Katrina's aftermath

There's your New Orleans police, protecting the people. Look, you had to know this was going to happen.

And I said "if they can". Look, they might starve, die of dehydration, or end up with typhoid. You got any better ideas how to eat or drink?

-- nero (abc12...), August 31st, 2005.

Can anyone actually cite a source that says our ability to respond was somehow diminished by having troops in Iraq? If it's true, it makes me angry, but so far I've only seen speculation.

Just now I put "Katrina" into Google, and guess what one of the first things that comes up is:

http://www.katw.com/

it's apparently more an issue of equipment than troops. the helicopters are over there, for one thing.

Col. Schneider says the state has enough equipment to get by, and if Louisiana were to get hit by a major hurricane, the neighboring states of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida have all agreed to help.

http://www.ww4report.com/node/1016

11:30 A.M. - Emergency Operations Director Walter Maestri: Evacuees from New Orleans and the east bank of Jefferson are flocking to the west bank, overwhelming the facilities.

here you go - the NYT reports that 6000+ guard troops from LA and MS are in Iraq, and both states have requested help from the outside

That's assuming that MS, AL, and FL wouldn't be having problems of their own which is clearly the case now. That quote is from August 1 - certainly things were a lot more optimistic back then.

Surely there is a place where it stops being "looting" and starts being survival. I wish they would put in the minimal amount of effort it would take to refer to them as, I don't know, "flood victims" rather than "looters".

xpost

re the evacuation: carnival cruise lines issued a statement saying they're looking into the feasibility of getting one of their ships to new orleans. it would be difficult, but it's not out of the question.

Oh man, that would be, like, the greatest thing ever.

"Asked whether the governors were short of Guard members for the hurricane mission, a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman said, "The numbers would suggest otherwise.""

Virtually every state in the nation is sending in National Guardsmen. That would be the expected response anyhow.

No one, anywhere, in any place of power, has said that they lack the manpower needed to deal with the disaster because of Iraq. LA's National Guard, by itself, never would have been able to deal with the disaster anyhow, and given that what's been occurring has been happening over a period of several days now, having people transported in from TX, AR, OK, VA, and other completely unaffected areas was going to have to happen anyways. Its what is occurring now and has been occurring for some time.

I was just thinking exactly the same thing and posted on ILM.

On another board I go to, someone posted two pictures, one of some black dudes w/Diet Pepsi and some other stuff...the others of two white skateboard looking kids w/some food....captions called the blacks "looters" and said the whites were "Carrying food they found at a grocery store"....finders keepers, looters weepers...

-Things are beginning to improve, basically by not getting worse. The predictions of flooding continuing en masse haven't yet come to pass.

-Work is continuing to sandbag the broken levee.

Watching the Cam from Interdictor: No surprise at the weather (clearly very sunny). No real water coming up to St. Charles anymore. Several vehicles on the street. Not many people on foot. Military and police vehicles have been driving through regularly, as long as vehicles towing boats.

from the cam: LOOOOOOONG line of vehicles going down St. Charles now. Now a small mob of people.

that would be rather counterproductive, wouldn't it? I mean, Bush is hardly a petulant and political guy. the state governments have said by their actions, at the least, that they have insufficient manpower and equipment. the newspapers and other commentators, who don't have to please anyone to get a response, have noted that a large chunk of the manpower and equipment is in Iraq.

LA's National Guard, by itself, never would have been able to deal with the disaster anyhow,

you miss the point. the current disaster may have been greatly compounded by the failure to stop the levee breach (assuming that would have worked, but we can't know either way). that failure apparently was due to their preoccupation with rescue missions. if they had had more people and equipment, it would have been more likely that both would occur simultaneously.

Finding Bread"

no news on their site. they're playing in atlanta on sunday, hopefully they already evacuated themselves and their equipment.

Jefferson: You can return Monday with your ID. You will be allowed to collect your belongings and will not be allowed to return for a month.

How long were neighbors of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island supposed to wait to return to their homes? I mean, fuck.

Is that basically the argument? Because they aren't saying so, its true?

>the newspapers and other commentators, who don't have to please anyone to get a response, have noted that a large chunk of the manpower and equipment is in Iraq.<

There's a good chunk of manpower and equipment in Iraq. Fine. Here's my question; What good is a Apache helicopter in a flood? How about an M1A1 ? Not much. The question is "has the fact that there are troops in Iraq in any way retarded the ability of Louisiana to help itself?" Everyone says "no". In fact, none of the newspapers who have reported the people being in Iraq have made the claim either, as well they shouldn't. To say such at this time would be obvious politicism.

>that failure apparently was due to their preoccupation with rescue missions. if they had had more people and equipment, it would have been more likely that both would occur simultaneously.<

You're assuming that all the equpiment in Iraq has pertinance to the mission of saving lives in Louisiana. This is not true. There is nothing that A-10 Warthogs or Personnel Carriers can do to plug that hole. Even merely having helicopters is facetious, given that the minority of the helicopters are capable of heavy lifting operations, and furthered by the number of helicopters from outside LA that are being used in the effort.

Besides, if it was true, don't you think somewhere in the blogoshpere or media, someone would have leaked this already?

sorry he didn't post the link...just wrote out the captions and pix himself...he's not on the board now...

Residents in close proximity to Chernobyl never did. Three Mile Island, as far as I know, never touched off any long term evacuations.

say, who else has remembered that the nomination hearings for John Roberts start next week? We gonna have a fun September...

President Bush is considering an address to the nation asking citizens to conserve energy, a top White House source says.

Bush ordered the release of oil from federal petroleum reserves to help refiners affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Bush returned to Washington on Wednesday to oversee the federal response to the historic disaster. He plans to coordinate federal efforts, across more than a dozen agencies, to assist hurricane victims.

"Still undecided is whether or not to call for a nationwide effort to reduce energy consumption during this emergency," a top Bush source explains. "It is seriously being considered."

i like the "coordinate" bit. He's going to be in his office with 3 telephones and multiple email windows running, issuing orders for the next 72 hours.

oh yeah, and gasoline at the local supermarket jumped 17 cents per gallon from its price on monday morning.

WWL-TV reported that the Miller Brewing Co. was sending several truck loads of water to the region from its Albany, Ga., plant.

Yeah, that's going to go down real well...

Cue Annie Potts: "Yeah, it's a sign, alright; 'Goin' Out of Business.'"

and certain loons believe that the rest of the world doesn't care.

perhaps this site is true: http://www.godhatesshrimp.com/

Well, the biggest problem was that the lake would drain in, but now that everything is equalized, the only real problem is that it'll take longer to repair the levees and then pump out the water.

One bit of good news is that New Orleans doesn't appear to face a threat of being surrounded by even more water than it has outside its levees right now. By yesterday, the water level in the Mississippi had dropped about 11 feet since Monday, as the storm surge that had pushed upriver from the Gulf of Mexico, temporarily reversing the river's course, receded. Yesterday, the water level in the stretch of river that runs through the city was down to a level of about 4.28 feet, well below the flood level of 17 feet and low even under normal circumstances, hydrology experts said...

The rain that Katrina dumped on Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday won't affect the river's water levels because many of the rivers in the area flow directly into the Gulf. Rain that Katrina deposits in Tennessee and farther north isn't likely to reach New Orleans for at least two weeks, Mr. Richards said.

Parts of Kentucky, Ohio, and other areas where Katrina was headed have been unusually dry, meaning less runoff from the storm, Mr. Richards said.

Likewise, the water in Lake Pontchartrain isn't likely to rise, said Richard Keim, assistant professor at the School of Renewable Natural Resources at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The fresh water source that feeds it is only about as large as the lake itself, so while much rain has fallen in the area, not much will end up in the lake, says Mr. Keim. The larger question is when the storm surge will recede into the Gulf, the lake's other water source. Lake Pontchartrain has only two narrow, winding outlets to the Gulf, so it is unclear how long it will take them to empty.

<HIPPIEFUCK>hahaha, only during emergencies though!<HIPPIEFUCK>

woah woah woah...people...slow down...let's not do anything rash....jeez you'd think a major american city had just slid into the ocean...oh wait.