Saw the flood coming

[archenemy]

I think better than what is going on now - it is such a unique situation. At least with an earthquake you probably will have some remnant infrastructure and you could get around a bit. This - inundation of a city of 500k, no phone, water, sewer is grim.

 

There is a good interview with the Major of New Orleans on CNN - sounds like the ball was dropped on a number of occassions that made things worse than they had to be. Wish we had a leader in the White House.

Are you kidding? Infrastructure? You mean, like, the viaduct would still be standing? Or maybe all the bridges that are along the I5 would still be standing? Or do you mean that hookers will still walk along a nice, intact North Aurora? Thank goodness that the city started putting our water system underground. Oh wait, the ground would shift and break em up--seeing as how they are already sectioned and all.

Say what you need to make yourself feel better.

[Billygoat]

...the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.

 

This is what I find most puzzling: it was apparent - days in advance - that something major was about to happen. It was apparent that a major population centre was going to be at or very near the epicentre, and that it was unusually vulnerable to this type of event.

 

Wouldn't we use the advance warning period to start mobilizing resources, and getting them in position ready to move in as soon after the quake as possible? Wouldn't we use that warning period assembling stockpiles of food and clean water and medicine, rescue and medical personnel, security forces, transportation...? I find it hard to believe, but by all appearances there was absolutely no advance preparation done at all, despite the clear indication that this was a massive hurricane heading directly toward a major population centre that was known to be particularly vulnerable.

 

 

Bush was on vacation.

[catbirdseat]

I heard that Dennis Hastert made some ill advised comments about bull dozing New Orleans and not rebuilding it that have put him in hot water. He's right, but of course his view will never prevail. They will rebuild.

[Peter_Puget]

photo

[selkirk]

Seattle is built on silt right next to a big pool of water. All we would need is a well-placed big earthquake to dislodge us. Fortunately, we are right next to a very active area where techtonic plates like to meet up.

 

Isnt that mostly just downtown seattle? Seems like the hills most stuff north of the the montlake cut would be fine. Of course the waterfront will liquify. I wonder if anyone has done some work predicting what magnitude a quake would set that off?

[Jim]

(CNN) -- The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates.

 

Yea - especially the 45% of the city that lives below the poverty line, has limited resources and no car. Excellent point!

[Mal_Con]

(CNN) -- The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates.

 

 

 

Yea - especially the 45% of the city that lives below the poverty line, has limited resources and no car. Excellent point!

 

They should have just jacked a car and got out

Edited September 2, 2005 by Mal_Con

[Jim]

Seattle is built on silt right next to a big pool of water. All we would need is a well-placed big earthquake to dislodge us. Fortunately, we are right next to a very active area where techtonic plates like to meet up.

 

Isnt that mostly just downtown seattle? Seems like the hills most stuff north of the the montlake cut would be fine. Of course the waterfront will liquify. I wonder if anyone has done some work predicting what magnitude a quake would set that off?

 

Correct - that would be the bigget problem - the fill zone from the stadiuums to the market. Not that the rest of the city and residental areas wouldn't sustain damage but the isolation would be nothing like what were seeing down south.

[selkirk]

Are you kidding? Infrastructure? You mean, like, the viaduct would still be standing? Or maybe all the bridges that are along the I5 would still be standing? Or do you mean that hookers will still walk along a nice, intact North Aurora? Thank goodness that the city started putting our water system underground. Oh wait, the ground would shift and break em up--seeing as how they are already sectioned and all.

Say what you need to make yourself feel better.

 

But like most people in the northwest that i've known everyone seems to have sleeping bags, alternative heat sources of some kind, as well as mechanisms for purifying water. I can't imagine living anywhere in the NW without having at least a wood stove or some back up for heat/cooking/water purification. Between winter storms, volcanoes, fault lines, and other random acts it just pays to be capable of being self-sufficient for at least a week or two in a pinch.

[archenemy]

As long as we don't have looting, raping, and shooting; then sure, self sufficiency is fine. Of course, that doesn't include kids who were seperated from their parents, people in old folks homes, hospitals, pregnant, disabled, and the like. But I am sure that everyone on cc.com would be in good enough shape to keep on spraying.

[kix]

much of that silt is predicted to virtually liquify if the quake is greater that 7. (fuzzy recollection on actual strength, but within the realm of possibility considering he tectonic plates.)

 

are you prepared?

[catbirdseat]

It's easier to survive in a cool climate without electricity than it is in a hot climate. You have less problems with keeping food from spoiling and heat related stresses and less problems with diseases.

[cj001f]

But like most people in the northwest that i've known everyone seems to have sleeping bags, alternative heat sources of some kind, as well as mechanisms for purifying water. I can't imagine living anywhere in the NW without having at least a wood stove or some back up for heat/cooking/water purification. Between winter storms, volcanoes, fault lines, and other random acts it just pays to be capable of being self-sufficient for at least a week or two in a pinch.

Fuck man you don't know anyone who isn't white or middle class, do you?

[Dechristo]

(CNN) -- The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates.

 

Yea - especially the 45% of the city that lives below the poverty line, has limited resources and no car. Excellent point!

So, every time there's a threat perceived to any resident of the U.S., the federal government should forcibly (for the residents' own good) evacuate all residents unable or unwilling to evacuate themselves, 225,000 people in this instance (of course, all residents should be forced to evacuate, otherwise, it stinks of class bias). This way, no one would bear any responsibility. You'd make a benevolent dictator. Making evacuation assistance available is another thing.

 

Correct - that would be the bigget problem - the fill zone from the stadiuums to the market. Not that the rest of the city and residental areas wouldn't sustain damage but the isolation would be nothing like what were seeing down south.

I wouldn't hazard such a pronouncement that limits the power of natural forces and it's affect on the relative fragility of human effects Edited September 2, 2005 by Dechristo

[selkirk]

But like most people in the northwest that i've known everyone seems to have sleeping bags, alternative heat sources of some kind, as well as mechanisms for purifying water. I can't imagine living anywhere in the NW without having at least a wood stove or some back up for heat/cooking/water purification. Between winter storms, volcanoes, fault lines, and other random acts it just pays to be capable of being self-sufficient for at least a week or two in a pinch.

Fuck man you don't know anyone who isn't white or middle class, do you?

 

I just grew up in North Idaho. Anyone who didn't have at least one wood stove and a enough wood for 2 weeks in the winter, regardless of income was a moron. I distinctly remember the year an ice-storm rolled through the area and places lost power in December for several weeks, and in some areas til the next spring. Regardless of where you live or to some degree your at the mercy of the weather and world, I don't think it's unreasonable to act like. For a lot of friends (from a full range of incomes) heat, cooking and water purification all boil town to a wood stove or fireplace and a couple of pots or a dutch oven, maybe beefed up with some iodine or chlorine. That's not really much of a stretch.

[archenemy]

But like most people in the northwest that i've known everyone seems to have sleeping bags, alternative heat sources of some kind, as well as mechanisms for purifying water. I can't imagine living anywhere in the NW without having at least a wood stove or some back up for heat/cooking/water purification. Between winter storms, volcanoes, fault lines, and other random acts it just pays to be capable of being self-sufficient for at least a week or two in a pinch.

Fuck man you don't know anyone who isn't white or middle class, do you?

 

I just grew up in North Idaho. Anyone who didn't have at least one wood stove and a enough wood for 2 weeks in the winter, regardless of income was a moron. I distinctly remember the year an ice-storm rolled through the area and places lost power in December for several weeks, and in some areas til the next spring. Regardless of where you live or to some degree your at the mercy of the weather and world, I don't think it's unreasonable to act like. For a lot of friends (from a full range of incomes) heat, cooking and water purification all boil town to a wood stove or fireplace and a couple of pots or a dutch oven, maybe beefed up with some iodine or chlorine. That's not really much of a stretch.

 

I lived in North Idaho for seven years and agree that living there after a disaster would be feasible. However, trying to survive in the wreckage of a city (sewage lines breaking, skyscrapers falling over, city folk freaking out) seems a lot different. I agree with the "escape to the hills" mentality--that thought goes thru my head every day I am at work--but I just can't see that it could be that easy after a disaster that wipes things out, freaks people out, and seperates you from your loved ones. I mean, what if your mate was downtown when the shit hit the fan? What if your parents just flew in to visit you and were at the airport? what if....

[selkirk]

what if, what if, what if. In most things your options are few. Either you hole up where you are, or try to get to some place safer. The problem is once you start moving, no one will be able to find you anytime soon.

 

Honestly? It's a long walk , but only a walk from downtown to home (south shoreline) It's a longer walk from the airport. Most people I know could still cover the ground from downtown to our place in a day (including my parents, and mabye 1/2 of my grandparents given enough time and some good blisters).

 

There isn't any portion of this country that doesn't get hit with what amounts to natural disasters though. Storms, eartquakes and volcanoes on the west coast and NW. Heat waves in the SW, tornadoes and winter storms in the great plains, floods along the Miss., hurricanes in the south (several times a year), winter storms in the NE, not to mention man-made disasters like damn failures, power outages etc. To not be at least minimally prepared to hole up for a few days at home in bad conditions without electricity, food, or necessarily clean water seems foolhardy. If your stuck out somewhere you do what you can.

 

But with half of the disasters I just mentioned there's significant warning. (Most eruptions, nearly all storms, and hurricanes) The only ones that are really unheralded are earthquakes and random power outages, and for those you cope as best you can.

 

Its not that I don't feel sorry for these people. It's not that I don't think the Gov't screwed up in not funding the Army Corp of Engineers work their for the past 10 years. But at the same time, living in a city that's below sea-level, in an region that gets hit with hurricanes several times a year, right next the Mississippi which floods somewhere along it's length every few years, with bayou, which is the only buffer they have shrinking every year, and then ignoring a mandatory evacuation order from the mayor when you know a seroius hurricane is about to make landfall at or very close to the city......

 

My grandparents live in Fl. and have been through a couple of hurricanes this year though theyv'e come through ok. Hell if I know why they live there.

[archenemy]

what if, what if, what if. In most things your options are few.

 

This is the important part of your post.

[bunglehead]

So we all agree that the current situation in New Orleans totally fucking sucks?

I just feel awful for all those people that lost everything they own, and are being forced to just sit there and wait.

I have a hard time sitting through an hour long meeting in an air condtioned room, I can't imagine what I'd be acting like if I just lost my dog, my guitars, and I couldn't find anybody I knew. I'd be crazed.

[archenemy]

Me too.

[cj001f]

I just grew up in North Idaho. Anyone who didn't have at least one wood stove and a enough wood for 2 weeks in the winter, regardless of income was a moron. I distinctly remember the year an ice-storm rolled through the area and places lost power in December for several weeks, and in some areas til the next spring. Regardless of where you live or to some degree your at the mercy of the weather and world, I don't think it's unreasonable to act like. For a lot of friends (from a full range of incomes) heat, cooking and water purification all boil town to a wood stove or fireplace and a couple of pots or a dutch oven, maybe beefed up with some iodine or chlorine. That's not really much of a stretch.

Haven't done much city living have you? Sure you are probably fine out in the burbs. High population densities don't work well without functioning infrastructure, which was proven in the 19th century, and is being proven in New Orleans.

 

What do you do with the sewage produced by an 800 person apt building? Where do they get fresh water? Best way to deal with open flame cooking/heating in said building? How about the old/infirm, how do they cope with these conditions?

[archenemy]

Ok, away from the personal attack on a good guy.

 

The editorial that was posted here was right to the bone. I like this part:

 

I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.

 

At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

 

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.

 

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.

[selkirk]

I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.

 

An additional issue i had heard cited in the lack of immediate response was that there was a reasonable level of readiness at the outer edge of the zone they expected to be strongly affected by the hurricane. However, the zone that was actually effected turned out to be much larger, and a portion of the difficulty was just in getting the available supplies through the affected region to the places where it was needed. Basically another undersestimate of the overall effect.

[Dru]

Reuters

 

09:38 AM Sep. 02, 2005 PT

 

Virtually everything that has happened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models, so emergency management specialists wonder why authorities were so unprepared.

 

"The scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was well anticipated, predicted and drilled around," said Clare Rubin, an emergency management consultant who also teaches at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University.

 

 

Computer models developed at Louisiana State University and other institutions made detailed projections of what would happen if water flowed over the levees protecting the city or if they failed.

 

In July 2004, more than 40 federal, state, local and volunteer organizations practiced this very scenario in a five-day simulation code-named "Hurricane Pam," where they had to deal with an imaginary storm that destroyed over half a million buildings in New Orleans and forced the evacuation of a million residents.

 

At the end of the exercise Ron Castleman, regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency declared: "We made great progress this week in our preparedness efforts.

 

 

"Disaster response teams developed action plans in critical areas such as search and rescue, medical care, sheltering, temporary housing, school restoration and debris management. These plans are essential for quick response to a hurricane but will also help in other emergencies," he said.

 

In light of that, said disaster expert Bill Waugh of Georgia State University, "It's inexplicable how unprepared for the flooding they were." He said a slow decline over several years in funding for emergency management was partly to blame.

 

In comments on Thursday, President Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

 

But LSU engineer Joseph Suhayda and others have warned for years that defenses could fail. In 2002, the New Orleans Times Picayune published a five-part series on "The Big One," examining what might happen if they did.

 

It predicted that 200,000 people or more would be unwilling or unable to heed evacuation orders and thousands would die, that people would be housed in the Superdome, that aid workers would find it difficult to gain access to the city as roads became impassable, as well as many other of the consequences that actually unfolded after Katrina hit this week.

 

Craig Marks who runs Blue Horizons Consulting, an emergency management training company in North Carolina, said the authorities had mishandled the evacuation, neglecting to help those without transportation to leave the city.

 

"They could have packed people on trains or buses and gotten them out before the hurricane struck," he said. "They had enough time and access to federal funds. And now, we find we do not have a proper emergency communications infrastructure so aid workers get out into the field and they can't talk to one another."

 

Most of those trapped by the floods in the city of some 500,000 people are the poor who had little chance to leave.

 

Ernest Sternberg, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo, said law enforcement agencies were often more eager to invest in high tech "toys" than basic communications.

 

"It's well known that communications go down in disasters but people on the frontlines still don't invest in them. A lot of the investments that have been made in homeland security have been misspent," he said.

 

Several experts also believe the decision to make FEMA a part of the Department of Homeland Security, created after the Sept. 11 attacks, was a major mistake. Rubin said FEMA functioned well in the 1990s as a small, independent agency.

 

"Under DHS, it was downgraded, buried in a couple of layers of bureaucracy, and terrorism prevention got all the attention and most of the funds," she said.

 

Former FEMA director James Lee Witt testified to Congress in March 2004: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded.

 

"I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared. In fact one state emergency manager told me, 'It is like a stake has been driven into the heart of emergency management,"' he said.

 

Underlying the situation has been the general reluctance of government at any level to invest in infrastructure or emergency management, said David McEntire, who teaches emergency management at the University of North Texas.

 

"No one cares about disasters until they happen. That is a political fact of life," he said.

 

"Emergency management is woefully underfunded in this nation. That covers not only first responders but also warning, evacuation, damage assessment, volunteer management, donation management and recovery and mitigation issues."

[archenemy]

Maybe we all tend to underestimate a bit because it is frightening to think of the utter destruction that lies in wait.

Did that sound too dramatic?