<p>Barrons, it’s all about planning. There should be an evacuation plan in place for every major US city - for whatever reason (certainly we’ve heard enough about various threats, from dirty bombs to biological warfare, let alone the old standbys of flood, tornados, earthquakes, etc.). And I’d submit that it’s the job of FEMA (or Homeland Security) to devise the plan and prepare for its implementation. I agree - all local buses should have been carrying people north before the hurricane hit - 24 hours notice is enough - if you have a plan in place and ready to implement ahead of time. If you don’t have a plan, forget about it. You need to have a way to contact the drivers, get them to the bus storage yards, have the buses fueled, direct them so that the right amount of buses are in the right locations, etc. And a means of notifying people when and where the buses will be, etc. It can be done - but not in 24 hours, if no preparation has been made. And obviously, none was.</p>
<p>Kluge, NO had a plan in place, just didn’t follow it. You may think it’s FEMA’s job to devise such for every city, but that’s not realistic, nor are they charged with such.
<a href=“http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=46&tabid=26[/url]”>http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=46&tabid=26</a></p>
<p>Just saw a repeated CNN interview with a FEMA director (not Brown) standing in front of the Superdome coordinating the intake BEFORE hurricane and he said “This isn’t going to be comfortable. We aren’t going to feed these people. This is just a place for people to go until Tuesday afternoon.” (The day after the hurricane).</p>
<p>Just try to have FEMA come into every decent sized city in the US and dictate their evacuation plan. Laughable in reality. It would take a team of bureaucrats that would more than fill that Superdome. Come to think of it, how was that Superdome funded–could not the city of NO better spent their scare funds on levees rather than a dome for football games?? What other projects did NO put ahead of their own safety–that would be interesting to know. We have local and state governments for a reason. They are supposed to handle such things. If they cannot, then maybe the feds come in.</p>
<p>CHEERS - yup - and that was somewhat the original plan - most would be able to go home tuesday - after the storm passed - or at least to leave - as the Superdome was the place of ‘‘last resort’’ for those still in NO - then a second disaster struck on tuesday - they essentially DID make it thru the hurricane in one piece for the most part - and would have been somewhat ok under those circumstances alone. BUT…we now know the rest of the story - sadly</p>
<p>BARRONS very true about FEMA - I sure would not want to live in a police state such as that idea would creat in many respects. One of the things that I truly enjoy - and consider lucky - is that the US of A has a sense of freedom that many other countries don’t enjoy.</p>
<p>NOLA-in the NY Daily News</p>
<p>By almost every statistical measure, New Orleans is a bad place to be poor. Half the city’s households make less than $28,000 a year, and 28% of the population lives in poverty. </p>
<p>In the late 1990s, the state’s school systems ranked dead last in the nation in the number of computers per student (1 per 88), and Louisiana has the nation’s second-highest percentage of adults who never finished high school. By the state’s own measure, 47% of the public schools in New Orleans rank as “academically unacceptable.” </p>
<p>And Louisiana is the only one of the 50 states where the state legislature doesn’t allocate money to pay for the legal defense of indigent defendants. The Associated Press reported this year that it’s not unusual for poor people charged with crimes to stay in jail for nine months before getting a lawyer appointed.</p>
<p>These government failures are not merely a matter of incompetence. Louisiana and New Orleans have a long, well-known reputation for corruption: as former congressman Billy Tauzin once put it, “half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment.”</p>
<p>That’s putting it mildly. Adjusted for population size, the state ranks third in the number of elected officials convicted of crimes (Mississippi is No. 1). Recent scandals include the conviction of 14 state judges and an FBI raid on the business and personal files of a Louisiana congressman. </p>
<p>In 1991, a notoriously corrupt Democrat named Edwin Edwards ran for governor against Republican David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan. Edwards, whose winning campaign included bumper stickers saying “Elect the Crook,” is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for taking bribes from casino owners. Duke recently completed his own prison term for tax fraud.</p>
<p>The rot included the New Orleans Police Department, which in the 1990s had the dubious distinction of being the nation’s most corrupt police force and the least effective: the city had the highest murder rate in America. More than 50 officers were eventually convicted of crimes including murder, rape and robbery; two are currently on Death Row.</p>
<p>The decision to subject an entire population to poverty, ignorance, injustice and government corruption as a way of life has its ugly moments, as the world is now seeing. New Orleans officials issued an almost cynical evacuation order in a city where they know full well that thousands have no car, no money for airfare or an interstate bus, no credit cards for hotels, and therefore no way to leave town before the deadly storm and flood arrived.</p>
<p>The authorities provided no transportation out of the danger zone, apparently figuring the neglected thousands would somehow weather the storm in their uninsured, low-lying shacks and public housing projects. The poor were expected to remain invisible at the bottom of the pecking order and somehow weather the storm.</p>
<p>But the flood confounded the plan, and the world began to see a tide of human misery rising from the water - ragged, sick, desperate and disorderly. Some foraged for food, some took advantage of the chaos to commit crimes. All in all, they acted exactly the way you could predict people would act who have been locked up in a ghetto for generations.</p>
<p>Woah!!!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The notion that the flooding was a separate, and unexpected, disaster is pure fiction – fiction being promulagated by administration spin-meisters.</p>
<p>Experts have always known that the real threat to New Orleans in a hurricane would be the tidal surge flooding from Lake Ponchatrain.</p>
<p>See this five part article from the Times-Picayune originally published in 2002. The flood levels predicted in the graphics accompanying this article were within a foot of what actually happened on Monday and Tuesday. The predictions were so accurate that you could use the flood water graphics to depict this week’s flooding.</p>
<p><a href=“Hurricane Center | NOLA.com”>Hurricane Center | NOLA.com;
<p>Here are two versions of the flooding graphics:</p>
<p>Low-rez JPEG (1.3 meg)</p>
<p><a href=“Hurricane Center | NOLA.com”>Hurricane Center | NOLA.com;
<p>Hi-rez PDF (24 meg)</p>
<p><a href=“Hurricane Center | NOLA.com”>Hurricane Center | NOLA.com;
<p>
But this flood was not from tidal surge. NO was relatively dry after the hurricane went through. The flooding is almost exclusively caused by levy breaches, not overtopping.</p>
<p>
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<p>Not much wiggle room there for a Category 4 hurricane with less than 72 hours notice, is there? And there doesn’t seem to be anything in the plan dealing with broken levees and widespread and semi-premanent flooding, either.</p>
<p>What few remember is that the “Interstate” highways were actually sold to the public and Congress during the cold war as a means of evacuating the public (and moving military forces around the country) in the event of nuclear war. And that was viewed as a national responsibility. Natural (and human) disasters don’t recognize political boundaries - city limits, state lines, etc. are nothing to a hurricane or a nuclear bomb. I still think that evacuation plans, on a regional basis, should be coordinated (and funded) on a federal level.</p>
<p>Who was it who used to say something about the “blame game”?</p>
<p>Not interested in any report from 2002 - am stating the facts from what actually occured last monday and tuesday!!! And the outcome that we have all seen occur - how THIS occurance actually played out.</p>
<p>State emergencies announced on SAT - storm hits on MON - flooding occurs on TUES - NO WAY enough time to evacuate 1.5million people in that time frame - no matter what plan in place!!!</p>
<p>Listening to HONORE last nite sure made alot of sense to me - can’t put any help/assistance in harms way - no matter what the disaster!! - so no way to get many pre-arranged help to anywhere.</p>
<p>My comments are addressed to the here and now - the reality that happened - not was has been discussed, written about, etc… - just the actual occurance of what HAS happened. Hind site is 20/20 - but NOW is what should be/needs to be concentrated on - what was can’t be changed.</p>
<p>The highways worked OK for those who got to them. Estimates are that 80% or so of the area was able to drive out one way or another. A healthy number did not wish to leave as they had ridden out many storms before and lucked out. They did not want to leave behind what little they had knowing that protection of personal property would be non-existent. I’d suspect at least half of those left behind were in this group. This is a problem with all storms–you really don’t know exactly where and when and how big the storm is going to be until too late. Once you go through one that misses or does not live up to the hype you get a little cocky.Human nature is a funny and imperfect predictor of future events.</p>
<p>Not interested in any report from 2002 - am stating the facts from what actually occured last monday and tuesday!!! And the outcome that we have all seen occur - how THIS occurance actually played out.</p>
<p>State emergencies announced on SAT - storm hits on MON - flooding occurs on TUES - NO WAY enough time to evacuate 1.5million people in that time frame - no matter what plan in place!!!</p>
<p>Listening to HONORE last nite sure made alot of sense to me - can’t put any help/assistance in harms way - no matter what the disaster!! - so no way to get many pre-arranged help to anywhere.</p>
<p>My comments are addressed to the here and now - the reality that has happened - not was has been discussed, written about, etc… - just the actual occurance of what HAS happened. Hind site is 20/20 - but NOW is what should be/needs to be concentrated on - what WAS can’t be changed.</p>
<p>Fact - Hurricane hit on Monday - flooding started on tuesday!!! that is FACT!!! Expected damages would have been enough to deal with - the water flowing into NO is what has made this such a horrendous situation - beyound what any one could have ever imagined.</p>
<p>Throughout most of his entire political career, Ray Nagin was a Republican activist, and was an active Bush supporter in 2000. He switched parties in 2002 so that he could run for Mayor of New Orleans as a reformer (with the support of many Republican allies - no Republican has been elected Mayor of New Orleans in a very long time, and, as known Republican, received only 29% of the vote in the 2002 primary), then ran against an old-line political hack, the former Police Chief, in the general election. Even after election, he endorsed Republican Bobby Jindal against Blanco in the gubernatorial race, and ran anti-corruption drives against the city’s taxi bureau and utilities commission, resulting in several arrests. </p>
<p>Hey, folks, as politicians go, this is one of the good guys.</p>
<p>Ok, thanks for the info. Even if he is a Republican, he screwed up bigtime. What about that Governor–what’s her story. She seems as feckless as a scared bunny rabbit in all this. Why did she not ahve the State Police and La Guard ready to go. My understanding is she could do that on her own. I remember in my school rioting days they had police from all over the state and State Guard troops on campus in a heartbeat to maintain order.</p>
<p>Barron:</p>
<p>Read the Five-Part series. It predicts exactly what happened this week.</p>
<p>The flooding this week was absolutely tidal surge flooding. In fact, the track that Katrina took was very close to worst-case scenario: a storm moving due north towards N. Orleans and passing just east of the city. The east to west winds ahead of the storm drive water into Lake Ponchatrain and then the north to south winds as the hurricane passes top the levees from what is essentially a wind-driven “sloshing” in the shallow lake. </p>
<p>That is exactly what happened on Monday. The graphed lake levels in Ponchatrain from Monday morning head up off the charts to the point when the sensors all failed. Water overtopped the levees all along St. Bernard’s county and in all of the canals in N. Orleans’ proper. The overtopping in the Indutrial Canal, the 17th Street Canal, and the London Canal caused the breeches.</p>
<p>The only part of the expected flood mechanism that may not have occurred is flooding west of Kenner from Lake Ponchatrain – basically an end-around flood bypassing the main levees. The flood patterns suggest that this aspect of the flooding probably did not occur to any great extent (the storm was a little further east than the models described in the Times-Picayune articles).</p>
<p>What kills New Orleans is that the levee system traps the flooding in the city. In most coastal areas (such as the Mississippi coast), the storm surge comes ashore, wipes everything out for half a mile, and then receeds. Because of the levee system, any water that gets in New Orleans can’t receed.</p>
<p>I have read much of it. I have also read how Seattle will be a big mess when the 7.5 hits. LA and SF will have tens of thousands dead when the 8.0 hits and other possibilties. There are disaster scenarios for every city in the US that we are not fully prepared for. ZERO hurricanes over a 3 have hit NO in history. Yes, more could have been done. More can always be done in hindsight. I heard it took the Dutch nearly 45 years to design and build their new seawall and dyke system after the floods of 1953. They have been spending lots of money in the NO area for over 50 years and they survived many storms thanks to the system in place.</p>
<p>PS: I chose Lynchburg VA for retirement because it does not get major earthquakes, tornadoes, coastal hurricane hits etc. Anyone locating in active hurricane coastal areas is a fool in my book. I have written “Where to Retire” magazine suggesting that they cease extolling the wonders of coastal Miss and Punta Gorda Florida and the like as good retirement choices. Retirees have the least ability to start over when all is lost.</p>
<p>Mini: I saw a lengthy interview with Bobby Jindel on the webcast of N. Orleans TV. I was very impressed. Seemed like an intelligent, articulate guy.</p>
<p>I would give mixed reviews of the mayor. But, to his credit, he was one of the few public figures who seemed to grasp the life-and-death urgency of the situation from the get-go.</p>
<p>I believe that Mary Landreau grasped the situation, too. Her brother (the lt. governor) was in the water assisting with rescue efforts.</p>
<p>Tidal surge - uummm - yup - it goes in and comes out - that is NOT what happened in NO - the surge was long gone on tuesday - NO was essentially dry, cept for some water left by the rain - the lake rose and the river rose - but not by SURGE physics - and the levee broke down on tuesday and had the levee NOT broken down - they would have remained somewhat dry. So I do disagree with your comments - had the flooding occured by surge - it would have occured on monday - during the storm - as it did in all the other areas.</p>