September 19, 2005
3rd World
"When the hurricane struck, it did not turn [the Gulf Coast] into a third-world country. It revealed one."
— DANNY GLOVER, in New York City, at Saturday's Jazz at Lincoln Center "Higher Ground" benefit for victims of Hurricane Katrina
Posted by jnfr at 08:09 PM | Comments (2)
September 09, 2005
Panoramas
The Washington Post has an incredible set of panorama photos of the disaster in New Orleans. Requires Flash.
And here is a gallery of photos of the preparations before the storm.
Posted by jnfr at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
Outrage
Let's say it outright. The truest measure of any president, of any leader, is how well he takes care of his own people. And Bush, well, Bush has done a simply spectacular job of taking care of exactly his own people -- the wealthy, the corporate, the extreme religious right, his core base of supporters -- while happily and fiercely ignoring, restricting, condemning, destroying the rest. Are you educated or progressive or liberal or alternative-minded or sexually open or homosexual or anti-war? This means you. Are you dirt poor and belong to a minority group and don't drive an SUV and contribute six figures per annum to the RNC and maybe live in a flooded swamp in the Louisiana bayou? This means you, squared. Sucker.
Here, then, is the new American motto, as reimagined by BushCo: Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, and we'll let them die in a filthy and decrepit storm-ravaged American football stadium while our president languishes on vacation and ponders his oil futures and fondly remembers his good ol' days of getting drunk at Mardi Gras before going AWOL from the military. God bless America.
Posted by jnfr at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)
This is disgusting
Two shaky House incumbents, Democrat Melancon and Republican Boustany, hope response to hurricane rallies voters behind them. House Republican campaign chief Reynolds touts chance to market conservative social-policy solutions; Rep. Baker of Baton Rouge is overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
Baker explains later he didn't intend flippancy but has long wanted to improve low-income housing.
Compassionate conservatism my ass.
Posted by jnfr at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2005
Help needed for the animals, too
UPDATE: Please read the latest info in comments before you try to help these people! Thanks to (emma) for the update.
This was passed along to me by a friend:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2005 00:54:39 -0400
From: Ellen Datlow
Reply-To: cw96@yahoogroups.com
To: cw96@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [cw96] animal rescue needed
This was just posted on sff.net:
Transport Provided to Anywhere - Room Desperately Needed! (For the Animal Victims of Katrina)
There is transportation provided, with people ready and waiting, for upwards of 200 dogs and 150 cats so far rescued from the devastation of hurricane Katrina. What these animals need is a place to go. Kennels, boarding, vets offices, shelters with any extra space, foster
homes and rescues. Even one or two open kennels would greatly help.
>From what we know, all animals have been vaccinated and are in good health considering the conditions. There are dogs and cats of every breed and size. Some are in groups of two, three or four, hailing from
the same family, while some are solitary. ANY KENNEL SPACE AVAILABLE CAN CERTAINLY BE USED. These drivers are willing to move these animals ANYWHERE they need to go. Absolutely anywhere.
The current safe houses for these animals are being inundated and some of these pets will have to be euthanized if they are not moved to make
room for the incoming animals.
Please feel free to pass on this information everywhere. Every forum, every list, every community.
REMEMBER THESE ANIMALS WILL BE TRANSPORTED TO YOU.
If you know anyone, anywhere, that is willing to take in even one cat or dog, please have them contact Lynda at the information provided below.
They are also asking for ANY kind of donations for the animals - money, food, bedding, water, etc.
Please Contact Lynda V. at: 203 515 3024 (cell)
Home: 203 227 5308
Email: Lynda@portone.com
Please contact at any time, day or night. These volunteers, rescuers and shelter workers are working around the clock.
PLEASE spread the word on this animal rescue effort!
Posted by jnfr at 06:34 PM | Comments (3)
Police will use force
Officials have determined that everyone must leave the city, whether or not they want to go, and are determined to use force to remove the approx. 10,000 stragglers if necessary.
"We're trying to save them from themselves," he said. "We're going to get the residents evacuated and then we're going to get all the criminals out of New Orleans. "
With fires raging in some buildings and houses and New Orleans in lockdown, the authorities said today that they made 150 arrests this week as they tried to bring some order to the streets.
And with the city's municipal buildings unusable, the authorities today created a temporary jail at a local Greyhound bus station.
UPDATE: Just to be clear, I don't disagree with this. The water is incredibly toxic in N.O. at this point, and full of bacteria as well. People need to abandon this place, for now, until it's clean again.
Posted by jnfr at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)
40,000 bodies?
From Talking Points Memo, a pointer to this interview with a funeral director who will be working in Gulfport working with the dead:
Funeral director deploys to hurricane region
A co-owner of Shelbyville-based Gowen-Smith Chapel has been deployed to Gulfport, Miss., to help with recovery since Hurricane Katrina, and his business partner here has described the grim task there.
"DMort is telling us to expect up to 40,000 bodies," Dan Buckner said, quoting officials with the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, a volunteer arm of Homeland Security....
Posted by jnfr at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)
Katrina aftermath, cont.
• A report on the efforts to drain water from New Orleans.
• In Saint Gabriel, Lousiana, a huge morgue is being set up to receive and process the bodies, which are expected to number in the thousands.
• Brains and Eggs blog has some posts on real-time conditions inside the Houston Astrodome.
• E. coli has been detected in the water, which isn't surprising under the circumstances. A large fire is raging in the Garden District, and since there is no running water, firefighters have not been able to get it under control.
• CNN is showing footage of helicopters dropping water from big buckets to try and put out the fires.
• Trent Lott is angry with FEMA and with Mississippi's own EMA, since red tape is stopping the delivery of 20,000 trailers meant to help disaster victims.
Posted by jnfr at 01:11 PM | Comments (0)
What happened at the convention center?
Nola.com has a report up on the bodies piled up at the Convention Center, many of them dead by violence, and some of those children. It's a gruesome, difficult read.
Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.
"Don't step in that blood - it's contaminated," he said. "That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man."
Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.
"That's a kid," he said. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."
There's much more if you can stomach it.
Posted by jnfr at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)
What was FEMA really doing?
A diary by DavidNYC at dKos has a bunch of links to stories showing FEMA consistently stopping help from reaching hurricane victims. What the hell were they doing?
FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations
FEMA turns away experienced firefighters
FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks
FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel
FEMA won't let Red Cross deliver food
FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans
I'll try to add all the stories to my Furl archive, which is the list in the right column here.
Posted by jnfr at 08:21 AM | Comments (2)
September 05, 2005
Words fail me
Barbara Bush: Things Working Out "Very Well" for Poor Evacuees from New Orleans
NEW YORK Accompanying her husband, former President George H.W.Bush, on a tour of hurricane relief centers in Houston, Barbara Bush said today, referring to the poor who had lost everything back home and evacuated, "This is working very well for them." ...
In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "Almost everyone I’ve talked to wants to move to Houston."
Then she added: "What I’m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed with the hospitality.
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (she chuckled)--this is working very well for them."
Posted by jnfr at 05:53 PM | Comments (0)
In case of hurricane, you're on your own
Turns out that was always the plan, even by local officials — to leave the poor and those without transportation to fend for themselves. This is shameful.
What's more, many are starting to ask why - with mounting evidence that the below-sea-level metropolis might not survive a Category 3 or stronger hurricane - there was no plan for getting New Orleans' poorest residents out of town.
When the Crescent City went through an evacuation - and a near miss - with last year's Hurricane Ivan, critics complained about poor traffic management for those who tried to leave by car, as well as the fact that so many in poorer areas didn't leave at all.
For those who could drive, local officials developed a new counter-flow traffic plan that worked much better for Katrina.
For the estimated 134,000 New Orleans residents without vehicles, the city produced a DVD that was sent out to churches and community groups, urging them to leave town but admitting the government could not take them.
"You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you," local Red Cross executive director Kay Wilkins explained to the Times-Picayune six weeks ago.
"If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for that person outside the area. We can help you, but we don't have the transportation."
Posted by jnfr at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)
What went wrong? Bush played hooky!
I have to agree completely with Michael at Americablog on this:
What went wrong?
BUSH STAYED ON VACATION DURING THE WORST NATURAL DISASTER IN OUR COUNTRY'S HISTORY.
CHENEY STAYED ON VACATION DURING THE WORST NATURAL DISASTER IN OUR COUNTRY'S HISTORY.
RICE STAYED ON VACATION DURING THE WORST NATURAL DISASTER IN OUR COUNTRY'S HISTORY.
Why isn't this topic number one for every journalist worth their salt?
Posted by jnfr at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)
Survivors
Two stories that caught my eye this morning. First, from the Associated Press:
French Quarter Holdouts Create 'Tribes'
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming ''tribes'' and dividing up the labor.
As some went down to the river to do the wash, others remained behind to protect property. In a bar, a bartender put near-perfect stitches into the torn ear of a robbery victim.
While mold and contagion grew in the muck that engulfed most of the city, something else sprouted in this most decadent of American neighborhoods - humanity.
''Some people became animals,'' Vasilioas Tryphonas said Sunday morning as he sipped a hot beer in Johnny White's Sports Bar on Bourbon Street. ''We became more civilized.''
That's a pretty sweet story. Read the whole thing, it will lift your spirits. This next one, from the Los Angeles Times, will break your heart:
He Held Their Lives in His Tiny Hands
BATON ROUGE, La. — In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.
They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love....
Transporting the children alone was "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, knowing that their parents are either dead" or that they had been abandoned, said Pat Coveney, a Houston emergency medical technician who put them into the back of his ambulance and drove them out of New Orleans.
"It goes back to the same thing," he said. "How did a 6-year-old end up being in charge of six babies?"
These children ended up well-treated and are being reunited with their families where that is possible. Let's hope all the children end up being taken care of as well.
Posted by jnfr at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2005
I needed clothes and you did not clothe me...
From War and Piece:
Dutch viewer Frank Tiggelaar writes:
There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.
ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.
The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.
ZDF is Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, a German public television network.
UPDATE: Laura Rosen has posted more on this.
Posted by jnfr at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)
For I was hungry, and you did not feed me...
Craft with food, water, doctors needed orders
ON THE USS BATAAN -- While federal and state emergency planners scramble to get more military relief to Gulf Coast communities stricken by Hurricane Katrina, a massive naval goodwill station has been cruising offshore, underused and waiting for a larger role in the effort.
The USS Bataan, a 844-foot ship designed to dispatch Marines in amphibious assaults, has helicopters, doctors, hospital beds, food and water. It also can make its own water, up to 100,000 gallons a day. And it just happened to be in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina came roaring ashore.
The Bataan rode out the storm and then followed it toward shore, awaiting relief orders. Helicopter pilots flying from its deck were some of the first to begin plucking stranded New Orleans residents.
But now the Bataan's hospital facilities, including six operating rooms and beds for 600 patients, are empty. A good share of its 1,200 sailors could also go ashore to help with the relief effort, but they haven't been asked. The Bataan has been in the stricken region the longest of any military unit, but federal authorities have yet to fully utilize the ship.
Posted by jnfr at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
Jefferson Parish
UPDATE: Okay, I just watched the interview with this man, and I'm shaking with pain and rage. How in the world did this happen?
UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video.
____________________________________
This is the President of Jefferson Parish, speaking this morning on Meet the Press. How in the world can this be?
Three quick examples. We had Wal-mart deliver three trucks of water. Trailer trucks of water. Fema turned them back, said we didn't need them. This was a week go. We had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a coast guard vessel docked in my parish. The coast guard said come get the fuel right way. When we got there with our trucks, they got a word, FEMA says don't give you the fuel. Yesterday, yesterday, fema comes in and cuts all our emergency communications lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in. he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards said no one is getting near these lines.
Posted by jnfr at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2005
Katrina news cont.
UPDATE: This AP story says the last people have left the Superdome, though many people in the area are still dying.
No one knows how many were killed by Hurricane Katrina's floods and how many more succumbed waiting to be rescued. But the bodies are everywhere: hidden in attics, floating among the ruined city, crumpled on wheelchairs, abandoned on highways.
And the dying goes on - at the convention center and an airport triage center, where bodies were kept in a refrigerated truck.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Saturday that she expected the death toll to reach the thousands. And Craig Vanderwagen, rear admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service, said one morgue alone, at a St. Gabriel prison, expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies.
______________________________
Apparently 2000 are still left in the SuperDome. Officials say they don't have enough buses.
Posted by jnfr at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)
Outrageous
From Americablog (I don't have a link or a copy):
From a press release LA Senator Mary Landrieu sent out today:
But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast - black and white, rich and poor, young annd old - deserve far better from their national governmeent.
Posted by jnfr at 04:46 PM | Comments (0)
New Orleans Saturday
UPDATE: Evacuation of people at the Convention Center has started. Conditions there are grim.
UPDATE: WWLTV says Charity Hospital has finally been evacuated. All hospitals have now been evacuated, they say.
UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has video of an extraordinary report from the convention center and from the highway last night on Fox News.
_________________________________
I haven't heard of any actual evacuations from the Convention Center. There are still several thousand people stuck in the Superdome without evacuation help at this time. There are a couple of swamped parishes with survivors who have had no help at all, and the people rescued from roofs and attics are being left on the roadside, with no help available there, no food or water (see last night's Nightline program). The Red Cross has been forbidden to enter the city.
Federal officials are in full self-defense mode, claiming they had not idea how bad things were. Guess they weren't bothering to watch the news, cause it was all there.
Tbogg has a round-up of what officials are saying and what people on the ground are seeing. The disconnect has been incredible.
Posted by jnfr at 08:23 AM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2005
Class issues
Who knew? On CNN, Sanjay Gupta is reporting that private patients at Tulane were evacuated before more critical patients at Charity Hospital. He hasn't heard any reason why.
Posted by jnfr at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)
Sweet deal!
Nice work if you have the connections to get it. From the Los Angeles Times:
The city also has called in top corporations to help with the effort. Microsoft has been asked to develop a program to help reunite families, and Halliburton has been requested to share the expertise that it has used to house troops in Iraq in order to set up tent cities in Houston.
Mmmm... Halliburton! Always in the right spot to rake in the cash.
Posted by jnfr at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)
Friday in N.O.
UPDATE:: One of the buses carrying survivors out has rolled over. No word on casualties that I can find; I saw the footage on CNN.
UPDATE: They have fire boats in trying aggressively fighting the industrial fire. There are other fires burning in the city and the wooden homes are very close together and we may yet lose some of those that were spared in the flooding.
___________________________
CNN is showing footage of amphibious military vehicles which are taking supplies to the Convention Center. At last! They're under command of a three-star general, and have orders not to shoot or raise their weapons unless attacked. It would be nice to get through this without the military killing any innocents, though I wouldn't weep for any thugs or criminals who might get shot.
UPDATE: From this CNN transcript of Mayor Nagin, apparently the general in charge is really starting to get things done. This is what we need to see.
Now, I will tell you this -- and I give the president some credit on this -- he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is [Lt.] Gen. [Russel] Honore.
And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he's getting some stuff done.
Posted by jnfr at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)
LA wanted equipment returned from Iraq
Note the date on this article:
LA National Guard Wants Equipment to Come Back From Iraq
Yunji de Nies
August 1, 2005, 9:07 PM CDT
JACKSON BARRACKS -- When members of the Louisiana National Guard left for Iraq in October, they took a lot equipment with them. Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators are now abroad, and in the event of a major natural disaster that, could be a problem.
"The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," said Lt. Colonel Pete Schneider with the LA National Guard.
Posted by jnfr at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
Moving on
I had been blogging the hurricane over on World Turning, but as we've moved on from much of the immediate scientific and ecological info, I'll be mostly blogging political and cultural reactions over here. Science and ecology will continue at that site. This may seem odd, but it helps me keep my thoughts straight.
Posted by jnfr at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)
New Orleans last night
AP photo by Eric Brown
Just getting into the news this morning, but apparently New Orleans is descending into further lawlessness, with fires and explosions reported south of the French Quarter. Many many nations have offered help in the forms of both money and forces, but so far the President has not accepted any help.
The explosion was apparently in a chemical factory, and is not thought to be toxic. It was apparently the result of natural gas pipe problems, and not deliberately set.
Posted by jnfr at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)
A body
From the LA Times, via Talking Points Memo.
Posted by jnfr at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)