Why New Orleans defenses were down

[bigpoppanils]

Why city's defences were down

Cuts in spending to raise levees blamed on cost of war in Iraq

John Vidal, environment editor, and Duncan Campbell

Thursday September 1, 2005

The Guardian

The Louisiana coastline may have been so badly damaged by the hurricane because manmade engineering of the delta has led to erosion of natural defences, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The engineering of the last 100 years that has reworked the Mississippi delta with thousands of miles of levees and flood barriers to protect communities and aid navigation, has also disturbed natural barriers which traditionally prevented storm surges and protected against hurricanes, says the society.

"Human activity, directly or indirectly, has caused 1,500 square miles of natural coastal barriers to be eroded in the past 50 years. Human activity has clearly been a significant factor in coastal Louisiana land losses, along with subsidence, saltwater intrusion, storm events, barrier island degradation, and relative sea level changes," the society said in a paper last year.

It warned that "New Orleans and surrounding areas would now experience the full force of hurricanes, including storm surges that top levee systems and cause severe flooding as well as high winds".

The damage done this time may be also linked to White House cuts in funding for hurricane defence to pay for homeland security terrorist defences.

Lloyd Dumas, professor of political economy and economics at the University of Texas at Dallas, criticised the government's failure to oversee a more efficient evacuation. "It's remarkable that with the massive restructuring of the federal government that took place with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, they don't have more well thought-out plans to evacuate a city like New Orleans," he said.

"An emphasis should be placed on plans that have multiple purposes, like evacuation plans for a city like New Orleans that can of course be useful in the event of a terrorist attack but also in the event of a natural disaster like this one ... There were plans during the cold war to evacuate major cities in a few days."

Professor Dumas added that not enough provision seemed to have been made for poor people. "There doesn't seem to have been much attention paid to people who didn't have private automobiles," he said. "I didn't hear anything about school buses or city buses being used to aim people out of town." He said that there appeared to be little forward planning to cater to those on low incomes who would be unable to return to their homes for up to two months but who would not have the money to pay for that time in a hotel. "The Department of Homeland Security says on its website that it deals with natural disasters," he said. "They don't seem to have done a very good job. There doesn't seem to have been any long-term planning."

The war in Iraq was also being seen as playing a part in the federal response to the crisis. Many members of the National Guard who would normally have been swiftly mobilised to help in evacuation are on duty in Iraq. Although US air force, navy and army units were deployed to assist, the locally-based National Guard is depleted by the demands of the war.

New Orleans, which is in a natural basin on the Mississippi floodplain, is on average about six feet below sea level and theoretically protected by the most sophisticated levee system in the world. According to the US corps of army engineers, which is responsible for maintaining flood defences, more than 1,200 miles of levees and floodwalls have been built to protect the city from the Mississippi and from hurricanes.

The corps has long wanted to strengthen some of the levees which have been sinking, and on its website yesterday said it planned to build a further 74 miles of hurricane defences. But according to local media, it was last year refused extra funding by the White House which wanted to save money to pay for homeland security against terrorism. "In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for south-east Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4m, a sixth of what local officials say they need," reported Newhouse News Service yesterday.

Local officials are saying, the article claimed, that had Washington heeded warnings about the dire need for extra 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".

Last year Walter Maestri, emergency chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, one of the worst affected areas, reportedly told the Times-Picayune newspaper: "It appears that the money [for strengthening levees against hurricanes] 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."

In June 2004, the corps' project manager, Al Naomi, went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and requested $2m for "urgent work" that Washington was now unable to pay for. "The levees are sinking," he said. "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."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1560351,00.html

[obby]

America will come together(as it always does).

Note: America, not rep or dem, lib or conserv,,,but Americans!!!! ANYONE WHO OPTS TO POLITICALLY POSTURE THEMSELVES W/ THIS EVENT IS NOT HELPING! JAMMING A WEDGE BETWEEN AMERICANS AT THIS TIME OF NEED IS REPUGNANT AND I HOPE YOU GUYS SEE IT THAT WAY TOO!

[bigpoppanils]

America will come together(as it always does).

Note: America, not rep or dem, lib or conserv,,,but Americans!!!! ANYONE WHO OPTS TO POLITICALLY POSTURE THEMSELVES W/ THIS EVENT IS NOT HELPING! JAMMING A WEDGE BETWEEN AMERICANS AT THIS TIME OF NEED IS REPUGNANT AND I HOPE YOU GUYS SEE IT THAT WAY TOO!

so, does this mean that you're going to STFU now?

[majinbuu]

America will come together(as it always does).

Note: America, not rep or dem, lib or conserv,,,but Americans!!!! ANYONE WHO OPTS TO POLITICALLY POSTURE THEMSELVES W/ THIS EVENT IS NOT HELPING! JAMMING A WEDGE BETWEEN AMERICANS AT THIS TIME OF NEED IS REPUGNANT AND I HOPE YOU GUYS SEE IT THAT WAY TOO!

typical.

[pookie23]

And the state itself couldn't raise the money to make the necessary improvements?

[destruction]

The Hurricane and Bush’s Criminal Negligence:

Bush Slashed Flood Protection * Bush sent emergency personnel and equipment to Iraq* Bush’s role in global warming * Oil Profiteering * Bush failed to develop an evacuation plan * No emergency relief program, even now

With every hour that passes, we see and hear new stories of the horror and devastation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. What makes these images more shocking is the realization that much of the death and destruction could have been prevented.

Almost all of the death and destruction arising from the hurricane is the direct result of criminal neglect by the Bush Administration. This crisis was predicted in numerous reports and news articles and little, if anything, was done.

While natural disasters are beyond our control, the preparation for expected and predicted disasters is something that we can control. Natural disasters do not have to be catastrophes if plans are made in advance to protect people and their homes, but these plans were not made.

We cannot discuss the effects of this catastrophe without noting that those who have suffered most are people of color. Seventy percent of New Orleans’ residents are Black, as are a major part of the population of the surrounding area affected by the hurricane. The fact that absolutely no preparations were made for their evacuation, that no thought was given to meeting their basic emergency needs in the wake of the storm, and that even now they have been abandoned and ignored by the government, lays bare the racism at the core of U.S. society and at the heart of the policies of George W. Bush.

The criminal negligence displayed by all levels of government preceding and during this crisis sends a clear message that, to those in power, the lives of poor people, especially poor Black people, are of absolutely no concern.

President Bush has diverted funds that were needed to prepare for this type of natural disaster to fund a war of conquest in Iraq. He did this despite being warned of the potential for danger by FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) as early as 2001. The Houston Chronicle reported on Dec. 1, 2001: “New Orleans is sinking. And its main buffer from a hurricane, the protective Mississippi River delta, is quickly eroding away, leaving the historic city perilously close to disaster. ...So vulnerable, in fact, that earlier this year the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country.â€

The Bush Administration knew of the danger and they knew how to prepare for it. But they chose to do little or nothing – they actually slashed funding for preventative and emergency measures, leaving the people of the region helpless to deal with the inevitable disaster. Now, with the destruction of New Orleans and numerous surrounding communities, tens of thousands of people are without food, water, or electricity. Thousands of homes are destroyed and the death toll continues to climb.

This is a disaster of unprecedented proportion. It is poor and working people, particularly people of color, who are suffering the most from this disaster.

No preparation

It was clear from watching the disaster unfold that no real plans had been made for evacuating the region, even though everyone, including Federal authorities and meteorologists, knew that a hurricane of enormous magnitude was descending on the area.

For the elderly, the handicapped, the poor, there was no provision for evacuation or shelter. It was “everyone for themselves,†and those who didn’t have the ability to flee or the means to finance their own evacuation were left to perish. There were no arrangements for more than 100,000 people in New Orleans - 20 % of the population and overwhelmingly the poorest part of the population. Those with out cars, credit cards, and hotel reservations had few alternatives but to stay home and face the coming deluge. The death toll continues to mount, and it becomes more and more apparent how little the government is concerned for human life, particularly the lives of poor and working people.

There were many obvious things that could have and should have been done if the government were concerned about the lives of the people. Trains, airlines, buses, and other transportation could have been put to use evacuating people. Convention centers, hotels, and college dormitories throughout the region could have been used for shelter. The government uses eminent domain to take working people’s property for the benefit of corporate developers; this would have been an excellent opportunity to use eminent domain in a way that actually benefits people.

Because there was no plan for evacuation, more than 20,000 people were herded into the Superdome without adequate food, shelter, water, or medical care for days. The New York Times said, “By Wednesday, the stench was staggering. Heaps of rotting garbage in bulging white plastic bags baked under a blazing Louisiana sun on the main entry plaza, choking new arrivals as they made their way into the stadium after being plucked off rooftops and balconies. The odor billowing from toilets was even fouler. Trash spilled across corridors and aisles, slippery with smelly mud and scraps of food.â€

Videos of the situation (see below) show just how desperate the situation is—people are without food, water, and medicine. Bodies are piling up on the streets. The people have been absolutely abandoned by the government.

Only massive immediate Federal intervention can relieve the situation. The government has access to stockpiles of food and medicines and it has cargo planes and helicopters to deliver them. Yet the Administration has chosen not to act while people are dying.

Slashing emergency preparations to fund war and tax cuts for the wealthy

Knowing that a hurricane of this strength was eventually inevitable, the Bush Administration slashed the budget of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the area by $71.2 million. This cut eliminated hurricane and flood protection projects as well as a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane. This cut was part of the Bush policy of slashing essential programs to pay for a tax cut for the wealthy and for the occupation of Iraq.

Comparing the cuts of more than $71 million for flood protection to the $1.7 billion taken from the people of Louisiana for the war in Iraq yields one more example of how the Bush policy of endless war endangers the population here.

The Aug. 30 Editor and Publisher revealed that $250 million in crucial projects planned by the Army Corps of Engineers in the delta for shoring up levees and building pumping stations could not be carried out. “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.

“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.â€

Emergency Specialists and Equipment sent to Iraq

The National Guard, who would normally be deployed to aid in evacuation and disaster relief, is unable to respond adequately because 40% of the Mississippi National Guard 35% of the Louisiana National Guard is in Iraq. So is much of their equipment, including dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators that are essential to dealing with this type of emergency.

According to the Washington Post, "With thousands of their citizen-soldiers away fighting in Iraq, states hit hard by Hurricane Katrina scrambled to muster forces for rescue and security missions yesterday -- calling up Army bands and water-purification teams, among other units, and requesting help from distant states and the active-duty military."

Many of the members of the National Guard are also emergency medical technicians and firefighters. They should be at home helping their neighbors recover from this disaster, not in Iraq maintaining an illegal occupation.

Contempt for Environment exacerbates disaster

The flooding is exacerbated by the elimination of wetlands, which provide a natural buffer. The Bush Administration has removed Federal protection from as much as 20 million acres of wetlands.

The Bush Administration has demonstrated utter disregard for human life and contempt for international law by refusing to abide by the 1997 Kyoto accord, a treaty signed by the United States and 54 other nations. The agreement is designed to limit emissions that cause global warming.

Sir David King, the British Government's chief scientific adviser, says that global warming may be responsible for the devastation reaped by Hurricane Katrina. "The increased intensity of hurricanes is associated with global warming. We have known since 1987 the intensity of hurricanes is related to surface sea temperature and we know that, over the last 15 to 20 years, surface sea temperatures in these regions have increased by half a degree centigrade. So it is easy to conclude that the increased intensity of hurricanes is associated with global warming."

Loss of life is avoidable – Cuba a U.N. model

The massive loss of life in Louisiana and Mississippi was avoidable, if those making decisions were interested in funding emergency measures rather than spending money on war and occupation. Cuba lies directly in the path of many hurricanes, and yet the loss of life is usually minimal, because the government has systems in place to aid orderly evacuations, provide emergency shelter, and look after the elderly, the handicapped, and the poor.

In 2001, when Hurricane Michelle, a level-4 storm, hit with sustained 125-mile-per-hour winds and widespread floods, more than 700,000 people were evacuated. Only five Cubans lost their lives in the storm.

In September 2004, Cuba endured Ivan, the fifth-largest hurricane ever to hit the Caribbean, with sustained winds of 124 miles per hour. Cuba evacuated almost 2 million people--more than 15 percent of the total population. One hundred thousand people were evacuated within the first three hours. An incredible 78 percent of those evacuated were welcomed into other people's homes. Children at boarding schools were moved. Animals and birds were moved. No one was killed. The UN declared this to be a model of disaster preparation.

Cuba, a country blockaded and isolated by the U.S. for 45 years has been able to evacuate millions of people in an orderly fashion without loss of life. Natural disasters do not have to be catastrophes.

Oil profiteering

Beyond the horrific loss of life and homes in the region, working people everywhere will suffer as the pay more than $3.00 per gallon for gas, as oil companies rake in record profits. In some places, gas has reached as much as $5.00 per gallon.

Releasing oil from the Strategic Oil Reserves could easily offset the loss of oil refineries in the region. Nearly 700 million barrels of oil are stored in underground salt caverns along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. This reserve was established to cushion oil markets during energy disruptions or other emergencies, and sitting on the oil rather than releasing it only keeps the price of gas high and ensures greater profits for the oil companies.

While George W. Bush and his friends at the Big Oil companies are growing rich from escalating oil prices, while working people, who are already suffering from the economic policies of the Bush Administration, have to spend more of their shrinking paychecks to pay for gas to get to work and school.

Venezuela offers to help while Washington refuses to act

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has demonstrated more concern for working and poor people in the U.S. than George Bush has. Chavez has announced that Venezuela will be offering poor people discounted gas through its Citgo chain.

He has also offered to send more than $1 million in oil, food, and and equipment to the region. In addition, the Venezuelan government is offering two mobile hospital units, each capable of assisting 150 people, 120 specialists in rescue operations, 10 water purifying plants, 18 electricity generators of 850 KW each, 20 tons of bottled water, and 50 tons of canned food.

A senior U.S. State Department official said he was not aware of the Venezuelan offer, and then dismissed it as "counterproductive."

The real looting: Bush Administration steals from working people to fund war and corporate greed

Rather than focusing on criminal neglect by the Federal and State governments, the corporate media is reporting that the real danger is looting. In an attempt to shift blame from the policies of the Bush Administration, the news networks are demonizing the victims. In a blatant appeal to racism, those being portrayed as “looters†on the news are without exception black males.

Tens of thousands of poor people have been stranded by a policy of neglect. Many are without food, fresh water, baby formula, and medicine, and the government has refused to provide even basic relief.

The real looters are not the hungry people taking what they need from an abandoned corporate superstore. The real crime is that they were left in this situation by a government that puts war and corporate profits ahead of human needs.

The Bush regime has looted billions of dollars of the people’s money, slashing programs that provide basic necessities and robbing from agencies that are tasked with preparing for natural disasters in order to fund a war of conquest against the people of Iraq. There are dangerous looters, but they are Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, not the poor people of New Orleans trying to feed their families. It is clear that the Bush Administration is increasingly putting the entire population of the country in growing danger by relentlessly slashing every social program, infrastructure maintenance program, and environmental protection program.

Money for Human Needs not War!

It is the Bush Administration, and the Big Corporations it serves, who are directly responsible for the disaster, and they, not the working people of the region, should be responsible for rebuilding and providing relief.

In a speech on Wednesday, President Bush said, “our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens along the Gulf Coast who have suffered so much from Hurricane Katrina.†But the people of the region need food, clothing, shelter, and jobs, not hearts and prayers.

He grinned as he said, “Recovery will take years,†but offered no plan to assist in that rebuilding. The people of the area need, and are entitled to, more than empty rhetoric and vacant smiles. The crisis demands a massive national mobilization to meet emergency needs and facilitate rebuilding efforts. The disaster is beyond the scope of local authorities or private charities to handle; the Federal government must devote its ample resources, which are now being used to wage war, to provide immediate and long-term relief.

We call on the Bush Administration to:

* Stop funding war and occupation. Use the money instead to fund emergency relief and rebuilding.

* Erase the debts incurred by working people who had to pay for gas and emergency shelter because of the government’s refusal to plan for evacuation.

* Provide emergency unemployment relief to the tens of thousands who have lost their jobs because of the devastation.

* Immediately exercise eminent domain to use all available space to provide emergency and long-term shelter to those left homeless.

* Provide a massive jobs program at union wages for rebuilding. Millions of unemployed workers could be hired to help construct housing, schools, and other public facilities.

* Food, water, clothing, medical supplies, and other necessities should be immediately commandeered for the emergency from agribusiness, supermarket chains, and pharmaceutical companies. Government food storage supplies in warehouses throughout the country should be made available immediately.

Watch a video from the Convention Center in New Orleans: "Desperate Struggle"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9156612 click on “Launch†under Free Video

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September 10 Emergency Strategy Meeting

organized by the Troops Out Now Coalition

Lang Center at the New School University

55 W. 13th St. in Manhattan

(between 5th & 6th Ave.)

1:30 - 6:00 pm

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Now, more than ever, it is clear that we need a massive people's movement to stop the Bush agenda of endless war and cuts in vital services. Join us on September 10, from 1:30 to 6:00 pm for a National Strategy Meeting to help build a movement to Bring the Troops Home Now and demand "Money for the Gulf States, not for War!"

Topics will include:

Hurricane Katrina : A campaign for emergency action. Help plan national actions to demand Money for Hurricane Relief, Not for War!

Mobilizing for the September 24 National March on Washington DC

Counter-Recruiting Campaign

The Millions More Movement

Dec. 1-3 National Boycott to Shut Down the War

Donate to help organize against endless war.

[destruction]

America will come together(as it always does).

Note: America, not rep or dem, lib or conserv,,,but Americans!!!! ANYONE WHO OPTS TO POLITICALLY POSTURE THEMSELVES W/ THIS EVENT IS NOT HELPING! JAMMING A WEDGE BETWEEN AMERICANS AT THIS TIME OF NEED IS REPUGNANT AND I HOPE YOU GUYS SEE IT THAT WAY TOO!

[thomar]

[drlogic]

Let’s consider the obligations of the mayor of the city:

A great part of downtown New Orleans sits below water level. Maintaining levees is the first obligation of the mayor and his consorts. So the problem runs deeper than the current accusation that the Federal government, after providing hundreds of millions in recent aid, was cutting funds to the city’s public works. Every city mayor or manager knows that when the Feds don’t come up with funds for the civic safety net, then you look to the state and local agencies to ensure the survival of the city. Billions of dollars in casinos and mega-sports complexes are no investment for a municipality, if millions are not first spent to the levees behind them.

And when those life-saving levees broke, Mayor Nagin must have known whose fault it was. He resides, after all, next to a lake higher than his city. Before stooping to accuse a national government for not getting troops to his flooded downtown fast enough — as though there were easy access possible with bridges collapsed and the city under water, and as though there weren’t already rescue teams converging, doing the best they could given the failure of the mayor’s prior priorities, his flooded infrastructure, and his inadequate evacuation — a mayor of any character would take rather than dish out the blame.

Barring his ability to maintain the levees, Nagin should have at least taken responsibility for evacuating his city, or have provided safe zones for those who lacked the resources to escape the flooding. New Orleans’ slum residents, almost all of whom are among the quarter of the city’s population who live in dire poverty, surely were hardly surprised their mayor is back to the blame game. The Big Easy is long infamous for government fraud, bribery and racketeering. In fact, the city officials and departments have been the target of an FBI probe for the last decade to curb corruption. In March 2005, Louis M. Reigel III, the head of the regional FBI office charged with cleaning up Louisiana, retired from his position alleging that the conditions in the state were improving, with cooperation from the governor and other government officials. But businesses weren’t as forthright or confident, which was not odd given the 10% to 20% bite that organized crime was purportedly skimming off the top of contracts as the price of operating in the city.

Finally, the mayor should have had a read on the pulse of his own city — specifically its crime rate and festering pockets of lawlessness, especially in the downtown district. So, when officials started to fill the Superdome with thousands of panicky refugees from the slums of New Orleans — people who due to health or poverty could not or would not leave the city — the mayor should have considered that he would have needed an extraordinary police presence, plus whatever troops the state government could send just to prevent what often happens on a lesser scale on a Saturday night in New Orleans.

In short, Mayor Nagin is a perfect example of the our generation’s wider culture of blame that has fostered the careers and lined the pockets of many public officials — but heretofore usually been confined to well-publicized public officials outside the U.S. in Third World countries, who pilfer millions from their own states and automatically blame the U.S. for any shortcomings. For example, it is odd, even now, how we talk so easily about how Arafat personally skimmed $900 million off the top of Western aid given to the Palestinian Authority, which doesn’t include the millions he made from kickbacks or the millions more squandered by his associates. We can only fault ourselves since blame is the perquisite for no-strings-attached largess, and without it the guilt-ridden will not continue to hand out.

New Orleans reveals a true moral crisis in America: weak public officials deflecting their own responsibility, as more confident thugs rule in the streets. Apparently America has devolved from a “buck stops here†culture, where public officials stand up to shoulder responsibility, to a tribe of “blame himâ€: so censure George Bush and you can turn attention from your own administrative failings.

As our newspapers call for a rush-to-judgment castigation of the national government — the subtext of which is merely part of the now four-year-old litany that funds should not be going to the war in Iraq — perhaps they instead should be calling for the investigation of the Mayor and his government that should have been the focus of New Orleans’ malaise, well before and hopefully long after Katrina.

So there are two problems that transcend New Orleans and indeed are global. We live in an unusual time in which the mainstream press is obsessed not with improving the instrument of government or national security, but for partisan purposes is enmeshed in a banal battle to vindicate their earlier criticism of the war in Iraq. Secondly, the therapeutic press gives license to this culture of blame that pacifies all sorts of angry constituents without ever addressing why they are angry in the first place. The fiasco in New Orleans has simply become a microcosm of a larger world-wide pandemic of an abdication of responsibility, in which few governments admit culpability for their own inept and fraudulent actions. Why should they when they know that the American media will only help them perfect this already near perfect excuse?

The cleanup of New Orleans has a long way to go. Unfortunately, it took Katrina to show us how damaged the city was well before the storm and flood — and perhaps to give everyone involved a chance at a fresh start. Let’s get it right this time.

http://victorhanson.com/articles/heyne090605.html