BERIGAN

an interesting chunk of a CNN interview with the Mayor of N.O. Nagin NAGIN: Look, I’ll take whatever responsibility that I have to take. But let me ask you this question: When you have a city of 500,000 people, and you have a category 5 storm bearing down on you, and you have the best you’ve ever done is evacuate 60 percent of the people out of the city, and you have never issued a mandatory evacuation in the city’s history, a city that is a couple of hundred years old, I did that. I elevated the level of distress to the citizens. And I don’t know what else I could do, other than to tell them that it’s a mandatory evacuation. And if they stayed, make sure you have a frigging ax in your home, where you can bust out the roof just in case the water starts flowing. And as a last resort, once this thing is above a category 3, there are no buildings in this city to withstand a category 3, a category 4 or a category 5 storm, other than the Superdome. That’s where we sent people as a shelter of last resort. When that filled up, we sent them to the Convention Center. Now, you tell me what else we could have done. S. O’BRIEN: What has Secretary Chertoff promised you? What has Donald Rumsfeld given you and promised you? NAGIN: Look, I’ve gotten promises to — I can’t stand anymore promises. I don’t want to hear anymore promises. I want to see stuff done. And that’s why I’m so happy that the president came down here, because I think they were feeding him a line of bull also. And they were telling him things weren’t as bad as it was. He came down and saw it, and he put a general on the field. His name is General Honore. And when he hit the field, we started to see action. And what the state was doing, I don’t frigging know. But I tell you, I am pissed. It wasn’t adequate. And then, the president and the governor sat down. We were in Air Force One. I said, ‘Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two have to get in sync. If you don’t get in sync, more people are going to die.’ S. O’BRIEN: What date was this? When did you say that? When did you say... NAGIN: Whenever air Force One was here. S. O’BRIEN: OK. NAGIN: And this was after I called him on the telephone two days earlier. And I said, ‘Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two need to get together on the same page, because of the lack of coordination, people are dying in my city.’ S. O’BRIEN: That’s two days ago. NAGIN: They both shook — I don’t know the exact date. They both shook their head and said yes. I said, ‘Great.’ I said, ‘Everybody in this room is getting ready to leave.’ There was senators and his cabinet people, you name it, they were there. Generals. I said, ‘Everybody right now, we’re leaving. These two people need to sit in a room together and make a doggone decision right now.’ S. O’BRIEN: And was that done? NAGIN: The president looked at me. I think he was a little surprised. He said, “No, you guys stay here. We’re going to another section of the plane, and we’re going to make a decision.” He called me in that office after that. And he said, “Mr. Mayor, I offered two options to the governor.” I said — and I don’t remember exactly what. There were two options. I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision. S. O’BRIEN: You’re telling me the president told you the governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision? NAGIN: Yes. S. O’BRIEN: Regarding what? Bringing troops in? NAGIN: Whatever they had discussed. As far as what the — I was abdicating a clear chain of command, so that we could get resources flowing in the right places. S. O’BRIEN: And the governor said no. NAGIN: She said that she needed 24 hours to make a decision. It would have been great if we could of left Air Force One, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out. It didn’t happen, and more people died. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/05/ltm.01.html

I have to admit to not being familiar with him(might have seen the name somewhere, but never heard his music) I just got around to listening to a used cd I bought awhile ago at Media Play. Encore, recorded in 1955 from Savoy. Kenny Clarke and Hank Jones are on hand as well. Very nice! I won't say he is the most innovative player in the world, but he doesn't need to be, very good. Just surprised I haven't heard much about him, he worked with everyone from Charlie Barnet to T.S. Monk. A search here didn't seem to pull up much.

I heard an anchor on fox make a good point, what happens to Lake Pontchartrain when all that toxic water from the city is pumped into it??? And I heard one women refused to leave her house when the rescuers said she couldn't bring her dog onboard!

Health Disaster Officials Collecting the Dead By Steven Reinberg and Amanda Gardner HealthDay Reporters MONDAY, Sept. 5 (HealthDayNews) -- The grim task of dealing with the dead from Hurricane Katrina came into sharp focus Monday as authorities began collecting and counting the bodies strewn throughout still-flooded New Orleans. And health relief efforts appeared to hit some red tape, as hundreds of volunteer doctors were reportedly stalled in their attempts to reach the survivors and others said their offers of help were basically ignored. In the first official death count in the New Orleans area, Louisiana emergency medical director Louis Cataldie said authorities had verified 59 deaths -- 10 of them at the Superdome, the Associated Press reported. The Superdome had housed thousands of refugees in what soon turned into nightmarish conditions last week. The U.S. Public Health Service said a prison morgue near New Orleans was expecting 1,000 to 2,000 bodies. And more than 125 were known dead in Mississippi. The preliminary counts seemed to confirm what the nation's top health official had admitted Sunday: The dead will number in the thousands. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt told CNN he couldn't provide a precise number for victims of the deadly storm, but he added, "I think it's evident it's in the thousands." And the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, warned that there will be gruesome sights in the days ahead. "We need to prepare the country for what's coming," Chertoff told Fox News . "We are going to uncover people who died hiding in the houses, maybe got caught in the floods. It is going to be as ugly a scene as you can imagine." Meanwhile, help for the living was an uphill battle in some places. A convoy of 100 surgeons and paramedics in a state-of-the-art mobile hospital was marooned in rural Mississippi as of Sunday, AP reported, because Louisiana officials would not let them into the New Orleans area. "We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here," said one of the frustrated surgeons, Dr. Preston "Chip" Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That government officials can't straighten out the mess and get them assigned to a relief effort now that they're just a few miles away "is just mind-boggling," he told AP. Other doctors also complained that their offers of help were turned away. A primary care physician from Ohio said he had called and e-mailed the HHS after seeing a notice on the American Medical Association's Web site about volunteer doctors being needed. An e-mail reply told him to watch CNN Sunday night where Leavitt was to announce a Web address for doctors to enter their names in a database. In Biloxi, Miss., the kind of water-borne disease health officials have feared began to finally surface six days after Katrina hit, with officials closing a shelter there after more than 20 residents developed vomiting and diarrhea linked to what doctors believe may be dysentery. Although residents had been warned to avoid drinking the water at the local school, some may still have done so, officials say. On the other hand, "Who knows what they swallowed before they got here, half of them were swimming in stuff that we don't even know what it was," Biloxi police Cpl. Kayla Robert told AP. All of the sick are being treated with antibiotics, officials said. However, Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was touring the devastated areas, said her biggest concerns now are tetanus and childhood diseases. "Tetanus is something we'd be especially concerned about," she added. Tetanus lives in soil and can enter the body easily through a scratch, and many survivors have endured filthy conditions. Despite the fact that hospitals throughout New Orleans have at least been stabilized, and even with the arrival of military convoys carrying food and water to thousands of desperate people in the Convention Center, the health problems still are massive. One expert thinks that a variety of health dangers are a significant problem for refugees along the 90 miles of Gulf Coast that took the brunt of Monday's storm. The first problem is access to clean, potable water, said Dr. Eric A. Weiss, an emergency medicine expert at Stanford University School of Medicine. He also noted that "people, particularly elderly people, have been displaced from their normal medical care. They need access to their medications and to physicians." Weiss downplayed concerns about diseases from the vast number of corpses floating in the water. "The danger is highly overrated," he said. "There is not a significant danger of disease from floating bodies." But the enormous psychological impact of the week-long struggle for survival is now beginning to show, as experts had feared. Two New Orleans police officers, including the department spokesman, Paul Accardo, committed suicide over the weekend by shooting themselves in the head. And Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish, just west of New Orleans, cried on NBC's "Meet the Press" as he told the following story: "The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home, and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?'And he said, 'And yeah, Momma, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday'. And she drowned Friday night. She drowned on Friday night." http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/fee...cout527813.html

Looks like they are having bureaucratic issues as well-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Article published Sep 4, 2005 Red Cross bureaucracy causing frustrations By Billy Gunn bgunn@thetowntalk.com (318) 487-6378 It's been a week since Hurricane Katrina evacuees started arriving, dazed and heartbroken, fearing for loved ones and what the future holds. Many escaped with little clothing, their kids and pets in tow, not much money in their pockets, jobs vanquished. They grew roots quickly wherever in Cenla they landed: small churches and campgrounds, at least one hotel that let them live in lobbies and fed them. It was the closest thing to home they've had, and Central Louisiana welcomed them with bountiful generosity. However, some of the refugees and those who have helped them are frustrated with the Red Cross and its intractable bureaucracy, its tendency to look to the rule book before taking a step, whether it be registering evacuees for shelters and getting help from sorely needed volunteers. Also, the Red Cross-mandated migrating of evacuees from small shelters to large is ripping some from the small venues where they feel safe to much larger ones where people are placed hundreds to a room with no privacy and a shortage of bathrooms. Leann Murphy, CEO of the American Red Cross of Central Louisiana, said her agency is in "crisis mode," they're doing the best they can and that she understands the frustrations of evacuees and volunteers alike. Just walk in the Red Cross' command central on Jackson Street, and one encounters a house almost mad: volunteers dodging each other, cellular phones' different tones sing, a closed door for a much-needed private moment. But the enormity of the crisis, the influx of refugees (on Saturday the number at approved Red Cross shelters in Central Louisiana was 6,000, with thousands more staying elsewhere), doesn't seem to bring a change in Red Cross procedures. 'Ridiculous' "The Red Cross, they are ridiculous," said Tim Murry, a manager at Alexandria's Holiday Inn Convention Center, where 100 to 200 evacuees have lived since Katrina's landfall. The hotel, like many other places with no Red Cross assistance, has sheltered and fed the southeastern Louisiana residents, or former residents, since they arrived: some yesterday, some a week ago. Murry said he and Raj Patel, whose family owns the inn, on Friday tried to get the temporary tenants registered with the Red Cross but were met with resistance because of the emergency agency's steadfast adherence to its rules. Before registering, the hotel would have to demand that evacuees leave, then they'd have to find a registration center and fill out a form supplied by a certified Red Cross volunteer, Murry said. As a compromise, Murry and Patel offered to bring registration forms to the hotel and have evacuees fill them out there to keep their tenants, many of whom have not a buck for gasoline, off the road. And, they said, the Alexandria Riverfront Center is connected to the Holiday Inn, just steps away. The Riverfront is one of four big Red Cross shelters in Rapides Parish that continues to take on evacuees; two busloads of New Orleans evacuees arrived Friday night. But those staying at the Holiday Inn, where in banquet rooms they've made makeshift beds out of chairs, couldn't walk up stairs and register, Murry said. "I just said screw it. I'm keeping them," Patel said. "The important thing is that they register with FEMA." FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is a critical link to those displaced and needing federal assistance. Evacuees at the Holiday Inn said Red Cross volunteers did come and tell them about the procedures and what the agency required. It wasn't a good exchange, said those who've constructed boundaries where families can keep a semblance of privacy in the inn's banquet room. The Red Cross volunteer "came barging in here and said that we're destructing the hotel," said Christina Rosa of Metairie, who didn't remember the volunteer's name. "They said the hotel does not want you." "We had problems with the Red Cross being kinda rude to us," said Sharon Sam of New Orleans. Both women said the generosity of Central Louisiana and especially Patel and the Holiday Inn staff was a godsend: all were fed, local pastors came by to see check on them, local Salvation Army volunteers supplemented their needs, they felt safe. But, Marco Sosa said, "This changed a lot of people's mind about the Red Cross." Riverfront Center In the Riverfront Center, hundreds lay on cots and milled around in the over-cooled complex Saturday, and Marion Smith missed the smaller confines of Northwood Elementary, where she and other St. Bernard Parish evacuees had stayed. "I loved it there," she said. "It's so crowded here." Then Cynthia Jate, who drove the St. Bernard bus passengers to safety, told Smith, "I got hold of your son. Pack your bags, he's coming (from Houston) to get you." Stunned and teary, Smith said nothing, just listened. "He said he's been to Marksville to Mississippi, Lafayette, lookin' for you," Jate said. "He's so tickled." Jate told other St. Bernard residents "anything's better than here. You don't know these people. "All the St. Bernard people, I'm trying to get them out," said Jate, clearly in charge. A volunteer Leatha Basco also is mad at the Red Cross. Though disabled, she thought she could do something, anything, for refugees pouring in from the southeastern part of the state. So, she left Forest Hill Friday morning and drove to the Rapides Parish Coliseum's Exhibition Hall, one of the big-venue Red Cross shelters, the one landmark she knew how to get to. She put in a couple of hours, cleaning the restrooms and helping by lending her cellular phones to refugees desperate to find loved ones and wanting news on their homes. Basco then attended training, where "they said that if you can't put in eight, 12, 24 hours (at a time), they don't want you. I just got up and walked out." "There's a lot of people out there that give a little time," she said. "I guess I'm good enough to clean the toilet but not good enough for anything else." Murphy, the Red Cross CEO, said her manpower resources are stretched thin, and that might deviate from agency rules and let volunteers work shorter hours. The minimum-hours rule, she said, is in place for more orderly scheduling. Town Talk reporter Mandy Goodnight contributed to this article. http://thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...mplate=printart

Are these people in shock, denial, what???? September 5, 2005 Rescuers, Going Door to Door, Find Stubbornness and Silence By JERE LONGMAN NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 4 - The boat pulled up to the living room window on Read Boulevard early Sunday afternoon, and a volunteer rescuer, Stanley Patrick, began yelling: "Mr. Robert! Mr. Robert! Can you hear me?" There was no sound in response, only the lapping of water in this reeking New Orleans East neighborhood, where the rooftops of cars were still covered nearly a week after a levee broke and the city was inundated. Mr. Patrick grabbed a sledgehammer, broke through the window of the tidy brick house and sloshed down a hallway into a back bedroom. It seemed unlikely that he would encounter anyone alive in this toxic water, in this fetid heat. He found what he expected to find, an 83-year-old man, floating face down in stagnant water that had risen three and a half feet into the home. A Louisiana state trooper asked that the man not be identified in full because his family had not yet been notified. Rescuers were told there might be a woman in the house, too. "I didn't see her, but if he's dead, she's dead," Mr. Patrick said. "If he didn't leave, she didn't leave." As rescue operations went on, the frustrations of the police and volunteers continued to mount Sunday, as a growing number of those who had stayed in their homes seemed to be dead, and many of those who remained alive refused to leave. But Col. Terry Ebbert, director of the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security, said Sunday that he expected that nearly everyone would be removed from the city by Tuesday, as rescuers made block-by-block searches. He said he thought there were fewer than 1,000 residents left in the city. "We're going to remove them," he said. "People don't want to come out," said Capt. Tim Bayard, commander of the narcotics division of the New Orleans Police Department, who is supervising the water rescue effort. "They say they have enough water and food to sustain themselves. They don't understand. It's going to take six to eight weeks before the electricity comes on." The water has receded only about a foot in many places, he said, adding that it was still 20 feet deep in spots. "They need to come out," Captain Bayard said. But some residents fear that if they leave, their houses will be ransacked by looters, he said. "They've already lost their cars," he said. "All they have left is their house. They don't want those animals stealing from them. Write that, animals. Anybody that would take advantage of this is hardly better than animals. Not the people who are taking food and water and clothing. Those stealing TV's and shooting at police. What can you do with a TV? There's no electricity." Police have said that early rescue efforts were hampered when they encountered gunfire. It was also difficult to get enough of boats in the water because of bureaucratic foul-ups, Captain Bayard said. One day, as many as 300 boats were in the water, he said, but he could have used 1,000. "There was a breakdown in communication and coordination, and some people wanting to be lone stars and not cooperate," he said, declining to lay blame but saying federal officials were not at fault. "We have the boats now. Unfortunately, people don't want to utilize them." More than 10,000 people have been evacuated by boat, Captain Bayard said. Captain Bayard said he was reluctant to force anyone to leave against their will. If a boat capsized in a struggle, police officers and evacuees could drown or be subjected to disease, he said. But if ordered to remove residents, he would do so, he said. A volunteer rescuer, Morgan Lopez, said he and colleagues had all but forced four people from a home at Dwyer and Bundy Roads on Sunday, where a sea of raw sewage had reached the steps of the house. A woman, an 8-year-old child and the child's grandparents finally agreed to leave, Mr. Lopez said. "We acted like we were cops," Mr. Lopez said. "We were not letting them stay in that stuff. They had a lot of new clothes. Maybe they were trying to protect that." Mr. Lopez was one of about 40 workers from R&R Construction in Lake Charles, La., who volunteered their time in boats usually used for bass fishing. Two other R&R workers, Mr. Patrick and Scott Lovett, were dispatched to Read Boulevard to look for what they thought was an older couple. A shotgun rested in the boat next to Mr. Lovett, who said shots had been fired near him on occasion during the past week. "I don't feel like I'm in the U.S.," Mr. Lovett, 22, said. "I feel like I'm in a war. All the guns, the chaos." Mr. Patrick, 44, an ironworker, said he had also rescued victims after Hurricane Andrew hit Louisiana in 1992. The man on Read Boulevard may have tried to get into his attic and cut his way through the roof, but was perhaps too feeble or retreated in heat that would have topped 100 degrees, Mr. Patrick theorized, noting a ladder that led to the attic. The house appeared to be on a slight incline, and perhaps the man thought he was safe, Mr. Patrick said. "It's tragic," Mr. Patrick said. "The water rose in one night. These people probably didn't know. There's a lot more dead right here. I can smell it." He predicted that the death toll would be "astronomical." In coming days, the boat searches will shift from primarily a rescue mission to a recovery mission, once a sufficient morgue can be established, Captain Bayard said. Still, he said, the police, volunteers and the army would continue to look for survivors, and military trucks would patrol the streets in case those who had insisted to remain changed their minds - perhaps, he said, once they ran out of food or could no longer stand the smell of decay. "It's frustrating because they don't want to help themselves," Captain Bayard said. "But if they are going to come out, we're going to be there to pick them up. We're not going to turn our backs on them." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national...agewanted=print

Ghost it's late, so perhaps I am missing something on this now quite long thread, but did anyone here mention the Governor and whether she did or didn't declare an emergency on the 26th? The main question I had heard in regards to her(and not mentioned here I believe) was if she was slow in calling ALL the state's National Guard up. My bitch has been with the mayor(Who honestly, along with the Governor, seem like swell folks) not doing anything except saying to his citizens,get out and that the Superdome was a last resort ...Busing as many people out before all hell broke loose would have been the smartest thing for him to do. Lives would have been saved for sure. And do you really think Cheney , Rice or the guy in Greece for a wedding would have somehow changed the number of dead? I was going to look for stories on the Governor, and saw this very interesting thread on the main page of Freerepublic about cached news stories before the storm hit....(oh, and if anyone makes a nasty remark after this post, no one had yet commented when I posted this) Cached Katrina news reports BEFORE landfall (Aug 27-Aug 29) Times-Picayune (cached) ^ | Aug 27-29 | Times-Picayune Posted on 09/05/2005 1:43:56 AM PDT by xrhopsiomega http://www.geocities.com/alpomega@sbcgloba...7_29_2005b.html Here is a cached web page with of a bunch of news briefs from BEFORE Katrina reached New Orleans. It is interesting and a bit unsetteling to read it knowing the end result. However, it does provide insight into the planning and mindset before the hurricane struck. I have to admit that I had thought the planning at the time seemed well done. Here are some quotes made before the hurricane hit: Saturday, August 27, 2005 * The mayor said he would stick with the state's evacuation plan and not officially call for residents to leave until 30 hours before expected landfall, allowing residents in low-lying surrounding areas to leave first. But he recommended residents in low-lying areas of the city, such as Algiers and the 9th Ward, get a heard start. We want you to take this a little more seriously and start moving right now, as a matter of fact, Nagin said. * Nagin said the city would open the Superdome as a shelter of last resort for evacuees with special needs. He advised anyone planning to stay there to bring there own food, drinks and other comforts such as folding chairs, as if planning to go camping. No weapons, no large items, and bring small quanties of food for three or four days, to be safe, he said. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he and Nagin will likely call a curfew at some point, and would station police officers at shopping centers to prevent looting. Looters will be dealt with severly and harshly and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, he said. * LSU scientists took projected tracks of Hurricane Katrina on Saturday evening and produced a frightening scenario: A wall of water surging in from all sides pushing up against the urban levees. [From all the worst-case predictions I've read, they only mentioned flooding from storm surges overtopping the levees. FEMA probably was correct in saying that no one expected to have the levees actually break.] * The city has set up ten pickup areas to take people to emergency shelters. RTA buses will be picking up citizens for free and take them to these shelters. [There has been a lot discussed about not busing the poor as planned. It could be that their busing plan wsa to only take people to the shelters] Sunday, August 28, 2005 * New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin called for a first-ever mandatory evacuation of the city this morning... ...The city has 30 boats at its disposal, the mayor said. * The governor also said that President Bush had telephoned shortly before the 9:30 a.m. press conference began. She said Bush said he was very concerned about the storm's impact and urged Blanco and Nagin to order the evacuation. * "I want to emphasize, the first choice of every citizen should be to leave the city, he said. He noted that the Dome is likely to be without power for days and possibly weeks after the storm fits, and said it will not be a comfortable place." * The mayor urged residents to check on their neighbors and offer them help, in particular senior citizens. This is an opportunity for us to come together in a way we've never done before, he said. * While officials were mostly concerned about preparing for the storm's impact, there was also some discussion of its aftermath.[yikes] * 'Louisiana's senators thank Bush, urge tour Louisiana's U.S. senators' - Mary Landrieu and David Vitter - today sent a joint letter to President Bush, thanking him for his declaration of emergency in the state and his public comments urging residents to flee Hurricane Katrina. They also urged the president "respectfully but in the strongest possible terms to tour the devastated area as soon as practical," a visit they said would reassure residents that federal agencies are focused on helping the area recover.[Wow. The exact same people who are now complaining the Presidents visit was a photo-op] * About 26,000 New Orleans residents sought refuge from Hurricane Katrina at the Superdome, which authorities describe as the "shelter of last resort," Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said late Sunday. To help keep them fed and hydrated, the Louisiana National Guard delivered three truckloads of water and seven truckloads of MREs short for "meals ready to eat." That's enough to supply 15,000 people for three days, [One last note: If the NO mayor kept calling the Superdome the "refuge of last resort", does it hold refugees or evacuees? Who would have thought linguistics would a big story in the USA's largest disaster?] http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1477621/posts

Happy birthday! Perhaps this board will go down today so you can have some extra fun!

I do believe the poor of New Orleans are poor, but the city itself? Something like 10 million tourists a year come to N.O. Does that mean all the money went to the state? N.O. may have done a fine job of telling people to get out, but those too poor, too sick, what was the plan? That photo is of just one lot of school buses. Where were all the transportation buses? Prison buses? You cannot just blame the feds for this, or say they deserve 90% of the blame. It would have been a hell of lot better on those who couldn't leave on there own to have been bused out(Yeah, it would have been a difficult thing to do, but as you said the Superdome wasn't a great option either-but lives were saved by using it, no doubt) than to stay and go thru the hell they endured. Well, I just clicked on the link from Little green Footballs to the blog site that had the photo above....never been to it before.... LESS THAN A MILE FROM THE DOME sat dozens of municipally-owned NORTA buses. Here's the photo, from Google Earth: Thanks to Tom for spotting these buses. I count 146 of them at that facility, which is on Canal Street and less than a mile from the Superdome. Figure these buses have 60 or so seats on them. That adds up to an additional 9,000 or so passengers who could have ridden them out of New Orleans ahead of the storm and the flood in one trip. If Ebbert had followed the plan. I take no pleasure in counting up buses, Googling seating capacities and tallying up the number of lives that might have been saved. But when the blame game started, Mayor Nagin and Terry Ebbert made it necessary to do so. **note** I had an erroneous photo of the Almonaster facility in this post. I've removed it until I can find a legitimate photo of it. UPDATE: Here's the Almonaster facility. It's nearly empty It's just a couple of blocks from the Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool. It could have been emptied after the flood, though that seems unlikely. If it was emptied before the flood, why wasn't the other one? They're not far apart. Here's a link to a wide shot that shows both facilities. The Nagin Memorial Pool is in the lower left, if Google Earth's links are working right. They've been a bit screwy. MORE: The link will take you to a >before photo<, in which you can see dry land and a lot of buses. Click on the red Katrina button to see the after flood shot--water everywhere, and an empty lot. http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2005_08_28.html#004752

We have met the enemy, and they is us.... Katrina's enablers: Levees were ignored for decades WHO OR what gets the blame for the levee breaches that wrecked so much of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck? We have heard people point fingers at all of the following: President Bush, global warming, the Iraq war and racism. We are still trying to figure that last one out. The real culprit, however, has been right before our eyes for a long time. The Army Corps of Engineers is in charge of flood control in New Orleans, but state and local officials play important roles in planning and funding too. Engineers as well as local, state and federal officials have known for decades that the New Orleans levees were designed to survive only a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Category 5, which dropped to a 4 shortly before impact. Why didn't officials use their resources to build stronger, higher levees since the last Category 5 hurricane hit New Orleans in 1969? With the federal government in charge, local and state officials were able to shift the burden to Washington and divert their attention to more frivolous pursuits. Instead of pumping the necessary resources into walls and levees that would withstand the worst storms, they built convention centers and sports arenas. The Louisiana Superdome Cost $163 million to build in 1975. The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, a state entity, was built in 1985. It was expanded in 1999, and the state just completed negotiations for a new 500,000 square foot expansion. The state signed a contract for the new expansion on Aug. 17, just 12 days before Katrina hit. The price: $315 million. Construction would have begun years ago, for a cost of $275 million, but for some delays. There was a legal dispute over the contract in 2003, then in 2004 Gov. Kathleen Blanco tried to combine the expansion with a new stadium to replace the Superdome. There have been charges that recent decisions not to fully fund the requests of the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans were somehow to blame for the flooding last week. But the lower than requested funding for the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans was slated for the 2006 budget; it would have made no difference last Monday. However, Washington has neglected its duties in this area for years. Instead of spending the hundreds of millions, even billions, to replace levees that all experts knew were inadequate, federal politicians chose for decades to fund pork projects. Instead of new levees for New Orleans, the American people were given sports stadiums, bicycle trails and roads in powerful politicians' districts. Experts have known of the city's vulnerability since at least the 1960s, and yet no one at the local, state or federal level made sure that the levees could withstand a hurricane even less powerful than Camille in 1969. Several decades' worth of politicians of both parties played with taxpayer money while neglecting their duty to protect the citizens. As a result of their irresponsibility, hundreds, perhaps thousands, have died. http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_sho...l?article=59964

Bet each thinks they are helping the other, and they probably are!

Mississippians' Suffering Overshadowed Sep 03 11:49 PM US/Eastern By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS Associated Press Writer JACKSON, Miss. Mississippi hurricane survivors looked around Saturday and wondered just how long it would take to get food, clean water and shelter. And they were more than angry at the federal government and the national news media. Richard Gibbs was disgusted by reports of looting in New Orleans and upset at the lack of attention hurricane victims in his state were getting. "I say burn the bridges and let 'em all rot there," he said. "We're suffering over here too, but we're not killing each other. We've got to help each other. We need gas and food and water and medical supplies." Gibbs and his wife, Holly, have been stuck at their flooded home in Gulfport just off the Biloxi River. Water comes up to the second floor, they are out of gasoline, and food supplies are running perilously low. Until recently, they also had Holly's 75-year-old father, who has a pacemaker and severe diabetes, with them. Finally they got an ambulance to take him to the airport so he could be airlifted to Lafayette, La., for medical help. In poverty-stricken north Gulfport, Grover Chapman was angry at the lack of aid. "Something should've been on this corner three days ago," Chapman, 60, said Saturday as he whipped up dinner for his neighbors. He used wood from his demolished produce stand to cook fish, rabbit, okra and butter beans he'd been keeping in his freezer. Although many houses here, about five miles inland, are still standing, they are severely damaged. Corrugated tin roofs lie scattered on the ground. "I'm just doing what I can do," Chapman said. "These people support me with my produce stand every day. Now it's time to pay them back." One neighbor, 78-year-old Georgia Smylie, knew little about what's happening elsewhere. She was too worried about her own situation. "My medicine is running out. I need high blood pressure medicine, medicine for my heart," she said. Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist, said he's been watching hours of Katrina coverage every day and most of the national media attention has focused on the devastation and looting in New Orleans. "Mississippi needs more coverage," Sabato said. "Until people see it on TV, they don't think it's real." Along the battered Mississippi Gulf Coast, crews started searching boats for corpses on Saturday. Several shrimpers are believed to have died as they tried to ride out the storm aboard their boats on the Intracoastal Waterway. President Bush toured ravaged areas of the Mississippi coast on Friday with Gov. Haley Barbour and other state officials. They also flew over flooded New Orleans. "I'm going to tell you, Mississippi got hit much harder than they did, but what happened in the aftermath _ it makes your stomach hurt to go miles and miles and miles and the houses are all under water up to the roof," Barbour said. Keisha Moran has been living in a tent in a department store parking lot in Bay St. Louis with her boyfriend and three young children since the hurricane struck. She said National Guardsmen have brought her water but no other aid so far, and she was furious that it took Bush several days before he came to see the damage in Mississippi. "It's how many days later? How many people are dead?" Moran said. Mississippi's death toll from Hurricane Katrina stood at 144 on Saturday, according to confirmed reports from coroners and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. Barbour had said Friday the total was 147, but he didn't provide a county-by-county breakdown. In a strongly worded editorial, The Sun Herald of Biloxi-Gulfport pleaded for help and questioned why a massive National Guard presence wasn't already visible. "We understand that New Orleans also was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, but surely this nation has the resources to rescue both that metropolitan (area) and ours," the newspaper editorialized, saying survival basics like ice, gasoline and medicine have been too slow to arrive. "We are not calling on the nation and the state to make life more comfortable in South Mississippi, we are calling on the nation and the state to make life here possible," the paper wrote. ____ Associated Press reporter David Royse and Brian Skoloff in Gulfport and Jay Reeves in Bay St. Louis contributed to this report. http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/03/D8CD6TQ03.html

Yeah, but isn't that like saying until the Levees broke, they were doing an adequate job of holding the water? What did N.O. do to prepare for the worst? Here is a photo of a bunch of ruined School Buses, would have been nice if they had them surrounding the Superdome before the flooding. Hell, I first thought when I heard all these folks were going to the Dome, what if the then 175 MPH Hurricane(Can it seem possible this story could have been worse with a direct hit with those winds!) damaged the structure? Imagine if thousands had died in that type of disaster. But, it seemed better than having them killed in the houses. So much delay....systems have to be improved...phones go down, no way to communicate? I see the media has satellite phones, perhaps cities need to invest in them....

Tonight, after going to one of the weekly car cruises 4 miles from our house, I noticed almost every gas station...was without fuel! I don't know if it had to do with the governor doing away with the gas tax for September, people leaving town for Labor day weekend, or what.....Nothing on the 10 O'clock news, so may just be the southside of Atl right now...

I hear you. I am all for many a slow news day. I go to bed thinking about it, and wake up thinking about it...I could complain that I am not sleeping well but I had a shower today, ate, drank water, and was in A.C. all day, so I won't. In your previous post, you wondered if they would be evacuating the "thugs" good question! What will they do with those shooting at them? How many of those snipers are going thru serious withdrawals right now, and are just not thinking clearly?(Oh, if I shoot at that helicopter, that'll make things better ) I hear that is one of the main reasons looters were breaking into the hospitals, was to look for drugs....I wonder if a tiny number of people will not want to leave New Orleans...

It's not obvious to me whether this jump in price is good for all oil companies. It's true that they get to sell oil at higher prices, but those dependant on getting their oil from the refineries in the south now have to acquire it from more costly sources. Guy ← Oh, it's good for them alright. They are going to have record on top of record profits, prices haven't gone up on drilling or processing the oil lately...if they "lose" a little profit in the short run,(They may sell a little less, but fuel is over $3.00 everywhere) they'll get by. ← Nobody is talking about them not getting by -- we're talking about whether their profits will decrease, which they very well might at least in some cases. The primary for the very recent increase (last week) in gas prices has to do with a sharp drop in supply due to refineries going offline. Guy ← Guy, I thought I addressed the issue by saying that prices are going up(65 cents on average here in ATL in about a week) so if they sell 20% less, they will still have basically the same record profits....I am sure they can write off the damage they have suffered come tax time..but, you are the budding economist, you tell us! Of course, you don't really hear the media address the lack of refineries in the U.S. (29 years since one was built) bet any future terrorists are quite aware of how weak we are right now because of this.... Oil Refineries? Not in Our Backyard Friday, April 08, 2005 LOS ANGELES — As prices continue to soar at the pump, critics are pointing fingers in many directions, citing big oil's giant profits or China's increased oil consumption, among other things. But some experts say it's the United States' own fault for not refining black gold into gasoline faster. Crude oil that comes out of the ground is pretty much useless until it is made into gasoline (search), but the oil refineries that turn the crude oil into gasoline are ugly, dirty and dangerous. Environmentalists, neighborhoods and even the government are fighting to keep them out of Americans' backyards. A new oil refinery hasn't been built in the United States in 29 years. "We're operating, particularly during the summer periods when we have peak consumption periods, we're operating, essentially at 100 percent of capacity. So there is no spare refining capacity," said Edward Murphy of the American Petroleum Institute. While business blames red tape for the shortage of new refineries, critics say oil companies prefer it that way so they can gouge customers. "We've seen that the industry does not have any incentive, really, especially the big oil companies, to build any new refineries or expand their existing ones because they're making so much money," said Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen. But now, the Environmental Protection Agency (search) has approved a permit for a new refinery near the Arizona-California border to refine oil into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Environmentalists protested the new refinery, but the plan is expected to proceed. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,152922,00.html

Obviously, you have not seen the same coverage I have. What about the people at the convention center who DID EVACUATE? Went where they were told to go. Did exactly as they were told and were left there to die with no food or water or services for days. There were people dying on the spot. Elderly and handicapped people dying in their wheelchairs, women and babies. The reporter I watched said he had people die in front of him. With anguish he said, "I can't take it, anymore". Also, about the looting. I read an interesting article yesterday that had photos of people taking things from stores. The caption under the black person, wading through chest deep water, said he had just "looted a grocery store". The caption under the white people, wading through chest deep water, said they had just "found bread and sodas from a local grocery". I don't consider it looting if you are doing everything you can for you and your family to survive. ← More about those photos that sparked so much controversy http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n.../a152350D17.DTL

A trival question what channel is everyone watching? Just CNN? I go between CNN, Fox and MSNBC, and the networks at 6:30. I think only on NBC did I see that there are/were folks still in many of the apartments there...white folks, looking pretty damn terrible. Who knows how many people are still in N.O.? Without any communication, will people have to go door to door everywhere in N.O.???? Oh, right now at 3 am est they are re-running the Hannity/Colmes show, catch it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man, I wish I had thought of it sooner...I showered and caught Shepard Smith just going off about the situation in N.O. Why were they not letting the people walk out, why do they turn people away at the end of the overpass. Let them walk west to were there was food, water, Electricty? So, I ran the DVR thingy back 10 minutes to catch all of it(great feature with Dish Network)Hannity just didn't know what to do....So...they go to Geraldo at the Convention center(These 3 are not my favs, but Shepard Smith really proved himself tonight) Geraldo is a bit of a, well you know what he is. But he is tag teaming with Shepard, Geraldo was saying let these people out, let them go!!! He held up a 5 week old baby, and started to cry! Amazing T.V. to see, to say the least. meanwhile, I had been watching CNN earlier, and it was sounding more like you would expect FOX to sound, things were getting better, blah, blah, blah(at least the part I caught)

Guys, I hope we can keep this civil, I really do. It won't do any good to get made at each other, it won't change a thing.(Just trying to stop something before it starts) People LOVE to point fingers, and since many hate the president here, it must ALL be his fault. Well, he did declare an emergency BEFORE the Hurricane hit, which is almost unprecedented. What did the State and local officials do to prepare for this event? This is what, the 3rd time folks had been brought to the Superdome? There could have been 70,000 there Sunday night, there were something like 10,000 at first. Why wasn't the center of the dome filled, just fucking filled with Food, water, medical supplies? Or if that wasn't possible, the upper regions of the stadium where they never did have people. EVERY level of the government did not react quickly enough, can we all agree on that? The state and local governments are the first responders, and there are many reasons why they couldn't react faster(Flooding, trying to save those still trapped in an area of encompassing 200 square miles) but they didn't seem to know what the hell to do, except ask for help, which of course they should. They were overwhelmed, and so was FEMA I imagine. But there must have been something the locals could have done in conjunction the police, since they weren't locking people up...but they couldn't contact anyone, since the communication systems were all down...hell, I don't know for sure, who does? I heard Biloxi was about to run out of medical supplies and that was a few hours ago, anyone hear anything more about this? This is such an amazingly widespread problem... Perhaps we should all get away from the computer for awhile, and see what if anything we can do to help the soon to be former residents of N.O. Between Louisiana and Mississippi there are well over a million homeless Americans right now....

Death toll in Louisiana could be above 10,000: US Senator 2 hours, 7 minutes ago BATON ROUGE, United States (AFP) - US Senator David Vitter said that the death toll from Hurricane Katrina could top 10,000 in Louisiana alone. "My guess is that it will start at 10,000, but that is only a guess," Vitter said, adding that he was not basing his remarks on any official death toll or body count. Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, also called for the immediate deployment of regular US combat troops in New Orleans, saying the build-up of National Guard troops was too slow to quickly restore order. Such a step would require Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco to formally request the dispatch of federal army soldiers, a highly unusual step. Blanco said on Thursday that she had asked for 40,000 troops, the majority of which are National Guard units from Louisiana and elsewhere. Five-thousand National Guard troops are expected to be on the ground in violence-wracked New Orleans by late Friday, military leaders said. But Vitter said that timeline could be too slow, amid reports that bands of armed men are roaming the streets in the city, which is 80 percent submerged in floods brought in by a storm tide after the hurricane hit on Monday. Vitter, speaking to reporters at the emergency response center in Baton Rouge, also said he gave the federal government a grade 'F' for its response to the disaster so far. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050902/pl_afp/usweatherdeaths

They just had some survivors from N.O. on CNN, one guy said he was going to leave, but found the highway closed, so turned back to his house! The other 2 people said that basically, people from around there never left for Hurricanes, made it thru Betsy, and Camille....

Most everything I have read has said cash(really credit cards if you do it online) I think in the near future, many cities around the country that will take in the million + displaced people from the region(There are a lot of N.O. folks here in Atlanta even) will need clothing for these people, but right now Money for food, water and shelter has to be the top priority.

Mike you make a good point...50, 60 years ago I don't think there could be this level of publicity. The Berlin airlift I am sure had some delays at the beginning, but people don't mention that today. Getting things thru a flood zone has to slow things down. But, I got to wonder how we could have such a collapse at the local, state and Federal level. Why were there not, oh I don't know, 50 Dasani trucks a hundred miles east of N.O. in Louisiana? I heard that FEMA had a mock disaster in N.O. last year...did no one see at least some of these problems? Doesn't someone in government read National Geographic?

1523 died on the Titanic. I am afraid many more have died in those 3 states.