It happened here in this country, on our soil and that it was perpetrated against our own citizens.
I am not talking about Sept 11th, I am not talking Oklahoma City. I am speaking of Hurricane Katrina and it's devastation to the Gulf States, and most importantly the insane, unprofessional, unbelievable, non-response by the Bush Administration and local NOLA authorities.
I and my husband are huge fans of This American Life. It's a radio show on National Public Radio, and I guess it feels to me, like people reading diaries and memoirs to me over the air ways. I love it because there are no pictures, no film. Just voices, and my imagination, my humor, my education. Listening is an exercise for an entirely underutilized part of the brain in my opinion. So I get the benefit of entertainment and education, and honing my listening skills simultaneously when I listen to this show.
Tomorrow is the 7 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Tonight, Hurricane Isaac will reach the shore as at least a Category 1 hurricane with 100 mph winds. Katrina was a Cat III storm which means it's winds were between 100 and 131 MPH thereabouts.
As an Okie, I know what 100 mph winds will do. Add to that driving rain and a raging storm surge and you got some major issues to deal with.
Lots of people have commented over time, how they didn't understand why everyone in NOLA didn't flee the area upon the announcement of the arrival of this storm. Well first of all, it wasn't expected to reach category III strength, but did just before it made landfall. And secondly, if you got no money, how do you leave town? If you got no where to go--where do you go with no money? What do you do for transportation?
People imagine themselves walking out of town--and I just have to ask: Do you really think you can out walk the rain bands and high winds and local flooding? Do you think you are going to out walk the little tornadoes that spin up on those bands, or the lightning bolts, or the falling trees and power lines? And where pray tell do you go from there?
So many of the people trapped there, were elderly, poor, or with small children or disabled. Not only did they not expect a storm of Katrina's magnitude, but they also didn't count on being ignored by their own government. Seriously I have seen better responses to citizens in foreign countries, then what went down in New Orleans or most of the Gulf States for that matter.
Sonic Cherry Limeade anyone?
Watching this unfold on the television was horrific. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to actually be there with bloated bodies of neighbors, on the sidewalks baking in the hot southern sun. All these people being crammed in the Superdome like sardines, with no sanitation, no incoming food or water or other supplies like diapers or medication for the children and the elderly that were present too.
The length of time it took for our government to respond and send support and aid into the South, and into New Orleans in particular was unbelievable.
I am going to be taking material from a transcript of After the Flood on This American Life.
The Governor of Louisiana declares a state of emergency the Friday before the storm hits, calls on the federal government to step in. Then President Bush officially declares a state of emergency in Louisiana the next day, Saturday before the storm, and authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency to act. You can read the paper where he does this on the White House website. Basically, that should have settled who was in charge.
I want to let this sink in for a moment. The way our new Homeland Security laws work is that if a catastrophic occurrence happens on American soil, the federal government doesn't need permission from local or state authorities to step in and take charge. This was a post 9-11 rewrite. So any claims that locals stood in the way is total BS. They didn't have the legal authority to stand in the way, given the circumstances.
In the event of a large-scale emergency, DHS assumes primary responsibility for ensuring that response professionals are prepared.[7] This is intended to prevent the negative consequences of uncoordinated responses by local, state, and federal agencies during emergencies. Wikipedia-National Response Plan
This new plan was implemented in 2004. Katrina happened in 2005.
What transpired on the ground in our own country is beyond belief. I wish it weren't true. I wish this were as fake as FEMA Camps, but it's not. We as a country, failed these citizens. We failed our neighbors. Sometimes I think I must be the only person who sees it this way. But I saw and read and heard about things happening that should never happen in this country. Scenarios that sounded more at home in a far away land run by a junta or regional war lords.
I always knew that things were going in the wrong direction in this country. But it was watching the response to hurricane Katrina unfold that finally caved in any illusion I had that this was the place I knew and loved as a child.
This next quote is from a story about a woman who stayed with her mom at a hospital. After the levees broke, people wandered into this hospital trying to enter, looking for food and water and shelter. The hospital turned them away, even with a severely dehydrated baby.
Babies can die within hours of dehydration. They are so small, they loose their water so easily. So the seriousness of this situation recounted in this vignette should not be discounted, it should not be minimized.
That happened over and over again. The person who sticks out most in my mind is a man who had his wife and his two children, and his baby-- his daughter was so dehydrated. The people were yelling at him, you can't come in here. We were on the smoking patio, which is on the second floor, so we saw them. And we were yelling at them, man, leave the baby. Man, leave the baby. And he was like, I can't leave my baby. We don't have a house. How am I going to find my baby if I leave him with you? I don't know where you're going to take him. I've been in this water for two days. It was just devastating to just see that.We knew that nobody was going to be able to come up in there. And so the people on the smoking balcony, we would throw them water, and we tried to throw them food.
What kind of country have we become, that hospitals can turn away families after a disaster, especially those with wounded or sickened children? This reads like a scene from a war zone. This shouldn't have happened on our soil due to a natural disaster.
This nurse reports that the hospital evacuated. They ran out of water in the building the first day, and no supplies were forthcoming --WHY? Your guess is as good as mine. We can put a man on the moon, but we can't seem to airlift supplies to a hospital on our own soil. The hospital people ended up at the Superdome with a lot of other citizens. She reported that it was like a sewer in there.
We slept on the sidewalk. This place, there was trash all over the ground outside, and I was thinking, how are the girls going to even lay down with their babies? There's not a spot that's clean, nothing. There's nowhere to lay down. And then my mom wanted me to make sure I tell you, what they kept doing the whole time was tell us to line up for the buses that never came. It was like they were doing drills every four hours. You all have to line up for the bus. And if you bum rush the bus, they're just going to take off without you, and nobody is going to get to go anywhere. You have to line up. You have to be in a straight line. We're talking about old people in wheelchairs and women with babies in lines, waiting for buses that you know God damn well aren't coming, like they were playing with us.
Imagine being tired, so tired your bones hurt, your eyes hurt. You are hungry, thirsty, you have human feces on your feet, maybe you are in a wheel chair or use a walker, or you might have an infant. And this is what you go through. Waiting in line in the heat for buses that never come. WTF!? The people there were broken, and dejected. This is how we treat our fellow Americans? So what's the point? They left these people lined up in the hot sun to die with no food or water. There is the physical drain on your person having gone through a hurricane and now this, but there is also an emotional toll. A moment when you realize all that junk they taught you in school about your own country is pure unadulterated bs. That your citizenship means crap, even in your own country. You are disposable, especially if you are poor, elderly, disabled, a mother, infant, and/or the wrong color.
No wonder the RNC wanted to avoid a split screen with Hurricane Isaac. After all, this happened on their watch.
I am such a boyscout at heart. I always thought, especially while in Uniform, that nothing like that would ever be allowed to happen on our own soil. Even though I wasn't there, even though I didn't have to go through, physically what these people went through, watching it, hearing it, broke my heart in ways I cannot even give words to. It was such a departure from everything I ever believed was best about the United States.
Where is our pride? Where is our can-do spirit? What happened to us? When exactly did we loose our soul, and how do we begin to retrieve it?
So when you read this next segment--ask yourself, is this so unbelievable given this young woman's circumstances, all that she had witnessed? Wouldn't this be believable to you as well if you had walked a mile in her shit-encrusted shoes?
I was almost convinced, because I kept having a vision of them opening that floodgate on us, of my niece and her baby floating away from me screaming. And I just knew it. And then the next morning, I heard from somebody that they actually were going to open that floodgate. So by the time the rumor started that the National Guard was going to kill us, I almost halfway believed it.
I still have issues swallowing the fact that the profound level of our collective failure never really stuck. That people still just don't get it.
The police kept passing us by, and the National Guard kept passing us by with their guns pointed at us. When you see a truck full of water, and people have been crying for water for a day and a night, and the water truck passes you by, just keeps going, how are we supposed to believe that these people were here to help us?...
A hydrated adult can go without water for maybe 3 to 5 days, under ideal conditions. However
a stressed person or someone already overheated, can become dehydrated or even die in a matter of hours. The woman giving this account, Ms Moore reported seeing several people die in the Superdome.
I hope you read the rest of this transcript. Criminals were getting milk and juice and diapers for babies and the elderly. That is more than what our government did. When people tried to walk out of the city, they would be turned away, at gunpoint.
Guns were trained on citizens trying to leave a disaster scene, with no access to food or water. I know the first time I listened to this episode, my husband and I, were so pissed off. What planet is this, what alternate reality did we wake up in? They'd go up the bridge to go across to the West Bank where it was dry and lights were on. And the National Guard was up there with guns. They turned them back with guns, and the Governor gave orders to shoot to kill. You couldn't get through them.
WHY? Someone please explain to me why anyone needed to shoot these people if they crossed a bridge? No one was sending buses. Food and Water weren't coming in, there were no porto-potties being set up, no tents, nothing. And yet, if they try to leave what is essentially a desolate, flooded shit-hole, someone will shoot them.
Did the governor really give an order to shoot and kill regular, nonviolent citizens attempting to cross a bridge? I understand that there was gun violence in some areas, and I get that, but really? Corralling citizens in areas with no food, water or sanitation or shelter? Trapping them with the violence?
Oh yea, that makes perfect sense.
When a local motel manager collected money from patrons to charter buses to leave NOLA, the military commandeered the buses coming into town, leaving the patrons trapped in the city. It's like a goddamn Greek tragedy. See Act II Forgotten but not Lost, 2nd Paragraph. The people trapped, were paramedics and some with their families. People you would think most likely capable of surviving and rendering aid during a disaster. Well only if you aren't being hindered by the idiot, powers that be.
I read a diary today, "They Deserved To Die" about a waitress giving her opinion that the people who died in Katrina deserved to. I bet she didn't know anything about this.
And as the storm approached, there were no flights out of the city, there were no rental cars available. And so they stayed in their hotel, luckily their hotel let them stay. No electricity, eating boxed cereal, canned soup, whatever they had there in the hotel.
The hotels kicked these people out when they ran out of food and water. These out-of town paramedics+ family members and other guests, wandering around, they cannot get into any kind of shelter. There is nothing for them. The police tell them to cross the bridge to find buses. Only remember Act I--bridges are blocked by armed guards who have been ordered to shoot to kill. The Gretna sheriffs fired upon these people before they could even ask, to cross the bridge.
Tourists with pull along baggage, people with children, paramedics, and sheriffs fired upon them, United States Citizens, unarmed citizens, on our own soil, for attempting to cross a bridge, trying to leave a disaster area.
They were turned away. Not allowed to pass. Some of these people stayed together and tried to make a temporary shelter in an overpass, they had managed to access some potable water and some food.
A Gretna sheriff came up and just had that crazy look that, as a paramedic, when I see that crazy look, you just find a way to not come in front of that energy. Because he had a gun, and he was pointing and screaming at us, get the [BLEEP] off this freeway. Get the [BLEEP] off this freeway. Like the most insane, crazed, frightened person ever. And we had to leave this place of safety, and went into the dark. And it was martial law by this point, and we had heard it was a shoot to kill policy.
Why? Well I am sure that only a licensed, trained mental health professional could tell us why. But really, wouldn't you expect something like this to happen in Mogadishu, but not in the United States? A police helicopter hovered close to this makeshift shelter and literally blew all this stuff left there, away.
A helicopter on a normal planet would be used to air lift people to safety. But in this alternate reality, a helicopter is used to destroy makeshift shelters being used by citizen-refugees.
It boggles my mind to this day, how the people involved in these criminal acts can live with themselves for making and acting on such decisions.
Even if you were given orders to do this, to be this way, how could you let that supercede your human decency, and give yourself permission to treat your fellow American Citizens like this? That is not the America, I was raised in, and it certainly isn't the kind of America I would choose to perpetuate. I guess I come from older stock, that still remembers how to be kind and compassionate to those, who for whatever reason, have suddenly become less fortunate than I.
I guess my parents raised me not to be an asshole.
My America doesn't kill people for being poor or for being the wrong color. In my America, we have enough food and water to sustain our citizens through natural disasters. We have enough military assets to conduct timely search and rescue missions. We have enough brain power to make the situation work for the people, rather than just letting them die in their own waste.
When Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water, FEMA officials turned them away, he said. Agency workers prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the parish's emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA, Mr. Broussard said. NYT 2005
It all feels a bit contrived doesn't it? These sorts of failures. Is it really incompetence, or a Wag the Dog kind of thing. All these screams about "You can't trust the Gub'mint" and you know you really cannot trust them at all, when the GOP is in charge. The term self-fulfilling prophecy comes to mind.
A one hundred million dollar boondoggle: Stumbling Storm-Aid Effort Puts Tons of Ice on Trips to Nowhere.
Sick and Abandoned
You can listen to the entire show here: This American Life: After the Flood.
Doctors eager to help sick and injured evacuees were handed mops by federal officials who expressed concern about legal liability. Even as violence and looting slowed rescues, police from other states were turned back while officials squabbled over who should take charge of restoring the peace.
CNN: Leadership Vacuum Stymied Aid Offers.
I know you thought we had only just recently reached a critical mass in terms of Teh Stoopid, but apparently we have peaked before. Legal Liabilities? Seriously? Anyone else buying that? I highly recommend you read the entire CNN story--this quote is but one jewel, in the crown of idiocy awaiting rediscovery.
I know you thought that the Fail Doctrine was post Obama, but what if it wasn't? What if it predates the 2008 presidential elections significantly?What if there was a concerted effort to spread F.U.D throughout our country towards our government, by slowly dismantling it stone by stone via administrative sabotage.
Note: I don't normally use so many, large quotes. However I make exceptions on occasion. In this case, I felt that these quotes were so riveting, and represented such a bizarre circumstance, that I would loose something significant in the interpretation. I urge you to either listen to this show or read the entire transcript.
My initial thought about the state of our government, having watched these enormous gaffes over the years, the turf wars and all, is that we have to fix this.
Or else it won't matter. Without a strong government, we will be at the mercy of any power that happens along on our shores--more so than usual. Nature, after all, abhors a vacuum.
Wed Aug 29, 2012 at 9:18 AM PT: Be sure and read: Let them Eat Shit, by Mitchel Cohen at Counterpunch.
http://www.counterpunch.org/...
His conclusions are plausible given the circumstances.
The military and the National Guard basically run themselves. The whole point of having a chain of command is so that if you loose leadership at the top, that the next tier of folks can take over. So the only reason for them to be unable to render aid --would be the product of a direct order.