 AM
Response to Reply #8
457. Raw Story, from WSJ: Internal docs show feds "bungled" Katrina response
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Raw Story, from WSJ: Internal docs show feds "bungled" Katrina response
Edited on Tue Sep-13-05 02:22 PM by highplainsdem
Separately, internal documents and emails from FEMA and other government agencies dating back to Aug. 31 and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show the extent to which the federal government bungled its response to the hurricane. The documents highlight serious deficiencies in the Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan, a post-Sept. 11 playbook on how to deal with catastrophic events. Mr. Chertoff activated the National Response Plan last Tuesday by declaring the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina an "Incident of National Significance."
In one instance, federal environmental health specialists, who were charged with protecting both rescue workers and evacuees, weren't called in by the Department of Homeland Security until Sunday -- 12 days after the Occupational Safety & Health Administration announced it had teams from various agencies standing by ready to assist. Even now, with mounting evidence of environmental problems, the deployment is being held up by continuing interagency wrangling, according to officials at the National Institutes of Health, which also is involved in the effort.
In addition, FEMA's official requests, known as tasking assignments and used by the agency to demand help from other government agencies, show that it first asked the Department of Transportation to look for buses to help evacuate the more than 20,000 people who had taken refuge at the Superdome in New Orleans at 1:45 a.m. on Aug. 31. At the time, it only asked for 455 buses and 300 ambulances for the enormous task. Almost 18 hours later, it canceled the request for the ambulances because it turned out, as one FEMA employee put it, "the DOT doesn't do ambulances."
FEMA ended up modifying the number of buses it thought it needed to get the job done, until it settled on a final request of 1,355 buses at 8:05 p.m. on Sept. 3. The buses, though, trickled into New Orleans, with only a dozen or so arriving on the first day.

The Raw Story article, with excerpts from the Wall Street Journal, is at
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Paper_Internal_documents_ ...

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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:42 AM
Response to Reply #8
463. 9/13 Blanco gives up on FEMA, hires firm herself to recover Louisiana dead
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Blanco gives up on FEMA, hires firm herself to recover Louisiana dead
Louisiana Hires Contractor to Help Recover Bodies
Sept. 13 (Bloomberg)
-- Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said the state hired a contractor to recover bodies left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, saying she had given up on the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"In recent days, I have spoken with FEMA and administration officials to convey my absolute frustration regarding the lack of urgency and the lack of respect of our people whose lives were lost as a result of Hurricane Katrina,'' Blanco told reporters in Baton Rouge today during a meeting with state officials.
Blanco said Kenyon International Emergency Services, a Houston-based unit of Service Corp. International that has worked on Asian tsunami recovery effort, will find the corpses left after Katrina roared ashore on the U.S. Gulf Coast Aug. 29. The storm killed thousands, caused an estimated $100 billion in damage and left 80 percent of New Orleans submerged in water....
***
Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff said the agency that runs FEMA created a "system of recovery" a week ago and is responsible for the recovery of bodies, Blanco said, adding that even the highest government officials couldn't "break through the bureaucracy to get the coordination done." She also blamed the agency for not committing enough workers to the effort.
Respect
"I cannot bear to wait any longer," Blanco said today during a meeting with state officials. "In death as in life our people deserve more respect than they have received."...
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=add...
ON EDIT: Re. FEMA's contracting with Kenyon --
Blanco said she has signed a contract with Kenyon International Emergency Services after the company threatened to pull out of the state because it had not yet signed a formal contract with FEMA.
Asked about the issue, FEMA spokesman David Passey said: "From what I understand, Kenyon had some questions about the contract."
http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 11:43 AM
Response to Reply #463
479. 9/14 Firm hired by Blanco is subsidiary of one FEMA would have hired
Search this page for "DMORT" for more.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
22. No, Kenyon International is a subsidary of SCI... it is the same company.
Blanco signed the FEMA contract. FEMA was in negotiations or something with SCI's Kenyon International
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:56 AM
Response to Reply #8
467. 9/13 Chertoff STILL Impeding FEMA Efforts
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Whistleblower: Chertoff Impeding Rescue NOW!
HS is scrambling to resurrect/protect it's tarnished image, and that of *, so much, they are screwing up even more! They definitely got the call from Rove..."look good, at any cost!"
<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/13/164257/615 >On last night's Nightline, FEMA staffer Leo Bosner appeared, careful to say he was giving his personal views, not the agency's official ones. He spoke quietly but did not mince words:
"Right now as we talk, unfortunately, Homeland Security is actually impeding - in my view - impeding the rescue effort. As I mentioned, we're running a 24/7 operation down there and we're trying to do the best we can at FEMA. And we're getting held back because we're bombarded with telephone calls, day and night, from Homeland Security, saying, `Oh, Secretary Chertoff has a press conference coming up, uh, stop everything and get us this information: Can you tell us exactly how many pounds of ice have been delivered to such and such county,' or, `Why are the number of rescues different from what they were six hours ago?' They're impeding the effort right now."
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 09:23 AM
Response to Reply #467
478. 9-14 re 9-13: Chertoff delayed federal response, memo showsPosted on Tue, Sep. 13, 2005
• Knight Ridder
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/news/politic... Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows
BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY, ALISON YOUNG AND SHANNON MCCAFFREY
Knight Ridder NewspapersWASHINGTON - (KRT) - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.
Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.
As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.
But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-15-05 10:49 AM
Response to Reply #478
487. 9-14KR Report: 'Confused' Chertoff Delayed Federal Katrina Response
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ep/20050914/en...
KR Report: 'Confused' Chertoff Delayed Federal Katrina Response Wed Sep 14, 6:38 PM ET

NEW YORK In a major scoop, three reporters with Knight Ridder's Washington bureau report that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not ex-FEMA chief Michael Brown, was the federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina. In a damning allegation, they suggest that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.
The reporters -- Jonathan S. Landay, Alison Young and Shannon McCaffrey -- say this is based on federal documents they reviewed this week.
Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, they report, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Brown, they add, had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 01:05 AM
Response to Reply #8
468. 9/13 WSJ: Internal docs show feds "bungled" Katrina response
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Raw Story, from WSJ: Internal docs show feds "bungled" Katrina response
Separately, internal documents and emails from FEMA and other government agencies dating back to Aug. 31 and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show the extent to which the federal government bungled its response to the hurricane. The documents highlight serious deficiencies in the Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan, a post-Sept. 11 playbook on how to deal with catastrophic events. Mr. Chertoff activated the National Response Plan last Tuesday by declaring the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina an "Incident of National Significance."
In one instance, federal environmental health specialists, who were charged with protecting both rescue workers and evacuees, weren't called in by the Department of Homeland Security until Sunday -- 12 days after the Occupational Safety & Health Administration announced it had teams from various agencies standing by ready to assist. Even now, with mounting evidence of environmental problems, the deployment is being held up by continuing interagency wrangling, according to officials at the National Institutes of Health, which also is involved in the effort.
In addition, FEMA's official requests, known as tasking assignments and used by the agency to demand help from other government agencies, show that it first asked the Department of Transportation to look for buses to help evacuate the more than 20,000 people who had taken refuge at the Superdome in New Orleans at 1:45 a.m. on Aug. 31. At the time, it only asked for 455 buses and 300 ambulances for the enormous task. Almost 18 hours later, it canceled the request for the ambulances because it turned out, as one FEMA employee put it, "the DOT doesn't do ambulances."
FEMA ended up modifying the number of buses it thought it needed to get the job done, until it settled on a final request of 1,355 buses at 8:05 p.m. on Sept. 3. The buses, though, trickled into New Orleans, with only a dozen or so arriving on the first day.
The Raw Story article, with excerpts from the Wall Street Journal, is at
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Paper_Internal_documents_...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-15-05 01:24 AM
Response to Reply #8
485. 9/14 Man Saved Day 16 Bec. N.G. Lt. Broke FEMA Order Not to Search Homes
Edited on Thu Sep-15-05 01:26 AM by snot
From http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/14/12516/3649 :
Survivor rescued 16 days after the hurricane
By KEITH SHARON
The Orange County Register
September 14, 2005
NEW ORLEANS - . . . A human foot arching at an odd angle was visible through the front window of a locked and dark home.
The National Guard team of searchers was about to call in a "DB," or dead body . . . in the Broadmoor district when Lt. Frederick Fell decided to investigate.
In the past few days, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has ordered searchers not to break into homes. They are supposed to look in through a window and knock on the door. If no one cries out for help, they are supposed to move on. If they see a body, they are supposed to log the address and move on.
< snip >
Fell broke the rules and ordered his men to bash open the door, launching a series of events that would save a man's life and revitalize California Task Force 5 from Orange County.
< snip >
. . . 16 days after Hurricane Katrina smacked this aging community in the face, an unconscious and emaciated man identified as Edgar Hollingsworth, 74, was rescued. The man is expected to survive.
< snip >
Medics from California Task Force 5, which had been searching in the same neighborhood, were eventually able to get intravenous fluids through a vein under the man's clavicle in an intricate curbside medical procedure that may have saved the man's life.
The man had been lying on the couch in his locked and sweltering home.
< snip >
They pulled him out of the house and laid him on the sidewalk. He looked as if he weighed less than 80 pounds.
< snip >
"They were surprised at the hospital that anyone in his condition would still be alive," Czuleger said. "In 24 hours, he would have been dead.
"I think the young Army guy that found him saved his life."
< snip >
Hollingsworth had been lying naked on his blue-green couch. It was unclear if he had eaten or drunk anything for several days. He was not surrounded by food or water containers. His house was still in disarray from the storm. A chair had landed on top of the kitchen table.
< snip >
A pit-bull puppy was also pulled from the house. It appeared to be healthy and was transported to the hospital along with Edgar Hollingsworth.
Earlier, they had been frustrated when FEMA delayed their deployment for four days, housing them in the Hyatt Regency in Dallas.
They were frustrated further when they were given the FEMA order that they weren't allowed to force their way into houses to search them.
< snip >
Thank you, California National Guard. Too bad that half the Louisiana National Guard -- and their equipment -- were halfway around the world fighting George W Bush's illegitimate war, instead of saving the lives of people like Edgar Hollingsworth.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-15-05 09:50 PM
Response to Reply #8
488. 9/15 Brown admits calling WH within hours of Katrina's hit
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Brown admits calling WH within hours of Katrina's hit
NEW YORK - The former FEMA director who became a lightning rod for the sluggish federal response to Hurricane Katrina blamed state officials for the delays, according to a newspaper report.
Michael Brown told The New York Times that within hours of Katrina's attack on New Orleans he told the White House that Louisiana officials lacked an organized response, leading to an "out of control" situation.
Brown said he called Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House chief of staff Andrew Card to let them know the situation was out of control.
His account suggests the White House knew right away that the storm was leaving the coast in shambles.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050915/ap_on_re_us/katrina...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-15-05 11:07 PM
Response to Reply #8
490. 9-15 "Sick and Abandoned" FEMA blocked emergency hospital
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Herbert/NYT: "Sick and Abandoned" FEMA blocked emergency hospital
Edited on Thu Sep-15-05 12:14 PM by Nothing Without Hope
supplies and generator fuel from reaching Methodist Hospital, in the eastern part of New Orleans. The supplies sent from out of state by the hospital's owners to save dying patients and keep the emergency generators going was confiscated by FEMA. As a result, more patients died.
The story follows a tragic, despicable pattern that is all too familiar by now, but it's good to see it in the New York Times two and a half weeks after the storm. The outrage should not be allowed to cool.

September 15, 2005
Sick and Abandoned
By BOB HERBERT, op/ed columnist
(snip)
The patients and staff at Methodist could have been evacuated before Hurricane Katrina hit. But instead they were condemned to several days of fear and agony by bad decision-making in Louisiana and the chaotic ineptitude of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Some of the patients died.
Incredibly, when the out-of-state corporate owners of the hospital responded to the flooding by sending emergency relief supplies, they were confiscated at the airport by FEMA and sent elsewhere.
(snip)
Everybody's suffering would have been eased if the emergency relief effort mounted by the hospital's owner, Universal Health Services in King of Prussia, Pa., had not been interfered with by FEMA. Company officials sent desperately needed water, food, diesel fuel to power the hospital's generators and helicopters to ferry in the supplies and evacuate the most vulnerable individuals.
Bruce Gilbert, Universal's general counsel, told me yesterday, "Those supplies were in fact taken from us by FEMA, and we were unable to get them to the hospital. We then determined that it would be better to send our supplies, food and water to Lafayette <130 miles from New Orleans> and have our helicopters fly them from Lafayette to the hospital."
(snip)
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

Bob Herbert ends his article by pointing out that the story of the deadly consequences of the confiscated emergency supplies for Methodist hospital is "just one small part of the New Orleans catastrophe," hinting at the sheer scale of the massive societal failure that was allowed to happen. He concludes, "Welcome to the United States in 2005."
The abandonment of sick people is STILL going on under FEMA's murderously negligent direction. People are STILL dying of hunger and thirst in New Orleans and most probably all over the region devastated by the hurricane. For example this man in New Orleans, who was alone and abandoned without food or water:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/14/12516/3649
(DU thread on this dKos story here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ... )

Mr. Hollingsworth is still alive only because a California National Guard refused to follow orders from FEMA not to break into houses after he saw a foot in the window. This was TWO AND A HALF WEEKS AFTER THE STORM. There must be hundreds- thousands?- of others who are still dying or died within the last few days. There can be no conceivable excuse for this. It is negligent homicide on a massive scale.
We cannot let the outrage cool.
Right now there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people who have STILL not been rescued or helped. The GOP do not care, and some of them are positively gleeful (like that Baton Rouge pol who was overheard by a Wash Post reporter as he told lobbyists "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did").
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
Thread title: WP: Sympathetic Tone Eludes Some in GOP (Hit Jarring Notes re. Katrina)
We must hold them accountable and not let up on our efforts to motivate action to aid the victims and get the truth out about what has been and is being done to them in our name. And we must also be alert to block efforts by the Bush Administration not only to evade blame but also to use this national tragedy to grab ever more power in defiance of the Constitution:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
Thread title: Bush says he may need more power in disasters
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
Thread title: NPR Reports: GW to Blanco"I'll send in the troops if you answer to the WH"
Finally, though you may consider this off-topic, I feel it's vitally important to be alert to horrible actions done by the Bush Administration while the nation is in a state of shock over the Katrina aftermath. We need DU threads collecting these "under the radar" stories. A prime example: THE PENTAGON'S DRAFT PLAN FOR MAKING PRE-EMPTIVE NUCLEAR ATTACKS OFFICIAL US MILITARY POLICY IS NEARING APPROVAL.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
Thread title: Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan
That's right, folks, if this is approved, Bush will be able to nuke anybody he wants if his handlers tell him that they MIGHT be CONSIDERING using bioweapons, or chemical ones at some point. We'd probably be in a nuclear World War III by this time if that had been on the books when he went into Iraq. And you know they've wanted "regime change" by any means in Iran for a long time and now they're giving those coded phrases about Syria too. THIS IS NO TIME TO LOSE ATTENTION!!!Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-15-05 11:12 PM
Response to Reply #8
491. 9-15KR Report: 'Confused' Chertoff Delayed Federal Katrina Response
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
KR Report: 'Confused' Chertoff Delayed Federal Katrina Response
NEW YORK In a major scoop, three reporters with Knight Ridder's Washington bureau report that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not ex-FEMA chief Michael Brown, was the federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina.
In a damning allegation, they suggest that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.
The reporters -- Jonathan S. Landay, Alison Young and Shannon McCaffrey -- say this is based on federal documents they reviewed this week.
Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, they report, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Brown, they add, had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.
As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water, and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives, they write.
But Chertoff -- not Brown -- was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.
More: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ep/20050914/en ...

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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-16-05 03:32 PM
Response to Reply #8
503. 9/16 FEMA Officials Were Shocked @ Failure of Brown & Chertoff to Mobilize
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
NPR follow-up story-DC FEMA Official Says Chertoff& Brown Ignored Warnings
Once again Chertoff/Brown are caught LYING!!
NPR doing a follow-up on previous story
FEMA Official Says Agency Heads Ignored Warnings
NPR - Morning Edition - 9/16/05
by Laura Sullivan
In the days before Hurricane Katrina hit land, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, FEMA Director Michael Brown and other top Homeland Security officials received e-mails on their blackberries warning that Katrina posed a dire threat to New Orleans and other areas. Yet one FEMA official tells NPR little was done.
Leo Bosner, an emergency management specialist at FEMA headquarters in Washington, D.C., is in charge of the unit that alerts officials of impending crises and manages the response. As early as Friday, Aug. 26, Bosner knew that Katrina could turn into a major emergency.
In daily e-mails -- known as National Situation Updates -- sent to Chertoff, Brown and others in the days before Katrina made landfall in the Gulf Coast, Bosner warned of its growing strength -- and of the particular danger the hurricane posed to New Orleans, much of which lies below sea level.
But Bosner says FEMA failed to organize the massive mobilization of National Guard troops and evacuation buses needed for a quick and effective relief response when Katrina struck. He says he and his colleagues at FEMA's D.C. headquarters were shocked by the lack of response.
"We could see all this going downhill," Bosner said, "but there was nothing we could do."
Entire audio at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=48...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-17-05 06:14 PM
Response to Reply #503
516. More pieces on similar subject
Edited on Sat Sep-17-05 06:16 PM by snot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
A disturbing view from inside FEMA(Brown and Chertoff were given warnings)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/17/katrina.response /
A disturbing view from inside FEMA
Worker: Decision-makers lack disaster experience
As Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast three weeks ago, veteran workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency braced for an epic disaster.
But their bosses, political appointees with almost no emergency management experience, didn't seem to share the sense of urgency, a FEMA veteran said.
"We told these fellows that there was a killer hurricane heading right toward New Orleans," Leo Bosner, a 26-year FEMA employee and union leader told CNN. "We had done our job, but they didn't do theirs."( Watch video of the whistleblower)
Bosner's storm warning came early Saturday, three days before Hurricane Katrina came ashore in eastern Louisiana.
"New Orleans is of particular concern because much of that city lies below sea level," he warned in his daily alert to Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, then-FEMA chief Michael Brown and other Bush administration officials.
________
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Early warnings raised doubt on Bush disaster plans
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N17208748.htm
17 Sep 2005 20:16:03 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON, Sept 17 (Reuters) - In the months before Hurricane
Katrina, President George W. Bush sought to cut a key program to help
local governments raise their preparedness, and state officials
warned of a "total lack of focus" on natural disasters by his
homeland-security chief, documents show.
The disclosures add to questions over the administration's
emergency-response planning, Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff's priorities and the way the White House budgets for
disaster preparedness after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Organizations representing emergency-response and security officials
at state and local agencies had complained of funding shortages and
what they saw as an excessive shift by the Homeland Security
Department away from preparing for natural disasters, as it focused
increasingly on terrorism.
In July, the National Emergency Management Association wrote lawmakers
expressing "grave" concern that still-pending changes proposed by
Chertoff would undercut the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA).
<snip>
more... http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N17208748.htm
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-17-05 01:08 AM
Response to Reply #8
507. 9/16 FEMA Ordered Dr. to STOP Treating Victims--Watched 2 Die
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Doctor says FEMA ordered him to stop treating hurricane victims
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091605/new_doctoror...
In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn't registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"I begged him to let me continue," said Perlmutter, who left his home and practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania to come to Louisiana and volunteer to care for hurricane victims. "People were dying, and I was the only doctor on the tarmac (at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) where scores of nonresponsive patients lay on stretchers. Two patients died in front of me.
<snip>
Lori Price
http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-17-05 01:20 AM
Response to Reply #8
508. 9/16 Oil Workers Get New Homes Fast
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
LA: Displaced oil workers get new homes
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/15/katrina.sugarville.reu...
Compared with many others forced from their homes by Hurricane Katrina, residents of Sugarville have comfortable new houses, complete with amenities like soft beds, DVD players and full refrigerators.
Of course, "Sugarville" is actually a huge dirt lot on the grounds of the Royal Dutch Shell Sugarland Terminal in this southeastern Louisiana town.
The "houses" are Fleetwood Enterprises trailers supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house oil workers and their families displaced by the storm that devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast.
For those in the storm's path, there are complaints far and wide that disaster response officials are not moving fast enough to find housing for storm evacuees. But when it comes to the oil industry, FEMA moved quickly, scrambling to get trailers so refineries could come back online and crude could begin flowing again.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-17-05 01:34 AM
Response to Reply #8
509. 9/16 Criteria for FEMA Aid Not to Be Divulged to Victims???
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
FEMA's response at our town hall meeting
We have had two town hall meetings (last night and the night before) and invited evacuees from the New Orleans area that are staying in our town to come and meet with our city's leaders to discuss how we can help them more.
Last night the FEMA person for our area came to address some of the evacuees concerns. Not a single evacuee here has received anything from FEMA. They wanted to know why. The FEMA person said that after they registered with FEMA, and if they qualified, it would be about 10 days before they received a check. It has been close to two weeks since a majority of our evacuees registered with FEMA. Everyone wanted to know what the qualifications were to receive a check. She said that she couldn't tell what the qualifications were. We asked her what did she mean that she "couldn't tell us what the qualifications were"? She said that there were certain qualifications that people applying for FEMA benefits had to meet, but they were "secret", and could not be divulged because FEMA was concerned that if the qualifications were made public people who didn't qualify would apply for benefits using fake qualifications that met the criteria.
It was a packed hall, and you could have heard a pin drop after she said that. What kind of crap is that! I didn't know that FEMA had "secret" qualifications to receive benefits.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-17-05 02:42 PM
Response to Reply #8
511. 9/17 NYT: FEMA, Slow to the Rescue, Now Stumbles in Aid Effort
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
NYT: FEMA, Slow to the Rescue, Now Stumbles in Aid Effort
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/17/national/nationalspec...
BATON ROUGE, La., Sept 16 - Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina cut its devastating path, FEMA - the same federal agency that botched the rescue mission - is faltering in its effort to aid hundreds of thousands of storm victims, local officials, evacuees and top federal relief officials say. The federal aid hot line mentioned by President Bush in his address to the nation on Thursday cannot handle the flood of calls, leaving thousands of people unable to get through for help, day after day.
Federal officials are often unable to give local governments permission to proceed with fundamental tasks to get their towns running again. Most areas in the region still lack federal help centers, the one-stop shopping sites for residents in need of aid for their homes or families. Officials say that they are uncertain whether they can meet the president's goal of providing housing for 100,000 people who are now in shelters by the middle of next month.
While the agency has redoubled its efforts to get food, money and temporary shelter to the storm victims, serious problems remain throughout the affected region. Visits to several towns in Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as interviews with dozens of local and federal officials, provide a portrait of a fragmented and dysfunctional system.
The top two federal relief officials in charge of the effort both acknowledged in interviews late this week that they too have listened to the frustrated voices of local officials and citizens alike, and find their complaints valid.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-17-05 03:47 PM
Response to Reply #8
514. 9/17 Michael Moore Rpts His Own Relief Efforts, & FEMA's Complete Absence
Michael Moore's updates from Covington
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/covington.php?id=2...
Friends,
Last week I closed my New York production office and sent my staff down to New Orleans to set up our own relief effort. I asked all of you to help me by sending food, materials and cash to the emergency relief center we helped set up on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain with the Veterans for Peace. We did this when the government was doing nothing and the Red Cross was still trying to get it together. Every day, every minute was critical. People were dying, poor people, black people, left like so much trash in the street. I wanted to find a way to get aid in there immediately.
I hooked up with the Vietnam veterans and Iraqi war vets (Veterans for Peace) who were organizing a guerilla, grass-roots relief effort. They were the same group that had set up Cindy Sheehan's camp in Crawford and now they had moved Camp Casey to Louisiana.
I have good news and horrible news to report. First, your response to my appeal letter was overwhelming. Within a few days, a half-million dollars was sent in through my website to fund our relief effort. This money was immediately used to buy generators, food, water, a mobile medical van, tents, satellite phones, etc.
Others of you began shipping supplies to our encampment. People in communities all over the country started organizing truck caravans to us in Louisiana. Twenty-two trucks from southern California alone have already arrived. A semi-truck from Chicago delivered ten tons of food. A group of friends in New Jersey got two 24 foot trucks, got their community to load them up with goods, and arrived in Covington tonight. Fifteen iMacs are inbound from California. One man gave us his pick-up truck and another donated truck is en route from Houston.
Your response to my appeal has been nothing short of miraculous. And it has saved many, many lives.
A number of you decided to just get in your cars and drive to our camp to volunteer to help. We now have had 150 volunteers here doing the work that needs to be done. Last night they unloaded twenty tons of food from a tractor trailer in under two hours. Each day more volunteers arrive. Everyone is sleeping on the ground or in tents. It is a remarkable sight. Thank you, all of you, for responding. I will never forget this outpouring of generosity to those forgotten by our own government.
My staff and the vets spend their 18-hour days delivering food and water throughout the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. What they have seen is appalling. I have asked them to post their daily diaries on my website (www.michaelmoore.com ) along with accompanying photos and video so you can learn what is really going on. What the media is showing you is NOT the whole story. It is much, much worse and there is still little being done to bring help to those who need it.
Our group has visited many outlying towns and villages in Mississippi and Louisiana, places the Red Cross and FEMA haven't visited in over a week. Often our volunteers are the first relief any of these people have seen. They have no food, water or electricity. People die every day. There are no TV cameras recording this. They have started to report the spin and PR put out by the White House, the happy news that often isn't true ("Everyone gets 2,000 dollars!").
The truth is that there are dead bodies everywhere and no one is picking them up. My crew reports that in most areas there is no FEMA presence, and very little Red Cross. It's been over two weeks since the hurricane and there is simply not much being done. At this point, would you call this situation incompetence or a purposeful refusal to get real help down there?
That's why we decided not to wait. And we are so grateful to all of you who have joined us. The Veterans for Peace and my staff aren't leaving (and that's why we are hoping those of you who can't get to Covington will make it to the Veterans for Peace co-sponsored anti-war demonstration in DC on September 24: www.unitedforpeace.org .)
If you want to help, here's what we need in Covington right now:
Cleaning Supplies (glass cleaner, bleach, disinfectant, etc.)
Aspirin and other basic over the counter drugs.
Bottled Water
Canned Goods
Hygiene Supplies
Baby Supplies - Baby Food Formula, diapers #4, #5, Wipes, Pedialyte
Sterile Gloves
Batteries - All kinds, from AA to watch and hearing aid batteries.
Volunteers with trucks and cars
Self contained kitchens with generators, utensils, workers
Consider sending supplies in reusable containers. List the contents on the outside of the package so the folks in the warehouse can easily sort the items.
Clothes are not needed. If you go, keep in mind that you MUST be self-sufficient. Bring a tent and a sleeping bag. People are driving to Covington from across the country and often have extra room in their cars for you or for an extra box of supplies. For more information, go to the Veterans for Peace message board: www.vfproadtrips.org/katrina/.
Send supplies via UPS to:
Veterans for Peace
Omni Storage
74145 Hwy. 25
Covington LA
Thanks again for funding and supporting our relief efforts. It has been a bright spot in this otherwise shameful month.
Yours,
Michael Moore
mike@michaelmoore.com
www.michaelmoore.com
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-18-05 04:47 PM
Response to Reply #8
520. 9/18 People Are Still Dying and FEMA's Still Ignoring Them
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/17/223753/006 :
URGENT FROM BOGALUSA...PEOPLE ARE F**KING DYING
by Barbara
(edited bec. of copyright concerns)
Sat Sep 17th, 2005 at 19:37:53 PDT
Barbara's diary :: ::
I talked to FEMA reps, RC reps, State Health reps and the hospital folks and received the same "we don't need doctors or nurses to run clinics" (I've been placing medical teams)
Today at the Red Cross shelter, the doctor I traveled with...Dr. Ken Levine, was STILL seeing patients that 'didn't need him' when I left at 7 p.m.
There is NO MEDIA HERE...PLEASE KOSSACKS, GET ME MEDIA...THE NATIONAL KIND NOW.
I went to check on my little 80 year old ladies today and stopped at another house with TWO TREES still through it and the couple living there...14 days AFTER the hurricane hit, they put a sign out on their lawn that said "this is how the government treats you"...FEMA went there the next day, gave them a $2k check and wished them good luck.
These people have NOT seen the RC and scavange for food/water. She drove for an hour and waited in line for 9 hours to fill out the paperwork for getting RED CROSS vouchers and then was given a NUMBER and told to come back on MONDAY. Now you might think, well they must be in the middle of no where...WRONG, these people are on the ROAD THAT ALL THE GOVERNMENT agencies take to the main control center at least 10 times daily. FEMA never even got people to remove the trees off their roof, they had FRIENDS show up finally.
At my little 80 year old ladies home, I find out they haven't seen the RED CROSS for 2 days and they were out of food and water and needed medical attention and meds. I got them all of that.
While there, their young neighbor talked with the photo journalists who requested I talk to him and I find out that the RED CROSS REFUSED to talk to him, much less help him. This is a 36 year old man who has a wife with POLIO and they are living in a church with NOTHING. FEMA won't talk to them, they have no phone, etc.
So KOSSACKS, here is the low down from here and what I am praying you will do.
Contact the press and get them to come here and use me as their 'point' person so I can show them the 'real' shit.
Contact the RED CROSS and ask them where the fuck the $700 million is going, cuz they sure aren't helping the folks much here. Sure, they have shelters and soup kitchens, but that is that. The shelters may or may not have food or sundry items. I actually took a load of things to the one here today because they didn't have stuff.
CALL ME if you need to. The church where I am staying at night has good cell coverage...during the day in Bogalusa, it's hit/miss.
619.213.2762
(More at link above)
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 01:10 PM
Response to Reply #8
529. 9/18 FEMA ordering ALL recovered bodies be prayed over
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
FEMA ordering ALL recovered bodies be prayed over !!!!
... An issue raised by the Feds that Kenyon (Kenyon Worldwide Disaster Services )found distasteful: an instruction that chaplains bless recovered bodies. A company source said the Feds are insisting on this, and the first chaplains are supposed to go out this week. Asked if that was mixing church and state, a FEMA spokeswoman responded: "A prayer is not necessarily religious. Everybody prays."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9379239/site/newsweek /
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 01:18 PM
Response to Reply #8
533. 9/18 Where Were the 500 FEMA Busses?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Gov. Blanco still wants 1question answered: Where were the 500 FEMA buses?
Edited on Sun Sep-18-05 02:33 PM by Sapphire Blue
Blanco says feds pledged buses
By MICHELLE MILLHOLLON
mmillhollon@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau
Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina raged ashore, Gov. Kathleen Blanco still wants one question answered.
Where were the buses?
Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.
On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.
Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said.
Continued : http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091805/new_blanco00...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-23-05 02:02 PM
Response to Reply #8
551. 8-29-FEMA and the busses
FEMA subcontracting and the buses of New Orleans
by dmsilev
Fri Sep 23rd, 2005 at 05:09:05 PDT
On the front page of this morning's Chicago Tribune, we learn some frightening details about why it took FEMA so bloody long to get buses into New Orleans to evacuate the Superdome and Convention Center. Surprising precisely nobody, it's another example of public money being funneled to companies whose chiefs supported the administration. Said company sat on its ass for a couple of days, and then slowly got in gear, while offers of buses from other sources were ignored.
Quotes below
dmsilev's diary :: ::
Two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, as images of devastation along the Gulf Coast and despair in New Orleans flickered across television screens, the head of one of the nation's largest bus associations repeatedly called federal disaster officials to offer help.
Peter Pantuso of the American Bus Association said he spent much of the day on Wednesday, Aug. 31, trying to find someone at the Federal Emergency Management Agency who could tell him how many buses were needed for an evacuation, where they should be sent and who was overseeing the effort.
"We never talked directly to FEMA or got a call back from them," Pantuso said.They wanted to help. This is an association of bus lines (including Greyhound), charter bus companies, and the like. In other words, a group of companies that could, if asked, rapidly provide large amounts of transportation. Furthermore, a professional association is the logical clearinghouse to coordinate the efforts of the whole industry.
So what does FEMA do? Contract it out to one firm:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/23/895/00538
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 08:55 PM
Response to Original message
16. Pre K: Scientific info on probable damage

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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:17 AM
Response to Reply #16
96. Scientific American: Drowning New Orleans
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID...
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:18 AM
Response to Reply #16
98. Popular Mechanics: New Orleans Is Sinking
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/128215...
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:36 AM
Response to Reply #16
108. Natural Hazards Observer: What if Hurricane Ivan Had Not Missed NO?
http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/o/nov04/nov04c.html
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:37 AM
Response to Reply #16
109. PBS NOW: New Orleans and the Delta
http://www.pbs.org/now/science/neworleans.html
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:38 AM
Response to Reply #16
110. LSU Study: Would New Orleans Really Flood in a Major Hurricane
http://www.publichealth.hurricane.lsu.edu/convert%20to%...
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:41 AM
Response to Reply #16
112. Nat'l Geographic: Gone with the Water
http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:01 PM
Response to Reply #16
343. 9/10 (orig 9/2) Models predicted New Orleans disaster, experts say
Models predicted New Orleans disaster, experts say
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N02521178.htm
WASHINGTON, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Virtually everything that has happened in
New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and
in computer models, so emergency management specialists wonder why
authorities were so unprepared.
"The scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was well
anticipated, predicted and drilled around," said Clare Rubin, an
emergency management consultant who also teaches at the Institute for
Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management at George Washington University.
In light of that, said disaster expert Bill Waugh of Georgia State
University, "It's inexplicable how unprepared for the flooding they
were." He said a slow decline over several years in funding for
emergency management was partly to blame.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 08:57 PM
Response to Original message
17. Pre K: Media articles on probable damage

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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:46 AM
Response to Reply #17
116. DU thread with multiple links
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 08:58 PM
Response to Original message
18. Pre K: Fed Govt knowledge about probable damage

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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:22 AM
Response to Reply #18
100. Disaster in the Making (RE FEMA)
http://www.sfbg.com/38/52/news_fema.html
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:21 AM
Response to Reply #18
129. 2001, FEMA warned a hurricane at N.O. was one of 3 most likely disasters
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 01:27 AM by snot
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the
three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New
Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,37...
Also, from a post I believe at DU but I don't have the link, I kept the following:
FACTS: Bush was told about NO, he funded a study to confirm & then CUT $$
#1 Bush was told in 2001 that New Orleans was a National Issue
#2 Bush funded a $500K study to confrim this in 2004
#3 Bush cut New Orleans hurricane funds by 80%
Point #1
----------
In 2001, FEMA ranked a major hurricane strike on New Orleans as “among the three likeliest, most castastrophic disasters facing this country.” Bush slashed hurricane funding anyway. August 29, 2005 10:19
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/08/29/bush-knew
Point #2 - Study to confirm
----------------------------
IEM Team to Develop Catastrophic Hurricane Disaster Plan for New Orleans & Southeast Louisiana
June 3, 2004
IEM, Inc., the Baton Rouge-based emergency management and homeland security consultant, will lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans under a more than half a million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
In making the announcement today on behalf of teaming partners Dewberry, URS Corporation and James Lee Witt Associates, IEM Director of Homeland Security Wayne Thomas explained that the development of a base catastrophic hurricane disaster plan has urgency due to the recent start of the annual hurricane season which runs through November. National weather experts are predicting an above normal Atlantic hurricane season with six to eight hurricanes, of which three could be categorized as major.
The IEM team will complete a functional exercise on a catastrophic hurricane strike in Southeast Louisiana and use results to develop a response and recovery plan. A catastrophic event is one that can overwhelm State, local and private capabilities so quickly that communities could be devastated without Federal assistance and multi-agency planning and preparedness.
Thomas said that the greater New Orleans area is one of the nation’s most vulnerable locations for hurricane landfall.
(snip)
http://www.ieminc.com/Whats_New/Press_Releases/pressrel
Point #3 - Bush cuts NO funding by 80%
--------------------------------------
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."
Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:
"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."
snip
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_di... Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 02:23 PM
Response to Reply #18
256. Sept 9: Hurricane Simulation Predicted 61,290 Dead (They KNEW!)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050909/ap_on_re_us/katrina... ;_ylt=AotFRjeFf_Ee0quwpSe6Qums0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg
Hurricane Simulation Predicted 61,290 Dead
By RON FOURNIER and TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writers
10 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - As Katrina roared into the Gulf of Mexico, emergency planners pored over maps and charts of a hurricane simulation that projected 61,290 dead and 384,257 injured or sick in a catastrophic flood that would leave swaths of southeast Louisiana uninhabitable for more than a year.
These planners were not involved in the frantic preparations for Katrina. By coincidence, they were working on a yearlong project to prepare federal and state officials for a Category 3 hurricane striking New Orleans.
Their fictitious storm eerily foreshadowed the havoc wrought by Category 4 Katrina a few days later, raising questions about whether government leaders did everything possible — as early as possible — to protect New Orleans residents from a well-documented threat.
After watching many of their predictions prove grimly accurate, "Hurricane Pam" planners now hope they were wrong about one detail — the death toll. The 61,290 estimate is six times what New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has warned people to expect
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:37 PM
Response to Reply #18
391. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) Prior Knowledge Laundry List
Katrina 'Prior Knowledge' Laundry List:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-18-05 01:46 AM
Response to Reply #18
517. 9/17 Flood Experts Warned Dennis Hastert(R)That Fema Would Fail Floods
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Flood Experts Warned Dennis Hastert(R)That Fema Would Fail Floods
Verbatim repost:
BREAKING NEWS:
FLOOD EXPERTS WARNED SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE DENNIS HASTERT(R)THAT FEMA WOULD FAIL IN FLOOD DISASTER WHILE UNDER DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
I just found a January 2005 smoking gun letter from flood experts known as the Association of State Floodplain Managers written to Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert warning that FEMA had been dangerously weakened by being made part of the Department of Homeland Security.
http://www.floods.org
>Dedicated to reducing flood losses in the nation.<
"The Association of State Floodplain Managers is an organization of nearly 7,000
professionals involved in floodplain management, flood hazard mitigation, the National
Flood Insurance Program, flood preparedness, warning and recovery and the multi-objective
management of our nation's floodplains and waterways. ASFPM is a respected
voice in floodplain management practice and policy in the United States. It represents the
flood hazard specialists of local, state and federal government, the private sector, the
research community, the insurance industry, and the professional disciplines of
engineering, planning, hydrologic forecasting, emergency response, water resources, and
others."
http://www.floods.org/PDF/ASFPM_Letter_FEMAinDHS_House_...
The letter reminds Hastert(R) that the General Accounting Office had warned that FEMA would be weakened under DHS back in September, 2003.
The letter also reminds Hastert that the House Judiciary Committee and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committees had agreed with the importance of FEMA staying independent of DHS to remain effective and recommended FEMA therefore be kept out of DHS.
The ASFPM letter describes exactly how FEMA was dismantled and buried under DHS:
"Since FEMA has become part of the Department of Homeland Security, it has been a
struggle. Funds have been raided, staff have been transferred into other DHS functions
without being replaced, slowdowns because of added layers of bureaucracy for nearly all
functions have dramatically increased, and there is the constant threat of reprogramming
appropriated funds."
"If FEMA is pulled apart, doesn’t have a direct link
to the President, and cannot communicate effectively with Congress, all of the progress
made over the last 15 years could be for naught."
THIS MEANS THAT THE GOP 'LEADERSHIP' IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MUCH OF THE LACK OF DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND LOSS OF LIFE DUE TO STORM KATRINA BECAUSE THEY TOOK APART FEMA AND DIDN'T LISTEN TO WARNINGS OF THE CONSEQUENCES.
TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW.
--------------------------
(full transcript of letter to Dennis Hastert from pdf)
ASSOCIATION OF STATE FLOODPLAIN MANAGERS, INC.
2809 Fish Hatchery Road Madison, Wisconsin 53713
Ph: 608-274-0123
Fax: 608-274-0696
Website: www.floods.org
Email: asfpm@floods.org
Dedicated to reducing flood losses in the nation.
Chair
Chad Berginnis, CFM
Supervisor
Ohio DNR - Division Of Water
1939 Fountain Square, Bldg. E-3
Columbus, OH 43224
614-265-6715
Fax 614-447-9503
chad.berginnis@dnr.state.oh.us
Vice Chair
Pam Pogue, CFM
NFIP State Coordinator
Rhode Isl. Emerg Mgmt Agency
645 New London Ave.
Cranston, RI 02920
401-946-9996
Fax 401-944-1891
pam.pogue@ri.ngb.army.mil
Secretary
Rhonda Montgomery, CFM
NFIP State Coordinator
Kansas Dept. of Ag.- DWR
109 SW 9 th St., 2 nd Floor
Topeka, KS 66612
785-296-4622
Fax 785-296-4835
rmontgomery@kda.state.ks.us
Treasurer
William Nechamen, CFM
NFIP State Coordinator
New York State DEC
625 Broadway, 4th Floor
Albany, NY 12233
518-402-8146
Fax 518-402-9029
wsnecham@gw.dec.state.ny.us
Executive Director
Larry A. Larson, P.E., CFM
Executive Director
2809 Fish Hatchery Road
Madison, WI 53713
608-274-0123
Fax 608-274-0696
larry@floods.org January 6, 2005
The Honorable Dennis Hastert, Speaker
United States House of Representatives
H 232 Capitol
Washington, DC 20515
RE: House Reorganization of Authorizing Committees involving FEMA programs
Dear Mr. Speaker:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is one of the 22 departments and
agencies that were combined to create the Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
where the primary mission is to protect the nation against terrorism. The effectiveness of
FEMA's all hazards programs is increasingly threatened with regard to natural disasters.
As you are well aware, the Congress is in the process of reorganizing itself to better
consider homeland security issues. The Department of Homeland Security is now 2 years
old. As the organization of the DHS itself and Congressional reorganization are
considered, the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) urges you to make
sure that natural hazards programs retain their integrity and, therefore, their effectiveness.
The Association of State Floodplain Managers is an organization of nearly 7,000
professionals involved in floodplain management, flood hazard mitigation, the National
Flood Insurance Program, flood preparedness, warning and recovery and the multi-objective
management of our nation's floodplains and waterways. ASFPM is a respected
voice in floodplain management practice and policy in the United States. It represents the
flood hazard specialists of local, state and federal government, the private sector, the
research community, the insurance industry, and the professional disciplines of
engineering, planning, hydrologic forecasting, emergency response, water resources, and
others.
FEMA, since its creation, had matured into an organization that became recognized for
effectiveness in carrying out its mission – preparing for, responding to, recovering from,
and mitigating against all hazards. Natural disasters are the most frequent and,
cumulatively, most costly disasters, including terrorist events. FEMA had established a
reputation for nimble responsiveness. This was closely related to the agency's capacity for
flexibility and especially well coordinated, genuine give-and-take partnerships with states
and localities. In addition to supporting responsiveness, these factors also allowed FEMA
to develop well conceived programs promoting hazard mitigation. Such programs sought
to permanently break the cycle, after a disaster event, of damage/rebuild/damage since
much of the recovery and repair costs were borne by taxpayers. After the terrorist attacks
on September 11 th and FEMA’s inclusion into the Department of Homeland Security, this
began to change.
----------------------------------
Page Two
The ASFPM has been concerned from the beginning that inclusion of FEMA in DHS
might not bode well for the progress the nation has made in reducing the nation’s risk to
natural hazards. We fully recognize the need for our national emphasis on terrorism;
however, the effectiveness of natural hazards programs and the all-hazards concept must
not be sacrificed in the process. Due to the sheer number magnitude of impact of natural
disasters, FEMA's work is more heavily focused on these events.
The ASFPM is not the only organization that has these concerns. The General Accounting
Office, in its September 2003 report, said the following:
Moreover, the placement of FEMA within DHS represents a substantially changed
environment in which FEMA will conduct its missions in the future, and missions
that focus on reducing the impacts of natural hazards, such as hazard mitigation
and flood insurance, may receive decreased emphasis. Sustained attention to
these programs will be needed to ensure they maintain or improve their
effectiveness in protecting the nation against, and reducing federal costs
associated with, natural disasters.
It should not be surprising that there is concern about FEMA’s organizational structure or
its loss of focus on a multi-hazard mission – it is merely a continuation of the debate that
began in Congress when DHS was created. The House Judiciary Committee and the
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committees had misgivings about the inclusion
of FEMA in DHS and both recommended that FEMA remain an independent agency to
preserve the traditional mission of FEMA. Also, a Brookings Institution analysis in 2002
raised concern that much of the progress FEMA has made over two decades could be
reversed.
Since FEMA has become part of the Department of Homeland Security, it has been a
struggle. Funds have been raided, staff have been transferred into other DHS functions
without being replaced, slowdowns because of added layers of bureaucracy for nearly all
functions have dramatically increased, and there is the constant threat of reprogramming
appropriated funds. Strongly felt worries about such matters led the ASFPM Board of
Directors, in August 2004, to pass a resolution recognizing FEMA’s accomplishments and
its challenges. The resolution calls for FEMA to be removed from the Department of
Homeland Security and for its ability to report directly to the President to be restored.
The Board, made up of state and local officials, felt strongly that FEMA doesn’t have to
be part of a larger agency to share its expertise and utilize its network of state and local
officials for all hazards management. If FEMA is pulled apart, doesn’t have a direct link
to the President, and cannot communicate effectively with Congress, all of the progress
made over the last 15 years could be for naught.
The Association of State Floodplain Managers recommends that
1) Congressional
reorganization for homeland security reflect attention to the importance of natural disaster
programs and policies and that
2) the Congress undertake an evaluation of the structure of
DHS and FEMA as it affects retention of an effective capacity for natural hazards
response and mitigation programs.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Page Three
Natural disasters impact Americans every single day. In 2004, 35 states had Presidentially
declared disasters – all as a result of natural hazards. Please do not allow the agency that
is in the forefront of dealing with these hazards to be made less effective or pulled apart
altogether. Please make certain that the Congressional structure reflects appropriate
attention to the frequency and the magnitude of impact of natural disasters. If you have
any questions or comments, do not hesitate to contact Larry Larson, ASFPM Executive
Director, or myself.
Respectfully,
Chad Berginnis, CFM
Chair
===
A friend, JohnOneillsMemory did this research and asks that we propagate this far and wide!
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-18-05 11:06 PM
Response to Reply #18
523. 9-18-05-!! Flood Experts Warned Dennis Hastert(R)That Fema Would Fail Floo
Tinoire (1000+ posts) Sun Sep-18-05 05:42 AM
Original message
!! Flood Experts Warned Dennis Hastert(R)That Fema Would Fail Floods
Edited on Sun Sep-18-05 05:42 AM by Tinoire
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Verbatim repost:
BREAKING NEWS:
FLOOD EXPERTS WARNED SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE DENNIS HASTERT(R)THAT FEMA WOULD FAIL IN FLOOD DISASTER WHILE UNDER DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
I just found a January 2005 smoking gun letter from flood experts known as the Association of State Floodplain Managers written to Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert warning that FEMA had been dangerously weakened by being made part of the Department of Homeland Security.
http://www.floods.org
>Dedicated to reducing flood losses in the nation.<
"The Association of State Floodplain Managers is an organization of nearly 7,000
professionals involved in floodplain management, flood hazard mitigation, the National
Flood Insurance Program, flood preparedness, warning and recovery and the multi-objective
management of our nation's floodplains and waterways. ASFPM is a respected
voice in floodplain management practice and policy in the United States. It represents the
flood hazard specialists of local, state and federal government, the private sector, the
research community, the insurance industry, and the professional disciplines of
engineering, planning, hydrologic forecasting, emergency response, water resources, and
others."
http://www.floods.org/PDF/ASFPM_Letter_FEMAinDHS_House_ ...
The letter reminds Hastert(R) that the General Accounting Office had warned that FEMA would be weakened under DHS back in September, 2003.
The letter also reminds Hastert that the House Judiciary Committee and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committees had agreed with the importance of FEMA staying independent of DHS to remain effective and recommended FEMA therefore be kept out of DHS.
The ASFPM letter describes exactly how FEMA was dismantled and buried under DHS:
"Since FEMA has become part of the Department of Homeland Security, it has been a
struggle. Funds have been raided, staff have been transferred into other DHS functions
without being replaced, slowdowns because of added layers of bureaucracy for nearly all
functions have dramatically increased, and there is the constant threat of reprogramming
appropriated funds."
"If FEMA is pulled apart, doesn’t have a direct link
to the President, and cannot communicate effectively with Congress, all of the progress
made over the last 15 years could be for naught."
THIS MEANS THAT THE GOP 'LEADERSHIP' IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MUCH OF THE LACK OF DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND LOSS OF LIFE DUE TO STORM KATRINA BECAUSE THEY TOOK APART FEMA AND DIDN'T LISTEN TO WARNINGS OF THE CONSEQUENCES.
TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW.
--------------------------
(full transcript of letter to Dennis Hastert from pdf)ASSOCIATION OF STATE FLOODPLAIN MANAGERS, INC.
2809 Fish Hatchery Road Madison, Wisconsin 53713
Ph: 608-274-0123
Fax: 608-274-0696
Website: www.floods.org
Email: asfpm@floods.org
Dedicated to reducing flood losses in the nation.
Chair
Chad Berginnis, CFM
Supervisor
Ohio DNR - Division Of Water
1939 Fountain Square, Bldg. E-3
Columbus, OH 43224
614-265-6715
Fax 614-447-9503
chad.berginnis@dnr.state.oh.us
Vice Chair
Pam Pogue, CFM
NFIP State Coordinator
Rhode Isl. Emerg Mgmt Agency
645 New London Ave.
Cranston, RI 02920
401-946-9996
Fax 401-944-1891
pam.pogue@ri.ngb.army.mil
Secretary
Rhonda Montgomery, CFM
NFIP State Coordinator
Kansas Dept. of Ag.- DWR
109 SW 9 th St., 2 nd Floor
Topeka, KS 66612
785-296-4622
Fax 785-296-4835
rmontgomery@kda.state.ks.us
Treasurer
William Nechamen, CFM
NFIP State Coordinator
New York State DEC
625 Broadway, 4th Floor
Albany, NY 12233
518-402-8146
Fax 518-402-9029
wsnecham@gw.dec.state.ny.us
Executive Director
Larry A. Larson, P.E., CFM
Executive Director
2809 Fish Hatchery Road
Madison, WI 53713
608-274-0123
Fax 608-274-0696
larry@floods.org January 6, 2005
The Honorable Dennis Hastert, Speaker
United States House of Representatives
H 232 Capitol
Washington, DC 20515
RE: House Reorganization of Authorizing Committees involving FEMA programs
Dear Mr. Speaker:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is one of the 22 departments and
agencies that were combined to create the Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
where the primary mission is to protect the nation against terrorism. The effectiveness of
FEMA's all hazards programs is increasingly threatened with regard to natural disasters.
As you are well aware, the Congress is in the process of reorganizing itself to better
consider homeland security issues. The Department of Homeland Security is now 2 years
old. As the organization of the DHS itself and Congressional reorganization are
considered, the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) urges you to make
sure that natural hazards programs retain their integrity and, therefore, their effectiveness.
The Association of State Floodplain Managers is an organization of nearly 7,000
professionals involved in floodplain management, flood hazard mitigation, the National
Flood Insurance Program, flood preparedness, warning and recovery and the multi-objective
management of our nation's floodplains and waterways. ASFPM is a respected
voice in floodplain management practice and policy in the United States. It represents the
flood hazard specialists of local, state and federal government, the private sector, the
research community, the insurance industry, and the professional disciplines of
engineering, planning, hydrologic forecasting, emergency response, water resources, and
others.
FEMA, since its creation, had matured into an organization that became recognized for
effectiveness in carrying out its mission – preparing for, responding to, recovering from,
and mitigating against all hazards. Natural disasters are the most frequent and,
cumulatively, most costly disasters, including terrorist events. FEMA had established a
reputation for nimble responsiveness. This was closely related to the agency's capacity for
flexibility and especially well coordinated, genuine give-and-take partnerships with states
and localities. In addition to supporting responsiveness, these factors also allowed FEMA
to develop well conceived programs promoting hazard mitigation. Such programs sought
to permanently break the cycle, after a disaster event, of damage/rebuild/damage since
much of the recovery and repair costs were borne by taxpayers. After the terrorist attacks
on September 11 th and FEMA’s inclusion into the Department of Homeland Security, this
began to change.
----------------------------------
Page Two
The ASFPM has been concerned from the beginning that inclusion of FEMA in DHS
might not bode well for the progress the nation has made in reducing the nation’s risk to
natural hazards. We fully recognize the need for our national emphasis on terrorism;
however, the effectiveness of natural hazards programs and the all-hazards concept must
not be sacrificed in the process. Due to the sheer number magnitude of impact of natural
disasters, FEMA's work is more heavily focused on these events.
The ASFPM is not the only organization that has these concerns. The General Accounting
Office, in its September 2003 report, said the following:
Moreover, the placement of FEMA within DHS represents a substantially changed
environment in which FEMA will conduct its missions in the future, and missions
that focus on reducing the impacts of natural hazards, such as hazard mitigation
and flood insurance, may receive decreased emphasis. Sustained attention to
these programs will be needed to ensure they maintain or improve their
effectiveness in protecting the nation against, and reducing federal costs
associated with, natural disasters.
It should not be surprising that there is concern about FEMA’s organizational structure or
its loss of focus on a multi-hazard mission – it is merely a continuation of the debate that
began in Congress when DHS was created. The House Judiciary Committee and the
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committees had misgivings about the inclusion
of FEMA in DHS and both recommended that FEMA remain an independent agency to
preserve the traditional mission of FEMA. Also, a Brookings Institution analysis in 2002
raised concern that much of the progress FEMA has made over two decades could be
reversed.
Since FEMA has become part of the Department of Homeland Security, it has been a
struggle. Funds have been raided, staff have been transferred into other DHS functions
without being replaced, slowdowns because of added layers of bureaucracy for nearly all
functions have dramatically increased, and there is the constant threat of reprogramming
appropriated funds. Strongly felt worries about such matters led the ASFPM Board of
Directors, in August 2004, to pass a resolution recognizing FEMA’s accomplishments and
its challenges. The resolution calls for FEMA to be removed from the Department of
Homeland Security and for its ability to report directly to the President to be restored.
The Board, made up of state and local officials, felt strongly that FEMA doesn’t have to
be part of a larger agency to share its expertise and utilize its network of state and local
officials for all hazards management. If FEMA is pulled apart, doesn’t have a direct link
to the President, and cannot communicate effectively with Congress, all of the progress
made over the last 15 years could be for naught.
The Association of State Floodplain Managers recommends that
1) Congressional
reorganization for homeland security reflect attention to the importance of natural disaster
programs and policies and that
2) the Congress undertake an evaluation of the structure of
DHS and FEMA as it affects retention of an effective capacity for natural hazards
response and mitigation programs.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Page Three
Natural disasters impact Americans every single day. In 2004, 35 states had Presidentially
declared disasters – all as a result of natural hazards. Please do not allow the agency that
is in the forefront of dealing with these hazards to be made less effective or pulled apart
altogether. Please make certain that the Congressional structure reflects appropriate
attention to the frequency and the magnitude of impact of natural disasters. If you have
any questions or comments, do not hesitate to contact Larry Larson, ASFPM Executive
Director, or myself.
Respectfully,
Chad Berginnis, CFM
Chair
===
A friend, JohnOneillsMemory did this research and asks that we propagate this far and wide!

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:00 PM
Response to Original message
19. Pre K: State of LA knowledge about probable damage

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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:21 AM
Response to Reply #19
99. PBS NOW transcript The City in a Bowl
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_neworleans...
I don't know all these folk. Maybe one or more are federal?
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:01 PM
Response to Original message
20. Pre K: Feds block action to prevent NOLA didaster

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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:27 PM
Response to Reply #20
87. Corps of Engineers' Civilian Chief Ousted
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=artic... Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:51 AM
Response to Reply #20
120. Bush fired head of Corps of Engineers for slamming budget cuts
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Bush fired head of Army Corps of Engineers in '02 for slamming budget cuts
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=artic...
Corps of Engineers' Civilian Chief Ousted
Parker Resigns After Openly Questioning Bush's Proposed Spending Cuts
Thursday, March 7, 2002
Michael Parker, the recently appointed leader of the Army Corps of Engineers, was abruptly forced to resign yesterday for failing to defend President Bush's proposed budget cuts.
Parker, a former House member from Mississippi who was confirmed as assistant Army secretary for civil works five months ago, was the first major administration official ousted since Bush took office. He had made no secret of his disdain for the Office of Management and Budget's efforts to rein in the Corps, and recently told a sympathetic House committee that he had requested $2 billion more than the OMB proposed in the president's budget. At a Senate hearing, he questioned the administration's decision to fund no new Corps projects, adding that he did not have a "warm and fuzzy feeling" for OMB officials.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 12:14 PM
Response to Reply #20
310. Aug 31, 2005: Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_di... Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
By Will Bunch
Published: August 31, 2005 9:00 PM ET
PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans. That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level with the massive lake.
New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.
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.HURRICANE COVERAGE
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped 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.
More...

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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:49 PM
Response to Reply #20
397. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) FEMA Action to REDUCE Volunteer Pool
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Mixed Misdirection from FEMA - again
From: councils@dhs.gov
Subject: Citizen Corps support for response to Hurricane Katrina
To: All State and Local Citizen Corps Councils
Citizen Corps Program Partners and Affiliates
Regional Citizen Corps Program Managers
Thank you all for your compassion and your interest in helping those in need
following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. To those of you in the
affected area, we send our deepest concern.
At this time, the National Office of Citizen Corps IS NOT conducting a
national call out as was done for the Florida hurricanes last year. Current
activities and plans for next steps are as follows:
FEMA DEPLOYMENTS
* At present, FEMA is deploying ONLY THOSE WHO ALREADY RECEIVED FEMA
SECURITY CLEARANCES AND CREDIT CARDS from their 2004 employment. FEMA has
determined that no recruits can travel or enter into employment without a
satisfactory background investigation. This security check takes
approximately 3 weeks to complete. As such, only recruits hired last year
may be called by FEMA at this time.
* In anticipation of Hurricane Dennis in July 2005, state Citizen
Corps points of contact reviewed and vetted the list of 2700 people who
deployed for the Florida hurricanes in 2004. As a result, 1900 people were
identified as potential recruits for future disasters.
* The FEMA Automated Disaster Deployment (ADD) staff are now calling
ONLY these 1900 pre-identified people to check on their availability for
Hurricane Katrina. NOTE: This means that not everyone who participated in
2004 will be called. If you have any questions about who may be on this
list, please contact your state Citizen Corps point of contact.
* If you receive questions from anyone who was deployed in 2004 or for
Hurricane Dennis, please tell them they SHOULD NOT call the FEMA ADD phone
number or the FEMA Regional Offices. Calling the ADD phone number distracts
operators from the deployment process. Please tell them to simply wait for
their official ADD deployment call and follow instructions. We know this
may be frustrating and it may take awhile for everyone to be contacted, but
THIS IS THE ONLY WAY FOR THEM TO BE DEPLOYED THROUGH FEMA.
THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT CHANGE FROM LAST YEAR'S HURRICANE SEASON -- REDUCING THE POOL OF VOLUNTEERS
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:03 PM
Response to Original message
21. Pre K: Bush guts disaster relief

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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:24 AM
Response to Reply #21
102. NOLA U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Record Cuts
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_200...
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:25 AM
Response to Reply #21
103. Disaster in the Making (RE FEMA)
http://www.sfbg.com/38/52/news_fema.html
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:42 AM
Response to Reply #21
114. FEMA packed with W's pals
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
NY Daily News: FEMA packed with W's pals
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/344004p...
DAILY NEWS EXCLUSIVE
Campaign pros get top jobs
By KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON - The three top jobs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Bush went to political cronies with no apparent experience coping with catastrophes, the Daily News has learned.
Even if Bush were to fire embattled and suddenly invisible FEMA Director Michael Brown over his handling of Hurricane Katrina, the bureaucrat immediately below him is no disaster professional, either.
While Brown ran horse shows in his last private-sector job, FEMA's No. 2 man, deputy director and chief of staff Patrick Rhode, was an advance man for the Bush-Cheney campaign and White House. He also did short stints at the Commerce Department and Small Business Administration. Rhode's biography posted on FEMA's Web site doesn't indicate he has any real experience in emergency response.
In addition, the agency's former third-ranking official, deputy chief of staff Scott Morris, was a PR expert who worked for Maverick Media, the Texas outfit that produced TV and radio spots for the Bush-Cheney campaign. In June, Morris moved to Florida to become FEMA's long-term recovery director.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:46 AM
Response to Reply #21
117. DU thread with multiple links re- Bush crippling FEMA
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 12:47 AM by snot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:24 AM
Response to Reply #21
131. Brown's earlier scandal
From http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
FEMA Director Michael D. Brown's earlier scandal
I just posted this on a thread about Brown from several hours ago -- but at the rate things are moving, I thought it had better have a thread of its own. It seems that Michael D. Brown, the blitheringly incompetent head of FEMA, was involved in some interesting goings-on back last winter;
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/sfl-fema24nov24,0,2387 ...
Florida lawmakers Tuesday called for state and federal investigations into how the government approved about $28 million in Hurricane Frances claims for new furniture, clothes and appliances for residents of Miami-Dade County, which was barely touched by the storm.
<snip>
The actions follow a report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Sunday that hurricane relief in Miami-Dade bought thousands of new televisions, microwaves, refrigerators and other appliances. FEMA paid for new cars, dental bills and a funeral, even though the county Medical Examiner recorded no deaths from Frances.
FEMA inspectors attributed damage to tornados -- there were none recorded in the county -- and in six instances listed "ice/snow" as the cause, the newspaper reported.
<snip>
Shaw wrote to FEMA Director Michael D. Brown six weeks ago, after the newspaper first reported that thousands of Miami-Dade residents had collected hurricane relief from the Labor Day storm that hit 100 miles to the north. Brown announced that FEMA would investigate, but so far has not provided any results or returned phone calls from the congressman's staff, said Shaw, chairman of Florida's delegation.
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/01/25/State/Suspect_in_kidn ...
FEMA Director Michael D. Brown has "stymied investigations" and failed to accept responsibility for mistakes that led to more than $30-million in Hurricane Frances payments to residents of Miami-Dade, even though the county experienced "no more than a heavy rainstorm," Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., wrote to Bush.
"Such a gross waste of taxpayer monies cannot be taken lightly," Wexler wrote.
Bush had not seen Wexler's letter but stands by Brown, said Taylor Gross, a White House spokesman. "The president has full faith in the outstanding job that Under Secretary Mike Brown and FEMA are doing in providing assistance to hurricane victims."
FEMA issued a statement saying the agency will cooperate with an ongoing criminal investigation by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general into allegations of fraud in Miami-Dade.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:08 PM
Response to Reply #131
346. 9/10 (orig 9/2) Brown fired from previous job
FEMA Head Fired from Previous Job for Incompetence
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/2/34622/68348 :
And that previous job was "Judges and Stewards Commissioner" for a show
horse association!
Who judged this imbecile to be qualified for this important postion? And
who authorized a lie about his qualifications on the official press
release announcing his appointment?
"Yes, that's right... the man responsible for directing federal relief
operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sharpened his
emergency management skills as the "Judges and Stewards Commissioner"
for the International Arabian Horses Association... a position from
which he was forced to resign in the face of mounting litigation and
financial disarray."
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:20 PM
Response to Reply #131
352. 9/10 (orig 9/2) More on Brown
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Brown_%28FEMA%29ht...
Some disturbing information on FEMA and Mike Brown
(I went looking for information on Brown and on how FEMA operates in order to try to determine the name of the authority to whom Brown ultimately answers. My search was the result of a conversation with a Bush supporter who was, for some odd reason, trying to defend Brown's incompetence in the aftermath of Katrina. The Bush supporter claimed that Brown "has to answer to someone lower down the chain of command than the President," implying, I guess, that this takes some of the pressure off Bush. Who knows. I was under the impression that Brown answers directly to Bush, and went to Google in search of the answer. Instead, I found the following.)
Michael D. Brown (b. 1954 in Guymon, Oklahoma) is the Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response (a division of the Department of Homeland Security), the cabinet-level position that replaced the Federal Emergency Management Agency directorate, and generally referred to as the "head" of FEMA. He was nominated by President George W. Bush in January 2003.
-snip-
While attending law school Brown was appointed by the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee of the Oklahoma Legislature as the Finance Committee Staff Director, where he oversaw state fiscal issues. His background in state and local government also includes serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight and as a city councilman, although most of his career was spent in private practice. Before joining DHS/FEMA, Brown was Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association from 1999-2001, a position from which he resigned under duress after an onslaught of lawsuits. Brown started his own legal defense fund before resigning, a move he said was necessary to protect his family's assets.
The above bold text was posted at DU yesterday. It's an important factor in the whole FEMA-incompetence equation, but I wasn't surprised because I had read it here yesterday.
This is the part that was news to me:
In January 2005, U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler publically urged President Bush to fire Brown, citing reports that FEMA disbursed $30 million in disaster relief funds for Hurricane Frances to residents of Miami, Florida, a city which was not affected by the hurricane. Brown admitted to $12 million in overpayments, but denied any serious mistakes, blaming a computer glitch. Wexler repeated his call in April to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, citing new reports that FEMA sent inspectors with criminal records of robbery and embezzlement to do damage assessments.
http://www.wexler.house.gov/news.php?ID=116 :
One year ago we had the opportunity to learn from the disasters in Florida. Floridians experienced the consequences of FEMA’s failure to deliver aid to communities who needed it the most. We saw the most vulnerable in our society – the elderly and the poor – being left out or overlooked. Last year we had the opportunity to prevent this from happening again. At that time, I called for the resignation of FEMA head, Michael Brown because of his grievous mismanagement. The President did not heed that call, nor did he see fit to make any substantial changes in FEMA.
Last year, when the President’s election was in question, his response to the hurricanes in the swing state of Florida was tremendously fast -- even passing out ice in the immediate aftermath. Where was he in the immediate aftermath for Gulf coast? Where were the trucks of food? Where were the water buffalo? Where were the tents of aid that are just now being established? The President and Congress dropped everything and flew back to Washington on Palm Sunday to intervene on behalf of Terri Schiavo. Why did the President delay so long for an entire American city in crisis? These are desperate people who need food, water, shelter and safety, not a photo op – which even itself comes 5 days late. Every asset of the American military in this hemisphere should have been devoted to America’s humanitarian crisis starting on Monday at 5 PM.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-12-05 01:55 AM
Response to Reply #131
421. 9/11 Just when you thought you heard it all about Brownie
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Just when you thought you heard it all about Brownie's
Edited on Sun Sep-11-05 05:37 PM by Prodemsouth
incompetence. Here comes more. Worked for Steve Jones Timothy McViegh's lawyer, told FBI they had to be joking when they said Browne was going to be at FEMA on national level. Jones and his partners split their law firm- wanted keep as many as employees as possible, decided to keep 35 of 37. Brownie was not one of the 35. Wow!
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/09/10/Worldandnation/_Avera...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:33 AM
Response to Reply #21
134. Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
From http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_di... :
Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
By Will Bunch
Published: August 30, 2005 9:00 PM ET
PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans late on Tuesday. That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level with the massive lake.
New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.
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 SELA dropped 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."
Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:
"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."
The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.
The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.
There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:
"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."
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."
Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be."
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:41 AM
Response to Reply #21
136. Mitigation program eliminated, etc.
From http://www.sfbg.com/38/52/news_fema.html :
Long before this hurricane season, some emergency managers inside and outside of government started sounding an alarm that still rings loudly. Bush administration policy changes and budget cuts, they say, are sapping FEMA's long-term ability to cushion the blow of hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, wildfires, and other natural disasters.
Since 2001, key federal disaster mitigation programs, developed over many years, have been slashed and tossed aside. FEMA's Project Impact, a model mitigation program created by the Clinton administration, has been canceled outright. Federal funding of post-disaster mitigation efforts designed to protect people and property from the next disaster has been cut in half, and now communities across the country must compete for pre-disaster mitigation dollars.
In addition, the White House has pushed for privatization of essential government services, including disaster management, and merged FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security, where natural disaster programs are often sidelined by counterterrorism programs. Along the way, morale at FEMA has plummeted, and many of the agency's most experienced personnel have left for work in other government agencies or private corporations.
In June, Pleasant Mann, a 16-year FEMA veteran who heads the agency's government employee union, wrote members of Congress to warn of the agency's decay. "Over the past three-and-one-half years, FEMA has gone from being a model agency to being one where funds are being misspent, employee morale has fallen, and our nation's emergency management capability is being eroded," he wrote. "Our professional staff are being systematically replaced by politically connected novices and contractors."
"Mitigation is the cornerstone of emergency management," a FEMA Web site explains today. "It's the ongoing effort to lessen the impact disasters have on people's lives and property." Under mitigation plans, houses in floodplains are moved or raised above the flood line, buildings are designed to withstand hurricane winds and earthquakes, and communities are relocated away from likely wildfire zones. According to FEMA estimates, every dollar spent on mitigation saves roughly $2 in disaster recovery costs.
William Waugh, a disaster expert at Georgia State University who has written training programs for FEMA, warns that the rise of a "consultant culture" has not served emergency programs well. "It's part of a widespread problem of government contracting out capabilities," he says. "Pretty soon governments can't do things because they've given up those capabilities to the private sector. And private corporations don't necessarily maintain those capabilities."
By ignoring the logic of fully funded mitigation and other preparedness programs, Bush's first FEMA director earned some scorn among emergency specialists. "Allbaugh? He was inept," says Claire Rubin, a senior researcher at George Washington University's Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management. "He was chief of staff for Bush in Texas - that was his credential. He didn't have an emergency management background, other than the disasters he ran into in Texas, and he wasn't a very open guy. He didn't want to learn anything."
The merger into the DHS has compounded the agency's problems, says FEMA employee and union president Mann. "Before, we reported straight to the White House, and now we've got this elaborate bureaucracy on top of us, and a lot of this bureaucracy doesn't think what we're doing is that important, because terrorism isn't our number one," he says. "The biggest frustration here is that we at FEMA have responded to disasters like Oklahoma City and 9/11, and here are people who haven't responded to a kitchen fire telling us how to deal with terrorism. You know, there were a lot of people who fell down on the job on 9/11, but it wasn't us."
Rubin, the George Washington University researcher, agrees with these assessments. "DHS has done a number of things to FEMA that are making it very, very hard for FEMA to function as it used to," she says. "A large number of people who are experienced with natural hazards no longer are doing that primarily or at all."
In 2003, Congress approved a White House proposal to cut FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program in half. Previously, the federal government was committed to invest 15 percent of the recovery costs of a given disaster in mitigating future problems. Under the Bush formula, the feds now cough up only 7.5 percent.
Such post-disaster mitigation efforts, specialists say, are a crucial way of minimizing future losses. It's after a disaster strikes, they argue, that the government can best take the steps necessary to avoid repeat problems, because that's when officials and storm victims are most receptive to mitigation plans.
The administration also argues that its new pre-disaster mitigation grants, which are awarded on a competitive basis, will help states pick up the slack. But again, emergency managers say it's not enough. In recent congressional testimony, a NEMA representative noted that "in a purely competitive grant program, lower income communities, those most often at risk to natural disaster, will not effectively compete with more prosperous cities.... The prevention of repetitive damages caused by disasters would go largely unprepared in less-affluent and smaller communities."
And indeed, some in-need areas have been inexplicably left out of the program. "In a sense, Louisiana is the floodplain of the nation," a 2002 FEMA report noted. "Louisiana waterways drain two thirds of the continental United States. Precipitation in New York, the Dakotas, even Idaho and the Province of Alberta, finds its way to Louisiana's coastline." As a result, flooding is a constant threat, and the state has an estimated 18,000 buildings that have repeatedly been damaged by flood waters - the highest number of any state. And yet, this summer FEMA denied Louisiana communities' pre-disaster mitigation funding requests.
In Jefferson Parish, part of the New Orleans metropolitan area, flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue is baffled by the development. "You would think we would get maximum consideration" for the funds, he says. "This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."
Within FEMA, the shift away from mitigation programs is so pronounced that many longtime specialists in the field have quit. "The priority is no longer on prevention," says the FEMA administrator. "Mitigation, honestly, is the orphaned step-child. People are leaving it in droves."
In fact, disaster professionals are leaving many parts of FEMA in droves, compromising the agency's ability to do its job.
In case Congress hasn't gotten the message, former FEMA director Witt recently restated it in strong terms. "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded," he testified at a March 24, 2004, hearing on Capitol Hill. "I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared. In fact one state emergency manager told me, 'It is like a stake has been driven into the heart of emergency management.'"
Waugh, the Georgia State University expert, says, "This is an exposed nerve in the emergency management community, in the sense that resources have been shifted away from hurricanes, tornadoes and other kinds of disasters - the kind of disasters that are more likely to occur than terrorism."
For more information, go here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 11:05 AM
Response to Reply #21
201. July 24, 2005 - Poor : You are on your own (for evaccuation)
July 2005 article reveals New Orleans told poor: 'You're on your own'
John Byrne
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/July_2005_article_reveals...
A July 24, 2005 article in the New Orleans Times Picayune (not available online) reveals just how unprepared officials were for a hurricane, especially as it affected the city's poor, RAW STORY has learned. The first sentence alone reveals how little support the city expected to have for the poor in the event of a disaster, saying, "City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own."
The article was first discovered in a detailed piece by the Philadelphia Daily News' Will Bunch.
The local Red Cross executive director was quoted as saying, "You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you. If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for that person outside the area. We can help you. But we don't have the transportation."Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:31 PM
Response to Reply #21
209. Sept 1 *** Important timeline on FEMA and the cuts****
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/20...
Washington Monthly
Kevin Drum
September 1, 2005
CHRONOLOGY....Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration. Read it and weep:January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country."December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy and former college roommate, Michael Brown, who has no previous experience in disaster management and was fired from his previous job for mismanagement.

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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 12:06 AM
Response to Reply #21
244. FEMA Union Prez says Bush weakened FEMA & that FEMA was unprepared
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
President of FEMA Headquarters Employees Union speaks out
FEMA Was Unprepared for Katrina Relief Effort, Insiders Say
"All of us were just shaking our heads and saying, 'This isn't going to be enough, and the director has to know this isn't going to be enough.' But nothing more seemed to be happening," said Leo Bosner, president of the FEMA Headquarters Employees Union.
Bosner has been with FEMA since it began 26 years ago. He says the agency has been systematically dismantled since it became part of the massive Department of Homeland Security.
"One of the big differences I see," said Bosner, "besides taking away our staff and our budget and our training, is that Homeland Security now, in my view, slows down the process."
The union warned Congress in a detailed letter about FEMA's decline a year ago. State emergency managers also warned Capitol Hill and Homeland Security just weeks ago that DHS was too focused on one thing — terrorism.
more@link
'Catapulting' Katrina
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 01:29 PM
Response to Reply #21
252. 9/9 E-mail fr friend re- Article on Brown & Bush Cronyism/Corruption
Katrina: Time article to hash Brownie over resume discrepancies
As Ned Sublette said a couple of days ago, some call it "cronyism," but there's a more accurate word -- corruption. Snip from Time article about "discrepancies" in FEMA head Michael Brown's resume:
Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website <http://www.fema.gov/about/bios/brown.shtm > , was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/12/2001120... > stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division." In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. "Department heads did not report to him." Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. "Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University," recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. "Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."
Link <http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1103003,... > to Time story, and see also this New Republic article by Paul Campos: Link <http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050919&s=campos091905 > . (Thanks, Connor)
posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:32:43 AM permalink <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/09/katrina_time_artic... > | blogs' comments <http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=?=... >
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 04:42 PM
Response to Reply #21
262. Aug 29: Disaster experts: Federal government wasn't ready for Katrina
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/nation/12...
Posted on Wed, Aug. 31, 2005
Disaster experts: Federal government wasn't ready for Katrina
By SETH BORENSTEIN
Knight Ridder NewspapersWASHINGTON - The federal government so far has bungled the job of quickly helping the multitudes of hungry, thirsty and desperate victims of Hurricane Katrina, former top federal, state and local disaster chiefs said Wednesday.
The experts, including a former Bush administration disaster response manager, told Knight Ridder that the government wasn't prepared, scrimped on storm spending and shifted its attention from dealing with natural disasters to fighting the global war on terrorism.
The disaster preparedness agency at the center of the relief effort is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which was enveloped by the new Department of Homeland Security with a new mission aimed at responding to the attacks of al-Qaida.
"What you're seeing is revealing weaknesses in the state, local and federal levels," said Eric Tolbert, who until February was FEMA's disaster response chief. "All three levels have been weakened. They've been weakened by diversion into terrorism."

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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:22 PM
Response to Reply #21
332. 9/10 E-mail fr friend w/ analysis of Brown's resume
FEMA's Brown padded resume: hardly a lawyer, either
by Goldy at HorsesAss
Thu Sep 8th, 2005 at 15:11:48 PDT
FEMA director Mike Brown was originally brought into the agency as its general counsel, under the auspices of his old college roommate (and Bush fixer) Joe Allbaugh. By now we all know that Brown is an emergency manager who knows nothing about managing emergencies, and a former horse association commissioner who knew nothing about horses... but apparently, he was also a general counsel who was hardly even a real lawyer.
In a devastating expose published today in The New Republic, University of Colorodo-Boulder law professor Paul Campos determines to answer the question "of exactly what, given Brown's real biography, he is qualified to do." The answer, not surprisingly, is very little.
Goldy at HorsesAss's diary :: :: To understand the Mike Brown saga, one has to know something about the intricacies of the legal profession, beginning with the status of the law school he attended. Brown's biography on FEMA's website reports that he's a graduate of the Oklahoma City University School of Law. This is not, to put it charitably, a well-known institution. For example, I've been a law professor for the past 15 years and have never heard of it. Of more relevance is the fact that, until 2003, the school was not even a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS)--the organization that, along with the American Bar Association, accredits the nation's law schools. Most prospective law students won't even consider applying to a non-AALS law school unless they have no other option, because many employers have a policy of not considering graduates of non-AALS institutions. So it's fair to say that Brown embarked on his prospective legal career from the bottom of the profession's hierarchy.
According to Campos, Brown received his J.D. in 1981, and spent the next couple years representing the interests of a "prominent local family" in Enid, Oklahoma, followed by an 18-month stint at a local law firm (that no longer exists.) But it appears that by 1987 he had already more or less abandoned his legal career. From 1991 to 2001 he served as commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a full-time position from which he resigned under pressure.
What, then, are we to make of the claim in Brown's FEMA biography that, prior to joining the Agency, he had spent most of his professional career practicing law in Colorado? Normally, an attorney practicing law in a state for ten years would have left a record of his experience in public documents. But just about the only evidence of Brown's Colorado legal career is the Web page he submitted to Findlaw.com, an Internet site for people seeking legal representation. There, he lists himself as a member of the "International Arabian Horse Association Legal Dept." and claims to be competent to practice law across a dizzying spectrum of specialties--estate planning, family law, employment law for both plaintiffs and defendants, real-estate law, sports law, labor law, and legislative practice. With all this expertise, it's all the more striking that one can't find any other evidence of Brown's legal career in Colorado.
Campos further deconstructs Brown's FEMA bio, which he impressively claims to have served as "a bar examiner on ethics and professional responsibility for the Oklahoma Supreme Court and as a hearing examiner for the Colorado Supreme Court." Campos' translation?
In Oklahoma, he graded answers to bar exam questions, and, in Colorado, he volunteered to serve on the local attorney disciplinary board.
Ouch.
Campos' summation is equally devastating, and a pointed critique of the Bush administration.
When Brown left the iaha four years ago, he was, among other things, a failed former lawyer--a man with a 20-year-old degree from a semi-accredited law school who hadn't attempted to practice law in a serious way in nearly 15 years and who had just been forced out of his job in the wake of charges of impropriety. At this point in his life, returning to his long-abandoned legal career would have been very difficult in the competitive Colorado legal market. Yet, within months of leaving the IAHA , he was handed one of the top legal positions in the entire federal government: general counsel for a major federal agency. A year later, he was made its number-two official, and, a year after that, Bush appointed him director of FEMA.
It's bad enough when attorneys are named to government jobs for which their careers, no matter how distinguished, don't qualify them. But Brown wasn't a distinguished lawyer: He was hardly a lawyer at all. When he left the IAHA , he was a 47-year-old with a very thin resumé and no job. Yet he was also what's known in the Mafia as a "connected guy." That such a person could end up in one of the federal government's most important positions tells you all you need to know about how the Bush administration works--or, rather, doesn't.
Once again, this has always been a story about cronyism, and the human lives it may have cost. And now we know that not only did Brown lack the qualifications to lead FEMA, he also lacked the legal qualifications to serve as its general counsel, his first position at the agency. It's not just Brown who should be fired... it's the incompetent president who appointed him.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:52 PM
Response to Reply #21
339. Sept10: Texas Republicans on FEMA
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/10/14423/9876
Texas Republicans on FEMA
By Anne-Marie Slaughter | bio
From: America Abroad
In response to Juliette's post on FEMA, check out Dan K's comment to my post a while ago "Just Like Haiti." He dug out the following gem from the 2000 Texas Republican Party Platform:
Civil Defense - America had a strong, grassroots-based civilian defense system with county level volunteers and local leadership from the World War I era until the establishment of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Now local civil defense coordinators have been replaced with federally-controlled emergency management coordinators. The priority has changed from "defending" the citizens in an emergency to "managing" the citizens. The Party supports the restoration of our civil defense system. A non-partisan effort should be made to organize communication and emergency response training for citizens to assist in times of emergency, and the local county government should appoint a civilian defense coordinator. Elected county officials should be in charge of decisions affecting the local community.
As Dan K points out, what happened to FEMA was not accidental. It was ideology.

Sep 10, 2005 -- 02:04:23 PM ESTPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:22 PM
Response to Reply #21
387. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) From Hurricane Guru Jeff Masters; Evacuation of Poor
Edited on Sun Sep-11-05 12:23 PM by snot
(Note: I'm putting this here 'cause it relates to some of the other replies to #21)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
MUST READ from Hurricane Guru Jeff Masters
http://www.weatherunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comm...
Being in Baton Rouge, I followed this guy's blog constantly from three days before Katrina hit. Believe me, they did know this would happen. Numerous bloggers were screaming bloody murder days before the event.
"In comments on Thursday, Sep. 1, in an interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC News, President George W. Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm. But these levees got breached."
In comments to the press on Sep. 3, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff remarked, "That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight", and called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise."
It's not our fault," said Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, in charge of the deployment of National Guard troops in New Orleans. "The storm came and flooded the city."
In other words, Katrina was an Act of God no one could have foreseen, and the politicians we elected to protect us from disaster are not responsible for the unimaginable horror we have witnessed this week.
A horror unimagined by anyone, except by every hurricane scientist and government emergency management official for the past forty years and more. It was a certainty that New Orleans would suffer a catastrophe like this. Every 70 years, on average, the central Gulf Coast has a Category 4 or 5 hurricane pass within 80 miles of a given point. Sometimes you get lucky--for a while. New Orleans had gone over 150 years without a strike by a hurricane capable of overwhelming the levees. Sometimes you get unlucky. There's no guarantee that New Orleans won't get hit by another major hurricane this year. We are in the midst of an extraordinary period of hurricane activity, the likes of which has not been seen in recorded history. Hurricanes Ivan and Dennis, which both had storm surges capable of breaching the levees in New Orleans, smashed into Pensacola in the past year. Either of these storms could have destroyed New Orleans, had they taken a slight wobble westward earlier in their track.
Hurricanes are an inescapable part of nature's way on the Gulf Coast. Nature doesn't care about tax cuts and fiscal years and budget crunches. Nature doesn't care that a city of 500,000 people situated below sea level lies in its path. It was certain that New Orleans would sooner or later get hit by a hurricane that would breach the levees. How could the director of Homeland Security not be familiar with this huge threat to the security of this nation? How could the President not know? How could all the presidents and politicians we elected, from Eisenhower to Clinton, not know?
The answer is that they all knew. But the politicians we elect don't care about the poor people in New Orleans, because poor people don't have a lobbyist in Washington. The poor people don't make big campaign contributions, and those big campaign contributions are vital to getting elected. In all of the Congressional and Presidential races held over the past ten years, over 90% were won by the candidate that raised the most money.
So there was little effort given to formulate a plan to evacuate the 100,000 poor residents of New Orleans with no transportation of their own for a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. To do so would have cost tens of millions of dollars, money that neither the city, nor the state, nor the federal government was willing to spend. Why spend money that would be wasted on a bunch of poor people? The money was better spent on projects to please the politicians' wealthy campaign contributors. So the plan was to let them die. And they died, as we experts all knew they would. Huge numbers of them. And they keep dying, still. We don't know how many. Since the plan was to let them die, the city of New Orleans made sure they had a good supply of body bags on hand. Only 10,000 body bags, but since Katrina didn't hit New Orleans head-on, 10,000 will probably be enough.
Admittedly, it is very difficult to safely evacuate 100,000 people with a Category 4 or 5 hurricane bearing down on you. There are only a few routes out of the city, and a full 72 hours of warning are needed to get everyone out. That's asking a lot, as hurricanes are very difficult to predict that far in advance. The National Hurricane Center did pretty well, giving New Orleans a full 60 hours to evacuate. The Hurricane Center forecasted on Friday afternoon that Katrina would hit New Orleans as a major hurricane on Monday, which is what happened. New Orleans had time to implement its plan to bus the city's poor out. However, this plan had two very serious problems--it wasn't enacted in time, and it could only get out 20% of the people in a best case scenario.
The mandatory evacuation order was not given until Sunday, just 20 hours before the hurricane. I have not been able to ascertain from press accounts when the busses actually started picking up people. The mayor says 50,000 made it to the Superdome and other "shelters of last resort", leaving another 50,000 to face the flood waters in their homes. Although 80% of the city was evacuated, it is unclear whether any of the city's poor made it out by bus. And it is very fortunate that Katrina did not hit the city head-on, or else most of those in the Superdome and other "shelters of last resort" would have perished. The death toll from Katrina would have easily surpassed 50,000.
Even if the evacuation plan had been launched 72 hours in advance, it almost certainly would have failed. A local New Orleans news station, nola.com, reported in 2002 on the evacuation plan thusly:
In an evacuation, buses would be dispatched along their regular routes throughout the city to pick up people and go to the Superdome, which would be used as a staging area. From there, people would be taken out of the city to shelters to the north.
Some experts familiar with the plans say they won't work.
"That's never going to happen because there's not enough buses in the city," said Charley Ireland, who retired as deputy director of the New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness in 2000. "Between the RTA and the school buses, you've got maybe 500 buses, and they hold maybe 40 people
each. It ain't going to happen."
The plan has other potential pitfalls.
No signs are in place to notify the public that the regular bus stops are also the stops for emergency evacuation. In Miami Beach, Fla., every other bus stop sports a huge sign identifying it as a hurricane evacuation stop.
It's also unclear whether the city's entire staff of bus drivers will remain. A union spokesman said that while drivers are aware of the plan, the union contract lacks a provision requiring them to stay.
So, if one does the math, 500 busses times 40 people per bus yields 20,000 people that could have been evacuated in a best-case scenario. Only 20,000 out of 100,000. That isn't a half-hearted effort, it's a one-fifth hearted, criminal effort. We're talking about the lives of 80,000 people or more sacrificed, from a disaster that was certain to happen. By not having a plan to get New Orleans' poor out, our government caused the unbelievable suffering and the needless deaths of thousands of Americans. This was not a natural disaster caused by an act of God, it was an unnatural disaster. In his excellent 2001 book, Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America, Ted Steinberg writes: "Calling such events acts of God has long been a way to evade moral responsibility for death and destruction." He shows in the book how countless politicians over the past one hundred years have done their best to evade this moral responsibility when preventable disasters struck. Our current leaders are no different.
The most prosperous and technologically advanced nation in history surely could have done better. Was it really too expensive to have the vehicles, people, and workable plan in place needed to evacuate New Orleans? "A society is measured by how it treats the weak and vulnerable", said George W. Bush in his State of the Union of Feb 2, 2005. By that measure, the people of this country have responded magnificently. The outpouring of aid, sympathy and prayers for those affected has been tremendous. But by that same standard, our government has failed. Its not just the current administration--every elected government since the days of Eisenhower has failed us. As I've outlined above, the problem is not likely to go away until the amount of money a candidate raises is no longer the primary factor determining who gets elected. Our elected officials won't care for the poor, as long as it is the rich who determine who get elected.
What can we do to help prevent such a disaster from recurring? Well, I encourage all of you to support election reform initiatives such as public campaign financing and Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) over the coming years. Maybe then I can check a box to vote for a candidate who will actually care for the needs of the poor in New Orleans and elsewhere in this county, instead of the usual "lesser of two evils" from the miserable two-party system that let thousands die and tens of thousands more suffer so unbearably.
Dr. Jeff Masters"
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:27 PM
Response to Reply #21
388. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) Ex-officials say weakened FEMA botched response
Edited on Sun Sep-11-05 12:33 PM by snot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Bush's FEMA Failed Us All.
Ex-officials say weakened FEMA botched response
By Frank James and Andrew Martin
Washington Bureau
Published September 3, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Government disaster officials had an action plan if a major hurricane hit New Orleans. They simply didn't execute it when Hurricane Katrina struck.
Thirteen months before Katrina hit New Orleans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill that Ronald Castleman, then the regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called "a very good exercise."
More than a million residents were "evacuated" in the table-top scenario as 120 m.p.h. winds and 20 inches of rain caused widespread flooding that supposedly trapped 300,000 people in the city.
"It was very much an eye-opener," said Castleman, a Republican appointee of President Bush who left FEMA in December for the private sector. "A number of things were identified that we had to deal with, not all of them were solved."
FEMA contracted Innovative Emergency Management to 'lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans'.
In July, 2004, they heldthe 'Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Planning Workshop' it went like this;
Driven by a predetermined scenario, entitled Hurricane Pam, the participants developed 15 functional plans over the course of the week, including: pre-landfall activities; unwatering of leveeenclosed areas; hazardous materials; billeting of response personnel; distribution of power, water, and ice; transport from water to shelter; volunteer and donations management; external
affairs; access control and re-entry; debris; schools; search and rescue; sheltering; temporary housing; and temporary medical care.
The scenario involved a slow-moving Category 3 storm making landfall near Grand Isle in the early morning. In the scenario, the storm, sustaining winds of 120 mph at landfall, spawned tornados, destroyed over 75% of the structures in its path, and left the majority of New Orleans under 15–20 feet of water. The workshop was sponsored by FEMA and LOHSEP, with a weather scenario designed by the National Weather Service and damage and consequences developed by IEM, Inc. of Baton Rouge. IEM, Inc. also facilitated the workshop sessions.
From November 29–December 3, over 90 participants met in New Orleans to continue planning for three topics: sheltering, temporary housing, and temporary medical care. These three topics were chosen by the workshop’s Unified Command as areas that needed continued group planning.
The outcome of these workshops is a series of functional plans that may be implemented immediately. Along with these plans, resource shortfalls were identified early, saving valuable time in the event an actual response is warranted. It is because of the dedication of every workshop participant that Louisiana is much better prepared for a catastrophic hurricane. More here.
A clear case of 'privatization' as failure has rarely been seen.
Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top
By Susan B. Glasser and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 4, 2005; Page A01
...Despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent preparing for the worst, the federal government was not ready when it came at daybreak on Monday, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior officials and outside experts.
Among the flaws they cited: Failure to take the storm seriously before it hit and trigger the government's highest level of response. Rebuffed offers of aid from the military, states and cities. An unfinished new plan meant to guide disaster response. And a slow bureaucracy that waited until late Tuesday to declare the catastrophe "an incident of national significance," the new federal term meant to set off the broadest possible relief effort.
Born out of the confused and uncertain response to 9/11, the massive new Department of Homeland Security was charged with being ready the next time, whether the disaster was wrought by nature or terrorists. The department commanded huge resources as it prepared for deadly scenarios from an airborne anthrax attack to a biological attack with plague to a chlorine-tank explosion.
But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday that his department had failed to find an adequate model for addressing the "ultra-catastrophe" that resulted when Hurricane Katrina's floodwater breached New Orleans's levees and drowned the city, "as if an atomic bomb had been dropped."
Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security has no access to the 'internets'.
Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top
By Susan B. Glasser and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 4, 2005; Page A01
...Despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent preparing for the worst, the federal government was not ready when it came at daybreak on Monday, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior officials and outside experts.
Among the flaws they cited: Failure to take the storm seriously before it hit and trigger the government's highest level of response. Rebuffed offers of aid from the military, states and cities. An unfinished new plan meant to guide disaster response. And a slow bureaucracy that waited until late Tuesday to declare the catastrophe "an incident of national significance," the new federal term meant to set off the broadest possible relief effort.
Born out of the confused and uncertain response to 9/11, the massive new Department of Homeland Security was charged with being ready the next time, whether the disaster was wrought by nature or terrorists. The department commanded huge resources as it prepared for deadly scenarios from an airborne anthrax attack to a biological attack with plague to a chlorine-tank explosion.
But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday that his department had failed to find an adequate model for addressing the "ultra-catastrophe" that resulted when Hurricane Katrina's floodwater breached New Orleans's levees and drowned the city, "as if an atomic bomb had been dropped."
Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security has no access to the 'internets'.
FEMA takes brunt of hurricane relief criticism
BY MICHELLE MITTELSTADT
The Dallas Morning News
Though disaster planners have long ranked a direct hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the top three catastrophic scenarios facing the United States, authorities have lagged badly in evacuating the sick and vulnerable, passing out food and water, deploying military assets and quelling rampant lawlessness. And while the Superdome has long factored in disaster preparedness plans as the city's main hurricane refuge, no supplies were stocked there before the storm hit Monday.
Dr. Michael Lindell, a senior scholar at Texas A&M's Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center, said he cannot comprehend why federal officials had not deployed equipment and relief supplies before Katrina struck - or mobilized to relieve clearly outflanked state and local resources.
"If it's a Category 5 hurricane, then frankly it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that it's going to overwhelm local capacity and that they are going to be in a world of hurt," he said, referring to the storm that fell to Category 4 by the time it hit shore. "You don't have to wait until there are bodies floating around in the water to start activating the National Guard."
Many disaster relief specialists blame FEMA's stumble on its diminished standing within the government and a relentless focus on terrorism prevention by the agency's new overseers.
In a post-Sept. 11 reorganization, FEMA joined 21 other agencies in a new Homeland Security Department, stripped of the Cabinet rank that had allowed it to report directly to the president. And, in a further department shuffle in July, FEMA lost its historic mission of working with state and local governments on preparedness plans before disaster strikes.
The administration has been trotting out representatives from the Army Corps of Engineers to say that they didn't see the 'break' in the levee coming. But nearly in the same sentence they admit that the flooding was foreseen.
But there was a change in leadership at the Corps in 2002.
Ex-Army Corps officials say budget cuts imperiled flood mitigation efforts
As levees burst and floods continued to spread across areas hit by Hurricane Katrina yesterday, a former chief of the Army Corps of Engineers disparaged senior White House officials for "not understanding" that key elements of the region's infrastructure needed repair and rebuilding.
Mike Parker, the former head of the Army Corps of Engineers, was forced to resign in 2002 over budget disagreements with the White House. He clashed with Mitch Daniels, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, which sets the administration's annual budget goals.
"One time I took two pieces of steel into Mitch Daniels' office," Parker recalled. "They were exactly the same pieces of steel, except one had been under water in a Mississippi lock for 30 years, and the other was new. The first piece was completely corroded and falling apart because of a lack of funding. I said, 'Mitch, it doesn't matter if a terrorist blows the lock up or if it falls down because it disintegrates -- either way it's the same effect, and if we let it fall down, we have only ourselves to blame.' It made no impact on him whatsoever."
Daniels, now governor of Indiana, did not respond to a request for comment.
Fire the employees that counter your agenda. Just another day in Bushworld. Damn the consequences.
On the front cover of the Mississippi Press, the boldest headline is 'Where's FEMA?' They are still waiting.
Where's FEMA?
by Natalie Chambers
THE MISSISSIPPI PRESS
September 4, 2005
PASCAGOULA — County and municipal officials are asking aloud ‘Where’s FEMA?’
As word spread of temporary housing needs beginning to be met in neighboring Harrison County, more questions are being asked in Jackson County.
Leaders here can only hope that they are next on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s list.
An estimated 100,000 of 135,000 Jackson County residents are in need of housing assistance following Monday’s landfall of devastating Hurricane Katrina, county officials were told by a Red Cross’ national representative. They also need a dependable supply of water, ice, food and other necessities.
To summarize; there was ample warning, plenty of studies to predict the flooding, but budget slashing, downsizing and privatization were employed that crippled FEMA's disaster relief abilities.
To top it off, cronyism.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 09:47 PM
Response to Reply #21
543. 9/19 FEMA Employee Opinions worst I have ever seen, period
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
NPR Commentary: "FEMA Employee Opinions worst I have ever seen, period."
From this morning's 'Morning Edition' commentary:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=48...
Commentary: An argument for fixes at FEMA
September 19, 2005 from Morning Edition
STEVE INSKEEP, host: So there's a plan for rebuilding New Orleans. Now here's a plan for rebuilding the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Commentator Paul Light is author of "The Four Pillars of High Performance," which outlines his strategy for strengthening organizations like FEMA.
PAUL LIGHT:
Contrary to the now conventional wisdom, FEMA was not the victim of the Homeland Security merger. Flooded by inexperienced political appointees at the top, the agency already ranked dead last on the list of best places to work in government well before Katrina hit. According to the federal government's own surveys, employees reported sharp declines in morale and resources in early 2002. Less than a third said they held their new leaders in high regard. The concerns are familiar across government where employees complain about the lack of resources and the politicalization of even trivial decisions, but the FEMA opinions are the worst I have ever seen, period.
FEMA had only recently rebounded from years as a political dumping ground for campaign aides with no place else to go. It failed miserably after Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992. Eight years of hard work brought the agency up to peak performance. Then inexperienced appointees brought the agency back down. Katrina shows yet again how important effective leadership is to government performance. On the day Katrina hit, half of FEMA's top political jobs were occupied by executives without any meaningful disaster experience. Seven of the top civil service jobs were filled by acting appointees. It's no wonder FEMA hesitated as the catastrophe took hold.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:04 PM
Response to Original message
22. Pre K: Clinton builds emergency preparedness

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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 03:08 PM
Response to Reply #22
316. 9/10 E-mail fr friend Comparing Pres'l Actions Re- Hurricanes Past
In August of 1969 when Cat-5 Hurricane Camille hit roughly the same area as Katrina, President Nixon had already readied the National Guard and ordered all Gulf rescue vessels and equipment from Tampa and Houston to follow the Hurricane in. There were over 1,000 regular military with two dozen helicopters to assist the Coast Guard and National Guard within hours after the skies cleared.
August, 1992 -- Hurricane Andrew -- President H.W. Bush (#41) was in the midst of a brutal campaign for re-election. Yet, he cut off his campaigning the day before and went to Washington where he marshaled the largest military operation on US soil in history. He sent in 7,000 National Guard and 22,000 regular military personnel, and all the gear to begin the clean up within hours after Andrew passed through Florida.
In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd -- a category 3 -- was bearing down the Carolinas and Virginia. President Clinton (#42) was in Christchurch, New Zealand, meeting with President Jiang of China. He made the Presidential proclamation declaring the areas affected by Floyd "Federal Disaster Areas" so the National Guard and Military can begin to mobilize. Then he cut short his meetings overseas and flew home to coordinate the rescue efforts. This all one day BEFORE a Cat-3 hit the coast.
George W. Bush (#43) - August 2005 - Cat-5 Hurricane Katrina bears down on New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf. Both states are down nearly 8,000 National Guard troops because they are in Iraq -- with most of the rescue gear needed. Bush is on vacation. The day before Katrina makes landfall, Bush rides his bike for two hours. The day she hits, he goes to Johnnie McCain's birthday party and lies to old people about the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical company welfare boondoggle. People are dying, the largest port of entry in the United States (and fifth largest in the World) is under attack. Troops and supplies are desperately needed. The levees are cracking and the emergency 1-1/2 ton sandbags are ready, but there aren't enough helicopters or pilots to set them before the levees fail. The mayor of New Orleans begs for Federal coordination, but there is none, and the sandbagging never gets done. So Bush -- naturally -- goes to San Diego to play guitar with the country singer and give another tired speech trying to justify the Iraq oil war. The levees give way, filling New Orleans with water, sewage, oil and chemicals. The city is totally destroyed. Thousands are dead or dying. Bush decides he'll end his vacation a couple of days early -- TOMORROW -- because Rumsfeld has skybox tickets to a Padres game! He goes back to the Farm in Crawford, with every intention of doing something on WEDNESDAY about this disaster that starting happening last Sunday night.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:19 PM
Response to Original message
23. Just prior to K: Official Fed announcements and declarations
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 09:22 PM by mom catPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:31 PM
Response to Reply #23
215. Dated Aug 27(?):official: White House declaration
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 02:10 PM by mom cat
From the White House
Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/2005082...
The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.
The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn.
Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent Federal funding.
Representing FEMA, Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Department of Homeland Security, named William Lokey as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Federal recovery operations in the affected area.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: FEMA (202) 646-4600. Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:36 PM
Response to Reply #215
216. Sept 8: From the WH press release: BUSH DIDN'T MOVE TO PROTECT NO AT ALL!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
BloodyWilliam (428 posts) Thu Sep-08-05 02:30 PM
Original message
From the WH press release: BUSH DIDN'T MOVE TO PROTECT NO AT ALL!
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/2005082 ...
Read the list of parishes covered. Orleans? Missing. Jefferson? Missing. Tarribone? Missing. Any of the parishes that were going to recieve the worst part of the hurricane? MISSING. According to the press release, the only parishes actually protected by Bush's actions are the northern, inland ones.
I'm enraged. I'm actually shocked. We have to put this out there, we have to spread this everywhere we can. Bush didn't lift one finger to help the parishes that needed the most help, even after the governor explicitly requested it.
We NEED to show this to everyone. The truth has to be heard. This is hard, this is real, and this is pretty obvious in the Bush administration's criminal negligence. Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 02:44 PM
Response to Reply #215
220. Katrinatimeline
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 02:48 PM by mom cat
edit for link to Katrina timeline: http://www.katrinatimeline.org/aug27.html
8:30 AM ET / 7:30 AM CT
Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco participates in the Southeastern Louisiana parishes Conference Call at the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (LHLS & EP). The Governor joins federal, state, and parish officials as they receive the latest information on Hurricane Katrina and discuss emergency preparations in the southeastern Louisiana parishes. At the conclusion of the conference call, Governor Blanco conducted a briefing for the news media at the LHLS & EP. http://www.gov.state.la.us/Press_Release_detail.asp?id=...
10:00 AM CT
NHC-HURRICANE KATRINA FORECAST/ADVISORY NUMBER 17 http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/mar/al122005.fstad... ?
NHC-HURRICANE KATRINA ADVISORY NUMBER 17 http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/pub/al122005.publi... ?
NHC-HURRICANE KATRINA DISCUSSION NUMBER 17 http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al122005.discu... ?
NHC-HURRICANE KATRINA PROBABILITIES NUMBER 17 http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/prb/al122005.prblt... ?
FEMA:Emergency Aid Authorized For Hurricane Katrina Emergency Response In Louisiana
Release Date: August 27, 2005 Release Number: HQ-05-169
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response, today announced that Federal resources are being allocated to support emergency protective response efforts response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina.
Brown said President Bush authorized the aid under an emergency disaster declaration issued following a review of FEMA's analysis of the state's request for federal assistance. FEMA will mobilize equipment and resources necessary to protect public health and safety by assisting law enforcement with evacuations, establishing shelters, supporting emergency medical needs, meeting immediate lifesaving and life-sustaining human needs and protecting property, in addition to other emergency protective measures.
The parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle?, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn were designated eligible for assistance. In addition, federal funds will be available for public safety debris removal and emergency protective measures at 75 percent of approved costs.
Brown named William Lokey of FEMA to coordinate the federal relief effort. FEMA prepares the nation for all hazards and manages federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates mitigation activities, trains first responders, works with state and local emergency managers, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration. FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 02:20 PM
Response to Reply #23
218. These "missing counties" are included in the 8/29 posting ..
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
halobeam (1000+ posts) Thu Sep-08-05 03:24 PM
Response to Original message
22. These "missing counties" are included in the 8/29 posting ..
on whitehouse.gov
snip....
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
August 29, 2005
Statement on Federal Disaster Assistance for Louisiana

The President today declared a major disaster exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts in the area struck by Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 29, 2005, and continuing.
The President's action makes Federal funding available to affected individuals in the parishes of Acadia, Ascension, Assumption, Calcasieu, Cameron, East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, Iberia, Iberville, Jefferson, Jefferson Davis, Lafayette, Lafourche, Livingston, Orleans, Plaquemines, Pointe Coupee, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. Helena, St. James, St. John, St. Mary, St. Martin, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Terrebonne, Vermilion, Washington, West Baton Rouge, and West Feliciana. Assistance can include grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover from the effects of the disaster.
Federal funding is available to State and eligible local government in the parishes of Acadia, Ascension, Assumption, Calcasieu, Cameron, East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, Iberia, Iberville, Jefferson, Jefferson Davis, Lafayette, Lafourche, Livingston, Orleans, Plaquemines, Pointe Coupee, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. Helena, St. James, St. John, St. Mary, St. Martin, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Terrebonne, Vermilion, Washington, West Baton Rouge, and West Feliciana for debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance.
Federal funding also is available to State and eligible local governments in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Catahoula, Claiborne, Concordia, Desoto, East Carroll, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, and Winn for emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance. Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 02:27 PM
Response to Reply #218
219. Sept 8, 2005...copy of Aug 29 from whitehouse .gov.
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 02:30 PM by mom cat
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/2005082...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 11:49 PM
Response to Reply #23
242. Disaster declarations
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
(Statute Re- Pres. appointing a Fed. officer to coord with a State officer)
Undeniable proof of who was supposed to be in charge
There is no doubt this was federal responsibility.
http://www.ohioema.org/robertt.htm
Sec. 302. (a) Immediately upon his declaration of a major disaster or emergency, the President shall appoint a Federal coordinating officer to operate in the affected area.He declared this a disaster area on the 27th.The ball was in the fed's court.
(b) In order to effectuate the purposes of this Act, the Federal coordinating officer, within the affected area, shall
(1) make an initial appraisal of the types of relief most urgently needed;
(2) establish such field offices as he deems necessary and as are authorized by the President;
(3) coordinate the administration of relief, including activities of the State and local government, the American National Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Mennonite Disaster Service, and other relief or disaster assistance organizations, which agree to operate under his advice or direction, except that nothing contained in this Act shall limit or in any way affect the responsibilities of the American National Red Cross under the Act of January 5, 1905, as amended (33 Stat. 599); and
(4) take such other action, consistent with authority delegated to him by the President, and consistent with the provisions of this Act, as he may deem necessary to assist local citizens and public officials in promptly obtaining assistance to which they are entitled.
(c) When the President determines assistance under this Act is necessary, he shall request that the Governor of the affected State designate a State coordinating officer for the purposes of coordinating State and local disaster assistance efforts with those of the Federal Government.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Horse with no Name (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 10:56 AM
Original message
There is NO conspiracy regarding the disaster declarations
Please can we put this to rest. The disaster declarations were done CORRECTLY and there weren’t ANY parishes left out of the loop. To keep this in perspective, you must first look at the initial letter provided by Gov. Blanco
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pd...
It is a PDF file so I cannot cut and paste it. If someone can do that I would be grateful.
Then the Presidents response:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/2005082...
Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana
The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing. These are the primary counties that Gov. Blanco named as parishes to receive major damage and significant damage.
The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn. these are the counties that are listed to be secondarily affected.
Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent Federal funding.
Representing FEMA, Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Department of Homeland Security, named William Lokey as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Federal recovery operations in the affected area.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: FEMA (202) 646-4600.
Then FEMA’s response: http://www.fema.gov/news/event.fema?id=4786
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response, today announced that Federal resources are being allocated to support emergency protective response efforts response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina.These are the parishes in the path of the hurricane.
Brown said President Bush authorized the aid under an emergency disaster declaration issued following a review of FEMA's analysis of the state's request for federal assistance. FEMA will mobilize equipment and resources necessary to protect public health and safety by assisting law enforcement with evacuations, establishing shelters, supporting emergency medical needs, meeting immediate lifesaving and life-sustaining human needs and protecting property, in addition to other emergency protective measures.
The parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn were designated eligible for assistance. In addition, federal funds will be available for public safety debris removal and emergency protective measures at 75 percent of approved costs.These are the secondarily affected parishes.
Brown named William Lokey of FEMA to coordinate the federal relief effort. FEMA prepares the nation for all hazards and manages federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates mitigation activities, trains first responders, works with state and local emergency managers, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration. FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003.
It is clearly indicated that the FIRST set (She actually names the parishes that will be directly affected, but the FEMA and Bush’s response refer to these as parishes in the path of the hurricane). In all three documents however, the secondary counties are listed specifically. All three documents follow the same format.
This isn’t a conspiracy. There weren’t any parishes left out—they were just referred to differently. The Stafford Act demands that these parishes be listed to be eligible for aid, even though they may or may not be damaged.
http://www.ohioema.org/robertt.htm
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 11:36 PM
Response to Reply #23
382. 9/10 (orig 9/4) Bush Suspended Posse Comatatus???
Edited on Sat Sep-10-05 11:43 PM by snot
(I think this is actually AFTER k, but I wasn't sure where else to put it. However, I think the subject of the applicable law re- state vs. fed authority, Bush's attempt to get Blanco agree to "Federalize", concerns about using the army here while sending Nat'l Guard abroad and the whole subject of posse comatatus may need its own subheading.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
Anyone Hear About A 6 AM Appearance By Bush? Suspended Some Laws?
My sister just called and said Bush came on TV at 6AM and announced that he was suspending the laws that prevented the military from engaging in police activities here in the states!
From some other posts in same thread:
23. MACDIS would probably suffice in this case
http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html2/d302512 ...
One of the first things that Bush(Cheney) did in 2001 was redirect money in the DoD to review (I think they used a differnt verb) posse comitatus. I used to have a .gov link for this request but I can't find it right now. Then in 2002, the WH publicly stated it wanted to reexamine the posse comitatus but Congress didn't play along. They brought it up again last month
Here's part of an editorial from the Plain Dealer, 8/15/2005. I got it out of LexisNexis so no link.. sorry.
The U.S. military is said to have plans for some very unlikely scenarios — among them, for instance, the invasion of London. So there should be little surprise when the Washington Post reports that the Northern Command headquarters, responsible for the continental United States, has drawn up plans for the armed forces to take charge in case of a catastrophic terrorist attack.
Little surprise, but some proper concern, nonetheless. Although the words “martial law” were not used in the account, that’s almost certainly what would result. Should a president assert his or her commander-in-chief authority under Article 2 of the Constitution to set aside the post-Civil War Posse Comitatus Act and bring in troops to preserve the order, Americans would live, in whatever numbers and for whatever time frame, under rules foreign to their unregimented ways.
Among those rules would be restrictions on travel and the distribution of food, water and fuel, and — depending on the extent of the attack — quite possibly some attempts to control communications: television, radio, newspapers and even the Internet.
Karmakaze (221 posts)
Sun Sep-04-05 10:16 AM
Response to Original message
25. Posse Comitatus Act:
Here are some links that can provide some more information on the Act:
http://law.wustl.edu/WULQ/75-2/752-10.html
http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Trebil ...
The interesting point is made in the second link:
Federal military personnel may also be used pursuant to the Stafford Act, 42 U.S.C., section 5121, in times of natural disaster upon request from a state governor. In such an instance, the Stafford Act permits the president to declare a major disaster and send in military forces on an emergency basis for up to ten days to preserve life and property. While the Stafford Act authority is still subject to the criteria of active versus passive, it represents a significant exception to the Posse Comitatus Act’s underlying principle that the military is not a domestic police force auxiliary.
The only reason I can see for Bush to "suspend" Posse Comitatus is the duration that military forces are allowed to be employed - 10 days.
30. What's wrong with this picture?
We have the National Guard in Iraq and Northcom in an american city.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
The Busheviks are going to get away with it.
I had hope. I no longer do. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Stay with me here...
General Honore comes in and is touted as a hero restoring order to New Orleans. He is now spinning madly to protect the Busheviks. The coup is complete. We are now a dictatorship.
What has gone unnoticed is, since early this morning Posse Comatatus has been suspended. Had Clinton dared such a thing, it would have been an open Civil War, but those who would have decried such an act under Clinton now support it wholeheartedly under Bush.
This is a significant event. These bastards know survival psychology, and failing to respond was a cold, calculated maneuver to have the nation BEG for a military presence to restore order. Now, this will be utilized as justification for them to move in with the military any place at any time. Killing of Americans by American military forces is now an acceptable option.
In our humanity, we have called down the retribution of a military dictatorship.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 01:20 AM
Response to Reply #382
471. 9-13: Sen. Warner & Snow: "revise" Posse Comitatus & Insurrection
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Sen. Warner & Snow: "revise" Posse Comitatus & Insurrection Acts
Edited on Tue Sep-13-05 02:52 PM by paineinthearse
Senator Warner (R-Va) fires first shot to revise/repeal the posse comitatus act & the insurrection act.
Live from floor speech...developing. Warner asked unanimous consent his "thoughts" be entered into the record (may be available in Thomas tomorrow, but any DU members from Virginia, please call his office and get/post a copy of his "thoughts" here ASAP).
His direction was immediately seconded by Senator Snow (R-Maine).

http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-cp/comrel/factfile/Factcards/P ...
"POSSE COMITATUS ACT" (18 USC 1385): A Reconstruction Era criminal law proscribing use of Army (later, Air Force) to "execute the laws" except where expressly authorized by Constitution or Congress. Limit on use of military for civilian law enforcement also applies to Navy by regulation. Dec '81 additional laws were enacted (codified 10 USC 371-78) clarifying permissible military assistance to civilian law enforcement agencies--including the Coast Guard--especially in combating drug smuggling into the United States. Posse Comitatus clarifications emphasize supportive and technical assistance (e.g., use of facilities, vessels, aircraft, intelligence, tech aid, surveillance, etc.) while generally prohibiting direct participation of DoD personnel in law enforcement (e.g., search, seizure, and arrests). For example, Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachments (LEDETS) serve aboard Navy vessels and perform the actual boardings of interdicted suspect drug smuggling vessels and, if needed, arrest their crews). Positive results have been realized especially from Navy ship/aircraft involvement.

http://matewan.squarespace.com/journal/2005/9/7/the-ins ...
The Insurrection Act
§ 332. Use of militia and armed forces to enforce Federal authority
Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:24 PM
Response to Original message
24. Just prior to K: Announcements and declarations of various states

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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:02 PM
Response to Reply #24
44. DU thread w/ info re- Blanco's announcments August 26 - 28
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Some replies in the thread contain useful info, e.g., # 10.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 02:45 AM
Response to Reply #44
143. August 28...Blanco's letter to Bush (trhough the FEMA regional director)
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pd...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 08:08 AM
Response to Reply #44
184. Are people seriously buying that "Bush told Blanco first" emergency crap?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
gatorboy (1000+ posts) Thu Sep-08-05 08:24 AM
Original message
Are people seriously buying that "Bush told Blanco first" emergency crap?
I mean, c'mon. I hear these people trying to use these talking points when all they have to do is check the timeline through news articles between the 26th and 28th. Are they seriously that lazy?
In case they need more proof....Here you go:
Blanco declared a state of emergency on Friday:
http://www.thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2 ... Bush declared a state of emergency on Saturday:
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/1-08272005-53337 ...
See, Friday comes before Saturday....Wasn't that easy? You having fun? Cool! Let's do one more...And this time we'll have FEMA help us out! Weeeeee!
Friday=Blanco
http://www.fema.gov/emanagers/2005/nat082705.shtm
(Pssst! They even made it bold so you could see it easier!)
State of Emergency Declared in Mississippi, Louisiana DueIn anticipation of a possible landfall, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco declared States of Emergency Friday. In Louisiana, New Orleans is of particular concern because much of that city lies below sea level.
Bush=Saturday
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18447
Brown said President Bush authorized the aid under an emergency disaster declaration issued following a review of FEMA's analysis of the state's request for federal assistance.
I sure had fun and I hope you did to! Next week, Michael Brown is going to show us how tomilk a horse. See you then!

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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:42 PM
Response to Reply #184
217. Yes, they're buying it! Rove/GOP also told WP and Newsweek
As I state over at Angry Girl
http://www.nightweed.com/angrygirl.html
If you control the information, that is to say, the media, then nobody will ever become the wiser. With today's technology and mass media, you CAN fool MOST the people MOST the time. (If you know of any naive, ignorant folk who trust everything they see on TV, send them to MediaMatters.org at http://mediamatters.org .
Talking Points (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com /) has pointed out a classic example of the White House smear and cover-up tactics that are the trademark of Bush handler Karl Rove, in charge of easing Katrina's political damage at the White House (http://nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/... ):
August 27 Governor Blanco requests that Bush declare a State of Emergency. The next day she declare a Stte of Ermegency herself, posted on the State of Louisiana website on August 28.
PDF file here
http://gov.louisiana.gov/2005%20%20proclamations/48pro2...
Sept 4 Washington Post reported Sept. 4: "As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said." A correction was printed later that day but the damage was done.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
Sept 6 Newsweek repeats the statement: "Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco seemed uncertain and sluggish, hesitant to declare martial law or a state of emergency, which would have opened the door to more Pentagon help." No correction or retraction has been made yet.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179587/page/5 /
Sept 7 Larry Johnson reports he called MSNBC's show Connected, Coast to Coast with Ron Reagan while a man from the Evergreen Foundation was on the air spinning the myth that Bush had to "beg" the Governor of Louisiana to take action. Scarily, when Johnson called to correct the misinformation, the booker Susan Durrwatcher thanked me for my "opinion" and said "we just have a different perspective"!
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/9/7/142737/2117
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:08 PM
Response to Reply #44
222. Aug Aug 26...Gov Blanco declares state of emergency
http://www.katrinatimeline.org/aug26.html
4:00 PM CT
GOVERNOR BLANCO DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY
BATON ROUGE, LA--Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco today issued Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005, declaring a state of emergency for the state Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina poses an imminent threat, carrying severe storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause flooding and damage to private property and public facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the citizens of the state of Louisiana The state of emergency extends from Friday, August 26, 2005, through Sunday, September 25, 2005, unless terminated sooner.
The full text of Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005 is as follows:
WHEREAS, the Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act, R.S. 29 21, et seq., confers upon the governor of the state of Louisiana emergency powers to deal with emergencies and disasters, including those caused by fire, flood, earthquake or other natural or man-made causes, in order to ensure that preparations of this state will be adequate to deal with such emergencies or disasters and to preserve the lives and property of the citizens of the state of Louisiana;
WHEREAS, when the governor finds a disaster or emergency has occurred, or the threat thereof is imminent, R.S. 29 24(B)(1) empowers her to declare the state of disaster or emergency by executive order or proclamation, or both; and
WHEREAS, On August 26, 2005, Hurricane Katrina poses an imminent threat to the state of Louisiana, carrying severe storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause flooding and damage to private property and public facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the citizens of Louisiana;
NOW THEREFORE I, KATHLEEN BABINEAUX BLANCO,
Governor of the state of Louisiana, by virtue of the authority vested by the Constitution and laws of the state of Louisiana, do hereby order and direct as follows:
SECTION 1: Pursuant to the Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act, R.S. 29 21, et seq., a state of emergency is declared to exist in the state of Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina poses an imminent threat, carrying severe storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause flooding and damage to private property and public facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the citizens of the state of Louisiana;
SECTION 2: The state of Louisiana's emergency response and recovery program is activated under the command of the director of the state office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness to prepare for and provide emergency support services and/or to minimize the effects of the storm's damage.
SECTION 3: The state of emergency extends from Friday, August 26, 2005, through Sunday, September 25, 2005, unless terminated sooner.
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Press_Release_detail.asp?id=97...
Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, commander, Joint Task Force Katrina, acknowledges in Special Defense Department Briefing held on Sept. 1 that a request from the state governors in Louisiana, Mississippi was requested a week earlier Friday Aug. 26.
Q: General, Jamie McIntyre from CNN. To what extent is this additional assistance you've outlined today a response to a request from the state governors in Louisiana, Mississippi? And if so, can you tell us when specifically you got that request?
GEN. HONORÉ: Yes, sir. The process starts, sir, in this particular event, with a request Friday of last week, as the approximate date for defense coordinating offices to be established in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Those were established in those states over FridayPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:30 PM
Response to Reply #44
371. 9/10 (orig 9/3) Debunking the WaPo: Blanco Requested Fed Aid on 8/28!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Debunking the WaPo: Blanco Requested Fed Aid on 8/28!
(Sorry if this duplicates)
Debunking the WaPo: Gov. Blanco Requested Federal Aid from Bush on Sunday, August 28th - 2 Days Before Katrina Struck
In a well detailed letter to President Bush, Governor Kathleen Blanco requested that Bush declare an “expedited state of disaster for the State of Louisiana… beginning on August 28, 2005 and continuing.”
It appears there is some confusion over at the White House about when Governor Blanco requested aid and for that matter when she declared a State of Emergency for the State of Louisiana.
According to the WaPo, “As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.” That’s rather curious because the letter from Governor Blanco to President Bush clearly states that she declared a State of Emergency on August 26, 2005.
Perhaps the two journalists for the WaPo don’t frequent DU, but they should, if they did they might have seen the link to the letter. And a quick visit to Gov.Louisiana.gov would have turned up the link to this: STATE OF EMERGENCY - HURRICANE KATRINA - August 26, 2005. The State of Emergeny Order clearly states that “The state of emergency extends from Friday, August 26, 2005, through Sunday, September 25, 2005, unless terminated sooner.”
It seems that these two documents do create a bit of sticky situation for the lies of the Bush administration, perpetuated by the WaPo in this story — Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting, White House Shifts Blame to State and Local Officials.
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’d 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.
A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.
Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.
“The federal government stands ready to work with state and local officials to secure New Orleans and the state of Louisiana,” White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said. “The president will not let any form of bureaucracy get in the way of protecting the citizens of Louisiana.”
Blanco made two moves Saturday that protected her independence from the federal government: She created a philanthropic fund for the state’s victims and hired James Lee Witt, Federal Emergency Management Agency director in the Clinton administration, to advise her on the relief effort.
Clearly the WaPo could have done a better job with a bit of investigative journalism. They chose the easy way out and let the claims of the Bush administration stand as a statement of their headline, rather than refute the Bush administration’s claims, as I have above.
MORE & LINKS - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=431
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:57 PM
Response to Reply #24
212. Natl Hurricane Center's Mayfield held video conf. w/ Bush 8/28
On Saturday night, Mayfield was so worried about Hurricane Katrina that he called the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi and the mayor of New Orleans. On Sunday, he even talked about the force of Katrina during a video conference call to President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
"I just wanted to be able to go to sleep that night knowing that I did all I could do," Mayfield said.
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/08/30/State/For_forecasting...
(Thank you, Talking Points Memo)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 02:55 PM
Response to Reply #24
221. August 26: Gov, Blanco's press releace: Conference call for aug27
Press Release
Date: 8/26/2005Contact enise Bottcher or Roderick Hawkins at 225-342-9037GOVERNOR BLANCO TO HOLD PRESS BRIEFING
http://www.gov.state.la.us/Press_Release_detail.asp?id=...
BATON ROUGE—On Saturday, August 27, 2005 at 7:30 a.m., Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco will participate in the Southeastern Louisiana parishes Conference Call at the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (LHLS & EP). The Governor will join federal, state, and parish officials as they receive the latest information on Hurricane Katrina and discuss emergency preparations in the southeastern Louisiana parishes.
At the conclusion of the conference call, Governor Blanco will conduct a briefing for the news media at the LHLS & EP.
• Governor’s press briefing re Hurricane Katrina
• Following 7:30 a.m. conference call with Southeast Parishes
• Louisiana Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness
7667 Independence Blvd
Baton Rouge, LA

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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 11:50 PM
Response to Reply #24
243. Disaster declarations
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Horse with no Name (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 10:56 AM
Original message
There is NO conspiracy regarding the disaster declarations
Please can we put this to rest. The disaster declarations were done CORRECTLY and there weren’t ANY parishes left out of the loop. To keep this in perspective, you must first look at the initial letter provided by Gov. Blanco
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pd...
It is a PDF file so I cannot cut and paste it. If someone can do that I would be grateful.
Then the Presidents response:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/2005082...
Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana
The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing. These are the primary counties that Gov. Blanco named as parishes to receive major damage and significant damage.
The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn. these are the counties that are listed to be secondarily affected.
Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent Federal funding.
Representing FEMA, Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Department of Homeland Security, named William Lokey as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Federal recovery operations in the affected area.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: FEMA (202) 646-4600.
Then FEMA’s response: http://www.fema.gov/news/event.fema?id=4786
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response, today announced that Federal resources are being allocated to support emergency protective response efforts response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina.These are the parishes in the path of the hurricane.
Brown said President Bush authorized the aid under an emergency disaster declaration issued following a review of FEMA's analysis of the state's request for federal assistance. FEMA will mobilize equipment and resources necessary to protect public health and safety by assisting law enforcement with evacuations, establishing shelters, supporting emergency medical needs, meeting immediate lifesaving and life-sustaining human needs and protecting property, in addition to other emergency protective measures.
The parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn were designated eligible for assistance. In addition, federal funds will be available for public safety debris removal and emergency protective measures at 75 percent of approved costs.These are the secondarily affected parishes.
Brown named William Lokey of FEMA to coordinate the federal relief effort. FEMA prepares the nation for all hazards and manages federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates mitigation activities, trains first responders, works with state and local emergency managers, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration. FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003.
It is clearly indicated that the FIRST set (She actually names the parishes that will be directly affected, but the FEMA and Bush’s response refer to these as parishes in the path of the hurricane). In all three documents however, the secondary counties are listed specifically. All three documents follow the same format.
This isn’t a conspiracy. There weren’t any parishes left out—they were just referred to differently. The Stafford Act demands that these parishes be listed to be eligible for aid, even though they may or may not be damaged.
http://www.ohioema.org/robertt.htm
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:22 AM
Response to Reply #24
458. 9/13 Report Confirms Louisiana Took Necessary and Timely Steps
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Report Confirms that Louisiana Took Necessary and Timely Steps
Pursuant to a September 7 request by Representative John Conyers to review the law and legal accountability relating to Federal action in response to Hurricane Katrina, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report today about whether the Governor of Louisiana took the necessary and timely steps needed to secure disaster relief from the federal government. The report unequivocally concludes that she did.
Congressman Conyers issued the following statement:
"This report closes the book on the Bush Administration's attempts to evade accountability by shifting the blame to the Governor of Louisiana for the Administration's tragically sluggish response to Katrina. It confirms that the Governor did everything she could to secure relief for the people of Louisiana and the Bush Administration was caught napping at a critical time."
In addition to finding that "...it would appear that the Governor did take the steps necessary to request emergency and major disaster declarations for the State of Louisiana in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina. (p.11)" The report found that:
* All necessary conditions for federal relief were met on August 28. Pursuant to Section 502 of the Stafford Act, "he declaration of an emergency by the President makes Federal emergency assistance available," and the President made such a declaration on August 28. The public record indicates that severa additional days passed before such assistance was actually made available to the State;
* The Governor must make a timely request for such assistance, which meets the requirements of federal law. The report states that "xcept to the extent that an emergency involves primarily Federal interests, both declarations of major disaster and declarations of emergency must be triggered by a request to the President from the Governor of the affected state";
* The Governor did indeed make such a request, which was both timely and in compliance with federal law. The report finds that "Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco requested by letter dated August 27, 2005...that the President declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period from August 26, 2005 and continuing pursuant to " and "Governor Blanco's August 27, 2005 request for an emergency declaration also included her determination...that 'the incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of disaster."
http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/003513.html
PDF: http://www2.dccc.org/docs/conyersgaokatrina.pdf
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:51 AM
Response to Reply #24
466. 9/13 Nonpartisan Congressiona Rpt finds LA governor took necessary steps
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Nonpartisan congressional research report finds LA governor took necessary
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Nonpartisan_congressional...
Nonpartisan congressional research report finds Louisiana governor took necessary steps
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report Tuesday afternoon asserting that Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco took the necessary and timely steps needed to secure disaster relief from the federal government, RAW STORY has learned.
The report, which comes after a request by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to review the law and legal accountability relating to Federal action in response to Hurricane Katrina, unequivocally concludes that she did.
"This report closes the book on the Bush Administration's attempts to evade accountability," Conyers said in a statement. "The Bush Administration was caught napping at a critical time."
The report found that:
...
The Governor did indeed make such a request, which was both timely and in compliance with federal law. The report finds that "Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco requested by letter dated August 27, 2005...that the President declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period from August 26, 2005 and continuing pursuant to " and "Governor Blanco's August 27,2005 request for an emergency declaration also included her determination...that 'the incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of disaster."
The full report will be available soon on the House Democrats' Judiciary website.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:27 PM
Response to Original message
25. Just prior to and durikg K; What the Bush doing and not doing

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:08 PM
Response to Reply #25
225. Bush refuses call from Nagin
http://ariannaonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28989&...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-23-05 07:35 PM
Response to Reply #225
553. no link found on that site.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 01:51 PM
Response to Reply #25
314. Great summary of the Bush disregard of the danger: He kept playing!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Aftre listing the competent responces, the writer of this e-mail summarises Bush's incompetence as follows:
President: Bush the Lesser
Danger: Category-5 Hurricane Katrina (August 2005)
Area: Gulf CoastResponse: National Guard troops are down about 8,000 members because
they are in Iraq with much of the necessary rescue equipment needed.
Bush was on vacation, riding his bike for two hours the day before the
hurricane lands. On the day Katrina landed, Bush attended a birthday
party for John McCain. The levees began to crack. While emergency
1.5-ton sandbags were ready to be placed to steady the levee and absorb
water, there were insufficient numbers of helicopters and pilots to set
them before the levees break. Nagin, the mayor of NO, pleaded for
federal-level assistance and got none. Bush went to San Diego to play
guitar with a country singer and end his vacation early -- but not
until the next day, because he had tickets to a San Diego Padres game.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 03:15 PM
Response to Reply #25
442. Sept 13, what Bush was doing
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Stephanie (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-12-05 06:58 PM
Original message
ONE MORE TIME: Bush's Activities Two Weeks Ago While Katrina Ravaged NOLA>
He can't spin this away. Re-posting this in reference to Bush' PC today, posted in another thread, in which he claims he was aware of the gravity of the situation on Monday.
photos and text

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:29 PM
Response to Original message
26. Just prior to and during K: What top level Bush admins were doing and not
doing..
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-16-05 12:04 AM
Response to Reply #26
496. 9-16- Conflicting accounts from top on Katrina responseConflicting accounts from top on Katrina response
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N14505805.htm

Conflicting accounts from top on Katrina responseWASHINGTON, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Under fire over the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the White House and Homeland Security Department have offered conflicting accounts of who was in charge and when the administration first triggered what it promised would be a massive, organized federal response.
U.S. Senate investigators are looking closely at these inconsistencies and what some critics say was general confusion within the administration about what a newly created National Response Plan entailed.
....
In the same memo, Chertoff declared Katrina the first-ever "incident of national significance" -- an announcement touted the next day by the White House as key to setting in motion a carefully choreographed response and recovery effort.
But according to government documents, congressional aides and Homeland Security officials, what first triggered the "incident of national significance" was not Chertoff's memo, but a little-noticed statement issued by the White House on the night of Aug. 27 while President George W. Bush was still vacationing at his Crawford, Texas ranch.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 01:17 PM
Response to Reply #26
532. 9/18 Where Were the 500 FEMA Busses?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Gov. Blanco still wants 1question answered: Where were the 500 FEMA buses?
Edited on Sun Sep-18-05 02:33 PM by Sapphire Blue
Blanco says feds pledged buses
By MICHELLE MILLHOLLON
mmillhollon@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau
Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina raged ashore, Gov. Kathleen Blanco still wants one question answered.
Where were the buses?
Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.
On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.
Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said.
Continued : http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091805/new_blanco00...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 01:22 PM
Response to Reply #26
534. 9/18 Rove was in hospital for 24-36 hours; Gov't paralysed
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Sunday Times: Bush’s key aide ‘missed’ Katrina (Rove)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1785729,00...
Bush’s key aide ‘missed’ Katrina
“BUSH’S brain” was missing when flood waters swamped New Orleans. Karl Rove, the White House aide who goes by that unofficial title, was suffering from painful kidney stones and was briefly hospitalised in the middle of the biggest crisis so far of President George W Bush’s second term.
Once his condition improved it was Rove who urged the president to open his chequebook for the stricken city, against the advice of White House economists, and spend $200 billion (£111 billion) to rebuild it “higher and better”, as Bush went on to promise.
Although many Republicans are horrified by the cost, Rove is determined to revive Bush’s dormant image as a compassionate conservative, the theme of his first presidential campaign in 2000, and will be overseeing the reconstruction effort.
Bill Kristol, editor of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard, said Rove’s absence had made a significant difference after the hurricane hit. “He was out of commission for 24-36 hours and he’s indispensable. It’s a thin White House and it’s not a good thing that the government could become paralysed for a day,” Kristol said.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-22-05 09:34 PM
Response to Reply #26
550. 9/22 Chertoff Relied on Commercial Weather Instead of Nat'l Hurricane Ctr
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
HUGE NEWS... DHS did not use NHC during Katrina!
The Senate Commerce Committee held hearings this afternoon on
Katrina. The House Science Committee will be holding hearing
Wednesday morning (9/21). Sen. Ben Nelson (Florida) asked Max
Mayfield whether it was true that Secretary Chertoff (the head of
homeland security) & Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used
Accuweather for hurricane forecasts of Katrina and he confirmed it.
The National Infrastructure Command Center in DHS prepared
an "overnight summary" for Secretary Chertoff on Katrina that was
based on Accuweather hurricane predictions rather than hurricane
forecast information from the National Hurricane Center. This dates
from when former PA. Governor Ridge was Secretary of homeland
security.
What's even most shocking is that the "NOAA Desk" in the DHS Ops
Center, staffed by a primary & two backup NWS meteorologists, prepared
forecasts for Secretary Chertoff based on the National Hurricane
Center; however, it is unsure that this ever made it to the
Secretary. To make matters worse & even more confusing, FEMA relies
solely on NWS products, which includes those issued by the National
Hurricane Center. So FEMA (which only uses NWS) and the DHS (which
uses Accuweather) are not even looking at the same forecasts! The NWS
NHC's track for Katrina was significantly different & more accurate
than Accuweather's. Just recently, Accuweather's track for Ophelia
brought it across Florida & into the Gulf. In both cases,
Accuweather's forecast was dead wrong. The end result is that the
head of homeland security & DHS & FEMA received conflicting forecasts.
Sen. Bill Nelson also asked Max Mayfield about consolidation and
downsizing of WFOs and Max Mayfield unequivocally said it was a very
bad idea, and that he hopes that it doesn't happen and that the local
WFOs are an essential part of NWS. Senator Nelson also trashed
Accuweather and, without naming Santorum, blasted those who would try
to take NWS off the air and off the internet to help commercial
interests.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:31 PM
Response to Original message
27. Just prior to and durikg K: What FEMA and Homeland Security were
doing and not doing.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:56 AM
Response to Reply #27
122. MSM last night,-Locals say explosives opened ninth ward levee
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Anyone? MSM last night,-Locals say explosives opened ninth ward levee
authorities admit they had to breach levees, canal walls in spot to alleviate 'areas' , see below
anyone have the program or source? I do not have cable, so it was network news Labor Day night, but the computer is upstairs and was discombobulated from up/ down and all the varying searches on technorati for details on this unnatural disaster. What show was this observation shared? , who was the host?
Here is the work on this aspect, regarding..it wasn't the hurricane, IT Was The Flood. Please take the time to digest, review this it did grow as associative connections and necessary background, perspective developed from the culling of dynamic, interesting and credible input ...flowed & blossomed.
They told network reporter that too much dynamite was used to open the canal floodwall, actually not a true levee, to sluice water from high-rent uptown district.
here is the documentation:
*****
Also heard that part of the reason our house flooded is they dynamited part of the levee after the first section broke - they did this to prevent Uptown (the rich part of town) from being flooded. Apparently they used too much dynamite, thus flooding part of the Bywater.
www.getyouracton.com letter to family and friends @ http://getyouracton.com/blog/?p=63
It is being reported that homes in the Bywater section of New Orleans, the 9th Ward,flooded because they (some government entity) used too much explosive to dynamite part of the levee after the first section broke - they did this to prevent Uptown (the rich part of town) from being inundated with water from the Lake. Who is responsible for flooding so many homes-Katrina, or our government?
http://www.youthinkwhat.com/2005/09/food-for-thought.ht ...
Here is my message:
I am a resident of the Bywater in New Orleans (9th Ward). I am one of the lucky ones that was able to evacuate before the storm.
I have recently managed to speak to some friends stranded in New Orleans. They are starving and dehydrating and there is no news of when they will be receiving food and water. I have spoken to relief efforts and understand that there are plenty of supplies waiting for these people, BUT THEY ARE NOT BEING ALLOWED INTO THE CITY.
http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/3941.php
and as reported by the Guardian Unlimited UK even considering it was not the main focus of the article:
But it is clear from talking to survivors that what happened in New Orleans last week was far more extensive, bloody and terrifying than the authorities have admitted so far.
'We had to wrap dead people in white sheets and throw them outside while the police stood by and did nothing,' said Correll Williams, a 19-year-old meat cutter from the Crowder Road district in the east of the city, who waded two miles through waist-high water to make it to the Convention Centre after hearing on the radio it was being turned into a refuge.
'The police were in boats watching us. They were just laughing at us. Five of them to a boat, not trying to help nobody. Helicopters were riding by just looking at us. They weren't helping. We were pulling people on bits of wood, and the National Guard would come driving by in their empty military trucks.'
Williams only left his apartment after the authorities took the decision to flood his district in an apparent attempt to sluice out some of the water that had submerged a neighbouring district. Like hundreds of others he had heard the news of the decision to flood his district on the radio. The authorities had given people in the district until 5pm on Tuesday to get out - after that they would open the floodgates.
'We thought we could live without electricity for a few weeks because we had food. But then they told us they were opening the floodgates,' said Arineatta Walker, who fled the area with her daughter and two grandchildren.
'So about two o'clock we went on to the streets and we asked the army, "Where can we go?". And they said, "Just take off because there's no one going to come back for you." They kicked my family out of there. If I knew how to hotwire a car I would have,' Walker said.
Once inside the Convention Centre, Walker confronted a new hell. 'People were being raped, there were cries and screams, there were gunshots, but the police did nothing,' Walker said.
from:
'They're not giving us what we need to survive'
Jamie Doward reports on the fury of New Orleans residents who say they were ignored and mistreated by the authorities
Sunday September 4, 2005
The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,69 ...
levee break in neighborhood 98% black
If New Orleans is rebuilt, it is absolutely certain that the ghettos, housing projects and notorious all-black neighborhoods such as the Lower Ninth Ward (98.3% black) will be wiped clean. Instead, New Orleans will build (with federal money) its usual boondoggle of high-end retail, casinos, luxury condos and maybe one of those new ballparks so beloved by blight-fighting redevelopment councils.
The problem New Orleans city leaders have faced for decades is what to do with the poor blacks. That problem is solved, thanks to the miraculous break of a new “hurricane proof” levee and the even more miraculous decision by the Army Corps of Engineers to not bother trying to plug the breech, despite public assurances that they would.
Those who didn’t drown or die in the aftermath are at this moment being uprooted, sent to uncertain exile in cities up north and neighboring states, where they will most likely resume hard lives with dead-end jobs, terrible schools and (at best) a roof over their head that belongs to a landlord or the government.
The poor black survivors of Katrina are being bussed away with the wet stinking clothes on their backs … unless they’re at the Convention Center, where it appears they are being intentionally left to die in full view of the news cameras. They don’t own homes, so they have no insurance to rebuild their property. If they had jobs, those jobs are gone — the rebuilding jobs will go to out-of-state contractors who own the federal government.
http://franklinavenue.blogspot.com/2005/09/national-tra ...
"Mullen has a schoolteacher's kindly demeanor, so it was jarring to hear him say he suspected that the levee breaks had somehow been engineered to keep the wealthy French Quarter and Garden District dry at the expense of poor black neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward -- a suspicion I heard from many other black survivors. And it was surprising to hear Mullen's gentle voice turn bitter as he described the scene at the convention center, when helicopters bringing food didn't even land and the soldiers 'just pushed the food out like we were in the Third World. That's what made people go off. They just pushed it at us.'"
Monday, September 05, 2005
Third World Scenes @ http://blackgold347.blogspot.com/2005/09/third-world-sc ...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:02 AM
Response to Reply #27
160. 8/29 interview with Mike Brown (FEMA)
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 04:03 AM by John Doe II
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/0...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:50 PM
Response to Reply #27
398. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) FEMA Action to REDUCE Volunteer Pool
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Mixed Misdirection from FEMA - again
From: councils@dhs.gov
Subject: Citizen Corps support for response to Hurricane Katrina
To: All State and Local Citizen Corps Councils
Citizen Corps Program Partners and Affiliates
Regional Citizen Corps Program Managers
Thank you all for your compassion and your interest in helping those in need
following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. To those of you in the
affected area, we send our deepest concern.
At this time, the National Office of Citizen Corps IS NOT conducting a
national call out as was done for the Florida hurricanes last year. Current
activities and plans for next steps are as follows:
FEMA DEPLOYMENTS
* At present, FEMA is deploying ONLY THOSE WHO ALREADY RECEIVED FEMA
SECURITY CLEARANCES AND CREDIT CARDS from their 2004 employment. FEMA has
determined that no recruits can travel or enter into employment without a
satisfactory background investigation. This security check takes
approximately 3 weeks to complete. As such, only recruits hired last year
may be called by FEMA at this time.
* In anticipation of Hurricane Dennis in July 2005, state Citizen
Corps points of contact reviewed and vetted the list of 2700 people who
deployed for the Florida hurricanes in 2004. As a result, 1900 people were
identified as potential recruits for future disasters.
* The FEMA Automated Disaster Deployment (ADD) staff are now calling
ONLY these 1900 pre-identified people to check on their availability for
Hurricane Katrina. NOTE: This means that not everyone who participated in
2004 will be called. If you have any questions about who may be on this
list, please contact your state Citizen Corps point of contact.
* If you receive questions from anyone who was deployed in 2004 or for
Hurricane Dennis, please tell them they SHOULD NOT call the FEMA ADD phone
number or the FEMA Regional Offices. Calling the ADD phone number distracts
operators from the deployment process. Please tell them to simply wait for
their official ADD deployment call and follow instructions. We know this
may be frustrating and it may take awhile for everyone to be contacted, but
THIS IS THE ONLY WAY FOR THEM TO BE DEPLOYED THROUGH FEMA.
THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT CHANGE FROM LAST YEAR'S HURRICANE SEASON -- REDUCING THE POOL OF VOLUNTEERS
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snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 02:20 PM
Response to Reply #27
435. 9/13 FEMA operation manual for disaster workers
FEMA USAR Field Operations Guide (FOG), an operation manual for disaster and recovery workers employed by the US government. Link <http://www.fema.gov/pdf/usr/usr_fog_sept_25_2003_color_... > (PDF)
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:32 PM
Response to Original message
28. After K: Bush photo op stories

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:23 PM
Response to Reply #28
85. Sept 4: Bush tour a 'photo op': Louisiana senator
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bush-tour-a-photo-op-s...
Bush tour a 'photo op': Louisiana senator
September 4, 2005 - 11:35AM
Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu has branded US President George Bush's visit to New Orleans a mere photo opportunity, and slammed his Government's response to the hurricane tragedy.
Landrieu rebuked Bush for failing to heed her call to name a cabinet-level official to lead the Federal Government response to the one of the worst natural disasters in American history.
"Perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street Levee," said Landrieu, a Democrat.
"Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe.
"Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a presidential photo opportunity.
"The desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

skids (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:22 AM
Response to Reply #28
101. The firefighters' FEMA story -- last paragraph.Just for posterity. Also to note that Keith Olberman mentioned this story on today's broadcast, if video footage of a newscaster saying it is desired.
Front page DU article:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:52 AM
Response to Reply #101
182. Also discussed in this thread
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 11:51 AM
Response to Reply #28
204. Sept2: Bush visit halted 3 tons of food being delivered..(Raw Story)
Times-Picayune
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Bush visit halts food delivery
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer
Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.
The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.
“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.
The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.

DU thread on this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 11:57 AM
Response to Reply #28
205. Sept2: Bush visit halted 3 tons of food being delivered..(Raw Story)Times-Picayune
http://www.nola.com/weblogs/print.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Time...
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Bush visit halts food delivery
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer
Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.
The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.
“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.
The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 07:03 PM
Response to Reply #28
278. Sept 4: A Bhush with (laura) Bush in NO (feeding stopped)http://hal-law.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/4/124532/7736
A Brush with Bush in NO
by Hal Law
Sun Sep 4th, 2005 at 09:45:32 PDT
As you know from the news, it looks like it's worse than anybody could have thought, and so I figured it was time for another update. Lafayette got our first refugees on Wednesday night, even as I was writing my last e-mail, and I spent a good chunk of the night manning a door at the Cajundome as they wheeled stretchers (sometimes occupied) and medical supplies in and out.
The big irony is that I moved to Lafayette in part to get away from refugee work, but with something like this on our doorstep, it's obviously been time to get back in practice, as it has been for nearly everyone else in my town.
I've always been frustrated by America's ability to ignore crises from abroad (such as the ongoing, largely-ignored genocide in Sudan). At the same time, I've always cherished the belief that Americans are fundamentally good people who may be good at shielding themselves from news of other people's problems, but that if they came face-to-face with those problems, they couldn't help but respond. Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

DrDebug (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 07:34 AM
Response to Reply #28
308. Sept 3: Bush faked levee repair for photo op yesterday
But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.
http://www.fromtheroots.org/story/2005/9/3/19542/97952
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-faked-leve...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:24 PM
Response to Reply #28
355. 9/10 (orig 9/2) The 2 Black Girls were just visiting Biloxi to shop
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Aaron Brown (CNN) interviewed the two black women hugged...
by the Coward. Based on their accents, I think they were from somewhere in the Caribbean or something. They seemed a little clueless and thought everything was just peachy keen. Turns out they were just visiting Biloxi to do some shopping.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:34 PM
Response to Reply #28
358. 9/10 (orig 9/2) How CNN Rptd Biloxi Photo Op vs. German TV
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002485.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Dutch viewer Frank Tiggelaar writes:
There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.
ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.
The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 11:24 PM
Response to Reply #28
380. 9/10 (orig 9/4) Photo Ops Blocking Relief
(These stories may be of the same events in momcat's posts, but for good measure
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Photo-Op Fakery
President's visit was a completely staged event
September 03, 2005
If he could go to Baghdad, why didn't Bush go to the New Orleans Superdome or the Convention Center? It was bizarre for all of the country and much of the world to be watching those scenes for days on our TVs and news reports, and for Bush's photo ops to be in areas that were far less critical. I know there are security considerations but his visit seemed extraordinarily hollow even by this administration's standard of ultra-stage managed events.
Dutch viewer Frank Tiggelaar writes:
There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.
ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.
The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.
-----------------------
Bush faked levee repair for photo op yesterday
by John in DC - 9/03/2005 06:29:00 PM
From a press release LA Senator Mary Landrieu sent out today:
But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast - black and white, rich and poor, young annd old - deserve far better from their national government.
--------------
Bush visit halts food delivery
By Michelle Krupa -- Staff writer
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.
The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.
“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-16-05 11:01 AM
Response to Reply #28
498. 9/16 Power ON for Bush's speach, DARKNESS 1 hour later
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Brian Williams reports: Power ON for Bush's speach, DARKNESS 1 hour later
Friday morning (power) line
From Brian Williams, NBC News
I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.
It is impossible to over-emphasize the extent to which this area is under government occupation, and portions of it under government-enforced lockdown. Police cars rule the streets. They (along with Humvees, ambulances, fire apparatus, FEMA trucks and all official-looking SUVs) are generally not stopped at checkpoints and roadblocks. All other vehicles are subject to long lines and snap judgments and must PROVE they have vital business inside the vast roped-off regions here. If we did not have the services of an off-duty law enforcement officer, we could not do our jobs in the course of a work day and get back in time to put together the broadcast and get on the air. As we are about to do.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8045532 /
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:34 PM
Response to Original message
29. After K: The collapse if the 17th Street Canaland subsequent flooding

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 09:00 AM
Response to Reply #29
187. Sept 4: Mayor blasts failure to patch levee breaches
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/31/katrina.levees /
Mayor blasts failure to patch levee breaches
Sunday, September 4, 2005; Posted: 10:21 a.m. EDT (14:21 GMT)
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.
An earlier breach occurred along the Industrial Canal in the city's Lower 9th Ward. ( Watch the video featuring Nagin's complaints about delayed sandbagging -- 0:56 )
The rising flood waters overwhelmed pumping stations that would normally keep the city dry. About 80 percent of the city was flooded with water up to 20 feet deep after the two levees collapsed.
The Army Corps of Engineers is working to repair the levee breaches, the agency said Tuesday, but it gave no timetable for repairs. (See the video of water surging into the saturated city -- 1:53 )
The Corps has workers assessing damage at the two locations. The National Guard, Coast Guard and state and federal agencies are working with the agency to speed the process, it reported.

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DrDebug (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 06:52 AM
Response to Reply #29
302. Aug 30: Water rising at 17th St. canal
Tuesday, 6:30 p.m.
Mayor Ray Nagin has announced that the attempt to plug a breach in the
17th Street canal at the Hammond Highway bridge has failed and the
rising water is about to overwhelm the pumps on that canal.
The result is that water will begin rising rapidly again, and could
reach as high as 3 feet above sea level. In New Orleans and Jefferson
Parish, that means floodwaters could rise as high as 15 feet in the next few hours.
Nagin urged residents to try to find higher ground as soon as possible.
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-23-05 05:21 PM
Response to Reply #29
552. 9-23: The flooding returns to the 9th ward
Water flows over New Orleans levee
Corps of Engineers: 9th Ward under 3-4 feet of water, again
Friday, September 23, 2005; Posted: 4:38 p.m. EDT (20:38 GMT)
A National Guard officer surveys a flooded neighborhood in New Orlean's 9th Ward on Friday.
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WATCH Browse/Search
Water breaks through levee in New Orleans (3:52)
LSU scientists: New Orleans levees were faulty and failed (2:28)
New Orleans is shoring up its levees for Rita (2:40)
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Manage Alerts | What Is This? NEW ORLEANS (CNN) -- A storm surge from Hurricane Rita topped a damaged section of a New Orleans levee Friday, leaving the city's Lower 9th Ward immersed in floodwater as deep as 4 feet, a general who toured the area by boat said.
"It's spreading rapidly down to the south-southeast, so they're going to have complete flooding in that area again," Maj. Gen. Bill Caldwell told CNN. Caldwell, commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, said floodwater had spread across 30 to 40 city blocks.
The low-lying but now empty neighborhood was devastated last month by Hurricane Katrina.
At a news conference a half hour after Caldwell spoke, Dan Hitchings of the Army Corps of Engineers Mississippi Valley Division said the water level was not rising any further in the 9th Ward, and that some gauge readings indicated the water level had dropped 18 inches.
The 8-foot storm surge flowed across a 2-foot-high temporary barricade of sandbags and compacted stone, soil and gravel the corps used to plug a breach in the Industrial Canal levee caused by Hurricane Katrina, Hitchings said. (Watch video of broken levee in New Orleans -- 3:52)
The 9th Ward
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:35 PM
Response to Original message
30. Just prior to and during K... The evaccuation declarations and efforts

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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 04:51 PM
Response to Reply #30
264. 9/9: Report from Aug. 28 Shows Nagin Ordered Busses to Be Used
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
Buses were used to pick up people at 12 locations - Prior to storm
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Around 112,000 Orleanians do not own cars, according to census data. Nagin urged those people to seek rides with friends, family, neighbors and church members. Those who could not find rides were urged to get to the Superdome as quickly as possible.
Regional Transit Authority buses were scheduled to ferry people to the dome from 12 locations around the city beginning at noon today.
Meantime, to make sure word of the mandatory evacuation gets out, Nagin said that police and fire crews would be driving through neighborhoods Sunday with bullhorns, directing people to leave.
The evacuation order contained exemptions for certain people, including city, state and federal officials, inmates of the parish prison, those in hospitals, tourists staying in hotels and members of the media.
An emergency order Nagin announced Sunday in declaring the mandatory evacuation gives authorities the right to commandeer private buildings and vehicles — including boats — as they see fit.
The mayor did not say which buildings might be seized for public use. For the time being, the Superdome will be used as a “shelter of last resort” for those unable to evacuate the city. If the dome fills to capacity, other buildings could be appropriated, Nagin said.
Nagin said the dome’s availability to residents doesn’t mean that going there is a good idea.
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlo...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:30 PM
Response to Reply #30
357. 9/10 (orig 9/2) N.O. Told Poor You're on Your Own Getting Out
Raw: July 2005 article reveals New Orleans told poor: 'You're on your own'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/July_2005_article_reveals ...
A July 24, 2005 article in the New Orleans Times Picayune (not available online) reveals just how unprepared officials were for a hurricane, especially as it affected the city's poor, RAW STORY has learned. The first sentence alone reveals how little support the city expected to have for the poor in the event of a disaster, saying, "City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own."
The article was first discovered in a detailed piece by the Philadelphia Daily News' Will Bunch.
The local Red Cross executive director was quoted as saying, "You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you. If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for that person outside the area. We can help you. But we don't have the transportation."
In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as 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...
According to story this was put on DVD's and was to be distributed to pastors and community leaders before hurricane season in September - whoops.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 01:15 PM
Response to Reply #30
531. 9/18 Blanco Still Waiting to Know: Where Were the 500 FEMA Busses?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Gov. Blanco still wants 1question answered: Where were the 500 FEMA buses?
Edited on Sun Sep-18-05 02:33 PM by Sapphire Blue
Blanco says feds pledged buses
By MICHELLE MILLHOLLON
mmillhollon@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau
Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina raged ashore, Gov. Kathleen Blanco still wants one question answered.
Where were the buses?
Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.
On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.
Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said.
Continued : http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091805/new_blanco00...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:37 PM
Response to Original message
31. Just prior to and during K: The people who could not get out

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:41 PM
Response to Original message
32. After K: Delays in military deployment, Eventual deployment

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:43 PM
Response to Reply #32
33. Pre K: Superdome: Refuge of last resort

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 01:34 PM
Response to Reply #33
254. Preparations for use of Superdome 3 days food for 15,000 brought to
dome.
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlo...
26,000 shelter at Superdome
About 26,000 New Orleans residents sought refuge from Hurricane Katrina at the Superdome, which authorities describe as the "shelter of last resort," Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said late Sunday. To help keep them fed and hydrated, the Louisiana National Guard delivered three truckloads of water and seven truckloads of MREs — short for "meals ready to eat." That's enough to supply 15,000 people for three days, according to Col. Jay Mayeaux, deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Emergency Preparedness.
Outside the New Orleans area, the Louisiana Red Cross has opened 45 emergency shelters that were serving about 3,000 evacuees as of late Sunday, said Victor Howell, who heads the Red Cross of the Louisiana Capital Area.
Once Hurricane Katrina passes through, the Red Cross is prepared to deploy 750 employees and volunteers from Louisiana, plus an additional 2,000 from around the country. If the damage from Katrina is as great as authorities fear, Howell said he expects it to be the single largest hurricane relief effort ever undertaken by the American Red Cross. Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:46 PM
Response to Reply #32
34. During K: Superdome - conditions inside and out

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:47 PM
Response to Reply #32
35. After K: Superdome: Conditions become intolerable

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:49 PM
Response to Reply #35
36. After K: Superdome..Evaccuation stalled

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:43 PM
Response to Reply #36
62. Sept 2: Geraldo at the dome
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
See second post for vid at Crooks and Liers
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 05:25 PM
Response to Reply #36
269. Sept 3: Guardsmen Halt Evacuation at Superdome
Guardsmen Halt Evacuation at Superdome
Saturday September 3, 2005 8:46 AM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-525...
AP Photo LADM136
By MARY FOSTER
Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - National Guard members halted the evacuation of the Superdome early Saturday after buses transporting the refugees of Hurricane Katrina stopped rolling. About 2,000 people remained in the stadium and could be there until Sunday, according to the Texas Air National Guard. They had hoped to evacuate the last of the crowd before dawn Saturday.
Guard members said they were told only that the buses had stopped coming and to close down the area where the buses were loaded.
``We were rolling,'' Capt. Jean Clark said. ``If the buses had kept coming, we would have this whole place cleaned out already or pretty close to it.'' Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:47 AM
Response to Reply #35
152. Baby lived and died in Superdom :
Baby lived and died in Superdom :
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 11:07 PM
Response to Reply #35
375. 9/10 (orig 9/4) Evacuees on Superdome Horrors During Final Days
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4213214.stm
Survivors Reveal Superdome horror
The bedraggled crowds may have left the Superdome, but the dead remain where they fell.
Tired, hungry and traumatised by days spent under the damaged roof of a once-gleaming football stadium, the refugees of New Orleans have spoken of a nightmarish week living among the crazed and the desperate.
Stories of rape, murder and suicide have emerged.
Medical teams delivered babies in filthy conditions, with human faeces never far away and fresh water in short supply. At least three were reported to have died.
Amid the filth and the crime, some snapped.
"One guy jumped off a balcony," said Charles Womack, a 30-year-old roofer who was beaten and injured during his time at the Superdome.
"I saw him do it. He was talking to a lady about it. He said it reminded him of the war and he couldn't leave."
Deadly night-time
Fear ratcheted up the tension, with disturbing reports of mistaken identity emerging from the chaos. Police and national guardsmen were accused of killing innocent people.
"They killed a man here last night," Steve Banka, 28, told the Reuters news agency before he left on Sunday.
"A young lady was being raped and stabbed.
"And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them.
"He jumped up on the truck's windscreen and they shot him dead," Mr Banka said.
Another man died in mysterious circumstances on Friday as a police car passed the New Orleans Convention Center, where equally squalid conditions forced many to sleep outside among streets full of rubbish.
More than 24 hours later, his body, like so many others, had not been moved.
"Right where he fell," Larry Martin told the Los Angeles Times. "Like roadkill."
On Saturday morning Africa Brumfield, 32, sat with relatives near the corpse of a young man in streets around the convention centre.
He had died on Friday night as he walked in the street.
"There is rapes going on here. Women cannot go to the bathroom without men. They are raping them and slitting their throats," she told Reuters.
Rotting
Inside the Superdome, a National Guard soldier charged with keeping order confirmed the brutal reality of life after Katrina.
"We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom. Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death."
As Saturday ebbed past, an endless fleet of yellow school buses offered the dispossessed a passage out of their nightmares.
"It's been a long time coming," Derek Dabon, 29, said as he queued for a security check.
Hillary Snowton, 40, sat with a white sheet wrapped around his face to shield himself from the smell of a dead body that lay, untouched, just metres away.
He had watched the body lie there for the past four days, decomposing in the sultry Louisiana climate.
He didn't see the point in moving away from the corpse, he told the Associated Press.
"It stinks everywhere."
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:43 AM
Response to Reply #32
115. Military Angry...Bush should have been giving orders
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Military is mad...Bush was on vacation & should have been giving orders!!!
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/5167.html
Northern Command isn't happy
Posted 12:14 pm | Printer Friendly
Because Northern Command oversees all active-duty military operations inside the United States, it's also responsible for organizing the relief operations on the Gulf Coast. There are early indications, however, that NorthCom officials aren't entirely pleased with the orders they've received of late from the president.
There's an interesting BBC World News report (brought to my attention by my friend Darrell) in which NorthCom Lt. Commander Sean Kelly explained the military's efforts which, in addition to military support, include distribution of medical supplies, search and rescue operations, distributing food and water, and meeting transportation needs. (Note: the server hosting the video seems to be overwhelmed. This is a direct .mpg link, which is also slow right now, but keep trying.)
When the BBC noted the criticism of the government's slow response, Lt. Commander Kelly explained that NorthCom was ready to go well in advance of Katrina making landfall, but suggested the president didn't make the right call at the right time.
"Northcom started planning before the storm even hit. We were ready when it hit Florida, because, as you remember, it hit the bottom part of Florida, and then we were planning once it was pointed towards the Gulf Coast.
"So, what we did, we activated what we call 'defense coordinating officers' to work with the states to say, 'OK, what do you think you will need?' And we set up staging bases that could be started.
"We had the USS Bataan sailing almost behind the hurricane so once the hurricane made landfall, its search and rescue helicopters could be available almost immediately So, we had things ready.
"The only caveat is: we have to wait until the president authorizes us to do so. The laws of the United States say that the military can't just act in this fashion; we have to wait for the president to give us permission."
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:26 PM
Response to Reply #115
369. 9/10 (orig 9/3) See also these from CNN and BBC:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
I found it: Northern Command waiting for Orders!! Adm. Keating on CNN
I actually saw this and finally found it at the Salon.com War Room!!!!
As of 3:14 PM on August 31 (Wed) Northern Commmand was still waiting for orders!!!!! from the Gov of LA and BUSH.
Which gets us into that whole mess of what did Blanco request...saw a Dem rep on Nightline last night getting crapped on by Koppel about how someone "didn't ask." This Congressman (a man, starts with an M?) said the proper procedures had been followed...he was thoroughly exasperated...
Permalink <15:14 EDT, August 31, 2005
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=... [br />Google cache
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:yhyzZk9QeT0J:www.s...
Bush is back
The cable networks have just carried a live feed of Air Force One landing at Andrews Air Force Base. The president strode smartly down the steps of plane, saluting a couple of military officers with one hand while holding his Scottish terrier in the other.
The commander in chief is back in command, and not a minute too soon. The mayor of New Orleans just said that the death toll in his city is "minimum, hundreds," and "mostly likely, thousands." He said that there are a "significant number of dead bodies in the water," and that New Orleans will not be "functional" for a matter of months.
What will the president do now that he's back in Washington? He'll give a televised speech from the White House at 5 p.m., and he may contemplate sending active-duty U.S. soldiers to New Orleans to help stop looting there. Appearing on CNN, Adm. Timothy Keating, the chief of the U.S. Northern Command, said he's awaiting a request from the governor of Louisiana and an order from the president of the United States.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
(BBC Report)- "Northern Command WAITED on GREEN LIGHT from Bush" !!!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Here is the thread that discusses the BBC report interviewing a Lieutenant at Northcom.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A: Now I'm sure you're aware of the criticism that the authorities have been slow to respond to this. When did you get the order to start relief work?
K: NorthCom started planning before the storm even hit. We were ready for the storm when it hit Florida because, as you remember, it crossed the bottom part of Florida, and then we were plaining, you know, once it was pointed towards the Gulf Coast. So what we did was we activated what we call defense coordinating officers to work with the state to say okay, what do you think you'll need, and we set up staging bases that could be started. We had the USS Baton sailing almost behind the hurricane so that after the hurricane made landfall it's search and rescue helicopters would be available almost immediately. So we had things ready. The only caveat is, we have to wait until the President authorizes us to do so. The laws of the United States say that the military can't just act in this fashion, we have to wait for the President to give us permission.
----------------------------------------------------
They COULD NOT go in without Bush's approval.
So either Bush screwed up -- or he waited.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 06:51 PM
Response to Reply #32
326. Officials: Guard Deployment Hurt Response
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Eugene (831 posts) Fri Sep-09-05 06:06 PM
Original message
Officials: Guard Deployment Hurt Response
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-526... Officials: Guard Deployment Hurt ResponseFriday September 9, 2005 6:31 PM
By ROBERT BURNS
Associated Press Writer
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. (AP) - The deployment of thousands of National
Guard troops from Mississippi and Louisiana in Iraq when Hurricane
Katrina struck hindered those states' initial storm response, military
and civilian officials said Friday.
Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that
"arguably" a day or so of response time was lost due to the absence
of the Mississippi National Guard's 155th Infantry Brigade and
Louisiana's 256th Infantry Brigade, each with thousands of troops
in Iraq.
Blum said that to replace those units' command and control equipment,
he dispatched personnel from Guard division headquarters from Kansas
and Minnesota shortly after the storm struck.
Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., whose waterfront home here was washed away
in the storm, told reporters that the absence of the deployed
Mississippi Guard units made it harder for local officials to
coordinate their initial response.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:47 PM
Response to Reply #32
338. 9/10 (from post 9/3?) "As a vet, I can't BELIEVE the lack of response!!!
From http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
As an Air Force Vet, I CANNOT believe the lack of response!!!
An old C-130 Hercules can airdrop loads up to 42,000 pounds or use its high-flotation landing gear to land and deliver cargo on rough, dirt strips. Load and flight prep, LESS than 2 hours. It can fly 1200+ miles at about 350 mph!!!
Reservists could do it . . . IF THEY WEREN'T IN IRAQ!!!!!!!!!
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:16 PM
Response to Reply #32
350. 9/10 (orig 9/2) National Guard Delay (no approval by WH til Thurs!) Likely
National Guard Delay (no approval by WH til Thurs!) Likely to Be Examined
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
See also http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/katrina_national_guard
WASHINGTON - Several states ready and willing to send National Guard troops to the rescue in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans didn't get the go-ahead until days after the storm struck — a delay nearly certain to be investigated by Congress.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard on Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.
California troops just began arriving in Louisiana on Friday, three days after flood waters devastated New Orleans and chaos broke out.
In fact, when New Orleans' levees gave way to deadly flooding on Tuesday, Louisiana's National Guard had received help from troops in only three other states: Ohio, which had nine people in Louisiana then; Oklahoma, 89; and Texas, 625, figures provided by the National Guard show.
<snip>
With many states' Guard units depleted by deployments to Iraq, Katrina's aftermath was almost certain from the beginning to require help from faraway states.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 11:21 PM
Response to Reply #32
379. 9/10 (orig 9/4) Video and Transcript of Local Officials Begging for Help
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
WATCH THIS NOW !! PLEASE!!
Jefferson Parrish President sobbing on Meet The Press - one week after the hurricane - "We have been abandoned by our own country...the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history...Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody."
Video of MTP interview Jefferson Parrish President
http://s30.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=39D44TQZEXE632ASCA2E...
http://s28.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0PW4XZFWSF1D71GFBBTG... (same)
MR. BROUSSARD: ...that have worked 24/7. They're burned out, the doctors, the nurses. And I want to give you one last story and I'll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. President...
MR. BROUSSARD: Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:41 PM
Response to Reply #32
393. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) Northern Command Was Waiting for Bush Orders
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
On BBC: Northern Command was in position, waiting for Presidential orders.
This was on the episode of BBC World News which played on a local (Philadelphia area) PBS station at 6:00 am this morning. I can't find a stream or transcript online. It's sitting on my TIVO right now marked do not delete but I have no way to put it onto my hard drive and no place to serve it from anyway. If you do have a recording of it, it starts about 9 minutes in. I've done a hand written transcript, the spelling and punctuation are mine. The bolding is also mine to emphasize what I think is the important part. The BBC announcer was interviewing Lieutenant Commander Sean Kelly whom she referred to as Leftenant Commander. This is the entire interview with no missing context.
Announcer: The relief operation is the largest ever conducted in America. It's being coordinated by the US Northern Command in Colorado. Leftenant Commander Sean Kelly explains how the relief effort is being organized.
Kelly: US Northern Command is the command that coordinates the military support for our federal and state agencies. They call up and request a capability and we try and provide that capability, whether it's medical resources, search and rescue helicopters, food, water, transportation, communications; that's what we provide.
A: So it sounds like you're providing a bit of everything. I mean, do you know how much you're actually providing?
K: Right now we've got 4,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and marine and coast guardsmen supporting this. They've delivered more than 9 million meals, I can't remember how many millions of liters of water.
A: 9 million meals? Do you actually have 9 million meals?
K: It's those "meals ready to eat". The packaged meals that the Army takes out with them out in the field. We have 9 million of 'em ready. I know at least 100,000 went to the Superdome the other night to help the people out there in New Orleans. So they're staged at various places throughout Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.
A: Now I'm sure you're aware of the criticism that the authorities have been slow to respond to this. When did you get the order to start relief work?
K: NorthCom started planning before the storm even hit. We were ready for the storm when it hit Florida because, as you remember, it crossed the bottom part of Florida, and then we were plaining, you know, once it was pointed towards the Gulf Coast. So what we did was we activated what we call defense coordinating officers to work with the state to say okay, what do you think you'll need, and we set up staging bases that could be started. We had the USS Baton sailing almost behind the hurricane so that after the hurricane made landfall it's search and rescue helicopters would be available almost immediately. So we had things ready. The only caveat is, we have to wait until the President authorizes us to do so. The laws of the United States say that the military can't just act in this fashion, we have to wait for the President to give us permission.
A: Now I gather that your engineers are also involved in pumping some of that flood water out of the areas.
K: Yes, our military personnel are helping to reconstruct the levees which frees up the engineers to start pumping out the waters so that hopefully New Orleans can be high and dry soon enough.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:50 PM
Response to Original message
37. After K: Media hyping violence and "looting"

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skids (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:52 PM
Response to Reply #37
69. Consequences: people stuck on overpass.
This thread touches on just about everything, but specifically to this point it says:

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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skids (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:55 PM
Response to Reply #69
70. Racial bias: European/affluent tourists "looted" too (same article)We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:17 AM
Response to Reply #37
147. Denial of shooting at helicopters buried in the same report
Report is ominously titled:Evacuation Disrupted by Gunshot Report
Superdome Evacuation Disrupted by Report of Gunshot Fired at Military Helicopter; No Injuries Reported
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1087205
BUT later in the same article is this:
Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in Washington, said she had no such report.
"We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of them reported being fired on," she said, adding that the FAA was in contact with the military as well as civilian aircraft.
Clear case of hyping gunshots that cannot be proven.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:03 PM
Response to Reply #37
344. 9/10 (orig 9/2) Per FAA, not ONE plane reported being shot at
Planes Did NOT Report Being Shot At
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1087205
Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in
Washington, said she had no such report.
"We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of
them reported being fired on," she said, adding that the FAA was in
contact with the military as well as civilian aircraft.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:22 PM
Response to Reply #37
354. 9/10 (orig 9/2) Troops Entering N.O. Find LACK of Violence
Met by Despair, Not Violence
As they begin to patrol the chaotic city, troops are surprised by what they don't find.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tr ...
The truck lurched through the streets, past buildings burning unabated and MPs in gun turrets. When they stopped to gear up for their arrival at the New Orleans Convention Center, where more than 15,000 people had been living in squalor since Katrina, these words echoed — for the first time, one would imagine — through the intersection of Poydras Avenue and Carondelet Street: "Lock and load!"
"Sixteen in the clip!" one Guardsman shouted, a common refrain used to indicate that rifles are fully loaded.
But when they arrived, they did not find marauding mobs. They did not come under fire. They found people who had lost everything in the storm and, since then, their dignity.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:52 PM
Response to Original message
38. After K: Succesful rescue efforts

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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:20 PM
Response to Reply #38
50. Privately organized planes evacuated hospitals
http://www.algore.org/index.php?option=com_content&task... :
Gore at NOLA: The Fastercures Airlift From New Orleans
Wednesday, 07 September 2005
From TMP Cafe
by Greg Simon, President FasterCures
On September 3rd and 4th, FasterCures worked with a small dedicated group of people to airlift approximately 270 medical patients and evacuees from the New Orleans airport to hospitals and shelters in Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee. This is the story of how it happened.
On Thursday, September 1st, my friend Jill Chozen of San Francisco called to ask if I could put someone in touch with Al Gore. Dr. David Kline, the father in law of Jill’s friend Denise Kline, was stranded in Charity hospital in New Orleans. The situation was dire and becoming worse by the minute – food and water running out, no power, four feet of water surrounding the hospital and alligators eating corpses outside. David is a neurosurgeon and needed to take his patients out of the hospital as soon as possible. David asked Denise to find Al Gore for help because David knew Gore from operating on Gore’s son after a life threatening auto accident nearly 16 years ago.
I emailed Gore with Denise Kline’s number after speaking to Jill and got an answer immediately. Gore had phoned David in the hospital several times and ascertained that he was now on the way to an Apache Helicopter landing site with his patients. Things were looking up.
The next day, Friday September 2nd, I heard an NPR story that things were getting worse at Charity hospital – they were actually taking in more patients because the other nearby hospital –Tulane—was closed. When I arrived at work, I knew what we had to do –we had to evacuate medical patients from Charity to safety.
(much more at link above)
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:37 PM
Response to Reply #38
58. Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded
Want to make sure you got this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
NYT: Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded
By DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: September 7, 2005
PENSACOLA, Fla., Sept. 6 - Two Navy helicopter pilots and their crews returned from New Orleans on Aug. 30 expecting to be greeted as lifesavers after ferrying more than 100 hurricane victims to safety.
Instead, their superiors chided the pilots, Lt. David Shand and Lt. Matt Udkow, at a meeting the next morning for rescuing civilians when their assignment that day had been to deliver food and water to military installations along the Gulf Coast.
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skids (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:44 PM
Response to Reply #38
63. College student in 2wd Hyundai evacuates 7 people from convention center.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Byrd
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skids (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:47 PM
Response to Reply #38
66. The first Renegade bushttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabbar_Gibson
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 06:05 PM
Response to Reply #66
273. More about Jabbar Gibson and the borowed bus
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/09/jailed-for-sa...
Friday, September 02, 2005 Jailed for saving lives
The link is to the video from the television story, followed by the transcript.Taking refuge in the AstrodomeThursday, September 01, 2005 Updated: 07:55 PM
HOUSTON -- NEWSCHANNEL 5 crews were in Houston as some desperate refugees arrive in a stolen bus.Save lives without permission-go to jail
This came in over e-mail
In Massachusetts We'd Call This Yankee IngenuityA friend on a lawyer listserve sent me this story. This kid is definitely getting a pro bono lawyer. He found an abandoned bus in New Orleans, packed it with survivors, and drove it to the Astrodome. The reaction of the officials? They're going to charge him with theft. Unbelievable.
This kid is a hero. They should give him a medal. He evacuated 100 people faster than FEMA.

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skids (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:38 AM
Response to Reply #38
111. 09/06: Sports illustrated article
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 12:44 AM by skids
Not a "rescue" perse but...
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/michael_s...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 11:28 PM
Response to Reply #38
381. 9/10 (orig 9/4) Gibson May Face Arrest After Bus Escape
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
kid that saved a bus load of people is now in jail for stealing bus
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/09/jailed-for-sa...
In Massachusetts We'd Call This Yankee Ingenuity
A friend on a lawyer listserve sent me this story. This kid is definitely getting a pro bono lawyer. He found an abandoned bus in New Orleans, packed it with survivors, and drove it to the Astrodome. The reaction of the officials? They're going to charge him with theft. Unbelievable.
This kid is a hero. They should give him a medal. He evacuated 100 people faster than FEMA.
The link is to the video from the television story, followed by the transcript.
Taking refuge in the AstrodomeThursday, September 01, 2005 Updated: 07:55 PM
HOUSTON -- NEWSCHANNEL 5 crews were in Houston as some desperate refugees arrive in a stolen bus.
HOUSTON -- Thousands of refugees of Hurricane Katrina were transported to the Astrodome in Houston this week. In an extreme act of looting, one group actually stole a bus to escape ravaged areas in Louisiana.
About 100 people packed into the stolen bus. They were the first to enter the Houston Astrodome, but they weren't exactly welcomed.
The big yellow school bus wasn't expected or approved to pass through the stadium's gates. Randy Nathan, who was on the bus, said they were desperate to get out of town.
"If it werent for him right there," he said, "we'd still be in New Orleans underwater. He got the bus for us."
Eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.
"I just took the bus and drove all the way here...seven hours straight,' Gibson admitted. "I hadn't ever drove a bus."
The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there.
"It's better than being in New Orleans," said fellow passenger Albert McClaud, "we want to be somewhere where we're safe."
During a long and impatient delay, children popped their heads out of bus windows and mothers clutched their babies.
One 8-day-old infant spent the first days of his life surrounded by chaos. He's one of the many who are homeless and hungry.
Authorities eventually allowed the renegade passengers inside the dome.
But the 18-year-old who ensured their safety could find himself in a world of trouble for stealing the school bus.
"I dont care if I get blamed for it ," Gibson said, "as long as I saved my people."
Sixty legally chartered buses were expected to arrive in Houston throughout the night. Thousands of people will be calling the Astrodome "home," at least for now.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 01:18 AM
Response to Reply #38
430. 9/12 Will Pitt's Girlfriend's Ex-Boyfriend from Krypton
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
WilliamPitt (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-12-05 09:29 PM
Original message
THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD
The woman I am currently dating used to be with this guy named Steve a long time ago, they were from the same Massachusetts town, and they have remained good friends. From what she has told me in the past, he sounds like a great guy. He is a super-townie with oak clusters, a 'yah-dood' in the purest sense of the word, a great guy.
One story she tells is of him buying a $2,000 engagement ring for his girlfriend, finding out she had been sleeping around on him, so he called the whole thing off. He went down to a bridge over a river to chuck the ring into the river, and saw this young woman coming with two babies in a carriage and a third on her arm. He gave her the ring instead, told her what it was worth and that she should pawn it. So he's that kind of guy, just a big hearted sheet-metal worker who never left the town he grew up in, not political, just a solid citizen.
Well, my girlfriend just got back from hanging out with him tonight, and she tells me this MIND-BLOWING story. It seems Steve is crazy about this girl who was originally from New Jersey, but recently moved to New Orleans for a job. The storm hit, he couldn't reach her, her parents couldn't reach her, and he is worried sick.
Fuck it, he says, I'm going. Last Sunday he told his boss he was headed down, his boss busted him two paychecks, and off he went. Got down to the WORST DISASTER AREA IN THE COUNTRY and just started looking for this girl he is in love with.
He goes from shelter to shelter, looking for her. Wades through disgusting water, past bodies, gets this fungus growing on his feet, and keeps looking. Meets an Iraq vet in one shelter who was paralyzed from the waist down, and who had just lost his whole family to the storm.
Got his hands on a flat-bottom boat and starts rowing his ass all through the city, going from shelter to shelter looking for her. Along the way he keeps finding people and bringing them to safety. Once day he passed a house and heard a baby crying, and went in. He saw a baby crying on the floor with two people sitting above it, asked, "Are you OK? I have a boat, want to come?" The two people were dead. He saved the baby.
After several days of searching shelters, rowing past bodies and helping anyone he could along the way, HE FOUND THE GIRL HE IS IN LOVE WITH in one shelter. She flips out, and he says we are getting out of here. No, no, she says, we can't go, they are shooting out there, it is the Wild West. Hell with that, he says, and they go. They get out of the city and up to Baton Rouge, get a hotel, and she finally calls her parents to say she is OK. They get a plane home the next day. Needless to say, she now thinks Steve wears a cape and is from Krypton. Frankly, so do I.
So tonight, my girlfriend gets together with him and says, "Boy, have I had a hard week." He says, "Me, too," like the Mr. Humble he is. He'd just gotten back yesterday. Ordinary hero.
I am going to meet up with this guy in a few days and get his whole story; apparently, there are many more details. But he found her. He fucking found her. He went down there and found her.
The last thing I said to my girlfriend was, "So, when are you dumping me for him?"
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:53 PM
Response to Original message
39. After K: blocked rescue efforts (other than FEMA which is posted above)

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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:05 PM
Response to Reply #39
75. After K: Blocked Escape Efforts

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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:09 PM
Response to Reply #75
77. Trapped medical workers in NOLA
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... (EDITED) :
Trapped EMS workers in NOLA have their say:
First By the Floods, Then By Martial Law Trapped in New Orleans
http://www.counterpunch.org/bradshaw09062005.html
By LARRY BRADSHAW and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY
LARRY BRADSHAW and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY are emergency medical services
(EMS) workers from San Francisco and contributors to Socialist Worker.
They were attending an EMS conference in New Orleans when Hurricane
Katrina struck. They spent most of the next week trapped by the
flooding--and the martial law cordon around the city.
What . . . we witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief
effort: the working class of New Orleans.
The maintenance workers who used a forklift to carry the sick and
disabled. The engineers who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators
running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords
stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order
to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for
mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air
into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who
rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat
yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their
roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hotwire any car that could
be found to ferry people out of the city. And the food service workers
who scoured the commercial kitchens, improvising communal meals for
hundreds of those stranded.
Most of these workers had lost their homes and had not heard from
members of their families. Yet they stayed and provided the only
infrastructure for the 20 percent of New Orleans that was not under
water.
* * *
ON DAY Two, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in
the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference
attendees like ourselves and locals who had checked into hotels for
safety and shelter from Katrina.
Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of
New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources,
including the National Guard and scores of buses, were pouring into the
city. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible,
because none of us had seen them.
We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up
with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the city. Those
who didn't have the requisite $45 each were subsidized by those who did
have extra money.
We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours
standing outside, sharing the limited water, food and clothes we had.
We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and newborn
babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the
buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute they
arrived at the city limits, they were commandeered by the military.
By Day Four, our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was
dangerously bad. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime
as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and
locked their doors, telling us that "officials" had told us to report
to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the
center of the city, we finally encountered the National Guard.
The guard members told us we wouldn't be allowed into the Superdome, as
the city's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health
hellhole. They further told us that the city's only other shelter--the
convention center--was also descending into chaos and squalor, and that
the police weren't allowing anyone else in.
Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only two shelters in
the city, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that this was
our problem--and no, they didn't have extra water to give to us. This
would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile
"law enforcement."
WE WALKED to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and
were told the same thing--that we were on our own, and no, they didn't
have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred.
We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp
outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the
media and constitute a highly visible embarrassment to city officials.
The police told us that we couldn't stay. Regardless, we began to
settle in and set up camp.
In short order, the police commander came across the street to address
our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the
Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge to
the south side of the Mississippi, where the police had buses lined up
to take us out of the city.
The crowd cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and
explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation,
so was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander
turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the
buses are there."
We organized ourselves, and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with
great excitement and hope. As we marched past the convention center,
many locals saw our determined and optimistic group, and asked where we
were headed. We told them about the great news.
As we approached the bridge, armed sheriffs formed a line across the
foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began
firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in
various directions.
As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and
managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of
our conversation with the police commander and the commander's
assurances. The sheriffs informed us that there were no buses waiting.
The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as
there was little traffic on the six-lane highway. They responded that
the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans, and there would be
no Superdomes in their city. These were code words for: if you are poor
and Black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River, and you are not
getting out of New Orleans.
OUR SMALL group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the
rain under an overpass. We debated our options and, in the end, decided
to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway--on
the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We
reasoned that we would be visible to everyone, we would have some
security being on an elevated freeway, and we could wait and watch for
the arrival of the yet-to-be-seen buses.
All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the
same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be
turned away--some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no,
others verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were
prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot.
Meanwhile, the only two city shelters sank further into squalor and
disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw
workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car
that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape
the misery that New Orleans had become.
Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery
truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so
down the freeway, an Army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations
on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping
carts.
Now--secure with these two necessities, food and water--cooperation,
community and creativity flowered. We organized a clean-up and hung
garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and
cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom, and the kids
built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken
umbrellas and other scraps. We even organized a food-recycling system
where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for
babies and candies for kids!).
This was something we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When
individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out
for yourself. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your
kids or food for your parents. But when these basic needs were met,
people began to look out for each other, working together and
constructing a community.
If the relief organizations had saturated the city with food and water
in the first two or three days, the desperation, frustration and
ugliness would not have set in.
Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing
families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our
encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.
From a woman with a battery-powered radio, we learned that the media
was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and
news organizations saw us on their way into the city. Officials were
being asked what they were going to do about all those families living
up on the freeway. The officials responded that they were going to take
care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had
an ominous tone to it.
Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking city) was
accurate. Just as dusk set in, a sheriff showed up, jumped out of his
patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces and screamed, "Get off the
fucking freeway." A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its
blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff
loaded up his truck with our food and water.
Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law
enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated into
groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims," they saw
"mob" or "riot." We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together"
attitude was impossible because the agencies would force us into small
atomized groups.
In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we
scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of eight people, in the
dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on
Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements, but
equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs
with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.
The next day, our group of eight walked most of the day, made contact
with the New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out
by an urban search-and-rescue team.
We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with
the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited
response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section
of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were
unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.
WE ARRIVED at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The
airport had become another Superdome. We eight were caught in a press
of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush
landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on
a Coast Guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.
There, the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort
continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we
were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses didn't have
air conditioners. In the dark, hundreds of us were forced to share two
filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with
any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) were
subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.
Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been
confiscated at the airport--because the rations set off the metal
detectors. Yet no food had been provided to the men, women, children,
elderly and disabled, as we sat for hours waiting to be "medically
screened" to make sure we weren't carrying any communicable diseases.
This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heartfelt
reception given to us by ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker
give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street
offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome.
Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept and racist.
There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not
need to be lost.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:13 AM
Response to Reply #75
128. Deliberate containment of evacuees in New Orleans
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
A First Hand Account - Why So Few Katrina Survivors Got Out.
Edited on Tue Sep-06-05 03:34 PM by leveymg
Within hours after the savage winds of Katrina subsided, the westward expressway out of New Orleans was blocked-off by armed sheriffs of suburban Gretna County who barred everyone trying to flee the city by vehicle and on foot. After four to five days, federal officials finally began to move evacuees out of the two designated downtown shelters on buses and on military flights. Those who were fortunate enough to reach Houston waited for hours at airfields and in parking lots while everyone was checked for communicable diseases.
The hell of the survivors was prolonged for days by a deliberate containment policy concocted by local officials who could think of nothing but to surround New Orleans with armed guards and wait for the Army to arrive. After troops came in, evacuation was further delayed as evacuees were examined for signs of infections. The fear of race and germs probably killed more people than the rush of waters that broke through the city's outdated, inadequate storm walls.
In addition to criminal bungling of disaster efforts, it appears that there was a de facto quarantine of New Orleans. The federal search and rescue and evacuation operations were apparently tied up for 3 or 4 days. Meanwhile, CDC waited to see if there was a contagious disease outbreak. Little effort was taken during that time to get adequate water or food to thousands of people clustered visibly in large groups on highway access ramps.
The stories of wild anarchy and armed looters was largely an overblown, racist cover story. The mass media again allowed itself to be used to spread lies concocted by the White House. The American people were being prepared for the possibility that federal troops would be ordered to enforce a quarantine, and the remaining population of New Orleans rebelled after learning Washington had decided that Katrina's survivors wouldn't be let out of the doomed city. - Mark
AND another long but detailed account at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/6/132725/8931 , noting, "if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans".
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:31 AM
Response to Reply #75
148. evaccues fired upon to keep then out of a white area:First person account
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
impeachdubya (1000+ posts) Tue Sep-06-05 06:28 AM
Original message
INCREDIBLE First Person Katrina Account
(My wife just got this from a friend, it was written by the friend's co-workers who were in New Orleans for a Conference. I am 100% convinced it is credible. I have removed the names for obvious reasons. Unbelievable. -i.)Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences
Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen’s store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen’s windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.
The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen’s gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.
snip:
As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander’s assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

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DrDebug (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 07:26 AM
Response to Reply #148
305. Sept 3: Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1077495.p...
Discussions:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
The army is now calling it an "insurgency"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:14 PM
Response to Reply #75
214. Guardian: people could get in...Why couldn't the people leave,?
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 01:19 PM by mom cat
http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1561996...
'It reminds me of Baghdad in the worst of times'
Julian Borger in New Orleans
Saturday September 3, 2005
Inside the centre, no one could understand why they were being treated in this way. "If you can drive in like that, how come they can't come and get us?" Henry Carr, a 38-year-old furniture salesman, said.
Everyone was frantic to know whether the buses would turn up. For days, they had been told to stay in the centre so they could be picked up, but the promised transport had failed to materialise. Buses had arrived for the people trapped at the Louisiana Superdome stadium, a mile to the north, but it seemed the convention centre, a lesser landmark, had been forgotten. The latest rumour was that the buses would come later that afternoon, but that would already be too late for up to a dozen people who had died waiting.
Two of the bodies had been dumped by an employees' entrance. They were both old and frail women. One had died in her wheelchair; a blanket had been thrown over her face. The other woman had been wrapped in a sheet.
A man walked past the bodies dragging a pallet loaded with big bottles of ginger ale, some plates and a frying pan. To the rest of America watching the tragedy unfold on their televisions, he was one of the looters, denounced by President Bush.
But to the people inside the convention centre, he was one of a band of heroes keeping them alive. "The people who were going into the stores would give us water and food, said Edna Harris, Henry Carr's aunt. "There would be ladies with babies and they had no milk, and these guys would break in and bring them milk."
Kyle Turner, a 28-year-old dishwasher
ttp://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1561996,00.htm...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 03:01 PM
Response to Reply #75
258. 9/9 Cops Nearby Admit They Blocked Survivors from Leaving N.O.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
UPI: Cops Trapped Survivors in New Orleans
More on the story about why so few got out of New Orleans after Katrina.
Cops trapped survivors in New Orleans
http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20050908-112433-4907r.htm
By Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
Sep. 9, 2005 at 10:48AM
Police from surrounding jurisdictions shut down several access points to one of the only ways out of New Orleans last week, effectively trapping victims of Hurricane Katrina in the flooded and devastated city.
An eyewitness account from two San Francisco paramedics posted on an internet site for Emergency Medical Services specialists says, "Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot."
"We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit.
"All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said.
The bridge in question -- the Crescent City Connection -- is the major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.
Lawson said that once the storm itself had passed Monday, police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river.
He added that the small town, which he called "a bedroom community" for the city of New Orleans, would have been overwhelmed by the influx.
"There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said. "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people.
"If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."
But -- in an example of the chaos that continued to beset survivors of the storm long after it had passed -- even as Lawson's men were closing the bridge, authorities in New Orleans were telling people that it was only way out of the city.
"The only way people can leave the city of New Orleans is to get on (the) Crescent City Connection ... authorities said," reads a Tuesday morning posting on the Web site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, which kept reporting through the storm and the ruinous flooding that followed.
Similar announcements appeared on the Web site of local radio station WDSU and other local news sources.
"Evidently, someone on the ground (in New Orleans) was telling people there was transport here, or food or shelter," said Lawson. "There wasn't."
________
Police Trapped Thousands in New Orleans
http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/2748
As the situation grew steadily worse in New Orleans last week, you might have wondered why people didn't just leave on foot. The Louisiana Superdome is less than two miles from a bridge that leads over the Mississippi River out of the city.
The answer: Any crowd that tried to do so was met by suburban police, some of whom fired guns to disperse the group and seized their water.
Around 500 people stuck in downtown New Orleans after the storm banded together for self-preservation, making sure the oldest and youngest among them were taken care of before looking after their own needs.
Two San Francisco paramedics who were staying in the French Quarter for a convention have written a first-hand account that describes their appalling treatment at the hands of Louisiana police, a story confirmed today by the San Francisco Chronicle, UPI, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
When buses charted by the group to escape New Orleans never showed up, they camped out beside a police command center on Canal Street, believing it was the best place to get aid, protection, and information. They were told they could not stay there and should leave the city on foot over Highway 90, which crosses the Mississippi River from New Orleans to the suburb of Gretna, a city of 17,500 people.
Running out of food and water, they walked to the bridge, growing in number to around 800 people as word spread of a safe way out:
As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City.
In an interview with UPI, Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson confirmed that his department shut down the bridge to pedestrians: "If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."
The increasingly desperate group set up camp on the New Orleans side of the bridge, where they were seen by several media outlets, until they were chased off at gunpoint by Gretna police:
Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.
The paramedics believe that race played a factor in the decision to block evacuees on foot. Gretna's population is 56 percent white and 36 percent black, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 12:01 AM
Response to Reply #75
300. an account from News Orleans
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
flyingfysh (452 posts) Fri Sep-09-05 11:50 PM
Original message
an account from News Orleans
I got this by email from family members, it had been relayed through several people. I have no way to contact the people who originally wrote it, so I removed the names.
Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.
The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.
We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.
We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork liftto carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured andkept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators.
Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded. Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.
On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.
We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived at the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.
By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was
dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street
crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowinganyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us.
This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and
hostile "law enforcement".
We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowd cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."
We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched past the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.
As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomesin their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.
Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.
All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot.
Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and
disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.
Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).
This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together and constructing a community.
If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not have set in. Flush with the necessities, we offered food andwater to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people. From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.
Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was
correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water. Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.
In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.
The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.
We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The
airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of
humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush
landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.
There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where wewere forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.
Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been
confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal
detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.
This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt
reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:12 PM
Response to Reply #75
349. 9/10 (orig 9/2) First Hand Account -- Escape Blocked by Police
First Hand Account of Status as of 9/2 a.m.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
ress=104x4581617 :
Hi Everyone
Matt is home safe and sound. Larry, Matt and Michael were flown home by
Jay this evening. What they told me is so much worse than we are all
imagining.
The reason that the boys left the hotel this morning to try to walk to
safety instead of waiting to be rescued is because they were told they
had to leave the hotel by the afternoon and head toward the Dome (they
said that they were NOT going to do that) and their lives were at stake
as the looters were in their hotel.
They decided that if they didn't try to make it to the highway (knowing
Larry was trying to reach them there) they would not survive where they
were. They heard gunshots every 30 minutes. They packed their suitcases
with essentials (all of the food and water that they had collected and
saved) and used sheets to tie around them to form a backpack. They
walked in the water, trying to avoid all of the debris and dead things
(they were told not to look at dead people) for several blocks until
they got to the highway.
They managed to get over the bridge where the police told them they had
to go back. When the boys tried to stay, the police pulled their
shotguns on them. Finally, a utility truck pulled up and took them back
over the bridge where they proceeded to walk toward Baton Rouge. They
tried to flag down anyone who passed them in a vehicle begging for a
ride but nobody would stop. Finally, a man in a pickup truck stopped and
agreed to take them to BR. All 9 of them crammed into the bed of the
pickup with their bags.
They got to BR where Matt filled the man's truck up with gas for him and
they paid the man money for the ride. They were able to call and tell us
where they were and I called Larry...his phone would not always work and
the boys had a difficult time getting in touch with him so we would have
to wait until Larry called me for the update.
If it hadn't been for Michael's phone having the ability to text message
(his was the only one) and them knowing that Larry was there trying to
reach them, they would not have known what to do or where to go. They
felt they had to try to reach Larry and if it weren't for Jim finding
out the roads and directions they needed to head for, they would not
have made it.
Now that I have said all of this, Larry and Matt have said that if they
did not get out today like they did, they probably would not have made
it out. People were looting the hospitals for the drugs and food. They
were killing people for the clothes, food, water or anything else that
they could use to barter. People were getting their throats slit for
their cars.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 08:46 AM
Response to Reply #39
186. Sept 2: Message from a Louisianna relief worker-PLEASE READ!!
http://forums.go.com/abc/thread?threadID=534069&forumSt...
Message from a Louisianna relief worker-PLEASE READ!!
replyPosted: Sep 02 @ 10:58 AM
by: susanblue (86 Posts in the last 90 days) Registered: May 28, 2004
This is from a friend who lives in central LA, and has volunteered as relief worker. She lives a very small town, but they have taken on hundreds of refugees. It's long, but if you want to get an idea of how people in the surrounding area & victims themselves are feeling; it's a good read....
My thanks to all of you who have sent words of encouragement.....PRAYERS.......(really need those big time) and thanks too for the additional offers for assistance. I wasn't going to bother y'all with another email from here - but apparently some of you sharing them (which is fine) (there are lots of desperate people needing to be heard in general terms.) Since y'all are fielding questions on our behalf I'll take a stab at answering the ones you have sent to me. But remember please that my experience is just one voice in a very remote rural area. You have a better idea than I do, likely as not, what is going on statewide. I don't get all that much outside news here.
The state of Louisiana is in one of two worlds.
There is the situation that y'all are seeing on TV.
more
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 10:42 AM
Response to Reply #39
200. Aug 31: Flotilla of rescue boats turned back
http://www.thedeadpelican.com/lawyer.htm
snip
A group of approximately 1,000 citizens pulling 500 boats left the Acadiana Mall in Lafayette this morning (Weds.) and headed to New Orleans with a police escort from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department. The "flotillia" of trucks pulling boats stretched over five miles. This citizen rescue group was organized by La. State Senator, Gautreaux from Vermilion Parish. The group was comprised of experienced boaters, licensed fishermen and hunters, people who have spent their entire adult life and teenage years on the waterways of Louisiana.
snip.
A group of approximately 1,000 citizens pulling 500 boats left the Acadiana Mall in Lafayette this morning (Weds.) and headed to New Orleans with a police escort from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department. The "flotillia" of trucks pulling boats stretched over five miles. This citizen rescue group was organized by La. State Senator, Gautreaux from Vermilion Parish. The group was comprised of experienced boaters, licensed fishermen and hunters, people who have spent their entire adult life and teenage years on the waterways of Louisiana.
The State Police waved the flotillia of trucks/boats through the barricades in LaPlace and we sped into New Orleans via I-10 until past the airport and near the Clearview exit. At that time we were stopped by agents of the La. Dept. of Wildlife & Fisheries. A young DWF agent strolled through the boats and told approximately half of the citizens that their boats were "too large" because the water had "dropped during the night" and that they should turn around and go home.
We were pulling a large (24ft) shallow draft aluminum boat that can safely carry 12 passengers and had ramp access which would allow the elderly and infirm to have easier access to the boat. We politely informed the DWF agent that the local and national media had consistently reported that the water level had "risen" during the night which contradicted his statement to us that the water "was dropping" and no boat over 16ft. in length would be allowed to participate in rescue operations.
more....
DU post regarding this article: Sept2:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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DrDebug (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 07:32 AM
Response to Reply #39
307. Sept 3: 200 evacuees turned back by National Guard
Dressed in his work boots and jeans, Thomas said that a busload of New Orleans evacuees, about 200, were stopped by National Guardsmen in Baton Rouge on Saturday and told they could not get off.
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlo...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 11:17 PM
Response to Reply #39
378. 9/10 (orig 9/4) Blogged Report from Charity Hospital
(Not sure whether lack of rescue was due to FEMA or others)
http://www.transbuddha.com/index.php/buddha/comments/a_... /
A Note from Charity Hospital in New Orleans
by killdozr <http://www.transbuddha.com/index.php/member/174/ >
I have a friend who managed to escape the city of New Orleans a couple of days after the storm. She is on staff at Charity Hospital, which you have no doubt heard about in the news by now.
She sent this correspondence because she thinks the plight of Charity Hospital, which makes its reputation by healing the poor and uninsured of the city, is being overlooked by the national media, which (of course) is bent on sensationalizing everything in lieu of ratings. This is a short, but powerful blog entry she sent me.
Hi all.
Just so you know, I’m out of New Orleans, fine and in Nashville until further notice.
I am writing to get the word out. As most of you know, I am doing my residency at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. It is a state hospital that serves mostly the poor, and is an integral part of the Gulf Coast health care. Throughout Katrina’s terror, I have been able to talk with one ER doc who has been at Charity since Sunday.
It is 5a.m. Friday morning now. I just got off the phone with him. He is doing well, but is still at the hospital. His outgoing message is (approximately)the following:
“Hey this is Roderick Bennett. Once again, thanks for all your support...for an update, everything is looking a little better,we’ve got some military here, I’m a little worried, as they send us outta here they are talking about making us just like everyone else and sending us along with those who were shooting at us. If anyone knows some way to help us, like sending us to another city, hey, we’d greatly appreciate it...”
In our esteemed Charity ER there are 14 volunteer physicians. They began with 41 patients and then closed the ER, which meant they could not treat anyone during this horrific week. (Please don’t forget, there are to many other physicans and patients on the other wards of the hospital too) They have been in terrible conditions for almost a week. Until yesterday (Thursday) afternoon, there were no armed guards protecting them from gunmen who were after drugs, food and water. They have been hearing that they would be evacuated soon. In fact, when I spoke with the Senators office on Wednesday, I was told that all the hospitals would be evacuated by sundown that day. It is now Friday.
Tulane hospital, a private hospital less than a block away was mostly evacuated as of yesterday.
Here is the gist of my conversation with Dr. Bennett this morning:
He is terribly disappointed at being left behind. About half of the patients were evacuated today. There was a sudden halt when guns were being fired nearby. All but 4 critically ill ICU patients have been evac’d. He expresses deep concern of the lack of haste for lonely , poor old New Orleans. There is no estimated evacuation time at this point.
I am dismayed that our city, which everyone KNEW this would happen to someday, has been thrashed because of poor planning, and little concern. This is dire.
PLEASE forward this to anyone who can spread it, blog it, cover it. On CNN today, one anchor began talking about Race and Class and it’s link to this devastation. The situation at Charity is a perfect example.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 01:33 AM
Response to Reply #39
472. 9-13:re earlier pres diversion of power crews away from hospitals
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... restore oil pipeline.
Electric crews diverted from hospital work by White House
Power crews diverted
Restoring pipeline came first
By Nikki Davis Maute
Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast.
That order - to restart two power substations in Collins that serve Colonial Pipeline Co. - delayed efforts by at least 24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in the Pine Belt.
At the time, gasoline was in short supply across the country because of Katrina. Prices increased dramatically and lines formed at pumps across the South.
"I considered it a presidential directive to get those pipelines operating," said Jim Compton, general manager of the South Mississippi Electric Power Association - which distributes power that rural electric cooperatives sell to consumers and businesses.
"I reluctantly agreed to pull half our transmission line crews off other projects and made getting the transmission lines to the Collins substations a priority," Compton said. "Our people were told to work until it was done.
"They did it in 16 hours, and I consider the effort unprecedented."Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:55 PM
Response to Original message
40. After K: Quotes from Bush, Barbare, and other Bush top admins and
family
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 06:36 PM
Response to Reply #40
276. Sept 9: DeLay to evacuees: 'Is this kind of fun?'
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/DeLay_to_evacuees_Is_this...
DeLay to evacuees: 'Is this kind of fun?'
RAW STORYA report on the Houston Chronicle blog by Chronicle reporter Purva Patel reveals that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay asked Hurricane Katrina evacuees if their current situation was "kind of fun," RAW STORY has found. Excerpts follow.
#
While on the tour with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.
The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 06:38 PM
Response to Reply #276
277. Full story on Chronicle's Domeblog
http://blogs.chron.com/domeblog/archives/2005/09/delay_...
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skids (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 11:25 PM
Response to Reply #40
297. 09/09: several quotes DU thread.
Edited on Fri Sep-09-05 11:26 PM by skids
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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skids (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:02 AM
Response to Reply #40
309. 09/10: 25 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 06:37 PM
Response to Reply #40
323. Sept 9: A compilation of stupid, insensitive quotes by Repubs re: Katrina
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Contrary1 (1000+ posts) Fri Sep-09-05 10:10 PM
Original message
A compilation of stupid, insensitive quotes by Repubs re: Katrina disaster
Feel free to add your own. We will probably have to add several more threads to cover it all. Here's a good start:
Smirk: "...out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- the guy lost his entire house -- there's going to be fantastic house. I look forward to sitting on the porch."
Babs Bush: "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."
Babs Bush, part deux: "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this is working very well for them."
Pat Robertson: "...Judge Roberts can, maybe, you know, be thankful that a tragedy has brought him some good."
Dennis Hastert: "It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level....It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed."
Michael Brown: "Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well."
Wolf Blitzer: "You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals...many of these people, almost all of them that we see are so poor and they are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are watching this story unfold."
Richard Baker: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
Michael Chertoff: ""Louisiana is a city that is largely under water."
Jack Burkman (GOP strategist): "I understand there are 10,000 people dead. It's terrible. It's tragic. But in a democracy of 300 million people, over years and years and years, these things happen." more in the replies...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:07 PM
Response to Reply #40
364. Sept 10: DU thread of quotes:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
OmmmSweetOmmm (1000+ posts) Sat Sep-10-05 11:09 PM
Original message
Cheney..We are well on our way on getting on top of this Katrina EXERCISE
I just saw that on the MSNBC scroll.
Exercise?

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:12 PM
Original message
Sept 10:Rescuers collect dead, Cheney sounds upbeat
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050910/ts...
Rescuers collect dead, Cheney sounds upbeat By Jason Webb
Sat Sep 10, 2:39 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Emergency workers collected the dead of New Orleans on Saturday and the official death toll rose slowly, boosting hopes Hurricane Katrina would claim far fewer lives than the many thousands once feared.
As police and soldiers started to remove the bodies -- many in homes marked with paint to identify their presence when floodwaters were high -- President George W. Bush invoked the spirit that united the nation after the September 11 attacks.
"Today, America is confronting another disaster that has caused destruction and loss of life. This time the devastation resulted not from the malice of evil men, but from the fury of water and wind," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
"America will overcome this ordeal, and we will be stronger for it," he said on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the New York and Washington attacks that killed some 2,700 people.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:22 PM
Response to Reply #40
368. Sept 10:on our way to getting on top of the whole Katrina exercise. Cheney
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050910/ts...
Vice President Dick Cheney visited an emergency management center in Austin, Texas, and said the government was finally gaining control of the situation.
"I think we are in fact on our way to getting on top of the whole Katrina exercise. We've got a lot of work ahead of us," he said.
The Bush administration on Friday recalled widely criticized Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown to Washington, handing his role in coordinating rescue and recovery to Vice Admiral Thad Allen, chief of staff of the U.S. Coast Guard. Just a week ago, the president publicly told Brown he was doing a "heck of a job."Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-12-05 11:57 AM
Response to Reply #40
424. Barbara Bush's statement

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-12-05 11:58 AM
Response to Reply #424
425. Julian Bind: George Bush should put a muzzle on his mother

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 05:43 PM
Response to Reply #40
448. Sep13VID - Bush on CNN: self-congratulatory about his handling of Katrina
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
VIDEO - Bush on CNN: self-congratulatory about his handling of Katrina
Edited on Tue Sep-13-05 03:14 AM by Nothing Without Hope
preparations and aftermath - He referred to his signing of emergency declarations before the storm as "extraordinary," adding that "in most emergencies, the President signs after the storm hits."
He also said with obvious belligerence that it is just "preposterous" to suggest that engagement of the National Guard troops in Iraq had any bad effect on the handling of the storm and its aftermath.
Bubble Boy lives - just amazing. Watch it and share it.

This is at the Crooks and Liars site at this permalink:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/12.html#a4927
Here's a direct link to the clip in Windows Media format:
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/The-Situation-Room-Bus ...

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:57 PM
Response to Original message
41. After K: Statements by Democrats appalled by the rescue efforts
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 09:58 PM by mom catPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 06:59 PM
Response to Reply #41
224. Sept 8: Pelosi blasts Bush, demands that Brown resign
http://www.shadowtv.com/redirect/notification.jsp?vid=3...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 01:12 PM
Response to Reply #41
530. 9/18 Clinton holding Bush accountable on Iraq, Katrina and budget
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Yahoo covers Clinton holding Bush accountable on Iraq, Katrina and budget
Clinton launches withering attack on Bush on Iraq, Katrina, budget
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Former US president Bill Clinton sharply criticised George W. Bush for the Iraq War and the handling of Hurricane Katrina, and voiced alarm at the swelling US budget deficit.
More at the link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050918/ts_alt_afp/usweath...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 01:36 PM
Response to Reply #41
536. 9/19 Edwards calls for return of depression era programs
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
(Not sure where link is to original speech: might be this: http://oneamericacommittee.org / )
Edwards: We need to be democrats... back to our roots; Bush's plan insane
Edwards calls for return of depression era programs
MIKE GLOVER
Associated Press
INDIANOLA, Iowa - Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards called Sunday for a return of depression era jobs programs to rebuild the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast.
Edwards said those programs would give new hope and money to victims of Hurricane Katrina as well as rebuild shattered cities, such as New Orleans.
He used the Work Products Administration as an example of a depression era program that built parks, bridges and other facilities that are still being used.
"We ought to have a new WPA like was used during the depression to create jobs, and we ought to bring those folks who have been displaced back into New Orleans to rebuild their city," Edwards said. "Give them a decent wage and decent benefits. That's the way to help rebuild New Orleans they way it should be built.
"Not just rebuild the city, but rebuild people's lives," he said.
Edwards spoke to more than 1,300 hard-core Democratic activists at Sen. Tom Harkin's annual steak fry, just outside Indianola.
Since the last presidential election, where he was nominee John Kerry's running mate, Edwards has opened a center for the study of poverty issues at the University of North Carolina.
He is traveling the country, making the case that the nation needs to face the growing level of poverty. He's made four stops in Iowa, where precinct caucuses launch the presidential nominating season.
Edwards said Hurricane Katrina has focused the nation's attention on poverty, because so many victims of the storm are poor.
He said that attention gives the country's political leaders an opportunity to make progress on the issue.
"The real issue is, in this window where people are paying attention, will we have leadership that sustains the effort?" Edwards said.
Edwards criticized President Bush's response to the storm, saying it showed a lack of understanding of the poor in America.
"He has consistently shown a lack of understanding," Edwards said.
He said a Bush relief proposal would give victims money in bank accounts that most don't have.
"He's talking about putting this money into people's bank accounts," Edwards said. "Most of these people don't have bank accounts."
Edwards said Bush also has suspended laws that require that the prevailing wage be paid on reconstruction projects.
"That's insane," he said. "What these people need is a decent wage. It's the reason so many of them are living in poverty to begin with."
Edwards has left little doubt that he's interested in another run for the Democratic presidential nomination, and being the keynote speaker at Harkins' steak fry was a plum assignment.
It's one of the largest Democratic events of the year, and allows Edwards to rebuild contacts he made during the 2004 campaign.
In his fiery speech, Edwards said the war on poverty takes Democrats back to their roots.
He said 1 million people have slipped into poverty in just the last year, a decline in living caused by Republican policies."We don't need another Republican party," he said. "We need to be Democrats because this party gives voice to people who have no voice, and they never needed it more than they do now."

Harkin has held his annual steak fry for 28 years and he echoed Edwards theme, pointing to the haunting images of the poor living in misery.
"I'll say this about Hurricane Katrina ... it opened our eyes," Harkin said.
Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson, who also heads the Iowa Democratic Party, said the momentum started by the steak fry is badly needed because the party faces a tough round of elections next year, including defending the governor's office.
Edwards said he'll be back often and that his theme won't change.
"Katrina has focused the country's attention on an issue that doesn't just exist on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, but it exists all across the country and we need to take this window opportunity and act."
-----------------
Edit: Edwards was in Louisiana too. He talked about in his speech and this are a couple of accounts from those who heard him at Harkin's Stake Fry in Iowa today:
"Tears came to my eyes when JRE talked about going to Louisiana last week and talking to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. He relayed the story of a man who held on to his wife's hand as the flood waters rose around their home. The force of the water made them lose each other's hands, and the husband watched his wife drown."
"JRE told us he had been to Louisana last week and how sad it was to see the poverty and the sadness of the people, he spoke of one man who he talked to that told him about the rising water and how he and his wife went to the 2nd story and the water was coming there also, he said his wife couldn't swim, but that he could and he took her hand and they went out a window upstairs, he said the current was so strong he could not hold onto his wife and she drowned, he made it to another roof. JRE said it broke his heart to hear this man tell the story along with others."
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 09:59 PM
Response to Original message
42. After K: Statements by repubs appalled by fed - Bush response
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 10:06 PM by mom catPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:00 PM
Response to Original message
43. After K: Statements by media appalled by the fed - Bush responce
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 10:08 PM by mom catPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:18 PM
Response to Reply #43
82. Sept 3:New Orleans Paper Slams Federal Response on Saturday
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_di...
New Orleans Paper Slams Federal Response on Saturday

By E&P Staff
Published: September 03, 2005 10:45 AM ET
NEW YORK The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, in publishing its second print edition of the week on Saturday from its new base in Houma, lashed out in an editorial at federal relief efforts so far, even as help and supplies finally started to arrive.
"It's good to hear the president admit his administration's shortcomings, and it's even better to hear his promise to help all of us who are in need," the editorial declared. "But the sad truth remains that the federal government's slow start has already proved fatal to some of the most vulnerable people in the New Orleans area. Water has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people. A lack of water to drink is exacting its toll on others.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:33 PM
Response to Reply #43
89. Sept 2: The big disconnect on New Orleans...CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/katrina.response /
The big disconnect on New Orleans
The official version; then there's the in-the-trenches version
Friday, September 2, 2005; Posted: 5:17 p.m. EDT (21:17 GMT)
Conditions were desperate at the Louisiana Superdome on Thursday.
Image:

New Orleans (Louisiana)
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Michael Chertoff
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday, with statements by some federal officials in contradiction with grittier, more desperate views from the streets. By late Friday response to those stranded in the city was more visible.
But the conflicting views on Thursday came within hours, sometimes minutes of each of each other, as reflected in CNN's transcripts. The speakers include Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, evacuee Raymond Cooper, CNN correspondents and others. Here's what they had to say:
Conditions in the Convention Center FEMA chief Brown: We learned about that (Thursday), so I have directed that we have all available resources to get that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water and medical care that they need. (See video of Brown explaining how news reports alerted FEMA to convention center chaos. -- 2:11)Mayor Nagin: The convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies for the 15,000 to 20,000 people. (Hear Nagin's angry demand for soldiers. 1:04)
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:58 AM
Response to Reply #43
157. Holy shit. Cafferty surmises that the Bush photo op and the convoy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Holy shit. Cafferty surmises that the Bush photo op and the convoy
of supplies is no coincidence!
He is pissed!
He had Blitzer stammering trying to respond to this!
He says it is an outright embarrasment.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 05:53 PM
Response to Reply #43
271. Sept 4: CBS takes off the gloves!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
johnaries (1000+ posts) Sun Sep-04-05 05:42 PM
Original message
CBS takes off the gloves!
Edited on Sun Sep-04-05 05:44 PM by johnaries
Bob Scheiffer really gave it to the Admin! Go to page 9 of the transcript:
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/face_90405.pdf
SCHIEFFER: Finally, a personal thought. We have come through what may have been one of the worst weeks in America's history, a week in which government at every level failed the people it was created to serve. There is no purpose for government except to improve the lives
of its citizens. Yet as scenes of horror that seemed to be coming from some Third World country flashed before us, official Washington was like a dog watching television. It saw the lights and images, but did not seem to comprehend their meaning or see any link to reality.
As the floodwaters rose, local officials in New Orleans ordered the city evacuated. They might as well have told their citizens to fly to the moon. How do you evacuate when you don't have a car? No hint of intelligent design in any of this. This was just survival of the richest.
By midweek a parade of Washington officials rushed before the cameras to urge patience. What good is patience to a mother who can't find food and water for a dehydrated child? Washington
was coming out of an August vacation stupor and seemed unable to refocus on business or even think straight. Why else would Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert question aloud whether New Orleans should even be rebuilt? And when he was unable to get to Washington in time to vote on emergency aid funds, Hastert had an excuse only Washington could understand: He had to attend a fund-raiser back home.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 05:56 PM
Response to Reply #271
272. Sept 4: Face the Nation. PDF transcript containg above quote
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/face_90405.pdf
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 06:12 PM
Response to Reply #43
274. Sept 4: Sunday papers (including conservative ones) rip Bush hurricane res
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Generic Other (1000+ posts) Sun Sep-04-05 08:01 PM
Original message
Sunday papers (including conservative ones) rip Bush hurricane response
Editorials, Including Those at Conservative Papers, Rip Bush's Hurricane Response NEW YORK Editorials from around the country on Friday -- including at the Bush-friendly Dallas Morning News and The Washington Times -- have, by and large, offered harsh criticism of the official and military response to the disaster in the Gulf Coast. Here's a sampling.
Dallas Morning News
As a federal official in a neatly pressed suit talked to reporters in Washington about "little bumps along the road" in emergency efforts, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued an urgent SOS. The situation near the convention center was chaotic; not enough buses were available to evacuate thousands of survivors, and the streets were littered with the dead.
Moments later, President Bush took center stage and talked at length about the intricacies of energy policy and plans to keep prices stable. Meanwhile, doctors at hospitals called the Associated Press asking to get their urgent message out: We need to be evacuated, we're taking sniper fire, and nobody is in charge.
Who is in charge?
MORE
http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_displa...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 10:56 PM
Response to Reply #43
294. **Sept 9:Bush Losing Support From His Base **
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/... washingtonpost.com
Bush Losing Support From His Base
Review of polls and media articles
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:46 PM
Response to Reply #43
362. 9/10 (orig post 9/2) CNN on Discrepancy Btw Fed Version & Truth
From http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
CNN article entirely on DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OFFICIAL VERSION AND TRUTH
There is a huge amount they're missing, but the main point is clear: Bush administration officials are LYING. No, the article doesn't use that resonant L-word, but verbatim quotes are placed side by side and it is very clear that the authors are PISSED. And THERE ARE ACCOMPANYING VIDEOS for some of the statements. (I could not get direct video links, but if you go to the article you can use the live links in the text.)
(Mods - This excerpt contains two CNN introductory paragraphs and one quote by a CNN employee. The remainder are quotes from non-CNN employees. The 4-paragraph rule is obeyed.)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/katrina.response/index ...
The big disconnect on New Orleans
The official version; then there's the in-the-trenches version
Friday, September 2, 2005; Posted: 5:17 p.m. EDT (21:17 GMT)
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday, with statements by some federal officials in contradiction with grittier, more desperate views from the streets. By late Friday response to those stranded in the city was more visible.
But the conflicting views on Thursday came within hours, sometimes minutes of each of each other, as reflected in CNN's transcripts. The speakers include Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, evacuee Raymond Cooper, CNN correspondents and others. Here's what they had to say:
Conditions in the Convention Center
• FEMA chief Brown: "We learned about that (Thursday), so I have directed that we have all available resources to get that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water and medical care that they need."
(See video of Brown explaining how news reports alerted FEMA to convention center chaos. -- 2:11)
• Mayor Nagin: The convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies for the 15,000 to 20,000 people.
(Hear Nagin's angry demand for soldiers. 1:04)
• CNN Producer Kim Segal: It was chaos. There was nobody there, nobody in charge. And there was nobody giving even water. The children, you should see them, they're all just in tears. There are sick people. We saw... people who are dying in front of you.
• Evacuee Raymond Cooper: Sir, you've got about 3,000 people here in this -- in the Convention Center right now. They're hungry. Don't have any food. We were told two-and-a-half days ago to make our way to the Superdome or the Convention Center by our mayor. And which when we got here, was no one to tell us what to do, no one to direct us, no authority figure.
(snip)
There are also side by side comparisons of quotes and some more video clips on the following topics:
Uncollected corpses
Hospital evacuations
Violence and civil unrest
The federal response
Security
The word is spreading. The Bush Administration is trying to spin its way out with lies again, but it's not going to work this time.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 01:23 PM
Response to Reply #43
403. 9/11 Newsweek: Good Article Summarizing "How Bush Blew It"
From http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
Newsweek: How Bush Blew It ( a scathing indictment of Bush)
By Evan Thomas
Sept. 19, 2005 issue - It's a standing joke among the president's top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS. The bad news on this early morning, Tuesday, Aug. 30, some 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would have to cut short his five-week vacation by a couple of days and return to Washington. The president's chief of staff, Andrew Card; his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin; his counselor, Dan Bartlett, and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, held a conference call to discuss the question of the president's early return and the delicate task of telling him. Hagin, it was decided, as senior aide on the ground, would do the deed.
The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.
How this could be - how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century - is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.
-snip-
But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil's advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn't wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287434/site/newsweek /
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-16-05 03:45 PM
Response to Reply #43
505. 9/16 Show by Ted Koppell going through day by day
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Show Ted Koppel is hosting on NOLA is excellent >
He's going day by day. He showed Bush talking about Medicare while New Orleans floods. The last speaker just said "the federal govt was oblivious."
http://tv.yahoo.com/tvpdb?.src=my&d=tvp&lineup=us_Easte...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-17-05 03:00 PM
Response to Reply #43
512. 9/17 Reaction of European Media
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
"No light of humanity in the eyes, no gravitas on the face"...
European editorials "how they see us". Short and worth the read from a perspective unclouded by any US spin.
A world leader who can’t lead
Americans dissatisfied with Bush’s response to Katrina.
9/9/2005
Hurricane Katrina has revealed the true character of the American president, said Philippe Grangereau in Paris’ Libération. George W. Bush, the least hardworking president in history, continued playing at his Texas ranch while his fellow citizens drowned and starved in New Orleans. Most Americans get only two weeks of vacation, if that, but the president had been riding his bike, chopping wood, and fund-raising for five weeks. When he finally, “grudgingly,” cut his revelry short by two days and traveled to the devastated Gulf Coast, it was too late. America, and the world, had already seen that the superpower’s leader “lacks leadership.”
Remember that deer-in-the-headlights look when Bush was informed of the 9/11 attacks? said Stefan Kornelius in Munich’s Suddeütsche Zeitung. Bush seemed similarly helpless in this second national crisis. And he “showed the same political denseness.” Just as he kept reading a story to schoolchildren while thousands of Americans were burning to death in the twin towers, so he kept smiling and joking as floods engulfed whole cities. In that first crisis, though, he was able to recover quickly and portray himself as “strong and decisive.” But this time around, Americans are not so easy to fool. They have watched the death toll in Iraq rise month after month with no end in sight. “It is slowly dawning on them” that tough talk and the profligate use of military power are no substitute for true leadership.
A little compassion would have gone a long way, said Howard Jacobson in the London Independent. But Bush can’t even fake it. “No light of humanity in the eyes. No gravitas on the face.” The only emotion he can muster is defensiveness. “It’s cold comfort, but if you are a Muslim who believes that the West values Western lives above Muslim lives, the American president’s demeanor over the last days points to a more democratic reading: The leader of the Western world lacks a language in which to value any life.”
The president’s indifference was so apparent, and so appalling, said Annette Levy-Willard, also in Libération, that it “roused the American press from its patriotic torpor.” Television news, “normally so conformist and excessively respectful of power,” finally dared to question the administration’s lies. Networks used split screens to reveal the truth: On one side, an administration official saying everything was fine; on the other, images of old people and the poor clinging to rooftops, dying of thirst. Rather than serving corporate goals, “American television performed a public service.” It lived up to the mission of the press to defend the poor and “criticize the political class.” If such zeal lasts after the flood waters ebb, Americans could have a long overdue political awakening.
The rest of the world has already had one, said Madrid’s La Razon in an editorial. We watched the richest country in the world let its poor die like animals. It’s beyond dispute that the U.S. had the means to rescue the hurricane victims. It simply lacked the will. “That the largest and most modern army in the world was so inefficient can only be blamed on leaders of doubtful competence.” America’s image “has been tarnished as never before.”
http://www.theweekmagazine.com/article.asp?id=1108
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 01:37 PM
Response to Reply #43
537. 9/19 Scathing Editorial by in Fredericksburg Paper
Edited on Mon Sep-19-05 01:38 PM by snot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
SCATHING, BLISTERING, DAMNING editorial, read it and weep "W"
The president was on vacation, all right--vacation from his duty
RICHARD AMRHINE
The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, VA
Date published: 9/18/2005
WE HAVE BEEN told that President Bush is not entirely to blame for the poor response to the suffering and devastation left behind by Hurricane Katrina. Indeed, there is plenty of blame to divvy up among the officials who are elected to plan ahead for troubled times...
That is also why we have a president, the commander in chief, who we count on to take charge and to feel our pain. He seemed to be trying to do that, finally, in a speech from New Orleans on Wednesday night...
Thankfully this is America, and this real-life Alfred E. Neuman will be out of office in 2008. Has three years ever seemed such an eternity?
In the meantime, we have mid-term elections in 2006 that allow Americans to send a message on how they think the president is doing. That message should be loud and clear.
In Katrina's wake, people have been asking how they can help. First, they should send a donation to a legitimate charity. Then, if your car has a Bush bumper sticker on it, grab a Sharpie and put a big X through it. And another thing: Somebody remind the president that daddy's not always going to be around to help make things right.
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2005/092005/09182005... Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:03 PM
Response to Original message
45. After K: Statements by citizens appalled by the fed - Bush responce
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 10:09 PM by mom catPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 05:26 PM
Response to Reply #45
410. Sept 11: Man in Water in LA Yells: " I voted for that idiot! How Stupid Am
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
leftchick (1000+ posts) Sun Sep-11-05 02:47 AM
Original message
Man in Water in LA Yells: " I voted for that idiot! How Stupid Am I?"
Edited on Sun Sep-11-05 03:18 AM by leftchick
I swear to God I saw it on CNN today around 6:00 pm. There was a reporter and camera crew in a boat going around in the waters in LA questioning people on how they were coping. They came upon a man alone in a boat with an oar, ironically with a flag embossed towel around his neck.
They asked how he was coping. He Went OFF! (paraphrasing here because it is late) " Government? What Government?? I have not seen any help! Where is the government? Where is bush? If I saw him right now I would... aaaarrrggghhhh!(throwing fist in the air!). He Is an IDIOT! I voted for him too! How stupid am I?"
Poor guy.....I hope the SS did not get the number off of his canoe.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 05:32 PM
Response to Reply #45
411. Sept 11:Welcome to DU Dr. Ben Marble of "go fuck yourself cheney" fame
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Welcome to DU Dr. Ben Marble of "go fuck yourself cheney" fame
Thought this deserved its own thread. I know a lot of us are fans.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-12-05 11:56 AM
Response to Reply #45
423. Julian Bonb: George Bush should put a muzzle on his mother

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:13 PM
Response to Original message
46. After K: Media articles supporting the Bush - fed responce
note any shift to Rove talking points
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 04:09 PM
Response to Reply #46
259. Where to Point the Fingers (Krauthammer witches and Jews article)
Where to Point the Fingers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 9, 2005; Page A25
In less enlightened times there was no catastrophe independent of human agency. When the plague or some other natural disaster struck, witches were burned, Jews were massacred and all felt better (except the witches and Jews).
A few centuries later, our progressive thinkers have progressed not an inch. No fall of a sparrow on this planet is not attributed to sin and human perfidy. The three current favorites are: (1) global warming, (2) the war in Iraq and (3) tax cuts. Katrina hits and the unholy trinity is immediately invoked to damn sinner-in-chief George W. Bush.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 05:48 PM
Response to Reply #46
449. Sep 13Wash Post exposed shilling for WH re: Blanco smear, issues retractio
henslee (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-12-05 09:38 PM
Original message
Wash Post exposed shilling for WH re: Blanco smear, issues retraction....
Edited on Mon Sep-12-05 09:39 PM by henslee
Following snip is from this Village voice article...
http://villagevoice.com/news/0537,rozen,67724,2.html
(snip)
On Sunday, September 4, the Washington Post quoted an anonymous White House source as saying that in the critical days as New Orleans was filling with water, the White House was prevented from sending federal assistance to aid flood victims because of a technicality—Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco had not declared a state of emergency. On its face, the claim seemed absurd—thousands of New Orleanians were left to drown, dehydrate, and starve because of a technicality? And indeed, only hours later, the Post was forced to publish an above-the-story correction revealing how badly they had been burned by their anonymous White House source:
Correction to This Article:
A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26. "
The quote may have revealed a blatant White House effort to steer the "blame game" toward the Democratic governor (all the while directing the White House and its supporters to respond to critics, as if in chorus, with variations of the pious phrase, "Now's not the time to play the blame game.") Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:14 PM
Response to Original message
47. After K: Repub support of Bush - fed responce.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:16 PM
Response to Original message
48. After K: International Relief : offers made: accepted,refused or stymied
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 10:18 PM by mom catPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:41 AM
Response to Reply #48
113. Sept 6: Canada, France, U.K. Militaries Dispatch Aid to U.S.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000082&sid=aVN...
Canada, France, U.K. Militaries Dispatch Aid to U.S. Gulf Coast
Sept. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Canada, France, Germany and Britain are among countries whose militaries are coming to the aid of the U.S. in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, according to interviews with officials and government statements. ? How much of it was delayed by red tape!

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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:55 AM
Response to Reply #48
183. 60 nations offered help
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L0472355.htm
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:21 PM
Response to Reply #48
230. Extensive list of all countries (in German)
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,373565,00.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 08:20 PM
Response to Reply #48
238. Sept 7:Offers of Aid Immediate, but U.S. Approval Delayed for Days
Foreign Giving
Offers of Aid Immediate, but U.S. Approval Delayed for Days
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 7, 2005; Page A01
Offers of foreign aid worth tens of millions of dollars -- including a Swedish water purification system, a German cellular telephone network and two Canadian rescue ships -- have been delayed for days awaiting review by backlogged federal agencies, according to European diplomats and information collected by the State Department.
Since Hurricane Katrina, more than 90 countries and international organizations offered to assist in recovery efforts for the flood-stricken region, but nearly all endeavors remained mired yesterday in bureaucratic entanglements, in most cases, at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In Germany, a massive telecommunication system and two technicians await the green light to fly to Louisiana, after its donors spent four days searching for someone willing to accept the gift.
"FEMA? That was a lost case," said Mirit Hemy, an executive with the Netherlands-based New Skies Satellite who made the phone calls. "We got zero help, and we lost one week trying to get hold of them."
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 05:11 PM
Response to Reply #48
268. 9/9 Swedish plane full with aid waiting since 6 days for an US order
(Also posted this under FEMA response, though not sure it's their authority.)
Swedish plane full with aid waiting since 6 days for an US order
Sweden's government spokeman Per Ström criticised the passivity of the US concerning international aid.
Since 6 days (I repeat "six days") a swedish plane carrying equipment to clean water is waiting on a military airport to receive an order from the US where it shall fly to. So far no order has been received.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,373833,00 ....
(in German)
Here an article a few days before:
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=2018&date=2005090 ...
Ström said the plane would continue to wait but could take off at any moment if the US wishes so.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 08:05 PM
Response to Reply #48
283. Sept 2: World mobilises to aid US victims
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4210264.stm
World mobilises to aid US victims
The US was considering dozens of offers of international assistance
More than 44 foreign governments and international organisations have offered aid to help with the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
Sri Lanka and Indonesia, who were recipients of US assistance after the tsunami, were among the list of potential donors.
Cuba and Venezuela put aside their differences with the Bush administration to offer assistance.

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DrDebug (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 07:00 AM
Response to Reply #48
303. Sept 1: Scott McClellan: "We are NOT requesting international aid."
Canadian agencies are saying that foreign aid is probably not being permitted into Louisiana and Mississippi because of "mass confusion" at the U.S. federal level in the wake of the storm."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 01:02 PM
Response to Reply #48
312. Sept 10: German plane with Katrina aid turned back from U.S.
German plane with Katrina aid turned back from U.S.
Associated Press
http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?tl=1&display=r...
BERLIN - A German military plane carrying 15 tons of emergency rations to survivors of Hurricane Katrina was turned away by U.S. authorities, officials said Saturday.
The plane was turned back on Thursday because it didn't have the required authorization, a German government spokesman said.
The government spokesman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, declined to comment on a report in the German news magazine Der Spiegel that that U.S. authorities refused the delivery by arguing that the NATO military rations could carry mad cow disease.
The spokesman said U.S. authorities had since given a green light for any further aid deliveries. He said it was unclear whether there would be more flights from Germany.
A U.S. Embassy official, who asked not to be named, cited temporary technical and logistical problems. Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 01:04 PM
Response to Reply #312
313. Original article from Der Speigel...in German
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,374093,00.html
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 09:15 PM
Response to Reply #48
539. 9/19 Tons of British Aid to Be Burned
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16147117%26met...
EXCLUSIVE: UP IN FLAMES
Tons of British aid donated to help Hurricane Katrina victims to be BURNED by Americans
From Ryan Parry, US Correspondent in New York
HUNDREDS of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned.
Instead tons of the badly needed Nato ration packs, the same as those eaten by British troops in Iraq, has been condemned as unfit for human consumption. And unless the bureaucratic mess is cleared up soon it could be sent for incineration.
(snip)
The food, which cost British taxpayers millions, is sitting idle in a huge warehouse after the Food and Drug Agency recalled it when it had already left to be distributed. Scores of lorries headed back to a warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, to dump it at an FDA incineration plant.
The Ministry of Defence in London said last night that 400,000 operational ration packs had been shipped to the US. But officials blamed the US Department of Agriculture, which impounded the shipment under regulations relating to the import and export of meat. The aid worker, who would not be named, said: "This is the most appalling act of sickening senselessness while people starve.
"The FDA has recalled aid from Britain because it has been condemned as unfit for human consumption, despite the fact that these are Nato approved rations of exactly the same type fed to British soldiers in Iraq.
"Under Nato, American soldiers are also entitled to eat such rations, yet the starving of the American South will see them go up in smoke because of FDA red tape madness."
(snip)
"Everyone is revolted by the chaotic shambles the US is making of this crisis. Guys from Unicef are walking around spitting blood.
(snip)
"If they are trying to argue there is a BSE reason then that is ludicrously out of date. There is more BSE in the States than there ever was in Britain and UK meat has been safe for years."
The Ministry of Defence said: "We understand there was a glitch and these packs have been impounded by the US Department of Agriculture under regulations relating to the import and export of meat.
(snip)
Food from Spain and Italy is also being held because it fails to meet US standards and has been judged unfit for human consumption. And Israeli relief agencies are furious that thousands of gallons of pear juice are to be destroyed because it has been judged unfit.
(snip)
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:23 PM
Response to Original message
51. After K: Contracts to Halliburton & other Bush supporters: note if no bid

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 08:33 AM
Response to Reply #51
185. Sept 1: *****YES***** SEPT 1!*****Halliburton hired for storm cleanup*****
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 08:36 AM by mom cat
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/33356...
Sept. 1, 2005, 8:30PM
AROUND THE REGIONCONSTRUCTION
Halliburton hired for storm cleanup
The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina. ADVERTISEMENTHalliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.
KBR was assigned the work under a "construction capabilities" contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process. The company is not involved in the Army Corps of Engineers' effort to repair New Orleans' levees.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 11:38 AM
Response to Reply #51
203. Sept 4: FEMA privatized hurricane disaster recovery planning
Written by Wayne Madsen
Monday, 05 September 2005
http://www.wnymedia.net/index.php?option=com_content&ta... Wayne Madsen | September 4 2005
FEMA privatized hurricane disaster recovery planning for New Orleans and Southeastern Louisiana. The firms that received the contract are big GOP contributors. Adding to the controversy regarding the Army Corps of Engineers diverting $250 million from the SELA (Southeast Louisiana) Urban Flood Control Program to Iraq and Halliburton reconstruction projects, is the revelation that FEMA outsourced hurricane recovery planning to the Baton Rouge-based consulting firm Innovative Emergency Management (IEM), Inc. to develop a "Catastrophic Hurricane Disaster Plan for New Orleans & Southeast Louisiana." The award was announced on June 3, 2004 on the firm's web site but was taken down just as Hurricane Katrina's winds and waves first started pounding New Orleans. It would now appear that the hurricane plan IEM and its team developed wasn't worth a damned thing.
IEM's team partners for the more than $500,000 contract are Dewberry of Arlington, VA, URS Corporation of San Francisco, and James Lee Witt Associates. Witt was FEMA Director under Bill Clinton. IEM's president is Madhu Beriwal. The company was founded in 1985. Dewberry and URS are engineering firms. IEM is also a Defense Department contractor and has contracts with the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) along with team members Booz Allen Hamilton and Lockheed Martin.
Now for the interesting background on Ms. Beriwal. She is a big-time contributor to the GOP. She's given thousands of dollars to Republicans, including Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, Louisiana Rep. Bobby Jindal, Rep. Richard Baker of Louisiana, the National Republican Congressional Committee, former Arkansas Sen. Tim Hutchinson. Vitter was the largest recipient of funds from Beriwal.
The Chairman of Dewberry Sidney Dewberry, the Vice Chairman, Barry K. Dewberry, and Secretary of the firm, Michael Dewberry have been substantial contributors to George W. Bush, Virginia Sen. John Warner, the National Republican Congressional Committee, Sen. Shelby, "Every Republican is Crucial" Political Action Committee, Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia (also fingered in the Duke Cunningham MZM, Inc. scandal), Virginia Sen. George Allen, Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf, Virginia Rep. Tom Davis, Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Republican National Committee, and the Federal Victory Fund of Annandale, VA controlled by Tom Davis. The Dewberrys have also contributed to the financially-tainted Democrat from Virginia's 8th District, Jim Moran. Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 11:47 PM
Response to Reply #51
241. Three FEMA contractors arrested for looting in Plaquemines Parish
(Not clear whether these were in fact * cronies, so sorry if doesn't fit topic exactly.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Three FEMA contractors arrested for looting in Plaquemines Parish
Three Texas truck drivers under contract with the federal government to bring in storm relief supplies for Plaquemines Parish have been arrested for allegedly looting toys, dolls, women’s lingerie and other merchandise from a Belle Chasse Family Dollar store, authorities said.
(snip)
Marie said that since the relief effort began, drivers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency had been allowed to take drinks, personal grooming supplies and other small items from the Family Dollar store at 7902 Louisiana 23.
But he said the three suspects went much further, loading the cabs of their trucks with toys such as Barbie dolls, kitchen appliances, telephones, answering machines, waste paper baskets and other goods.
“When we arrested them, they had enough stolen stuff to fill five grocery carts full of property,” Marie said.
(more at link)
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlo...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 02:47 PM
Response to Reply #51
257. 9/8 Fed contractors won't have to pay "prevailing wage" to workers
Cheap Labor <http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/cheap_lab... >
See: Proclamation by the President: To Suspend Subchapter IV of Chapter 31 of Title 40, United States Code, Within a Limited Geographic Area in Response to the National Emergency Caused by Hurricane Katrina <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/2005090... > .
According to this L.A. Times article <http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bu... > , the prevailing wage in New Orleans is about $9.00 per hour.
Comments <http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/comments/cheap_... > | Posted in Hurricane Katrina
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-17-05 02:40 PM
Response to Reply #257
510. 9/17 Pres. Failed to Comply w/ Req'ts for Activating Emergency Powers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/16/131238/384
Bush has no legal authority to cut wages in Katrina recovery.
by Windowdog
Fri Sep 16th, 2005 at 10:12:38 PDT (edited by snot for brevity)
As many people have pointed out one of the first thing Bush did in the wake of Katrina was waive the Davis Bacon Wage supports that require relief workers be paid a wage in keeping with the local labor market. This cut the minimum wage for all relief related workers drastically.
Turns out Bush may very well have no legal authority to waive that requirement. His actions are based on a law that was nullified in 1976, almost 30 years ago!
But this emergency statute was one of numerous authorities that
were rendered dormant by the National Emergencies Act of 1976, and
that can only be activated by certain procedural formalities that
were absent in this case.
In particular, the President must formally declare a national
emergency under the National Emergencies Act, and he must specify
which standby legal authorities he proposes to activate so as to
permit congressional restraint of emergency powers.
Strangely, however, President Bush proceeded as if the National
Emergencies Act did not exist.
The September 8 presidential declaration was "an anomaly,"
according to a new Congressional Research Service assessment, and
it did not follow "the historical pattern of declaring a national
emergency to activate the suspension authority."
"The propriety of the President's action in this case may be
ultimately determined in the courts," the CRS report stated
delicately.
See "National Emergency Powers," Congressional Research Service,
updated September 15, 2005 (esp. pp. 18-19):"
Update <2005-9-16 15:18:58 by Windowdog>:: To address some points made below let me just restate this. Bush could have gotten the authority to do this rubber stamped in less than a day had he chosen to do so. However he couldn't even be bothered with that. This is a brazen act of an imperial presidency to curtail the legal rights of the population without any authority to do so.
In 1976 a law was passed that said the President had to list the powers he intended to use, thus exposing his intentions to congressional review, before he activated the powers made dormant under the act. His proclamation is meaningless legally since he had no authority to issue it at that time. Any attempts to enforce that proclamation are illegal until the situation is rectified.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:59 PM
Response to Reply #51
341. 9/10 (orig post 9/2) Halliburton Contract to Repair Katrina Damage
Edited on Sat Sep-10-05 08:59 PM by snot
From
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
ress=104x4588896
Halliburton gets contract to repair damage from Hurricane Katrina
News Update from Citizens for Legitimate Government
02 September 2005
http://www.legitgov.org /
http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news
Halliburton gets contract to repair damage from Hurricane Katrina
(HalliburtonWatch.org) 02 Sep 2005 The US Navy asked Halliburton to
repair naval facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the Houston
Chronicle reported today. The work was assigned to Halliburton's KBR
subsidiary under the Navy's $500 million CONCAP contract awarded to KBR
in 2001 and renewed in 2004. The repairs will take place in Louisiana
and Mississippi. In March, the former director of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), which is tasked with responding to hurricane
disasters, became a lobbyist for KBR.
Address to receive newsletter: http://www.legitgov.org/#subscribe_clg
Please write to: signup@legitgov.org for inquiries. lrp/mdr
CLG Newsletter editor: Lori Price, General Manager. Copyright (c) 2005,
Citizens For Legitimate Government (r) All rights reserved. CLG Founder
and Chair is Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D.
From
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
ress=104x4589780 :
Flood protection money went to Halliburton ..??
maybe cheneys company will rebuild now??
Bunatine Green house knows all..and has said she was intimidated into
signing off on no bid contracts
"September 1, 2005 -- Flood protection money to Halliburton = Blood
money for the Big Easy. With reports that the Bush administration
diverted $250 million in SELA (Southeast Louisiana) Urban Flood Control
Program funds from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to Iraq, it is time
for Congress to sit down with former Corps of Engineers Senior Executive
Service Principal Assistant for Contracting Bunnatine Greenhouse. Ms.
Greenhouse, who hails from Louisiana and likely knows something about
who diverted the flood abatement funds to Halliburton, was fired in
retaliation for her June 27 congressional testimony in which she stated
that Corps contracts for Kellogg, Brown & Root/Halliburton Iraq
infrastructure projects were improperly awarded -- through a no-bid
process -- as a result of political influence by Bush and Cheney
political appointees in the Army's hierarchy. On August 27, Ms.
Greenhouse was removed from her career civil service position just as
Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans. Congress should order the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) to obtain copies of all Corps of
Engineer documents on contracts for Halliburton and the diverting of New
Orleans flood control funds to Iraq reconstruction. The possibility that
Dick Cheney's firm took money that was to go to New Orleans flood
control projects should be a priority for Congress -- which should
cancel its Labor Day recess and get back to work before September 12.
(Late today, it announced it was reconvening immediately).
It is no wonder that Dick Cheney is nowhere to be found during America's
worst natural disaster. When the people of New Orleans discover that
Cheney's firm profited at the expense of their loved ones' lives..."
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com /
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skids (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-30-05 01:31 PM
Response to Reply #51
557. 9/30 Roof tarping scam.
Edited on Fri Sep-30-05 01:31 PM by skids
"The government is paying contractors an average of $2,480 for less than two hours of work to cover each damaged roof - even though it’s also giving them endless supplies of blue sheeting for free."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:26 PM
Response to Original message
52. Pre, during and after: The race factor in the disaster

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:58 PM
Response to Reply #52
71. Sept 7: Dean Race played role in death toll
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 11:00 PM by mom cat
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200...
Also see DU thread:http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:36 PM
Response to Reply #52
335. Sept 8: Molly Ivins on the race card and the "looters"
http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=mi...
MOLLY IVINS
FOR RELEASE: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2005, AND THEREAFTER

AUSTIN, Texas -- George W. Bush has come up with his worst idea since he decided to have the military investigate torture by the military at Abu Ghraib prison. He, George W. personally, plans to investigate to "find out what went right and what went wrong" in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
It's hard to guess where Bush will look first, but maybe he should start with the appointment of "Brownie" to head FEMA, the federal disaster relief agency. "Brownie" is Michael Brown, who was appointed by some president.
At the time, Brownie was deputy director of the agency under Joe Allbaugh -- because he was Joe Allbaugh's college roommate, you see, and Allbaugh was Bush's campaign manager in 2000, you see, which made both of them qualified to manage disasters.
The FEMA press release announcing Brownie's appointment started with his other obvious qualification, "From 1991 to 2001, Brown was the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association." It's unclear whether "Brownie" was fired or resigned from the organization in the wake of financial mismanagement and lawsuits.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Bluebear (1000+ posts) Sat Sep-10-05 05:10 PM
Original message
Molly Ivins: The bottom line is they're PLAYING THE RACE CARD
....The bottom line is they're playing the race card. As many of you have noted, it IS a racial issue that poor people suffer most in any natural or economic disaster. Because Katrina hit the Deep South, a great many of the poor people affected are black, especially in New Orleans -- both hit hardest and majority black to begin with.
I'm not sure what to say about a cable news station that plays a "loop" of black looters over and over -- about 20 seconds of actual footage, replayed for four minutes, while the voiceover dwells on the looting problem. Obviously, there are some looters in New Orleans and elsewhere, and equally obviously, there are lots of people who were without food or water for days.
The exhausted and desperate black mayor of New Orleans begged for help in an interview late last week. "They're feeding the public a line of bull and they're spinning, and people are dying down here," Mayor Ray Nagin said, talking about the feds. "It's politics, man, and they are playing games. ... They're out there spinning for the cameras. ... I don't want to see anybody do any more goddamned press conferences. ... Excuse my French, everybody in America, but I am pissed. ...
The mayor was in tears. I heard two nice, white American "ladies" deploring this interview. "Well! He should remember there might be children listening!" Children still without food and water. What happens to people when they talk about race? Of course, most of us don't actually talk about race any more, we refer to it only indirectly, we talk "those people."
Watch carefully, listen carefully -- minority groups have always been blamed after natural disasters....

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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:43 PM
Response to Reply #52
394. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) "It's the blacks..we always worried this would happen
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
"It's the blacks..we always worried this would happen" (Tribune report)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/perspective/...
Spreading the poison of bigotry
By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
Published September 4, 2005
BATON ROUGE, La. -- They locked down the entrance doors Thursday at the Baton Rouge hotel where I'm staying alongside hundreds of New Orleans residents driven from their homes by Hurricane Katrina. Because of the riots," the hotel managers explained. Armed Gunmen from New Orleans were headed this way, they had heard. "It's the blacks," whispered one white woman in the elevator. "We always worried this would happen."
Something else gave way last week besides the levees that had protected New Orleans from the waters surrounding it. The thin veneer of civility and practiced cordiality that in normal times masks the prejudices and bigotries held by many whites in this region of Deep South Louisiana was heavily battered as well. All it took to set the rumor mills in motion were the first TV pictures broadcast Tuesday showing some looters—many of them black—smashing store windows in downtown New Orleans. Reports later in the week of sporadic violence and shootings among the desperate throngs outside the Superdome clamoring to be rescued only added to the panic.
By Thursday, local TV and radio stations in Baton Rouge—the only ones in the metro area still able to broadcast—were breezily passing along reports of cars being hijacked at gunpoint by New Orleans refugees, riots breaking out in the shelters set up in Baton Rouge to house the displaced, and guns and knives being seized. Scarcely any of it was true—the police, for example, confiscated a single knife from a refugee in one Baton Rouge shelter. There were no riots in Baton Rouge. There were no armed hordes. But all of it played directly into the darkest prejudices long held against the hundreds of thousands of impoverished blacks who live "down there," in New Orleans, that other world regarded by many white suburbanites—indeed, many people across the rest of the state—as a dangerous urban no-go area.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-12-05 03:40 PM
Response to Reply #52
426. Sep 12: Blasphemy about New Orleans: A god with whom i am not familiar
http://www.blackcommentator.com/149/149_think_wise_new_... is an open letter to the man sitting behind me at La Paz today, in Nashville, at lunchtime, with the Brooks Brothers shirt:
You don't know me. But I know you.
I watched you as you held hands with your tablemates at the restaurant where we both ate this afternoon. I listened as you prayed, and thanked God for the food you were about to eat, and for your own safety, several hundred miles away from the unfolding catastrophe in New Orleans.
You blessed your chimichanga in the name of Jesus Christ, and then proceeded to spend the better part of your meal – and mine, since I was too near your table to avoid hearing every word – morally scolding the people of that devastated city, heaping scorn on them for not heeding the warnings to leave before disaster struck. Then you attacked them – all of them, without distinction it seemed – for the behavior of a relative handful: those who have looted items like guns, or big screen TVs.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-12-05 10:26 PM
Response to Reply #52
428. 9/12 Spiegel on Fallout for Rove's Designs on the Black Vote
SPIEGEL ONLINE - September 12, 2005, 05:39 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,374285,00.ht...
White House Letter

A Blow for Republicans
By Elisabeth Bumiller
From the political perspective of the White House, Hurricane Katrina appears to have damaged the carefully laid plans of Karl Rove to make inroads among black voters.
WASHINGTON - From the political perspective of the White House, Hurricane Katrina destroyed more than an enormous swath of the Gulf Coast. The storm also appears to have damaged the carefully laid plans of Karl Rove, President Bush's political adviser, to make inroads among black voters and expand the reach of the Republican Party for decades to come.
Many African-Americans across the country said they seethed as they watched the television pictures of the largely poor and black victims of Hurricane Katrina dying for food and water in the New Orleans Superdome and the convention center. A poll released last week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center bore out that reaction as well as a deep racial divide: Two-thirds of African-Americans said the government's response to the crisis would have been faster if most of the victims had been white, while 77 percent of whites disagreed.
(more)
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:30 PM
Response to Original message
53. Before, during and after K: Ray Nagin

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:35 PM
Response to Reply #53
56. Sept2: Audio of interview with Nagin ... Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/2/74322/28816
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:47 PM
Response to Reply #53
65. Sept 2: Mayor to Feds: Get off your asses
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/nagin.transcript/index...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:00 AM
Response to Reply #53
124. Nagin's Use of N.O. Busses
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Fact Check: About those buses now under water
We keep hearing that Mayor Nagin should have used those school buses now under water to evacuate those who didn't have cars. (E.g., it just came up on Hardball again)
It's time for a fact check. Based on the Times-Picayune Blog (i.e., CONTEMPORANEOUS report, not after-the-fact CYA), when he announced the mandatory evacuation, Nagin provided a toll-free number for people to call to get picked up by bus (RTA):
Mayor Nagin issues mandatory evacuation for New Orleans
As of 9:30 a.m., Mayor Nagin has issued a mandatory evacuation for New Orleans.
* * *
The city has set up ten pickup areas to take people to emergency shelters. RTA buses will be picking up citizens for free and take them to these shelters. The number to call for pickup areas is 1-800-469-4828.
The pickup locations are (list of multiple pick up locations follows)
* * *
See http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlo ... (You have to scroll way down to Aug 28 - the "permalinks" are not working)
================
I've seen no reports about whether the RTA buses were overwhelmed; whether the school buses were needed; whether people called, but didn't get picked up.
However - the contemporaneous documents PROVE that Nagin offered those without transportation a way to call to get a ride to a shelter, and had buses picking people up.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 01:16 PM
Response to Reply #53
401. 9/11 Nagin: Only 200 Guardsmen in early days
From http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp / :
Nagin on rebuilding: New Orleanians should take the lead
Sunday, 8:40 a.m.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Sunday morning that any rebuilding effort should be led by New Orleanians and not outsiders.
"I'll lead that effort come heck or high water," he said on the television show "Meet the Press".
Nagin declined to grade the actions and response of President George W. Bush, but did repeat earlier comments that initial response from the federal government was not what it should have been.
"I think for some reason he did not understand the full magnitude of this on the front end," Nagin said.
But Nagin said the response from the president was much better after any personal meetings between the two.
When asked about the actions of Gov. Kathleen Blanco, Nagin paused before offering an answer: "I don't know about that," he said.
Nagin said he had only 200 National Guardsmen in the city in the early days. "We didn't get a lot of help for three or four days of pure hell," he said. "I don't have much else to say about (Blanco)."
The mayor also said there seemed to be confusion between Blanco and federal officials about just who had ultimate authority in the disaster area.
"I just don't appreciate that stuff when people are dying in my city."
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:32 PM
Response to Original message
54. Attempts to Block Communications

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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:40 PM
Response to Reply #54
60. Ham Radio help refused
See Post #44 in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
More links to crazy FEMA decisions in and around New Orleans
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 02:27 AM by Up2Late
I was looking for something I ran across last night on one of the Major "Ham" Radio websites, but I saw all this, and thought you all might want to add some of these links to what you have already.
Scroll down and you'll find lots of weird stuff that the Admin of this discussion board, posted here:
<http://www.hamradio-online.com />
(O.K. I found it, I thought this was a bit odd, but then again, maybe this is part of the whole FEMA F*ckup?)
<http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2005/09/01/2 />
ARRL President Urges Orderly Amateur Radio Response in Katrina Recovery
NEWINGTON, CT, Sep 1, 2005--ARRL President Jim Haynie, W5JBP, today called on the Amateur Radio community to exercise patience as the Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans flooding relief and recovery efforts move into high gear.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ... :
"I know many people would like to move now," Haynie said. "Please don't. I know many of you want to enter the fray, come to the coast and get involved. Please, not yet." Haynie instead advised hams eager to assist to make sure they're prepared, refresh their skills and knowledge of protocols and procedures and let emergency management and relief agencies determine who is needed and where.
"For now, the area is simply too dangerous and no one is being allowed in," Haynie went on to say. "Transportation and logistics, including volunteer groups coming in, must be done in an orderly manner or we may only add to the chaos and confusion." He recommended that ARES members and teams work through their Section Emergency Coordinators (SECs).
"Information and coordination for such a historically large response is being developed and will be made available soon," he said. Haynie also reminded volunteers to be "professional and disciplined" whenever checking into a net. "Net control is a difficult job at best, so be respectful," he said. "If you have traffic fine, but if not , please stand by."
<http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2005/09/01/2 />
(more at link above)
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:42 PM
Response to Reply #54
61. Evacuees isolated and warned not to talk to media
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
a visit to a FEMA camp
Fascinating and troubling lengthy account from Oklahoma here, with many pictures, of an attempt to deliver goods to a FEMA camp deep in the woods.
We then started lugging in our food products. The foods I had purchased were mainly snacks, but my mother - God bless her soul - had gone all out with fresh vegetables, fruits, canned goods, breakfast cereals, rice, and pancake fixings. That's when we got the next message: They will not be able to use the kitchen.
Excuse me? I asked incredulously.
FEMA will not allow any of the kitchen facilities in any of the cabins to be used by the occupants due to fire hazards. FEMA will deliver meals to the cabins. The refugees will be given two meals per day by FEMA. They will not be able to cook. In fact, the "host" goes on to explain, some churches had already enquired about whether they could come in on weekends and fix meals for the people staying in their cabin. FEMA won't allow it because there could be a situation where one cabin gets steaks and another gets hot dogs - and...it could cause a riot.
It gets worse.
He then precedes to tell us that some churches had already enquired into whether they could send a van or bus on Sundays to pick up any occupants of their cabins who might be interested in attending church. FEMA will not allow this. The occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason. If they leave the camp they may never return. They will be issued FEMA identification cards and "a sum of money" and they will remain within the camp for the next 5 months.
"Talk about a surreal moment...troops (unknown if Regular or National Guard) have taken up residency in the Durant First Baptist Church cabin very near the main gate of the camp:"
The poster asks: Do you think I'm over-reacting to the idea of being bussed hundreds of miles from what I am familiar with to a place miles from civilization and from which I cannot leave?
or do you think I'm over-reacting to the fact that federal agencies are treating people who have done nothing but lose all they ever owned to a natural disaster as if they are criminals waiting to make their next nefarious move?
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:48 PM
Response to Reply #54
67. Telecom Jamming
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
Post #1:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
FEMA crippling communications???
I was skeptical about the jamming of radio frequencies...
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page /...
Inside Sheriff Lee, of Jefferson parish in New Orleans, is sitting at a table, fuming.
He is doing his best to alleviate the biggest catastrophe he will ever witness, but lacks even the most basic of resources.
He cannot communicate with his own officers -- his officers can barely communicate with each other -- because the overloaded radio frequency keeps jamming.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m15382&l=i&size=1&hd=0
Since Bushzarro world is all about customizing reality for political reasons, chances are pretty good we will never know what happened in the wake of Katrina. "We can now report that the jamming of New Orleans' communications is emanating from a pirate radio station in the Caribbean," explains Madsen. "The noise is continuous and it is jamming frequencies, including emergency high frequency (HF) radios, in the New Orleans area. The radio frequency jammers were heard last night, stopped for a while, and are active again today.... However, we now have a new unconfirmed report that the culprit may be the Pentagon itself. The emitter is an IF (Intermediate Frequency) jammer that is operating south southwest of New Orleans on board a U.S. Navy ship, according to an anonymous source. The jamming is cross-spectrum and interfering with superheterodyne receiver components, including the emergency radios being used in New Orleans relief efforts.... A Vancouver, British Columbia Urban Search & Rescue Team deployed to New Orleans reported that their satellite phones were not working and they had to obtain other satellite phones to keep in touch with their headquarters and other emergency agencies in British Columbia." There are also rumors spreading on forums and blogs that troops are confiscating and destroying civilian cameras. Graphic photos are however surfacing on the internet, once again trumping the corporate media, handmaiden to Bushian crimes and cover-ups.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790 /
The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.
Also, I seem to recall that Broussard said something about FEMA cutting phone lines; here's what at least used to be a link to a video; not sure if he mentions it in this: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/04/broussard_we_have_ ...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 10:21 PM
Response to Reply #54
292. Cuting of phone lines
I_Make_Mistakes (548 posts) Sun Sep-04-05 10:28 PM
Original message
FEMA cutting phone lines in Jefferson Parish why? Swamp Rat
I got this from Swamp Rat
He's responding to my don't forget me, I have offered to help his family if they need it
SR's reply
won't... so many people are PMing me and I am struggling to put things in order here... food, place to stay, bills... I am OK right now. Please help the folks still in Orleans Parish.. My brother just heard JP Sheriff Harry Lee say that his deputies caught FEMA agents trying to cut the phone lines in Jefferson Parish.
Why would they do that?
Why?

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snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 02:27 PM
Response to Reply #54
441. 9/13 Wi-Fi and WiMax to be set up for emergency reconnect
Wireless broadband lines set up for emergency reconnect: "Networks relying on such technologies as Wi-Fi and WiMax can be established more quickly and more cheaply than crews can right telephone poles and cellular towers or bail water out of flooded switching stations." Link <http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0509120015... >
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:32 PM
Response to Original message
55. Attempts to Censor or Restrict Media

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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:36 PM
Response to Reply #55
57. Media restricted from Astrodome
See also http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
From http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
I am very concerned about the degree of censorship and secrecy the Feds are trying to impose, both in N.O. and on the evacuees.
See http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/07/katrina_rape_murde ... (edited by me):
Wednesday, September 7, 2005
Katrina: "Rape, murder, beatings" in Astrodome, say evacuees
Here's a rough partial transcript of an IM chat with Jacob Appelbaum <http://jacob.wordpress.com / > throughout the day today. He's inside the Houston Astrodome, and has been talking to Katrina evacuees and tech aid volunteers who are there to set up computer banks and a low power FM station (see bottom of post -- FEMA's blocking that, despite FCC having granted the LPFM organizers a temporary license exemption). Times shown are LA local.
10:23: Joel just got removed. Almost arrested. Fox News is down on the floor. I'm in dome, hiding in seats. They're allowing some media on the floor, not others.
10:31 Just met members of the Polish press, they are being stopped from entering floor. Says this is like the former USSR.
10:57 Raw transcript of comments by NOLA evacuee Clara Barthelemy: "The 17th street levee was bombed by the Army Corps of Engineers to save the more valuable real estate in the city… to keep the French Quarter protected, the ninth ward was sacrificed… people are afraid to speak out… everyone who was near there heard the bombings… they bombed seven times. That's why they didn't fix the levees… 20 feet of water. Gators. People dying in water. They let the parishes go, not the city center. Tourist trap was saved over human life. A six year old girl was raped in here.. 9 year old boy killed. A man in the shower beaten. No hot food. No help for elderly."
Another evacuee: "Over 20 rapes per night happening inside this place. They bring in national guard for media purposes. Bush wants us to stay here to raise his ratings. Some workers are stealing the good stuff, like shoes."
11:22 Evacuee Dianne Stafford: "They blew the levee to save the city…" Saying a barge broke the levee. She is from St. Bernard Parish. "More expensive places were saved at the expense of the neighborhoods that aren't as valuable… Rebuilding Bourbon Street matters more to the government… that's what mattered to Governor Blanco…"
11:59 CNN have no problem getting in. Nobody's stopping them from accessing the floor, but other credentialed press who already have press badges are being stopped.
12:24 Man I'm speaking to, Danny Smith, says he cannot get housing because he has a felony. Aid workers found him a house but he is a felon, so they turned him away. FEMA has agreed to pay for his apartment, but he cannot get one. "Everyone has a felony here," he says. He thinks that people are going to riot
13:03 Harris County will not allow any radio station inside without a FEMA form even if operator has FCC permission. Austin Airwaves says trying to get form now, been waiting 2.5 days. No radio station inside the dome until that form is filled out.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:51 PM
Response to Reply #55
68. More problems at Astrodome
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/07/katrina_lpfm_stati...
Katrina: LPFM station for Astrodome blocked <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/07/katrina_lpfm_stati... >
Xeni Jardin:
Following up on previous BB posts and a Wired News item <http://wired.com/news/hurricane/0,2904,68779,00.html > about tech volunteers <http://cuwireless.net/ > ' attempts to set up a low power FM radio station <http://www.evacuationradioservices.org/ > up to provide information to evacuees at the Astrodome, Jacob Appelbaum <http://jacob.wordpress.com/ > blogs from Houston:
Rita Obey is the person that told Austin Airwaves they had to have 10,000 radios before they could broadcast. We purchased a number of radios and while we’ve had some issues with this, it was just a meaningless golden egg. We called her bluff by getting the radios lined up to be purchased and they threw something else out.
At 16:29 (CST) today, RW Royal Jr. Incident Commander of the JIC (Joint Information Commity) has denied Austin Airwaves the ability to run the emergency low power FM radio station inside of the dome. This is contrary to the FCC licenses that have been issued to Austin Airwaves. However RW Royal Jr is a member of the JIC. He has decided to deny the request. When they asked why they were being turned down, they were told that the Astrodome could not provide them with electricity. When the Austin Airwaves team offered to run on battery backup, they were still denied. This is an OUTRAGE.
The people on the ground I spoke with personally asked me why I was there. I told them that I was with a group helping to bring emergency information to them over a radio inside the dome. Those people were overjoyed to hear that they would get a radio station with emergency information, with information on job interviews, with information on food, housing, clothing and other important information. It breaks my heart.
Why has this man denied this? Why is the government going out of its way to stop us from helping people?
Link <http://jacob.wordpress.com/2005/09/07/radio-station-has... > to Jacob's account, and here's the LPFM station website: evacuationradioservices.org <http://www.evacuationradioservices.org/ >
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:15 AM
Original message
Evacuees in lockdown in Colorado
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Evacuees' stories are moving, but fence isn't (Denver Post)
If I didn't know better, I'd have thought I was peering through the fence at a concentration camp.
The signs on the buildings say "Community College of Aurora," though for now they're serving as an impromptu Camp Katrina. About 160 hurricane survivors are being housed in the dorms, surrounded by fences, roadblocks, security guards and enough armed police officers to invade Grenada.
There's a credentials unit to process every visitor, an intake unit to provide identification tags and a bag of clothes to every evacuee, several Salvation Army food stations, portable toilets, shuttle buses, a green army-tent chapel with church services three times a day and a communications team to keep reporters as far away from actual news as possible.
http://www.denverpost.com/carman/ci_3006502
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:34 AM
Response to Reply #55
106. Bodies censored
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Media groups say FEMA censors search for bodies
http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx ?...
Media groups say FEMA censors search for bodies
WASHINGTON, Sept 7 (Reuters) - When U.S. officials asked the media not to take pictures of those killed by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, they were censoring a key part of the disaster story, free speech watchdogs said on Wednesday.
The move by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is in line with the Bush administration's ban on images of flag-draped U.S. military coffins returning from the Iraq war, media monitors said in separate telephone interviews.
"It's impossible for me to imagine how you report a story whose subject is death without allowing the public to see images of the subject of the story," said Larry Siems of the PEN American Center, an authors' group that defends free expression.
U.S. newspapers, television outlets and Web sites have featured pictures of shrouded corpses and makeshift graves in New Orleans.
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:38 AM
Response to Reply #55
173. General effort to bar reporters from access to many points of NOLA
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8045532/#050907c
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 01:28 PM
Response to Reply #55
251. 9/9 E-mail from friend re- Patterns of Press Access Denial
Katrina: message control, patterns of press access denial?
Snip from a post on <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8045532/#050907c > NBC correspondent Brian Williams' blog:
While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of Guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.
Josh Marshall says <http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_... > :
Take a moment to note what's happening here: these are the marks of repressive government, which mixes inefficiency with authoritarianism. The crew that couldn't get key aid on the scene in time last week is coming in in force now. And one of the key missions appears to be cutting off public information about what's happening in the city.
Reporters Without Borders reports at least 2 cases <http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14894 > of police confiscating or destroying reporters' camera gear in New Orleans.
When realized had photographed them hitting looters, they hurled him to the ground, grabbed his two cameras and removed memory cards containing around 350 pictures.
Several reports of "potemkin relief" -- staged scenarios for photo opps, including this news clip (in German) <http://www.tagesschau.de/video/0,1315,OID4700936_RESrea... > of a German correspondent reporting on the hurricane aftermath in the US. She says she witnessed a scene near Biloxi in which -- all of a sudden -- a number of relief workers appeared right before Bush arrived at the area. Once the president left, as did the bus with all of the reporters trailing him, the relief workers also disappeared.
From Andrew Sullivan's blog, a call to arms for photobloggers <http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archiv... > :
FEMA is trying to censor the reality in New Orleans, under the guise of "respect" for the dead. Money quote:
n Tuesday, FEMA refused to take reporters and photographers along on boats seeking victims in flooded areas, saying they would take up valuable space need in the recovery effort and asked them not to take pictures of the dead. In an e-mail explaining the decision, a FEMA spokeswoman wrote: "The recovery of victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect and we have requested that no photographs of the deceased by made by the media."
The press should ignore those requests, get boats themselves and show the world what has actually happened. (Hey, much of the media was ahead of FEMA during the worst of it. Why not again now?) That goes for any intrepid bloggers with camera-phones or anyone else who can slip through the censorship net. If necessary, faces can be blurred to protect the dignity of the dead. But it matters that we see the full consequences of government delinquency. That's what the press is for. Ignore FEMA. Photobloggers, here's an opportunity for important and necessary work.
(Thanks, Todd Lappin, A.V., Lucas Hoekstra)
posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:13:56 AM permalink <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/09/katrina_message_co... > | blogs' comments <http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=?=... >
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 09:15 PM
Response to Reply #55
286. Sept 9: Anderson Cooper says CNN gets restraining order (against govt)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Autonomy (330 posts) Sat Sep-10-05 12:02 AM
Original message
CNN: Anderson Cooper says CNN gets restraining order
against government, keeping govt from preventing reporters from covering body count in NOLAPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 09:21 PM
Response to Reply #55
287. Amy Goodman..regarding reporters being threatened by military
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/09/141...
Friday, September 9th, 2005
Is the Government Trying to Stem the Tide of Images From New Orleans by Threatening Journalists?
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Journalists covering New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina report that militarization in and around the city has hindered their work and threatened their physical safety. We hear from two journalists who were reporting in New Orleans recently.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The journalists who have been covering Hurricane Katrina have literally been risking their lives for the last week. Reporters have been stationed in and around New Orleans since the Hurricane hit and have tirelessly reported on the devastation to the city. Some journalists have expressed enormous outrage at government officials for their slow response. A few television reporters openly broke down on air as they report the horrific conditions and the desperation of victims. Reporters have witnessed the militarization of the city and are starting to feel the effects of the government crack-down on information gathering. FEMA is now rejecting requests by journalists to accompany rescue boats searching for storm victims. In addition, journalists are being asked not to photograph any dead bodies in the region. NBC News Anchor Brian Williams reported on his blog, that police officers had been seen aiming their weapons at members of the media. And a blogger named Bob Brigham wrote a widely read dispatch that the National Guard in Jefferson County are under orders to turn all journalists away. Brigham writes: "Bush is now censoring all reporting from New Orleans, Louisiana. The First Amendment sank with the city."
Earlier this week, Reporters Without Borders issued a warning about police violence against journalists working in New Orleans. They highlighted two cases – in one case police detained a Times-Picayune photographer and smashed his equipment to the ground after he was seen covering a shoot-out with police. In the second case, a photographer from the Toronto Star was detained by police and his photos taken from him when police realized that he had snapped photos of a clash between them and citizens who the police claimed were looters. Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 09:25 PM
Response to Reply #55
288. Larry King reporting on CNN request for injunction!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 10:34 PM
Response to Reply #55
293. Sept 6: U.S. agency blocks photos of New Orleans dead
http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?...
U.S. agency blocks photos of New Orleans dead
Tue Sep 6, 2005 8:56 PM ET
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NEW ORLEANS, Sept 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. government agency leading the rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take photographs of the dead as they are recovered from the flooded New Orleans area.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected requests from journalists to accompany rescue boats as they went out to search for storm victims.
An agency spokeswoman said space was needed on the rescue boats and that "the recovery of the victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect."
"We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media," the spokeswoman said in an e-mailed response to a Reuters inquiry.
more
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 12:51 PM
Response to Reply #55
311. Sept 10:***** U.S. drops banning media from body hunt
U.S. drops banning media from body hunt
CNN filed suit for access to search for New Orleans' dead
Saturday, September 10, 2005; Posted: 11:05 a.m. EDT (15:05 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/09/10/katrina.media/index.h...
Joint Task Force Katrina "has no plans to bar, impede or prevent news media from their news gathering and reporting activities in connection with the deceased Hurricane Katrina victim recovery efforts," said Col. Christian E. deGraff, representing the task force.
U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison issued a temporary restraining order Friday against a "zero access" policy announced earlier in the day by Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who is overseeing the federal relief effort in the city, and Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security director.
In explaining the ban, Ebbert said, "we don't think that's proper" to let members of the media view the bodies.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:55 PM
Response to Reply #55
399. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) FEMAS's Training on Managing the Media
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
OMG: FEMAS's Training on Managing the Media is on line:
I knew I heard Mike Brown say part of his job was to "manage expectations" early last week on TV, and while googling for the quote, found this: http://www.training.fema.gov/emiweb/downloads/HO-1.doc Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 02:25 PM
Response to Reply #55
439. 9/13 Democracy Now: "Is Gov't Trying to Stem Tide of Images?
"is the government trying to stem the tide of images?" Link <http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/09/141... >
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 01:39 AM
Response to Reply #55
473. 9-13: As bodies recovered, reporters are told 'no photos, no stories'
As bodies recovered, reporters are told 'no photos, no stories'
Cecilia M. Vega, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/13...
New Orleans -- A long caravan of white vans led by an Army humvee rolled Monday through New Orleans' Bywater district, a poor, mostly black neighborhood, northeast of the French Quarter.
Recovery team members wearing white protective suits and black boots stopped at houses with spray painted markings on the doors designating there were dead bodies inside.
Outside one house on Kentucky Street, a member of the Army 82nd Airborne Division summoned a reporter and photographer standing nearby and told them that if they took pictures or wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would take away their press credentials and kick them out of the state.
"No photos. No stories," said the man, wearing camouflage fatigues and a red beret.
On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.
But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn't being followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires media to be 300 meters -- more than three football fields in length -- away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military operations. Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 10:59 PM
Response to Original message
72. Pre, During & After Timelines

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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:00 PM
Response to Reply #72
73. ThinkProgress timeline (found on DU on 9/7)
http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:32 PM
Response to Reply #72
88. Washington Monthly FEMA/NOLA timeline
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/20...
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:12 AM
Response to Reply #72
92. Talking Points Memo timeline
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/katrina-timeline.php
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:15 AM
Response to Reply #72
94. AlterNet Blog *Interactive* Timeline "Drowning in a Bathtub"
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 12:15 AM by Angry Girl
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/25182
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:25 AM
Response to Reply #72
132. Washington Monthly timeline
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/20...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:41 AM
Response to Reply #72
175. John Marshall's timeline
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/katrina-timeline.php
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:44 AM
Response to Reply #72
176. CNNhttp://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/katrina/interactive/ti...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 05:20 PM
Response to Reply #72
223. WWTV: Updates as they come in on Katrina
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG090705.6b8226...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 12:11 AM
Response to Reply #72
245. Guerilla News Timeline
http://www.guerrillanews.com/articles/1663/System_Failu...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 01:34 PM
Response to Reply #72
253. 9/9 Blog with Compilation of Links to Timelines (& may be Useful Sites)
From http://www.mahablog.com / :
To help fight the rising flood of lies coming from the Right, be sure to clip & save the following resources:
The Katrina Timeline at Think Progress.
http://www.thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline
The Katrina Timeline at Uggabugga.
http://uggabugga.blogspot.com/2005/09/katrina-timeline-...
The Katrina Timeline at Dkosopedia.
(Link not working at the time I posted this so I can't it right now.)
The Katrina Timeline at Nobody Knows Anything.
http://www.nobody-knows-anything.com/2005/09/a_short_ka...
The Katrina Timeline at Talking Points Memo.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/katrina-timeline.php
The Katrina Timeline at The Brookings Institution (PDF)
http://www.brookings.edu/fp/projects/homeland/katrinati...
The Katrina Timeline at Right Wing Nuthouse*
http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2005/09/04/katrin... /
*A conservative site, but several lefties have vouched for it.
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Shadder (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 04:19 PM
Response to Reply #72
260. katrinatimeline.org
http://www.katrinatimeline.org
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DrDebug (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 08:05 PM
Response to Reply #72
284. Timeline leading upto the Katrina hitting the Gulf Coas
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 07:24 PM
Response to Reply #72
416. NOLA: the web blog -timeline of the Times Picayune Excellent
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlo...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:01 PM
Response to Original message
74. Other great Katrina Resources...list websites

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:06 PM
Response to Reply #74
76. Crooks and liers: important video doctumentation
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/01.html#a4738
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:11 PM
Response to Reply #74
78. Lexis-Nexis Hurricane Katrina DATABASE of articles
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,37...
Nightweed's Hurricane Katrina Aid Organizations
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:22 AM
Response to Reply #78
130. And it is free! Free Lexis Nexis for Katrina articles:
You ever Wanted to Read about Katrina
Database giant Lexis-Nexis, which archives more newspapers and magazines than any other company, has opened the floodgates to its Katrina coverage, offering Web surfers free access to any article it has about the unfolding state of emergency on the Gulf Coast.

NASA
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,37... Lexis-Nexis has made publicly accessible its enormous database of articles on the Katrina catastrophe.
Back during the tsunami in South Asia we linked to Reuters AlertNet, a free and invaluable service that combines the news agency's reports with information helpful to nonprofit organizations working in disaster and crisis zones. We were happy to see this week that Lexis-Nexis, the world's largest news database, with more than 4,000 sources in the United States and around the world, has created a special portal that opens the gates to all of the coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the recovery operation in its databank.
You can find reporting from most of the regional papers in the hurricane region, including The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Lousiana, the Sun Herald in Biloxi, Mississippi and the Houston Chronicle, which is reporting daily on the New Orleans refugees who have been relocated to the city. The site also provides a glimpse of how the rest of the world is covering Katrina and gives you links to the latest statements from President George W. Bush, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:12 PM
Response to Reply #74
79. Katrina timeline...DU's own Shadder..Very Good
http://www.katrinatimeline.org/
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:17 AM
Response to Reply #74
95. Everything you wanted to read about K at Spiegel Mag online
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
Everything You ever Wanted to Read about Katrina
I found this in 'Spiegel magazine, online':
SPIEGEL SURFS THE WEB
Everything You ever Wanted to Read about Katrina
Database giant Lexis-Nexis, which archives more newspapers and magazines than any other company, has opened the floodgates to its Katrina coverage, offering Web surfers free access to any article it has about the unfolding state of emergency on the Gulf Coast.
Back during the tsunami in South Asia we linked to Reuters AlertNet, a free and invaluable service that combines the news agency's reports with information helpful to nonprofit organizations working in disaster and crisis zones. We were happy to see this week that Lexis-Nexis, the world's largest news database, with more than 4,000 sources in the United States and around the world, has created a special portal that opens the gates to all of the coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the recovery operation in its databank.
You can find reporting from most of the regional papers in the hurricane region, including The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Lousiana, the Sun Herald in Biloxi, Mississippi and the Houston Chronicle, which is reporting daily on the New Orleans refugees who have been relocated to the city. The site also provides a glimpse of how the rest of the world is covering Katrina and gives you links to the latest statements from President George W. Bush, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,37...
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skids (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:17 AM
Response to Reply #74
97. wiki links.
http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Hurricane_Katrina_t...
http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Hurricane_Katrina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
Lots of time some great material is buried in archives of the talk pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hurricane_Katrina Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:47 AM
Response to Reply #74
118. Times-Picayune Special 5-Part Report: Washing Away
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway/
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:51 AM
Response to Reply #74
121. IRE Resources for hurricanes + Katrina Aftermath (vast)
IRE = Investigative ReLarge collection of articles and info
http://www.ire.org/inthenews_archive/hurricane.html
http://www.ire.org/inthenews_archive/katrina.html
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:59 AM
Response to Reply #74
137. WWL Blog spot...also WWL TV
There is a lot of info in this thread.
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 02:15 AM
Response to Reply #74
138. A live blog fron NO throughout the disaster:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:05 AM
Response to Reply #74
146. Global Free Press...Katrina Videos
http://news.globalfreepress.com/gallery/index.php?cat=1...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:35 AM
Response to Reply #74
149. Katrina Audio, video and image archive
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:24 PM
Response to Reply #149
232. discussion of this archive
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:27 AM
Response to Reply #74
168. Websites with interesting articles:
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/09/criminal...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
http://xymphora.blogspot.com /
http://rhosgobel.blogspot.com /Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:39 AM
Response to Reply #74
174. John Marshall
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 09:06 AM
Response to Reply #74
188. CBS Katrina disaster blog See links to dates below:
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 09:10 AM by mom catPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 09:16 AM
Response to Reply #188
189. Aug 31:CBS Katrina Disaster Blog
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/01/katrina/main8... 5:10 p.m.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Wednesday his administration was moving quickly to save lives and provide sustenance to uncounted victims of Hurricane Katrina but recovery "will take years'' from the storm that laid waste to the Gulf Coast.
"We're dealing with one of the worst national disasters in our nation's history,'' he said at the news conference hours after an aerial tour of the area.
"This is going to be a difficult road,'' he added, and made it clear the impact could broaden well past the four states along the battered coast.
"Our citizens must understand this storm has disrupted the capacity to make gasoline and to distribute gasoline,'' the president said.
(note oil)
more
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 10:04 AM
Response to Reply #188
196. Sept 1;
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/02/katrina/main8...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 10:07 AM
Response to Reply #188
197. Sept 2:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/03/katrina/main8...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 10:10 AM
Response to Reply #188
198. Sept 3
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/31/katrina/main8...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:04 PM
Response to Reply #188
206. CBS Disaster on the Gulf - home page

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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 04:35 PM
Response to Reply #74
261. Yurica re- Katrina--Includes disturbing info re- "End Game"
From http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
Ominous Katrina-inspired Reports from Yurica--Read Up!
From an email:
The Yurica Report set up a new directory with links to links and about 75 articles! It is all on the Hurricane and FEMA and mismanagement! With a hint of things yet to come. Many of these articles are shocking. Still, you may want to pass this on to your friends. Do take the time to download the 49 page report from ICE called The End Game, its in a PDF file and well worth your time to see how the immigration department, now called ICE, has suddenly become one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the U.S. (and probably the world). The End Game is their plan to create temporary cities--to hold around 5 million people! It began in 2002. You can download The End Game by clicking here:
http://www.yuricareport.com/Civil%20Rights/Endgame.pdf
It is about 1257 KB so it will take a while to download. Our question is why the Feds did not produce some of their temporary housing facilities for the people in New Orleans.
The Directory is at: http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/HurricaneDisasterD...
Here are some excerpts from the Directory and their links that should give you a sense of the breadth and width of our coverage: The first group is on FEMA and ICE. The second group focuses on the hurricane and gives eye witness accounts of FEMA's interference and obstruction, etc.
Over 45 Articles! Don't miss one of the great journalistic investigations of
the decade!
FEMA Under Bush Leaves
a Long Trail of Corruption
Investigations by Florida's Sun-Sentinel
Reporters Reveal Republican Miami-Dade
County, which suffered little or no hurricane
damage, received the bulk of the aid, while
Broward County, a Democratic stronghold
received little. Here are over 45 stories
revealing a trail of stunning corruption
and mismanagement including the
fact that 20% of FEMA inspectors had
criminal records:
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/FEMAunderBushTrail...
When Hurricane Frances hit South Florida Labor
Day weekend, 100 miles north of Miami-Dade
County, but Sun-Sentinel reporters found
that the federal government approved $28
million in storm claims there for new furniture
and clothes and thousands of new televisions
microwaves, refrigerators and other appliances.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency
paid for new cars, dental bills and a funeral
even though the Medical Examiner recorded
no deaths from Frances... The reports have
prompted calls for investigations by federal
and state officials and the beginnings of an
inquiry by the Inspector General for the
Department of Homeland
Security.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/FEMAunderBushTrail...
FEMA Prepared for Mass
Destruction of U.S. Cities
Starting in 2002
Crash effort was made to create temporary
cities to handle millions of displaced
persons by January of 2003.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Civil%20Rights/FEMAPlanForE...
$300 million dollars of contracts awarded:
So where are they?
http://www.yuricareport.com/Civil%20Rights/FEMAPlanForE...
ICE Deploys Over 700 Law
Enforcement Officers to
Golf Coast
Sept. 8, 2005
WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today
announced that over the past ten days it
has deployed roughly 725 law enforcement
and support personnel from around the country
to the Gulf Coast as part of the governments
response to Hurricane Katrina.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/ICE_SentOver700toG...
Read about the Camps of ICE
Where in the past the US Immigration authorities
have detained their prisoners in various holding
facilities, to include County Jails, Municipal Jails,
Federal Prisons, they have embarked upon this
ENDGAME plan which will make them the largest
jailer of human beings in all of history.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Civil%20Rights/TheCampsOfIC...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW: Bush Requests $51.8 Billion More
for Relief
GOP Leaders Launch Inquiry on Katrina
Preparation and Response
By Jonathan Weisman and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
President Bush sent Congress a request for
$51.8 billion in additional hurricane relief yesterday,
raising Katrinas cost to the federal government
to $62.3 billion so far, easily a record for domestic
disaster relief. Separately, Republican leaders
moved to try to contain the political fallout from
Katrina, forming a joint House Senate review
committee of senior lawmakers who will
investigate the government's preparation
and initial response to the catastrophe.
Democrats called again for an independent
probe similar to the investigation of the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/BushRequests$51.8M...
NEW: FEMA Turned Away Aid, Rescue
Crews, Cut Emergency Communication
Lines:
Witnesses Agency draws ire of frustrated
volunteers and donors
by Dru Oja Jay
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, several witnesses
have alleged that the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) turned away volunteers who were
ready to help New Orleans residents people trapped
in their flooded homes. Other witnesses have said that
FEMA turned away offers of aid, prevented water and
fuel from reaching people on the ground, and cut
emergency communications lines.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/FemaCutEmergencyPh...
Why FEMA failed
Ideologically opposed to a strong
federal role in disaster relief and obsessed
with terrorism, the Bush administration
let a once-admired agency fall apart.
By Farhad Manjoo
Sept. 7, 2005 | Days before Hurricane Katrina struck
the Gulf Coast, the city of Chicago drew up a list of
resources it was willing to make available for relief
efforts in areas that might be hit by the storm. Chicago
told the Federal Emergency Management Agency
that in the event of disaster, it could spare more than
100 Chicago police officers, 36 Fire Department
personnel, eight emergency medical experts, more
than 130 staff from Chicagos Department of Public
Health, 140 staff from the Department of Streets &
Sanitation, dozens of trucks and two boats.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/WhyFEMAFailed.html
NEW: Historic MSNBC Meet the Press
with Tim Russert Transcript Reveals
FEMAs Acts of Potentially Criminal
Magnitude
Transcript for September 4
Michael Chertoff, Marc Morial, Mike Tidwell,
Mark Fischetti, David Wessel, Haley Barbour
and Aaron Broussard
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/TimRussertIntervie...
NEW: Techniques of Bush Administration
Exposed: Senior White House Official Lied to
Washington Post. Here is the Correction:
A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov.
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared
a state of emergency. When in fact, she declared
an emergency on Aug. 26. The corrected article
with inserts is below:
Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting
White House Shifts Blame to State and Local
OfficialsBy Manuel Roig-Franzia and Spencer Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 Tens of thousands of
people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from
this ruined city, as Bush administration officials
blamed state and local authorities for what leaders
at all levels have called a failure of the countrys
emergency management.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/BushOfficialsLieAb...
Governor Blanco Declares State
of Emergency
Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco today issued
Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005, declaring a state
of emergency for the state Louisiana as Hurricane
Katrina poses an imminent threat, carrying severe
storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause
flooding and damage to private property and public
facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the
citizens of the state of Louisiana The state of emergency
extends from Friday, August 26, 2005, through Sunday,
September 25, 2005, unless terminated sooner.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/GovBlancoDeclaresE...
Read the full Statement of the Document
that Exonerates Louisiana Officials
Copy of Letter from Governor Blanco to
President Bush
Dated August 28, 2005
Dear Mr. President:
Under the provisions of Section 401 of the Robert T.
Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance
Act, 42 U.S.C. 5121-5206 (Stafford Act), and
implemented by 44 CFR 206.36, I request that
you declare: an expedited major disaster for the
State of Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina, a Category
V Hurricane approaches our coast south of New
Orleans; beginning on August 28, 2005 and continuing.
The affected areas include all the southeastern
parishes including the City of New Orleans directly
impacted by the brunt of the storm and the mid state
and northern parishes accepting the thousands of
citizens forced to evacuate from the impacted areas
directly affected by Hurricane Katrina.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/BlancoToPresident_... In July, 2005: Coastal Advocates
Dismayed by Bush's Opposition
Date: 7/22/2005
Gov. Kathleen Blanco released a copy of a letter to
President Bush on Wednesday in which she encourages
him to visit Louisiana to see the state's coastal erosion
problems firsthand. In it, she touches on concerns
that the deteriorating Louisiana coast threatens critical
oil-industry infrastructure, including transportation
routes and pipelines. Although budget constraints
are said to be the reason for the Bush administration's
opposition, Blanco said, please consider the far
greater costs of not addressing the catastrophic
coastal land loss occurring in Louisiana, land loss
that puts our nation's energy security and economic
future at risk.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/GovBlancoTriedInJu... NEW: The Lethal Tardiness of the Bush
Administration
By Matthew Rothschild
The scope of the disaster that goes by the
name Hurricane Katrina is difficult to fathom
at a distance. All the video on TV and all the
photographs and words in newspapers,
magazines, and on line cannot adequately
describe the loss. A million people homeless,
a death toll likely to rise over 1,000, a great
city submerged, a region devastated-the
enormity was too great to take in.
Even in the first seventy two hours after Katrina
came ashore near New Orleans, it became
obvious that government had failed, at every level.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/LethalTardinessOfB...
Here Is the Story Behind the Hurricane
In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency ranked a major hurricane strike on New
Orleans as among the three likeliest, most
catastrophic disasters facing this country, directly
behind a terrorist strike on New York City.
One of the strongest storms in recorded history
rocked the Gulf Coast, bringing 145 mph winds
and floods of up to 20 feet.
Two months ago, President Bush took an
ax to budget funds that would have helped New
Orleans prepare for such a disaster. The New
Orleans branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
suffered a record $71.2 million reduction in federal
funding, a 44.2 percent reduction from its 2001 levels.
Reports at the time said that thanks to the cuts,
major hurricane and flood protection projects will
not be awarded to local engineering firms.
http://www.yuricareport.com/BushSecondTerm/StoryOfAHurr...
Homeland Security would not let the Red Cross
deliver food
Saturday, September 03, 2005
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post Gazette
As the National Guard delivered food to the New
Orleans convention center yesterday, American
Red Cross officials said that federal emergency
management authorities would not allow them
to do the same.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Disaster/FEMARefusedRedCros...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:19 PM
Response to Reply #74
331. Snopes.com
Edited on Sat Sep-10-05 08:19 PM by snot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
One of the best Katrina references: SNOPES
http://www.snopes.com/politics/katrina/katrina.asp#nagi...
FALSE: That New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco refused President Bush's pleas to declare an emergency in Louisiana before Hurricane Katrina struck.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:47 PM
Response to Reply #74
396. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) Includes Video & Congressional Transcripts
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Just found this — loads o' great Katrina stuff
http://www.ifthisbetreason.com /
A good-sized video dump, "Katrina by the Numbers" and perhaps the best part — transcripts of statements in Congress calling for funds to shore up the levees, etc.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 01:22 AM
Response to Reply #74
526. 9/18 Craigslist
source for on-the-ground reports....craigslist
click on link; to the far right of page are cities---Shreveport, Baton Rouge, etc
then click on various forums
http://www.craigslist.org /Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:13 PM
Response to Original message
80. Pre K: Sci Info - Sci. Am. article = Drowning New Orleans
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 11:14 PM by Angry Girl
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID...
Nightweed's Hurricane Katrina Aid Organizations
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:15 PM
Response to Original message
81. Pre K: What the Gov Knew - PBS NOW: The City in a Bowl
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_neworleans...
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:18 PM
Response to Original message
83. Pre K: What the Gov Knew - Disaster in the Making (FEMA)
http://www.sfbg.com/38/52/news_fema.html
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:21 PM
Response to Original message
84. Pre K: What the Gov Knew - Record NOLA Cuts (June 2005)
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_200...
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:24 PM
Response to Reply #84
86. dammit.... I did this ALL wrong. Really sorry MomCat!!!
Hopefully my list of articles at
http://www.nightweed.com/bushkilledneworleans.html
will redeem me. (I'm not doing any more!) :-o

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-07-05 11:41 PM
Response to Reply #86
90. Oh dear me!
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 11:43 PM by mom cat
now get over it and get back to work...we need you. Just put them in the right place.. This is hard and we will all make mistakes.
You could repost in the right place and self delete what you have put in the wrong place.. That would be ultimate redemption!...Then mom cat would not swat you with her velvet paw!
PS Long time no see! meow!
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Angry Girl (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:30 AM
Response to Reply #90
104. Done! Ignore these dupes pls! (too late to self-delete...)
Yeah, it's been a while! I probably won't be long but it's nice to see you too!
Later!
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 01:09 AM
Response to Reply #104
127. Thanks!
for old times sake....
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 02:33 AM
Response to Original message
141. After K: survivor stories

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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:22 PM
Response to Reply #141
231. INCREDIBLE First Person Katrina Account
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:56 PM
Response to Reply #141
237. Sept 6: First By the Floods, Then By Martial Law
September 6, 2005
First By the Floods, Then By Martial Law
Trapped in New Orleans
By LARRY BRADSHAW
and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY
http://www.counterpunch.org/bradshaw09062005.html
Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreens store at the corner of Royal and Iberville Streets in the city's historic French Quarter remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing, and the milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat.
The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers and prescriptions, and fled the city. Outside Walgreens' windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry. The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized, and the windows at Walgreens gave way to the looters.
There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices and bottled water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead, they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.
We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home on Saturday. We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreens in the French Quarter.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

DrDebug (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 06:49 AM
Response to Reply #237
301. Aug 30: Martial Law Declared in New Orleans; Situation Deteriorating
Published on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 by CBS News
Martial Law Declared in New Orleans; Situation Deteriorating
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0830-10.htm
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana -- Martial Law has been declared in New Orleans as conditions continued to deteriorate. Water levels in The Big Easy and it's suburbs are rising at dangerous levels and officials stated they don't know where the water is coming from. Residents are being urged to get out of New Orleans in any way they can as officials fear "life will be unsustainable" for days or even weeks.
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DrDebug (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 07:12 AM
Response to Reply #141
304. Bigfoot story
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/42309.html
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:10 PM
Response to Reply #141
347. 9/10 (orig 9/2) First Hand Account of getting out of N.O.
First Hand Account of Status as of 9/2 a.m.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
ress=104x4581617 :
Hi Everyone
Matt is home safe and sound. Larry, Matt and Michael were flown home by
Jay this evening. What they told me is so much worse than we are all
imagining.
The reason that the boys left the hotel this morning to try to walk to
safety instead of waiting to be rescued is because they were told they
had to leave the hotel by the afternoon and head toward the Dome (they
said that they were NOT going to do that) and their lives were at stake
as the looters were in their hotel.
They decided that if they didn't try to make it to the highway (knowing
Larry was trying to reach them there) they would not survive where they
were. They heard gunshots every 30 minutes. They packed their suitcases
with essentials (all of the food and water that they had collected and
saved) and used sheets to tie around them to form a backpack. They
walked in the water, trying to avoid all of the debris and dead things
(they were told not to look at dead people) for several blocks until
they got to the highway.
They managed to get over the bridge where the police told them they had
to go back. When the boys tried to stay, the police pulled their
shotguns on them. Finally, a utility truck pulled up and took them back
over the bridge where they proceeded to walk toward Baton Rouge. They
tried to flag down anyone who passed them in a vehicle begging for a
ride but nobody would stop. Finally, a man in a pickup truck stopped and
agreed to take them to BR. All 9 of them crammed into the bed of the
pickup with their bags.
They got to BR where Matt filled the man's truck up with gas for him and
they paid the man money for the ride. They were able to call and tell us
where they were and I called Larry...his phone would not always work and
the boys had a difficult time getting in touch with him so we would have
to wait until Larry called me for the update.
If it hadn't been for Michael's phone having the ability to text message
(his was the only one) and them knowing that Larry was there trying to
reach them, they would not have known what to do or where to go. They
felt they had to try to reach Larry and if it weren't for Jim finding
out the roads and directions they needed to head for, they would not
have made it.
Now that I have said all of this, Larry and Matt have said that if they
did not get out today like they did, they probably would not have made
it out. People were looting the hospitals for the drugs and food. They
were killing people for the clothes, food, water or anything else that
they could use to barter. People were getting their throats slit for
their cars.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 11:12 PM
Response to Reply #141
376. 9/10 (orig 9/4) French Quarter Becomes Oasis of Wary Calm
French Quarter Becomes Oasis of Wary Calm
French Quarter Becomes Oasis of Wary Calm
By JAMES DAO <http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JAME... >
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 - Marty Montgomery stood on his second-floor balcony on Friday night, playing blues on his harmonica into empty French Quarter streets that have never seemed so dark, so desolate - or so threatening.
On the table beside him sat a shotgun that he calls kindness. "If something happens and I have to use it, I'll be killing them with kindness," Mr. Montgomery said, laughing with a tinge of menace.
Life is not so easy these days in the French Quarter, the district of all-night bars, historic homes and voodoo traditions that is the oldest, rowdiest and, these days, driest part of storm-battered New Orleans.
Outside, the Quarter's elegant 150-year-old buildings look relatively unruffled, except for some loosened bricks, having been spared the worst of Hurricane Katrina's winds and sitting high enough to have avoided the flooding. Ceramic flowerpots on every other balcony seem not to have budged, gaslights still burn outside doors, Preservation Hall stands solidly intact, seemingly undamaged.
But inside the gated buildings, the Quarter's few remaining residents feel under siege. Yet their lives go on. And because this is the French Quarter, they go on with a certain style.
(Much more at link above)
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:45 PM
Response to Reply #141
395. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) Charmaine Neville: Couldn't Afford to Leave
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Charmaine Neville's story (she was trapped in N.O.)
http://2theadvocate.com/stories/090405/new_soul001.shtm...
Charmaine Neville, a singer, is daughter of Charles Neville and niece of Aaron, Art, and Cyril. She made it out.
Neville: My soul is New Orleans
What's more, she added, she could not afford to leave when residents were told to evacuate. Many others in New Orleans, home to thousands of poor residents, were in the same boat.
"It wasn't that I wanted to ride out the storm, believe me," Neville said. "Two days before the storm hit, I had spent every penny I had saved getting a new roof put on my house. I didn't have any money. I didn't have a car.
"When they said the storm was coming, I barricaded myself in the house and prayed. Many people in my neighborhood stayed because they didn't have resources. We did not stay because we wanted to be looters or martyrs. We stayed because we had to."
"When we realized they weren't going to pick us up, we had to leave," she said. "So we just started walking, in water, with dead bodies, and fish, this big, and alligators, filth, trash. The smell was horrible."
Some desperate flood victims committed suicide, she said. "Because nobody was coming to help them, they were killing themselves. Some people that just went crazy."
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 03:01 PM
Response to Reply #141
406. 9/11 Account from a friend of a friend
Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 7:11 PM
Greetings.
i will now try to transcribe somewaht our situation as
far as i can remember and if the order is screwy I
apologize.
Day 1.saturday
I attempted to dj a show for robert starnes benefit
but it was cancelled where then i was taken to a
private pty at a hotel to dj the night away thinking
we were still atm safe from any impending REAL danger
from the storm.
day 2 sun morning....
upon returning home i was immediately put on the very
real and very aware danger we faced as i talked to
friend after friend fleeing the city.communicating
with robert starnes (RS-from now on)
we met up with jason warwick to board my house and
flee to the proximus tower to the 10th floor to safely
ride the storm out. we had food water beer etc and me
being a native thought we would basically have a lil
flooding the usual power problems etc. NO BIG DEAL.
rs left for atlanta we hunkered down and time starts
to pass.
(THE STORM)MONDAY
at first it was super-normal in all respects. rain
wind, nothing uncommon in the many many hurricanes ive
been in. then it got closer and closer as the night
progressed. rain started to seep thru the walls due to
the sheer sideways motion and force on the winds. we
had power till roughly midnight being the last to lose
it since we were on the city hall and hospital
grid.(thinking at the time we would get it back first
as well)
winds hurl the wall unit air conditioner thru the
computer lab office and 180 mph winds rip thru the
office as i frantically try to reach out a 10 story
window to pull a window shut to no avail. we flee to
the bathrooms to barely sleep the remainder of the
storm out as the building shudders around us. the
computer office is a veritable vortex of debris and
water as we further ride the night out in sweltering
heat and wetness all around.the storm passes finally
and we walk out in to the tuesday morning.
Tuesday
A bomb has blown new orleans to pieces. when i say
glass i mean glass. every window is completely blown
to bits. the glass is everywhere cars are turned over,
all street lights are gone. girders from other
buildings are sticking out and thru the concrete walls
of other buildings.the hyatt looks like something from
independance day...all the curtians blow in the wind
cauce not one window remains in the 40 story
structure.we see maybe 5 guards men viechles, and not
much else of any other department.what you need to
realize now is that there isnt one working piece of
communication EQ left anywhere. this is where it
began, no one knew it yet though.the levee was
breached and filling the city but no one knew or could
warn them it was happening.the chinese restaurant up
the street might open, we try fail and return to the
tower. ppl zombified mill about slowly inspecting
things and are clueless as what to do atm. the roof of
the superdome is ripped to shreds and all we keep
hearing is go to the superdome, go to the
superdome...F*** THAT! there are barely any police
around and rumors start to mill greatly about
everything imaginable..but most seems calm atm in the
cbd. we check out property in the 9th ward find it to
be basically intact and decide to stick it out in the
tower one more day thinking we will get power
asap.watching out the window till we fall asleep again
we assume the worst is over.we were wrong of course.
at this point i lose track of days so bear with me.
the streets fill with water rapidly.we all move out to
check on our house in the 9th ward to move camp there
asap. the water is roughly 3 feet atm.
house is ok we return to the tower to gather basic
belongings and jackies cats. we set out into the water
again the looting is everywhere. canal street is a
total riot zone. all and every store imaginable is
being ransacked, jewelry,clothes,shoe etc. NO ONE IS
TAKING F****** FOOD! OR WATER!
we get thru the french quarter and stop by the local
grocery store to see whats up. its overrun by the
basically peaceful looters. food, drink supplies etc.
the guard and police are there but quickly leave, the
manager of the store is there and even calls out that
its ok to supply ourselves but to plz not destroy the
place. some listen and keep orderly most do not. we
take out looted rations back to the house and head out
again for more. we have a good cache of food and
liquids atm and try to settle down for the night.
night travel is out of the question we are not armed
yet.
wednesday (i think)
we wake in the sweltering heat to ride out thru the
neighborhoods and to recon. now keep in mind the
majority of the populace and remaining citizns has
ALREADY!! returned to a semi-tribal and gang like
escape from new york like state. 2 fucking days!
we are wandering bands.
we see some of the ppl we are with now are staying for
the moment and we do more recon into the city. we loot
a circle k for electrolytes and carbs. a blind man
approaches me and aske me what way hes supposed to
walk up the street to avoid the debris.the way is
almost totally impassable, there is no way to go.
people stare at me in total fear in my uniform due to
my glover and mask. they scramble to me for answers i
do not have nor supplies to give.then i get yelled at
and most ppl leave in disgust. i am working for no
agency i keep repeating to no avail.everyone is lost
and there is no communication. most ppl still are
grabbing smokes beer liquor etc. we hit the walgreens
for jackies medicine and start passing out the heart
medicine and insulin to the sreaming old people in
kneew deep water trying to look for their
prescriptions. i have at this point donned my emt gear
and although not currently certified in LA i went
freelance to try to put and official face on for
calming ppl and to ward off would be attackers.we
basically take 3 sorties for supplies and return to
our neighborhood to clean,gather and do patrols for
safety.
at this point we are armed with brass knuckles,bats
knives and axe handles. most is quiet in the
neighborhood. we see no police,guard or anything just
non stop helicopters in the sky all day.it rains
somewhat to our relief to cool us and fill some
makeshift water catches i made. up the street there
are bonfires for meeting places, the neighborhood is
now heavily armed and point all weapons outward. we
are 1 block from m-16 armed navy guardsmen at the base
that do nothing for us but say stay away from the gate
and go back to their bottled water. no police no help
no anything. we hear on the radio that 2 levees are
broken and we might all flood out. in the 9th ward
where we are on the river we are pretty much the last
island left in the city. the french quarter is over
run,cops are looting just as bad as the ppl for
supplies setting up armed posts around the a&p and a
french quarter walgreens. the officials are losing it
on the radio. there is no communication there is
nothing, chaos fills the streets and danger at every
corner. fires are ripping thru the city, no FD, no
water to do anything. some police in our neighborhood
pull thru and rip open a small food mart and take lots
of beer then throw us all sorts of canned goods and
dry goods. they leave...we find a gun.
..32 caliber hand pistol, the owners more likely. we
now have a gun, brass knuckles, an axe and large ice
picks. we look like frickin thunderdome.
a bbq is set up for that night at a local mans house 1
block away. he has a generator and is armed as well.
he has 10 ppl from st bernard parish in his home. a
whole family that was pulled thru an attic and left on
the nearest bridge to go where they were not told or
even pointed too. the mans house we were at found them
wandering in the dark and took them in to feed them
till he could get them in a direction. i tended wounds
and watched tv images for the first time in days (he
had a generator semi-working)we saw for the first time
how truly insane the situation we were in was.
night falls.
4am
a 500 foot high explosion roars thru the night sky
sending us from our beds. i run up the street to get
info. a propane and firework warehouse
?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
has blown sky high. the fire is still burning as far
as i know.the radio keeps saying go to the super dome
go to the convention center.
we see some of the first troops a humvee shines a
light on us and speeds away into the night maybe 5
soldiers.but they are all going to the cbd where the
concentration of ppl are. we start to hear of the
death filling the streets. i tend to wounds in the
neighborhood and dole out some penicillin. the sky is
still full of choppers and we see no troops or police
or anything anywhere. occasionally as i pass out
meager supplies i see a suv full of heavily armed
police drive by they stare at me in my uniform in
disbelief as to why it seems im bothering to do this.
i just keep quiet and moving along the streets.the man
with the generator has fled. all cars are being
siphoned or already are. city busses are being stolen
and driven thru out streets for fun by local thugs.
more steal forklifts and are playing crash derby in
the streets. things have fully progressed to madmax
and the warriors and every other goddamn movie you
could imagine of this shit but way fuckin worse. we
have sealed our blocks are tread like fuedal ninjas on
the streets ready to kill anyone and anything that
seems dangerous.
my brass knuckles and knives havent left my hands for
days, im patching wounded ppl up with my brass
knuckles attached...then you see a 8 year old ride
down the street on his bike like its a normal day.
bodies are floating up onto the median on st claude
st. packs of wild dogs are everywhere. more buildings
are exploding near the wharf and train tracks. i bring
more supplies to the lil girl up the street her
grandmother steals them from her. she is clinging in a
deathgrip to a wet ruined harry potter book. a man
rides by me saying there is a man trapped in a
building downtown with his leg rotting off...I CAN DO
NOTHING FOR HIM!
i havent the protection or supplies to even enter that
part of the city. the water = death, feces, bodies ,
typhoid, cholera, staph, hepatitus EVERYTHING!
more city busses are being stolen and they start to
crash into houses for fun and look for potential
looting spots. men run down the street with mink coats
as a woman screams for water and baby formula....
SAFE
we finally get the team together and ride out sat
afternoon it is like riding thru pictures of baghdad
or serbia or HELL....we are in hell...everthing is on
fire, bodies are everywhere.....WE STILL SEE NO PPL
TILL THE CBD....its all fucked....with the animals
intact. my dog is dead...say a prayer for akira
please...im crying.....................we saved 3
dogs... 2 cats.... dan, jay poggi, jackie mang, jason
warwick and myself...we are in baton rouge and leave
for ohio at noon tomorrow....
i must stop now if you would like to speak in person i
am at , till tomorrow
peace be with you all...
bryan marchese
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 02:34 AM
Response to Original message
142. After K: How this disaster affects the poor

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:28 AM
Response to Reply #142
169. Sept 2: We Don't See the People in the Rafters
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
JPZenger (890 posts) Fri Sep-02-05 01:52 PM
Response to Original message
3.
We Don't See the People in the Rafters
Edited on Fri Sep-02-05 02:43 PM by JPZenger
One refugee said that we see the people on top of their roofs from helicopters. What we don't see in the media is the many people who have climbed into the rafters and attics of their homes to get away from floodwaters, and who haven't been able to break through the roofs.
-----
Part of the problem is that New Orleans has been sinking over the years, because it was built on a swamp that is compacting over time. Also, the coast around New Orleans has been disappearing - reducing the city's protection from storms. Large wetland areas between the City and Gulf have disappeared over the last 80 years.
New Orleans is about 70% Black. There was massive White flight from the City in the last couple decades. As a result, the Whites live in better drained areas outside of the City. Most of the minorities lived in the lowest lying parts of the City. The county that includes New Orleans has the 7th highest poverty rate in the country.
----
I talked to a mid-level officer in the National Guard last night. He is waiting for the phone call to go, but hasn't received any word. He was extremely angry about the response. He said that the President should have immediately federalized all the National Guard units in the surrounding states. He said there is no excuse for not having enough food and water on the ground - with the military's heavy duty Chinook helicopters and the C-5A military transports - which are some of the largest planes in the world.more
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 01:47 PM
Response to Reply #142
255. Sept 9: Miles Obrien on CNN said the Katrina victims have to sign a waiver
a waiver.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
NNN0LHI (1000+ posts) Fri Sep-09-05 12:00 PM
Original message
Miles Obrien on CNN said the Katrina victims have to sign a waiver to...
Edited on Fri Sep-09-05 12:10 PM by NNN0LHI
...recieve the $2000.00 debit cards that says they will not request any more assistance from the government if they accept it. I guess thats what the chaos was about yesterday at the Astrodome? A million dollars on average for each 9/11 victim and 2 grand per family for these victims. Something doesn't seem right here. I think some lawyers had better get their asses down there pronto.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 06:14 PM
Response to Reply #142
320. Sept 8: New Orleans Population has the Right of Return
http://www.blackcommentator.com/radio_bc/090805/090805_...
Text of Radio BC audio commentary
September 8 2005
New Orleans Population has the Right of Return
Listen Now
The people of New Orleans have a right to return. It is not too early to say so. In fact, it is imperative that we demand the Right of Return now, before the circumstances of the displacement of this population create facts on the ground that cannot be reversed. We have seen, elsewhere in the world, how those who have been displaced are effectively shut out from returning to their origins, and how quickly the public says, well, that’s just water under the bridge – or over the levee. Others, newcomers, will benefit from the tragedy of the previous population’s displacement. This cannot be allowed to occur in New Orleans.
Not only does the Black two-thirds of the city have the right to return, but the federal government has an obligation to direct every resource to making it possible and practical for them to return, and to live productive lives in the city from which they were driven.
The circumstances of displacement are clear. The Bush regime set New Orleans up for a fall, cutting back on funding for the levees in every year of George Bush’s administration. The scenario for precisely the catastrophe that Hurricane Katrina wrought was played out in a regional and federal computerized hurricane war game, just last year, involving a hypothetical Hurricane called “Pam.” The Bush men chose to ignore the data. In legal terms, they showed a depraved indifference to human life – or worse.

After the deluge, this official depravity was compounded by the Bush men’s indifference – or worse – to the plight of those who had no choice but to stay in New Orleans. The facts of federal depravity are so manifest, there is no need to elaborate in this commentary. But the New Orleans diaspora is spreading, uncharted, with no paper trail, and only an ad hoc, improvised charitable money trail. The displaced persons of New Orleans, like the Blanche DuBois character in the Tennessee Williams play, “Streetcar Named Desire,” are now largely dependent on “the kindness of strangers.” That is nothing to celebrate about.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 02:21 PM
Response to Reply #142
436. 9/13 WaPo says N.O. Will Not Be Rebuilt
"A Sad Truth -- Cities Aren't Forever... The city of New Orleans is not going to be rebuilt." Link <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20... >
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:34 AM
Response to Reply #142
461. 9/13 Argument that BushCo. Intended to "Clean Out" the Poor
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
quod erat demonstrandum: It Was Intentional
Please read this:
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report Tuesday afternoon asserting that Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco took the necessary and timely steps needed to secure disaster relief from the federal government, RAW STORY has learned.
The report, which comes after a request by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to review the law and legal accountability relating to Federal action in response to Hurricane Katrina, unequivocally concludes that she did.
"This report closes the book on the Bush Administration's attempts to evade accountability," Conyers said in a statement. "The Bush Administration was caught napping at a critical time."
Link:
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Nonpartisan_congressional...
And, then read this:
Watch Who's Cleaning Up
by Charlie Cray - director of The Center for Corporate Policy in Washington, D.C., and co-author of The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy (Berrett-Koehler, 2004)
September 13, 2005
Some of the same crony contractors who cleaned up in Iraq are beginning to sign big contracts with FEMA. Moreover, the same inexperience and bureaucratic ineptitude that handicapped the agency’s initial response threatens to convert the agency into “an oversized entitlement program,” as former FEMA head-turned Halliburton lobbyist Joe Allbaugh put it in his 2001 confirmation hearings.
The money allocated to rebuild has to be spent. But the current emergency has created a rush to skimp on competitive bidding processes designed to increase potential savings and enhance work quality. A handful of no-bid, “cost-plus” contracts similar to the ones handed out in Iraq have already been signed—with some of the same companies. This time the administration has begun to use the current emergency as an excuse to circumvent routine competitive-bidding processes, while virtually deflecting the hundreds of businesses that have been calling the Army Corps and FEMA to learn how they can get in on the action. We can expect new tales of wasted money and shoddy work.
Bechtel, the giant construction and engineering firm hired through a no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq’s electricity and water infrastructure, is reportedly in negotiation with FEMA for a contract to provide temporary housing, as is Fluor, another politically connected company that also worked in Iraq.
<clip>
The survivors of the hurricane deserve a speedy and effective clean-up and reconstruction effort. America’s taxpayers who are underwriting that effort expect the bidding process to be fair and transparent. In their unbridled greed, the corporate “disaster lobby” is pushing a wave of earmarks and deficit expenditures that threaten to further bankrupt the nation’s treasury at the same time that it fails the people of the Gulf.
Link:
http://www.tompaine.com/print/watch_whos_cleaning_up.ph...
And then read this:
As we all sit in dismay watching the bodies float through the streets of New Orleans on TV, it may seem like the free market bears no real connection to this weather-driven event. And yet what we are watching is the ultimate product of our market-driven society: the eradication of the lower class – in this case poor African Americans -- by economic cleansing. While a hurricane may be the agent, Katrina is shining a spotlight on the reality of what America has become, a society that has traded in its moral principles for market principles.
The free market is not just an economic theory, it is an entire belief system based on the principle of competition, i.e. me vs. you. This system cannot survive, however, unless it is restrained by a framework of higher values based on the principle of unity, i.e. us. The tremendous success of America has always been the product of the delicate balance between these two belief systems, one emanating primarily from the world of business, and the other from the Judeo-Christian tradition. However, for diverse reasons—technological and cultural—market forces have become extraordinarily strong in recent decades, to the point where the market belief system now permeates all aspects of American life. The result is that we no longer care about “us” the way we once did, with devastating results.
<clip>
A Me Society will never build a great civilization and it is folly to promote any theory that maintains otherwise. We need to understand that the market belief system is only part of our society, and the lower part at that. Without those values that promote social unity, be they cultural, familial, religious, aesthetic, moral, or democratic, the water will continue to rise.
From Economic Cleansing in America by Paul Stiles on September 13, 2004
More at link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-stiles/economic-clea...
And, now look at exactly what Bush and the neoconsters have been doing at the UN since they inserted Bolton, against the will of the Senate:
Unbeknownst to the US public, however, at the very time impoverished Americans are being showered with support from the world community, the Bush administration’s newly appointed UN ambassador, John Bolton, has been waging an all-out attack on the global poor.
<clip>
But even before the first world leader landed in New York, John Bolton threw the process in turmoil. In a letter to the other 190 UN member states, Bolton wrote that the United States “does not accept global aid targets” — a clear break with the pledge agreed to by the Clinton administration. (While some countries, including Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have already reached the aid target of 0.7 percent, the United States lags far behind, spending a mere 0.16 percent of its GDP on development.)
<clip>
Finally, with global resources that could used to alleviate poverty instead going into the never-ending arms race, Bolton’s agenda moves us in the direction of an even more dangerous and violent world. He tried to eliminate the principle that the use of force should be considered as an instrument of last resort, slash references to the International Criminal Court and calls for the nuclear powers to make greater progress toward dismantling their nuclear weapons, and cut language that would discourage Security Council members from blocking actions to end genocide.
John Bolton’s slash-and-burn style has convinced many global leaders that the US agenda is not to reform the United Nations but to gut it. In fact, Bolton even called for deleting a clause saying the United Nations should be provided with “the resources needed to fully implement its mandates.”
From On Eve of World Summit, Hurricane Bolton Threatens to Wreak Havoc on the Global Poor
by Medea Benjamin
Much more detail at the link:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0913-36.htm
Senator Kerry commented on Bush's highly parsed 'responsibility' statement in the following way: ""The President has done the obvious, only after it was clear he couldn’t get away with the inexcusable." (TPM - http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_... )
However, I think it should be clear that whatever Bush and the neoconsters may say, they have gotten away with the inexcusable and no one is stopping them from more of the same. No. One.
Specifically, see New Orleans for what it was meant to be -- a message to the entire world that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and all their buddies partied while American citizens drowned. That's the message.
The mullahs in Tehran undoubtedly 'get it'; folk at the Kremlin and in Beijing undoubtedly 'get it.'
Bush is blasting away on the boarder of Syria, knowingly goading the Iranians. He is threatening Syria, knowingly goading the Iranians.
Bechtel and Halliburton and others have spent billions hardening and expanding strike bases in Iraq. And, Bush today pushed aside the supposed President of Iraq by countering that timetables for withdrawal of American troops are not on the table.
And, Bolton, for the past several weeks has been making it obvious to every Member State of the UN that Bush and his regime will act unilaterally and aggressively, whenever and wherever.
I submit that the economic cleansing, on the part of Bush and the neoconsters extends to every impoverished person on the planet.
I think Bush and the neoconsters have zero regard for life; they've done the math, they know the population on the planet today is not sustainable, they know that without water and power much of that population will be dead within a decade or less, and if we need any evidence of how willing they are to let it happen just look at Darfur, what AIDS is going to do to much of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, their reluctance to contribute on an appropriate scale to the UN Millennium Project, and New Orleans.
They do not care about life - except their own. They have told us precisely what their real goals are in all their PNAC pronouncements and most Americans do not know what PNAC is.
Not only do Bolton's actions Q.E.D. the reality that "New Orleans" was intentional and they have every intention of disrupting assistance to the world's impoverished; it Q.E.D. the reality that Bush and the neoconsters are now unaccountable in America, are set on dismantling the UN, and no one with either corporate or institutional power in the United States are stopping them.
No One.
quod erat demonstrandum: It Was Intentional -- and the whole world knows it.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
quod erat demonstrandum: It Was Intentional
Please read this:
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report Tuesday afternoon asserting that Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco took the necessary and timely steps needed to secure disaster relief from the federal government, RAW STORY has learned.
The report, which comes after a request by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to review the law and legal accountability relating to Federal action in response to Hurricane Katrina, unequivocally concludes that she did.
"This report closes the book on the Bush Administration's attempts to evade accountability," Conyers said in a statement. "The Bush Administration was caught napping at a critical time."
Link:
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Nonpartisan_congressional...
And, then read this:
Watch Who's Cleaning Up
by Charlie Cray - director of The Center for Corporate Policy in Washington, D.C., and co-author of The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy (Berrett-Koehler, 2004)
September 13, 2005
Some of the same crony contractors who cleaned up in Iraq are beginning to sign big contracts with FEMA. Moreover, the same inexperience and bureaucratic ineptitude that handicapped the agency’s initial response threatens to convert the agency into “an oversized entitlement program,” as former FEMA head-turned Halliburton lobbyist Joe Allbaugh put it in his 2001 confirmation hearings.
The money allocated to rebuild has to be spent. But the current emergency has created a rush to skimp on competitive bidding processes designed to increase potential savings and enhance work quality. A handful of no-bid, “cost-plus” contracts similar to the ones handed out in Iraq have already been signed—with some of the same companies. This time the administration has begun to use the current emergency as an excuse to circumvent routine competitive-bidding processes, while virtually deflecting the hundreds of businesses that have been calling the Army Corps and FEMA to learn how they can get in on the action. We can expect new tales of wasted money and shoddy work.
Bechtel, the giant construction and engineering firm hired through a no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq’s electricity and water infrastructure, is reportedly in negotiation with FEMA for a contract to provide temporary housing, as is Fluor, another politically connected company that also worked in Iraq.
<clip>
The survivors of the hurricane deserve a speedy and effective clean-up and reconstruction effort. America’s taxpayers who are underwriting that effort expect the bidding process to be fair and transparent. In their unbridled greed, the corporate “disaster lobby” is pushing a wave of earmarks and deficit expenditures that threaten to further bankrupt the nation’s treasury at the same time that it fails the people of the Gulf.
Link:
http://www.tompaine.com/print/watch_whos_cleaning_up.ph...
And then read this:
As we all sit in dismay watching the bodies float through the streets of New Orleans on TV, it may seem like the free market bears no real connection to this weather-driven event. And yet what we are watching is the ultimate product of our market-driven society: the eradication of the lower class – in this case poor African Americans -- by economic cleansing. While a hurricane may be the agent, Katrina is shining a spotlight on the reality of what America has become, a society that has traded in its moral principles for market principles.
The free market is not just an economic theory, it is an entire belief system based on the principle of competition, i.e. me vs. you. This system cannot survive, however, unless it is restrained by a framework of higher values based on the principle of unity, i.e. us. The tremendous success of America has always been the product of the delicate balance between these two belief systems, one emanating primarily from the world of business, and the other from the Judeo-Christian tradition. However, for diverse reasons—technological and cultural—market forces have become extraordinarily strong in recent decades, to the point where the market belief system now permeates all aspects of American life. The result is that we no longer care about “us” the way we once did, with devastating results.
<clip>
A Me Society will never build a great civilization and it is folly to promote any theory that maintains otherwise. We need to understand that the market belief system is only part of our society, and the lower part at that. Without those values that promote social unity, be they cultural, familial, religious, aesthetic, moral, or democratic, the water will continue to rise.
From Economic Cleansing in America by Paul Stiles on September 13, 2004
More at link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-stiles/economic-clea...
And, now look at exactly what Bush and the neoconsters have been doing at the UN since they inserted Bolton, against the will of the Senate:
Unbeknownst to the US public, however, at the very time impoverished Americans are being showered with support from the world community, the Bush administration’s newly appointed UN ambassador, John Bolton, has been waging an all-out attack on the global poor.
<clip>
But even before the first world leader landed in New York, John Bolton threw the process in turmoil. In a letter to the other 190 UN member states, Bolton wrote that the United States “does not accept global aid targets” — a clear break with the pledge agreed to by the Clinton administration. (While some countries, including Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have already reached the aid target of 0.7 percent, the United States lags far behind, spending a mere 0.16 percent of its GDP on development.)
<clip>
Finally, with global resources that could used to alleviate poverty instead going into the never-ending arms race, Bolton’s agenda moves us in the direction of an even more dangerous and violent world. He tried to eliminate the principle that the use of force should be considered as an instrument of last resort, slash references to the International Criminal Court and calls for the nuclear powers to make greater progress toward dismantling their nuclear weapons, and cut language that would discourage Security Council members from blocking actions to end genocide.
John Bolton’s slash-and-burn style has convinced many global leaders that the US agenda is not to reform the United Nations but to gut it. In fact, Bolton even called for deleting a clause saying the United Nations should be provided with “the resources needed to fully implement its mandates.”
From On Eve of World Summit, Hurricane Bolton Threatens to Wreak Havoc on the Global Poor
by Medea Benjamin
Much more detail at the link:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0913-36.htm
Senator Kerry commented on Bush's highly parsed 'responsibility' statement in the following way: ""The President has done the obvious, only after it was clear he couldn’t get away with the inexcusable." (TPM - http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_... )
However, I think it should be clear that whatever Bush and the neoconsters may say, they have gotten away with the inexcusable and no one is stopping them from more of the same. No. One.
Specifically, see New Orleans for what it was meant to be -- a message to the entire world that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and all their buddies partied while American citizens drowned. That's the message.
The mullahs in Tehran undoubtedly 'get it'; folk at the Kremlin and in Beijing undoubtedly 'get it.'
Bush is blasting away on the boarder of Syria, knowingly goading the Iranians. He is threatening Syria, knowingly goading the Iranians.
Bechtel and Halliburton and others have spent billions hardening and expanding strike bases in Iraq. And, Bush today pushed aside the supposed President of Iraq by countering that timetables for withdrawal of American troops are not on the table.
And, Bolton, for the past several weeks has been making it obvious to every Member State of the UN that Bush and his regime will act unilaterally and aggressively, whenever and wherever.
I submit that the economic cleansing, on the part of Bush and the neoconsters extends to every impoverished person on the planet.
I think Bush and the neoconsters have zero regard for life; they've done the math, they know the population on the planet today is not sustainable, they know that without water and power much of that population will be dead within a decade or less, and if we need any evidence of how willing they are to let it happen just look at Darfur, what AIDS is going to do to much of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, their reluctance to contribute on an appropriate scale to the UN Millennium Project, and New Orleans.
They do not care about life - except their own. They have told us precisely what their real goals are in all their PNAC pronouncements and most Americans do not know what PNAC is.
Not only do Bolton's actions Q.E.D. the reality that "New Orleans" was intentional and they have every intention of disrupting assistance to the world's impoverished; it Q.E.D. the reality that Bush and the neoconsters are now unaccountable in America, are set on dismantling the UN, and no one with either corporate or institutional power in the United States are stopping them.
No One.
quod erat demonstrandum: It Was Intentional -- and the whole world knows it.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 09:44 PM
Response to Reply #142
480. Sept 11: Exiles from a city and from a nation ( Cornell West)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1567249...
Exiles from a city and from a nation
Cornel West
Sunday September 11, 2005
The Observer It takes something as big as Hurricane Katrina and the misery we saw among the poor black people of New Orleans to get America to focus on race and poverty. It happens about once every 30 or 40 years.
What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most naked manifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where the message for decades has been: 'You are on your own'. Well, they really were on their own for five days in that Superdome, and it was Darwinism in action - the survival of the fittest. People said: 'It looks like something out of the Third World.' Well, New Orleans was Third World long before the hurricane.
It's not just Katrina, it's povertina. People were quick to call them refugees because they looked as if they were from another country. They are. Exiles in America. Their humanity had been rendered invisible so they were never given high priority when the well-to-do got out and the helicopters came for the few. Almost everyone stuck on rooftops, in the shelters, and dying by the side of the road was poor black.
In the end George Bush has to take responsibility. When Kanye West said the President does not care about black people, he was right, although the effects of his policies are different from what goes on in his soul. You have to distinguish between a racist intent and the racist consequences of his policies. Bush is still a 'frat boy', making jokes and trying to please everyone while the Neanderthals behind him push him more to the right.

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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-15-05 03:57 AM
Response to Reply #142
486. 9/14 Bush wants to waive law banning educational segregation for homeless
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Bush wants to waive law that bans educational segregation for homeless
“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL” EDUCATION: The Wall Street Journal reports that Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will ask Congress to waive a federal law that bans educational segregation for homeless children. The Bush administration is arguing, along with states like Utah and Texas, that providing schooling for evacuees – who, in this case, are likened to homeless children — will be disruptive to public school systems, so they want to have sound legal backing for creating separate educational facilities for the 372,000 schoolchildren displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The State of Mississippi is opposed to waiving the Act because they argue the law helps evacuees enroll in schools without red tape.
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/09/14/katrina-excuse/
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-15-05 11:51 PM
Response to Reply #142
494. 9-15 Mental Health Needs of Blacks Acute After Katrina
Mental Health Needs of Blacks Acute After Katrina
The 'New Orleans Stare' -- Mental Health Needs of Blacks Acute After Katrina
News Feature, Kevin Weston, Video: Cliff Parker,
Pacific News Service, Sep 15, 2005
BATON ROUGE, La.--The New Orleans Stare. You can see it in the faces of Katrina survivors here at the evacuation shelter at the River Center in Baton Rouge.
A woman looks blankly at nothing -- rubbing her face and short graying afro with wrinkled brown hands, sitting on a lonely chair outside the complex. Old men sit on the curb smoking cigarettes and talking quietly to one another. Young men try to occupy themselves by talking with relief workers and National Guardsmen with M-16s. The stare -- the facial manifestation of overwhelming loss -- is in all of the evacuees' eyes.
About 2,000 people call the River Center home. The vast majority is African American. Though their immediate physical needs are being met, the mental health issues black people are dealing with are off the radar screen in the debate surrounding the recovery of the Gulf Coast region.
Dr. Rasheda Perine, 32, a New Orleans native, is an assistant professor of psychology at Southern University in Baton Rouge and a practicing clinical psychologist. Her immediate family and a family friend are staying with her, all evacuees from New Orleans. The East New Orleans neighborhood where she grew up has been completely destroyed.
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?arti ... Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 10:08 PM
Response to Reply #142
544. 9/19 911 Operators Heard: 'Help me, please don't let me die'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Help me, please don't let me die' -- 911 operators in NOLA
'Help me, please don't let me die'
911 operators confront grim task, ghastly calls
Operators fall apart once off the phone
By Brian Thevenot
Staff writer
As she took that first call from a woman trapped in her 9th Ward attic, 911 operator Lechia Allen ached with the grim realization that the next call would be the same. And the next. And the next. She couldn't do a thing for any of them.
Working in the downtown 911 center at Broad and Gravier streets, next to the Falstaff antenna, Allen knew police wouldn't respond to calls while the winds of Hurricane Katrina roared. She knew the rescue operation wouldn't start for hours and, in many cases, days. Laboring under the heavy weight of helplessness, all Allen and her 120 fellow operators could do was listen to the terrifying tales of rising waters, raging fires and parents holding their children toward the skies, above the floodwaters.
"They heard people taking their last breaths. They heard people holding children up in the peak of the attics, and dropping children in the water and watching them drown," said New Orleans Police Capt. Steve Gordon, chief of the 911 center.
Some of the nearly all-female staff working with Allen, 44, took calls from the same neighborhoods where they knew their families had stayed to ride out the storm, she said. Some lost loved ones. Others haven't been found.
more....
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/index.ssf?/mtlog...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-20-05 12:43 AM
Response to Reply #142
545. 9/19 Most of damaged housing in NO was affordable, low income (HUD)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Most of damaged housing in NO was affordable, low income housing (HUD)
This information is from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, prepared from HUD numbers: http://www.nlihc.org/mtm/mtm10-36.html#18
<snip>
Nearly 90% of Rental Housing Damaged in New Orleans Affordable to Low Income Households
Housing Units (by Affordability Category)
All Units Destroyed or Damaged (Total / Percent)
Extremely Low Income: ---* ---*
Very Low Income: 57,410 / 40%
Low Income: 54,611 / 38%
Other Income: 30,668 / 21%
TOTALS: 142,690 100%
All Rental Units Destroyed or Damaged (Total / Percent)
Extremely Low Income: 16,094 / 20%
Very Low Income: 24,861 / 32%
Low Income: 29,459 / 37%
Other Income: 8,338 / 11%
TOTALS: 78,753 / 100%
All Low Income
All Units: 112,021 / 79%
Rental Units: 70,415 / 89%
* HUD does not provide data in this dataset on extremely low income homeownership units
Source: NLIHC Research Note #05-02
<unsnip>
Note that when it says "HUD does not provide data in this dataset" that the probable reason for that, I am assuming, is that extremely low income households rarely own their own homes.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 02:52 AM
Response to Original message
144. After K: Impact of Bush's delays

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 02:56 AM
Response to Reply #144
145. Sept 6: Pentagon: USS Bataan Waited Days For Orders to Help Out
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/06/149...
Pentagon: USS Bataan Waited Days For Orders to Help Out
Criticism of the federal government's response is also coming from some unlikely sources including the Pentagon. Lt. Commander Sean Kelly, a Pentagon spokesman for Northern Command, revealed on the BBC that NorthCom was prepared to send in search and rescue helicopters from the USS Bataan almost immediately after the hurricane hit. He said, "We had things ready. The only caveat is: we have to wait until the president authorizes us to do so." That authorization didn't happen for days even though the ship was docked just outside New Orleans. On board the ship had doctors, hospital beds, food and the ability to make up to 100,000 gallons of water a day. Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:45 PM
Response to Reply #144
210. Sept 3: BBC: Norththern Command awaits for word from Bush
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
drm604 (729 posts) Sat Sep-03-05 03:14 PM
Original message
On BBC: Northern Command was in position, waiting for Presidential orders.
Edited on Sat Sep-03-05 03:36 PM by drm604
This was on the episode of BBC World News which played on a local (Philadelphia area) PBS station at 6:00 am this morning. I can't find a stream or transcript online. It's sitting on my TIVO right now marked do not delete but I have no way to put it onto my hard drive and no place to serve it from anyway. If you do have a recording of it, it starts about 9 minutes in. I've done a hand written transcript, the spelling and punctuation are mine. The bolding is also mine to emphasize what I think is the important part. The BBC announcer was interviewing Lieutenant Commander Sean Kelly whom she referred to as Leftenant Commander. This is the entire interview with no missing context.

Announcer: The relief operation is the largest ever conducted in America. It's being coordinated by the US Northern Command in Colorado. Leftenant Commander Sean Kelly explains how the relief effort is being organized.
Kelly: US Northern Command is the command that coordinates the military support for our federal and state agencies. They call up and request a capability and we try and provide that capability, whether it's medical resources, search and rescue helicopters, food, water, transportation, communications; that's what we provide.
A: So it sounds like you're providing a bit of everything. I mean, do you know how much you're actually providing?
K: Right now we've got 4,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and marine and coast guardsmen supporting this. They've delivered more than 9 million meals, I can't remember how many millions of liters of water.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 08:22 PM
Response to Reply #210
285. BBC video of Sean Kelley's statement
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:49 PM
Response to Reply #144
211. Sept 3: BBC: Norththern Command awaits for word from Bush
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
drm604 (729 posts) Sat Sep-03-05 03:14 PM
Original message
On BBC: Northern Command was in position, waiting for Presidential orders.
Edited on Sat Sep-03-05 03:36 PM by drm604
This was on the episode of BBC World News which played on a local (Philadelphia area) PBS station at 6:00 am this morning. I can't find a stream or transcript online. It's sitting on my TIVO right now marked do not delete but I have no way to put it onto my hard drive and no place to serve it from anyway. If you do have a recording of it, it starts about 9 minutes in. I've done a hand written transcript, the spelling and punctuation are mine. The bolding is also mine to emphasize what I think is the important part. The BBC announcer was interviewing Lieutenant Commander Sean Kelly whom she referred to as Leftenant Commander. This is the entire interview with no missing context.

Announcer: The relief operation is the largest ever conducted in America. It's being coordinated by the US Northern Command in Colorado. Leftenant Commander Sean Kelly explains how the relief effort is being organized.
Kelly: US Northern Command is the command that coordinates the military support for our federal and state agencies. They call up and request a capability and we try and provide that capability, whether it's medical resources, search and rescue helicopters, food, water, transportation, communications; that's what we provide.
A: So it sounds like you're providing a bit of everything. I mean, do you know how much you're actually providing?
K: Right now we've got 4,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and marine and coast guardsmen supporting this. They've delivered more than 9 million meals, I can't remember how many millions of liters of water.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:37 PM
Response to Reply #144
359. 9/10 (orig 9/2) Victims eating corpses to survive???
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
"Black hurricane victims . . . eating corpses to survive."
From Randall Robinson on The Huffington Post:
It is reported that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive. Four days after the storm, thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying like dogs. No-one has come to help them.
I am a sixty-four year old African-American.
New Orleans marks the end of the America I strove for.
I am hopeless. I am sad. I am angry against my country for doing nothing when it mattered.
This is what we have come to. This defining watershed moment in America’s racial history. For all the world to witness. For those who’ve been caused to listen for a lifetime to America’s ceaseless hollow bleats about democracy. For Christians, Jews and Muslims at home and abroad. For rich and poor. For African-American soldiers fighting in Iraq. For African-Americans inside the halls of officialdom and out.
My hand shakes with anger as I write. I, the formerly un-jaundiced human rights advocate, have finally come to see my country for what it really is. A monstrous fraud.
But what can I do but write about how I feel. How millions, black like me, must feel at this, the lowest moment in my country’s story.
**********************************************************************
Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randall-robinson/new-orle ...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 01:49 PM
Response to Reply #144
405. 9/11 Cover-Up: N.O. Will Be Toxic for Decades
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
Cover-up: toxic waters 'will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade'
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=14671c0dd ...
Cover-up: toxic waters 'will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Correspondent
Published: 11 September 2005
Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger.
In an exclusive interview, Hugh Kaufman, an expert on toxic waste and responses to environmental disasters at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the way the polluted water was being pumped out was increasing the danger to health.
The pollution was far worse than had been admitted, he said, because his agency was failing to take enough samples and was refusing to make public the results of those it had analysed. "Inept political hacks" running the clean-up will imperil the health of low-income migrant workers by getting them to do the work.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 04:33 PM
Response to Reply #144
408. 9/11 Hospitals Euthanized Rather than Let Patients Die in Agony
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... had to kill our patients /when NO hospitals evac'ed
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/new ...
11/09/05 - News section
We had to kill our patients
by CAROLINE GRAHAM and JO KNOWSLEY, Mail on Sunday
snip:
Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.
In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, one New Orleans doctor told how she 'prayed for God to have mercy on her soul' after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.
Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials. One emergency official, William 'Forest' McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."
Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana, and The Mail on Sunday is protecting the identities of the medical staff concerned to prevent them being made scapegoats for the events of last week.
Their families believe their confessions are an indictment of the appalling failure of American authorities to help those in desperate need after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, claiming thousands of lives and making 500,000 homeless.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-12-05 01:43 AM
Response to Reply #144
418. 9/11 Patients in NO Euthanized
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Patients put down (Euthanasia in New Orleans)
Patients put down
September 12, 2005
DOCTORS working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leave them to die in agony as they evacuated.
With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.
One New Orleans doctor told how she "prayed for God to have mercy on her soul" after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.
Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials.
One emergency official, William Forest McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."
snip
http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,1656685... Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 02:15 PM
Response to Reply #144
434. 9/13 E-mail from friend Re- a Cameraman's ViewKatrina: a cameraman's journal in NOLA <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/13/katrina_a_camerama... >
Xeni Jardin:
Excerpt from a personal diary written by a friend who's a news cameraman working in New Orleans. Name and affiliation withheld by request. This was written on Sunday, September 4th, six days after the storm hit.
New Orleans - The Real Story
It’s September 4th in New Orleans, and unfortunately - no one is getting it right, not the Feds, the State, the Local folks or the media. I’m sure that many people are trying, but for what ever reason- it is a rotting, deteriorating mess.
I’m only writing this because of what I watched on tv last night. It was the first chance I’ve had to see some of the coverage and what I watched was pathetic. I sensed it yesterday when, amongst the chaos of the unfolding disaster, you realized some of the differences between what is happening here compared to major calamities we’ve endured recently.
There are almost no news crews in the field trying to cover the story. Hundreds, if not thousands of media people are in the region - but I have driven back and forth through some of the worst neighborhoods in the city and you don’t see them. You don’t see the National Guard…..you don’t see ANYONE, except for the poor unfortunate souls wandering the streets looking for food or water. Many of them are on their last legs; they are literally not long for this world. It is surreal; it’s like a zombie scene from Dawn of the Dead. It’s disgraceful that in our times, we are seeing the complete disintegration of our ability to care for our own.
This is a racist issue, there’s no other way to look at it. These are the poorest of the poor. The people left behind in New Orleans are there for one reason only; they had no means to remove themselves from the city. Everyone who could get out, got out.
What’s missing from the rescue is apparent to anyone. A simple plan. It’s like no one ever gave it a real thought. Simple things like storage of emergency rations, clothing, tents, etc. in strategic locations….communications that allow different entities to talk to one another, emergency plans and routing for moving large numbers of people (easily done with the hundreds of public and school transit buses available locally), and the list goes on. Everyone on the street that I have met is so grateful for anything that you can give them. You have to be careful or you could start a riot just giving away a bottle of water.
Driving or walking through the flood area, you see people in the shadows on every block. As you walk around - they come out and they are so dehydrated, carrying babies, or leading you to their father or their mother or a friend who needs help. They all say that they want to get out; they just don’t have a way. And they uniformly complain about the police not stopping to help. Over and over you hear the same thing....”They just drawin’ down on people”, meaning they are pulling their guns.
I can only judge from what I saw, but in walking through the worst areas, every looter I saw was taking food and water. They could be shot for entering supermarkets, which by the way are mostly fully stocked with food, water, juices and soda. It’s disgraceful, it’s been almost a week and yet there seems as though no one in Washington, or Baton Rouge who gets the enormity of what is unfolding.
There are dead bodies on the street. Yesterday, I watched as a man tried to flag down a cop. There was a middle aged woman who had been dead for days, and yet no authority seems concerned. We can see that there was no plan for the living, but you would think that there would be some respect for the dead. When he was finally able to get a cop to stop - not an easy thing to do since they drive through at such high speed…. the cop said that they didn’t care about removing bodies. Someone’s mother, or child, she was still there late last night as I drove out.
I have driven from one end of New Orleans to the other - a drive of over 7 miles, and repeatedly not seen one cop, guardsman, trooper…. And where is the Red Cross? Not ONE. Everyone on the street says, “Where’s the Red Cross? I gave them so much money after 9/11 and the tsunami - where’s the Red Cross”. The cops I’ve asked say they are not here because they are afraid. The Red Cross says that the authorities are not letting them in the city. I find that hard to believe. The police can’t even secure a few blocks, let alone keep the Red Cross out. Helping victims in New Orleans is exactly why the Red Cross was created.
People are dying, I’ve seen it personally, and the main organization we look to is no where to be seen. Just like the media who sit on a safe block, or hang around the Superdome or the convention center because it is safe, maybe they are shunning the poor because they are scared. If they are being truthful, then they should take a stand, and deploy their personnel. Otherwise, they are complicit in an ill conceived plot to starve survivors out.
What is particularly sad to me is that I’m no hero. I’m basically a coward, but I don’t find anyone I’ve met on the street to be threatening. They are suffering and desperate and no one has uttered a word other then “help me” or “thank you”.
I watched one of these news robots on the air last night standing at Camp and Canal Street - where it is safe - doing a national live shot saying that “everything is in place now” and “food is being distributed”, and “the National Guard is deployed in force….on the street” - it was pure fiction. This guy hasn’t left the safety of his air conditioned trailer complete with Subway sandwiches (from Baton Rouge) and Gatorade. It’s pathetic.
One can only hope that our Federal officials will get a handle on the Herculean task ahead and that the citizenry will hold them responsible for the unnecessary loss of life.
As for the media… do a little fact checking, read more than one paper. Stay away from CNN, MSNBC and Fox. NPR and Nightline do a good job of looking beyond the headlines. By the way, The Salvation Army is here and they have been able to help in some places. This is a racist/socioeconomic situation.
We all know that if it were somewhere else, like an affluent resort town or a Bush county in Florida, things would be different. Yes, there was looting and gunfire, and there are criminals out there, but they were a small minority of the population. There were tens of thousands of poor, black folk who stayed out of it, and they are still waiting today for any kind of help.
Image <http://flickr.com/photos/ioerror/42603081/ > : Razorwire first, supplies second. Shot by Jacob Appelbaum.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:25 AM
Response to Reply #144
459. 9/13 WH Diverted Crews from Power for Hospitals to Power for Pipelines
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Electric crews diverted from hospital work by White House
Power crews diverted
Restoring pipeline came first
By Nikki Davis Maute
Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast.
That order - to restart two power substations in Collins that serve Colonial Pipeline Co. - delayed efforts by at least 24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in the Pine Belt.
At the time, gasoline was in short supply across the country because of Katrina. Prices increased dramatically and lines formed at pumps across the South.
"I considered it a presidential directive to get those pipelines operating," said Jim Compton, general manager of the South Mississippi Electric Power Association - which distributes power that rural electric cooperatives sell to consumers and businesses.
"I reluctantly agreed to pull half our transmission line crews off other projects and made getting the transmission lines to the Collins substations a priority," Compton said. "Our people were told to work until it was done.
"They did it in 16 hours, and I consider the effort unprecedented."
Katrina slammed into South Mississippi and Southeast Louisiana on Aug. 29, causing widespread devastation and plunging most of the area - including regional medical centers and rural hospitals - into darkness.
The storm also knocked out two power substations in Collins, just north of Hattiesburg. The substations were crucial to Atlanta-based Colonial Pipeline, which moves gasoline and diesel fuel from Texas, through Louisiana and Mississippi and up to the Northeast.
"We were led to believe a national emergency was created when the pipelines were shut down," Compton said.
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:48 AM
Response to Original message
153. Before K: Historical parallels. How other hurricans were handled

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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:49 AM
Response to Reply #153
154. How Castro handled a hurricane:http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:51 AM
Response to Reply #153
155. how did they deal with the bodies after the tsunami?http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:52 AM
Response to Reply #153
156. Compare FEMA Response to Hurricane in FL 2004http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 03:16 PM
Response to Reply #153
318. 9/10 E-mail fr friend Comparing Pres'l Actions Re- Hurricanes Past
In August of 1969 when Cat-5 Hurricane Camille hit roughly the same area as Katrina, President Nixon had already readied the National Guard and ordered all Gulf rescue vessels and equipment from Tampa and Houston to follow the Hurricane in. There were over 1,000 regular military with two dozen helicopters to assist the Coast Guard and National Guard within hours after the skies cleared.
August, 1992 -- Hurricane Andrew -- President H.W. Bush (#41) was in the midst of a brutal campaign for re-election. Yet, he cut off his campaigning the day before and went to Washington where he marshaled the largest military operation on US soil in history. He sent in 7,000 National Guard and 22,000 regular military personnel, and all the gear to begin the clean up within hours after Andrew passed through Florida.
In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd -- a category 3 -- was bearing down the Carolinas and Virginia. President Clinton (#42) was in Christchurch, New Zealand, meeting with President Jiang of China. He made the Presidential proclamation declaring the areas affected by Floyd "Federal Disaster Areas" so the National Guard and Military can begin to mobilize. Then he cut short his meetings overseas and flew home to coordinate the rescue efforts. This all one day BEFORE a Cat-3 hit the coast.
George W. Bush (#43) - August 2005 - Cat-5 Hurricane Katrina bears down on New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf. Both states are down nearly 8,000 National Guard troops because they are in Iraq -- with most of the rescue gear needed. Bush is on vacation. The day before Katrina makes landfall, Bush rides his bike for two hours. The day she hits, he goes to Johnnie McCain's birthday party and lies to old people about the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical company welfare boondoggle. People are dying, the largest port of entry in the United States (and fifth largest in the World) is under attack. Troops and supplies are desperately needed. The levees are cracking and the emergency 1-1/2 ton sandbags are ready, but there aren't enough helicopters or pilots to set them before the levees fail. The mayor of New Orleans begs for Federal coordination, but there is none, and the sandbagging never gets done. So Bush -- naturally -- goes to San Diego to play guitar with the country singer and give another tired speech trying to justify the Iraq oil war. The levees give way, filling New Orleans with water, sewage, oil and chemicals. The city is totally destroyed. Thousands are dead or dying. Bush decides he'll end his vacation a couple of days early -- TOMORROW -- because Rumsfeld has skybox tickets to a Padres game! He goes back to the Farm in Crawford, with every intention of doing something on WEDNESDAY about this disaster that starting happening last Sunday night.
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 03:59 AM
Response to Original message
158. Before K: Who is responsible for what. Organization of federal agencies

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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:00 AM
Response to Reply #158
159. National Distaster Plan
http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRP_FullText.p...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:31 PM
Response to Reply #158
389. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) FEMA contracted IEM to lead planning for hurricane
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Bush's FEMA Failed Us All.
Ex-officials say weakened FEMA botched response
By Frank James and Andrew Martin
Washington Bureau
Published September 3, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Government disaster officials had an action plan if a major hurricane hit New Orleans. They simply didn't execute it when Hurricane Katrina struck.
Thirteen months before Katrina hit New Orleans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill that Ronald Castleman, then the regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called "a very good exercise."
More than a million residents were "evacuated" in the table-top scenario as 120 m.p.h. winds and 20 inches of rain caused widespread flooding that supposedly trapped 300,000 people in the city.
"It was very much an eye-opener," said Castleman, a Republican appointee of President Bush who left FEMA in December for the private sector. "A number of things were identified that we had to deal with, not all of them were solved."
FEMA contracted Innovative Emergency Management to 'lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans'.
In July, 2004, they heldthe 'Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Planning Workshop' it went like this;
Driven by a predetermined scenario, entitled Hurricane Pam, the participants developed 15 functional plans over the course of the week, including: pre-landfall activities; unwatering of leveeenclosed areas; hazardous materials; billeting of response personnel; distribution of power, water, and ice; transport from water to shelter; volunteer and donations management; external
affairs; access control and re-entry; debris; schools; search and rescue; sheltering; temporary housing; and temporary medical care.
The scenario involved a slow-moving Category 3 storm making landfall near Grand Isle in the early morning. In the scenario, the storm, sustaining winds of 120 mph at landfall, spawned tornados, destroyed over 75% of the structures in its path, and left the majority of New Orleans under 15–20 feet of water. The workshop was sponsored by FEMA and LOHSEP, with a weather scenario designed by the National Weather Service and damage and consequences developed by IEM, Inc. of Baton Rouge. IEM, Inc. also facilitated the workshop sessions.
From November 29–December 3, over 90 participants met in New Orleans to continue planning for three topics: sheltering, temporary housing, and temporary medical care. These three topics were chosen by the workshop’s Unified Command as areas that needed continued group planning.
The outcome of these workshops is a series of functional plans that may be implemented immediately. Along with these plans, resource shortfalls were identified early, saving valuable time in the event an actual response is warranted. It is because of the dedication of every workshop participant that Louisiana is much better prepared for a catastrophic hurricane. More here.
A clear case of 'privatization' as failure has rarely been seen.
Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top
By Susan B. Glasser and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 4, 2005; Page A01
...Despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent preparing for the worst, the federal government was not ready when it came at daybreak on Monday, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior officials and outside experts.
Among the flaws they cited: Failure to take the storm seriously before it hit and trigger the government's highest level of response. Rebuffed offers of aid from the military, states and cities. An unfinished new plan meant to guide disaster response. And a slow bureaucracy that waited until late Tuesday to declare the catastrophe "an incident of national significance," the new federal term meant to set off the broadest possible relief effort.
Born out of the confused and uncertain response to 9/11, the massive new Department of Homeland Security was charged with being ready the next time, whether the disaster was wrought by nature or terrorists. The department commanded huge resources as it prepared for deadly scenarios from an airborne anthrax attack to a biological attack with plague to a chlorine-tank explosion.
But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday that his department had failed to find an adequate model for addressing the "ultra-catastrophe" that resulted when Hurricane Katrina's floodwater breached New Orleans's levees and drowned the city, "as if an atomic bomb had been dropped."
Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security has no access to the 'internets'.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 01:27 AM
Response to Reply #158
431. 9/12 An Engineer Re- Who's Responsible for What
9/12 An Engineer Re- Who's Responsible for What
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Thoughts on Katrina from a professional engineer
I've been seeing a lot lately in the news and in the blogs about the "blame game" and who was responsible. Having worked in the engineering private sector interfacing with emergency management, and having spent the past few years working on my PhD in engineering studying hurricane evacuation, I can say that there is plenty of blame to go around. As in civil lawsuits, the question is how much is apportioned to whom.
Every jurisdiction at risk of a hurricane develops emergency procedures to deal with the possible consequences based on the predicted storm severity and expected impacts (eg storm surge). Resource allocation, placement of equipment and other supplies, and responsiblity of each involved agency is laid out in these plans. These plans are typically layered to account for increasing threat. Cat 1 storms don't require nearly the preparation or relocation as Cat 5 storms - obviously. And no city wants to evacuate if avoidable; this is costly both economically and in terms of risk to citizen and personnel.
Once the threat becomes established (based on NHC weather forecasts), these procedures are implemented, and as the threat increases, the additional pre-determined measures (layers) are taken. Emergency procedures don't kick in until certain criteria are met, simply out of practicality. Jurisdictions can't just willy-nilly declare emergencies and begin evacuations at any time, since nature can't be accurately predicted beyond short-term times (Hurricane Charley is a good example). Based on available timelines for Hurricane Katrina (ignoring the GOP-produced bullshit timeline), Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin appear to have done what they were supposed to do, when they were supposed to do it.
Once an emergency is declared, various administrative and jurisdictional procedures kick in. Blanco clearly did this on the Friday prior to landfall, and once the feds acknowledged her request (Saturday morning), they became obligated to aid in any number of specific ways. Mayor Nagin also took the steps assigned to him to move as many people to shelters as possible. The fact that the evacuation reached an unprecedented 80% is an indication of his efforts and his success (when 60% was expected).
(much more)
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:01 AM
Response to Reply #158
453. 9/13 Chertoff Had Authority but Delayed Fed Response
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Memo -Chertoff delayed federal response
Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows
BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY, ALISON YOUNG AND SHANNON MCCAFFREY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
"WASHINGTON - (KRT) - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show
Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm....
But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director."
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/news/politic...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:13 AM
Response to Original message
164. Great DU threads loaded with info

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:15 AM
Response to Reply #164
165. Eloriel's thread...Great info!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:20 AM
Response to Original message
166. After K: General conditions of the rescue efforts

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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:20 AM
Response to Reply #166
167. Sgt. Paul Accardo, 36, N.O.P.D., commits suicide amid Katrina chaos
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/06/police.suicide.ap/inde...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 11:15 PM
Response to Reply #166
377. 9/10 (orig 9/4) Blogged Report from Charity Hospital
http://www.transbuddha.com/index.php/buddha/comments/a_... /
A Note from Charity Hospital in New Orleans
by killdozr <http://www.transbuddha.com/index.php/member/174/ >
I have a friend who managed to escape the city of New Orleans a couple of days after the storm. She is on staff at Charity Hospital, which you have no doubt heard about in the news by now.
She sent this correspondence because she thinks the plight of Charity Hospital, which makes its reputation by healing the poor and uninsured of the city, is being overlooked by the national media, which (of course) is bent on sensationalizing everything in lieu of ratings. This is a short, but powerful blog entry she sent me.
Hi all.
Just so you know, I’m out of New Orleans, fine and in Nashville until further notice.
I am writing to get the word out. As most of you know, I am doing my residency at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. It is a state hospital that serves mostly the poor, and is an integral part of the Gulf Coast health care. Throughout Katrina’s terror, I have been able to talk with one ER doc who has been at Charity since Sunday.
It is 5a.m. Friday morning now. I just got off the phone with him. He is doing well, but is still at the hospital. His outgoing message is (approximately)the following:
“Hey this is Roderick Bennett. Once again, thanks for all your support...for an update, everything is looking a little better,we’ve got some military here, I’m a little worried, as they send us outta here they are talking about making us just like everyone else and sending us along with those who were shooting at us. If anyone knows some way to help us, like sending us to another city, hey, we’d greatly appreciate it...”
In our esteemed Charity ER there are 14 volunteer physicians. They began with 41 patients and then closed the ER, which meant they could not treat anyone during this horrific week. (Please don’t forget, there are to many other physicans and patients on the other wards of the hospital too) They have been in terrible conditions for almost a week. Until yesterday (Thursday) afternoon, there were no armed guards protecting them from gunmen who were after drugs, food and water. They have been hearing that they would be evacuated soon. In fact, when I spoke with the Senators office on Wednesday, I was told that all the hospitals would be evacuated by sundown that day. It is now Friday.
Tulane hospital, a private hospital less than a block away was mostly evacuated as of yesterday.
Here is the gist of my conversation with Dr. Bennett this morning:
He is terribly disappointed at being left behind. About half of the patients were evacuated today. There was a sudden halt when guns were being fired nearby. All but 4 critically ill ICU patients have been evac’d. He expresses deep concern of the lack of haste for lonely , poor old New Orleans. There is no estimated evacuation time at this point.
I am dismayed that our city, which everyone KNEW this would happen to someday, has been thrashed because of poor planning, and little concern. This is dire.
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:33 AM
Response to Original message
171. After K: Bush requests federal takeover of NOLA

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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:34 AM
Response to Reply #171
172. 3/9/05 Bush requested federal takeover
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:47 AM
Response to Original message
178. Pre K: FEMA

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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:47 AM
Response to Reply #178
179. FEMA was there PRIOR to Hurricane Katrina
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0830/p01s02-ussc.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 12:19 PM
Response to Reply #178
208. Pre K :FEMA responsibility (per their own documents) in wiki
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 12:21 PM by mom cat
Federal Emergency Management Agency
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from FEMA)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Emergency_Manageme...
The Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA is an agency of the United States government dedicated to swift response in the event of disasters, both natural and man-made. It is headed by Michael D. Brown.
FEMA coordinates the work of federal, state, and local agencies in responding to floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. FEMA provides financial assistance to individuals and governments to rebuild homes, businesses, and public facilities; trains firefighters and emergency medical professionals; and funds emergency planning throughout the United States and its territories.
FEMA also has responsibilities in the event of a severe accident at a nuclear power plant. <1> <2>
FEMA has responsibilities in what it defines as four domains of emergency management:
Mitigation: Reducing the severity or likelihood of the hazard.
Preparedness: Ensuring you have the capability to respond to the hazard.
Response: Immediate actions taken to save lives, property, the environment, and the economy.
Recovery: Subsequent actions taken to restore property, jobs, and services.
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:25 PM
Response to Reply #178
233. Two Bush 2000 Florida recount aides were rewarded with top FEMA posts
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 03:58 AM
Response to Reply #178
246. FEMA's Hurricane Pam Exercise 2004: Perfect preparation!
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=13051
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N02521178.htm
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 03:59 AM
Response to Reply #178
247. FEMA's Individual Assistance Programs:
http://www.fema.gov/rrr/inassist.shtm
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:50 AM
Response to Original message
180. Post K: Important articles

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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 04:50 AM
Response to Reply #180
181. Salt Lake City Tribune, 9/6/05
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 04:07 AM
Response to Reply #180
248. USA-Today 9/5/05: Bush Responsible For FEMA's Disastrous Failure
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050908/edit...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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babylonsister (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:46 PM
Response to Reply #180
361. FEMA arrives empty-handed: Lafayette, LA
FEMA Arrives Empty-Handed (Lafayette)
FEMA arrives empty-handed (art. dated 10 Sept)
Brad Kemp/bkemp@theadvertiser.com
FEMA representative Kenneth Swain explains to Hurricane Katrina evacuees Friday what FEMA is trying to do for them at its new office at 111 Liberty Ave. in Lafayette.
Lafayette's first FEMA office opened Friday, but the center had no money or vouchers to give to hundreds of Hurricane Katrina evacuees who came searching for help.
"We're not giving anything," manager Kenneth Swain told the crowd. "We don't have anything yet to give."
snip
FEMA has been noticeably absent from Lafayette since the hurricane struck, and people descended on the church looking for answers.
snip
Swain said the center had one line Friday for people to fill out paper applications. Without working computers, he said there was nothing he could do to check on the status of applications already filed. Those who have filed applications should visit the center in a few days to check.

While people were crowding the FEMA center, U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, and Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter toured the Cajundome. Boustany said he was disappointed that FEMA was just now arriving.
"The communication lines are still not what we want," he said. "We're still not satisfied with the response."
Vitter said he and other Louisiana politicians were trying to bring more aid to the state. He said he met with Vice President Dick Cheney during his tour of Louisiana and told him help was urgently needed.
"We've waited too long without answers," he said.
The key now is working to hold agencies accountable for providing help, Boustany said.
"We think it's been heard and now we'll wait," he said.http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID= ...

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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 01:02 PM
Response to Reply #180
528. 9/19 35-Pages on * Policies that Led to Excessive Deaths, Destruction
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
"Unacceptable": The Federal Response to Katrina
A very short excerpt from a 35-page report...
Special Report
“Unacceptable”: The Federal Response to Katrina
by Walter M. Brasch
www.dissidentvoice.org
September 12, 2005
EDITOR’S NOTE: We recommend that our readers print out this incisive special report and read it in print. The author is an award-winning syndicated columnist, professor of journalism, and a former emergency management official. This article is an in-depth look at the Bush policies that created the atmosphere not only for an ineffective FEMA response during the Katrina catastrophe, but which may have contributed to additional property destruction and deaths than should have occurred.
(excerpt)
DESTRUCTION OF THE WETLANDS
During the 1970s, the Nixon Administration created The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Drinking Water Act. The effect of the laws was to protect the environment, including the wetlands, the areas beside streams, rivers, and lakes that absorb flood waters. When developers begin replacing wetlands with concrete and asphalt, the floodwaters have no place to go but further onto city streets. The Clinton Administration used federal funds to buy land in the flood plains and increased wetland protection, slowing commercial development. However, in January 2003, the Bush Administration eviscerated the Clinton-ordered flood plains protection. The new policy allowed development of about 20 million acres of wetlands.
<snip>
A REPOSITORY FOR POLITICAL PAYBACKS
<snip>
President Bill Clinton changed FEMA’s focus and image, appointing staff with strong experience in disaster operations, and then elevated the agency to cabinet-level status. During the eight-year Clinton Administration, FEMA re-established strong working relationships with local and state agencies, and businesses. President George W. Bush’s opinion of FEMA was evident the month he was inaugurated when he appointed Joseph Allbaugh to head the agency. Allbaugh, who had been Bush’s chief of staff when he was governor and then ran the 2000 political campaign, had no disaster experience. He brought onto his staff Michael D. Brown to be chief counsel; Brown was soon promoted to deputy director. Brown -- who also had no experience in disaster planning, mitigation, rescue, or recovery -- did have two primary qualifications: he was Allbaugh’s close friend and a fellow campaign worker who was active in Florida during the disputed 2000 recount. Before being named to FEMA, Brown had spent 11 years as commissioner for judges and stewards of the International Arabian Horse Association. Allbaugh left FEMA after two years to become a lobbyist, often for companies interested in contracts in Iraq. To fill Allbaugh’s position, Bush appointed Brown to be FEMA director. Shortly after Katrina hit, David Goldstein, editor of the political website, HorsesAss.org, with some of the information provided by one of his readers, broke the story about Brown’s previous work with the IAHA, his forced resignation, and his inexperience with natural disasters. The story was picked up by The Daily Kos, a larger website, and then published, often without credit, by the establishment newspapers. As the Katrina disaster continued, other information about Brown’s lack of experience was brought out. TIME Magazine, with confirmation by sources who had worked with Brown before he came to FEMA, reported that Brown’s official biography was padded, and that several items were outright lies.
<snip>
POLITICIZING DISASTER RELIEF -- PART II
<snip>
Michael Chertoff told the media in Washington, D.C., according to the Washington Post, that FEMA’s response was slow because “our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor.” He was wrong. The National Response Plan directs FEMA to “prepare for, respond to, and recover an incident or potential incident is of such severity, magnitude, and/or complexity that it is considered an Incident of National Significance.” FEMA does not have to wait for local or state officials to request its assistance. That plan also allows the Department of Defense to provide immediate assistance, even if not requested by local authorities. Two days before Katrina hit land, President Bush, upon strong recommendations of the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, which had already issued their own declarations of emergency and requests for federal assistance, had declared a “state of emergency,” which should have moved FEMA into action.
<snip>
Writing for The New York Times, Adam Nagourney and Anne E. Kornblut reported that political strategist/deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and communications director Dan Bartlett “rolled out a plan . . . to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.” That plan included sending Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, all trailed by hordes of media, into the disaster zone. The presence of senior Bush officials drew some of the press away from their reporting about the victims. In Lafayette, La., Laura Bush visited a clean mass care facility for storm victims, and nipped at the press coverage. “This doesn’t really look like what we’re seeing on television,” she said, possibly hoping the American people would believe that the hopelessness and desperation they saw on television was only a small problem which the media magnified.
Please read the rest @ http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Brasch0912.htm
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 09:29 AM
Response to Original message
190. Post K: Who will profit
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 09:51 AM by mom catPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 09:58 AM
Response to Reply #190
195. Sept 2: Investors bet on Katrina's winners and losers........
Joanne98 (1000+ posts) Fri Sep-02-05 09:36 PM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Original message
Investors bet on Katrina's winners and losers........
Edited on Fri Sep-02-05 09:42 PM by Joanne98
Well we just heard about Halliburton but as you see Fluor is back...
Investors have been piling into the engineering and construction stocks, banking on the fact they should be big winners in the reconstruction. Fluor Corp. jumped $3.34 yesterday to close at $61.91, on the New York Stock Exchange, bringing its advance since last Friday to $4.22 a share. Baton Rouge, La. based Shaw Group Inc. which said it has been in contact with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other governmental agencies to assist in the recovery efforts, closed at $21.10, having gained $4.91 over the last three sessions.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v4... WINNERS?
Engineering and construction: Fluor Corp., Shaw Group and Jacobs Engineering
Energy: Imperial Oil, Sunoco and Valero Energy
Lumber producers: Weyerhauser and Louisiana-Pacific
Possible winners: Livestock producers, Smithfield Foods, Archer Daniels Midland and Bunge
LOSERS: The good people of New Orleans.
Bush Family Values.. LIE, STEAL AND MURDER!Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:13 PM
Response to Reply #190
226. Halliburton Stock at an All Time High
http://yahoo.reuters.com/financeQuoteCompanyNewsArticle...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:15 PM
Response to Reply #190
227. Sept 8: Old-line families plot the future (of NO)
Old-line families plot the future (of NO)
Thursday, September 08, 2005
By Christopher Cooper, The Wall Street Journal
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05251/567892.stm
NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in his home.
The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas, streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly intact and powered by generators. Wednesday, officials reiterated that all residents must leave New Orleans, but it's still unclear how far they will go to enforce the order.
The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By Wednesday, the city water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline.
Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:34 PM
Response to Reply #190
235. Sept 8: Cashing in ON DISASTER
CASHING IN ON DISASTER
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/sfl-femacoverage,0,669... FEMA worker Mary Ann Carlisle left these "sample letters'' with the Medical Examiner in Polk County, hoping to persuade him to link a death to the hurricanes. The letters suggest wording from doctors to allow FEMA to approve funeral claims. Hurricane Frances hit South Florida Labor Day weekend, 100 miles north of Miami-Dade County, but Sun-Sentinel reporters found that the federal government approved $28 million in storm claims there for new furniture and clothes and thousands of new televisions microwaves, refrigerators and other appliances. The Federal Emergency Management Agency paid for new cars, dental bills and a funeral even though the Medical Examiner recorded no deaths from Frances. In an ongoing series of reports, the newspaper also found FEMA inspectors were given only cursory training and attributed damage to tornadoes - there were none recorded in the county - and in six instances listed “ice/snow’’ as the cause. The reports have prompted calls for investigations by federal and state officials and the beginnings of an inquiry by the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security.
FEMA gave $21 million in Miami-Dade, where storms were 'like a severe thunderstorm'
The four hurricanes that pummeled the rest of Florida hardly brushed Miami-Dade County. Only Hurricane Frances was a factor there -- packing the punch of a bad thunderstorm.
Probe sought into questionable aid to Miami-Dade 'hurricane victims'
Three Florida members of Congress on Monday called for investigations into how the federal government awards disaster aid and why at least 9,800 Miami-Dade applicants have received more than $21 million in Hurricane Frances assistance even though the storm inflicted little damage in the county.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:40 PM
Response to Reply #190
236. Sept 8: Funeral profiteering
CatWoman (1000+ posts) Thu Sep-08-05 07:50 PM
Original message
Holy Shit!!!! Please read this (just mentioned by Randi) http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 08:27 PM
Response to Reply #190
239. Exxon's $10 Billion Fill-Up: Cashing in on Crunch (Quarterly Record)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 03:15 PM
Response to Reply #190
317. 9/9 Private, Armed "Blackwater" Forces patrol while Red Cross Excluded
Katrina: authorities bar Red Cross from NOLA; Blackwater gets carte blanche <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/09/katrina_authoritie... >
Xeni Jardin:
(Image: Blackwater USA Training Center, "Where Professionals Train," in North Carolina. Link <http://www.blackwaterusa.com/training/ > .)
Armed with assault rifles, contractors from private security firm Blackwater <http://www.blackwaterusa.com/ > are patrolling the black-water-flooded streets of New Orleans.
Meanwhile, unnarmed Red Cross workers toting food and medicine have been unable to enter the city <http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00.html > for days.
The name Blackwater may ring a bell for those who've been following that other Gulf warzone -- Iraq. The highly trained private security contractors support US military operations there, and in Afghanistan, typically earning far more pay than enlisted personnel.
Kathryn Cramer blogs more on Blackwater's presence in Katrina's wake here <http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/2005/09/bla... > . (still more <http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006775.ht... > at Making Light)
More in this New York Times article on the forced confiscation of weapons from civilians -- but not from guns-for-hire -- in New Orleans. Snip:
Waters were receding across this flood-beaten city today as police officers began confiscating weapons, including legally registered firearms, from civilians in preparation for a mass forced evacuation of the residents still living here. No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said.
But that order apparently does not apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property. The guards, employees of private security companies like Blackwater, openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles. Mr. Compass said that he was aware of the private guards, but that the police had no plans to make them give up their weapons.
Link <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/national/nationalspec... > .
Reader comment: Mathias Forbach, a media student in Switzerland, asks,
Why do the police in New Orleans clear the city of the last remaining residents? Why can't these residents stay in their homes if they are able to stay? And why do the authorities do this with guns?
Two weeks ago, we had really bad flood here in Switzerland. Two days of constant rain. But we did't see anybody with a gun -- only water buckets and shovels and people helping each other, and Red Cross workers giving first aid.
Why, in the U.S.A., are the first images we see all military-aggressive-armed-forces who aren't helping the victims, but threatening them with big guns? I don't understand. Did Asian people experience the same with the Tsunami flood? Even in Indonesia, where there was a conflict between the junta and the government, they stopped their conflict to help the poor inhabitants.
Reader comment:Tom Genoni says,
As much as I'm not a fan of our current administration (...) much of New Orleans is uninhabitable: no water, no sanitation, no food, no power, at least 11 separate fires, broken gas lines, sewage-laden floodwaters, and rotting corpses (along with the the fear these will clog pumps draining the city). People are being moved -- with force if necessary -- because it's not safe to stay, regardless of what some residents think.
Previously: Baghdad on the Bayou <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/09/katrina_baghdad_on... >

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snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 02:24 PM
Response to Reply #317
438. 9/13 Democracy Now on Armed Security Contractors in N.O.
Report from Democracy Now's Amy Goodman on armed security contractors in New Orleans: Link <http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/12/142... >
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 04:16 PM
Response to Reply #190
319. Sept 10: Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals Sat Sep 10,11:03
Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals Sat Sep 10,11:03 AM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050910/pl_nm/contracts_dc
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.
One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.
Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
Experts say it has been common practice in both Republican and Democratic administrations for policy makers to take lobbying jobs once they leave office, and many of the same companies seeking contracts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have already received billions of dollars for work in Iraq.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-12-05 10:15 PM
Response to Reply #319
427. 9/12 Same story reported by Wired.com
Looks word-for-word at least through first paragraphs:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,68829,00.html
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 07:44 PM
Response to Reply #190
328. sept 7:Pat Robertson's Katrina Cash
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050919/blumenthal
article | posted September 7, 2005 (web only)
Pat Robertson's Katrina Cash
Max Blumenthal
Every cloud has a silver lining. Hurricane Katrina has devastated New Orleans, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands homeless, and plunging the entire city into chaos. In the hurricane's wake, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its director, Michael Brown, forced out of his former job at the International Arabian Horse Association, with no credentials in disaster relief, have become targets of withering criticism. Yet FEMA's relief efforts have brought considerable assistance to at least one man who stands to benefit from Hurricane Katrina perhaps more than any other individual: Pat Robertson.
With the Bush Administration's approval, Robertson's $66 million relief organization, Operation Blessing, has been prominently featured on FEMA's list of charitable groups accepting donations for hurricane relief. Dozens of media outlets, including the New York Times, CNN and the Associated Press, duly reprinted FEMA's list, unwittingly acting as agents soliciting cash for Robertson. "How in the heck did that happen?" Richard Walden, president of the disaster-relief group Operation USA, asked of Operation Blessing's inclusion on FEMA's list. "That gives Pat Robertson millions of extra dollars."
Though Operation USA has conducted disaster relief for more than twenty-five years on five continents, like scores of other secular relief groups currently helping victims of Hurricane Katrina, it was omitted from FEMA's list. In fact, only two non-"faith-based" organizations were included. (One of them, the American Red Cross, is being blocked from entering New Orleans by FEMA's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.) FEMA, meanwhile, has reportedly turned away Wal-Mart trucks carrying food and water to the stricken city, teams of firemen from Maryland and Texas, volunteer morticians and a convoy of 1,000 boat owners offering to help rescue stranded flood victims. While relief efforts falter in the face of colossal bureaucratic incompetence, the Bush Administration's promotion of Operation Blessing has ensured that the floodwaters swallowing New Orleans will be a rising tide lifting Robertson's boat.

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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:32 PM
Response to Reply #190
334. 9/10 Who collects and counts the dead
(Note: the following strikes me as speculative)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
A Stench: Mobile Morgues, Brown, Funeralgate, FEMA - a Cover-up?
I see a travesty taking place, and I need to speak up. FEMA is bringing in a really sleazy outfit to care for, identify and bury Katrina's dead. Worse still, this outfit has big money ties to Bush's Houston buddies, including both the current and previous head of FEMA. And I'm not sure who's in charge, or what their agenda is.
Skip ahead to THE ONGOING SCANDAL below if you want, but please come back and read this too:
Unfortunately, the greater public's attention wanders when we begin talking about dry (!) details like Rove's outing of an operative, but this story has some strong emotional and graphic overtones. I’m using the word SCANDAL intentionally. Still, I want to use it responsibly. Watergate WAS a national scandal. BucshCo’s character assassinations and innuendos are touted as scandals, but they are the tactics of bullies and thugs.
So… I don't want to ignore these facts, just because they seem creepy. They've all been cited in mainstream articles. I would appreciate any corrections or further fact-checking.
Read THE SCANDAL PART 1, then THE ONGOING SCANDAL farther down, and finally THE CHILLER.
I organized this basically in this order: Background on who's in charge of FEMA and where they came from; how they became involved with the mobile morgue people; and what seems to be happening now.
How did Brown get appointed? What's his background?
From Time Magazine:
Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division." In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. "Department heads did not report to him."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1103003,...
More damning statements, from a Daily Kos blogger (and remember, this is just a blog, although it’s been widely distributed):
"An unmitigated, total fucking disaster." That's not a quote from Mike Brown, but rather, a quote describing him. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/2/34622/68348
How did Mike Brown get to FEMA in the first place?
Joseph Allbaugh, Bush's chief of staff when he served as Governor of Texas, brought him along to FEMA with him:
Allbaugh hired Brown after an acrimonious end to a nine-year stint as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. Former officials say he was forced out; a friend and lawyer of Brown's said he negotiated a settlement after withstanding numerous lawsuits against his enforcement of rules for judges and stewards.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
How did Allbaugh become head of FEMA? Who was he?
FEMA website:
Prior to his appointment, Mr. Allbaugh served as Chief of Staff to then-Governor George W. Bush.
Mr. Allbaugh served as the National Campaign Manager for Bush-Cheney 2000 with responsibility and oversight for all activities related to the Bush election campaign. He had previously served as Campaign Manager for President Bush's first run for Texas governor.
http://www.fema.gov/about/allbaugh/index.shtm
Where is Allbaugh now?
Washington Post:Former FEMA Chief Is at Work on Gulf Coast
After leaving FEMA in March 2003, Allbaugh, who managed the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign, founded Allbaugh Co., a lobbying-consulting firm with many clients in the disaster-relief business.
-snip-
Among those clients are: the KBR division of Haliburton....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
HERE'S THE SCANDAL, PART ONE:
The Austin Chronicle
Funeralgate Hits Texas
What began as a citizen's complaint against SCI in January 1998 has since grown into a scandal revolving around campaign contributions, and the influence they may buy. All of the politicos who intervened on SCI's behalf received major contributions from SCI's political action committee, or PAC. Did that money convince them to help SCI -- the world's largest death care company -- and to punish the agency that investigated SCI?
-snip-
As a major player in the funeral business, SCI is accustomed to doling out cash in the form of perfectly legal campaign contributions. From 1996 through the 1998 election, SCI's PAC contributed about $113,000 to the campaigns of dozens of politicians. Bush received $35,000 from SCI. Cornyn got $2,000. Moreover, there appears to be a connection between SCI's political giving and actions taken by eleced officials.
-snip-
the scandal promises to grow as the lawsuit -- filed by former TFSC director Eliza May -- works through the discovery process. The suit alleges that May was fired because she "repeatedly and in good faith reported violations of the law and conduct that she reasonably believed to constitute violations of the law." As May's suit goes forward, Bush and the other politicos who helped SCI are scrambling for cover. May's lawyers want to depose Bush.
(Poster's note: the whistleblower lawsuit has been dismissed, yet there are claims that Bush perjured himself or obstructed justice. I am not a lawyer and did not include these as I don't know their validity)
-snip-
A few days later, May alleges, she was called into Allbaugh's office where -- with Waltrip sitting in the same room -- Whitmire interrogated her about the TFSC's investigation into SCI and demanded that she answer his questions about the investigation.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol18/issue45/pol...
OR google: funeralgate allbaugh bush waltrip TFSC or any combination and get your mind blown, if you don't already know this story - oh, yeah, Atty General Gonzales has been all over trying to get this hushed, google his name in connection, too.
THE ONGOING SCANDAL (COVERUP?)
Here's the part I'm not finding ANYWHERE in the news. I pulled the info together yesterday, emailed the Austin Chronicle and a local politician, and now assembled threads for DU.
Here's the story, links follow with details:
SCI Corporation has a wholly-owned subsidiary, Kenyon International, which has been deployed, with a mobile morgue, to NOLA. I'm having a little trouble getting GREAT definitive answers - imagine that! - but everything I see points to this being the mobile morgue in St Gabriel, where the NOLA bodies are being processed without transparency, without autopsies, behind a Bushco veil of secrecy.
FEMA didn't deploy its own DMORT teams to the St. Gabriel warehouse where the mobile morgue is set up, but outsourced that location’s administration to Kenyon International. That's right, Joe Albaugh and Michael Brown's FEMA selected them, and FEMA is saying there is neither time nor money for autopsies. If autopsies were performed on randomly-selected bodies, a statistician could use the results to extrapolate a great deal of information about the Katrina deaths; specifically:
--numbers killed by drowning and initial trauma of Katrina itself
--numbers killed by dehydration
--numbers killed by gunshot
--time of death
--were people killed by the natural disaster or the failure of the rescue effort?
I believe that most Americans would not want such a sleazy outfit in charge of the remains. And I must ask: why use a Bush crony to handle this?
From what I can see, by searching Louisiana revised code as well as DMORT.org's website, it's up to the local coroner to make final decisions about death certificates and the need to autopsy. How can FEMA usurp this right?
I'd love to see this story get in front of the American public. I think. Then, again, it's pretty sensational. But entrusting Katrina's bodies to a company that is accused of burying bodies in the woods...?
On September 1, Kenyon posted a press release on its website, and was quoted on CNN's website in an article about St. Gabriel's, but the press release and the reference to a Kenyon representative in CNN's story has been pulled from the internet.
Please take the time to check out these links:
How sleazy is SCI/Kenyon?
Houston Business Journal
Houston-based Service Corp. International, the world's largest funeral and cemetery company, on Tuesday said it agreed to pay $65 million to settle a securities class action lawsuit. The suit had been pending against the company and certain of its current and former officers since January 1999. http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2004/04/19/d...
The New York Times
$100 Million Settlement Over Remains
The parent company of two cemeteries has agreed to pay $100 million to families who sued it for mishandling and moving remains. The company, the Service Corporation International of Houston, announced the settlement months after a judge certified a class-action lawsuit by 2,000 families in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties. The settlement will also compensate plaintiffs in related suits against the company and its Menorah Gardens cemeteries in Palm Beach and Broward Counties. Abby Goodnough (NYT)
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E0DA...
The New York Times
Funeral Company Accused of Desecration
ABSTRACT - Class-action lawsuit in Florida accuses Service Corp International, largest US funeral company, of desecrating remains in Jewish cemeteries it operates in South Florida; families of deceased charge company with breaking open burial vaults and dumping contents in woods to make room for others.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30612F7...
Kenyon is deployed:
PRNewswire
HOUSTON, Sept. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Kenyon International Emergency Services, the world's leading disaster management company, has activated an emergency action team to respond to the needs of Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina under an agreement with the US Government and the Department of Homeland Security
Kenyon has deployed one of its fully-equipped mobile morgue kits and a 10-member, specially-trained team to provide morgue support to the area. The mobile morgue includes equipment for search and recovery, victim identification, and pathology. It is one of three mobile morgues held worldwide by Kenyon. Earlier this year, Kenyon also deployed a mobile morgue and a large response team for the tsunami efforts in Phuket, Thailand.
Kenyon International Emergency Services is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Houston-based Service Corporation International (NYSE: SCI). Founded in 1929, the company works with more than 200 clients in both the public and private sector, and has responded to more than 300 mass-fatality incidents in its 75 year history.
For more information, call Jay Kirsch at 281-872-6084 or Jerry Hendin at 425-442-5565 or visit the Kenyon website at http://www.kenyoninternational.com .
PR newswire site: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&S...
The source of the prnewswire above, including the links to Kenyon Internationl, is the Yahoo business site: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050901/dath045.html?.v=16
Houston Chronicle
Morgue set up in St. Gabriel,Team of forensic specialists called in to help identify the dead
Sept. 6, 2005, 12:57AM
ST. GABRIEL, LA. - The bodies have been tied to trees, floating in the toxic muck and decomposing in the blazing Louisiana sun. Now, officials say the victims of Hurricane Katrina being collected this week from the flooded streets of New Orleans and other damaged areas will be handled with delicate care before they are claimed by loved ones.
As officials began the grim task of pulling bodies off the streets and out of homes, a team of forensic specialists at a makeshift morgue in St. Gabriel, a small town between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, prepared to process the bodies.
-snip-
It won't be a traditional operation, where we would do autopsies and things that would take a vast amount of time," Ellis said. "We want to try and do a good job on the post-mortem collection and inspection side so we can give these folks and opportunity to retrieve their loved ones at some future date.
Baton Rouge Advocate
September 4, 2005
Morgue in works in St. Gabriel
Disaster Mortuary Team to identify victims of hurricane
By MARK F. BONNER
mbonner@theadvocate.com
Advocate staff writer
ST. GABRIEL -- In preparation for the bodies that will be removed from New Orleans in the coming days and weeks, a Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team on Saturday was erecting a temporary morgue in a large warehouse next to the St. Gabriel Police Department off of Iberville Street.
Officials on the scene wearing green "DMORT" shirts would not comment on their presence or their construction efforts, but dump trucks were bustling in and out of the work site.
DMORTs are directed by the National Disaster Medical System -- a sector within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Response Division. The teams include funeral directors, medical examiners, coroners, pathologists, forensic anthropologists, medical records technicians and transcribers and fingerprint specialists, according to the National Disaster Medial System Web site.
Don Moreau, the chief of operations for the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office said Saturday he had been in contact with DMORT officials to inquire if they needed support. Moreau said officials told him that DMORT did not need support from him and said they would be processing 60 bodies a day in recognition and identification procedures.
St. Gabriel Police Chief Kevin J. Ambeau Sr. would not comment on the presence of DMORT and directed a reporter to leave the premises.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Saturday that she expects the death toll to reach into the thousands.
http://2theadvocate.com/stories/090405/new_morgue001.sh...
You can read about DMORT here:
Main Site: http://www.dmort.org /
History of DMORT: http://www.dmort.org/DNPages/DMORTHistory.htm
It was the DMORT WMD team that deployed to St Gabriel (which is 15 miles from Baton Rouge)- you read that right - the WMD team, which was used after September 11. I wish I had time to find out when and how Kenyon International came up with the idea of a mobile morgue capable of deployment by FEMA - when buddy Joe Allbaugh took over the agency?
The posting below is from the DMORT website: http://www.dmort4.com /
UPDATE 8/31/2005 FROM COMMANDER HOWELL:
DMORT Region IV has deployed two 3 person teams to assess the situation in Gulfport and Biloxi, MS. The remainder of the region IV team is currently enroute to Hattiesburg, MS and under the command of Paul Taylor. Region I and II has been deployed to Aniston, AL. Region VII is deployed to Baton Rouge, LA. Region VIII has been deployed to Houston, TX. The mobile morgue in Selma, AL has been deployed to Biloxi, MS. The DMORT WMD Team has been deployed to Baton Rouge, LA. No additional resources have been called at this time, but all DMORT Region IV members should be on standby for possible deployment. If you are a DMORT Region IV member and have not already notified DMORT Command Staff of your availability for deployment, please do so via the contact form on this website.
And here's this, which begs the question: If FEMA can deploy DMORT teams directly, without the layer of paying a subcontractor some profit, too, why wouldn't they? But the following post seems to say that Kenyon is competing with the DMORT teams to bring in qualified DMORT techs.
UPDATE 9/7/2005 FROM COMMANDER HOWELL:
Many DMORT Region IV members are also members of Kenyon International Emergency Services, Inc. Due to the scale of this natural disaster, Kenyon International has contracted with FEMA to provide mortuary services. As a result, many DMORT Region IV members have been contacted about possible deployment with Kenyon. Please be aware of the fact that any deployment with Kenyon is NOT a DMORT mission. Those DMORT members who have already confirmed their deployment status with DMORT Command Staff are expected to remain available for deployment, and should expect to be deployed in the near future. DMORT Region IV will not prevent anyone from deployment with Kenyon. However, any DMORT Region IV member who is unavailable for deployment due to a prior obligation or deployment with another agency such as Kenyon may be asked to step down from the Region IV team so that positions can be available for those making the mission of DMORT Region IV a top priority.
And from the same website, it’s apparent that FEMA was in no hurry to deploy all their DMORT teams:
DMORT REGION IV NEWS
UPDATE 8/30/2005 FROM ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER KIM PLUNK:
As of 10am Tuesday morning the deployed DMORT IV team members are still stationed in Anniston, AL. During the night 2 three person assessment teams were sent forward to help in affected areas. Cotton has asked that all members please keep up with latest info. via this website and email. DO NOT CALL COTTON UNLESS IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. We will give daily updates as long as we have capability to do so.
And I repeat, I don't see anything that deprives the local coroners of the right to determine cause of death, or order/deny an autopsy.
Please see:
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MEDICAL EXAMINERS
MASS FATALITY PLAN
Excerpt: Page 7
The decision to do complete or partial autopsies resides with the Medical Examiner/Coroner authority locally responsible for body processing and death certification. Some reasons for complete autopsies:
- Homicides
- Terrorism
- Indeterminate manner of death
- Flight crews ¡V the same pathologist should do all members
- Unidentified remains
- Federal request
- Local ME/Coroner request
Excerpt: Page 14
The final determination of body or body parts positive identification is the sole responsibility of the local ME/Coroner in which the disaster occurs
Excerpt: Page 15
Death Certificates
A. Issued according to procedures normally in place and as directed by the local ME/Coroner jurisdiction.
B. The administrative or judicial issuance of death certificates in situations in which there is an absence of positive physical forensic scientific identification is a responsibility solely of the local ME/Coroner in conjunction with local legal and public health authorities.
http://www.dmort.org/FilesforDownload/NAMEMFIplan.pdf
AND
from the "Mass Fatality Incidents: A Guide for Human Forensic Identification" June 05 Report by the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice,Office of Justice Programs: http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/199758.pdf
Excerpt: Page 57
The DMORT team supports the local medicolegal authority by providing expertise, personnel, supplies, and equipment. The responsibility for assigning the cause and manner of death, signing of death certificates, and death notification remain with the local authority
and
Excerpt - Page 15
If the medical examiner/coroner is not equipped to assume responsibility for managing morgue operations, a Disaster Mortuary sponsible for appointing a forensic pathologist or temporary medical examiner/coroner who is capable of overseeing all morgue operations and administrative functions. The extent and role of a DMORT remains at the discretion of the local medical examiner/coroner.
This same document says:
Excerpt: Page 57
Federal Disaster Declaration. The Federal Response Plan dictates how Federal agencies respond following a disaster. A request for DMORT assistance must be made by a local official through the State emergency management agency, which will then contact the regional office of FEMA. Based on the severity of the disaster, FEMA can ask for a Presidential disaster declaration, allowing the DMORT team to be activated. This process can take from 24 to 48 hours.
http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/199758.pdf
In closing, here's
THE CHILLER:
from a DMORT newsletter, referring to the Pennsylvania crash site on 9/11: http://www.dmort.org/DNPages/jan2002newstext.htm
This response marked several firsts, all of note because of their importance for future responses. These included the deployment of the DNA team, the establishment of protocols documenting the operation of each morgue section, responding under a memorandum of understanding with the FBI, the response of the FAC team and the collection of family blood reference samples, the inclusion of a formal triage station as the first morgue station, and the first use of the Kenyon International Services mobile morgue.
and
The FBI was the lead authority in the investigation because of the criminal nature of the crash. Although victim identification responsibilities resided with the local coroner, his capabilities were severely taxed. Attempts to have the site declared a federal disaster through the state proved unsuccessful. The FBI stepped in to establish a memorandum with HHS that allowed DMORT to respond. During the activation, the crash site was under the control of the FBI; the DMORT operation focused on the morgue and the family assistance center.
Sound familiar?
Bolding is mine, but the term "the first use" sent chills through me. I am NOT a conspiracy theorist. As a matter of fact, I had these facts assembled yesterday and delayed posting because I needed to ask my spouse and a few good friends, "Am I cracking under the stress/grief/frustration of watching this unfold? Am I getting wacky?" Admittedly, there is an element of the macabre in all this that had me repulsed throughout the research, but still....
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:41 PM
Response to Reply #190
336. 9/10 The N.O. Gentry
By way of perspective, a friend of a friend would probably qualify as N.O. gentry. His family is well-to-do and he owns several real properties in N.O. My friend said he is now "excited" about the opportunities that will probably be available to buy additional property cheaply.
(My friend also mentioned that the N.O. friend's son, who is white and was missing for several days before the Feds took over N.O., spent the time looting private homes.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Old-line families plot the future (in NOLA - antebellum "gentrification")
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05251/567892.stm
Thursday, September 08, 2005
By Christopher Cooper, The Wall Street Journal
NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in his home.
The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas, streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly intact and powered by generators. Wednesday, officials reiterated that all residents must leave New Orleans, but it's still unclear how far they will go to enforce the order.
The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By Wednesday, the city water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline.
Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires.
<more>
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:41 PM
Response to Reply #190
337. 9/10 The N.O. Gentry
By way of perspective, a friend of a friend would probably qualify as N.O. gentry. His family is well-to-do and he owns several real properties in N.O. My friend said he is now "excited" about the opportunities that will probably be available to buy additional property cheaply.
(My friend also mentioned that the N.O. friend's son, who is white and was missing for several days before the Feds took over N.O., spent the time looting private homes.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Old-line families plot the future (in NOLA - antebellum "gentrification")
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05251/567892.stm
Thursday, September 08, 2005
By Christopher Cooper, The Wall Street Journal
NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in his home.
The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas, streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly intact and powered by generators. Wednesday, officials reiterated that all residents must leave New Orleans, but it's still unclear how far they will go to enforce the order.
The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By Wednesday, the city water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline.
Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires.
<more>
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:57 PM
Response to Reply #190
340. 9/10 (orig post 9/2) Halliburton Contract to Repair Katrina Damage
Edited on Sat Sep-10-05 08:59 PM by snot
From
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
ress=104x4588896
Halliburton gets contract to repair damage from Hurricane Katrina
News Update from Citizens for Legitimate Government
02 September 2005
http://www.legitgov.org /
http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news
Halliburton gets contract to repair damage from Hurricane Katrina
(HalliburtonWatch.org) 02 Sep 2005 The US Navy asked Halliburton to
repair naval facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the Houston
Chronicle reported today. The work was assigned to Halliburton's KBR
subsidiary under the Navy's $500 million CONCAP contract awarded to KBR
in 2001 and renewed in 2004. The repairs will take place in Louisiana
and Mississippi. In March, the former director of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), which is tasked with responding to hurricane
disasters, became a lobbyist for KBR.
Address to receive newsletter: http://www.legitgov.org/#subscribe_clg
Please write to: signup@legitgov.org for inquiries. lrp/mdr
CLG Newsletter editor: Lori Price, General Manager. Copyright (c) 2005,
Citizens For Legitimate Government (r) All rights reserved. CLG Founder
and Chair is Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D.
From
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
ress=104x4589780 :
Flood protection money went to Halliburton ..??
maybe cheneys company will rebuild now??
Bunatine Green house knows all..and has said she was intimidated into
signing off on no bid contracts
"September 1, 2005 -- Flood protection money to Halliburton = Blood
money for the Big Easy. With reports that the Bush administration
diverted $250 million in SELA (Southeast Louisiana) Urban Flood Control
Program funds from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to Iraq, it is time
for Congress to sit down with former Corps of Engineers Senior Executive
Service Principal Assistant for Contracting Bunnatine Greenhouse. Ms.
Greenhouse, who hails from Louisiana and likely knows something about
who diverted the flood abatement funds to Halliburton, was fired in
retaliation for her June 27 congressional testimony in which she stated
that Corps contracts for Kellogg, Brown & Root/Halliburton Iraq
infrastructure projects were improperly awarded -- through a no-bid
process -- as a result of political influence by Bush and Cheney
political appointees in the Army's hierarchy. On August 27, Ms.
Greenhouse was removed from her career civil service position just as
Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans. Congress should order the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) to obtain copies of all Corps of
Engineer documents on contracts for Halliburton and the diverting of New
Orleans flood control funds to Iraq reconstruction. The possibility that
Dick Cheney's firm took money that was to go to New Orleans flood
control projects should be a priority for Congress -- which should
cancel its Labor Day recess and get back to work before September 12.
(Late today, it announced it was reconvening immediately).
It is no wonder that Dick Cheney is nowhere to be found during America's
worst natural disaster. When the people of New Orleans discover that
Cheney's firm profited at the expense of their loved ones' lives..."
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com /
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:01 PM
Response to Reply #190
342. Sept 10: DU thread on the profiteering issues and * talking points
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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Name removed (0 posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:41 PM
Response to Reply #190
360. Deleted message
Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.
snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-12-05 01:58 AM
Response to Reply #190
422. 9/11 ‘They’ are trying to take our city from us.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... back home into New Orleans....to claim New Orleans
This blog might interest some of you. I receive this info re subscribed email, so I guess it's ok to post more than 4 paragraphs? These individuals have been helping at Camp Casey II in Covington. Suggestion---bookmark or subscribe.
www.getyouracton.com/blog/
The important news to impart is: WE ARE GOING HOME. Our friend James went into the city today and checked on our neighborhood and reported back that “it is beautiful.” He estimates there are some 30-40 people left in our area. The national guard is patrolling - but - as was stated to us by the national guard we met yesterday in Algiers “well, we’d rather be here than being shot at in Iraq, so our mission here is not to complete our mission (evacuating the city).” So after a long, stressful day with all sorts of craziness with cops and the Red Cross and everything else under the sun, we have decided we are going home. My friend Leenie just got back to LA and she is down with the plan. So… here is the deal: tomorrow, we are are going into the city - first to Algiers to drop off the supplies we picked up for those folks today, and then we will make a run through our neighborhood and check out our house (James did a check from the outside today, other than the awning that now sits in front of our door instead of above it, we are pretty much ok). The day after, we will load up on supplies - replace the generators we have given to others, stock up on food and water, get ourselves hooked up with broadband internet so we can stay in touch with ya’ll… and the day after, we are going back in and we are going to stay.
I don’t have the energy to explain, so I’m just going to tell you all how it is. ‘They’ are trying to take our city from us. Thousands upon thousands of poor, mostly African American citizens of New Orleans were murdered. Those levey breaks? Dynamite. Don’t ask me for proof yet - just give us some time, we will get it to you. The ones that didn’t die were starved. The rest, ‘evacuated.’ To quote one of our state reps, who now claims the quote was taken out of context, they solved the public housing problem in New Orleans.
Little thing they forgot, though. New Orleans isn’t like any other place in this country. We’ve always (half)jokingly referred to it as the only third world city in the United States. Some of you might be familiar with this nickname: the city that care forgot. Well…. Haliburton has the contract to clean up the city, the developers are salivating at the ‘new’ New Orleans they will build, and the lower ninth and all the dead people in its attics are to be bulldozed so the land can be turned into a barrier reef to protect the city. Ain’t that lovely?
Only one thing - the powers that be are not from New Orleans and they don’t know that this city is born of hardship and survives not despite, but because of it. We have been forced into the outside world these last couple of weeks - and while I want to make it clear that the love and support of the American people has been phenomenal - there is no place like home and we are not going to watch it be taken from us.
So we are going back. We’re going to shove the muck on the first floor as far back as we can and set up a soup kitchen and a distribution center. Daniel is going to set up an animal sanctuary in the back yard. We’ve heard that the National Guard there is friendly, and our friend James will be our liason and run supplies for us. Tomorrow I’ll be figuring out the intricacies of having myself an online connection in the middle of a half destroyed war zone, so don’t worry - we’ll be coming to you live.
We don’t aim to get ourselves killed here - we’ve made this decision based on the experiences of recent expiditions into the city and have determined now that it is possible to do what we set out to do: to go home. But we will have our car ready and waiting… if they force us out at gunpoint, we will leave.
New Orleans can go two ways now - it can stay true to the place that holds our heart or it can become the so called new New Orleans, the brain child of developers with hard ons, government officials happy to be relieved of that pesky impovrished African American ‘criminal element’ and key positions to keep the oil flowing. Or, as we se it, it can become the free republic of New Orleans, the pheonix arising from the flood waters and the flames with spirit boiling over, righting wrongs and shining its light ever so much brightly than ever before.
So please with us luck and keep us in your prayers. We intend to be just fine - and after our experiences in the outside world, we think we’ll feel better and safer back at home in our militarized zone with no running water and no electricity. New Orleans is our home and we are taking it back.
Please keep sending us donations and supplies - we will be turning the first floor of our house into a soup kitchen and distribution area so we can help our friends and neighbors get back on their feet as they start returning to the city, whenever that day may be. In the meantime, we are staking our claim.
I know this may worry a lot of you, but please just wish us well. We are doing what we have to do, this is what we came back for and now the moment has come.
Soon, there will be pictures. Apologies again for the delays, but like I said, it’s been a crazy day.
We are going home, folks, we are going home.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 02:26 PM
Response to Reply #190
440. 9/13 Firms with Bush Ties Snagging Deals
Firms with Bush ties snag engineering, cleanup, rebuild deals: Link <http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050910/pl... >
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 02:47 AM
Response to Reply #190
476. 9-14:NYT: DHS Official Vows Investigation of No-Bid Relief Contracts
NYT: DHS Official Vows Investigation of No-Bid Relief Contracts
Official Vows Investigation of No-Bid Relief Contracts
By PHILIP SHENON
Published: September 14, 2005
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that his office had received accusations of fraud and waste in the multibillion-dollar relief programs linked to Hurricane Katrina and would investigate how no-bid contracts were awarded to several large, politically well-connected companies.
The inspector general, Richard L. Skinner, who serves as the department's internal watchdog, said in an interview that he intended to be "extremely aggressive" in monitoring the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which will receive most of the $62 billion in disaster-response financing approved by Congress last week.
FEMA, which is part of Homeland Security, was harshly criticized in recent months as mismanaging millions of dollars in relief funds after a 2004 hurricane in Florida.
Mr. Skinner's remarks came as the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff; Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales; and Republican Congressional leaders said Tuesday that they also were concerned about the potential for abuse, given the amount of federal money and private charity committed to the hurricane-relief effort.
Their comments appeared to be a response, in part, to charges from Democratic lawmakers that such a large, hurriedly organized federal relief program could produce the sort of contract abuses, cronyism and waste that numerous investigations have identified in the Bush administration's reconstruction programs in postwar Iraq....

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 03:10 AM
Response to Reply #190
477. 9-14 (FERC) Regulators to aid hurricane-hit utilities (Bush Supporters)
(FERC) Regulators to aid hurricane-hit utilities (unprecedented)
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B33D5A ...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Federal energy regulators are prepared to help hurricane-battered utilities recover costs to repair their power systems, a move that could set a precedent.
"We'll be open to requests at the federal level to consider cost recovery in the wake of hurricane Katrina," Federal Energy Regulatory Chairman Joseph Kelliher said Tuesday.
The commission regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, and wholesale sales of electricity in interstate commerce.
Kelliher said that neither Southern Co. (SO: news, chart, profile) nor Entergy Corp. (ETR: news, chart, profile) -- the two utilities with electric systems hardest hit by the hurricane -- have indicated that they will seek federal aid.
"But I don't want to rule out the possibility that we might get a request at FERC to help in cost recovery," he added.
...more...

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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-16-05 11:08 AM
Response to Reply #190
500. 9/16 America's Biggest Recovery Program: New Deal for the Rich
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Krugman Pegs Bush’s Speech
September 16th, 2005
Paul Krugman pegs Bush’s speech and lets the cat out of the bag…
Now it begins: America’s biggest relief and recovery program since the New Deal. And the omens aren’t good.
It’s a given that the Bush administration, which tried to turn Iraq into a laboratory for conservative economic policies, will try the same thing on the Gulf Coast. The Heritage Foundation, which has surely been helping Karl Rove develop the administration’s recovery plan, has already published a manifesto on post-Katrina policy. It calls for waivers on environmental rules, the elimination of capital gains taxes and the private ownership of public school buildings in the disaster areas. And if any of the people killed by Katrina, most of them poor, had a net worth of more than $1.5 million, Heritage wants to exempt their heirs from the estate tax.
MORE & LINKS - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=575#more-575
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-18-05 04:58 PM
Response to Reply #190
521. 9/18 "OPEC" meetings about draining/screwing Americans
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/17/223753/006 :
URGENT FROM BOGALUSA...PEOPLE ARE F**KING DYING
by Barbara
(edited for brevity)
Sat Sep 17th, 2005 at 19:37:53 PDT
I have been in Bogalusa, LA for the past three days and today I lost it...emotionally. The pain and suffering, the bullshit by every fucking government agency from the locals to the FEDS.
I have managed to bully my way into the main command center and become friendly enough with the 'important' people, that I have been invited into crucial meetings that are affectionally called "OPEC" meetings because they are about draining/screwing Americans.
Barbara's diary :: ::
I talked to FEMA reps, RC reps, State Health reps and the hospital folks and received the same "we don't need doctors or nurses to run clinics" (I've been placing medical teams)
Today at the Red Cross shelter, the doctor I traveled with...Dr. Ken Levine, was STILL seeing patients that 'didn't need him' when I left at 7 p.m.
There is NO MEDIA HERE...PLEASE KOSSACKS, GET ME MEDIA...THE NATIONAL KIND NOW.
I went to check on my little 80 year old ladies today and stopped at another house with TWO TREES still through it and the couple living there...14 days AFTER the hurricane hit, they put a sign out on their lawn that said "this is how the government treats you"...FEMA went there the next day, gave them a $2k check and wished them good luck.
These people have NOT seen the RC and scavange for food/water. She drove for an hour and waited in line for 9 hours to fill out the paperwork for getting RED CROSS vouchers and then was given a NUMBER and told to come back on MONDAY. Now you might think, well they must be in the middle of no where...WRONG, these people are on the ROAD THAT ALL THE GOVERNMENT agencies take to the main control center at least 10 times daily. FEMA never even got people to remove the trees off their roof, they had FRIENDS show up finally.
(More at link above)
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-18-05 11:17 PM
Response to Reply #190
524. Looking for a Corpse to Make a Case
Posted Saturday, Sep. 17, 2005
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1106213,...
Federal troops aren't the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions' legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had an idea to revitalize their cause, which he left on Apolinsky's voice mail: " Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with."
If legislative ambulance chasing looks like a desperate measure, for the backers of repealing the estate tax, these are desperate times. Just three weeks ago, their long-sought goal of repeal seemed within reach, but Katrina dashed their hopes when Republican leaders put off an expected vote. After hearing from Sessions, Apolinsky, an estate tax lawyer who says his firm includes three multi-billionaires among its clients, mobilized the American Family Business Institute, a Washington-based group devoted to estate tax repeal. They reached out to members along the Gulf Coast to hunt for the dead.
It's been hard. Only a tiny percentage of people are affected by the estate tax—in 2001 only 534 Alabamans were subject to it. And for Hill backers of repeal, that's only part of the problem. Last year, the tax brought in $24.8 billion to the federal government. With Katrina's cost soaring, estate tax opponents need to find a way to make up the potential lost income. For now, getting repeal back on the agenda may depend on Apolinsky and his team of estate-sniffing sleuths, who are searching Internet obituaries among other places. Has he found any victims of both the hurricane and the estate tax? "Not yet," Apolinsky says. "But I'm still looking."—with reporting by Amanda Ripley/WashingtonPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 09:18 PM
Response to Reply #190
540. 9/19 "Disaster Profiteering Act" H.R.3766
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Bush Corruption-The Orwellian Katrina "Disaster Profiteering Act" H.R.3766
“Disaster Profiteering Act” Makes Its Debut Seeks to
Waive Taxpayer Protections & Competition on
Government Contracts
For Immediate Release
Contact: Beth Daley beth@pogo.org 202-347-1122
Big federal contractors have scored a major victory with yesterday’s news that House Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) and Representative Kenny Marchant (R-TX) introduced legislation that will waive meaningful taxpayer protections and competition in contracting whenever Congress or the President declares a national emergency or there is a disaster. It is rumored that the legislation will be included in a manager’s amendment to the next Katrina relief bill. Project On Government Oversight (POGO) has dubbed the legislation (H.R. 3766) the “Disaster Profiteering Act.”
The Davis legislation would allow agency heads across the federal government to treat all purchases related to national emergencies as “commercial items,” meaning that contracts can be made under a no-bid process and that the government would not have the authority to audit purchases after they have been made. A second, unrelated provision deals with Katrina volunteers.
The President has at least a dozen current national emergencies according to annual filings made in the Federal Register including the national emergency which he renewed last week in response to terrorist attacks. Presumably, this would apply to all homeland security-related spending and broad swaths of national security spending.
Of greatest concern is the prospect that homeland security and defense contractors engaged in billions of dollars in contracts on major systems designed to address the war on terror or some other declared national emergency abroad will avoid competition and auditing. These taxpayer protection provisions were established after the notorious era of defense contracting scandals in the 1980s. Government-wide, 84% of all contracting dollars are spent on a non-commercial basis, according to the Federal Procurement Data Center .
http://www.pogo.org/p/contracts/ca-050903-katrinacontra...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 09:19 PM
Response to Reply #190
541. 9/19 Katrina Reconstruction = Rove 2006 GOP Congressional Slush Fund?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2099605
Katrina Reconstruction = Rove 2006 GOP Congressional Slush
Fund?

Forget the theories about Rove having been named head of the
federal Katrina Reconstruction so that he can use the Gulf
Coast as a testing ground for conservative ideology. This
would assume that the WH has some ideology beyond covering
its ass, making a quick buck and keeping its hands on the
reins of power in DC--which it doesnt.
Karl Rove has control of the Katrina Reconstruction for one
very important reason. He can now direct which GOP fat cat
donors get lucrative contracts. Many of these Pioneers will
not even be from the devastated area. They will be from
districts where GOP Congressmen are in tight races with
Democrats in 2006. The lucky recipients of the Katrina
largesse will turn around and kick back part of their ill
earned gains to Republican candidates. They will make sure
that locals know that the BUSH ADMINSTRATION is the reason
the local economy of Podunk, Ohio or Deerspit, Nebraska is
doing so well off Mississippi's misfortune.
Democratic business need not apply. That goes double for
democratic businesses in the devastated area. They might as
well just close up shop. And democratic voting areas in the
devastated area will be the LAST to be rebuilt, as Karl uses
the Reconstruction to Gerrymander by Disaster for 2006. Keep
the Dems in trailer parks divided up in GOP strongholds, in
other states if at all possible. That should keep them from
voting.
Big Oil will get yet another windfall as it writes off its
losses while getting huge government assistance, enabling it
to keep the dollars pouring into the Republican Congressional
Election Fund.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-25-05 03:22 PM
Response to Reply #190
554. "The Red Cross Money Pit"
Nothing Without Hope (1000+ posts) Sun Sep-25-05 11:12 AM
Original message
LA Times: "The Red Cross Money Pit" - The shocking, sorry TRUTH at last!!!
Edited on Sun Sep-25-05 11:19 AM by Nothing Without Hope
The American Red Cross has had its highly buffed reputation sullied by the disparity between its herculean efforts at fundraising after disasters such as the 9/11 attacks and the 1989 San Francisco Bay earthquake and the actual amount of aid it gave to victims of those disasters. In fact, that disparity - unknown to most trusting Americans - is scandalously huge and is long overdue for wide exposure at last.
Consider: fully SEVENTY PER CENT OF GIVING by Americans for Hurricane Katrina victims went to the American Red Cross. Celebrities, FEMA, the President, network TV, EVERYONE was pushing to give give give to the Red Cross as a way to help Katrina's victims. Yet very little of that money has actually reached the victims in any useful form. Indeed, the management of Red Cross operations in the Katrina areas has often been haphazard and counterproductive, to the point that the CEO of DeKalb County, Georgia ASKED THE RED CROSS TO LEAVE:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
thread title: Diminishing returns: DeKalb County (GA) CEO asks the Red Cross to LEAVE
As the new LA Times article points out, the VOLUNTEERS AND WORKERS of the ARC are wonderful, caring people who work their hearts out to give aid and comfort to disaster victims. For example, see this thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
Thread title: I have returned from my 10 day stint with Red Cross. (1st Impressions)
But the upper-level MANAGEMENT of the ARC is very different. One could sum up the problem by describing them as "Bushed," meaning not only that they are heavily weighted with rich GOP hangers-on, but that they deal in vast amounts of money, accomplish far less than they claim, and mask their real intentions and operations in secrecy. Every time they've been investigated over the last 15 years, what started bubbling up were very dark and ugly secrets indeed. Yet the ARC has to be one of the fattest "sacred cows" on the planet - who has dared to criticize them?
Where do all those billions of dollars so generously given to the ARC REALLY go? How much more productively might they be spent in more direct aid that provides desperately needed services that NEITHER FEMA nor the ARC give? This is not just a question of scandal and corruption, but of life and death, for since the federal government has abandoned hurricane victims to fend for themselves, the 70% of American donations are most of what is left to take up the slack. Instead, most of that money goes to shadowy places other than where it is most needed and the taxpayers actually have to reimburse the Red Cross for much of what little it actually does for the victims.
The losers in all of this are the victims, who are abandoned by BOTH their government and the major charity trusted by Americans to help them.
This is an excellent article, one for which it was extremely difficult to pick just the four paragraphs allowed by DU copyright rules. I urge you to read the entire thing and pass the information along. A full exposure of the sorry reality of the American Red Cross is way, way overdue. Generous Americans should realize that their gifts are NOT reaching the victims. This story should be followed by investigations and further exposés and FUNDAMENTAL changes in the way Americans provide care and aid for disaster victims.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-redcross25sep ...
REBUILDING
The Red Cross money pit
By Richard M. Walden
Richard M. Walden is president and CEO of Operation USA, a 26-year-old international disaster relief agency based in Los Angeles. Website: www.opusa.org .
September 25, 2005
(snip)
This skewed giving to Red Cross would be justified if the organization had to pay the cost of the 300,000 people it has sheltered. But FEMA and the affected states are reimbursing the Red Cross under preexisting contracts for emergency shelter and other disaster services. The existence of these contracts is no secret to anyone but the American public. The Red Cross carefully says it functions only by the grace of the American people — but "people" includes government, national and local. What we've now come to expect from a major disaster is a Red Cross media blitz.
(snip)
The Red Cross brand is platinum. Its fundraising vastly outruns its programs because it does very little or nothing to rescue survivors, provide direct medical care or rebuild houses. After 9/11, the Red Cross collected more than $1 billion, a record in philanthropic fundraising after a disaster. But the Red Cross could do little more than trace missing people, help a handful of people in shelters and provide food to firefighters, police, paramedics and evacuation crews during that catastrophe.
(snip)
The Red Cross expects to raise more than $2 billion before Hurricane Katrina-related giving subsides. If it takes care of 300,000 people, that's $7,000 per victim. I doubt each victim under Red Cross care will see more than a doughnut, an interview with a social worker and a short-term voucher for a cheap motel, with a few miscellaneous items such as clothes and cooking pots thrown in.
The Red Cross' 3 million unpaid volunteers, 156,000 of whom it says are deployed in Hurricane Katrina, are salt-of-the-Earth Americans. But asking where all the privately collected money will go and how much Red Cross is billing FEMA and the affected states is a legitimate question — even if posed by the president of a small relief agency.
(snip)

I suggest that in the replies to this thread we include two kinds of posts as well as discussion:
Additional articles and info about Red Cross financial scandals and failure to deliver expected aid to victims
Suggestions of special DIRECT, LOCAL charities which truly DO give victims what they need.(I've got a doozy for my contribution for category #2 - mobile medical units which come to areas that need medical care. They WORK magnificently and more are needed. I'll post on these MMUs tomorrow in the replies. They are the result of a collaborative project between singer/songwriter Paul Simon and a dean at the Columbia University Medical Center.)
"Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results." — Margaret AtwoodPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 09:31 AM
Response to Original message
191. Post K: Katrina and links to global warming
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,37...
August 30, 2005 Print | GERMAN PAPERS
Katrina Should be A Lesson To US on Global Warming
Seems like everything is President Bush's fault. One day after Katrina hammered the Gulf Coast, German commentators are laying into the US for its stubborn attitude to global warming and Kyoto.
........
The toughest commentary of the day comes from Germany's Environmental Minister, Jürgen Trittin, a Green Party member, who takes space in the Frankfurter Rundschau, a paper friendly with the Social Democrats, to bash US President George W. Bush's environmental laxity. He begins by likening the photos and videos of the hurricane stricken areas to scenes from a Roland Emmerich sci-fi film and insists that global warming and climate change are making it ever more likely that storms and floods will plague America and Europe. "There is only one possible route of action," he writes. "Greenhouse gases have to be radically reduced and it has to happen worldwide. Until now, the US has kept its eyes shut to this emergency. (Americans) make up a mere 4 percent of the population, but are responsible for close to a quarter of emissions." He adds that the average American is responsible for double as much carbon dioxide as the average European. "The Bush government rejects international climate protection goals by insisting that imposing them would negatively impact the American economy. The American president is closing his eyes to the economic and human costs his land and the world economy are suffering under natural catastrophes like Katrina and because of neglected environmental policies." As such, Trittin also calls for a reworking of the Kyoto Protocol -- dubbing it the uncreative title of "Kyoto 2" -- and insisting that the US be included.
The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung also delivers a punchy plea for more attention to global warming, saying politicians should pay more attention to Katrina's alarming images than to election polls and economic forecasts. "Hurricane Katrina has delivered terrible photos. Experts are already calling it the worst hurricane of all time. But this year's hurricane season has only just begun. Flooded villages, mud slides, sandbags....Scientists are quite calmly saying that we will see this kind of thing more often. After all, this is what they have been forecasting for years -- climate change, human-caused and irreversible. But a change of policy is not in the cards. Politics is trapped between voters and industry lobbyists. And of course, there is the killer argument: Protecting the environment impedes economic growth." This is not how it should be, the paper opines. Indeed, more "pictures from New Orleans should encourage us to follow science's advice on climate protection."
The Süddeutsche Zeitung uses its feature page as a defacto editorial by focusing on the hurricane as its theme of the day. Among its articles, it cites a study by US hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that shows a rising tendency for hurricanes that exactly reflects the curve of greenhouse gases. German scientists from the Max-Planck Institute hail the study as the first proof of a real link. "If this man-made warming continues, we will have to expect stronger storms in future" Emmanuel tells the paper.
More papers quoted at this link....
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 09:48 AM
Response to Reply #191
193. The contents above should be in a separate post.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 03:45 PM
Response to Reply #191
447. Al Gore: On Katrina, Global Warming
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Al Gore: On Katrina, Global Warming
Edited on Mon Sep-12-05 06:21 PM by Q
Published on Monday, September 12, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
On Katrina, Global Warming
Speech given by Al Gore
The following is a transcript of a speech given by former Vice President Al Gore at the National Sierra Club Convention in San Francisco on September 9, 2005 addressing the challenges and moral imperatives posed by Hurricane Katrina and global warming.
I know that you are deeply concerned, as I am, about the direction in which our country has been moving. About the erosion of social capital. About the lack of respect for a very basic principle, and that is that we, as Americans, have to put ourselves and our ability to seek out the truth because we know it will make us free. And then on the basis of truth, as we share it to the best of our abilities with one another, we act to try to form a more perfect union and provide for the general welfare and make this country worthy of the principles upon which it was founded.
My heart is heavy for another reason today, and many have mentioned this, but I want to tell you personally that my heart is heavy because of the suffering that the people of the gulf coast have been enduring. The losses that they've suffered in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, New Orleans in particular, but other cities as well, and rural areas. We are here thinking of them, thinking as well of the many brave men and women who have exceeded the limits of exhaustion as they do their duty in responding to this crisis, to the families of those responders and the families of the victims.
When I received the invitation that you generously extended for me to come and speak to you, I did not at first accept, because I was trying to resolve a scheduling conflict. The Fifty State Insurance Commissioners were meeting in New Orleans, and asked me to speak about global warming and hurricanes.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-15-05 11:55 PM
Response to Reply #191
495. 9-16 Hurricane Intensity Linked to Climate Change
Hurricane Intensity Linked to Climate Change
Hurricane intensity linked to climate change
September 16, 2005 - 9:06AM
http://smh.com.au/news/world/hurricane-intensity-linked...
The number of high-strength cyclones, like Hurricane Katrina, has nearly doubled in 35 years in all five of Earth's ocean basins, which scientists said today could be linked to global climate change.
"Global data indicate a 30-year trend toward more frequent and intense hurricanes," said the researchers from the University of Georgia and the National Centre for Atmospheric Research at Boulder, Colorado.
<snip>
They noted a strong uptick in the number and proportion of storms in the top two Saffir-Simpson levels, categories four and five, has been constant from 1970 to 2004, especially in the Indian and the North and South-west Pacific Ocean basins. The rise has been less in the North Atlantic.Around the world, the number of tropical hurricane days rose regularly from 1970 to 1995, when it levelled off at 870 hurricane days, then dropped by 25 per cent until 2003, to 600 days, the scientists said.
http://smh.com.au/news/world/hurricane-intensity-linked ...Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

suegeo (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 09:57 AM
Response to Original message
194. Just before K: Govt action: Army Corps of Engineer contracts
Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 09:58 AM by suegeo
I don't have time to track down this tip, but someone suggested that the Army Corps of Engineers issued contracts just before the hurricane hit. The contracts were for un-watering the city.
Therefore, the contracts, with dates, prove that the Bush Junta is lying when they say "no one expected the levees to break."
Here is the Corps' web site:
http://www.usace.army.mil /
Probably full of little gems of what the Army was planning.
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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:18 PM
Response to Original message
228. Post K: Conditions of evacuated survivors

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John Doe II (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-08-05 07:19 PM
Response to Reply #228
229. Oklahoma FEMA camp
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/09/series-of...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:15 PM
Response to Reply #228
366. 9/10 (orig post 9/3) Evacuees Housed in Ark. Toxic Waste Dump?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... ; http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
(Note: I have not confirmed whether CNN ever reported this story as the poster asserts they said they would.)
I was told to leave or be arrested
I live in Fort Smith Arkansas and 360 people from NO have been shipped to an old army base outside our town.
The problem is the base barracks they have put the people in is listed as a toxic waste dump. The barracks are so inundated with lead paint that the people that have to get around them wear masks so they don't have to breathe the fumes coming off them.
There is no air conditioning and it is 95 degrees at this time of year. I am afraid some of the older people will die of stroke from the heat.
This morning I went out and snuck into the area where they are being kept and told many of the people that the buildings were poisonous and got many of them to promise to leave as quick as they could before I was told to leave or be arrested for inciting a riot..
When I say the building are poisonous you must believe me. They have been trying for years to find a way to destroy them but the EPA won't let them do it..If they burn them it will release lead into the air and it will settle in the lakes and streams around the area. They can't tear them down and send them to other places because no one wants poisonous wood..They ground around them is even poisonous from the lead wash off when it rains. So what does our Illustrious Repug Governor do,.. well he puts NO refuges in them ...
I now have obtained evidence using the help of several lawyers and CNN proof of what I was saying about the atrocious and dangerous conditions at Fort Chaffee.
CNN is on the way and they are saying this story will probably lead on Tuesday morning.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 02:23 PM
Response to Reply #228
437. 9/13 FEMA to Set Up Camp Cities to House 200K for 3 Years
FEMA to set up camp cities to house 200K for 3 years: Link <http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlo... >
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-15-05 12:56 AM
Response to Reply #228
484. 9/14 VFP Reaching Those Who Remained--Who Are Doing Better than Evacuees
This doesn't fit perfectly but hopefully close enough. I'm beginning to feel concern over a pattern re- the Red Cross--it appears it may have been taken over by "free marketeers" determined to contract everything to cronies no matter how incompetent; all while trading on the good name of the Red Cross built up by those who ran it previously.
From http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
An email I just got from a friend who is doing relief work down in
Louisiana with the Hartford chapter of Food Not Bombs:
Hartford Food Not Bombs (including Dave **** and Ross ****) has been working tirelessly with other volunteers to get food and supplies to folks affected by Katrina both inside and outside of New Orleans. They have delivered food to several poor neighborhoods in rural areas such as Slidell, areas of Mississippi, outside Covington and other places along the way. These are the areas that FEMA and the Red Cross (more below) have not reached and some of these people had not seen any signs of help until FNB bus.
Veterans for Peace are stationed at Camp Casey 3 and they have been supplying FNB with some of the supplies they need to distribute to the victims. They are currently using Camp Casey 3 at a staging area for their efforts but plan to move the operation inside Algiers, a poor neighborhood where there are about 2000 people who refuse to evacuate (see below). Algiers is under marshal law and although many “officials” are present, they are doing nothing to help the people of this neighborhood. Food Not Bombs plans to set up a permanent kitchen in a local mosque so that when the volunteers leave, the residents can continue to use it for community meals.
Tucson, Arizona Food Not Bombs met up with Hartford which was a welcomed relief and together they are now able to extend their resources to more folks in need. Hartford and Tucson are the only FNB chapters down here as of last night but hopefully some others are on their way. Here are some things going on that they want people to know about:
• The Red Cross has been dangerously incompetent. For those who evacuated, the Red Cross is separating families into different shelters. In the Red Cross shelters that FNB visited, the food is terrible and conditions are horrendous. The people who chose not to evacuate are in much better shape largely thanks to grassroots efforts. In Algiers, there are reports that the Red Cross are turning away much needed volunteers and having other volunteers arrested for bringing medical supplies to the Wellness Clinic (the Wellness Clinic was set up by Mayday DC, some action medics and other groups).
• Some rogue members of the military have taken supplies from FEMA and gave them to the Wellness Clinic and other grassroots folks because they knew it would get to those in need more effectively.
• FNB was able to rescue two dogs from the lower garden district, one of which had a bad eye infection. They’ve adopted them until they can get them back to their owners (they have tags with names and addresses so hopefully they’ll get back with their families soon).
• Food Not Bombs and Indy Media is desparately needed down there. If you can come help, please call Ross at ***-***-****. This is a long term effort but a little help goes a long way. We must not forget about these victims!
• On the bright side, there is a strong spirit of community and mutual aid. People are very happy to be alive despite all they have lost.-
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skids (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-30-05 12:08 PM
Response to Reply #228
556. 9/30 Only 109 families placed in FEMA housing, 100's of millions spent.
Edited on Fri Sep-30-05 12:09 PM by skids
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 09:39 PM
Response to Original message
289. Levee breeches

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 09:42 PM
Response to Reply #289
290. Sept 4: Mayor blasts failure to patch levee breaches
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/31/katrina.levees /
Mayor blasts failure to patch levee breaches
Sunday, September 4, 2005; Posted: 10:21 a.m. EDT (14:21 GMT)
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.
An earlier breach occurred along the Industrial Canal in the city's Lower 9th Ward. ( Watch the video featuring Nagin's complaints about delayed sandbagging -- 0:56 )
The rising flood waters overwhelmed pumping stations that would normally keep the city dry. About 80 percent of the city was flooded with water up to 20 feet deep after the two levees collapsed.
The Army Corps of Engineers is working to repair the levee breaches, the agency said Tuesday, but it gave no timetable for repairs. (See the video of water surging into the saturated city -- 1:53 )Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 09:54 PM
Response to Reply #289
291. Sept 3: Report from the leevee
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... (1000+ posts) Sat Sep-03-05 10:52 AM
Original message
Report from the leevee
My cousin is with the Corp of Engineers and has been down in NO for several days now, where the supplies they needed to do their jobs have been very slow in coming to them. This man's a Vietnam vet and has seen it all. He also hates * with passion. This is the e-mail I got this morning from his wife about their working conditions and his frustration with at pace of the work. "The telephone lines there are so jammed. Try the FEMA offices in Ala. I call XXXX in the middle of the night as that is the only time I can reach him. He worked 18 hours yesterday filling sandbags for the levee. He is frustrated that things are moving so slow. They cut the funding for the Corp of Engineers this year back so far that they were on short crews anyway. They sent 4 people home the day after the levee broke and told then they didnt need them. He is catnapping on the floor of the barge. They do have sleeping bags. The mosquitos are terrible. Finally got hot food to them. These men are working day and night under bad conditions. Fished 3 bodies out of the river and were told to roll them in plastic and put them on the bank for pick up later. XXXX said at least in Viet Nam we brought our people out with dignity. "Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 02:10 PM
Response to Reply #289
432. 9/13 E-mail from friend Re- Geologist's ViewKatrina: geologist on levee breach "explosion" reports <http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/13/katrina_geologist_... >
Xeni Jardin:
Tim McKinney, a physical geologist and a Boing Boing reader, offers an explanation of what happens in soil and structures during flooding and heavy precipitation events -- and one possible explanation for rumors among evacuees that the levees "were bombed."
I've tried to explain a little more, in completely nontechnical terms, some of the forces at work. What may also is how once a failure threshold is reached, the result may be a slump or a more drastic rapid flow or blowout.
I mention this in light of unsubstantiated comments posted which referred to unnamed persons hearing sounds like explosions around the time of the failure. If a levee fails abrubtly and the canal containment wall above it tears loose, it could generate a significant noise, perhaps like a rumble or an explosion even.
Link <http://www.boingboing.net/images/Understanding_the_leve... > to Tim's doc (PDF). (Thanks, Kathryn Cramer <http://www.kathryncramer.com/ > )
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 11:16 PM
Response to Original message
295. Blanco V Bush

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 11:20 PM
Response to Reply #295
296. Sept 9: NPR Reports: GW to Blanco"I'll send in the troops if you answer to
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
demo dutch (1000+ posts) Fri Sep-09-05 09:57 PM
Original message
NPR Reports: GW to Blanco"I'll send in the troops if you answer to the WH"
Edited on Fri Sep-09-05 10:03 PM by demo dutch
Shocking!! on NPR
A must hear ... especially what took place during the 90 min mtg between Blanco, Nagin and Bush onboard Airforce One, during which GW said "I'll send in the troops if you answer to the WH"
Audio of the "Katrina Timeline Unexecuted plans" which aired on All Things Considered a bit ago is now posted at
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=48 ...
NPR-Brief on Katrina Timeline: Unexecuted Plans
All Things Considered, September 9, 2005 · Just days before Hurricane Katrina hit, officials from state, local and federal agencies were hearing that this could very likely be the big one -- the one they knew could devastate the city.
They spent the weekend in almost non-stop conference calls -- making sure all the plans for food, water and security were in place. But even before the storm hit, some of the plans started to fall apart.
National Guard troops in other states sat ready, waiting for orders that never came. Instead, they were told to wait for an official plan and a chain of command to be established. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling and Laura Sullivan report.
--
Also found this disccusion on on earlier DU thread
snip
Well, here is the story: a few nights ago, he met with Gov. Blanco. He isolated her, and attempted to get her to sign an agreement that partly would have exonerated the Feds and FEMA, and placed blame squarely on the state government. Well, I see in these NY Times articles that Karl Rove is orchestrating this cowardly attempt to diffuse blame. This story, by the way, comes from someone very high up in Blanco's administration.
--
link
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
so, if he indeed isolated her.. then it's her word against his!!!
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 11:37 PM
Response to Reply #296
298. Sept 9: Audio of the report
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=48...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-09-05 11:44 PM
Response to Reply #295
299. A Mole in Gov Blanco's office reports
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Gruenemann (338 posts) Mon Sep-05-05 05:03 PM
Original message
A Mole in Gov Blanco's office reports
Okay, I'm gonna come clean, because I see that Bush and his cronies are going to try to do what I heard they were going to do. I mentioned a few emails back that Bush was doing something despicable and cowardly.
Well, here is the story: a few nights ago, he met with Gov. Blanco. He isolated her, and attempted to get her to sign an agreement that partly would have exonerated the Feds and FEMA, and placed blame squarely on the state government. Well, I see in these NY Times articles that Karl Rove is orchestrating this cowardly attempt to diffuse blame. This story, by the way, comes from someone very high up in Blanco's administration.
From someone pretty high up in Mayor Ray Nagin's administration, word
also got out just yesterday athta Bush was going to try to aim blame at Nagin and his people. Believe me, this is serious shit. Both the state and city governments have real fears that their lines are being bugged by the Feds (not unfounded by the way). And all this during a disaster such as the aftermath. It is becoming painfully aware that Bush has no conscience, no integrity whatsoever. Okay, so I said if need be, I'd spill the beans on this, and I encourage all of you to pass it around.

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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:17 PM
Response to Reply #295
351. 9/10 (orig 9/2) National Guard Delay (no approval by WH til Thurs!) Likely
National Guard Delay (no approval by WH til Thurs!) Likely to Be Examined
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
See also http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/katrina_national_guard
WASHINGTON - Several states ready and willing to send National Guard troops to the rescue in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans didn't get the go-ahead until days after the storm struck — a delay nearly certain to be investigated by Congress.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard on Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.
California troops just began arriving in Louisiana on Friday, three days after flood waters devastated New Orleans and chaos broke out.
In fact, when New Orleans' levees gave way to deadly flooding on Tuesday, Louisiana's National Guard had received help from troops in only three other states: Ohio, which had nine people in Louisiana then; Oklahoma, 89; and Texas, 625, figures provided by the National Guard show.
<snip>
With many states' Guard units depleted by deployments to Iraq, Katrina's aftermath was almost certain from the beginning to require help from faraway states.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:28 PM
Response to Reply #295
370. 9/10 (orig 9/3) Behind Scenes Struggle; WH Tries to Shift Blame
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
WP, A01: White House Shifts Blame
Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country's emergency management.
....
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 had sought control over National Guard units, normally under control of the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request, noting that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. State authorities suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who is an adviser and does not have the authority to speak publicly.
Blanco made two moves Saturday that protected her independence from the federal government: She created a philanthropic fund for the state's victims and hired James Lee Witt, Federal Emergency Management Agency director in the Clinton administration, to advise her on the relief effort.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 11:38 PM
Response to Reply #295
383. 9/10 (orig 9/4) Bush Suspended Posse Comatatus???
Edited on Sat Sep-10-05 11:39 PM by snot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Anyone Hear About A 6 AM Appearance By Bush? Suspended Some Laws?
My sister just called and said Bush came on TV at 6AM and announced that he was suspending the laws that prevented the military from engaging in police activities here in the states!
From some other posts in same thread:
23. MACDIS would probably suffice in this case
http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html2/d302512 ...
One of the first things that Bush(Cheney) did in 2001 was redirect money in the DoD to review (I think they used a differnt verb) posse comitatus. I used to have a .gov link for this request but I can't find it right now. Then in 2002, the WH publicly stated it wanted to reexamine the posse comitatus but Congress didn't play along. They brought it up again last month
Here's part of an editorial from the Plain Dealer, 8/15/2005. I got it out of LexisNexis so no link.. sorry.
The U.S. military is said to have plans for some very unlikely scenarios — among them, for instance, the invasion of London. So there should be little surprise when the Washington Post reports that the Northern Command headquarters, responsible for the continental United States, has drawn up plans for the armed forces to take charge in case of a catastrophic terrorist attack.
Little surprise, but some proper concern, nonetheless. Although the words “martial law” were not used in the account, that’s almost certainly what would result. Should a president assert his or her commander-in-chief authority under Article 2 of the Constitution to set aside the post-Civil War Posse Comitatus Act and bring in troops to preserve the order, Americans would live, in whatever numbers and for whatever time frame, under rules foreign to their unregimented ways.
Among those rules would be restrictions on travel and the distribution of food, water and fuel, and — depending on the extent of the attack — quite possibly some attempts to control communications: television, radio, newspapers and even the Internet.
Karmakaze (221 posts)
Sun Sep-04-05 10:16 AM
Response to Original message
25. Posse Comitatus Act:
Here are some links that can provide some more information on the Act:
http://law.wustl.edu/WULQ/75-2/752-10.html
http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Trebil ...
The interesting point is made in the second link:
Federal military personnel may also be used pursuant to the Stafford Act, 42 U.S.C., section 5121, in times of natural disaster upon request from a state governor. In such an instance, the Stafford Act permits the president to declare a major disaster and send in military forces on an emergency basis for up to ten days to preserve life and property. While the Stafford Act authority is still subject to the criteria of active versus passive, it represents a significant exception to the Posse Comitatus Act’s underlying principle that the military is not a domestic police force auxiliary.
The only reason I can see for Bush to "suspend" Posse Comitatus is the duration that military forces are allowed to be employed - 10 days.
30. What's wrong with this picture?
We have the National Guard in Iraq and Northcom in an american city.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
The Busheviks are going to get away with it.
I had hope. I no longer do. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Stay with me here...
General Honore comes in and is touted as a hero restoring order to New Orleans. He is now spinning madly to protect the Busheviks. The coup is complete. We are now a dictatorship.
What has gone unnoticed is, since early this morning Posse Comatatus has been suspended. Had Clinton dared such a thing, it would have been an open Civil War, but those who would have decried such an act under Clinton now support it wholeheartedly under Bush.
This is a significant event. These bastards know survival psychology, and failing to respond was a cold, calculated maneuver to have the nation BEG for a military presence to restore order. Now, this will be utilized as justification for them to move in with the military any place at any time. Killing of Americans by American military forces is now an acceptable option.
In our humanity, we have called down the retribution of a military dictatorship.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 12:40 PM
Response to Reply #295
392. 9/11 (orig post 9/5) Northern Command Was Waiting for Bush Orders
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
On BBC: Northern Command was in position, waiting for Presidential orders.
This was on the episode of BBC World News which played on a local (Philadelphia area) PBS station at 6:00 am this morning. I can't find a stream or transcript online. It's sitting on my TIVO right now marked do not delete but I have no way to put it onto my hard drive and no place to serve it from anyway. If you do have a recording of it, it starts about 9 minutes in. I've done a hand written transcript, the spelling and punctuation are mine. The bolding is also mine to emphasize what I think is the important part. The BBC announcer was interviewing Lieutenant Commander Sean Kelly whom she referred to as Leftenant Commander. This is the entire interview with no missing context.
Announcer: The relief operation is the largest ever conducted in America. It's being coordinated by the US Northern Command in Colorado. Leftenant Commander Sean Kelly explains how the relief effort is being organized.
Kelly: US Northern Command is the command that coordinates the military support for our federal and state agencies. They call up and request a capability and we try and provide that capability, whether it's medical resources, search and rescue helicopters, food, water, transportation, communications; that's what we provide.
A: So it sounds like you're providing a bit of everything. I mean, do you know how much you're actually providing?
K: Right now we've got 4,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and marine and coast guardsmen supporting this. They've delivered more than 9 million meals, I can't remember how many millions of liters of water.
A: 9 million meals? Do you actually have 9 million meals?
K: It's those "meals ready to eat". The packaged meals that the Army takes out with them out in the field. We have 9 million of 'em ready. I know at least 100,000 went to the Superdome the other night to help the people out there in New Orleans. So they're staged at various places throughout Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.
A: Now I'm sure you're aware of the criticism that the authorities have been slow to respond to this. When did you get the order to start relief work?
K: NorthCom started planning before the storm even hit. We were ready for the storm when it hit Florida because, as you remember, it crossed the bottom part of Florida, and then we were plaining, you know, once it was pointed towards the Gulf Coast. So what we did was we activated what we call defense coordinating officers to work with the state to say okay, what do you think you'll need, and we set up staging bases that could be started. We had the USS Baton sailing almost behind the hurricane so that after the hurricane made landfall it's search and rescue helicopters would be available almost immediately. So we had things ready. The only caveat is, we have to wait until the President authorizes us to do so. The laws of the United States say that the military can't just act in this fashion, we have to wait for the President to give us permission.
A: Now I gather that your engineers are also involved in pumping some of that flood water out of the areas.
K: Yes, our military personnel are helping to reconstruct the levees which frees up the engineers to start pumping out the waters so that hopefully New Orleans can be high and dry soon enough.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 01:19 PM
Response to Reply #295
402. 9/11 Nagin: Only 200 Guardsmen in early days
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp / :
Nagin on rebuilding: New Orleanians should take the lead
Sunday, 8:40 a.m.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Sunday morning that any rebuilding effort should be led by New Orleanians and not outsiders.
"I'll lead that effort come heck or high water," he said on the television show "Meet the Press".
Nagin declined to grade the actions and response of President George W. Bush, but did repeat earlier comments that initial response from the federal government was not what it should have been.
"I think for some reason he did not understand the full magnitude of this on the front end," Nagin said.
But Nagin said the response from the president was much better after any personal meetings between the two.
When asked about the actions of Gov. Kathleen Blanco, Nagin paused before offering an answer: "I don't know about that," he said.
Nagin said he had only 200 National Guardsmen in the city in the early days. "We didn't get a lot of help for three or four days of pure hell," he said. "I don't have much else to say about (Blanco)."
The mayor also said there seemed to be confusion between Blanco and federal officials about just who had ultimate authority in the disaster area.
"I just don't appreciate that stuff when people are dying in my city."
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 04:29 PM
Response to Reply #295
407. 9/11 MSNBC: Bush Gets Call From Blanco and Goes to Bed
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
Bush Gets Emergency Phone Call From Blanco Mon. Nite and Goes to Bed!!wtf?
This is a Killer article about our little boy king and how removed he truly is from reality. Outrageous and Scary....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287434
How Bush Blew It <snip>
But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil's advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn't wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority.
<snip>Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, a motherly but steely figure known by the nickname Queen Bee, knew that she needed help. But she wasn't quite sure what. At about 8 p.m., she spoke to Bush. "Mr. President," she said, "we need your help. We need everything you've got."
Bush, the governor later recalled, was reassuring. But the conversation was all a little vague. Blanco did not specifically ask for a massive intervention by the active-duty military. "She wouldn't know the 82nd Airborne from the Harlem Boys' Choir," said an official in the governor's office, who did not wish to be identified talking about his boss's conversations with the president. There are a number of steps Bush could have taken, short of a full-scale federal takeover, like ordering the military to take over the pitiful and (by now) largely broken emergency communications system throughout the region. But the president, who was in San Diego preparing to give a speech the next day on the war in Iraq, went to bed.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-12-05 01:46 AM
Response to Reply #295
419. (self-deleted--wrong place)
Edited on Mon Sep-12-05 01:47 AM by snotPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 01:09 AM
Response to Reply #295
429. 9/12 An Engineer Re- Who's Responsible for What
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Thoughts on Katrina from a professional engineer
I've been seeing a lot lately in the news and in the blogs about the "blame game" and who was responsible. Having worked in the engineering private sector interfacing with emergency management, and having spent the past few years working on my PhD in engineering studying hurricane evacuation, I can say that there is plenty of blame to go around. As in civil lawsuits, the question is how much is apportioned to whom.
Every jurisdiction at risk of a hurricane develops emergency procedures to deal with the possible consequences based on the predicted storm severity and expected impacts (eg storm surge). Resource allocation, placement of equipment and other supplies, and responsiblity of each involved agency is laid out in these plans. These plans are typically layered to account for increasing threat. Cat 1 storms don't require nearly the preparation or relocation as Cat 5 storms - obviously. And no city wants to evacuate if avoidable; this is costly both economically and in terms of risk to citizen and personnel.
Once the threat becomes established (based on NHC weather forecasts), these procedures are implemented, and as the threat increases, the additional pre-determined measures (layers) are taken. Emergency procedures don't kick in until certain criteria are met, simply out of practicality. Jurisdictions can't just willy-nilly declare emergencies and begin evacuations at any time, since nature can't be accurately predicted beyond short-term times (Hurricane Charley is a good example). Based on available timelines for Hurricane Katrina (ignoring the GOP-produced bullshit timeline), Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin appear to have done what they were supposed to do, when they were supposed to do it.
Once an emergency is declared, various administrative and jurisdictional procedures kick in. Blanco clearly did this on the Friday prior to landfall, and once the feds acknowledged her request (Saturday morning), they became obligated to aid in any number of specific ways. Mayor Nagin also took the steps assigned to him to move as many people to shelters as possible. The fact that the evacuation reached an unprecedented 80% is an indication of his efforts and his success (when 60% was expected).
(much more)
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-18-05 04:06 AM
Response to Reply #295
518. 9/18 Blanco says feds pledged buses
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Blanco says feds pledged buses
Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina raged ashore, Gov. Kathleen Blanco still wants one question answered.
Where were the buses?
Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.
On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.
more....
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091805/new_blanco00...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 09:28 PM
Response to Reply #295
542. 9/19 Non-Partisan Report Clears Blanco
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
LA governor acted in a timely manner according to the House Judiciary
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/releases/katri...
I don't know how many of you have seen this,
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/releases/katri...
BUT SEND IT TO EVERY REPUBLICAN YOU KNOW WHO KEEPS TALKING ABOUT HOW THIS IS ALL THE GOVERNOR'S FAULT.
(sorry, can't copy and paste because it's PDF)
It clears the Governor of any mistakes or wrongdoing, according to the House Judiciary Committee.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 06:21 PM
Response to Original message
321. Democratic moves to help the victims:

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 06:24 PM
Response to Reply #321
322. Sept 10:John Kerry Offers Major Package of Legislation to Help Small Busin
http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=484
John Kerry Offers Major Package of Legislation to Help Small Businesses, Others Devastated by Hurricane Katrina
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 06:42 PM
Response to Original message
324. The death toll

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 06:46 PM
Response to Reply #324
325. Sept 10: 50,000 body bags ordered
Edited on Sat Sep-10-05 06:58 PM by mom cat
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/11196519p-11948351c.h...
Modesto company to deliver more body bags to New Orleans
The government's order for another 50,000 will be filled by about eight firms By PATRICK GIBLIN
BEE STAFF WRITERLast Updated: September 9, 2005, 04:24:14 AM PDTThe federal government is trying to purchase an additional 50,000 body bags for use in the Hurricane Katrina cleanup and in Iraq, according to an official for a Modesto manufacturer.
Previously, the Federal Emergency Management Administration purchased 25,000 body bags and shipped them to New Orleans.
"We recently delivered every bag we had in stock, which is about 400," said John Hassapakis, manager of Central Valley Professional Services in Modesto. "Those were sent directly to New Orleans."
This week the government put out a bid for 50,000 more bags, he said.
"They are for backup in Louisiana and for offshore purposes, but it will bemonths before they will be able to getthem," he said. "That's a lot of material."

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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:12 PM
Response to Reply #324
365. 9/10 Who collects and counts the dead
(Note: the following strikes me as speculative)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ... :
A Stench: Mobile Morgues, Brown, Funeralgate, FEMA - a Cover-up?
I see a travesty taking place, and I need to speak up. FEMA is bringing in a really sleazy outfit to care for, identify and bury Katrina's dead. Worse still, this outfit has big money ties to Bush's Houston buddies, including both the current and previous head of FEMA. And I'm not sure who's in charge, or what their agenda is.
Skip ahead to THE ONGOING SCANDAL below if you want, but please come back and read this too:
Unfortunately, the greater public's attention wanders when we begin talking about dry (!) details like Rove's outing of an operative, but this story has some strong emotional and graphic overtones. I’m using the word SCANDAL intentionally. Still, I want to use it responsibly. Watergate WAS a national scandal. BucshCo’s character assassinations and innuendos are touted as scandals, but they are the tactics of bullies and thugs.
So… I don't want to ignore these facts, just because they seem creepy. They've all been cited in mainstream articles. I would appreciate any corrections or further fact-checking.
Read THE SCANDAL PART 1, then THE ONGOING SCANDAL farther down, and finally THE CHILLER.
I organized this basically in this order: Background on who's in charge of FEMA and where they came from; how they became involved with the mobile morgue people; and what seems to be happening now.
How did Brown get appointed? What's his background?
From Time Magazine:
Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division." In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. "Department heads did not report to him."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1103003, ...
More damning statements, from a Daily Kos blogger (and remember, this is just a blog, although it’s been widely distributed):
"An unmitigated, total fucking disaster." That's not a quote from Mike Brown, but rather, a quote describing him. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/2/34622/68348
How did Mike Brown get to FEMA in the first place?
Joseph Allbaugh, Bush's chief of staff when he served as Governor of Texas, brought him along to FEMA with him:
Allbaugh hired Brown after an acrimonious end to a nine-year stint as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. Former officials say he was forced out; a friend and lawyer of Brown's said he negotiated a settlement after withstanding numerous lawsuits against his enforcement of rules for judges and stewards.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20 ...
How did Allbaugh become head of FEMA? Who was he?
FEMA website:
Prior to his appointment, Mr. Allbaugh served as Chief of Staff to then-Governor George W. Bush.
Mr. Allbaugh served as the National Campaign Manager for Bush-Cheney 2000 with responsibility and oversight for all activities related to the Bush election campaign. He had previously served as Campaign Manager for President Bush's first run for Texas governor.
http://www.fema.gov/about/allbaugh/index.shtm
Where is Allbaugh now?
Washington Post:Former FEMA Chief Is at Work on Gulf Coast
After leaving FEMA in March 2003, Allbaugh, who managed the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign, founded Allbaugh Co., a lobbying-consulting firm with many clients in the disaster-relief business.
-snip-
Among those clients are: the KBR division of Haliburton....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20 ...
HERE'S THE SCANDAL, PART ONE:
The Austin Chronicle
Funeralgate Hits Texas
What began as a citizen's complaint against SCI in January 1998 has since grown into a scandal revolving around campaign contributions, and the influence they may buy. All of the politicos who intervened on SCI's behalf received major contributions from SCI's political action committee, or PAC. Did that money convince them to help SCI -- the world's largest death care company -- and to punish the agency that investigated SCI?
-snip-
As a major player in the funeral business, SCI is accustomed to doling out cash in the form of perfectly legal campaign contributions. From 1996 through the 1998 election, SCI's PAC contributed about $113,000 to the campaigns of dozens of politicians. Bush received $35,000 from SCI. Cornyn got $2,000. Moreover, there appears to be a connection between SCI's political giving and actions taken by eleced officials.
-snip-
the scandal promises to grow as the lawsuit -- filed by former TFSC director Eliza May -- works through the discovery process. The suit alleges that May was fired because she "repeatedly and in good faith reported violations of the law and conduct that she reasonably believed to constitute violations of the law." As May's suit goes forward, Bush and the other politicos who helped SCI are scrambling for cover. May's lawyers want to depose Bush.
(Poster's note: the whistleblower lawsuit has been dismissed, yet there are claims that Bush perjured himself or obstructed justice. I am not a lawyer and did not include these as I don't know their validity)
-snip-
A few days later, May alleges, she was called into Allbaugh's office where -- with Waltrip sitting in the same room -- Whitmire interrogated her about the TFSC's investigation into SCI and demanded that she answer his questions about the investigation.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol18/issue45/pol ...
OR google: funeralgate allbaugh bush waltrip TFSC or any combination and get your mind blown, if you don't already know this story - oh, yeah, Atty General Gonzales has been all over trying to get this hushed, google his name in connection, too.
THE ONGOING SCANDAL (COVERUP?)
Here's the part I'm not finding ANYWHERE in the news. I pulled the info together yesterday, emailed the Austin Chronicle and a local politician, and now assembled threads for DU.
Here's the story, links follow with details:
SCI Corporation has a wholly-owned subsidiary, Kenyon International, which has been deployed, with a mobile morgue, to NOLA. I'm having a little trouble getting GREAT definitive answers - imagine that! - but everything I see points to this being the mobile morgue in St Gabriel, where the NOLA bodies are being processed without transparency, without autopsies, behind a Bushco veil of secrecy.
FEMA didn't deploy its own DMORT teams to the St. Gabriel warehouse where the mobile morgue is set up, but outsourced that location’s administration to Kenyon International. That's right, Joe Albaugh and Michael Brown's FEMA selected them, and FEMA is saying there is neither time nor money for autopsies. If autopsies were performed on randomly-selected bodies, a statistician could use the results to extrapolate a great deal of information about the Katrina deaths; specifically:
--numbers killed by drowning and initial trauma of Katrina itself
--numbers killed by dehydration
--numbers killed by gunshot
--time of death
--were people killed by the natural disaster or the failure of the rescue effort?
I believe that most Americans would not want such a sleazy outfit in charge of the remains. And I must ask: why use a Bush crony to handle this?
From what I can see, by searching Louisiana revised code as well as DMORT.org's website, it's up to the local coroner to make final decisions about death certificates and the need to autopsy. How can FEMA usurp this right?
I'd love to see this story get in front of the American public. I think. Then, again, it's pretty sensational. But entrusting Katrina's bodies to a company that is accused of burying bodies in the woods...?
On September 1, Kenyon posted a press release on its website, and was quoted on CNN's website in an article about St. Gabriel's, but the press release and the reference to a Kenyon representative in CNN's story has been pulled from the internet.
Please take the time to check out these links:
How sleazy is SCI/Kenyon?
Houston Business Journal
Houston-based Service Corp. International, the world's largest funeral and cemetery company, on Tuesday said it agreed to pay $65 million to settle a securities class action lawsuit. The suit had been pending against the company and certain of its current and former officers since January 1999. http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2004/04/19/d ...
The New York Times
$100 Million Settlement Over Remains
The parent company of two cemeteries has agreed to pay $100 million to families who sued it for mishandling and moving remains. The company, the Service Corporation International of Houston, announced the settlement months after a judge certified a class-action lawsuit by 2,000 families in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties. The settlement will also compensate plaintiffs in related suits against the company and its Menorah Gardens cemeteries in Palm Beach and Broward Counties. Abby Goodnough (NYT)
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E0DA ...
The New York Times
Funeral Company Accused of Desecration
ABSTRACT - Class-action lawsuit in Florida accuses Service Corp International, largest US funeral company, of desecrating remains in Jewish cemeteries it operates in South Florida; families of deceased charge company with breaking open burial vaults and dumping contents in woods to make room for others.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30612F7 ...
Kenyon is deployed:
PRNewswire
HOUSTON, Sept. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Kenyon International Emergency Services, the world's leading disaster management company, has activated an emergency action team to respond to the needs of Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina under an agreement with the US Government and the Department of Homeland Security
Kenyon has deployed one of its fully-equipped mobile morgue kits and a 10-member, specially-trained team to provide morgue support to the area. The mobile morgue includes equipment for search and recovery, victim identification, and pathology. It is one of three mobile morgues held worldwide by Kenyon. Earlier this year, Kenyon also deployed a mobile morgue and a large response team for the tsunami efforts in Phuket, Thailand.
Kenyon International Emergency Services is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Houston-based Service Corporation International (NYSE: SCI). Founded in 1929, the company works with more than 200 clients in both the public and private sector, and has responded to more than 300 mass-fatality incidents in its 75 year history.
For more information, call Jay Kirsch at 281-872-6084 or Jerry Hendin at 425-442-5565 or visit the Kenyon website at http://www.kenyoninternational.com .
PR newswire site: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&S ...
The source of the prnewswire above, including the links to Kenyon Internationl, is the Yahoo business site: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050901/dath045.html?.v=16
Houston Chronicle
Morgue set up in St. Gabriel,Team of forensic specialists called in to help identify the dead
Sept. 6, 2005, 12:57AM
ST. GABRIEL, LA. - The bodies have been tied to trees, floating in the toxic muck and decomposing in the blazing Louisiana sun. Now, officials say the victims of Hurricane Katrina being collected this week from the flooded streets of New Orleans and other damaged areas will be handled with delicate care before they are claimed by loved ones.
As officials began the grim task of pulling bodies off the streets and out of homes, a team of forensic specialists at a makeshift morgue in St. Gabriel, a small town between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, prepared to process the bodies.
-snip-
It won't be a traditional operation, where we would do autopsies and things that would take a vast amount of time," Ellis said. "We want to try and do a good job on the post-mortem collection and inspection side so we can give these folks and opportunity to retrieve their loved ones at some future date.
Baton Rouge Advocate
September 4, 2005
Morgue in works in St. Gabriel
Disaster Mortuary Team to identify victims of hurricane
By MARK F. BONNER
mbonner@theadvocate.com
Advocate staff writer
ST. GABRIEL -- In preparation for the bodies that will be removed from New Orleans in the coming days and weeks, a Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team on Saturday was erecting a temporary morgue in a large warehouse next to the St. Gabriel Police Department off of Iberville Street.
Officials on the scene wearing green "DMORT" shirts would not comment on their presence or their construction efforts, but dump trucks were bustling in and out of the work site.
DMORTs are directed by the National Disaster Medical System -- a sector within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Response Division. The teams include funeral directors, medical examiners, coroners, pathologists, forensic anthropologists, medical records technicians and transcribers and fingerprint specialists, according to the National Disaster Medial System Web site.
Don Moreau, the chief of operations for the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office said Saturday he had been in contact with DMORT officials to inquire if they needed support. Moreau said officials told him that DMORT did not need support from him and said they would be processing 60 bodies a day in recognition and identification procedures.
St. Gabriel Police Chief Kevin J. Ambeau Sr. would not comment on the presence of DMORT and directed a reporter to leave the premises.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Saturday that she expects the death toll to reach into the thousands.
http://2theadvocate.com/stories/090405/new_morgue001.sh ...
You can read about DMORT here:
Main Site: http://www.dmort.org /
History of DMORT: http://www.dmort.org/DNPages/DMORTHistory.htm
It was the DMORT WMD team that deployed to St Gabriel (which is 15 miles from Baton Rouge)- you read that right - the WMD team, which was used after September 11. I wish I had time to find out when and how Kenyon International came up with the idea of a mobile morgue capable of deployment by FEMA - when buddy Joe Allbaugh took over the agency?
The posting below is from the DMORT website: http://www.dmort4.com /
UPDATE 8/31/2005 FROM COMMANDER HOWELL:
DMORT Region IV has deployed two 3 person teams to assess the situation in Gulfport and Biloxi, MS. The remainder of the region IV team is currently enroute to Hattiesburg, MS and under the command of Paul Taylor. Region I and II has been deployed to Aniston, AL. Region VII is deployed to Baton Rouge, LA. Region VIII has been deployed to Houston, TX. The mobile morgue in Selma, AL has been deployed to Biloxi, MS. The DMORT WMD Team has been deployed to Baton Rouge, LA. No additional resources have been called at this time, but all DMORT Region IV members should be on standby for possible deployment. If you are a DMORT Region IV member and have not already notified DMORT Command Staff of your availability for deployment, please do so via the contact form on this website.
And here's this, which begs the question: If FEMA can deploy DMORT teams directly, without the layer of paying a subcontractor some profit, too, why wouldn't they? But the following post seems to say that Kenyon is competing with the DMORT teams to bring in qualified DMORT techs.
UPDATE 9/7/2005 FROM COMMANDER HOWELL:
Many DMORT Region IV members are also members of Kenyon International Emergency Services, Inc. Due to the scale of this natural disaster, Kenyon International has contracted with FEMA to provide mortuary services. As a result, many DMORT Region IV members have been contacted about possible deployment with Kenyon. Please be aware of the fact that any deployment with Kenyon is NOT a DMORT mission. Those DMORT members who have already confirmed their deployment status with DMORT Command Staff are expected to remain available for deployment, and should expect to be deployed in the near future. DMORT Region IV will not prevent anyone from deployment with Kenyon. However, any DMORT Region IV member who is unavailable for deployment due to a prior obligation or deployment with another agency such as Kenyon may be asked to step down from the Region IV team so that positions can be available for those making the mission of DMORT Region IV a top priority.
And from the same website, it’s apparent that FEMA was in no hurry to deploy all their DMORT teams:
DMORT REGION IV NEWS
UPDATE 8/30/2005 FROM ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER KIM PLUNK:
As of 10am Tuesday morning the deployed DMORT IV team members are still stationed in Anniston, AL. During the night 2 three person assessment teams were sent forward to help in affected areas. Cotton has asked that all members please keep up with latest info. via this website and email. DO NOT CALL COTTON UNLESS IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. We will give daily updates as long as we have capability to do so.
And I repeat, I don't see anything that deprives the local coroners of the right to determine cause of death, or order/deny an autopsy.
Please see:
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MEDICAL EXAMINERS
MASS FATALITY PLAN
Excerpt: Page 7
The decision to do complete or partial autopsies resides with the Medical Examiner/Coroner authority locally responsible for body processing and death certification. Some reasons for complete autopsies:
- Homicides
- Terrorism
- Indeterminate manner of death
- Flight crews ¡V the same pathologist should do all members
- Unidentified remains
- Federal request
- Local ME/Coroner request
Excerpt: Page 14
The final determination of body or body parts positive identification is the sole responsibility of the local ME/Coroner in which the disaster occurs
Excerpt: Page 15
Death Certificates
A. Issued according to procedures normally in place and as directed by the local ME/Coroner jurisdiction.
B. The administrative or judicial issuance of death certificates in situations in which there is an absence of positive physical forensic scientific identification is a responsibility solely of the local ME/Coroner in conjunction with local legal and public health authorities.
http://www.dmort.org/FilesforDownload/NAMEMFIplan.pdf
AND
from the "Mass Fatality Incidents: A Guide for Human Forensic Identification" June 05 Report by the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice,Office of Justice Programs: http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/199758.pdf
Excerpt: Page 57
The DMORT team supports the local medicolegal authority by providing expertise, personnel, supplies, and equipment. The responsibility for assigning the cause and manner of death, signing of death certificates, and death notification remain with the local authority
and
Excerpt - Page 15
If the medical examiner/coroner is not equipped to assume responsibility for managing morgue operations, a Disaster Mortuary sponsible for appointing a forensic pathologist or temporary medical examiner/coroner who is capable of overseeing all morgue operations and administrative functions. The extent and role of a DMORT remains at the discretion of the local medical examiner/coroner.
This same document says:
Excerpt: Page 57
Federal Disaster Declaration. The Federal Response Plan dictates how Federal agencies respond following a disaster. A request for DMORT assistance must be made by a local official through the State emergency management agency, which will then contact the regional office of FEMA. Based on the severity of the disaster, FEMA can ask for a Presidential disaster declaration, allowing the DMORT team to be activated. This process can take from 24 to 48 hours.
http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/199758.pdf
In closing, here's
THE CHILLER:
from a DMORT newsletter, referring to the Pennsylvania crash site on 9/11: http://www.dmort.org/DNPages/jan2002newstext.htm
This response marked several firsts, all of note because of their importance for future responses. These included the deployment of the DNA team, the establishment of protocols documenting the operation of each morgue section, responding under a memorandum of understanding with the FBI, the response of the FAC team and the collection of family blood reference samples, the inclusion of a formal triage station as the first morgue station, and the first use of the Kenyon International Services mobile morgue.
and
The FBI was the lead authority in the investigation because of the criminal nature of the crash. Although victim identification responsibilities resided with the local coroner, his capabilities were severely taxed. Attempts to have the site declared a federal disaster through the state proved unsuccessful. The FBI stepped in to establish a memorandum with HHS that allowed DMORT to respond. During the activation, the crash site was under the control of the FBI; the DMORT operation focused on the morgue and the family assistance center.
Sound familiar?
Bolding is mine, but the term "the first use" sent chills through me. I am NOT a conspiracy theorist. As a matter of fact, I had these facts assembled yesterday and delayed posting because I needed to ask my spouse and a few good friends, "Am I cracking under the stress/grief/frustration of watching this unfold? Am I getting wacky?" Admittedly, there is an element of the macabre in all this that had me repulsed throughout the research, but still....
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-12-05 01:21 AM
Response to Reply #324
417. 9/11 DU Thread Devoted to Body Count
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
Please post all articles on body counts here.
The government appears to be covering up numerous deaths.
I've previously seen stories on bodies in high schools, hospitals, morgues, etc as well as those who died in the convention center, Superdome, etc. that would total far more than what the government is reporting.
The government miraculously reported a drop in the anticipated body count just when the media was temporarily kicked out. The very same day, a Modesto paper reported that FEMA had ordered 50,000 more body bags delivered to New Orleans -- adding to the 25,000 already there.
I suspect a coverup and hope to do an investigative story.
Please help!
Post all stories on deaths attributed to the hurricane, flooding, starvation etc in the aftermath.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:15 AM
Response to Reply #324
455. 9/13 FEMA outsources Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping
Edited on Wed Sep-14-05 12:15 AM by snot
(I suspect our efforts in this thread may have helped!)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
FEMA outsources Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping!
My article, just posted at RawStory. Thanks to all here who helped provide links and info for this story!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEMA OUTSOURCES BODY COUNT TO FIRM THAT SETTLED CORPSE
DUMPING, DESECRATION SUITS-
FEMA outsources Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Kenyon International to set up a mobile morgue for handling bodies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina, RAW STORY has learned.
Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), a scandal-ridden Texas-based company operated by a friend of the Bush family. Recently, SCI subsidiaries have been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses....
FEMA and then Blanco outsourced the body count from Hurricane Katrina -- which many believe the worst natural disaster in U.S. history -- to a firm whose parent company is known for its "experience" at hiding and dumping bodies.
The Menorah Gardens cemetery chain, owned by SCI, desecrated vaults, removed hundreds of bodies from two cemeteries in Florida and dumped the gruesome remains in woods frequented by wild hogs, investigators discovered in 2001. In one case, a backhoe was used to crack open a vault, remove corpses and make room for more dead bodies...
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/FEMA_outsources_Katrina_b...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 01:14 AM
Response to Reply #455
470. 9-13: BREAKING HARD: FEMA, Bush, SCI, and 1999 Funeralgate as Governor
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
expatriot (1000+ posts) Tue Sep-13-05 11:58 PM
Original message
BREAKING HARD: FEMA, Bush, SCI, and 1999 Funeralgate as Governor
This shows Bush was aware of SCI's problems intimately.
Bush and the corporation hired to do body recovery in Louisiana go way back.
This is a Google follow up on the LBN article from Raw Story
FEMA, La. outsource Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals
I am at work and need to go back to work right now so I will be offline immediately after posting. Keep this alive.
FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh Resigns: Skeletons Here, There, and Everywhere......Literally

Bush was subpoenaed in 1999, but refused to testify as to what his involvement was in halting an investigation into SCI's embalming practices, among other things. A Texas judge put everything right for Bush just in time to campaign for the presidency, ruling that he could not be forced to testify by an ousted regulatory official, who had not produced enough evidence or that Bush had "unique and superior personal knowledge." Bush had filed an affidavit claiming he had no conversations with SCI officials, agents, or representatives concerning the investigation or any disputes arising from it, although by his own admission he said he dropped in on a meeting between Waltrip and Allbaugh, for a quick social visit and couldn't remember what he said. May's lawsuit claimed they did talk about the investigation and asked the judge to hold Bush in contempt of court and compel him to testify. In a news conference (held in August, '99) dominated by tough questions, the issue that really irritated Bush concerned funeral homes. His remarks were, "It's frivolous. It is frivolous." Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:16 AM
Response to Reply #324
456. 9/13 As bodies recovered, reporters are told 'no photos, no stories'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
As bodies recovered, reporters are told 'no photos, no stories'
www.sfgate.com
Cecilia M. Vega, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
New Orleans -- A long caravan of white vans led by an Army humvee rolled Monday through New Orleans' Bywater district, a poor, mostly black neighborhood, northeast of the French Quarter.
Recovery team members wearing white protective suits and black boots stopped at houses with spray painted markings on the doors designating there were dead bodies inside.
Outside one house on Kentucky Street, a member of the Army 82nd Airborne Division summoned a reporter and photographer standing nearby and told them that if they took pictures or wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would take away their press credentials and kick them out of the state.
"No photos. No stories," said the man, wearing camouflage fatigues and a red beret...
Full Story at this link:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/13...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:44 AM
Response to Reply #324
464. 9/13 Blanco gives up on FEMA, hires firm herself to recover Louisiana dead
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Blanco gives up on FEMA, hires firm herself to recover Louisiana dead
Louisiana Hires Contractor to Help Recover Bodies
Sept. 13 (Bloomberg)
-- Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said the state hired a contractor to recover bodies left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, saying she had given up on the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"In recent days, I have spoken with FEMA and administration officials to convey my absolute frustration regarding the lack of urgency and the lack of respect of our people whose lives were lost as a result of Hurricane Katrina,'' Blanco told reporters in Baton Rouge today during a meeting with state officials.
Blanco said Kenyon International Emergency Services, a Houston-based unit of Service Corp. International that has worked on Asian tsunami recovery effort, will find the corpses left after Katrina roared ashore on the U.S. Gulf Coast Aug. 29. The storm killed thousands, caused an estimated $100 billion in damage and left 80 percent of New Orleans submerged in water....
***
Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff said the agency that runs FEMA created a "system of recovery" a week ago and is responsible for the recovery of bodies, Blanco said, adding that even the highest government officials couldn't "break through the bureaucracy to get the coordination done." She also blamed the agency for not committing enough workers to the effort.
Respect
"I cannot bear to wait any longer," Blanco said today during a meeting with state officials. "In death as in life our people deserve more respect than they have received."...
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=add...
ON EDIT: Re. FEMA's contracting with Kenyon --
Blanco said she has signed a contract with Kenyon International Emergency Services after the company threatened to pull out of the state because it had not yet signed a formal contract with FEMA.
Asked about the issue, FEMA spokesman David Passey said: "From what I understand, Kenyon had some questions about the contract."
http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?...
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:46 AM
Response to Reply #324
465. 9/13 Bush & Body Count Contractor Go Way Back
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
BREAKING HARD: FEMA, Bush, SCI, and 1999 Funeralgate as Governor
This shows Bush was aware of SCI's problems intimately.
Bush and the corporation hired to do body recovery in Louisiana go way back.
This is a Google follow up on the LBN article from Raw Story
FEMA, La. outsource Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals
I am at work and need to go back to work right now so I will be offline immediately after posting. Keep this alive.
FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh Resigns: Skeletons Here, There, and Everywhere......Literally
Bush was subpoenaed in 1999, but refused to testify as to what his involvement was in halting an investigation into SCI's embalming practices, among other things. A Texas judge put everything right for Bush just in time to campaign for the presidency, ruling that he could not be forced to testify by an ousted regulatory official, who had not produced enough evidence or that Bush had "unique and superior personal knowledge." Bush had filed an affidavit claiming he had no conversations with SCI officials, agents, or representatives concerning the investigation or any disputes arising from it, although by his own admission he said he dropped in on a meeting between Waltrip and Allbaugh, for a quick social visit and couldn't remember what he said. May's lawsuit claimed they did talk about the investigation and asked the judge to hold Bush in contempt of court and compel him to testify. In a news conference (held in August, '99) dominated by tough questions, the issue that really irritated Bush concerned funeral homes. His remarks were, "It's frivolous. It is frivolous."
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-16-05 11:47 PM
Response to Reply #324
506. 9/16 Spike in Discovered Corpses as Workers Now Enter Hardest Hit Areas
Edited on Fri Sep-16-05 11:48 PM by snot
(And I assume they're still generally not even ENTERING most houses?)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Higher-than-expected death toll seen in clustered New Orleans corpses
http://http//www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans /
By Michael Perlstein
Staff writer
Tentative optimism that New Orleans’ death toll from Katrina might be far lower than first projected has given way to somber reality over the past 36 hours as search and rescue squad turn up bodies by the dozen in the hardest hit areas of the city.
By mid-afternoon Friday, the black triangles used to designate human remains were multiplying on an emergency command center map. Federal Emergency Management Agency rescue squad liaison Charles Hood said a spike in discoveries Friday has started to take an emotional toll on rescue workers.
...
“Parts of the city have become a target-rich environment for human remains,” Hood said. “We’re just now getting into the areas that experienced the most rapid inundation.”
Large chunks of the city, including parts of Gentilly, the Desire-Florida area and Upper 9th Ward, have revealed tell-tale signs that the two breaches of the London Avenue Canal led to a rapid rush of floodwater that caught scores of residents off-guard. The surprise factor was only worsened in that the fast-rising water, more than 12 feet in spots, came well after the storm had passed.
Why, why, why is this not on the homepage of the Times-Picayune's NOLA.Com?
For related information, see my post on "What Holocaust" on wetbankguide.blogspot.com. If they are under reporting the dead by as much as 90%, Nagin may not have been that far off.
The toll of the "officially dead" is 579.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-21-05 01:17 AM
Response to Reply #324
547. 9/20 Mystery over true death toll in Mississippi
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4827653
Mystery over true death toll in Mississippi

The official death toll in Mississippi stands at 218.
Considering 60,000 homes in Mississippi were completely
destroyed (ie. nothing left whatsoever) and a further 100,000
were likely damged beyond repair, with towns such as Waveland
and Bay St. Louis wiped off the map, this seems like an
incredibly low number of deaths.
Anecdotal reports from 3 weeks ago give much, much higher
numbers of collected bodies:
---------------------------------------------------------
http://www.moberlymonitor.com/articles/2005/09/06/news/news1.txt
Davis said Gator has been busy rescuing as many people as he
can; when she spoke to him last, he had taken over 50 people
into his home to give them food and shelter. He has pulled
almost that many dead bodies out of the water and taken them
to I-90, where he told Davis there were about 800 corpses
lined up along the road for rescue workers to retrieve.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7000069092
But those numbers are considered low by law enforcement and
medical rescue squads. One law enforcement officer estimates
it is more likely to be between 600 and 800 Bay St.Louis
alone. The residents are “in for a shock,” he tells the
Washington Post.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1473894/posts?page=2690http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/nation/12575557.htm
With the search-team's tales of horrendous findings and the
official death toll not matching up, rumors in this
disconnected part of the world seem to be spiraling out of
control.
A Florida EMA official, brought in to handle media in
Hancock, told the Sun Herald the county would not release
"any more numbers" until the coroners complete
their collecting process.
Several armed guards stand near the front gate of the old
Alcan Cable site in Bay St. Louis, where five, 53-foot,
refrigerated tractor-trailers sit behind a chain-linked
fence.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1480391/posts?q=1&&page=101#114a dear friend (who is a doc in Biloxi/Gulf Port)finally
called me to let me know that he was alive, said that they
had found (I believe it was this morning)a shelter about 1/4
from the beach that housed 800. All 800 were found to have
drown. Sad, Sad, Sad. I was relieved to hear his voice, but
feel bad for what he has seen. He happened to be in the ER
when the hurricane hit. All at the hospital were saved,PTL.
He did, however, loose his home and all earthly possessions.
He said the AFB is obliterated.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1476540/posts?q=1&&page=51#70
The death toll in Miss is in the thousands. I have now spoken
to at-least 4 people who have worked down there during
recovery.If you did the math between the 4 of them you would
be over 1,500 alone as far as tagging bodies is concerned.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1473894/posts?page=2690#2674
My wife works part-time for an answering company. One of
their clients is a funeral home up here in Upstate New York
has a couple of its employees down in Biloxi as volunteers.
Anyways, one of the employees called in from Biloxi - via the
answering service - to let their employer know of their
status. She said that they were "processing 300+ bodies
per day" in Biloxi alone...
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Also, it seems the only person allowed to give death toll
figures in Mississippi is Coroner Gary Hargrove who has been
making very defensive statements to the local press:
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/special_pac...
"There is no reason for me to deceive the public or the
news media because that's not going to help the situation
either," Coroner Gary Hargrove said. "Because if we
start reporting low numbers and keep them low and then all of
a sudden, 'bam,' we walk in and put high numbers on it, then
you've created another problem. You've created
deception."
This very early story is kind of strange:
--------------------------------------------
http://www.dfw.com/mld/kentucky/news/special_packages/iraq/11547092/12526471.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
GULFPORT, MISS. - Harrison County officials said Wednesday
that figures they provided Tuesday on storm-related
fatalities were too high.
In his second official day on the job Tuesday as the county's
emergency management director, Joe Spraggins said he wasn't
"100 percent certain" but that the number
fatalities was "100 plus."
On Wednesday, however, he backtracked.
"There were figures given out that were wrong,"
Spraggins said. "Now we're going to give you
facts."
A new policy makes Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove the
only person who can answer questions about the process of
retrieving dead bodies. A Federal Emergency Management Agency
team was setting up a portable morgue at Riemann's Funeral
Home in downtown Gulfport, but officials there would not
answer questions about the nature of equipment being brought
in.
------------------------------------------------------
Note the story doesn't say what the early body count was,
just that was "wrong".
So what's really going on here? What is the actual policy on
releasing the body count?
This quote partly explains it:
----------------------------------------------------
http://www.dfw.com/mld/kentucky/news/special_packages/iraq/11547092/12526471.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
In Mississippi, the coroner or a deputy coroner must examine
a body and determine a cause of death. But Hargrove only has
a couple of assistants. Cornoers in Harrison, Hancock and
Jackson Counties, and probably in Pearl River County, are
combining efforts to deal with the dead, said Hargrove.
"We are not releasing information on the deceased at
this time," he said, refusing to explain the reason for
the delay.
The scope of the body retrieval effort is obviously straining
capabilities here.
"We learned right away that we were using up our local
resources," said Hargrove, referring to gloves and other
disposable items used in working with the dead.
--------------------------------------------------------------
So does that mean Hargrove could have 3,000 bodies in his
morgue but is only willing to state that 218 are dead because
only 218 have been examined/identified by his assisstants.
Finally, the idea that gloves and disposable items were a
limiting factor in the processing of 218 bodies doesn't sound
right.
Bottom line: Are there actually thousands of bodies in
Mississippi and this news is being seriously understated?
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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-21-05 02:28 AM
Response to Reply #324
548. 9/20 Story on Body Collectors w/ Nos. of Workers, Teams, Etc.
120 people in teams of 12 to 15— so that’s at least 8
teams--working 12 to 14 hours per day . . .
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4826344
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9399130/site/newsweek
The Invisible Body Battalion
A private firm's undertaker unit is witnessing the human cost
of Katrina. But they're not talking.
Remains are removed from a house in New Orleans on Sept. 14
Carlos Barria / Reuters
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Dirk Johnson
Newsweek
Updated: 11:12 a.m. ET Sept. 19, 2005
Sept. 19, 2005 - Meet the body handlers. That’s impossible in
the field—the private unit deployed to find, package, and
transport the dead in the Mississippi Delta shuns the press.
Complete privacy is part of a battle plan aimed at treating
each corpse with dignity. Or, at least, so says the company,
leaving aside the issue of how the reality might affect
public opinion. Their mantra—this was somebody's mother or
father, sister or brother, or even a child. Therefore the
workers even must be sworn to secrecy about what they’re
finding.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, about 120 of these
grim reapers are now working to recover bodies, a job that
becomes more dreadful as the waters recede. Kenyon
International Emergency Services Inc. specializes in tending
to the ruins of human catastrophe—finding and identifying
bodies, embalming, counseling families—the work of an
undertaker, squared. Founded in 1929 in England after a
British Imperial airline crashed, the company recently has
worked on the Asian tsunami and the August Helios plane
crash. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana hired
Kenyon last Tuesday for $4.3 million to recover the bodies of
Louisiana flood victims. "It takes a special breed to do
this kind of work," says Jay Kirsch, a Kenyon spokesman.
"These are people who are comfortable handling
bodies."
They see bodies in rigor mortis, bodies that are decomposing,
remains that have been gnawed by rats. But they sign a pledge
swearing that they will never talk about it. "They can
talk about how terrible New Orleans looked, or how dreadfully
hot they were, or how exhausted, but they can never talk about
the condition of the bodies," says Kirsch. "These
bodies are people. They belong to families who want them
back. What if the body was your mother? Would you want
somebody to talk about what they had seen?"
Now based in a former Pepsi warehouse in north Houston,
Kenyon also has offices in England, Australia and Singapore.
It is a subsidiary of publicly traded Service Corporation
International, which describes itself as North America's
largest provider of funeral and cremation services. Most of
its employees work on contract, usually for three weeks at a
time, and they are drawn largely from what Hirsch described
as "the death industry,"—funeral homes, morgues,
hospital workers. Kenyon does not disclose what it pays its
body handlers. But Hirsch said simply, "The pay is
good."
At the Kenyon office in Houston, just off Interstate 45, the
company maintains a vast storage facility—much larger than a
football field—to house disaster victims’ belongings. Workers
clean, bar-code, photograph and store everything. Kenyon then
compiles a catalogue of the belongings for families, who have
up to 18 months to claim items. Family members often worry
less about recovering the expensive items like Rolex watches
than in finding the simple, but priceless, keepsake that said
something about a person—a pocketknife, say, or a medallion.
If these items go unclaimed, Kenyon buries them.
Kenyon has some 200 clients, ranging from airlines to state
and foreign governments. In all, Kenyon contracts with about
1,000 body handlers. To recover bodies after Katrina, these
workers are flown in to Houston from all over the country.
Authorities tell the teams of 12 to 15—about three quarters
are men—where to look for bodies. They put the dead in body
bags and move the bags to a morgue in St. Gabriel or to the
Convention Center, a holding site. The company has deployed
using about 60 white vans and 11 boats.
The workers wear Tyvek jumpsuits, wader hip boots, white
hospital masks and sometimes respirators. The odor of death
can be nauseating. The workers usually put in 12 to 14 hours,
and then sleep on cots in a tent. At the end of each day, the
suits go in a hazardous waste dump. Vans and boots are
decontaminated.
After any disaster, Kenyon gets an uptick in job applicants.
"It's mostly word of mouth," says Hirsch. "I
don't think I've ever seen a help-wanted ad for a body
handler." Concern for families drives these workers, he
said. With a body, they at least can properly grieve a loved
one. That thought will sustain them over what could be a long
and deeply troubling follow-up to Katrina.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 07:01 PM
Response to Original message
327. Katrina commentary in cartoon format

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:04 PM
Response to Original message
329. Post Katrina Polls

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 08:17 PM
Response to Reply #329
330. Sept 10: Eye of the Political Storm Bush approval at 38%
Eye of the Political Storm
A new NEWSWEEK poll suggests President Bush could become Katrina’s next casualty.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9280375/site/newsweek /
Jim Watson / AFP-Getty Images
Bush, FEMA chief Michael Brown and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in Mobile, Ala., on Sept. 2
Live Vote
Do you approve of President Bush's handling of Katrina's aftermath? * 49668 responses Yes
12%
No
85%
I don't know
2%
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Marcus Mabry
Newsweek
Updated: 1:31 p.m. ET Sept. 10, 2005
Sept. 10, 2005 - Hurricane Katrina claimed her first political casualty Friday. Michael Brown, the head of FEMA, the federal disaster readiness and response agency, was sidelined from the largest disaster relief project in the nation’s history. Brown was recalled to Washington by his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. But a new NEWSWEEK Poll suggests the post-Katrina political storm may just be rising. And her ultimate casualty could be President George W. Bush.
In Katrina’s wake, the president’s popularity and job-approval ratings have dropped across the board. Only 38 percent of Americans approve of the way Bush is doing his job overall, a record-low for this president in the NEWSWEEK poll. (Fifty-five percent of Americans disapprove of his overall job performance.) And only 28 percent of Americans say they are “satisfied with the way things are going” in the country, down from 36 percent in August and 46 percent in December, after the president’s re-election. This is another record low and two points below the satisfaction level recorded immediately after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal came to light. Fully two-thirds of Americans are not satisfied with the direction of the country.Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-16-05 12:07 AM
Response to Reply #329
497. 9/15/05 FOX News Poll: Post Katrina, Bush Job Rating at Record Low (41%)
9/15/05 FOX News Poll: Post Katrina, Bush Job Rating at Record Low (41%)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,169469,00.html
NEW YORK — Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina (search) made landfall on Louisiana, a new FOX News poll finds that Americans think hurricane relief should be President George W. Bush’s top domestic priority right now — outdistancing several other hot button issues, including the economy and gas prices. Bush’s approval rating has taken a hit since the hurricane and now sits at the lowest level of his presidency. The bright side of Katrina: A majority of the public thinks the hurricane will ultimately make the country stronger and most believe that Americans are pulling together more now than they have for previous disasters.
The poll finds that helping those affected by the hurricane should be the number one item on the president’s domestic to-do list. From a list of seven issue areas, a plurality (27 percent) says hurricane relief should be the top priority for Bush right now, the economy comes in second (17 percent), followed closely by homeland security (14 percent) and gas prices (10 percent). No other issue receives double-digit support, though at 9 percent health care comes closest — edging out Social Security (8 percent) and education (5 percent).
Today, 41 percent of voters approve and 51 percent disapprove of President Bush’s performance, which is the lowest job rating he has received in a FOX News poll. The president’s approval rating is down 4 percentage points from two weeks ago (45 percent, August 30-31), around the time the magnitude of Katrina’s damage was becoming clear. Before the hurricane, 47 percent approved and 44 percent disapproved (July 26-27).
For most of Bush’s presidency, approval among his party faithful has not only been well above 80 percent, but also for a significant amount of time above 90 percent. The average approval rating for his presidency among Republicans is 90 percent; today 81 percent approve. Bush’s approval rating has gone into single digits among Democrats, coming in at 8 percent in this week’s poll. For independents, 30 percent approve.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-18-05 10:46 PM
Response to Reply #329
522. 9-19-05 Lowest Rating for Bush in Eighth September Poll
September 19, 2005
Lowest Rating for Bush in Eighth September Poll http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/vi... CREDIT: The White House
George W. Bush(Angus Reid Global Scan) – Fewer adults in the United States express satisfaction with George W. Bush, according to a poll by Opinion Dynamics released by Fox News. 51 per cent of respondents disapprove of the president’s performance.
Bush—a Republican—earned a second four-year term in the November 2004 presidential election. The current approval rating of 41 per cent is the lowest for the sitting head of state in a national Opinion Dynamics/Fox News poll. Bush had his best showing in November 2001, with an approval rating of 88 per cent.
Earlier this month, Bush also registered all-time lows in surveys released by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Zogby International, Ipsos-Public Affairs/Associated Press, Newsweek, Hart/McInturff/Wall Street Journal/NBC News, TNS/Washington Post/ABC News and New York Times/CBS News.
Hurricane Katrina hit the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama on Aug. 29. Officials believe thousands of residents may have died as a result of the storm and its aftermath.
On Sept. 15, Bush introduced his proposal for an Urban Homesteading Act in the Gulf Coast, saying, "Under this approach, we will identify property in the region owned by the federal government, and provide building sites to low-income citizens free of charge, through a lottery. In return, they would pledge to build on the lot, with either a mortgage or help from a charitable organization like Habitat for Humanity. Home ownership is one of the great strengths of any community, and it must be a central part of our vision for the revival of this region."
Polling Data
Do you approve or disapprove of the job George W. Bush is doing as president?
Sept. 14
Aug. 31
Jul. 27
Jul. 13
Approve
41%
45%
47%
47%
Disapprove
51%
50%
44%
47%

Source: Opinion Dynamics / Fox News
Methodology: Telephone interviews to 900 American registered voters, conducted on Sept. 13 and Sept. 14, 2005. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-18-05 11:22 PM
Response to Reply #329
525. Bush Katrina Ratings Fall After Speech
Bush Katrina Ratings Fall After Speech
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... Survey of 1,000 Adults
September 16-17, 2005
President Bush Response to
Hurricane Katrina
Excellent 17%
Good 18%
Fair 23%
Poor 41%
RasmussenReports.com--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Favor Federal Funding for $200 Billion New Orleans Reconstruction?
Favor 50%
Oppos 27%
RasmussenReports.com--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------September 18, 2005--Thirty-five percent (35%) of Americans now say that President Bush has done a good or excellent job responding to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. That's down from 39% before his speech from New Orleans.
The latest Rasmussen Reports survey shows that 41% give the President poor marks for handling the crisis, that's up 37% before the speech.
Fifty percent (50%) of Americans favor the main proposal from that speech--a federal commitment of $200 billion to help rebuild New Orleans. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are opposed and 23% are not sure.
The spending plan has not been well received by conservative voters--just 43% favor the huge federal commitment partisan while 37% are opposed. This is especially striking given how supportive the President's base has remained throughout his Administration.
The President's reconstruction plan is favored by 66% of liberal voters. Still, only 10% of liberals give the President a good or an excellent rating for handling the crisis.

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 09:26 PM
Response to Original message
356. After K..forced evacuation of NOLA

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:01 PM
Response to Reply #356
363. Sept 10: Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091005A.shtml
Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
By Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo
t r u t h o u t | Report
Saturday 10 September 2005
New Orleans - Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details of the former head of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former US ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte.
"This is a totally new thing to have guys like us working CONUS (Continental United States)," a heavily armed Blackwater mercenary told us as we stood on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. "We're much better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq."
Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world and they are accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences. Their presence on the streets of New Orleans should be a cause for serious concern for the remaining residents of the city and raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here. Some of the men now patrolling the streets of New Orleans returned from Iraq as recently as 2 weeks ago.
What is most disturbing is the claim of several Blackwater mercenaries we spoke with that they are here under contract from the federal and Louisiana state governmentsPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:35 PM
Response to Original message
372. Spin, shifting the blame, outright falsehoods and talking points

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 10:39 PM
Response to Reply #372
373. Sept 10: The fake Times-Pycaune article and other lies exposed
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Bouncy Ball (1000+ posts) Sat Sep-10-05 11:01 PM
Original message
That supposed article from the NO Times-Picayune doesn't exist.
Edited on Sat Sep-10-05 11:03 PM by Bouncy Ball
I saw that circulated email that's going around blaming everyone but bush that has an article at the end that supposedly appeared in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on August 28. No such article exists, except in the mind of the hateful racist asshole who wrote it. I noticed no one is pointing this out even on Kos, so I thought I'd point it out here. I've searched the NOLA website over and over for this article, and then I took specific sections of it and pasted it into search engines to see what it would pull up.
Guess what it pulled up? Nothing but citations of this fictional article on right wing websites and left wing sites who are debunking it. But I don't see anyone pointing out that it NEVER APPEARED IN THE NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE.
Now, if the racist asshole who WROTE this article would like to step forward and admit he or she is lying about the attribution of it, that would be nice.
Here is the fictional article. You can tell they took a few paragraphs from an actual article, then added in some commentary in the last 3/4 of it. It is usually attached at the end of an email going around that is so full of misinformation and lies, it's hard to know where to start. But here's a good place: the levees are maintained by the Corps of Engineers, they are not maintained by private landowners, you stupid goobers.

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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 11:44 PM
Response to Reply #372
384. 9/10 (orig 9/4) Bush Admin Peddling Blame Elsewhere
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
The Bush regime doing what it does best: Peddle the blame elsewhere
White House shifts blame for Katrina response
Administration, embattled FEMA chief point to state, local officials
By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Spencer Hsu
Washington Post
Updated: 9:48 a.m. ET Sept. 4, 2005
NEW ORLEANS - Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country's emergency management.
<snip>
Bush, who has been criticized, even by supporters, for the delayed response to the disaster, used his weekly radio address to put responsibility for the failure on lower levels of government. The magnitude of the crisis "has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities," he said. "The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable."
In a Washington briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said one reason federal assets were not used more quickly was "because our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor."
And FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, a frequent target of New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin's wrath, said Saturday that "the mayor can order an evacuation and try to evacuate the city, but if the mayor does not have the resources to get the poor, elderly, the disabled, those who cannot, out, or if he does not even have police capacity to enforce the mandatory evacuation, to make people leave, then you end up with the kind of situation we have right now in New Orleans."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9189916 /
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-10-05 11:44 PM
Response to Reply #372
385. 9/10 (orig 9/4) Bush Admin Shifting Blame Elsewhere
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
The Bush regime doing what it does best: Peddle the blame elsewhere
White House shifts blame for Katrina response
Administration, embattled FEMA chief point to state, local officials
By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Spencer Hsu
Washington Post
Updated: 9:48 a.m. ET Sept. 4, 2005
NEW ORLEANS - Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country's emergency management.
<snip>
Bush, who has been criticized, even by supporters, for the delayed response to the disaster, used his weekly radio address to put responsibility for the failure on lower levels of government. The magnitude of the crisis "has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities," he said. "The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable."
In a Washington briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said one reason federal assets were not used more quickly was "because our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor."
And FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, a frequent target of New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin's wrath, said Saturday that "the mayor can order an evacuation and try to evacuate the city, but if the mayor does not have the resources to get the poor, elderly, the disabled, those who cannot, out, or if he does not even have police capacity to enforce the mandatory evacuation, to make people leave, then you end up with the kind of situation we have right now in New Orleans."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9189916 /
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 01:35 PM
Response to Reply #372
404. 9/11 (orig 9/10) RNC Talking Points (per Randi Rhodes)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... :
RNC Talking Points Leaked on Randi Rhodes Show 9/9/05
On the Friday, September 9th Randi Rhodes show, Randi read from what she said were the official RNC Talking Points for this weekend on air. She said there were 8 pages worth! These points are directed to pundits and pols who shill for their Dark Master.
Here are some verbatim points:
“The most important thing every single one of us can do is show our compassion. Contribute to disaster relief funds; Red Cross, Salvation Army.
The focus should be on helping people recover, not playing the blame game.
The eagerness of some to play the blame game and blame President Bush for everything from the levee breach to the hurricane itself is a disappointing reaction to an extreme tragedy we’re only beginning to understand.
Using the coverage of this disaster as a media hole to make political accusations, introduce knee-jerk legislation, or grandstand while victims are suffering is totally outrageous!”
(Apparently, President Bush didn’t get the memo. http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2339 )
In a separate section called;
DEMOCRATS, POLITICAL RESPONSE, AND IRRESPONSIBLE RHETORIC
This section picks out targets for Bush-friendly pundits to direct their fire at. Specifically;
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, and MoveOn.org.
“…televised images of poverty-sticken evacuees from hurricane Katrina are nothing more than a provocative last-minute effort by a liberal interest group… MoveOn.org.”
Sen. Harry Reid, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, Sen. Hillary Clinton, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Rep. Elijah Cummings are all to draw fire this weekend, September 9th – 11th.
Of course, Blanco and Negin are to be vilified and blamed for the post Katrina tragedy.
According to Randi, the memo goes on to say that when doing ‘response analysis’, invoke this Wall Street Journal OpEd;
‘Blame Amid the Tragedy’ by Bob Williams.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB11259660213833...
Invoke it and blame Negin and Blanco for the inability for poor people to evacuate.
And quote Michael Grunwald from the Washington Post;
'Money Flowed to Questionable Projects'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
“Over the five years of President Bush’s administration Louisiana has received far more money for core civil works projects than any other state.”
Use passages from this Washington Times editorial;
‘The Governor Procrastinates’
http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050906-093817-7790r....
‘Governor Blanco did not accept the offer of additional troops when it was offered.’
‘To the dismay of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, the governor told the president she wanted 24 hours to decide whether to accept the offer because Mr. Bush, as commander-in-chief, wanted control of the troops.’
The Bob Williams OpEd is to be cited extensively;
‘The evacuation plan warned that "if an evacuation order is issued without the mechanisms needed to disseminate the information to the affected persons, then we face the possibility of having large numbers of people either stranded and left to the mercy of a storm, or left in an area impacted by toxic materials." That is precisely what happened because of the mayor's failure.’
‘Instead of evacuating the people, the mayor ordered the refugees to the Superdome and Convention Center without adequate security and no provisions for food, water and sanitary conditions.’
‘In addition, unlike the governors of New York, Oklahoma and California in past disasters, Gov. Blanco failed to take charge of the situation and ensure that the state emergency operation facility was in constant contact with Mayor Nagin and FEMA.’
‘Mayor Nagin had to be encouraged by the governor to contact the National Hurricane Center before he finally, belatedly, issued the order for mandatory evacuation. And sadly, it apparently took a personal call from the president to urge the governor to order the mandatory evacuation.’
--------------------------
In other words, don’t play the blame game unless you intend to win.
Download the September 9th show here, FFWD to the 3:09:25 mark, the talking points dominate the hour.
http://www.whiterosesociety.org/Rhodes.html
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-12-05 01:51 AM
Response to Reply #372
420. 9/11 A Du'er from LA Explains LA Politics
(This is not an ideal place for this, but better than nowhere. Based on a quick read, it appears directed at those unhappy that the LA Dems haven't attacked the Feds more fiercely.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... Trying to educate DU about the politics in Louisiana right now
NOT trying to start an argument, just want people to know what's really going on politically right now in LA. Want DUers to think a bit more deeply than just gut reactions of "seeing Nagin or Blanco or Landrieu kissing repuke ass." Want to explain why these kinds of posts get on my nerves, but am trying to contain myself, lol. I have posted the following twice today in the middle of other threads. Please read it, and think twice about threads that help the repuke cause in my state:
"Senator Vitter is an Extreme, RW, PNAC Repuke. He has vowed to replace Senator Landrieu with a Repuke in her next election, and has an organization on the ground in LA (financed by the nat'l Repukes) ACTIVELY focused on getting her out. He would like nothing better than deliver LA as completely red, with a repuke Governor and both repuke Senators.
IN ORDER TO DO THIS, he must turn New Orleans RED. In order to do this, he must control the voting population of the "new" New Orleans. In order to do this, he and the nat'l repuke party must control the RECOVERY effort of New Orleans. New Orleans is the only large solid blue area in Louisiana. New Orleans is the reason we have one Dem Senator (yes, a Centrist Dem, but the alternative is too horrible to consider.) South Louisiana is the reason we have a Dem Governor. (Yes, a Catholic-religious, Centrist Governor, but the alternative is too horrible to even consider.)
Louisiana is a schizophrenic state. In North LA, they are mainly Baptist, Pro-Big-Business, Conservative (hypocrites), but not necessarily PNAC worshipers. They vote according to "SOCIAL and MORAL and BIG BUSINESS values" and will NEVER abandon the repuke party. There is also a strong RACIST motive under the surface of everything that is done politically in North Louisiana.
South Louisiana is a mixture of the above Conservatives and mainly Centrist Dems. New Orleans has a small population of Progressive Dems, but with not enough numbers to defeat any Centrist Dem, at this point.
Repuke leaders in New Orleans, along with Vitter and the Nat'l Repuke Party will work hard to control the recovery aspect of New Orleans to ensure that the now dispersed Dem voters (1) do not return to New Orleans at all, or, 2. are totally marginalized and controlled by repuke "recovery projects." One of the reasons that Minimum Wage is being suspended in the area is to ensure that the repuke controlled companies in charge of recovery are able to bring in masses of workers from other parts of the country who owe no allegiance to Louisiana (and illegal aliens) and to discourage local people from returning to the area to work for a fair wage. Let them stay dispersed all over America, and their voting block is dissolved.
Make no mistake, our Dem Governor, Blanco, is a Centrist Dem. Many of us in LA believe that, at heart, she is a Progressive, but given the population of LA, she can be nothing else and still represent all of her constituencies. Vitter and the repukes will use the hurricane to try to defeat her (or any other Dem's) effort to retain the governorship. As you can tell, the effort has already begun. Blanco was Lt. Gov under our former repuke governor, and has a stirling reputation in a state that has a history of corruption. I have never heard a breath of rumor against her character or honesty.
Make no mistate, our Dem Senator, Landrieu, is a Centrist Dem. New Orleans is the reason we at least have one Dem Senator at all. She is Pro-Choice (with restrictions), pro Oil Companies (ugh) but, knowing that many, many of the people in South LA make their livings from the oil fields, these DEM voters appreciate her siding with those monsters...how can they not, making their livings in the oil industry?
Hurricane Katrina has given Vitter and repukes the opening they have been looking for to turn LA completely red. You will see many, many attacks against Nagin (he is Black and a new Dem, and wants to lead the recovery of New Orleans), and against Blanco (she is now vulnerable due to the hurricane and a Dem), and against Landrieu (she is a Dem, and a woman, and a Senator who enjoys an amount of power and prestige in the Senate). You will see that attack take many forms...in the media, by word of mouth. You will also see the attack here on DU (I have seen it already.)
But, I am here to tell you that attacks on Landrieu, Blanco and Nagin are not in the best interests of the people of Louisiana. These Centrist Dems cannot NOW be replaced by Progressive Dems. The Progressive Dems do not have a strong organization in Louisiana right now...it is in its infancy. This does not mean that we will let these Dems "slide" on important issues. This doesn't mean that we will not lobby them and hold them accountable for their actions or votes. It means that, because of the hurricane, the repuke PUSH to get them replaced by CONSERVATIVE REPUKES IS ACCELERATED, so we are in the position of defending and supporting these Dem leaders. For now.
The Dem plan for recovery will come. For now, we in LA are in the position of keeping and supporting the Centrist Dems that we have or giving up the state completely to the ultra Conservatives. What would you do?"
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:32 AM
Response to Reply #372
460. Sept 13: debunking the "Truth about NO" chain letter
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Mugsy (283 posts) Tue Sep-13-05 06:06 PM
Original message
Debunking the "Truth of the N. O. hurricane" chain letter. PLEASE READ!
Edited on Tue Sep-13-05 06:28 PM by Mugsy
Perhaps you've received it yourself from a Conservative friend or concerned Liberal friend. It is an Op/Ed attributed to a "Merritt Is, reporter" citing "the facts" about everything Bush did right and Nagin/Blanco did wrong. It is chock full of errors, falsehoods and outright lies... and not one single coroborating link. And good luck figuring out just who the mysterious "Merritt Island reporter" is, because no one seems to have a name or even what rag he writes for.
I just received the aforementioned "li-atribe" and spent all morning reseaching the facts, all supported with links... unlike the author.
Please read, bump and pass this important response along. It took a LOT of work on my part: (be kind and bump. Thanks.)
----------------------------------------------------------
(original Op-Ed can be found here.)
http://www.snopes.com/politics/katrina/nagin.asp
> Subject: Truth of the N. O. hurricane?
I think someone is playing fast & loose with "the truth" here. Let's examine some of these "facts"... all backed up with links to the actual proof (unlike the original article):> This chain of events sounds credible. I am familiar with the Posse Comitatus Act.
> The Posse Comitatus act specificlaly limits the use of federal troops by the Federal Government
> in domestic issues. So that portion of this story is correct. The President cannot
> arbitraily just send Federal troops into new Orleans and into Louisiana.
> They have to be invited in by the Governor of the State.
There has been a lot of discussion regarding this. Too bad no one actually bothers to actually look the law up (link):
"In a nutshell, this act bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the act."> Truth of the N. O. hurricane?
>
> On Friday night before the storm hit Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center
> took the unprecedented action of calling Nagin and Blanco personally to plead with
> them to begin MANDATORY evacuation of NO and they said they'd take it under consideration.
August 28th at 10AM, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco gave a scheduled press conference (link) to announce *mandatory evacuations* in which she stated,
"I want to reiterate what the mayor has said. This is a very dangerous time. Just before we walked into this room, President Bush called and told me to share with all of you that he is very concerned about the citizens. He is concerned about the impact that this hurricane would have on our people. And he asked me to please ensure that there would be a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans."
So the suggestion that "mandatory evacuations" were only "under consideration" and prompted only by a call from the President, is a flat lie.> This was after the NOAA buoy 240 miles south had recorded 68' waves before it was destroyed.
Funny how, when someone is spinning something, *everything* must be exaggerated:
“The worker said the last transmission was a 35-foot wave, after that we lost contact,” Ballard said." (link)
The buoy was not "destroyed", it merely "lost contact" during the storm... which is not unusual (an interesting fun-fact, if you add the word "destroyed" to a Goolgle search of "Katrina NOAA buoy", every result is a link to this very same feux-fact op-ed).
And the time of the call, "late on August 27th", is the night before Governor Blanco and N.O. Mayor Nagin order a press conference to announce "mandatory evacuations" at 10AM the very next morning. In fact, Governor Blanco had already called for a "State of Emergency" on August 26th before any call from Max Mayfield or President Bush.> President Bush spent Friday afternoon and evening in meetings with his advisors and administrators
With a Category-5 hurricane now baring down on Louisiana and Mississippi, President Bush, still on his "ranch" in Crawford Texas, is busy finding new ways to avoid answering distraught mother Cindy Sheehan's simple question: "For what noble cause did my son die for in Iraq?" (link)> drafting all of the paperwork required for a state to request federal assistance (and not be in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act or having to enact the Insurgency Act).
First off, it's called the "Insurrection Act", not "Insurgency Act" (which should already clue you in as to the accuracy of the claims made).
Second, the "Insurrection Act", a new law created under the Bush Administration, is for the express purpose of: shutting down any "unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States". Translation, if President Bush was doing this before the evacuation, he was *expecting* there to be chaos and rebellion in the aftermath of Katrina ('cause hey, that's what poor people do, right?). Makes one wonder why the Federal government's response was so weak and slow in coming if he already believed chaos was certain to ensue.
I just can't imagine how Dubya might have come to the conclusion that poor people are prone to violence (link) (audio).> Just before midnight Friday evening the President called Governor Blanco and pleaded with her to sign the request papers so the federal government and the military could legally begin mobilization and call up.
In fact, it was Blanco who asked President Bush on August 27th to declare a State of Emergency, not the other way around. (link)
And as noted above, a "State of Emergency" had already been issued the day before.> He was told that they didn't think it necessary for the federal government to be involved yet.
Total BS. Can't link to something that never happened.> After the President's final call to the governor she held meetings with her staff to discuss the political ramifications of bringing federal forces. It was decided that if they allowed federal assistance it would make it look as if they had failed so it was agreed upon that the feds would not be invited in.
I've tried every keyword combination I can think of and a Google News search turns up NOTHING citing governor Blanco rejecting ANY offer by President Bush.> Saturday before the storm hit the President again called Blanco and Nagin requesting they please sign the papers requesting federal assistance, that they declare the state an emergency area, and begin mandatory evacuation.
As already noted, both Blanco and Nagin have already declared emergencies before any contact by President Bush.
There are just too many ways to phrase "received a second call" to verify with a search, but of all the ways I tried, I could find no report of a second call by President Bush pleading with Blanco or Nagin to take action.> After a personal call from the President, Nagin agreed to order an evacuation, but it would not be a full mandatory evacuation,
We're repeating ourselves now.> It is also reported that the President's legal advisers were looking into the ramifications of using the insurgency act to bypass the Constitutional requirement that a state request federal aid before
As already noted above, it's the "Insurrection Act", not the "Insurgency Act", and it isn't a law specifically to overrule states in times of emergency, it's a way for the Federal Government to crush any state that "gets uppity".> Throw in that over half the federal aid of the past decade to NO for levee construction, maintenance, and repair was diverted to fund a marina and support the gambling ships.
Just a little hyperbole here, but in fact this is (for the most part) true. Huh, who'da thunk it? No one ever called Louisiana "blameless" in this.
But the point needs to be made that it was the N.O. "levee board" that chose to redirect those funds, not the mayor or governor's office. And the board spent $2.8 million developing "a proposal to build a 4-mile-long island on Lake Pontchartrain with beaches, camping areas, and possibly hotels, restaurants, and an amusement park" (link). I can find no indication that the project began to take place before the storm. Nor can I find out how much the Federal Government earmarked for the N.O. Levee System over the past decade to neither confirm nor deny that "over half" was diverted to the project, though if true, $400 million over 10 years is a piddling pathetic amount to protect one of the largest cities and the second largest port in the United States.
In fact, FactCheck.org (Dick Cheney's favorite site) confirms:
"In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year…forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze."
(Special note, to find another source for this accusation, I was forced to *exclude* the words "Thrown in" in my search, or else sift through 500 word-for-word copies of this very same accusation.)> Toss in the investigation that will look into why the emergency preparedness plan submitted to the federal government for funding and published on the city's website was never implemented
Already disproven above.> The suffering people of N.O. need to be asking some hard questions as do we all, but they better start with why Blanco refused to even sign the multi-state mutual aid pack activation documents until Wednesday
I am having difficulty figuring this one out.
The "multi-state mutual aid" Act (EMAC) is an agreement between states to assist one-another in times of emergency. Most states proudly declare when they are a participant in this agreement, and Louisiana is among them. From what I can discern from the state of Virginia's website, "activation" of the EMAC (Emergency Mandatory Assistance Compact) is automatic upon declaring a State of Emergency, which Governor Blanco did (Federally) on the 27th (locally on the 26th).> Or maybe ask why Nagin keeps harping that the President should have commandeered 500 Greyhound busses to help him when according to his own emergency plan and documents he claimed to have over 500 busses at his disposal to use between the local school busses and the city transportation busses
This is the now infamous photo of 550 buses underwater in N.O.:

A few issues need to be noted about these buses:
1. Most photos of the 550 buses underwater in N.O. are from the NOISD bus depot. At least half of these buses weren't even working to begin with (I'm still working to confirm this with regards to N.O., though other cities report an average 50-55% of their bus fleets operational at any one time). That takes us to ~275 functional buses (just imagine how long it would have taken to run around, trying each one of them to see if they worked or not).
2. Now you need to commandeer 275 bus drivers, private citizens with families of their own to take care of. Good luck.
3. Over 1,000 air-conditioned “Greyhound/Trailways/Metro” buses were commandeered and shuttled ~40,000 people to safety (108 of them arrived here in Houston - photos).
4. Just because a bus starts up, doesn't mean it is in any condition to embark on an impromptu 348 mile road trip (the distance from N.O. to Houston).
5. Each school bus is capable of carrying 50 "school-age-sized" children comfortably, or 50 adults "uncomfortably". That means you could have transported AT MOST 13,500 adults +/- 500. There were 100,000 people trapped in N.O.. Even if you dumped all 13,500 passengers out after 250 miles (apx. Lafayette, still beneath the hurricane) and made the five/six hour trip back for a second load (and running on fumes by the time you arrived, so you'd spent another 20 hours refueling 275 buses), that would still leave another 70,000 people not evacuated).This is a sad time for all of us to see that a major city has all but been destroyed and thousands of people have died with hundreds of thousands more suffering, but it's certainly not a time for people to be pointing fingers
Interesting note: the first complaint I can find about "finger pointing" is by the Bush Administration when Press Secretary Scott "Scotty" McClellan said on September 1st:
"This is not a time for finger-pointing or playing politics,"
I wonder why the White House was suddenly concerned about people assigning blame?> Pray to God for the survivors that they can start their lives anew as fast as possible and we learn from all the mistakes to avoid them in
Finally, something we can agree upon.
-----------------------------------------
o "A disaster like Katrina is just what a president needs to anchor his second term and give him relevance and popularity far into his tenure." - Conservative columnist Dick Morris, Sept 7, 2005 (Death and Disaster... bad for Americans, political gold for George Bush.)
o "I think it puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" - former House Speaker Newt Gingrich....read
o "9/11, Iraq, Katrina... for the next three years, whenever I hear the words "Bush, August and vacation" in the same sentence, my first thought will be "thousands of Americans are about to die". With over ten thousand Americans now dead as a direct result of this President's incompetence, if you are still a supporter of this President, "Partisan" in your rear window. You're now a Zealot." - Me, Tom D'Ambrosio, speaking to Conservatives on September 1st, 2005.
o Louisiana's junior Senator, Republican David Vitter, gave the Bush administration "an F grade" for its handling of the crisis. Senator Chuck Hagel, a leading contender for his party's nomination to succeed Mr Bush, said, "There must be some accountability." - Sept. 4, 2005 "The Independent" UK newspaper.
o "she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night!" - Jefferson Parish President Aaron Brousard in tears on Meet the Press describing how a son reassured his mother day after day that help was coming.
o "Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield. No wonder confidence in civic institutions is plummeting." - Conservative columnist David Brooks in a NY Times Op-Ed. Sept 4, 2005.
o "The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, has vanished. In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster and economic uncertainty." - from an Op-Ed appearing in the New Hampshire Manchester Union-Leader, home to one of the most staunchly conservative editorial pages in the nation.
o "As with the planes of 9/11, New Orleans' burst levees had been anticipated, just not by the administration....Then again, W famously doesn't read newspapers, so I guess his ignorance is well-earned. As is his place in hell." - from CaliBlogger, a Conservative message board site.
o "For throughout the four years since Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush has been telling us that his number one No. 1 priority is protecting the nation against a WMD terrorist attack and, if efforts to protect us fail, preparing to respond with full force. Last week, a major American city, New Orleans, fell victim to the natural version of such an attack. The effects of Hurricane Katrina - widespread physical destruction and contamination rendering an entire city virtually uninhabitable - are virtually the same as the effects that might result from an attack by terrorists wielding weapons of mass destruction. So, Mr. President, where is "the plan"?" - Houston Chronicle Op-Ed, Sept 4, 2005

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-15-05 11:22 PM
Response to Reply #372
492. 9-15NY Times: Karl Rove in charge of Katrina Reconstruction Effort
NY Times: Karl Rove in charge of Katrina Reconstruction Effort
Too horrible to be made up!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Who's in Charge? Karl Rove! By Dan Froomkin Special to washingtonpost.com Thursday, September 15, 2005; 12:00 PM
All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson 's story in the New York Times this morning:
"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/20 ...Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-16-05 03:18 PM
Response to Reply #372
501. 9/16 E-mail Shows Feds Seeking to Blame Environmental Groups
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
E-mail suggests government seeking to blame groups (for flood of NO)
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=...
E-mail suggests government seeking to blame groups
Federal officials appear to be seeking proof to blame the flood of New Orleans on environmental groups, documents show.
The Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of an internal e-mail the U.S. Department of Justice sent out this week to various U.S. attorneys' offices: "Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation."
Cynthia Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said Thursday she couldn't comment "because it's an internal e-mail."
Shown a copy of the e-mail, David Bookbinder, senior attorney for Sierra Club, remarked, "Why are they (Bush administration officials) trying to smear us like this?"
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-18-05 04:21 AM
Response to Reply #372
519. SUPER Spin--So Sick it Attains Hilarity--
Edited on Sun Sep-18-05 04:22 AM by snot
Swiftian.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Nothing Without Hope (1000+ posts) Sun Sep-18-05 03:05 AM
Original message
Time: GOP senators looking for a RICH KATRINA CORPSE for estate tax pitch
This is apparently only in the online edition of Time Magazine, which is too bad - more people should see this. In this age of all spin all the time, I suppose it was inevitable, but this is uniquely shameless and bizarre. It also adds one more item to the long list of awful things GOP Congress people will do to get their way - now it's digging for weeks-old corpses to show that SOMEBODY needed that estate tax repeal for their pathetic, needy heirs.
Seems they haven't found EVEN ONE rich Katrina corpse yet. Too bad they can't do a negotiation that would reflect their true views of human value, say 10,000 poor black corpses equals one rich white corpse. Guess not - those rich GOP donors are priceless. They're still looking. I'm sure we'll hear about it if they finally find a ripe "volunteer character witness" for their estate tax cut pitch.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1106213,...
Web Exclusive | Nation
Looking for a Corpse to Make a Case
Senators look for a wealthy casualty of Katrina as evidence against the estate tax
By MASSIMO CALABRESI
Posted Saturday, Sep. 17, 2005
Federal troops aren't the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions' legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had an idea to revitalize their cause, which he left on Apolinsky's voice mail: " Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with."
If legislative ambulance chasing looks like a desperate measure, for the backers of repealing the estate tax, these are desperate times. Just three weeks ago, their long-sought goal of repeal seemed within reach, but Katrina dashed their hopes when Republican leaders put off an expected vote. After hearing from Sessions, Apolinsky, an estate tax lawyer who says his firm includes three multi-billionaires among its clients, mobilized the American Family Business Institute, a Washington-based group devoted to estate tax repeal. They reached out to members along the Gulf Coast to hunt for the dead.
It's been hard. Only a tiny percentage of people are affected by the estate tax—in 2001 only 534 Alabamans were subject to it. And for Hill backers of repeal, that's only part of the problem. Last year, the tax brought in $24.8 billion to the federal government. With Katrina's cost soaring, estate tax opponents need to find a way to make up the potential lost income. For now, getting repeal back on the agenda may depend on Apolinsky and his team of estate-sniffing sleuths, who are searching Internet obituaries among other places. Has he found any victims of both the hurricane and the estate tax? "Not yet," Apolinsky says. "But I'm still looking."
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Nothing Without Hope (1000+ posts)
Sat Oct-22-05 12:16 AM
Response to Reply #372
559. BAHAMONDE TESTIMONY: Condemns FEMA Response (LAT, WaPo, NYT & NBC)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
thread title: LAT: "Insider Condemns FEMA Response" -- Stunning revelations of LIES
posted by Nothing Without Hope General Discussion Fri Oct-21-05 05:42 AM
Highly credible statements backed up by Bahamonde emails from the Superdome highlight what appear to be PERJURY by Brown and most likely Chertoff too. Not only do we learn of Browne's aide fending off urgent pleas for help because Brown had to have plenty of time for dinner in the busy Baton Rouge restaurant, but the key issue of WHEN THE ADMINISTRATION WAS NOTIFIED OF THE LEVEE BREAKS now has a firmer timeline. There are major discrepancies in statments.
The NBC News VIDEO on this story is devastating, and the texts of Bahamonde's emails are posted and back up his testimony.
The current WH spin seems to be seeking to pin blame on Brown, who - while guilty - did NOT have the primary responsibility - that was Bush's and Chertoffs.
Many links in the OP and throughout the thread.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 05:22 PM
Response to Original message
409. how the animals suffered, official actions that made it worse

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 05:43 PM
Response to Reply #409
412. Sept 11: The water is wide. I can not get across...photos
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 06:12 PM
Response to Original message
413. Environmental impact of K...and the Bush denial and cover-up

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Sun Sep-11-05 06:14 PM
Response to Reply #413
414. Sep 11:Cover-up: toxic waters 'will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade'
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=14671c0dd...
Cover-up: toxic waters 'will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Correspondent
Published: 11 September 2005
Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger.
In an exclusive interview, Hugh Kaufman, an expert on toxic waste and responses to environmental disasters at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the way the polluted water was being pumped out was increasing the danger to health.
The pollution was far worse than had been admitted, he said, because his agency was failing to take enough samples and was refusing to make public the results of those it had analysed. "Inept political hacks" running the clean-up will imperil the health of low-income migrant workers by getting them to do the work.
His intervention came as President Bush's approval ratings fell below 40 per cent for the first time. Yesterday, Britain's Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, turned the screw by criticising the US President's opposition to the Kyoto protocol on global warming. He compared New Orleans to island nations such as the Maldives, which are threatened by rising sea levels. Other US sources spelt out the extent of the danger from one of America's most polluted industrial areas, known locally as "Cancer Alley". The 66 chemical plants, refineries and petroleum storage depots churn out 600m lb of toxic waste each year. Other dangerous substances are in site storage tanks or at the port of New Orleans. No one knows how much pollution has escaped through damaged plants and leaking pipes into the "toxic gumbo" now drowning the city. Mr Kaufman says no one is trying to find out.
Few people are better qualified to judge the extent of the problem. Mr Kaufman, who has been with the EPA since it was founded 35 years ago, helped to set up its hazardous waste programme. After serving as chief investigator to the EPA's ombudsman, he is now senior policy analyst in its Office of Solid Wastes and Emergency Response. He said the clean-up needed to be "the most massive public works exercise ever done", adding: "It will take 10 years to get everything up and running and safe."
Mr Kaufman claimed the Bush administration was playing down the need for a clean-up: the EPA has not been included in the core White House group tackling the crisis. "Its budget has been cut and inept political hacks have been put in key positions," Mr Kaufman said. "All the money for emergency response has gone to buy guns and cowboys - which don't do anything when a hurricane hits. We were less prepared for this than we would have been on 10 September 2001."
He said the water being pumped out of the city was not being tested for pollution and would damage Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi river, and endanger people using it downstream.
Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger.
In an exclusive interview, Hugh Kaufman, an expert on toxic waste and responses to environmental disasters at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the way the polluted water was being pumped out was increasing the danger to health.
The pollution was far worse than had been admitted, he said, because his agency was failing to take enough samples and was refusing to make public the results of those it had analysed. "Inept political hacks" running the clean-up will imperil the health of low-income migrant workers by getting them to do the work.
His intervention came as President Bush's approval ratings fell below 40 per cent for the first time. Yesterday, Britain's Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, turned the screw by criticising the US President's opposition to the Kyoto protocol on global warming. He compared New Orleans to island nations such as the Maldives, which are threatened by rising sea levels. Other US sources spelt out the extent of the danger from one of America's most polluted industrial areas, known locally as "Cancer Alley". The 66 chemical plants, refineries and petroleum storage depots churn out 600m lb of toxic waste each year. Other dangerous substances are in site storage tanks or at the port of New Orleans. No one knows how much pollution has escaped through damaged plants and leaking pipes into the "toxic gumbo" now drowning the city. Mr Kaufman says no one is trying to find out.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 12:56 PM
Response to Reply #413
527. 9/19 FEMA: "Just scrape off the mold"; cheaper that they die than rebuild
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Katrina: A request from my cousin about what is happening in a little town
in Alabama. Both sources are reliable. I know them both. My cousin requested that I post this here in hopes of more people knowing what is going on and so that maybe somebody can help.
"... there is a town in Alabama--Bayou La Batre. The government is completely corrupt and the town is poor. The government is telling them to go back to their homes, scrape the mold off and it will be ok. They are also stealing supplies from the ppl and selling them! It is really bad. Condy even visited there, at a shelter, and I guess that it was all ok with her! Imagine that!
Thanks!"
In a reply I asked her if she had a link to go with this. Here is her reply.
"No... I can't have xxxxx's name anywhere around it but that is who I am getting the info from and she is getting it from her boss (who just came back from AL) and they are beginning to work on an assessment plan. It's info that has not been publicly released. It is really really horrible and the media needs to get down there. A FEMA person said it was cheaper that they all die as opposed to re-building the homes, etc..."
Has anybody else heard reports like this?
I'm at home now, but when I go to work I'll be blocked from DU. Please don't think I'm ignoring this thread.
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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 03:20 PM
Response to Original message
443. The political aftermath

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 03:22 PM
Response to Reply #443
444. Bush "takes responsibility"
Bush Takes Responsibility for Blunders By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
12 minutes agohttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/katrina_washington
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Tuesday that "I take responsibility" for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and said the disaster raised broader questions about the government's ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terror attacks.
"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at joint White House news conference with the president of Iraq.
"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.
The president was asked whether people should be worried about the government's ability to handle another terrorist attack given failures in responding to Katrina.

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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 01:08 AM
Response to Reply #444
469. 9/13 Basically the same story--Bush Takes Responsiblity
BUSH SAYS HE TAKES RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY FEDERAL GOVT FAILURES
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/WBT003818.htm
13 Sep 2005 15:56:47 GMT
Source: Reuters
BUSH SAYS HE TAKES RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY FEDERAL GOVT FAILURES IN RESPONSE TO KATRINA
more:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/katrina_washington ;_ylt=Av76mlJPa3DRDJu3x4Ngi6Ws0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 02:28 AM
Response to Reply #443
474. Post Katrina Bush power grab and increased repression
Edited on Wed Sep-14-05 02:34 AM by mom catPrinter Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 02:32 AM
Response to Reply #474
475. Sep 13 -Bush says he may need more power in disasters
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Bush says he may need more power in disasters
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Monday urged Congress to examine whether the White House needs stronger powers to deal with catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina.
Bush’s backing for the congressional inquiry raised the possibility that lawmakers might expand presidential authority to:
• Order mandatory civilian evacuations
• Dispatch U.S.-based armed forces for emergency search-and-rescue operations
• Grant wider leeway for active-duty U.S. military personnel to carry out law enforcement operations.
“It’s really important that as we take a step back and learn lessons — that we are in a position to adequately answer the question: ‘Are we prepared for major catastrophes?”’ Bush said during a tour of hurricane damage in New Orleans.
He said if there was a terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction, such as germ-warfare agents, “we’ve got to make sure we understand the lessons learned to be able to deal with catastrophe.”>>>>snip
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/126299 ...

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-15-05 11:40 PM
Response to Reply #443
493. 9-16 Conservatives Balk As Spending Soars In Katrina's Wake
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Conservatives Balk As Spending Soars In Katrina's Wake
WASHINGTON -- The open-ended commitment by President Bush and congressional leaders to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is stoking anger among conservatives over the Republican government's record of higher spending and debt.
Following the nation's worst-ever natural disaster, no Republican in Congress is opposing federal aid that already totals $62 billion and is expected to exceed $200 billion. But the party's conservative wing, led yesterday by Oklahoma's Tom Coburn in the Senate and Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana in the House, is calling for offsetting "sacrifices" in federal spending. And they're backed by a growing chorus of conservative activists, columnists and bloggers.
"It's not about taking care of the folks that need us," Mr. Coburn said in an interview. "But I wouldn't vote for another penny until we get real about the hard choices of cutting some spending." In what would be a real break for conservatives, Mr. Coburn said he is also not inclined to vote to extend the Bush tax cuts absent some fiscal restraint.
The divisions go to a broader debate over the party's identity and legacy a decade after Republicans broke Democrats' 40-year control of Congress and nearly five years after they captured the White House as well.
But conservatives' rebelliousness threatens a range of Bush initiatives before Congress. Moreover, Republican strategists worry that widespread disenchantment among the party's bedrock conservatives could lead many to stay home in next year's midterm elections.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB1126831003479 ... Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

snot (1000+ posts)
Mon Sep-19-05 01:33 PM
Response to Reply #443
535. 9/19 Poll Results After Bush N.O. Speech
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
FINALLY A POLL: NO Speech was a flop. Ratings fall further:
Bush Katrina Ratings Fall After Speech
September 18, 2005--Thirty-five percent (35%) of Americans now say that President Bush has done a good or excellent job responding to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. That's down from 39% before his speech from New Orleans.
The latest Rasmussen Reports survey shows that 41% give the President poor marks for handling the crisis, that's up 37% before the speech.
http://rasmussenreports.com/2005/Katrina_September%2018... Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

mom cat (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 03:29 PM
Response to Original message
445. use to force after K against civilians

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mom cat (1000+ posts)
Tue Sep-13-05 03:34 PM
Response to Reply #445
446. Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
Totally Committed (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-12-05 04:26 PM
Original message
Mercenaries on American Soil: Blackwater in New Orleans!
Edited on Mon Sep-12-05 04:28 PM by Totally Committed
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
By Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo
t r u t h o u t | Report
Saturday 10 September 2005
New Orleans - Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details of the former head of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former US ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte.
"This is a totally new thing to have guys like us working CONUS (Continental United States)," a heavily armed Blackwater mercenary told us as we stood on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. "We're much better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq."
Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world and they are accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences. Their presence on the streets of New Orleans should be a cause for serious concern for the remaining residents of the city and raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here. Some of the men now patrolling the streets of New Orleans returned from Iraq as recently as 2 weeks ago.
What is most disturbing is the claim of several Blackwater mercenaries we spoke with that they are here under contract from the federal and Louisiana state governments.

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snot (1000+ posts)
Wed Sep-14-05 12:38 AM
Response to Reply #445
462. 9/13 Move in Senate to "Revise" Posse Comitatus!
(Not sure where to put this . . . but it's impt.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Sen. Warner & Snow: "revise" Posse Comitatus & Insurrection Acts
Senator Warner (R-Va) fires first shot to revise/repeal the posse comitatus act & the insurrection act.
Live from floor speech...developing. Warner asked unanimous consent his "thoughts" be entered into the record (may be available in Thomas tomorrow, but any DU members from Virginia, please call his office and get/post a copy of his "thoughts" here ASAP).
His direction was immediately seconded by Senator Snow (R-Maine).
http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-cp/comrel/factfile/Factcards/P...
"POSSE COMITATUS ACT" (18 USC 1385): A Reconstruction Era criminal law proscribing use of Army (later, Air Force) to "execute the laws" except where expressly authorized by Constitution or Congress. Limit on use of military for civilian law enforcement also applies to Navy by regulation. Dec '81 additional laws were enacted (codified 10 USC 371-78) clarifying permissible military assistance to civilian law enforcement agencies--including the Coast Guard--especially in combating drug smuggling into the United States. Posse Comitatus clarifications emphasize supportive and technical assistance (e.g., use of facilities, vessels, aircraft, intelligence, tech aid, surveillance, etc.) while generally prohibiting direct participation of DoD personnel in law enforcement (e.g., search, seizure, and arrests). For example, Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachments (LEDETS) serve aboard Navy vessels and perform the actual boardings of interdicted suspect drug smuggling vessels and, if needed, arrest their crews). Positive results have been realized especially from Navy ship/aircraft involvement.
http://matewan.squarespace.com/journal/2005/9/7/the-ins ...
The Insurrection Act
§ 332. Use of militia and armed forces to enforce Federal authority
Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-16-05 11:05 AM
Response to Reply #445
499. 9/16 *'s speech: POWER GRAB FOR POTUS AND MILITARY
illegal link
Missing A KEY POINT in *'s speech: POWER GRAB FOR POTUS AND MILITARY
Bush made it clear in his speech that the Administration is STILL going to try to use the Katrina disaster to grab more power. It would be another big step in their ongoing push toward suspension of the Constitution and Pentagon-directed military police and gutted civilian and states' rights. This has been a major goal of theirs for years - it can be documented step by step, for example the Patriot Act. (Of course this demand for ultimate Fed power centralization is also part of the strategy to blame the local and state authorities for the mass negligent homicide - it is saying in effect, "Just give us feds all the power and then you will all be safe!!!")
We cannot let this happen and must be very alert to prevent it.
In Bush's speech, along with the prospect of the vast reconstruction funds to be gobbled up by GOP crony deals; the plan to permanently disperse, displace and impoverish the people from New Orleans and the other devastated areas of the South; the prospect of federal money for religious schools to "educate" the displaced children; and many more neocon dreams, don't miss THIS:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9360206
(snip)
"...It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces, the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment’s notice.
"Four years after the frightening experience of September 11th, Americans have every right to expect a more effective response in a time of emergency. When the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I, as President, am responsible for the problem, and for the solution. So I have ordered every Cabinet secretary to participate in a comprehensive review of the government response to the hurricane. This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. We are going to review every action and make necessary changes, so that we are better prepared for any challenge of nature, or act of evil men, that could threaten our people."
(snip)You know the kind of people he has for Cabinet secretaries, so you know whatever "recommendations" they come up with will be for the purpose of furthering neocon goals. His assertion that the federal government and the military need more power to act effectively during a crisis is a lie. EXISTING laws already give him that power, but he is trying to push the limits. For example, read the relevant sections of the DHS National Response Plan, an EXISTING document:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
thread title: The Buck Stops Here: NATIONAL RESPONSE PLAN
The lines of authority are very clear; Bush does NOT need more power or more excuses to call for martial law and was TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FAILURES IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE KATRINA. Count on it, the detailed language in any change would include extension of the military policing to "civil disturbances" or just about any other damn thing.
And we're supposed to be encouraged that the disastrous federal non-response to the catastrophe will result in even TIGHTER exclusion of state and civilian efforts?!?! FEMA/DHS should have even GREATER power to block aid and disrupt search/rescue efforts and essential communication?!? Look at horrors FEMA/DHS are ALREADY responsible for in the Katrina disaster and their efforts to prevent anyone else from helping the victims that they have abandoned to die. The answer is supposed to be to INCREASE the power of these people?!?!
Oh yes. Using Katrina to grab more power for the POTUS is a theme. For example:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
Thread title: Bush says he may need more power in disasters
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
Thread title: NPR Reports: GW to Blanco"I'll send in the troops if you answer to the WH"
Make no mistake, there are years of step-by-step plans and moves leading up to this crisis and the intended political manipulation of it. I've been researching this and it isn't tinfoilhattery at all. The WH/Pentagon knew the disaster would come in some form, natural or man-made, sooner or later. In fact, in early 2001 there was the official report that the three top, most likely catastrophes to hit the US would be an earthquake in San Francisco, a terrorist attack in New York, or a hurricane in New Orleans. Bush knew, and he cut funding to maintain levees and improve hurricane preparedness:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
thread title: FACTS: Bush was told about NO , he funded a study to confirm & then CUT $$
(New Orleans hurricane and New York terrorist attack! Hey, two out of three!!! Though I do believe the New York attacks on 9/11 happened because of planning by Pentagon/WH insiders.)
For more of the back story on the step by step move to dictatorship and martial law, see this post and the follow the links back.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
Let's not let the neocons use this great disaster as the "one more hit" that General Tommy Franks was referring to in his Cigar Aficionado interview that would could result in the suspension of the Constitution for our "protection."
http://www.cigaraficionado.com/Cigar/CA_Profiles/People ...
I recommend this excellent article, a column written in response to Tommy Franks' surprisingly frank prediction.
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/12/07/Columns/From_Tommy_Fr ...
From Tommy Franks, a doomsday scenarioBy ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist
Published December 7, 2003
The doomsday scenario was laid out by Gen. Tommy Franks, the recently retired head of CentCom, in of all places the December edition of Cigar Aficionado magazine.
"What is the worst thing that can happen in our country?" Franks asked rhetorically. "Two steps. The first step would be a nexus between weapons of mass destruction . . . and terrorism." The second step would be "the western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy."
Franks suggested that a "massive casualty-producing event" might cause "our population to question our own Constitution and begin to militarize our country."
(snip)
It was the Nine Years' War in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World that facilitated the seizure of power by the world reformers who then took control of nearly all human and social development. In 1984, George Orwell described Oceania as in a constant state of war with a changeable enemy who "always represented absolute evil." These inventors of the great dystopias understood the way governments use war and its associative fear and instability to consolidate power. Despotism thrives on insecurity. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs puts safety right behind food, water and sleep. Humans naturally crave stability and are willing to sacrifice values such as liberty in its pursuit.
(snip)Foolish tinfoilhattery, you say? John Dean, one of our country's most respected legal authorites, disagrees with you. In 2002 he considered the probable consequences of the "one more hit," which he thought of as another domestic terrorist attack - though the hurricane can work even better for this purpose, especially with what certainly looks like deliberate worsening of the aftermath. Mr. Dean thought it quite possible that a great disaster like another terrorist attack could be successfully manipulated by the Administration into a functional suspension of the Constitution that he called "constitutional dictatorship."
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/columns/fl.dean.pow ...
With the Bush Administration, always watch for the hand behind the back - the one holding the secret stiletto. They are STILL going to try to use this ongoing national tragedy to grab more civil and state power and consolidate under Pentagon-directed military police. If they give it a name at all, I promise you they won't call it what it is: martial law and military dictatorship. No, I'm betting on something Orwellian like "Operation Safe America." You can bet that it will NOT involve OUR National Guard back at home defending their states under their governors' authority.
We MUST MUST MUST stay alert and STOP the power grab that the Bush Administration will try to make based on their own murderously negligent and incompetent response to the hurricane.Not only would this dismantle many more of the essential Constitutional protections from dictatorship and further increase Bush's unbalanced power, it would make us all LESS safe from natural and man-made disasters, not more. We MUST make both of these points clear to the American public. This is a turning point, one way or the other.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-16-05 03:43 PM
Response to Reply #499
504. 9/16 This looks like an expanded version of same post
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Missing A KEY POINT in *'s speech: POWER GRAB FOR POTUS AND MILITARY
Bush made it clear in his speech that the Administration is STILL going to try to use the Katrina disaster to grab more power. It would be another big step in their ongoing push toward suspension of the Constitution and Pentagon-directed military police and gutted civilian and states' rights. This has been a major goal of theirs for years - it can be documented step by step, for example the Patriot Act. (Of course this demand for ultimate Fed power centralization is also part of the strategy to blame the local and state authorities for the mass negligent homicide - it is saying in effect, "Just give us feds all the power and then you will all be safe!!!")
We cannot let this happen and must be very alert to prevent it.
In Bush's speech, along with the prospect of the vast reconstruction funds to be gobbled up by GOP crony deals; the plan to permanently disperse, displace and impoverish the people from New Orleans and the other devastated areas of the South; the prospect of federal money for religious schools to "educate" the displaced children; and many more neocon dreams, don't miss THIS:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9360206
(snip)
"...It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces, the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment’s notice.
"Four years after the frightening experience of September 11th, Americans have every right to expect a more effective response in a time of emergency. When the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I, as President, am responsible for the problem, and for the solution. So I have ordered every Cabinet secretary to participate in a comprehensive review of the government response to the hurricane. This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. We are going to review every action and make necessary changes, so that we are better prepared for any challenge of nature, or act of evil men, that could threaten our people."
(snip)
You know the kind of people he has for Cabinet secretaries, so you know whatever "recommendations" they come up with will be for the purpose of furthering neocon goals. His assertion that the federal government and the military need more power to act effectively during a crisis is a lie. EXISTING laws already give him that power, but he is trying to push the limits. For example, read the relevant sections of the DHS National Response Plan, an EXISTING document:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
thread title: The Buck Stops Here: NATIONAL RESPONSE PLAN
The lines of authority are very clear; Bush does NOT need more power or more excuses to call for martial law and was TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FAILURES IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE KATRINA. Count on it, the detailed language in any change would include extension of the military policing to "civil disturbances" or just about any other damn thing.
And we're supposed to be encouraged that the disastrous federal non-response to the catastrophe will result in even TIGHTER exclusion of state and civilian efforts?!?! FEMA/DHS should have even GREATER power to block aid and disrupt search/rescue efforts and essential communication?!? Look at horrors FEMA/DHS are ALREADY responsible for in the Katrina disaster and their efforts to prevent anyone else from helping the victims that they have abandoned to die. The answer is supposed to be to INCREASE the power of these people?!?!
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snot (1000+ posts)
Fri Sep-16-05 03:26 PM
Response to Reply #445
502. 9/16 Bush Power Grab
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Bush Power Grab
Just as George W. Bush used his failure before 9/11/2001 to
seize power with the Patriot Act, he is going to use
his failure in responding to Hurricane Katrina to try
to seize more power.
Bush wants the power to order the military to arrest people in the US. Currently, the military is barred by the Posse Comitatus Act from arresting people in the US. Changing this would negatively affect the nature of our society and the right to protest. http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/126299...
President Bush on Monday...raised the possibility that lawmakers might expand presidential authority to:
...Grant wider leeway for active-duty U.S. military personnel to carry out law enforcement operations.
Once the military starts arresting people in the US, it won't be limited to natural disasters.
Protests can be declared "emergencies" for soldiers to arrest protestors if Congress changes the law about the role of the military.
What looks to me like a protest, may look like a riot to a government official.
Nor were arrests by the military needed in New Orleans. There were police in New Orleans. What was needed from the military was more food and water than they supplied.
In Bush's Thursday night speech, he continued with the notion that of expanding domestic military power ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20... ):
"It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces, the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice."
Once the military can arrest us, can they then imprison us? Put us on trial? Hold us indefinitely? http://www.speakspeak.org/speak-blog/index.php?p=1117
Letting a president declare any cities he so chooses "emergency" areas where the military can arrest people for as long as he chooses is too much executive power. We need more relief supplies during an emergency, not arrests, and there are police to conduct arrests when necessary.
Bush was able to respond to previous natural disasters in Florida and elsewhere without being able to authorize the military to arrest people. President Bill Clinton was as well. Bush's failure regarding Hurricane Katrina means he should have less power, not more power.
We should maintain the distinction between the role of the police and the role of the military.
Also posted at www.speakspeak.org
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snot (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-17-05 03:16 PM
Response to Reply #445
513. 9/17 (orig. 8/10) Plans: Use of Terrorist Attacks to Justify Martial Law
I saved this on 8/10; don't know if it's still there.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/mart-a09.shtm... :
Pentagon devising scenarios for martial law in US
By Patrick Martin
9 August 2005
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
According to a report published Monday by the Washington Post, the Pentagon has developed its first ever war plans for operations within the continental United States, in which terrorist attacks would be used as the justification for imposing martial law on cities, regions or the entire country.
The front-page article cites sources working at the headquarters of the military’s Northern Command (Northcom), located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The plans themselves are classified, but “officers who drafted the plans” gave details to Post reporter Bradley Graham, who was recently given a tour of Northcom headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base. The article thus appears to be a deliberate leak conducted for the purpose of accustoming the American population to the prospect of military rule.
According to Graham, “the new plans provide for what several senior officers acknowledged is the likelihood that the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources.”
The Post account declares, “The war plans represent a historic shift for the Pentagon, which has been reluctant to become involved in domestic operations and is legally constrained from engaging in law enforcement.”
A total of 15 potential crisis scenarios are outlined, ranging from “low-end,” which Graham describes as “relatively modest crowd-control missions,” to “high-end,” after as many as three simultaneous catastrophic mass-casualty events, such as a nuclear, biological or chemical weapons attack.
In each case, the military would deploy a quick-reaction force of as many as 3,000 troops per attack—i.e., 9,000 total in the worst-case scenario. More troops could be made available as needed.
The Post quotes a statement by Admiral Timothy J. Keating, head of Northcom: “In my estimation, a biological, a chemical or nuclear attack in any of the 50 states, the Department of Defense is best positioned—of the various eight federal agencies that would be involved—to take the lead.”
The newspaper describes an unresolved debate among the military planners on how to integrate the new domestic mission with ongoing US deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and other foreign conflicts. One major document of over 1,000 pages, designated CONPLAN 2002, provides a general overview of air, sea and land operations in both a post-attack situation and for “prevention and deterrence actions aimed at intercepting threats before they reach the United States.” A second document, CONPLAN 0500, details the 15 scenarios and the actions associated with them.
The Post reports: “CONPLAN 2002 has passed a review by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and is due to go soon to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and top aides for further study and approval, the officers said. CONPLAN 0500 is still undergoing final drafting” at Northcom headquarters.
While Northcom was established only in October 2002, its headquarters staff of 640 is already larger than that of the Southern Command, which overseas US military operations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
About 1,400 National Guard troops have been formed into a dozen regional response units, while smaller quick-reaction forces have been set up in each of the 50 states. Northcom also has the power to mobilize four active-duty Army battalions, as well as Navy and Coast Guard ships and air defense fighter jets.
The Pentagon is acutely conscious of the potential political backlash as its role in future security operations becomes known. Graham writes: “Military exercises code-named Vital Archer, which involve troops in lead roles, are shrouded in secrecy. By contrast, other homeland exercises featuring troops in supporting roles are widely publicized.”
Military lawyers have studied the legal implications of such deployments, which risk coming into conflict with a longstanding congressional prohibition on the use of the military for domestic policing, known as posse comitatus. Involving the National Guard, which is exempt from posse comitatus, could be one solution, Admiral Keating told the Post. “He cited a potential situation in which Guard units might begin rounding up people while regular forces could not,” Graham wrote.
Graham adds: “when it comes to ground forces possibly taking a lead role in homeland operations, senior Northcom officers remain reluctant to discuss specifics. Keating said such situations, if they arise, probably would be temporary, with lead responsibility passing back to civilian authorities.”
A remarkable phrase: “probably would be temporary.” In other words, the military takeover might not be temporary, and could become permanent!
In his article, Graham describes the Northern Command’s “Combined Intelligence and Fusion Center, which joins military analysts with law enforcement and counterintelligence specialists from such civilian agencies as the FBI, the CIA and the Secret Service.” The article continues: “A senior supervisor at the facility said the staff there does no intelligence collection, only analysis. He also said the military operates under long-standing rules intended to protect civilian liberties. The rules, for instance, block military access to intelligence information on political dissent or purely criminal activity.”
Again, despite the soothing reassurances about respecting civil liberties, another phrase leaps out: “intelligence information on political dissent.” What right do US intelligence agencies have to collect information on political dissent? Political dissent is not only perfectly legal, but essential to the functioning of a democracy.
The reality is that the military brass is intensely interested in monitoring political dissent because its domestic operations will be directed not against a relative handful of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists—who have not carried out a single operation inside the United States since September 11, 2001—but against the democratic rights of the American people.
The plans of Northcom have their origins not in the terrible events of 9/11, but in longstanding concerns in corporate America about the political stability of the United States. This is a society increasingly polarized between the fabulously wealthy elite at the top, and the vast majority of working people who face an increasingly difficult struggle to survive. The nightmare of the American ruling class is the emergence of a mass movement from below that challenges its political and economic domination.
As long ago as 1984—when Osama bin Laden was still working hand-in-hand with the CIA in the anti-Soviet guerrilla war in Afghanistan—the Reagan administration was drawing up similar contingency plans for military rule. A Marine Corps officer detailed to the National Security Council drafted plans for Operation Rex ’84, a headquarters exercise that simulated rounding up 300,000 Central American immigrants and likely political opponents of a US invasion of Nicaragua or El Salvador and jailing them at mothballed military bases. This officer later became well known to the public: Lt. Colonel Oliver North, the organizer of the illegal network to arm the “contra” terrorists in Nicaragua and a principal figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.
As for the claims that these military plans are driven by genuine concern over the threat of terrorist attacks, these are belied by the actual conduct of the American ruling elite since 9/11. The Bush administration has done everything possible to suppress any investigation into the circumstances of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—most likely because its own negligence, possibly deliberate, would be exposed.
While the Pentagon claims that its plans are a response to the danger of nuclear, biological or chemical attacks, no serious practical measures have been taken to forestall such attacks or minimize their impact. The Bush administration and Congress have refused even to restrict the movement of rail tank cars loaded with toxic chemicals through the US capital, though even an accidental leak, let alone a terrorist attack, would cause mass casualties.
In relation to bioterrorism, the Defense Science Board determined in a 2000 study that the federal government had only 1 of the 57 drugs, vaccines and diagnostic tools required to deal with such an attack. According to a report in the Washington Post August 7, in the five years since the Pentagon report, only one additional resource has been developed, bringing the total to 2 out of 57. Drug companies have simply refused to conduct the research required to find antidotes to anthrax and other potential toxins, and the Bush administration has done nothing to compel them.
As for the danger of nuclear or “dirty-bomb” attacks, the Bush administration and the congressional Republican leadership recently rammed through a measure loosening restrictions on exports of radioactive substances, at the behest of a Canadian-based manufacturer of medical supplies which conducted a well-financed lobbying campaign.
Evidently, the administration and the corporate elite which it represents do not take seriously their own warnings about the imminent threat of terrorist attacks using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons—at least not when it comes to security measures that would impact corporate profits.
The anti-terrorism scare has a propaganda purpose: to manipulate the American people and induce the public to accept drastic inroads against democratic rights. As the Pentagon planning suggests, the American working class faces the danger of some form of military-police dictatorship in the United States.
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snot (1000+ posts)
Thu Sep-15-05 10:46 PM
Response to Original message
489. After K: Reconstruction & $$ Distribution (Other than Who Profits, above)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
NY Times: Karl Rove in charge of Katrina Reconstruction Effort
Too horrible to be made up!
Who's in Charge? Karl Rove! By Dan Froomkin Special to washingtonpost.com Thursday, September 15, 2005; 12:00 PM
All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson 's story in the New York Times this morning:
"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/20...
Link from/to NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/politics/15bush.html
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IanDB1 (1000+ posts)
Sat Sep-17-05 05:46 PM
Response to Original message
515. After K: FEMA Contracts body removal to company that fed corpses to pigsCompany hired to recover Louisiana bodies has ties to S. Florida lawsuits
By Neil Santaniello
Staff Writer
Posted September 16 2005
The company hired to recover Louisiana bodies in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is owned by the same corporate parent sued for mishandling bodies and desecrating graves in South Florida cemeteries.
The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals said it is contracting with Kenyon International, a subsidiary of Service Corporation International, to recover deceased storm victims in that state through Nov. 15.
In a statement, Dr. Fred Cerise, secretary of the department, expressed confidence Kenyon, a Texas-based global emergency response and disaster management company, would run a body recovery process with "respect and dignity."
Parent SCI was sued after two Menorah Gardens cemeteries -- in Palm Beach Gardens and west of Fort Lauderdale -- were accused of treating buried customers much to the contrary. The problem first surfaced in 2001 with allegations that cemetery employees buried people in the wrong locations, broke open vaults to squeeze in other remains and tossed bones into the woods. The case sparked a state investigation.
The world's largest funeral services company, SCI agreed to pay $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by angered relatives of the deceased.
More:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl... See also:
FEMA, La. outsource Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals
Miriam Raftery
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Kenyon International to set up a mobile morgue for handling bodies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina, RAW STORY has learned.
<snip>
In other words, FEMA and then Blanco outsourced the body count from Hurricane Katrina -- which many believe the worst natural disaster in U.S. history -- to a firm whose parent company is known for its "experience" at hiding and dumping bodies.
The Menorah Gardens cemetery chain, owned by SCI, desecrated vaults, removed hundreds of bodies from two cemeteries in Florida and dumped the gruesome remains in woods frequented by wild hogs, investigators discovered in 2001. In one case, a backhoe was used to crack open a vault, remove corpses and make room for more dead bodies.
<snip>
Waltrip, chairman of SCI, is a longtime friend of Bush's father, former President George Herbert Walker Bush. The firm's political action committee donated $45,000 to George W. Bush's 1994 gubernatorial campaign.
The company also contributed more than $100,000 for construction of the George H.W. Bush presidential library.
<snip>
SCI also owned fifteen funeral homes named as defendants in a lawsuit filed on behalf of family members alleging "macabre mishandling, abuse and desecration of bodies" by Tri-State Crematory in Georgia. The lawsuit accused SCI-owned funeral homes of sending bodies to the unlicensed, unregulated crematorium, where never-incinerated corpses were found piled outdoors and stuffed in sheds in 2000.
More:
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/FEMA_outsources_Katrina_b...


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