Multi-Layered Failures (a good, objective read)

[igloo]

September 13, 2005, 8:39 a.m.
Multi-Layered Failures
The government response to Katrina left something to be desired.
— Deroy Murdock

"Why can't they drop water on these people?"


I repeatedly shouted that question to my TV as I watched the heart-wrenching news coverage of Hurricane Katrina's attack on New Orleans. Washed from their homes as Lake Pontchartrain poured into the Crescent City through the 17th Street Canal, thousands of evacuees at the Superdome and nearby Convention Center soon ached for as little as a Dixie cup of water. High humidity, searing sunshine, and 90-plus-degree temperatures intensified their thirst. And yet there was not a drop to drink.




Answers to this mystery are gradually surfacing.

"We were ready from literally the time the storm blew through," American Red Cross president Marty Evans told Fox News Channel's Major Garrett last Thursday. "We were ready to go. We just were not given permission to go in."

"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," a statement on the Red Cross' website explains. "Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city."

"Acess [sic] 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 statement also notes.

Salvation Army Major George Hood told FNC's Garrett that his group was ready to help, too. "We were prepared," Hood said. "The intent and the will was definitely there."

The Red Cross's Evans added: "We understood that the thinking was that, if we were to come in, that, one, it would impede the evacuation. They were trying to get everybody out. And, secondly, that it could possibly suggest that it was going to be OK to stay."

So, while the Red Cross and Salvation Army were able and eager to deliver water, food, medicine, and other relief supplies to those suffering at the Superdome and convention center, Louisiana officials rebuffed them, for fear that hydrating and feeding these individuals would chill an already glacial evacuation while encouraging others to get cozy and settle in for the long haul. In short, Louisiana officials starved their citizens out of town.

Amid ample federal fumbling as the Katrina crisis unfolded, this was just one of numerous instances where authorities in Baton Rouge and New Orleans City Hall appear to have neglected their constituents, amplified their pain, and surely cost some their lives.

Early on, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco should have requested federal troops to quell or at least deter the chaos in New Orleans as flood damage took its toll, looters stole electronic gear and luxury items as well as groceries, and rifle-wielding sociopaths fired on rescue boats and medical helicopters. Not until Thursday, September 1 did Blanco say, "I've actually asked for uniformed troops of any sort," either National Guard or active-duty GIs. The White House apparently hesitated, as federal troops are prohibited from conducting domestic policing under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act.

"At a meeting on Air Force One outside Baton Rouge," the next day, "Mr. Bush offered her [Blanco] the full force of every federal relief agency including the military, he claims," the Times of London reports. "Fearful of losing control of the relief effort and of being blamed later for doing so, she asked for another 24 hours to think about it."

Blanco "needed 24 hours to decide," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told reporters, as he said President Bush outlined the situation to him after Blanco resisted Bush's offer to federalize the state National Guard. Blanco rejected Bush's offer the next day.

Blanco's leisurely decision making exacerbated much that shocked the eyes of the world for the last two weeks.

You Need Leadership, Man
While state-level intransigence kept New Orleans' evacuees parched, famished, and menaced for days, City Hall's incompetence left them marooned. New Orleans Port Police director Cynthia Swain "ordered all harbor officers to abandon their posts and flee to higher ground" as the city flooded on Tuesday August 30, NBC's Lisa Myers reported September 8.

"I sent them to high ground because I did not want them to become victims of rising floodwater," Swain explained. Of course, the citizens of New Orleans were not crazy about becoming victims of rising floodwater, either. That is why their taxes financed these boats in the first place. "There were no harbor police rescue boats in the water for rescues for four days," Myers concluded.

"I need 500 buses, man," Mayor Nagin bellowed the evening of September 1 on local radio station WWL-AM. "We ain't talking about — you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here. I'm like, 'You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans.'"

While Nagin awaited the relative comfort of Greyhound motor coaches, he could have filled at least 80 percent of his expressed transit needs simply by employing buses already in his control.

At least 146 municipal mass-transit buses, plus 255 school buses, could have been deployed to whisk car-less evacuees to Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Houston, or any number of places more appealing than the Superdome. Assuming a fairly comfortable 50 people each, these buses alone could have evacuated 20,050 New Orleanians per trip.

But rather than speed toward safety, these buses languished in parking lots where they now are waterlogged. Fuel and oil seep out of their submerged engines, deepening the city's monumental clean-up challenge.

"Sure, there was [sic] lots of buses out there," Nagin explained Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. "But guess what? You can't find drivers that would stay behind with a Category 5 hurricane, you know, pending down on New Orleans. We barely got enough drivers to move people on Sunday, or Saturday and Sunday, to move them to the Superdome. We barely had enough drivers for that. So sure, we had the assets, but the drivers just weren't available."

Nagin and company should have planned for this Category 4 (not 5) contingency. School and mass-transit drivers could have been assigned to start their buses, bring their own families, collect evacuees, and then leave town. Or, the city could have improvised. Among local citizens and tourists eager to escape, volunteers could have been recruited to drive buses. Almost any idea would have trumped drowning 401 buses in a lake. Wags have nicknamed this the Mayor Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool.

None of this should have surprised Nagin, assuming he happened to read the "City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan." Among its instructions:

Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the mayor of New Orleans. ...The city of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas. ...Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific life-saving assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedure as needed. ...Approximately 100,000 citizens of New Orleans do not have means of personal transportation.

Page 13 of the January 2000 "Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation and Sheltering Plan" also chose buses as latter-day arks for the poor and immobile of New Orleans.

The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.

So, even as undertakers gather those who Katrina extinguished, why spend time documenting where state and local officials failed the embattled people of New Orleans?

Federal Mismanagement
This is no whitewash of the federal contribution to this catastrophe. President Bush can blame no one but himself for appointing Michael Brown to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The former equestrian-competition executive was a college roommate of Bush pal Joe Allbaugh, his predecessor at FEMA, who he served as deputy for two years. That seems his most obvious qualification for this critical job, from which he resigned on Monday.

FEMA's tragicomic highlight reel includes flying evacuees to Charleston, West Virginia rather than Charleston, South Carolina. Between August 28 and September 8, FEMA shuttled an experienced medical assessment team from Alabama to Biloxi, then Dallas, and Galveston. "We joined the team to help people who need it, and we're not helping anybody," Tim Ward complained to NBC News before FEMA jetted him and his colleagues to Houston. Far less itinerant is a mobile communications unit that a German concern is prepared to fly into the disaster zone. FEMA, they complain, has yet to return any of the hundreds of calls they have left.

Publicly detached at first — despite declaring an emergency the Saturday before Katrina hit and pressuring Governor Blanco for a mandatory evacuation that Sunday morning — Bush seems increasingly hands-on and should stay so. He also should ditch his boundless loyalty to loyal but hapless underlings. Having fired essentially no one after September 11 (i.e. former CIA Director George Tenet) Bush should dismiss those who fell on their fannies when this calamity hit. FEMA's Brown is thought to have jumped; as for others, Bush should not be afraid to push.

Racial Repulsiveness
That said, it is vital for Americans to understand that many fannies hit the floor — from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to Washington — both Republicans and Democrats. This fact unravels the corrosive narrative that the American Left has woven furiously since the moment Katrina exited Orleans Parish for points north. From their perspective, this whole mess is Bush's fault, and his misdeeds were fueled by anti-black bigotry.

Consider just a few of vicious statements:

"George Bush doesn't care about black people," rapper Kanye West declared September 2 on an NBC concert and telethon for hurricane relief.

Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean told the National Baptist Convention in Miami on September 7, "We have to come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age, and economics played a significant role in who survived and who did not." He added, "The question, 40 and 50 years after Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, is: How could this still be happening in America?" Dean spoke as if New Orleans succumbed to Hurricane Jim Crow.

Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights alluded to Plessy v. Ferguson, the notorious 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case that established the "separate-but-equal" rationale for Southern segregation. Said Ratner, "The legacy of that thought is what we saw at the Superdome."

"There's a historical indifference to the pain of poor people and black people," the Rev. Jesse Jackson fumed as the Big Easy sank beneath the waves. He visited the New Orleans Convention Center and announced: "This looks like the hull of a slave ship." One wonders, had Katrina smashed into Boston, forcing thousands of white evacuees into Faneuil Hall, would Jackson have sauntered in and said: "This looks like the Irish Potato Famine?"

Thousands of Americans have toiled and even died to heal this country's racial wounds. Turning Katrina from an epic story of widespread government ineptness into an indictment of anti-black genocide perpetrated by the president of the United States is beyond pernicious.

The wild-eyed theory that Bush hates blacks so deeply that he would engineer their wholesale starvation, dehydration, and asphyxiation pries the scabs off these still-healing wounds and grinds fresh pepper into them. Either such explosive nonsense is a warm pile of lies, or Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, FEMA's departed Michael Brown, Democratic Governor Blanco, and Democratic Mayor Nagin (who is black) share Bush's anti-black animus and helped him harm and kill black Americans on live, international television.

This is best-described scatalogically. But to keep it polite, the race hustlers who are exploiting this tragedy are beyond contempt. They are polluting the public square with nitroglycerine. Their twisted view of a bigoted America is belied by the 18,000 mainly black New Orleanians rescued by the Coast Guard, the $762 million in Katrina-related donations Americans of all colors have offered so far to our disadvantaged countrymen, along with free housing, schooling, and more. Thousands of volunteers, many with white faces, raced to comfort the tempest-tossed, many with blacks faces.

"When those Coast Guard choppers, many of who were first on the scene, were pulling people off roofs, they didn't check the color of a person's skin," President Bush told reporters Monday after surveying flood-damaged neighborhoods in New Orleans. "They wanted to save lives." Bush added: "The storm didn't discriminate, and neither did the recovery effort...The rescue efforts were comprehensive, and the recovery will be comprehensive." Some 71,000 federal personnel are now on the ground returning the Gulf Coast to normal.

Let us concur that many public officials from the New Orleans City Hall to the Oval Office, overwhelmed by America's biggest natural disaster ever, performed far below expectations, but without malice. Let us marginalize the wretched racial arsonists before they burn anything else to the ground. And let us magnify the heroism and generosity that already are helping Hurricane Katrina's survivors reassemble their shattered lives.

[igloo]

BUMP--this should be read by everyone...especially the blind Bush bashers

[vicman]

regardless of party affilitaion, there were messups at all levels. i do think an independent council is needed to investigate everything that went on the days prior, days after, and past repeated warnings made to local, state and federal level agencies that went unheard that contributed to this mess.

hate to say it, but that was a good article posyed by igloo.

[drlogic]

I agree. Great post Igloo.

Just as I posted earlier, anyone who's still stuck on stupid needs to understand the following:

Attn: Haters

If you're not part of the solution, they you're part of the problem.

[vicman]

btw, anyone see about the people who died in the nursing home and how they are gonna be prosecuted based on "negligent homicide?"

seems to me that local and state officials should be sued by victims of the the hurricane on that same basis - how the fuck can shitload of school buses be left unused to evecuate people from the superdome before the storm hit is beyond my comprehension. there were means to get a lot of those 20,000+ at the superdome out of the city before the storm hit, yet THEY HAD NO PLAN !!!!!

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporlea...005_09_14.html

"They had adequate notice that the worst nightmare for the state of Louisiana was about to occur and they did nothing," he said. "Their inaction resulted in the deaths of these people."


UM, and what did local and state government do differently in trying to evacuate people from the superdome or other people who didn't have the means to leave town and might have wanted to?

[igloo]

Originally Posted by vicman

regardless of party affilitaion, there were messups at all levels. i do think an independent council is needed to investigate everything that went on the days prior, days after, and past repeated warnings made to local, state and federal level agencies that went unheard that contributed to this mess.

hate to say it, but that was a good article posyed by igloo.

Always post good articles vicman.....good to see you finally recognize it

Kidding aside, I am for an independent council as well-- but I fear it would just breakdown into a circus like the 9/11 commission....

[igloo]

Originally Posted by vicman

btw, anyone see about the people who died in the nursing home and how they are gonna be prosecuted based on "negligent homicide?"

seems to me that local and state officials should be sued by victims of the the hurricane on that same basis - how the fuck can shitload of school buses be left unused to evecuate people from the superdome before the storm hit is beyond my comprehension. there were means to get a lot of those 20,000+ at the superdome out of the city before the storm hit, yet THEY HAD NO PLAN !!!!!

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporlea...005_09_14.html

That nursing home story is brutal to comprehend...and the people who were running it are rightfully being charged with homicide....fucking disgrace.....

The school bus situation is a horror......the Superdome and Convention Center situation is a horror......what is mind boggling is apparently those two places were part of the DR plan, but there were no plans executed on how they were to be used.....

First off, they should have been able to get them out of there before the storm....but even if they could not--WHY THE FUCK wasn't those two places loaded with supplies for these people...outrageous

[vicman]

Originally Posted by igloo

That nursing home story is brutal to comprehend...and the people who were running it are rightfully being charged with homicide....fucking disgrace.....

The school bus situation is a horror......the Superdome and Convention Center situation is a horror......what is mind boggling is apparently those two places were part of the DR plan, but there were no plans executed on how they were to be used.....

First off, they should have been able to get them out of there before the storm....but even if they could not--WHY THE FUCK wasn't those two places loaded with supplies for these people...outrageous

to me its just incredible how when they show aerial footage of new orleans you see a shitload of school buses underwater. between the time people started arriving to the superdome/convention center to the time the storm started to hit the area, it was a good 8-12 hours. more than plenty of time to get them outta dodge and bus them out to another area.

[igloo]

Originally Posted by vicman

btw, anyone see about the people who died in the nursing home and how they are gonna be prosecuted based on "negligent homicide?"

seems to me that local and state officials should be sued by victims of the the hurricane on that same basis -

GOOD CALL......

La. Drawing Up Charges for Flood Deaths
Sep 14 4:01 PM US/Eastern


By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer

NEW ORLEANS

The arrest of two nursing-home owners in the deaths of 34 people marked the beginning of what prosecutors said Wednesday is a large- scale investigation into whether New Orleans-area hospitals and other institutions neglected their patients during Hurricane Katrina's onslaught.

The Louisiana attorney general's office said all of its investigators have been pulled from other tasks to work on the Medicaid Fraud Unit, the team whose work led to homicide charges Tuesday against the husband-and-wife owners of the flooded-out St. Rita's nursing home in Chalmette.

Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Charles Foti, said the office is looking into other allegations of neglect that may have led to injuries or deaths at nursing homes and hospitals.

"Reports are flooding in. It just depends on what's legitimate and what is not," Wartelle said Wednesday.

In Washington, meanwhile, Senate Republicans scuttled an attempt by Sen. Hillary Clinton to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to the hurricane.

Separately, a Senate committee opened a hearing on the disaster, with the panel's Republican chairwoman saying that changes instituted after Sept. 11 in the government's emergency-preparedness failed their first major test during Katrina.

With billions of dollars to boost disaster preparedness at all levels of government, "we would have expected a sharp, crisp response to this terrible tragedy," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "Instead, we witnessed what appeared to be a sluggish initial response."

For Louisiana alone, the death toll surged by more than half Tuesday to 423, and the number is certain to climb. Including deaths in four other states, Katrina's overall toll stood at 659.

"Let me caution everyone: We have not done the secondary searches in the areas where the water was the highest. So we still have a lot of work to do, and those numbers probably will go up," Mayor Ray Nagin said.

Authorities said the toll would be lower if nursing-home owners Salvador and Mable Mangano had heeded warnings to evacuate their patients as Katrina came ashore Aug. 29.

"The pathetic thing in this case was that they were asked if they wanted to move them and they did not," Foti said. "They were warned repeatedly that this storm was coming. In effect, their inaction resulted in the deaths of these people."

The Manganos were released on $50,000 bail each; each of the 34 counts against them carries up to five years in prison. Their attorney, Jim Cobb, said his clients were innocent and had waited for a mandatory evacuation order from the officials of St. Bernard Parish that never came.

Cobb said the Manganos were forced to make a difficult decision as Katrina approached: risk the health of the patients _ many of them frail and on feeding tubes _ in an evacuation, or keep them comfortable at the home through the storm.

Tom Rodrigue, whose mother died in the home, was not satisfied. "She deserved the chance, you know, to be rescued instead of having to drown like a rat," he said.

The attorney general is also investigating the discovery of more than 40 corpses at flooded-out Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans. A hospital official said the 106-degree heat inside the hospital as the patients waited for days to be evacuated likely contributed to their deaths.

On Tuesday, President Bush said he took responsibility for the fitful federal response to the devastation. New Orleans' mayor was asked on ABC's "Good Morning America" if he took responsibility for the city's response.

"I'm going to be a man about this. Whatever I did, whatever I could have done better, I'm going to stand up and history will judge me accordingly," Nagin said in an interview broadcast Wednesday.

"But let's make sure that as we analyze what Ray Nagin as mayor did, let's look at what everybody in authority (did) so that this never happens again in this country."

The updated Louisiana death toll was released as Gov. Kathleen Blanco lashed out at the federal government, accusing it of moving too slowly in recovering the bodies. The dead "deserve more respect than they have received," she said.

However, Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman David Passey said the state asked to take over body recovery last week. "The collection of bodies is not normally a FEMA responsibility," he said.

Not all the news was grim. The New Orleans airport reopened to commercial flights Tuesday, the port resumed operations far earlier than expected, and Nagin said dry sections of the city _ including the French Quarter and central business district _ could be reopened as early as Monday, provided the Environmental Protection Agency determines the air is safe to breathe.

"We're bringing New Orleans back," Nagin said. "We're bringing this culture back. We're bringing this music back. I'm tired of hearing these helicopters. I want to hear some jazz."

Government test results released Wednesday said the floodwaters in New Orleans still pose a health risk because of dangerous levels of sewage-related bacteria and toxic chemicals. But air pollutants were found to be at acceptable levels.

Nagin also said Tuesday the city does not have the cash to keep paying its employees and was working "f*****shly" with banks and federal officials to secure a line of credit to get the city through the end of the year.

Local authorities have been issuing more passes allowing residents to return to the city for the day to check on their businesses, save vital records and retrieve data from computers _ although some people arriving by a highway south of the city had to endure a four-hour wait at a checkpoint.

Nagin hoped other evacuees scattered across the country also would return, despite speculation that some would prefer to settle in their new towns rather than face the chore of rebuilding in New Orleans.

"I know New Orleanians. Once the beignets start cooking up again and the gumbo is in the pots and red beans and rice are served on Monday _ in New Orleans, and not where they are _ they're going to be back," Nagin said.

The Army Corps of Engineers reported significant progress pumping out flooded areas of New Orleans and neighboring parishes. The pumps are removing more than 9 billion gallons a day, the Corps said.

Col. Duane Gapinski estimated that half of the flooded area or less was still under water, and the city was on target to be almost completely drained by Oct. 8. More than 40 pumping stations were operating, including the city's biggest pump.

"That will change the world as we know it," Nagin said.

The news was more gloomy to the east in St. Bernard Parish, where more than 90 percent of an 17-foot-high levee is damaged and nobody will be allowed to return for four months.

"I think about 95 percent of the parish was under water. I would say it's pretty well destroyed," said Col. Richard Baumy of the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Office. "You've got to see it to believe it."

Dan Packer, chief executive of Entergy New Orleans, said the company had restored power to 75 percent of the 1.1 million customers who were out at the height of the storm, mostly in Mississippi and areas of Louisiana north and west of New Orleans.

Packer said about 264,000 customers were without power Tuesday afternoon, largely in the metro New Orleans area. He said all of the central business district and French Quarter should have power back within two weeks.

___

Associated Press writers Adam Nossiter, Brett Martel, Cain Burdeau, Mary Foster and Lisa Meyer contributed to this report.

[jtk4]

its all bush's fault if he just went there and plugged the hole we would of been fine. Sometimes i want to punch michael moore in his fat head.

[igloo]

Originally Posted by jtk4

its all bush's fault if he just went there and plugged the hole we would of been fine. Sometimes i want to punch michael moore in his fat head.

I want to punch him all the time.....but I understand he does not have a fat head anymore, empty maybe, but not fat...he apparently went to one of those places to lose weight......now if they can get him to take a shower

[drlogic]

Originally Posted by igloo

I want to punch him all the time.....but I understand he does not have a fat head anymore, empty maybe, but not fat...he apparently went to one of those places to lose weight......now if they can get him to take a shower

CORRECT!

He went to FAT CAMP in Palm Beach Co. or maybe it was Broward Co./Florida.

He now feeds on ignorance w/ sprinkles of hate..................SUPERSIZED.

[igloo]

Originally Posted by drlogic

CORRECT!

He went to FAT CAMP in Palm Beach Co. or maybe it was Broward Co./Florida.

He now feeds on ignorance w/ sprinkles of hate..................SUPERSIZED.

Rumor has it he lost weight by shitting out destruction