<p>We’ve been asked to take political observations to a different thread. Fair comment. The ramifications of what is happening to a major US metropolitan area do interest me–from a heartfelt and an analytical point of view.</p>
<p>I am surprised by the lack of fore planning as I heard the levees were expected to breech–and I believe I heard this a day or two before the storm hit. </p>
<p>By foreplanning, I mean plans for establishing law and order without communication or power. Every Parish sherriff seemed to be saying that it was going to be the Big One. Did they not have the manpower? The EMA seems to have done a great job evacuating everyone. The death toll could have been huge. The rescue appears to be well-planned. Again, it seems to be the law and order component that is missing. Do they not have the staff to plan beyond that? Are the sheer numbers (1 million +) beyond anyone’s experience? </p>
<p>Bear in mind, most of the Louisiana National Guard is on duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do we have the tropps needed to enforce martial law in a city the size of New orleans? This disaster will put military capability into question.</p>
<p>I have a good friend who is a retired colonel of the U.S. Army Engineers and whose civilian job with the city of Dallas until he retired from <em>that</em> last year was a FEMA-connected Emergency Preparedness director. I’m hoping to hear from him but may not for several weeksl; I suspect he he has been recalled into the center of this mess. Fwiw, he headed up one of the U.S. Army task forces to Nicaragua after their big quake.</p>
<p>Anyway, about New Orleans, they’ve been fighting a delaying battle for years. The coastline is eroding, the sea wants “in,” and the Missississippi River wants to change its course. </p>
<p>We’re lucky–and the people of Gulfport/Biloxi are not–that Katrina nudged eastward at the last moment. What’s happening in New Orleans would have been even worse with a direct hit. </p>
<p>To get to your question, Cheers, the magnitude of this is beyond what the law/order component could deal with. Not enough emergency transport and far too many higher priority problems. A case of what will be will be. </p>
<p>I read on one site that several NG units from Louisiana and surrounding areas are in fact available. Unclear as to what the truth is.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: I’ve read idiocies from both the Left and Right. Not all the murk is in the water.</p>
<p>I’m not there, of course, but it would seem to me “enforcing martial law” is the least of their worries. Yes, I saw the “horrible looting” on tv - folks left behind by the city (no cars, no transport, no buses provided by FEMA, no buses provided by the state, no buses provided by the Feds, no buses provided by the military, or did I just miss them ?- I’ll admit, I don’t hang around the tv much, but I didn’t find it in the newspaper either; now, of course, we are seeing all the heroic rescues) – walking into abandoned supermarkets that won’t reopen for months and, horrors of horrors, taking canned soup and cranberry juice off the shelves! Disgusting! </p>
<p>Just read this latest horror story from the Associated Press:</p>
<p>“As Sen. Mary Landrieu flew over the area by helicopter, a group of people smashed a window at a convenience store and jumped in. At a drug store in the French Quarter, people were running out with grocery baskets and coolers full of soft drinks, chips and diapers.” (Note that there is no running water to drink…)</p>
<p>Bill O’Reilly seems to be calling for capital punishment - use those pictures from the video cameras and track down every last one of those heinous criminals down! Beheading is too good for 'em!</p>
<p>I hope they re-establish “law and order” soon. In the meantime, I’m sending donations to the Salvation Army - sorry, I lived through the Santa Cruz earthquake folks - the Red Cross won’t get a nickel from me.</p>
<p>only 1000 guardsmen were initially sent in…that is less than the population of my D highschool</p>
<p>I am wondering who to donate to as well, I won’t do the Red Cross either- no offense but a 500,000 a year salary (double the presidents) seems excisive to me</p>
<p>Maybe Catholic Charities and an animal shelter, I can just imagine all those animals</p>
<p>And I would hope Walmart, Target and the like step up NOW with donations of clothing, generators and the like</p>
<p>no offense but a 500,000 a year salary (double the presidents) seems excisive to me?</p>
<p>Half a million? It was $2.3 million in 1989, during the Santa Cruz earthqauke, when more funds were taken OUT of California by the Red Cross than were put back in. The mayors of Santa Cruz, Watsonville, and San Francisco finally had to sue the Red Cross to get 12% (!) of the funds donated back to their communities. The Red Cross (this was Mrs. Dole) kept 88% of it.</p>
<p>Salvation Army always does good work on a pittance, as do the Adventist and Mennonite Relief Services.</p>
<p>Mini, good point, I’ve heard this about the Red Cross before. TheMom and I were just talking about making a donation…I think I’ll find a good target. The magnitude of this is such that a day or two isn’t going to make a difference.</p>
<p>Didn’t want to sound like a crazy leftie CC poster, but the references to Baghdad struck home for me. The lack of planning for the aftermath. Prisoners stranded on overpasses. Shortage of feet on the ground. Anarchy without services.</p>
<p>I feel for the Tulane, Xavier, Loyola and UNO administrations. Let’s hope they had the foresight to hire their own security forces–and boats.</p>
<p>This event does not bode well for Homeland security. There were days of advance warning in this instance.</p>
<p>In Mississippi, things are so bad they aren’t even collecting bodies. Marking houses with dead people with black X’s to collect later.</p>
<p>They aren’t even thinking about the fatalities in N’Awlins yet…and won’t really be able to until they get rid of the water.</p>
<p>The Governor’s tone tonight struck me as if she were just sending the orchestra out to play on the Lido deck to prevent full scale panic. </p>
<p>Terms such as “untenable” and “very, very desperate” are not encouraging. I think she knows that it’s pretty much every man for himself. There isn’t going to be food or water or health care or police protection in the city for weeks. Many of the emergency service agencies (EMTs, etc.) told their people to get out while they still could this afternoon.</p>
<p>BTW, the levees apparently sink over time and have to have constant attention and spending to keep them high enough. They were down 4 feet.</p>
<p>As for the National Guard, the agreement is that no more than half of a states troops are called up at a time. Lousiana and Mississippi apparently still have 2/3 theirs in the country with surrounding states waiting to contribution. Last I heard only half of those have been called up so far. </p>
<p>Last year regular army troops were called into Florida after the hurricanes, so I expect that to happen again. We have plenty. Our best fighting troops may be in Iraq, but they’re only a small percentage of our forces.</p>
<p>Whatever, a disaster this scale is going to take some time to get everything organized and much, much longer to fully recover from. If ever.</p>
<p>Why weren’t the levee shored up and maintained…you would think that would be done constantly…the city might have been salvagable but when those levees broke…it was over</p>
<p>Who is supposed to take care of the levees, and pay for them?</p>
<p>I mean in SF, our 1906 earthquake didn’t do the damage, it was the fire afterwards…we learned a very valuable lesson</p>
<p>After all is said and done, this needs to be looked at</p>
<p>And, cell phones aren’t working, there is no or little communication capabilities, I would have thought our Dept of Homeland Security would have resources available and there by now</p>
<p>The Army Corps of Engineers is in charge of all these flood management programs. The New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper had an award-winning series a few years back describing how some of the flood control measures that had been taken by the Corps had actually led to a long-term worsening of the area’s vulnerability to a worst-case scenario direct-hit by a powerful hurricane. </p>
<p>Well, CGM, if some of the Army Corps of Engineers’ flood control measures had in fact “actually led to a long-term worsening of the area’s vulnerability to a worst-case scenario direct-hit by a powerful hurricane”-- as reported in the Times-Picayune–then, cutting money from said program couldn’t really be said to be the cause of the problem, could it? But why bother reading before we comment? I mean, why start now?</p>
<p>Wisteria, to your concerns over manpower vis-a-vis the Iraq War, it’s really a non-issue. More than half of the LA National Guard remains in the state, available for deployment, once they can figure out how to get into a city that was just turned into the Everglades. The N.O. police force, numbering just over 700 officers, wasn’t affected by Iraq. They do have a severe morale problem that they’ve been attempting to deal with for years.</p>
<p>I was saddened to read in the Los Angeles Times today that when President Bush visited California(!) yesterday he told the audience that the people in Mississippi and Louisiana were going through a “trying time.” I don’t know anything about running the country, but if I were in his position I would have been on a plane/helicopter to visit the site yesterday and I would say something a little more connected to reality than it’s a “trying time.” Geez.</p>
<p>The president was in California, with or without the exclamation point, to speak to veterans about V-J Day. The anniversary would obviously have been on his schedule well in advance of the current tragedy, and was important to those who attended. Your advice that the president should have been flying around in a helicopter is reminiscent of so many who propose pointless actions in order to demonstrate their bona fides. If he had been riding around in a helicopter, people here would have been saying that he should have been at a desk making phone calls. As for “trying times,” well please share the profundities that would have fallen from the lips of President Inca; this is certainly a time that is trying men’s souls.</p>