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.
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.
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
In case of hurricane, you’re on your own
Turns out that was always the plan, even by local officials
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.