It is very difficult to figure out what should have been done in the wake of Katrina. It may well be absolutely useless as well. What can my thinking and obsessing add in any way to the event?
I am quite drawn to the idea of not thinking about it but that is something like not thinking about any bad thing even if it is also personally unsettling. So I am going to park some notes not with the intent of suggesting implications but just to see what is shaping my perceptions, my TV news experience. You park facts here and observations, too, if you like. Wikipedia is, as always, doing much the same but I want to know what is lodging in my brain. And please - leave the accusations out as I will just delete them:
- I have lived through a number of hurricanes over 100 km growing up in the Maritimes but nothing near category 5. I moved months before Juan in 2003 just like I moved away months before the ice storm of 1998. I have a personal habit of missing dangers.
- I worried personally about New Orleans and flooding with Ivan in September 2004 - even making a helpful diagram for you all to explain my thoughts. This comment I made under that post is still the best thing I have ever written:
Errr...you must be thinking of Saskaskatoba or Manscatchewan.
- The FEMA plan for emergency response was, perhaps in part, prepared in 2004 by a private consulting firm. It is not clear to me that the operation of the plan was in any way divested from the public authorities.
- The Red Cross did not enter New Orleans before the event in preparation for fear of only creating more people needing evacuation. I just recall hearing that from a Red Cross official last weekend before the event.
- FEMA appears days after the event to be blocking distribution of some emergency supplies.
- On day one, Gulfport police shot a stranded seal as people were pourng water on it saying something to the effect that people need your help more. CNN's Anderson Cooper, who had played the seal angle hard, was a little verklempt.
- The US military put resources on alert on or before 1 September, two or three days after, even as far away as northern New York state. A navy ship followed the hurricane in and has sat idle for six days with the ability to make 100,000 gallons of fresh water and hospital beds for 600. It has not been used though it has been at the site:
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. "Could we do more?" said Capt. Nora Tyson, commander of the Bataan. "Sure. I've got sailors who could be on the beach plucking through garbage or distributing water and food and stuff. But I can't force myself on people.
- Libertarians are useless in a time of crisis.
Comments
Flea - September 5, 2005 4:34 PM
For what it is worth, a number of us (Flea readers all I am proud to day) are putting together not only our own bug out kits but the makings of the Annex irregulars. Such are our troubled times (and were they not ever thus?).
I am with you on the libertarians. I have been thinking to post something to the effect of "so, just what is the libertarian answer to levee construction?" but I am afraid of the answers I would get. No point in whacking the wasps' nest with the stick.
Alan - September 5, 2005 4:45 PM
I have been reading a book on the Anti-Federalists, cher Flea, and I believe we are Whigs of some sort or another. Recents events confirm it. Make sure you hide away some tawny port.
Flea - September 6, 2005 12:39 AM
I am generally well stocked with port and so may now consider myself fully prepared for any contingency! Kopke Fine Tawny is my cheap and cheerful regular though I have managed to choke back a rather splendid Warre's Optima at the suggestion of the Queen of Denmark.
Alan - September 6, 2005 8:09 AM
When I were a lad and had a wine cellar, Kopke was the very thing. I introduced the madness of port to portland himself through its graces I believe.
Alan - September 6, 2005 11:34 AM
Back to the point, starving out people appears to be the new compassion according to NOLA Mayor Nagin:<blockquote class="smalltext">Mr. Nagin said the city has the authority to force residents to leave, but he did not say if it was taking that step. He did, however, detail one forceful tactic: Water will no longer be dispensed to people who refuse to leave.</blockquote>Also 1,000 firefighters are going to be used to hand out FEMA fliers instead of fight fires. They are on site and ready to do their job - not PR.
Alan - September 7, 2005 11:26 AM
Hard to get the word out when the transmitters are levelled. From <i>The Globe</i>:<blockquote class="smalltext">Rescuer Bob Alexander, who is a superintendent with the British Columbia Ambulance Service, said when the team identified itself to two women surrounded by a half-metre-deep flow of crude oil from a ruptured tank, they were met with disbelief. "They couldn't believe it -- we're from Canada," he said. "They really had no idea what was going on because the transmissions were down. They'd lost radio antennas. If you were in Chalmette, unless someone came out, you had no idea what happened in New Orleans." Urban Search and Rescue consists of volunteers from Lower Mainland police and fire departments, B.C. Ambulance staff, City of Vancouver employees and other agencies.</blockquote>...and the Mayor and the General are at odds at the "starve them out, force them out" policy:<blockquote class="smalltext">NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- New Orleans' mayor has ordered law enforcement agencies to remove from the city everyone who is not involved in cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina, whether they want to go or not. But U.S. active duty troops will not be involved, the general in charge of military relief efforts said on Wednesday. Lt. Gen. Russel Horne told CNN the task of removing people against their will was a law enforcement job and that the military would continue to deliver food and water to the survivors still in the city.</blockquote>I like Russ.
Alan - September 8, 2005 3:24 PM
Sometimes this is what happened when you decided to take care of yourselves and get out of New Orleans.
Alan - September 14, 2005 11:20 AM
What do we make of the mass application of morphine overdoses NOLA doctors decided to give patients who would have not otherwise survived the flooding? Is it worse or better than doing nothing?