Skip to content

Tag: new orleans

katrina’s response time sucked

All I hear and read in the media recently is about how poorly and slowly President Bush responded to the hurricane. He spent 2 days in Texas that should have been spent in DC or the Gulf Coast. The majority of the National Guard and other forces didn’t arrive until a week ago. Other federal aid took a hell of a long time as well. It was embarrassing and deadly how long everything took.

What I really want to know, however, is why New Orleans or Louisiana didn’t have a decent plan on the local level? Rather, why weren’t they prepared for a disaster of this proportion when they knew it was likely to occur? Sure, federal help for a disaster of this magnitude was essential, but they should have had a plan to help its people within the first couple of days. New Orleans was literally a tragedy waiting to happen. From what I can tell, it seems that the mayor of New Orleans did a lot of complaining. And more complaining. In fact, I have yet to see a photo or read/hear about a story of him actually physically doing something about the mess. He even admitted on the radio last week that he had no idea what the governor was up to. All he could say is where the hell is the federal aid?

Who the heck elected this guy? I’m sure he’s a stand up guy in many respects, but why did he not try to go out and do anything? Or, if he did, why is the media not reporting it? Even after 9/11, New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was right there looking everything over, talking to his people. Mayor Nagin, however, was just bitching away.

New Orleans had plenty of time, PLENTY of warning that something like this could happen. But, time and time again they chose to do other things. It never was a priority because “it’ll never happen to us”. Same reason many people choose not to buy life insurance, health insurance, renters insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance. Same reason thousands of people stayed behind while the hurricane ravaged the city. (yes, I’m aware of the fact that money probably have a lot to do with it. That’s still no excuse for leaving a city completely open to disaster.)

Now the drains are opened and the city is slowly losing all of its toxic, polluted water. Great. Now the Lake and eventually the Gulf of Mexico is going to be swarmed with even more diseases, viruses and toxic infectious organisms.

The local government of New Orleans was a complete failure to rescue their people and plan for a better evacuation. The state government of Louisiana was a complete failure for a lack of quick response to do anything. And the federal government is an embarrassment in their response as well.

For shame, people.

6 replies

Hurricane Katrina

The Destruction of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans

Extensive information on Hurricane Katrina.

I’m sure that anyone who reads this probably won’t get this until Monday morning or afternoon, but if you do get this in time, this is really fascinating.

CBS station WWL based in New Orleans is streamcasting a live news feed to track the hurricane destruction and news (and coverage has been continual for days). It’s very interesting watching the live broadcast as this hurricane makes landfall. In fact, since the hurricane is so strong and powerful, they closed the French Quarter site in New Orleans and are now broadcasting from Baton Rouge at LSU. I also see that sister station KHOU in Houston is helping with the streamcast.

It’s amazing how far along technology has come along, but I also realize that there’s still so much more to come. For instance, cell phone communications in the New Orleans area are extremely difficult to get good reception. Text messaging supposedly worked a lot better. If the hurricane blows down these towers, no more reception. And it could also affect the landlines as well. That’s pretty scary.

It seems that this storm is going to completely ravage the southeast side of Louisana. Can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow morning.

Edit 8/30/05: The news coverage for this hurricane devistation has been amazing. Not only are there are a lot of new media personnel in New Orleans, but there are bloggers covering it, NASA has released photos of the view from satellites, and there are so many other ways to get news! In fact, I’m watching WWL as I type this from the Internet!

In case you haven’t followed what’s happened, the levees have broken in New Orleans and the French Quarter and most of downtown is completely drenched up to about 3 feet or more of water. Supposedly, once the water receeds, they will only allow people back into the city to collect belongings but then have to leave for a month! I cannot even IMAGINE what they would be like if that happens to be true, which I now find out it is true.

High resolution photos of Katrina from space

They have declared Martial Law in the city as well. Martial Law is usually declared in areas that have no rule at all, such as war zones. The reason they declared this is because there’s so much looting going on that it’s almost like living in a war zone. Most of this looting occured last night and will probably be the same tonight when people are less likely to get caught.

One of the most dangerous aspects of being stuck with all of this water is the disease, snakes, gators, urine, vomit, and sewage that is mixed. This makes it not only unsafe but potentially deadly. And water levels continue to rise while the Corp of Engineers tries to plug the broken levees.

Does the city of New Orleans actually recover from something like this? Or should the people of this city just call it as it is and find another place to live?

2pm – Not too long ago, a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans was proclaimed. This means anyone who is still in New Orleans, which at this point is hundreds or thousands of people, will be forced from their homes and dwellings and forced to go elsewhere. I wonder how many people are going to try to stay behind?

8/31 8:30am – Since yesterday, flood waters never receeded and in fact kept rising. There are still possibly hundreds or thousands of people who need to be rescued. And now, they plan to transfer around 23,000 people from the Superdome to the Houston Astrodome. I have no idea how this is going to happen since almost all roads to New Orleans are closed!

It’s so weird how close to “home” this has happened. The fact that I went there a little over two months ago makes this even more real to me. Most of downtown New Orleans is fresh in my mind. I am here thousands of miles away and I still can feel everything as though it happened here.

I have donated to UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) today and I urge anyone who reads this to do the same with UMCOR or the Red Cross. I believe this is the least I could do in the name of humanity.
I URGE you to do the SAME!

WWL has kept a blog about ongoing news throughout the last 24 hours or so.

Another really awesome use of technology has been the forums on both WWL and Craigslist. So many people have posted on both of these sites asking for help to find loved ones and missing people.

9/1 9:30pm – I’m starting to get Google hits because people want to know more about New Orleans hurricane information.

Hurricane Katrina photos from USA Today
Photos from downtown New Orleans
Flickr photos of Hurricane Katrina

Houston has a huge task on their hand with the thousands of homeless who are staying in Houston. I hope they can handle it.

3 replies

the big easy

I’ve lived in Southeast Texas on and off for almost 20 years. Only once in that that time span have I been to New Orleans, and that was probably around 13 or 14 years ago. I have such vague memories of the actual city, of just a few places that we went to see or the things we did. So, New Orleans was just a distant memory somewhere in the back of my mind. This weekend updated whatever little memory I had.

(more…)

1 reply