Katrina - Page 7

lbelle1214 · #91 08-30-2005, 09:41 PM

Someone from my church just called (I'm ashamed, 'cause I haven't been there in about two years!) to collect things that the stranded said they needed...diapers, powdered baby formula, individually packed snacks, etc. So, I'm gathering up all I have and taking it to the church tomorrow. Everybody give what you can to help...money is secondary to the things they need for survival right now.

Mad4stevie · #92 08-30-2005, 09:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lbelle1214

Someone from my church just called (I'm ashamed, 'cause I haven't been there in about two years!) to collect things that the stranded said they needed...diapers, powdered baby formula, individually packed snacks, etc. So, I'm gathering up all I have and taking it to the church tomorrow. Everybody give what you can to help...money is secondary to the things they need for survival right now.

There was just a message on msnbc that said the Red Cross and Salvation Army are requesting that people NOT send food or clothing. Maybe it is easier for them to purchase things directly as needed with monetary contributions. I didn't hear the exact reasons why they are sending out this message.

strandinthewind · #93 08-31-2005, 09:57 AM

It appears one of the housing projects is burning

though it is hard to tell if that is a project or a neighborhood of row houses.

pic. is fron cnn.com

GateandGarden · #94 08-31-2005, 10:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

It appears one of the housing projects is burning

though it is hard to tell if that is a project or a neighborhood of row houses.

pic. is fron cnn.com

DrummerDeanna · #95 08-31-2005, 10:17 AM

The looting images are just something else. On CNN they're showing people leaving stores with their arms full of stuff

It's disgusting - I wish that these people - who are healthy and appartently came through ok - would put their energy to something more useful...but no

It really saddens me.

gldstwmn · #96 08-31-2005, 10:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Well, until someone can show how that equipment is sorely missed in NOLA and other parts of LA right now, you kind of have no argument

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/3...ees/index.html
Mayor blasts failure to patch levee breaches

gldstwmn · #97 08-31-2005, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I know I just saw it too - buit I wanna hear it again because it did not mention the oil reserves

Don't hold your breath.

gldstwmn · #98 08-31-2005, 10:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lbelle1214

They showed some homeless (But looked able-bodied) man before the storm hit...interviewed him and he said he was going to "ride it out" behind "that tree over there"...in New Orleans! That kind of stupidity leaves me speechless (almost) And he was only about a mile from the dome.

Well, let's look at it another way though. The toilets and garbage in the Dome are overflowing, it is 90+ degrees and officials are now saying they do not have enough water and food for everyone that is in there. They are evacuating it. I can see why people might be reluctant to go there.

strandinthewind · #99 08-31-2005, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/3...ees/index.html
Mayor blasts failure to patch levee breaches

I did read anything in that article or other related articles that suggested the equipment in Iraq could be used to plug the breached levees. In fact, they have the 3,000 sandbags, they have the shipping containers, they have the blackhawks, etc. They are just unsure how to use them. So, your argument is not supported by this article

Again, I am not being antagonistic, I am just unsure how the equipment is Iraq is missed in any significant measure as you asserted.

gldstwmn · #**100** 08-31-2005, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I did read anything in that article or other related articles that suggested the equipment in Iraq could be used to plug the breached levees. In fact, they have the 3,000 sandbags, they have the shipping containers, they have the blackhawks, etc. They are just unsure how to use them. So, your argument is not supported by this article

Again, I am not being antagonistic, I am just unsure how the equipment is Iraq is missed in any significant measure as you asserted.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin just told WWL TV in New Orleans that the project to fill the breach in the 17th St Canal flood wall with sandbags didn't fail -- the sandbags were never tried. Nagin suggested that, after repairing the breach had been made the top priority in discussions with state, federal and Orleans Parish Levee Board officials this morning, someone had apparently "reprioritized" the helicopter earmarked for the sandbag assignment. The result: unless somebody thinks of something in the next 12 to 15 hours, Nagin said, currently dry areas of New Orleans, including the French Quarter and the

Garden District, will be inundated to a point three feet above sea level. Nagin blamed the situation on "too many chiefs", and darkly suggested that some officials -- unnamed -- failed to grasp the severity of the situation.

UPDATE: Nagin said basically the same thing to WDSU TV in New Orleans. But he did not repeat the incendiary statements in an interview with CNN's Aaron Brown shortly afterward.

strandinthewind · #**101** 08-31-2005, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Well, let's look at it another way though. The toilets and garbage in the Dome are overflowing, it is 90+ degrees and officials are now saying they do not have enough water and food for everyone that is in there. They are evacuating it. I can see why people might be reluctant to go there.

In the beginning it was not that way and the people rescued from their roof tops in the sewage laden and corpse filled water in the 90+ degree heat with no food and water might find the Dome or another shelter a little better. Also, do not be surprised if in the end, they find people dead from snake bites and/or eaten by hungry wild animals.

I mean when the govt., based on expert opinion, orders you to do something and tells you that if you do not, you are placing the your life and the lives of others in peril, you do it - period. Again, these able bodied people are thwarting the rescue efforts of people who cannot help themselves. This is kind of a no brainer to me.

gldstwmn · #**102** 08-31-2005, 10:30 AM

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/..._id=1001051313

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues

By Will Bunch

Published: August 30, 2005 9:00 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans late on Tuesday. That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level with the massive lake.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

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.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

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 a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "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."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. 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.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late.

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."

Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be."

gldstwmn · #**103** 08-31-2005, 10:30 AM

Does that work for you Strandie, or did you need more?

strandinthewind · #**104** 08-31-2005, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin just told WWL TV in New Orleans that the project to fill the breach in the 17th St Canal flood wall with sandbags didn't fail -- the sandbags were never tried. Nagin suggested that, after repairing the breach had been made the top priority in discussions with state, federal and Orleans Parish Levee Board officials this morning, someone had apparently "reprioritized" the helicopter earmarked for the sandbag assignment. The result: unless somebody thinks of something in the next 12 to 15 hours, Nagin said, currently dry areas of New Orleans, including the French Quarter and the

Garden District, will be inundated to a point three feet above sea level. Nagin blamed the situation on "too many chiefs", and darkly suggested that some officials -- unnamed -- failed to grasp the severity of the situation.

UPDATE: Nagin said basically the same thing to WDSU TV in New Orleans. But he did not repeat the incendiary statements in an interview with CNN's Aaron Brown shortly afterward.

Mea Culpa - I read or heard where the sandbags were tried but did not work. Alot of info. is coming through at once it seems.

strandinthewind · #**105** 08-31-2005, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Does that work for you Strandie, or did you need more?

Well, then you have to back to the 70's because NOLA has been begging for Federal Intervention in the structure of the levees and pumping system - and for the most part, they never got it.

Moreover, that really does not explain how the actual vehicles in Iraq would be better served in NOLA as you implied