"I'm not going to try to lay down in words the lure of this place. Every great writer in the land, from Faulkner to Twain to Rice to Ford, has tried to do it, and fallen short. It is impossible to capture the essence, tolerance and spirit of south Louisiana in words...IT JUST IS WHAT IT IS."
-Chris Rose, N.O. Times-Picayune, 8/29/06
And by Remember, I mean remembering the sociopolitical circumstances that led to so much tragedy and loss...and not repeating them. People didn't suffer and die for us to forget, declare everything "OK," and merely move on and recreate the same conditions. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Mayor Landrieu.)
I'm reading a book called Where We Know: New Orleans as Home. It was a gift from three creatively maladjusted friends, who also happen to be three of our great literary citizens: Sam, G Bitch, and MF.
An essay in the book written by Eve Troeh contains what is definitely the quote of the day. Troeh recalls the story told to her by a family rescued from the Superdome and bussed to Arkansas:
"God bless them I know they were trying to be nice, but you do not put hot dogs in gumbo, even if it's just charity."
While the statewide average rate increase is 18 percent, actual increases in South Louisiana can be much higher.
In Orleans, Jefferson and protected parts of St. Bernard and Plaquemines, the average increase will be 59.2 percent, according to State Farm; in areas outside of levees in Plaquemines it will be 93.8 percent; and in areas outside of levees in St. Bernard, it will be 21.1 percent. In St. Charles Parish, the average increase will be 19.2 percent. In St. James and St. John the Baptist, it will be 22.6 percent... Other coastal parishes will also see increases.
State Farm spokeswoman Molly Quirk said that part of the rate increase calculation is the value of cutting the wind and hail policy. [Times-Picayune, 1-16-2011]
Can someone explain how you can charge more for less coverage? How did that get past the Louisiana insurance commission, and how much is Insurance Commissioner Donelon profiting from this? What is he getting that's worth throwing us under a bus?
The article talks about how State Farm has also raised rates on other policies, which were so numerous they probably ran out of room to list the auto insurance increases I also received from State Farm over the past year. I was wondering how my rates could increase on an 11-year-old vehicle on which I cut my coverage IN HALF because I couldn't even afford the insurance before the rate increase. It seems the answers to my questions are to be found in them new fangled calculators the State Farm home office sent to Baton Rouge.
These don't look like the devil-deal making type of folks Pat Robertson made them out to be. Over the course of history, many Protestants have looked askance at the Catholic religion and our "idolatry"; and I wonder if that sort of thinking is also the source of Pat Robertson's ridiculous statements since Haiti is 80% Roman Catholic. But I tell you this, I and most people I know, regardless of our religions, would choose to have the faith displayed in this video by the people of Haiti any day of the week over that of Pat Robertson's.
Also, as a Katrina survivor, I want people to know that then, just as now and despite the media focus on a "breakdown of society," most people pull together and do not descend into chaos. Please don't mistake anguished pleas for help, whether to God or to the cameraman, as a sign of impending chaos -- especially if you've never found yourself in such a situation. Just hush your mouth, show some compassion, and do something to help even if it's just a prayer or sending a check to get relief on the ground.
As expected, I received some pushback from the previous post and would like to respond to the questions and criticism received. Most importantly, I mis-cited the report from which I drew the history of previous hurricane flooding in N.O. That info came from the Independent Levee Investigation Team (not IPET). I greatly appreciate Editilla of New Orleans Ladder for pointing out this huge error! Like the Corps engineers, I am also human and thus fallible.
Let me address the most significant criticisms.
There is no evidence, beyond unverified verbal accounts by Army Corps spokespersons, that local citizens "limited the scope of the first round of levees which failed so catastrophically" during Katrina.
I didn't speak to Army Corps spokespersons. This information, which is the extent of my evidence, was lifted directly from the ILIT report:
In 1960...the Corps plan opted to solve the drainage canal freeboard problem by installing tidal gates and pumps at the drainage canal outfalls along Lake Pontchartrain. This obviated the need for condemning all the homes built along the canal levees. The Corps soon found itself embroiled in a clash of cultures and goals with the levee districts, the S&WB, and the local citizenry, who flatly opposed the Corps' proposal.
...the Corps focus shifted to heightening the drainage canal levees using concrete walls, which was what the opposing groups desired. These walls were to be designed to withstand a Category 3 storm surge with 12 ft tides and 130 mph winds. (ILIT report, pp. 4-22 to 4-23)
We [Levees.org] stand by our assertion that allegations in a 3-page sworn affidavit by NOLA.com Founder Jon Donley thoroughly validate our suspicions of a deception campaign being waged by the Army Corps of Engineers.
The Corps shouldn't be posing as individuals spouting off deceiving and incorrect information in online comment forums, but individual Corps employees should be able to spout off their personal views via any forum they choose. In my opinion, the way this issue about the Nola.com comments is playing out makes Levees.org look like it doesn't know how to handle criticism.
We hope to see both our supporters and critics at Rising Tide IV where we will sponsor the Early Riser Breakfast.
I do support Levees.org, which is why I care if some of the things they say is questionable. Often, the most helpful criticism comes from those who want to support and stand behind you.
Umm, have ya read the ILIT report? The hurricane, of which a defining element is storm surge, is the FIRST in ILIT's list of what caused our levees to fail: In the end, it is concluded that many things went wrong with the New Orleans flood protection system during Hurricane Katrina, and the resulting catastrophe had its roots in three main causes: (1) a major natural disaster (the Hurricane itself), (2) the poor performance of the flood protection system, due to localized engineering failures, questionable judgments, errors, etc. involved in the detailed design, construction, operation and maintenance of the system, and (3) more global "organizational" and institutional problems associated with the governmental and local organizations responsible for the design, construction, operation, maintenance and funding of the overall flood protection system. (ILIT, p. xix)
There is a reason hurricane storm surges are measured, recorded, studied, and feared: because they matter. If storm surge were not a factor, then levees and floodwalls would not be built according to how much storm surge and wave overtopping they could handle. Just because our floodwalls failed with 7ft as opposed to 14ft of storm surge does not mean surge was not a factor.
I mean, really, where exactly do people think all that fucking water that the levees did not hold back came from?
Basic successful engineering includes selection of types of structures as well as placement and maintenance of structures, both of which local government and citizens had some degree of control over:
The three drainage canals should not have been accessible to the storm surge. The USACE had tried for many years to obtain authorization to install floodgates at the north ends of the three drainage canals that could be closed to prevent storm surges from raising the water levels within the canals. That would have been the superior technical solution. Dysfunctional interaction between the local Levee Board (who were responsible for levees and floodwalls, etc.) and the local Water and Sewerage Board (who were responsible for pumping water from the city via the drainage canals) prevented the installation of these gates, however, and as a result many miles of the sides of these three canals had instead to be lined with levees and floodwalls. (ILIT, p. xxiii)
New Orleans officials were the ones who funded and built the outfall drainage canals despite being warned in the 1870's that they would direct storm surge right into the heart of the city, much like MRGO did. Until the 1950s, before the Corps became involved, it was the Orleans Levee Board who opted to raise these outfall canal levees again and again following each of the many overtoppings and breaches (listed in my previous post) that occurred during hurricanes. It was New Orleans officials who allowed homes to be built so close to those drainage canals, and once that occurred, do you really think the Corps faced any chance of constructing the wide, sturdy levees like the ones that have protected us from the Mississippi river since the 1850s? I understand that people don't want to have their homes torn down and forced to move. Hell, I wouldn't, but I also understand that we need to understand how we got to where we are today.
I'm not trying to reopen old wounds or rehash something that's been put to bed, like one person [i.e., Editilla~] insinuated about my motivations for writing my last post. This has been on my mind precisely because of the decisions we as New Orleanians are being asked to make once again and the coverage every Corps public meeting receives in the press. Also, my original post was not just about the Corps and floodwalls, it was about questioning the reluctance of our City Council to adopt higher elevations for rebuilding in a city that has been flooded 38 times -- THIRTY FRICKIN' EIGHT, people!! -- by Lake Pontchartrain. It was also about some people wanting to place pumps in City Park because they'd look too ugly by their lakefront houses, to hell with physical science and gravity and history which keep trying to tell us that that's just not a good idea no matter how you slice it. It was also about the continued lack of leadership in this City willing to face the hard truths and shepherd its citizens toward facing some tough truths when we need to. How can we expect the Corps and the feds to address their faults when we are insulted whenever asked to address our own community's faults?
By reading some of the dissenting comments, one would think I laid 100% of the blame at the foot of New Orleanians. I clearly said the Corps was to blame for the unacceptable design and failure of our flood protection, and I most certainly don't have a reputation of being a Corps sympathizer. What I would like to think I have a reputation for is pointing out facts, even the ugly ones; and the fact (unless the revered engineer and known Corps critic Robert Bea & his colleagues got it wrong in their ILIT report) is that many local officials and citizens prior to Katrina preferred the very system of outfall canals and floodwalls now in place. This does not mean we're stupid for living here. This does not mean the Corps did an excellent job of overseeing their design, maintenance, and construction because they didn't. It does not mean those walls didn't fail at half their design specifications. They did. It most certainly does not mean that people opting for the floodwalls should have seen the future and fully understood the implications of their decisions at that time. It just means what those words placed in that particular order are supposed to mean: that many people here preferred the Corps to build floodwalls instead of closing or reconfiguring the outfall canals, instead of the tidal gates and pumps at the mouth of the lake, and instead of giving up their homes.
So why even bring all this up? It's not an attempt to retell the Flood story in a manner that benefits the Corps, as one commenter [a.k.a. Editilla~] insinuated. It's an attempt to tell MORE of the story, beginning from the 1800s instead of starting halfway through (or even near the end of) the story at August 29, 2005. Sometimes life gives us the gift of past experience and hindsight, and we'd be doing ourselves and everyone who has to live with our decisions a giant disservice to not use that wisdom when we can.Those who do not understand history, or flat out deny it, are destined to repeat it...or at the very least act surprised when it occurs again.
[I've been planning this one for a while, so set on down, grab a cup of coffee (or the vodka if you prefer to swing that way) 'cuz I gots a lot to say.]
When it comes to flood protection, too many of us haven't admitted this. Everyone in the world knows we have a bit of a drainage & elevation problem, but I'm asking how many of us in the N.O. area have been honest enough to outwardly admit that we have in fact exacerbated and even caused -- Oh yes I did say it -- our own flood protection problems. At the very least we ignore the obvious, even to the point of denial, and you only need to have watched one after-school special to know that people who are in denial are nowhere near to achieving recovery (no matter how blonde and popular you are, nor whether you're prom queen).
Well, we are. And it's high time we stop running from that sad, uncomfortable truth. I don't believe we are to blame for the shoddy workmanship done on the levees. However, we are not idle, innocent bystanders in all of this.
Let's start with Fact #1 on thelevees.org Factsheet: "The flooding of New Orleans and nearby St. Bernard Parish was an engineering disaster, not a natural disaster." Yes, the structures were poorly constructed, but the levee and canal wall failures did not happen on a clear, sunny day. They were overwhelmed by hurricane storm surge -- a.k.a. a natural disaster. Hurricane Katrina was a strong Category 3 storm as it passed New Orleans, true. We were led to believe that our flood protection structures should have withstood such a storm (or roughly, a 100 year storm), true. However, thanks to Katrina, we now know that the five-category Saffir-Simpson scale is an inadequate classification system. While New Orleans received Category 2 winds, perhaps stronger gusts, Katrina brought with her storm surge well beyond that even seen during Camille, the strongest Cat 5 we have ever seen in the U.S. with winds approaching 200 miles per hour.
Fact #2 on levees.org: "Responsibility for the design and construction of the flood protection in metro New Orleans belongs solely to the US Army Corps of Engineers..." Solely? Really? Then why the required public commenting wherein they are pressured to spare volleyball courts at the cost of weakening the better designed plans presented by the Corps? What about when people insisted on putting pumps even further south of the lake (i.e., in City Park) when it is clearly in our best interests to block lake surge from intruding that far into the city?
How are WE at fault? We must shoulder part of the blame because many people here keep failing to acknowledge two key facts of life: 1) we have always been and will continue to be vulnerable to the destruction wrought by hurricanes; and 2) man can never, and I mean NEVER, guarantee that anything he builds can withstand whatever Mother Nature may send our way. Yet, just this summer the news featured coverage of people relying on updated flood maps, which are already outdated by the way, to decide whether or not to raise their homes. Let's review. Many people whose homes flooded had no flood insurance before Katrina not because they couldn't afford it but because based on the presence of a flood protection system federal maps zoned their homes as being outside of a 100 year floodplain (i.e., insurance guy told you you don't need flood insurance). OK, fine, many people didn't really understand the statistics behind 100- and 500-year storms and the variables involved, but you should now. However, many people understood back then that their neighborhoods existed only because the levee system was extended to incorporate that area of the city. Levees.org even acknowledges this fact:
In the weeks after the storm, I remember pissed off residents blaming "the feds" who told us we were safe behind levees. Yet here we are, going right back to where we started, with the City Council (not the Corps) not approving flood maps because doing so would require people to elevate their homes several feet...Unless they wait a couple years for the levee system to be rebuilt and the next round of flood maps putting them outside 100-year floodplains once again so they can build their houses at or very near ground level.
[The initial post incorrectly cited IPET as the reference document from which the following info was drawn. It was actually drawn from the ILIT report. Associated hyperlinks have also been corrected.]
Our collective sin is our repeated failure to learn from the sins of our fathers and from our own disaster ridden history. The Independent Levee Investigation Team (ILIT) issued a report on July 31, 2006, did a very good job of retelling this history as part of a nearly 700-page report on the failure of our flood protection system:
Floods Inundating "Backatown" via Lake Pontchartrain (the following lifted directly from the ILIT report [except for my commentary in brackets; bold emphases are mine]
Hurricanes strike the Louisiana Coast with a mean frequency of two every three years (Kolb and Saucier, 1982). Since 1759, 172 hurricanes have struck southern Louisiana (Shallat, 2000). Of these, 38 have caused flooding in New Orleans,usually via Lake Pontchartrain. Some of the more notable events have included: 1812, 1831, 1860, 1893, 1915, 1940, 1947, 1965, 1969, and 2005. [ILIT report, pp. 4-9 to 4-11]
"The Great Louisiana Hurricane" of August 9, 1812. It rolled over the barrier islands and drowned Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes and the area around Barataria Bay [pay attention too, Westbankers] under 15 feet of water. The parade ground at Fort St. Phillip was inundated by 8 feet of water and the shoreline along Lake Pontchartrain was similarly inundated, though this was far enough below the French Quarter to spare any flooding of the City.
In June 1821 easterly winds surged off Lake Pontchartrain and pushed up Bayou St. John, flooding fishing villages and spilling into North Rampart Street until the winds abated and allowed the water to drain back into the lake. It was an ominous portent of things to come.
On August 16, 1831 "The Great Barbados Hurricane" careened across the Caribbean, striking the Louisiana coast west of New Orleans. The area south of town was again inundated by storm surge, while a three foot surge entered the city from Lake Pontchartrain.
Southeastern Louisiana suffered through three hurricanes during the summer and fall of 1860. On August 8th a fast moving hurricane swept 20 feet of water into Plaquemines Parish. The third hurricane struck on October 2nd making landfall west of New Orleans. It inundated Plaquemines, St. Bernard, and Barataria, causing a significant storm surge in Lake Pontchartrain which destroyed 20 lakeside settlements, washing out a portion of the New Orleans and Jackson Great Northern Railroad. Surge from this storm overtopped the banks along the Old and New Basin drainage canals and a levee along Bayou St. John gave way, allowing the onrushing water to flood a broad area extending across the back side of New Orleans.
In 1871 three hurricanes caused localized flooding, which proved difficult to drain. Flooding emanating from storm surges on Lake Pontchartrain during these storms overtopped the Hagen Avenue drainage canal between Bayou St. John and New Basin Canal [present day Lafitte Avenue] spilling flood waters into the Mid-City area. City Engineer W. H. Bell warned the city officials about the potential dangers posed by the drainage canals leading to Lake Pontchartrain, because the Mid-City area lay slightly below sea level.
The record hurricane of October 2, 1893 passed south of New Orleans and generated winds of 100 mph and a storm surge of 13 feet, which drowned more than 2,000 people in Jefferson Parish, completely destroying the settlements on the barrier island of Cheniere Caminada. This represented the greatest loss of life ascribable to any natural disaster in the United States up until that time.
In August 1900, a hurricane passed directly over Galveston, TX, demolishing that city and killing between 6,000 and 8,000 people, which remains the deadliest natural disaster in American history. Prior to impacting Galveston, that hurricane tracked westerly parallel to the Gulf Coast about 150 miles south of New Orleans. Its flood surges were noted along the Gulf Coast, including Lake Pontchartrain's south shore (Cline, 1926) [sounds kinda like Rita and Ike, don't it? We're vulnerable even if a storm just passes south of us on the way to Texas! Still hard for me to wrap my mind around this phenomenon.]
Prior to Katrina's landfall in 2005, the most damaging hurricane to impact New Orleans was the Grand Isle Hurricane of September 29, 1915, a Category 4 event which produced winds as great as 140 miles per hour at Grand Isle. It slowed as it made landfall and eventually passed over Audubon Park, seriously damaging structures across New Orleans. Electrical power was knocked out, preventing the City's new pumps from functioning [sound familiar?]. The wave crest height on Lake Pontchartrain rose to 13 ft, easily overtopping 6-foot high shoreline levee, destroying the lakefront villages of Bucktown (at the end of 17th Street Canal), West End, Spanish Fort, and Lakeview (these lakeside settlements were swallowed up by the infilling of the Lake Pontchartrain shoreline in 1928-31). The drainage canals were also overtopped, flooding the city behind Claiborne, leaving Mid-City and Canal Street under several feet of water. This storm overwhelmed the City's defenses so quickly that 275 people were killed, mostly in the Lake Pontchartrain shoreline zone.
On September 19, 1947 an unnamed hurricane made landfall near the Chandeleur Islands [remember those?]A storm surge of 9.8ft reached Shell Beach on Lake Borgne. The runways at Moisant Airport were covered by 2 ft of water while Jefferson Parish was flooded to depths of 3+ ft. Sewage from an overwhelmed S&WB treatment plant stagnated in some of the drainage canals, producing sulfuric acid fumes that caused staining of lead-based paint on some of the homes in the Lakeview area, leaving them with unsightly black blotches [I've never heard this before]. 51 people drowned and New Orleans suffered more than $100 million in damages. City officials were unable to clear floodwaters through the drainage canals in the Lakeview, Gentilly, and Metairie neighborhoods for nearly two weeks. [hmm, I have this strange feeling of deja vu, like this has happened before]. This was the first significant hurricane to strike New Orleans which generated a large body of reliable storm surge data, which was subsequently used in design of flood protection works by the Corps of Engineers. The New Orleans Times-Picayune prepared a map that showed reported depths and locations of flooding in the 1947 hurricane.
A couple more important nuggets of history which some of us seem hellbent on repeating:
[In the 1870s!] New Orleans City Surveyor W.H. Bell warned of the potential dangers posed by the big outfall drainage canals. He told city officials to place pumping stations on the lakeshore, otherwise “heavy storms would result in water backup within the canals, culminating in overflow into the city.” This prophetic warning was ignored with catastrophic results during Hurricane Katrina. (p. 4-16)
By the time the Corps got involved [between 1955 & 1960], a dense network of single family residences abutted the drainage canals along their entire courses (the canals are 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 miles long). The encroachment of these homes adjacent to the canal embankments circumvented any possibility of using conventional methods to heighten the levees, which is usually accomplished by adding compacted earth on the land-side of the levees (Figure 4.23, which would require the condemnation and removal of hundreds of residences, which would be costly and time-consuming (not to mention unprecedented). (p. 4-22)
As far as I'm concerned, the previous point merits the most reflection. The feds and Corps did not build our homes right alongside outfall drainage canals. Those drained marshland pioneers may not have comprehended fully the implication of building their homes where they did. But now, we do. And we have to really think about what it means, not just to us personally but to the rest of the citizens who will be flooded from a breach of the floodwall in our backyards, when we object to the Corps appropriating 6 feet of our backyards to widen levee foundations or secure them from tree roots and whatnots that compromise the levees. WE are the ones with the power to tell the Corps how much land we are willing to cede to protect this great City, just like WE were the ones who limited the scope of the first round of levees which failed so catastrophically -- under the force of the Category 5 storm surge of a naturally occurring hurricane.
I was so pleased to hear that you understand and are concerned about the link between dropping out of school and ending up in prison, and that you would like to address these problems.
Every year 14,000 high school students drop out of school. Every year we lock up about 14,000 people in our prisons. I don't think that's a coincidence.-Gov. Bobby Jindal on his initiatives to reduce Louisiana's dropout and recidivism rates. [Times Picayune, 1/4/09, p. A-13]
I was not so pleased to read on the very same newspaper page your plans to stave off a projected $341 million budget shortfall by delaying the opening of a mental health crisis center in New Orleans and by canceling plans to add 6 inpatient beds to the N.O. Adolescent Hospital. You should be aware that a recent study shows that children in LA impacted by Hurricane Katrina currently suffer from physical and mental health problems at rates double that of homeless children in New York City.
NY Times 12/5/08: ...41 percent under age 4 had iron-deficiency anemia -- twice the rate for children in New York City's homeless shelters. Anemia, often attributable to poor nutrition, is associated with developmental problems and academic underachievement.
More than half of those ages 6 to 11 had a behavior or learning problem, yet in the East Baton Rouge School District children can wait for as long as two years to be tested for learning disabilities.
...many of the children of Hurricane Katrina are behind in school, acting out and suffering from extraordinarily high rates of illness and mental health problems. Their parents, many still anxious or depressed themselves, are struggling to keep the lights on and the refrigerator stocked.
Governor, these are the children most likely to not finish high school and then end up in jail, and these are the very children that your budget cuts will hurt most. I think that the Obama administration and Congress would be hard-pressed to hand over $450 million for a new Charity hospital to a state that won't even spend $4.25 million to address the dire needs of its own citizens, needs which should have been addressed 3 years ago now.
Here's today's hysterical laugh...Last night on the news, the Corps said that they are willing to have outside experts analyze the situation (how nice of them); however, they are not alarmed because "seepage" is normal. They said if the floodwall were "leaking," they'd be alarmed. There's a big difference, they said, between "seepage" and "leaking."
You got to see this http://www.wwltv.com/video/news-index.html?nvid=250060
(A bit of history: Several months before Katrina, residents along this floodwall where it failed, reported water in their backyards coming from underneath the floodwall; but the levee board failed to respond.)
UPDATE A bit of perspective from my wise Uncle Phil: "Let’s put this in human terms. If some part of your anatomy was seeping vs leaking – would there be a difference to you? I think not..."
Is it just me, or are there far fewer Christmas lights up around town this year? It seems like even less than last year. I guess as is true to human nature, the novelty of having electricity again has worn away compared to last Christmas, the same way our new toys lose their luster after a few months.
I can't believe this is the THIRD Christmas since Katrina. What can one say to that? I got nothin.' So, I'll just pretend time isn't flying by by posting this little montage I made last year. It's a collection of images representing my memory of 2005 during Thanksgiving & Christmas of that year, my first trips home after having evacuated 8/28/05. It's a mixture of personal photographs and shots from the Times-Picayune that I was sifting through last year, and it turned into this, which ended up being quite therapeutic.
Actually, I guess we have come quite a ways since then.
On the appropriately named conservative blog Hot Air, they are doing an excellent job following the Bush administration's lead of blowing smoke up our asses in times of crisis. However, they get much props for admitting the Right's long-known (but only recently to them, I think) technique of responding to obvious fact with "hot air" (Blog Founder: "We fight hot air with Hot Air." [Notice how their brilliant use of capitalization establishes once and for all that their Hot Air supersedes all other hot air. Plus, I'm pretty sure God said so in the Bible somewheres.)
Unfortunately, I don't think Californians need more hot air right now, and I know that those of us sweating to rebuild the Gulf Coast without much help from conservatives at the federal level don't need more of it.
It makes me ill to even give attention to their efforts to -- yet again -- politicize the destruction and death of fellow human beings. Nevertheless, I feel it my patriotic duty to point out -- yet again -- that the feds fucked up. Funny how the party of personal responsibility can't seem to own up to its own responsibilities. Louisiana's state and local officials could have supplied every survivor with handheld electric fans, frozen daiquiris and daily meals from Antoine's whilst they, our fellow Americans, waited for Lords Bush and Chertoff to decide whether the levees had been breached or merely overtopped before sending help (FYI: It makes no fucking difference!!!). REGARDLESS OF THE (IN)COMPETENCY OF BLANCO, NAGIN, JUNIOR RODRIGUEZ, WALTER MAESTRI, and even AARON "WOLFMAN" BROUSSARD, the simple fact remains that THE FEDS DROPPED THE BALL, THEN DRAGGED THEIR FEET PICKING IT UP WHEN IT CAME TO FULFILLING THE ROLE THEY HAD SET FORTH FOR THEMSELVES in the aftermath of Katrina... (that bitch, I might add).
It so happens that I am finishing a disturbingly eye-opening book called Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security (by Christopher Cooper & Robert Block)*, which highlights that Louisiana officials "excelled" in the areas of the FEMA-coordinated emergency plan that had been completed pre-Katrina. My friends at Hot Breath or whatever marvel at the wonder of a state enormously larger than Louisiana evacuating 250,000 people...over the course of a few days. Contrary to popular misbelief, you don't always get DAYS of warning that a hurricane will strike. About 1.2 million people left Greater New Orleans in less than 40 hours (less than 2 days in non-fuzzy math terms), without a fraction of the problems Texas had with evacuations only weeks later before Rita struck, AND there are really only 3 or 4 routes off this island commonly known as New Orleans. *recently purchased copy at local Barnes&Noble for $5.98*
It took FEMA 5 days to get a communications truck to N.O. from Baton Rouge when the roads were clear heading into New Orleans, and 2 days to transport ice that was sitting only 40 miles away to Biloxi. The governors of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama literally picked up the feds' slack and orchestrated their own disaster plans, not because us po' Suh-thunahs cain't do fo' us-selves, but because the feds said for years had told them "Oh, don't worry about that. FEMA will do that," etc., etc.
There are tons more reasons you can't compare Katrina with the CA wildfires, as nicely laid out in Sunday's T-P feature, par exemple:
Katrina's scale of devastation and its impact on humanity, however, was far greater.The number of homes destroyed or still threatened in California is about 10 percent of the roughly 200,000 left uninhabitable by Katrina and the often overlooked Hurricane Rita, which struck three weeks later.
In New Orleans alone, 140 of 180 square miles flooded, -- rendering uninhabitable a residential zone seven times the size of Manhattan. Across the region, its winds and rains wreaked havoc to a 90,000-square-mile swath of the Gulf Coast, an area twice the size of the entire state of New York.
Katrina forced the evacuation of 1.2 million people -- 500,000 remained displaced after four months. Almost 2,000 people died in Katrina.
The death toll from the fires stood at seven as of Saturday.
But hey, facts schmacts -- the folks at Hot Ass Breath got some GREAT talking points out there, and what's more important and American than that?
I don't think Hallmark has a Katrina card, but if they did, it might say something like this. I didn't come up with it, but I'd like to pass it on to all those around here who feel they are barely hangin' on. From me, to you:
I'll bet you've had about enough
of people telling you how strong you are
and how great you are doing
during this awful, difficult
period in your life.
Maybe you'd rather hear someone say
how much this sucks, how outrageous
and unfair it is.
Maybe you'd rather hear someone tell you that you don't have to be strong
It's on, people! PLEASE MAKE YOURSELVES HEARD ON THIS ISSUE! There are tools all over the web for you to write letters and send emails to your congressmen and women; there will be rallies held all over the country tomorrow as well. Also, now is as good a time as any to check your voter registration -- if you're not registered, get registered; if you need to update, do it.
At the risk of calling folks out, I'll go ahead and make it plain -- I got about a hundred emails from people about that ignorant Don Imus some months ago. I got a ton about the "Read a *&^%^ Book" video. Some folks even sent messages expressing outrage at PepsiCo for taking "in God we trust" off of their marketing materials or some similar foolishness. If y'all have time and energy to engage that madness -- you've certainly got time and energy enough to stand up for the health and wellness of our poor and near poor children. Let your reps know in no uncertain terms that this is a priority issue, and their vote gets yours. Let's go!
I don't know why exactly I was relieved to learn the Manganos were acquitted of negligent homicide charges, but I guess it has something to do with erring on the side of not ruining peoples' lives for no good reason. Until I read more about the case just before trial started, my impression from media reports and Foti was that these heartless people just left senior citizens in their nursing home to die. After finding out that the Manganos stayed at St. Rita's with their children and grandchildren through the storm, my whole view of them changed. Mabel Mangano can't swim. We all knew the storm would be bad. We were all equally shocked to find out just HOW bad. Katrina's surge and the levee failures ushered in horrors beyond what most of us were really capable of understanding before August 29, 2005.
My views have nothing to do with whether the state or the parish officially called for mandatory evacuation or not, or whether the Corps is to blame for levee failure. I'm not happy or sad for the Manganos or for those who died and their families or for you and me, because this disaster and our actions during those tense, horrific days, like so much in life, can't be shoved into the black-or-white, right-vs.-wrong, guilty-or-innocent mentality that pervades our answer-seeking, justice-must-be-done culture. Many tragedies do not happen because people are greedy or evil or reckless but because tragedies happen. Shortsightedness, foolheartedness, and poor judgment are human nature; and they may be to blame, but do they a criminal make?
For lack of time, or wasteful use of it, I haven't had the chance to share my thoughts on Dubya's K+2 visit to us. As it turns out, everybody -- from Shelley Midura, to James Gill, to my personal blogger friends, and even the BR Advocate editorial staff -- more or less shared what I probably would have.
I'd be remiss, however, if I didn't share at least one thought I had about Bush and his visit.
Come to think of it, that pretty much sums it up for me.
It was my pleasure and quite an honor to be invited to share my thoughts, as I do on my blog, on NPR's News & Notes roundtable bloggers segment with host Farai Chideya (of whom I am a long time fan and consider a rockstar, but thankfully the nervous anticipation of speaking to her subsided enough that I didn't throw up on air). And as if that weren't enough, I had a blast hanging out with the fellow local bloggers responsible for The G-Bitch Spot and Cliff's Crib who are just fantastic to kick it with, as anyone who is familiar with their work would assume.
Click on the title of this post for audio of the segment (which FLEW by way too fast!). But at least they didn't try to censor us, unlike our local lovable Chris Rose on Oprah's K+2 anniversary show.
I wanted to post this yesterday, but my day took an unexpected turn when I met Katina, one of those truly great Americans who see a problem and then get to fixing it using whatever raw talent and wherewithal God gave them. It seemed as good a way as any to spend the anniversary helping her help us by suggesting ideas for the documentary Katina is making to promote the ultimate goal of her New Orleans: A Labor of Love mission. Her goal is to not only recruit 5000 volunteers to continue coming here through 2008, but to also serve as a resource to help them navigate the Bizarro life of our Third World nation-state. I'll be posting more about my overall impressions from August 29, 2007.
I've been busy moving to a new place (don't worry, friends -- I'm still in N.O.!) but I don't think I've been SO removed from society that I may have missed our public officials' alarmed reaction to this news. Maybe I did. I know we're down on our politicians right now, and we have every reason to be. At the same time, I know they're so overloaded that they can't react to EVERY negative development right away. But, my Gawd, nearly one-tenth of their constituents is contemplating suicide seriously enough to tell research assistants from way across the country that they feel they can't go on anymore! Hello...that's a cry for help! What more do we need to do?! Throw up the fuckin' bat signal?
[Sidenote: Anyone planning to post a comment about how we are only whining for help and won't get off our asses or that we should let this "cesspool" sink into the sea can kiss my ass on Canal Street.]
I realize that stats and epidemiology comes across as Greek alot of times (assuming one doesn't speak Greek), so let me put some context around this:
The National Mental Health Association estimate that 4% of American adults contemplate suicide. If I figure correctly, based on the optimistic population count of 300,000, the 8% translates into 8,000 New Orleanians per every 100,000 who are thinking of killing themselves.
The National Institutes of Health reported that in 2004, 10.9 per every 100,000 people killed themselves, and estimated there are 8-25 attempts (or roughly 87.2-272.5 attempts per 100,000 persons) for every completed suicide. Attempting is different from contemplating, but I can't help but assume we're blowing national estimates out of the fucking water. If even 1% of those considering suicide here were to take their lives, that' d still put us at 80 (compared to 10.9) per every 100,000, which would mean 640 to 2000 New Orleanians per every 100,000 residents will attempt to take their lives within a year's time.
Overcoming major adversity can give people hope and perspective on things; feeling like there's no way out of hard times does not. I fear that the window for recovery has closed for some people. Everyone is worn down, I know, but we must somehow find the energy and concern to check on those around us. Sometimes a simple, "Seriously, how are you?" will give someone the chance to unload enough of their burden to get them through.
If you find yourself in the 8%, you are certainly not alone. Don't let shame or a sense of doom and hopelessness lead you to do something that will only add to the greater misery. And remember, you're doing alot to aid our recovery simply by not being a politician. (And if you're a politician, just remember you haven't even come close to fucking things up like those idiots we elected to serve with you).
