It looks like this is going to turn out to be one of the biggest disasters in American history and one that will be remembered long after we've all moved on. First off, and most importantly, help out where you can, as much as you can. The CW is that the Red Cross is the best and safest place to give, but certainly it isn't the only one.
Now, on to the details. It's too soon to get any kind of death toll, but it's obvious that the cost in human life will be high. Not tsunami high, but high enough. My thoughts go out to the families of the deceased and to the many who are going to be left to wonder about their loved ones as everything gets sorted out. Stories like this are horrifying:
Rescuers along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast pushed aside the dead to reach the living Tuesday in a race against time and rising waters, while New Orleans sank deeper into crisis and Louisiana's governor ordered storm refugees out of this drowning city.
After the flip, I take a tour of the blogosphere and beyond as we all try to cope with this disaster.
The damage to New Orleans is catastrophic as much as 80% of the city is under water, much of it twenty feet deep. And the storm isn't done with the Big Easy, either, as levees continue to fail and more water continues to pour into the streets. If you've ever been to New Orleans, savor your memories, as the place is likely to never be the same. Other areas in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and, to a lesser extent, Florida were also hit hard. And hurricane season is far from over.
Several parishes in Louisiana are closed. Completely. For at least a month. First was Jefferson, and Plaquemines may be next. Others may follow and the damage is already estimated at $25 billion. On a more personal level, many of us will see a practial effect of the storm at the gas pump, although that's a minor complaint compared to what millions in the path of Katrina have dealt with and will continue to deal with for a long time.
The increasing frequency and damage from hurricanes is significant evidence to support global warming arguments, although I'm sure those who are willing to remain blind to reality will ignore this evidence, too, putting the rest of us in increasing danger.
I'm sure much of the response to this will be a great outpouring of sympathy, help and unity, but it is already bringing out the worst in people, from looting to economic exploitation to price gouging at gas stations (and I don't consider people stealing food so they can survey to be looters).
It will probably not surprise you to learn that there are, in plentiful quantities. Those of you seeking souvenirs of the destruction and human tragedy left in Katrina's wake can choose from several versions of "I survived Hurricane Katrina" t-shirts; shirts with the satellite map image which extoll survivors to "Prepare, Endure, Rebuild" (20% of profits donated to relief funds!); numerous Katrina & the Waves items which may or may not have been posted in reaction to the hurricane; several seashells washed up by Katrina; the seemingly ill-conceived "NOReliefFund" .net, .org and .com domain names (10% of selling price donated to the Red Cross!); the HurricaneKatrina.BIZ domain name (no mention of any donated percentages); hurricane photos on CD; containers of real Hurricane Katrina rain; Atlantic Ocean coral from Hurricane Katrina; a keepsake described as "HURRICANE KATRINA ENGRAVED TAG < BLING BLING!!> HOTTT!"; a Segway-knockoff called an Electric Chariot, described as "Fast & strong like HURRICANE KATRINA"; and one apparently genuine offer of shelter from someone in a small house with one spare bedroom.
Worst of all seems to be a prison break, riot and hostage situation that includes children as hostages.
How have the wingnuts reacted? As expected:
But wouldn't you know, the biggest dittohead on the block, Rush Limbaugh, is calling the storm Hurricane Katrina vanden Heuvel and warning that the left is going to use this tragedy against the right. Jonah Goldberg, who has never seen a bad joke bandwagon he could resist jumping on with both feet, blogged, and I quote, "It would be pretty cool if Fox played to caricature and repeatedly referred to the hurricane as Katrina vanden Heuvel." Not satisfied, he went on to imagine the headlines, "The destruction from Katrina vanden Heuvel is expected to be massive...The poor and disabled are particularly likely to suffer from the effects of Katrina vanden Heuvel."
I'm sure that most conservatives and most Republicans didn't respond this way, but these are pretty mainstream stars in the conservative pantheon. And to be fair, some on the left have responded poorly as well.
From a political standpoint, it appears that this is another example of Bush having screwed up on an important issue. Obviously, Bush isn't responsible for anything that happened, but it seems that he could've done more, as usual, to have forestalled the worst of what has happened. Bold statement? Yes, but there is evidence:
"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us." -- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness: The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes. The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed. "The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."
From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune: "The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them." The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.
And Bush hasn't improved on this for the future, either, although hopefully that will change now.
In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal funding.
Bush has also underplayed the short-term response to Katrina. Sure, he cancelled his "necessary" vacation (or was it not a vacation, his people keep flip-flopping), but not before getting in some guitar time. He sent only 3500 National Guard to help with the relief effort. His father sent more than 30,000 troops to deal with Andrew in 1992. I wonder what else might be distracting our National Gaurd at a time like this?
And it isn't just Democrats and liberals who make this complaint:
Meanwhile, local officials said that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection - including fortifying homes, building up levees and repairing barrier islands - the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be.
"If we had been investing resources in restoring our coast, it wouldn't have prevented the storm but the barrier islands would have absorbed some of the tidal surge," said Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-La. "People's lives are at stake. We need to take this more seriously."
These political considerations shouldn't overshadow the tragedy and grief of what has happened, but they should be things we remember down the road to remind voters what kinds of negative effects come out of voting Republican (again, not the hurricane or the damage, but the preparedness and the response).
Finally, to help the impact of this sink in, I just want to leave you with some of the short blog entries from WWTLV Blog (a New Orleans TV station):
- One Mississippi county alone said its death toll was at least 100, and officials are "very, very worried that this is going to go a lot higher," said Joe Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County, home to Biloxi and Gulfport.
- Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu: 3000 rescued to date. People taken from rooftops, attics and from water, clinging to inner tubes.
- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says hundreds, if not thousands, of people may still be stuck on roofs and in attics, and so rescue boats were bypassing the dead.
- Mayor Nagin: Unhappy that the helicopters slated to drop 3,000-pound bags into the levee never showed up to stop the flow of water. Too many chiefs calling shots he says.
- John Marie of Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office: No one is allowed back into parish. Marshall law in effect. Forty-seven people were rescued by parish officials Monday and several dozen were rescued Tuesday.
- N.O. Councilman Oliver Thomas: "What you see on TV, you have no idea what the level of devastation and frustration is on the street."
- Jeff Parish schools chief Dianne Roussel says two months is probably "optimistic" to get schools back and functioning.
- Electric companies from around the country are rushing crews to the hurricane-ravaged South. They will help restore power to an area so devastated that it could be weeks or even months before the lights come back on in many places.
- WWL-TV Reporter quotes officials as saying there may now be 60,000 people in the Superdome and that more people are still being urged to go there.
- WWL-TV reporter Jonathan Betz reports widespread looting and WWL-TV cameras showed people walking out of Canal Street stores with racks of clothes and electronics. Some looters concentrated on basics and supplies, while others made no secret of their desire to get what they could.
- With conditions in the hurricane-ravaged city of New Orleans rapidly deteriorating, Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Tuesday that people now huddled in the Superdome and other rescue centers need to be evacuated.
- Charity Hospital is out of commission and they are trying to evacuate patients, but it is hard to get there because rising water is surrounding the hospital. They will try to evacuate the patients to other cities.
- Video on WAFB-TV shows the Twin Spans between I-10 and Slidell broken in dozens of spots.
- Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard says there is no plumbing and the sanitary situation is getting nasty. He told WAFB-TV that he is carrying around a bag for his own human waste.
- Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi says "this is going to be the most expensive natural disaster that's hit the United States in history."
- Kenner mayor asking for more National Guard. Asks anyone with the guard to call 468-7200.
- Entergy reports 1.1 million outages in Mississippi and Louisiana.
- Councilman Byron Lee of Jefferson Parish, "This is not life as it used to be. It's like a war zone."
And some more from the NOLA blog:
- Sitting on a black barrel amid the muck and stench near the St. Claude Avenue bridge, 52-year-old Daniel Weber broke into a sob, his voice cracking as he recounted how he had watched his wife drown and spent the next 14 hours floating in the polluted flood waters, his only life line a piece of driftwood.
- "Get out," said City Attorney Sherry Landry from the window of the SUV she would use to evacuate. "I'm serious." For many, that wasn't an option. In the impoverished 9th Ward, many didn't flee the storm in the first place because of lack of money and transportation, as well as a belief the storm wouldn't be nearly as bad as threatened. On Tuesday, they remained the focus of efforts to evacuate the newly homeless to the already crowded Superdome.
- That left thousands of people in other neighborhoods close to the lake, whose homes had not flooded until late Monday when the canal gave way, with no option other than to walk to the few dry areas of the city. Interstate 10 remained largely devoid of cars, but a steady stream of pedestrians seeking food, water and shelter walked along the highway.
- Some who left their flooded homes faced heart-rending dilemmas. Bethaney Waith of Mid-City, who walked in chest high water with a neighbor to the Superdome, had to leave her disabled housemate behind. The woman suffered from epidemia and can't walk.
- Many stumbled from dehydration as they made their way onto dry land. Several rescue workers said some of the people trapped were so shell-shocked or stubborn they refused to leave their houses.
- The scene called to mind a refugee camp in a Third World nation. Liquor flowed freely and tempers flared amid complaints about the pace of the relief effort, which seemed to overwhelm the agencies involved and the city's inability to contain flood waters.
- The New Orleans police officer shot in the head by a looter Tuesday was expected to survive, officials said.
You can also see pictures at Flickr or check out blogging from the region: