| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 5/26 |
| 2005/9/2-3 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:39438 Activity:low |
9/1 Guess why the FEMA reaction is a mess?
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katrina.fema.brown/index.html
\_ Getting out of a city costs money. Most of the people who stayed
are either poor and can't afford to get out of the city or were
unable to leave on short notice. If a government evacuates a city
they need to fund the evacuation and find people shelter. This
reads like someone blaming to poor for , well, being poor.
\_ http://csua.org/u/d8d [nyt]
"City officials said they provided free transportation from
pick-up points publicized on television, radio and by people
shouting through megaphones on the streets. In addition to the
Superdome, officials opened schools and the convention center
as shelters."
\_ "Shelters" that had no food, water, working sanitation...
This was and is FUCKED.
\_ Six rapes and three murders a night IN THE SHELTER.
\- Blob Dylan: Gimme Shelter
\_ Kinda makes you wonder how many murders & rapes a night
in NO back when it wasn't submerged.
\_ New Orleans had the highest murder rate last year. |
| 5/26 |
|
| www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katrina.fema.brown/index.html Tips FEMA chief: Victims bear some responsibility Brown pleased with effort: 'Things are going relatively well' Programming Note: CNN looks at the disaster and chaos crippling Louisiana , "NewsNight," Thursday, 10 pm ET. jpg Brown: When evacuation warnings go out, people should realize it's for th eir own good. Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands. "Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did n ot heed the advance warnings," Brown told CNN. "I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know , there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans," he said. "And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, yo u know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there. "So, we've got to figure out some way to convince people that whenever wa rnings go out it's for their own good," Brown said. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin have both predicted the death toll could be in the thousands. Nagin issued a "desperate SOS" Thursday as violence disrupted efforts to rescue people still trapped in the flooded city and evacuate thousands o f displaced residents living amid corpses and human waste. Full sto ry) Residents expressed growing frustration with the disorder evident on the streets, raising questions about the coordination and timeliness of reli ef efforts. See video on the desperate conditions -- 4:36 ) Sniper fire prevented Charity Hospital from evacuating its patients Thurs day. The hospital has no electricity or water, food consists of a few ca ns of vegetables, and the patients had to be moved to upper floors becau se of looters. See video of a city sinking in chao s -- 2:54) Brown was upbeat in his assessment of the relief effort so far, ticking o ff a list of accomplishments: more than 30,000 National Guard troops wil l be in the city within three days, the hospitals are being evacuated an d search and rescue missions are continuing. See video of National Guard efforts to rein in violence -- 3:14) "Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans -- virtua lly a city that has been destroyed -- that things are going relatively w ell," Brown said. Nevertheless, he said he could "empathize with those in miserable conditi ons." Asked later on CNN how he could blame the victims, many of whom could not flee the storm because they had no transportation or were too frail to evacuate on their own, Brown said he was not blaming anyone. "Now is the time to reco gnize that whether they chose to evacuate or chose not to evacuate, we h ave to help them." Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, whose father was a longtime N ew Orleans mayor, said there was "plenty of blame to go around," citing underinvestement by federal authorities over many years "despite pleas a nd warnings by officials." Earlier on CNN, Brown was asked why authorities had not prepared for just such a catastrophe -- given that the levees were designed to withstand only a Category 3 hurricane and Katrina was stronger than that. "Government officials and engineers will debate that and figure that out, " he replied. I think w e should have that debate, but at an appropriate time." Brown said Katrina was unlike other hurricanes in which the magnitude of the disaster typically subsides after the initial blow. That was not the case Monday, when the Category 4 storm blew ashore. "What we had in New Orleans is a growing disaster: The hurricane hit, tha t was one disaster; Brown said he had to be careful about getting rescue teams to the site ea rlier. "Otherwise, we would have faced an even higher death toll," he said. |
| csua.org/u/d8d -> www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/national/nationalspecial/02response.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=41248434df5debce&hp&ex=1125720000&partner=homepage Reprints Published: September 2, 2005 (Page 2 of 3) Army Corps personnel, in charge of maintaining the levees in New Orleans, started to secure the locks, floodgates and other equipment, said Greg Breerwood, deputy district engineer for project management at the Army C orps of Engineers. "We knew if it was going to be a Category 5, some levees and some flood w alls would be overtopped," he said. The uncertainty of the storm's course affected Pentago n planning. "We did not have precision on where it would make landfall," said Lt. But the Defense Department could not put so ldiers and equipment directly in the possible path of the storm, General Blum said. On Saturday, at the urging of FEMA, Mr Bush declared an emergency in Lou isiana, allowing the agency to promise financial assistance to state and local governments and to move ready-to-eat meals, medicine, ice, tarpau lins, water and other supplies to the region. By Sunday, Katrina had become a Category 5 hurricane, with winds of 175 m iles per hour. Mayor Nagin, who had urged New Orleans residents to flee on Saturday, ordered a mandatory evacuation. It would have been up to local officials, a FEMA spokeswoman said, to hir e buses to move people without transportation out of the city. Rodney Braxton, the chief lobbyist for New Orleans, said many of the city 's poorest "had nowhere to go outside the region and no way to get there ." Without the checks, many residents didn't have money for gasoline, bus fare or lodging. City officials said they provided free transportation from pick-up points publicized on television, radio and by people shouting through megaphon es on the streets. In addition to the Superdome, officials opened school s and the convention center as shelters. Mr Braxton said he believed the city was "aggressive enough" in conducti ng the evacuation. "We had everything we thought we needed in place," he said. "I don't think anybody could ever plan for the magnitude that Kat rina ended up being." But Susan Cutter, a geography professor at the University of South Caroli na and an emergency preparedness expert, said Mayor Nagin should have or dered a mandatory evacuation on Thursday or Friday. "I don't think they would have ta ken a political hit if they had ordered it, and it helped." Tennessee to Texas, according to Michael Chertoff, secr etary of homeland security. Before it made landfall on Monday, the storm turned slightly to the east, avoiding a direct hit on New Orleans. The winds had eased slightly to 1 40 miles per hour, reducing Katrina's strength to Category 4, and offici als counted themselves lucky. But on Tuesday, when the levees breached, a desperate situation became ca tastrophic. There was no fast way to fix them, Mr Breerwood of the Army Corps said, because delivery of heavy-duty equipment was hindered by th e destruction. While troops were station ed in the region, they could not move quickly into the New Orleans area. And in Mississippi, the zone of destruction was so widespread, it was d ifficult to cover it all quickly, officials said. "It is not a function of more people, but how many people can you move on the road system that exists now in Louisiana and in Mississippi," said General Blum of the National Guard. "How many people can you put through that funnel that a storm has taken four lane highways and turned them i nto goat trails?" On Wednesday, Mr Bush, having cut short his vacation, convened a federal task force. With looting spreading throughout New Orleans, Guard offici als said they were doubling the call by this weekend, to 21,000 forces, one-third of them military police officers. On Thursday, General Blum sa id more than 32,000 Guard members would be deployed in the gulf region b y Monday. |