My friends say I blame Bush for everything. To which I usually respond, "Well... Tell me one thing I'm mad about that he is not responsible for."
Add this impending disaster to the list. I am on the verge of tears tonight as I think about those in New Orleans who did not have the means to get out. And then my anger turns toward Bush. We had hundreds of billions for Iraq and not even $150 million for New Orleans?
From New Orleans CityBusiness (Feb, 2005): Bush White House has been cutting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District hurricane protection budget every year since 2001.
More below...
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has identified millions of dollars in flood and hurricane protection projects in the New Orleans district.
In general, funding for construction has been on a downward trend for the past several years, said Marcia Demma, chief of the New Orleans Corps' programs management branch.
In 2001, the New Orleans district spent $147 million on construction projects. When fiscal year 2005 wraps up Sept. 30, the Corps expects to have spent $82 million, a 44.2 percent reduction from 2001 expenditures.
And an older article describing what we can expect to see, starting tomorrow. This is horrible, and it's hard to read. I hope to God these estimates are wrong.
Direct Hit Could Drown City of New Orleans
Hurricane Ivan had pummeled the sand and grass barriers two weeks earlier, washing away much of them - and the hurricane protection they provide for New Orleans.
"It looks like it's pretty much all gone," said Rowan, commander of the New Orleans district of the Army Corps of Engineers.
The second line of defense is vanishing, too. Wetlands, which absorb much of the storm surge of approaching hurricanes, are disappearing at the rate of 28,000 acres a year, bringing the sea that much closer to the city.
So New Orleans, tucked below sea level between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, is in growing danger of drowning. A direct hit by a very powerful hurricane could swamp its levees and leave as much as 20 feet of chemical-laden, snake-infested water trapped in the man-made bowl.
More than 25,000 people could die, emergency officials predict. That would make it the deadliest disaster in U.S. history, with many more fatalities than the San Francisco earthquake, the great Chicago fire, and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks combined.
"It's only a matter of time," said Terry C. Tullier, city director of emergency preparedness.
"Ivan just missed us by a hairsbreadth," he said. "The thing that keeps me awake at night is the 100,000 people who couldn't leave."
...
"The Red Cross has estimated 25,000 to 100,000 would drown, and I don't think that is unrealistic," said Ivor van Heerden, director of Louisiana State University's Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes. About 300,000 of the area's 1.2 million people would not evacuate, he predicted, and many of those would be the most vulnerable - elderly, disabled, homeless, carless.
Rescuing 300,000 people trapped inside the flooded bowl would be a logistical nightmare, and officials have started enlisting private boat owners who could help a Dunkirk-style operation to ferry people out.
Be prepared for a month of hell. And don't think for a second that we should give Bush a pass on this. Politicize it from day one, minute one. After all, it was politics that could cost thousands of people's lives in the next 24 hours.
Information about direct hit hurricane consequences has been available since the day Bush took office, and instead of acting pragmatically, he cut costs in the worst possible place. And, starting tonight, tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people will see the impact that political decisions can have.