I decided to to a general posting that will contain all the information that I have gathered so far around the Net regarding pre- and post- hurricane Katrina.
I will just provide excerpts, but I strongly encourage you to follow those links and read the rest of the information so that you can get the whole picture.
I challenge you as readers to seek out the facts of this issue and not just rely on opinion pieces. I have seached for days across the spectrum of both MSM newspapers and many black blogs/websites and so far most of what I am finding are opinion pieces that contain just enough truth to validate the claim for racism.
Once again, I am appealing to you to please follow the links and read the information on those pages in its entirety so that you can have a better understanding of the situation.
The reason why I provided excerpts is because in most cases if I just provided a link, most readers will not click on it unless the title was provocative.
My mother-in-law a few years back reminded me of a phrase that still sticks with me today:
If you want to hide something from a black person, hide it in a book!
It is my hope and prayer that we open the book and make up our own minds instead of giving mainstream media that responsibility.
It is not the goal of this site to force readers to arrive at the same conclusion, but to be informed.
Last thing. It is my hope that those involved with black media that frequent this site would minimize opinion pieces that are written by folks who know very little about the behind the scenes day to day relief operation taking place in the Gulf region and emphasize the known facts like what is presented in this posting.
LET YOUR READERS DECIDE!!
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Give Smart! Charity Navigator
From National Geographic—
New Orleans Levees Not Built for Worst Case Events
Levee Upgrade
Until the day before Katrina’s arrival, New Orleans’s 350 miles (560 kilometers) of levees were undergoing a feasibility study to examine the possibility of upgrading them to withstand a Category Four or Five storm.
Corps officials say the study, which began in 2000, will take several years to complete.
Upgrading the system would take as long as 20 to 25 years, according to Al Naomi, the Corps’ senior project manager for the New Orleans District.
Martin McCann, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Stanford University in California, warns that long-term planning may not account for changes to the risk equation.
“As further development goes on behind levees, over decades you need to revisit the question and say, Are those levees providing us the protection that we wanted?” he said.
“The answer is probably no, because the exposure is probably greater. The number of people and the [amount of] valuable property [behind the levees] is greater.” (more…)
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Ivan exposes flaws in N.O.’s disaster plans
05:09 PM CDT on Sunday, September 19, 2004
(excerpted)
Those who had the money to flee Hurricane Ivan ran into hours-long traffic jams. Those too poor to leave the city had to find their own shelter – a policy that was eventually reversed, but only a few hours before the deadly storm struck land.
New Orleans dodged the knockout punch many feared from the hurricane, but the storm exposed what some say are significant flaws in the Big Easy’s civil disaster plans.
Much of New Orleans is below sea level, kept dry by a system of pumps and levees. As Ivan charged through the Gulf of Mexico, more than a million people were urged to flee. Forecasters warned that a direct hit on the city could send torrents of Mississippi River backwash over the city’s levees, creating a 20-foot-deep cesspool of human and industrial waste.
…When another dangerous hurricane, Georges, appeared headed for the city in 1998, the Superdome was opened as a shelter and an estimated 14,000 people poured in. But there were problems, including theft and vandalism.
This time far fewer took refuge from the storm – an estimated 1,100 – at the Superdome and there was far greater security: 300 National Guardsmen.
…In this case, city officials first said they would provide no shelter, then agreed that the state-owned Louisiana Superdome would open to those with special medical needs. Only Wednesday afternoon, with Ivan just hours away, did the city open the 20-story-high domed stadium to the public.
Mayor Ray Nagin’s spokeswoman, Tanzie Jones, insisted that there was no reluctance at City Hall to open the Superdome, but said the evacuation was the top priority.
“Our main focus is to get the people out of the city,” she said.
Callers to talk radio complained about the late decision to open up the dome, but the mayor said he would do nothing different.
“We did the compassionate thing by opening the shelter,” Nagin said. “We wanted to make sure we didn’t have a repeat performance of what happened before. We didn’t want to see people cooped up in the Superdome for days.”
(more…)
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City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan
Section I:
The safe evacuation of threatened populations when endangered by a major catastrophic event is one of the principle reasons for developing a Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan. The thorough identification of at-risk populations, transportation and sheltering resources, evacuation routes and potential bottlenecks and choke points, and the establishment of the management team that will coordinate not only the evacuation but which will monitor and direct the sheltering and return of affected populations, are the primary tasks of evacuation planning. Due to the geography of New Orleans and the varying scales of potential disasters and their resulting emergency evacuations, different plans are in place for small-scale evacuations and for citywide relocations of whole populations.
II. CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS
The Hurricane Emergency Evacuation Standard Operating Procedure is designed to deal with all case scenarios of an evacuation in response to the approach of a major hurricane towards New Orleans. It is designed to deal with the anticipation of a direct hit from a major hurricane. This includes identifying the city’s present population, its projected population, identification of at-risk populations (those living outside levee protection or in storm-surge areas, floodplains, mobile homes, etc.), in order to understand the evacuation requirements. It includes identifying the transportation network, especially the carrying-capacity of proposed evacuation routes and existing or potential traffic bottlenecks or blockages, caused either by traffic congestion or natural occurrences such as rising waters. Identification of sheltering resources and the establishment of shelters and the training of shelter staff is important, as is the provision for food and other necessities to the sheltered. This preparation function is the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Preparedness.
Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the Mayor of New Orleans in coordination with the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, and the OEP Shelter Coordinator.
The SOP, in unison with other elements of the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, is designed for use in all hazard situations, including citywide evacuations in response to hurricane situations and addresses three elements of emergency response: warning, evacuation, and sheltering.
[link]
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Press Release
Date: 9/1/2005
Contact:Denise Bottcher or Roderick Hawkins at 225-342-9037
Governor Blanco Announces Executive Order
Baton Rouge, LA Governor Blanco today announced the following Executive Order:
Executive Order NO. KBB 2005- 31- provides that pursuant to the Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act, R.S. 29:721, et seq., grants emergency powers to the governor, where, she has in consultation with school superintendents, utilized public school buses for transportation of Hurricane Katrina evacuees. As you are aware most public school districts will not begin school until Tuesday, September 6th 2005.
The full text of the above mentioned proclamation is available on the Internet at www.gov.state.la.us.
[link]
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“Busses” keep coming up. Here is a picture of some of the buses that could have been used when the manditory evacuation was issued:
If you recall, the city hurricaine plan also made the allotment for city busess as well
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DoD press briefing
Presenter: Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief, National Guard Bureau Saturday, September 3, 2005
The delay was in, if you want to call it a delay. I really don’t call it a delay, I’ll be honest about that. When we first went in there law enforcement was not the highest priority, saving lives was. You have to remember how this thing started. Before the hurricane hit there were 5,000 National Guardsmen in Mississippi and 5,000 National Guardsmen — excuse me. Let me correct the record. There were 2,500 National Guardsmen in Mississippi and almost 4,000 National Guardsmen in Louisiana that were sheltered and taken out of the affected area so as soon as the storm passed they could immediately go into the area and start their search and lifesaving work, and stand up their command and control apparatus, and start standing up the vital functions that would be required such as providing food, water, shelter and security for the people of the town. So it was phased in. There was no delay.
The real issue, particularly in New Orleans, is that no one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans. Once that assessment was made, that the normal 1500 man police force in New Orleans was substantially degraded, which contributed obviously to less police presence and less police capability, then the requirement became obvious and that’s when we started flowing military police into the theater.
Two days ago we flowed 1400 military policemen in. Yesterday, 1400 more. Today 1400 more. Today there are 7,000 citizen soldiers — Army National Guard, badge-carrying military policemen and other soldiers trained in support to civil law enforcement — that are on the streets, available to the mayor, provided by the governor to the mayor to assist the New Orleans police department. (more…)
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Katrina: General Honore Calls Out Some “BS†To Reports (VIDEO) [Political Teen]
REPORTER: The Congressman Jindal said that the real problem he sees is despite the heroic job that has been done with the National Guard and the Coast Guard and the first responders, but the problem has been with the organization – they should be behind the money and the support but it has been fractured by too much red tape and it’s delaying rescue operations, it’s delaying evacuations. There is a lack of unified chain of command, there is a lack of sense of urgency – that the normal rules
don’t apply here. People are told to send an email – -
GENERAL HONORE: – - who told you that?
REPORTER: This is from Congressman Jindal. He’s saying that people can’t get rescued [muffled]
GENERAL HONORE: That is BS. I will take that on behalf of every first responder down there. It is BS, I will not defuse where the Congressman may have got that from or if he had a personal answer, but I can tell you that, that is BS.
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The disaster that took place in NOLA was one that took years to create. This article covers some of that history.
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In 1735, New Orleans went under,” writes McPhee, “and again in 1785.” So began the continual raising and extending of levees and revetments in a never-ending attempt to keep the mighty river at bay. By the War of 1812, when Louisiana was in U.S. hands and the British marched against New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers was involved.
Brought in originally to bolster fortifications nearly two centuries ago, the Army Corps inherited levee maintenance and expansion and has been there fighting the inevitable course of nature ever since. By the 1920s, levees protecting New Orleans were “about six-times as high as their earliest predecessors, but really no more effective,” writes McPhee. There were 1,500 miles of them and no going back.
The problem seems to be that by constraining the Mississippi with levees, the vast quantities of sediment carried downstream have nowhere to go but sink. This raises the river bottom, which, in turn, raises the whole river. So the levees are raised again, and again, ad nauseam. They don’t call it the Big Muddy for nothin’. (more…)
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Bill Moyers brought attention to the levee issue back in 2002.
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The Mississippi River delta is disappearing. One of America’s most vibrant and productive ecological regions is slipping into the Gulf of Mexico at an alarming rate. Every year, a chunk of land nearly as big as Manhattan crumbles and washes away. As it erodes, it not only threatens one of the country’s most abundant fisheries and a vital home for wildlife, but it imperils the nation’s energy supply. And, as the coast of Louisiana continues to slip away, tens of thousands of lives are at risk from devastating hurricanes. The crisis in the delta could reach catastrophic levels in the next few decades, with far-reaching environmental, human, and economic consequences. (more…)
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Poor blacks worst hit
By WILLIAM BUNCH
Posted on Fri, Sep. 02, 2005
[excerpted]
“What’s more, many are starting to ask why – with mounting evidence that the below-sea-level metropolis might not survive a Category 3 or stronger hurricane – there was no plan for getting New Orleans’ poorest residents out of town.
When the Crescent City went through an evacuation – and a near miss – with last year’s Hurricane Ivan, critics complained about poor traffic management for those who tried to leave by car, as well as the fact that so many in poorer areas didn’t leave at all.
For those who could drive, local officials developed a new counter-flow traffic plan that worked much better for Katrina.
For the estimated 134,000 New Orleans residents without vehicles, the city produced a DVD that was sent out to churches and community groups, urging them to leave town but admitting the government could not take them.
“You’re responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you,” local Red Cross executive director Kay Wilkins explained to the Times-Picayune six weeks ago. (more…)
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CNN interview with Mayor Ray Nagin
Mayor Ray Nagin says the big problem too, now, is disease, because the bodies that are, frankly, in these homes and in the water, along with the sewage, could breed some disease. We got a chance to speak with the mayor yesterday, and asked him very bluntly, how much blame should he shoulder for all of these problems now?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
S. O’BRIEN: There are people who say your evacuation plan, obviously in hindsight, was disastrous.
MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS: Which one?
S. O’BRIEN: Your evacuation plan before — when you put people into the Superdome. It wasn’t thought out. You got 20,000 people in there. And that you bear the brunt of the blame for some of this, a large chunk of it.
NAGIN: Look, I’ll take whatever responsibility that I have to take. But let me ask you this question: When you have a city of 500,000 people, and you have a category 5 storm bearing down on you, and you have the best you’ve ever done is evacuate 60 percent of the people out of the city, and you have never issued a mandatory evacuation in the city’s history, a city that is a couple of hundred years old, I did that. I elevated the level of distress to the citizens.
And I don’t know what else I could do, other than to tell them that it’s a mandatory evacuation. And if they stayed, make sure you have a frigging ax in your home, where you can bust out the roof just in case the water starts flowing.
And as a last resort, once this thing is above a category 3, there are no buildings in this city to withstand a category 3, a category 4 or a category 5 storm, other than the Superdome. That’s where we sent people as a shelter of last resort. When that filled up, we sent them to the Convention Center. Now, you tell me what else we could have done.
S. O’BRIEN: What has Secretary Chertoff promised you? What has Donald Rumsfeld given you and promised you?
NAGIN: Look, I’ve gotten promises to — I can’t stand anymore promises. I don’t want to hear anymore promises. I want to see stuff done. And that’s why I’m so happy that the president came down here, because I think they were feeding him a line of bull also. And they were telling him things weren’t as bad as it was.
He came down and saw it, and he put a general on the field. His name is General Honore. And when he hit the field, we started to see action.
And what the state was doing, I don’t frigging know. But I tell you, I am pissed. It wasn’t adequate.
And then, the president and the governor sat down. We were in Air Force One. I said, ‘Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two have to get in sync. If you don’t get in sync, more people are going to die.’
S. O’BRIEN: What date was this? When did you say that? When did you say…
NAGIN: Whenever air Force One was here.
S. O’BRIEN: OK.
NAGIN: And this was after I called him on the telephone two days earlier. And I said, ‘Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two need to get together on the same page, because of the lack of coordination, people are dying in my city.’
S. O’BRIEN: That’s two days ago.
NAGIN: They both shook — I don’t know the exact date. They both shook their head and said yes. I said, ‘Great.’ I said, ‘Everybody in this room is getting ready to leave.’ There was senators and his cabinet people, you name it, they were there. Generals. I said, ‘Everybody right now, we’re leaving. These two people need to sit in a room together and make a doggone decision right now.’
S. O’BRIEN: And was that done?
NAGIN: The president looked at me. I think he was a little surprised. He said, “No, you guys stay here. We’re going to another section of the plane, and we’re going to make a decision.”
He called me in that office after that. And he said, “Mr. Mayor, I offered two options to the governor.” I said — and I don’t remember exactly what. There were two options. I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision.
S. O’BRIEN: You’re telling me the president told you the governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision?
NAGIN: Yes.
S. O’BRIEN: Regarding what? Bringing troops in?
NAGIN: Whatever they had discussed. As far as what the — I was abdicating a clear chain of command, so that we could get resources flowing in the right places.
S. O’BRIEN: And the governor said no.
NAGIN: She said that she needed 24 hours to make a decision. It would have been great if we could of left Air Force One, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out. It didn’t happen, and more people died.
[link]
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FactCheck.org
Is Bush to Blame for New Orleans Flooding?
He did slash funding for levee projects. But the Army Corps of Engineers says Katrina was just too strong.
[link]
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FEMA Chief Waited Until After Storm
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
The top U.S. disaster official waited hours after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast before he proposed to his boss sending at least 1,000 Homeland Security workers into the region to support rescuers, internal documents show. [link]
-more to come-
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