Re: Looting in New Orleans


John Lansford wrote:
> Vince <firelaw@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >news reports agree
> >http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1762948,00.html
> >
> >Catastrophic mistakes by the planners who forgot city's poor
> > From Tim Reid in Washington
> >DISASTER experts said yesterday that the anarchy that engulfed New
> >Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was in large part caused by an absence
> >of plans to evacuate the poor.
> >
> >Officials say that about 100,000 of the 500,000 residents of New Orleans
> >live on or below the poverty line, or are elderly and sick, mostly in
> >African-American neighbourhoods. But after years of anticipating a
> >hurricane, officials in effect ignored that this "low-mobility"
> >population would have neither the money nor the transport to flee.
> >
> >Brian Wolshon, a former consultant on the state's evacuation plan, told
> >The New York Times that at disaster planning meetings, whenever the
> >question was raised about how to evacuate the poor and infirm, "the
> >answer was often silence".
> >
> >Experts also listed other crucial errors made before Hurricane Katrina
> >hit and expressed bafflement over how the most anticipated natural
> >disaster in US history brought such a slow and chaotic response. Despite
> >dozens of plans and models over decades predicting a big hurricane hit,
> >including one last year that predicted 10ft to 15ft of water in New
> >Orleans and the evacuation of one million people, local, state and
> >federal officials have been overwhelmed by the disaster.
> >
> >Several experts said yesterday that a crucial error may have been the
> >failure to predict that the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain would
> >be breached. It was an omission that appeared extraordinary given the
> >parlous state of the defensive walls and the near certain belief among
> >federal and state officials for years that in the aftermath of a
> >hurricane, New Orleans would be flooded.
> >
> >Eric Tolbert, a former senior official in the Federal Emer-gency
> >Management Agency (Fema), said that after the Asian tsunami last year:
> >"New Orleans was the No 1 disaster we were talking about. We were
> >obsessed with New Orleans because of the risk."
> >
> >Martha Madden, a former secretary of the Louisiana Department of
> >Environmental Quality, said that it was incomprehensible that immediate
> >federal help, particularly troops on the ground, had not been provided.
> >She said: "They can't drop some food on Canal Street in New Orleans
> >right now? It's mind-boggling."
> >
> >In 2000 and last year, disaster plans were prepared for a significant
> >hurricane hit, but officials say that nobody thought that the levees
> >would be holed. Greg Breerwood, of the US Army Corps of Engineers, which
> >is responsible for maintaining the levee system, said: "We knew . . .
> >some levees and flood walls would be overtopped. We never did think they
> >would be breached."
>
> Then he is an idiot. What if a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane hit? The levee
> with the weakest support will fail if it is overtopped, just as the
> one on Canal Street did. Assuming that they won't be breached but
> overtopped, without realizing what happens when water overtops a
> structure, is just stupid.
>
> >Budget cuts to the city's defences by successive administrations in
> >Washington compounded the problem. Last year the army engineers sought
> >$105 million (£57 million) for hurricane and flood programmes in New
> >Orleans. The White House slashed the request to $40 million and Congress
> >approved $42.5 million. Mr Tolbert said that funding dried up after the
> >hurricane exercise last year, leading to the shelving of plans to
> >shelter survivors. Last year Al Naomi, the head of the army engineers in
> >New Orleans, complained that federal budget cuts had halted work on the
> >city's east-bank levees for the first time in 37 years.
> >
> >Analysts expressed amazement that despite Hurricane Katrina's slow
> >approach from the Gulf of Mexico, large numbers of National Guardsmen
> >were not in place before it made landfall, and that it took until
> >yesterday, four days after the disaster, for troops to arrive.
> >
> >Charles Boustany Jr, a Republican Louisiana congressman, said that he
> >spent 48 hours after the hurricane calling the White House to impress
> >upon Mr Bush the scale of the crisis.
> >
> >Terry Ebbert, the chief Homeland Security official in New Orleans, said:
> >"This is a national disgrace. Fema has been here three days, and we have
> >no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami
> >victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."
>
> The projected path of Katrina was known reasonably accurately at least
> 4 days before it made landfall; somewhere between just west of NO to
> Mobile. They could have stockpiled everything they needed, including
> NG troops, food, clothing, medicine, etc, to the east and west of that
> area and moved into the affected region immediately after the storm
> passed through.
>
> It sounds as if everyone was waiting on someone else to move first.
>
> John Lansford
> --
> The unofficial I-26 Construction Webpage:
> http://users.vnet.net/lansford/a10/

I posted this on another 'Katrina' thread too. As near as I can tell
the Hurricane Pam exercise was considered either entertainment or
ammunition for the next budget cycle, not a warning of what could/would
happen. I have a newspaper quote that the people unable to get out of
town were bused to the shelters.

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY
Officials hope eight days of intense training for a catastrophic
hurricane will aid recovery efforts if the real thing ever hits

July 20, 2004

Courtesy of the The Times-Picayune

BATON ROUGE -- It's a recipe for appalling destruction, and it could
happen here:

A hurricane packing winds of 120 mph and a storm surge that tops
17-foot levees slams into New Orleans, killing an untold number of
people and trapping half the area's residents in attics, on rooftops
and in makeshift refuges in a variety of public and office buildings.

Parts of the city are flooded with up to 20 feet of water, and 80
percent of the buildings in the area are severely damaged from water
and winds.

On Monday, at the outset of an eight-day tabletop exercise, more than
250 emergency preparedness officials from more than 50 federal, state
and local agencies and volunteer organizations began using that
catastrophic scenario -- dubbed Hurricane Pam -- to develop a recovery
plan for the 13 parishes in the New Orleans area.

The plan will provide a "bridge" between local and state short-term
evacuation and emergency response plans, and a longer-term federal
disaster response plan, said Ron Castleman, Federal Emergency
Management Agency regional director.

Officials are focusing on six major issues they expect to face in the
aftermath of a catastrophic storm like Pam:

-- Developing an effective search-and-rescue plan to find survivors and
move them to safety.

-- Identifying short-term shelters for those who evacuated, or those
rescued in the storm's aftermath.

-- Creating housing options, including trailer or tent villages, for
the thousands likely to be left homeless for months after the storm.

-- Removing floodwater from New Orleans, Metairie and other bowl-like
areas where levees will capture and hold storm surge, possibly for days
or weeks.

-- Disposing of the thousands of tons of debris left behind by the
storm, which will include the remains of homes and businesses; human
and animal corpses, including bodies washed out of cemeteries; and a
mix of toxic chemicals likely to escape from businesses, industries,
trucks and rail cars in the flooded areas.

-- Recreating school systems for public and private school students.

The ultimate dread

The Hurricane Pam scenario is the nightmare local emergency
preparedness officials dread: a hurricane that slows as it reaches the
Louisiana coast, battering much of the area with hurricane-force winds
for as much as 38 hours. Historically, such an intense hurricane, a
Category 3 like Pam or stronger, hits somewhere in Louisiana every
eight years.

In advance of such a storm, officials expect public pleas for
evacuation to be only half successful.

In New Orleans, when evacuees from other areas who seek shelter in the
city are accounted for, only a third of the population will leave
before the storm hits, according to the Pam scenario. That's partly a
recognition of the city's poor population: As many as 100,000 live in
households in which no one owns a car, officials say.

FEMA spokesman David Passey hesitated before answering a question about
how many people could die in such a storm.

"We would see casualties not seen in the United States in the last
century," he said.

Two years ago, officials with the American Red Cross estimated that the
death toll from a catastrophic hurricane in the New Orleans area could
be between 25,000 and 100,000, which would be more than any hurricane
in the U.S. has caused.

Walt Zileski, warning coordination meteorologist for the National
Weather Service's Southern Region headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas,
said Hurricane Pam was fashioned after Hurricane Georges, which in 1998
turned east only hours before it would have followed the path chosen
for Pam.

Funneled floodwaters

Flooding caused by storm surge would cover an area stretching from
lower Plaquemines Parish to the middle of St. Tammany Parish,
Ponchatoula in Livingston Parish, and parts of Ascension Parish.

The water would be high enough in parts of New Orleans to top 17-foot
levees, including some along Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi
River-Gulf Outlet, Zileski said. Some of the water pushed into Lake
Pontchartrain would flow through a gap in the hurricane levee in St.
Charles Parish, flow across land to the Mississippi River levee and be
funneled south into Jefferson and Orleans parishes.

Sean Fontenot, chief of preparedness for the state Office of Homeland
Security and Emergency Preparedness, said as much as 87 percent of the
area's housing would be destroyed. That would be the result of a
one-two combination of floodwaters and 120-mph winds, said Marc
Levitan, director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center.

"And there would be hurricane-force winds over a very large area, all
the way up to Baton Rouge and even farther north," Levitan said.

Complicating recovery would be the long-lasting effects of the storm,
said Col. Michael Brown, deputy director of the state emergency
preparedness department.

"This particular scenario shows that Plaquemines Parish will be out
from under the effects of the storm much earlier than people in
Alexandria or New Orleans, but our ability to respond will be reduced
because you can't drive through the effects of the storm to get there,"
Brown said. "So people are going to have to prepare to sustain
themselves for two or three days before help arrives."

Floating caskets

In a room set aside for those working on a plan to return youngsters to
school as soon as possible, officials debated where the schools might
be located and who should run them.

Terry Tullier, director of the city's Office of Emergency Preparedness
and the only city official in attendance Monday, moved among groups at
the state emergency preparedness office, State Police headquarters
building and training academy buildings, addressing various issues. He
said his staff at the city's emergency center was also answering
questions from the groups by telephone.

"What's critically important about this is that so many different
agencies, and all three levels of government are here, all singing from
the same *** of music, so that when we do come out with a working
document, everybody will have bought into it," Tullier said.

One stop was in the room dedicated to debris cleanup.

"We have a very old housing stock in New Orleans, what most consider as
historic," Tullier said. "But how many will stand up to the forces of
the storm is anybody's guess.

"The other concern is that we've been fighting this Formosan termite
battle," he said. "How many infested oak trees are going to be standing
in the city after 120-mph winds?

"And the other question is, how many caskets and carcasses are going to
be floating through the streets?" Tullier said. "Those are all aspects
of debris removal. What are we going to do with all that stuff?"

An equally thorny question is where to put people as they wait for what
could be months before it's safe to begin rebuilding.

Evacuation stressed

Brown said his staff has tried to identify potential sites for tent or
trailer towns in areas as close as possible to the city, but keeping
everyone satisfied is going to be a problem.

"It's going to be situation-dependent on the ground available after
such a catastrophic storm," he said. "The bottom line is that a lot of
people are going to be inconvenienced."

For Tullier, going through the recovery exercise reinforces his belief
that New Orleans residents must evacuate before such a storm.

"I'm always asked what's my worst nightmare, and I talk about the
generations of New Orleanians who have no historical reference in their
brain about how bad this will be," Tullier said. "And when I preach the
gospel of evacuation, they won't take it seriously.

"Evacuation, that's such a tough decision for our officials to make, so
once they make that decision, to have people say, 'Ah, I ain't going to
go,' that scares me," he said.
www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/newsrelated/incaseofemrgencyexercise.htm

"New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered the mandatory evacuation of the
city's 485,000 residents. Officials acknowledged that tens of thousands
of residents and tourists would be unable to leave. With the airport
closed, the city organized buses to transport those left behind to 10
emergency shelters and encouraged people to bring supplies and food for
a three- to five-day stay. Three nursing home patients died during the
evacuation, according to an Associated Press report."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/28/AR2005082800146.html

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