Katrina info thread II

[SpencerH]

I mentioned it on another thread but I had knowledgable friends (ie live in the south and understand the threat of hurricanes) who went down to NO on that thursday night (when Katrina was headed west) and didnt hear about the threat and evacuation notice until sat night. Who watches TV in NO? I think a lot of tourists may have got caught by surprise and didnt have a way out of the city.

[chequita guevara]

Shouldn't concierges be telling their guests something like that?

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Shouldn't concierges be telling their guests something like that?

You'd think so, but apparently it didnt happen (at a very nice french-quarter hotel). Given the 24/7 attitude of many revelers, a sign in the lobby or message under the door might have been a good idea but then again it can be difficult to focus the eyes after a late night.

[Barnabas]

didnt cuba send doctors some years ago to central america after a hurricane? anybody remembers the year and name of the hurricane?

[chequita guevara]

It was probably in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch.

[Chemical Ollie]

Not allowing pets

Picture from FOX.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Heh. This I'd never seen before...this excavator is literally poling up and down the canal on a barge, taking sandbags down to fill the levee break.

They're also showing shots of a 3-ft pipe pumping water out of the city.

[Zkribbler]

CNN is reporting that the New Orleans Police Department has lost 1/5 of its officers since the hurricane. Dozens have turned in their badges; others have simply walked away. I'm sure many are dead, victims of the flood or of outlaw ambushes. Two have committed suicide.

[Bosh]

More disgraceful incompetance on the part of FEMA:

http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470

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 Compact.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05blame.html?ex=1283572800&en=1d14ebfbd942a7d0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

When Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water, FEMA officials turned them away, he said. Agency workers prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the parish's emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA, Mr. Broussard said.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm

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.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html

3:32 P.M. Ben Morris, Slidell mayor: We are still hampered by some of the most stupid, idiotic regulations by FEMA. They have turned away generators, we've heard that they've gone around seizing equipment from our contractors. If they do so, they'd better be armed because I'll be damned if I'm going to let them deprive our citizens. I'm pissed off, and tired of this horse$#@@."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050902daley,1,2011979.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

Frustration 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.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e2511c8.html

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.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/105538/7048

Last night, one of my friends joined our regular Sunday chat. He had just come home from New Orleans with his group of volunteer firefighters from Houston, after they had waited outside New Orleans for since Tuesday for FEMA to let them help in New Orleans, or use them somewhere else in the stricken region.

FEMA's "reason" -- they wouldn't let anyone in "until the National Guard has secured the city." The details of his experience are below the fold.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15147862&BRD=1817&PAG=461&dept_id=68561&rfi=6

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.

When a tragedy or disaster occurs in Arizona, trained, skilled people are allowed to help without Federal Emergency Management Agency certification, he said. "But when a national disaster is in effect, federal rules take over and FEMA would have to approve it," said Dudelston.

"It's kind of sad people are being turned away, the minute they go into a federal situation, they just can't get in there," he said. "The problem is when something like this happens - when an area is declared a national disaster - you can't go in there. They don't know them (trained volunteers) from Adam, so they can't let them in," he said of federal officials.

[Kataphraktoi]

add FEMA to the list of rioters to be killed by the troops

[Tingkai]

But Bush says Michael Brown is doing a wonderful job so it must be true and the media must be lying.

NYT has a good story about two families affected by the flood.

It was moving day for the families of Gaynell Porretto and Tracy Jackson, the first page of the next chapter in their Hurricane Katrina horror stories.

Mrs. Porretto's four-car caravan crammed with a lifetime of photo albums, a few changes of clothes and coolers of drinks pulled up to a yellow house with a wide front porch that she had just rented for $600 in the humble hamlet of Arnaudville, La.

It is 125 miles from her storm-sacked home in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, half the size for twice as many people, but she can see the church steeple from the yard, and her son is signed up for football at the nearby high school.

"I have a ZIP code!" she said, exulting. "It's the happiest I've ever been."

Outside the New Orleans airport here, Ms. Jackson's four sickly and hungry children, ages 1, 3, 5 and 7, were sprawled on a skycap's cart as she slogged through the sweaty, snail-like line, the baby atop a blue plastic bin filled with what they had scrounged from strangers.

It is all they have, their $2,000 cash savings burned up with their belongings - including birth certificates - in a post-flood fire at their apartment in uptown New Orleans. Even as they waited to board a plane, they did not know where they were taking it.

"I'm just hoping it's a better place," she whispered. "I've never been on an airplane before, I'm afraid of heights."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05moving.html

[:) Smiley]

Looks like it was a good thing that FEMA took such a long time in finding out and responding... had they heard of the storm before they hit, everyone would still be in the city right now.

[OzzyKP]

Thanks for the link/quote collection Bosh

[Colon™]

Analysis by BBC that seems fair: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4216508.stm

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Ladies and Gentlemen- after a mere week they've sandbagged the levee.

May I humbly suggest that once the top 100 incompetents are identified, they should be taken out into the carpark for a really good kicking?