National Geographic, October 2004
Sep. 12th, 2005 12:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelle"The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours-- coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired costal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city's hurricane armor. "I don't think people realize how precarious we are," Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. "Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it's going to make things much worse."
This after a page of theoreticals: a blow-by-blow of what could happen if a Category Five hurricane were to hit New Orleans. It reads almost EXACTLY like a synopsis of the past two weeks. Someone sent me the first part of this article a week or so ago, and I couldn't believe it-- but it's true. It's part of an eighteen page feature story on exactly why a Category Five would be so catastrophic for the Big Easy, and what's led to such a precarious situation. And it came out a year ago.
It makes me feel distinctly ill.
This after a page of theoreticals: a blow-by-blow of what could happen if a Category Five hurricane were to hit New Orleans. It reads almost EXACTLY like a synopsis of the past two weeks. Someone sent me the first part of this article a week or so ago, and I couldn't believe it-- but it's true. It's part of an eighteen page feature story on exactly why a Category Five would be so catastrophic for the Big Easy, and what's led to such a precarious situation. And it came out a year ago.
It makes me feel distinctly ill.
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Date: 2005-09-12 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 11:22 am (UTC)Most of those that remained were dirt poor, with NO WHERE else to go. They had no cars, no money, no outside family. The public transportation system was shut down on SATURDAY morning. The hurricane didn't hit til Sunday night. The city didn't utilize its resources at all effectively, either. Well over two hundred and fifty school buses, that could have been used to mass evacuate the people (for free) sat submerged in water, bare distance from the highway that led to the dome on one end, and the neighboring states on the other.
AS for shooting at rescue workers, read this link: http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml
It is another facet of the equation. Riots and looting? They had no food or water, no assistance AT ALL for four days. Lots of helicopters flying about, Airforce One cruising casually overhead--plenty of lipservice, but nothing actually being DONE.
It was a tragedy. Pure, plain and simple. Compounded by an utterly inept government. While everyone stood around, wondering who was going to tell everyone what to do, noone did anything. And people drowned FIVE days after the levees broke. Bodies were still floating in the water FIVE days after the levees broke. It's obscene.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 11:27 am (UTC)Try reading this. It's not the same article, but an abbreviated version. Less terrifying:
related: Hurricane Katrina - Our Experiences
and Police made their storm misery worse
Police agencies south of New Orleans were so fearful of the crowds attempting to leave the city after Hurricane Katrina that they sealed a crucial bridge over the Mississippi River and turned back hundreds of desperate evacuees, according to two paramedics who were in the crowd.
The paramedics and two other witnesses said officers sometimes shot guns over the heads of fleeing people. The witnesses said they had been told by New Orleans police to cross this same bridge because buses were waiting for them there.
Instead, a suburban police officer angrily ordered about 200 people to abandon an encampment between the highways near the bridge. The officer then confiscated their food and water, the four witnesses said. The incidents took place in the first days after the storm last week, they said.
``The police kept saying, `We don't want another Super Dome,' and `This isn't New Orleans,' '' said Larry Bradshaw, a San Francisco paramedic who was among those fleeing.
Arthur Lawson, chief of the Gretna, La., police department, confirmed that his officers, along with those from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office and the Crescent City Connection Police, sealed the bridge.
``As soon as things calm down, we will do an inquiry and find out what happened,'' he said.
Bradshaw and his partner, Lorrie Beth Slonsky, wrote an account about their experiences that has been widely e-mailed.
Cathey Golden, a 51-year-old from Boston, and her 13-year-old son, Ramon Golden, on Friday confirmed the account.
The four met at the Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter. Bradshaw and Slonsky had attended a convention for emergency medicine specialists. Golden and her two children, including 23-year-old Rashida Golden, were there to visit family.
The hotel allowed its guests and nearly 250 residents from the nearby neighborhood to stay until Thursday, Sept 1. With its food exhausted, the hotel's manager finally instructed people to leave. Hotel staff handed out maps to show the way to the city's Convention Center, to which thousands of other evacuees had fled.
A group of nearly 200 guests gathered to make their way to the center together, the four said. But on the way, they heard that the Convention Center had become a dangerous, unsanitary pit from which no one was being evacuated. So they stopped in front of a New Orleans police command post near the Harrah's casino on Canal Street.
A New Orleans police commander whom none of the four could identify told the crowd that they could not stay there and later told them that buses were being brought to the Crescent City Connection, a nearby bridge to Jefferson Parish, to carry them to safety.
But on the bridge there were four police cruisers parked across some lanes. Between six and eight officers stood with shotguns in their hands, the witnesses said. As the crowd approached, the officers shot over the heads of the crowd, most of whom retreated immediately, Bradshaw, Slonsky and Golden and her son said.
http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18443.shtml
no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 11:36 am (UTC)if you hunt around on the site, or do a search, the title of the article (if that link doesn't work) is:
Hurricane Katrina - Our Experiences By Paramedics Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky
no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 04:27 pm (UTC)two, the storm warning was issued weeks in advance. they could have walked to higher ground. and higher ground was just outside the city.
three, let's not give more credit to the looters than they deserve. people clinging to live in a storm don't go looting your local k-marts. the looting and the riots happened here the same reason it happens everywhere else. the basic societal structures broke down and with it, individual accoutability. as usual, when the power go out and the police are busy else where, people redistribute wealth. its more a matter of the mob wanting stuff they don't have than fighting for the necessities of survival.
and speaking of the levee. it was designed to stand up to a class 4 hurricane. in most cases, its more than enough. so when the city/state/federal buget times come around, no one is going to want to spent the money on improving those when there are more urgent needs to be met like social welfare money, public schools, police/fire budgets, bullets and bombs earmarked for brown people, etc etc...i dislike shrub as much as anyone, but i don't think you can blame him for this one. not him alone, not that simple. its a much more complex social economic issue of not having enough resources to cover what needs to be done and putting off things that should be done but dont' have the money for than merely the government not doing enough in this incident alone. as far as i can see, for a natural disaster, everything that could be done (or more likely could be afforded to be done) was done. so unless people really truly care to redistribute the economic system, aka tax those who should be taxed and stop spending a couple billion dollars a day in a distant war that no one cares about, merely giving some blankets and canned foods now to the red cross doesn't entitle anyone to bitch about anything.
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Date: 2005-09-12 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 04:39 pm (UTC)no need for nastiness.
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Date: 2005-09-12 04:40 pm (UTC)I was going to continue a civilized discussion, addressing the post further up, but seeing this one? Nah. Go forth in your superiority, and trouble me no further.
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Date: 2005-09-12 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 05:01 pm (UTC)*you*, on the other hand, made snarky remarks about my nature.
I could care less what your personality is like, or whether this is your "mildly irritated and sarcastic setting." I DO care how someone addresses me, and whether they respect MY stance. You clearly do not, and are looking to have a pissing contest; ie: who can snark loudest and best.
You no longer have any sort of credibility in my eyes, and are incapable of debating the issue with grace or civility. You have provided an untenable platform for discussion, and are therefore free to be as vicious, critical, narrow-minded, and abusive as you choose to be--to someone else.
Thus endeth my dialog with you.
really? snark? can we at least use adult words?
Date: 2005-09-12 05:20 pm (UTC)i would respect any respectable stance, and yours is obviously not it. there is no respect per se just because you said it, not every view point is valid, which i am sure is a shock in your value system. say something intelligently insightful and stop parroting the mass media, then you may get some respect. i maybe critical and vicious, but at least i can look at things below the surface and not merely regurgitate mass media horseshit that they try to force feed down my throat; at least i can still think for myself and not docilely follow some tritely pseudo-liberal platform like some mindless herd animal.
Re: really? snark? can we at least use adult words?
Date: 2005-09-12 05:31 pm (UTC)Re: really? snark? can we at least use adult words?
Date: 2005-09-12 06:23 pm (UTC)Re: really? snark? can we at least use adult words?
Date: 2005-09-12 08:20 pm (UTC)I didn't know that
For what it's worth:
The levees were only built to stand up to Category 3 (not Class 4) hurricanes.
While "shrub" is not directly responsible for the disaster itself, some blame may be laid at his feet for the pathetic response of FEMA to the disaster. Under Clinton, FEMA made major progress towards being a reasonably good disaster response organization. Bush's political appointee to the FEMA head position (who had no disaster response experience), coupled with the rolling of FEMA into Homeland Security, resulted in an agency that was underfunded and worse-equipped to respond to major natural disasters. (I read a good article on this about a week ago, but now I can't find the link for you. I'll post again if I find it.) Of course, we can thank Congress too for the Homeland Security part of that picture.
I kind-of agree with you on the people-who-live-below-sea-level-shouldn't-complain-about-floods end of things. I was a student of environmental hazards--that's why I live in Vermont, because I'd rather deal with hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes as little as possible. But I just can't be callous about this, as much as I'd like to be. Hurricane Katrina picked up speed and strength quickly in the Gulf. People only had one to two days where they really knew there was a major hurricane, and its path wasn't certain for more than a day before landfall. Once the hurricane's path was clear, not everyone had access to a way out. The evacuation effort was dismal, and the people who were left behind were disproportinately poor.
Even if they walked out as you suggested, with no money, where would they stay? It wasn't just the immediate NOLA area that was slammed by this storm...and given the choice between having shelter on low ground and riding out 100+ mph winds in the open on high ground? In that situation, I'd probably risk the high water to stay inside... Not all of us in this country have the luxury of choosing where we live, and I find it really awful that those people disproportionately suffered and are still suffering from this disaster.
Yep, the last two paragraphs here are my opinion, and I firmly expect you to disagree.
Re: really? snark? can we at least use adult words?
Date: 2005-09-12 08:43 pm (UTC)and its really not a tragedy since the bible belt is shrub's power base, the more die now, the less to vote for neo-cons in the next election. just think if the hurricane took out everything up to the mason-dixon line, the next election would be a cake walk for the liberals!!!
Re: really? snark? can we at least use adult words?
Date: 2005-09-13 12:59 pm (UTC)Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly mocking relief efforts. I think they're really important...but it's so easy to lose that people are suffering now because of poor planning and misdirected priorities/funding.
I don't know about the rebribution part, though. If it were just Mississippi and Alabama I'd be more inclined to agree, but NOLA's got to be one of the most liberal spots in the South. (And they are still people, and suffering, even if they did partially vote themselves into this mess. I bet they understand "compassionate conservatism" a lot better now.)
The hurricanes in Florida last year were a better example of Divine Retribution, if such a thing exists. (There was a map floating around the net last year that showed hurricane tracks over voting results from the election...it was pretty creepy how well the paths tracked with Republican districts.)
Re: really? snark? can we at least use adult words?
Date: 2005-09-12 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 12:05 pm (UTC)*shaking head*
In other news, my child did a school report on This Week with George Stephanopoulis... guests were Barack Obama (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509120140sep12,1,6049955.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed) and the Dali Lama. (Say that ten times fast...*grin*) and a very interesting conversation resulted. Obama apparently blamed all tiers of response, but put most of the weight on the shoulders of the mayor who had no contingency for getting the people out... and suggested that the 'discrimination' was much more an issue of class than race.
Even my mother likes Barack Obama. Heh.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 04:08 pm (UTC)