Hurricane Katrina

[Art Sandusky 0]

The worst is that people seem to have forgotten all of this now that gas prices have abated. Surely all the problems are fixed if oil prices are going down!

[2GOLD 0]

The worst is that people seem to have forgotten all of this now that gas prices have abated. Surely all the problems are fixed if oil prices are going down!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

That's really partial the media's fault. Once they saw no more dead, they stopped caring. It's annoying having to hunt down the new stories now cause they have been buried like 10 pages deep or further back.

[Guest Vitamin X]

The worst is that people seem to have forgotten all of this now that gas prices have abated. Surely all the problems are fixed if oil prices are going down!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

That's really partial the media's fault. Once they saw no more dead, they stopped caring. It's annoying having to hunt down the new stories now cause they have been buried like 10 pages deep or further back.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hey, the same shit's basically happened with us and Hurricane Wilma. Since South Florida was a little smarter and didn't have the immense flooding and dead folk that Katrina caused in NOLA, we've basically been ignored by national news (hell you can see it here too since the Wilma thread has two pages mostly composed of posts by Floridians, whereas this one's reached 25). 3 million people left without power, food, or water and the rest of the country could give a shit unless there's more people dead.

 

I got power back last week, only to lose half of it Monday night (I have everything working except the lights in my house, the a/c and the water heater).

[Slayer 0]

The worst is that people seem to have forgotten all of this now that gas prices have abated. Surely all the problems are fixed if oil prices are going down!

That's really partial the media's fault. Once they saw no more dead, they stopped caring. It's annoying having to hunt down the new stories now cause they have been buried like 10 pages deep or further back.

Dead...

 

buried...

 

get it?

[The Czech Republic 0]

South Florida was a little smarter

You don't read that every day

[SuperJerk 0]

Snopes has a Hurricane Katrina section now:

 

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/katrina.asp

 

please be sure to read

 

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/politics/politics.asp

 

and especially

 

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/personal/volunteer.asp

 

since I remember someone posting that email on this board.

[Art Sandusky 0]

One of my bosses at work said a few days after the hurricane that we shouldn't feel sorry for the victims because "they're all getting new houses anyway" on the day we all donated our tips and/or tipshares to the relief effort. Asshole.

[Boon 0]

If it bleeds, it leads, kiddies.

[2GOLD 0]

If it bleeds, it leads, kiddies.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Only if it's white people.

Black people....fuck you, you have BET news. Go talk about your hip hop and let us get back to important white people things.

 

Like Jessica and Nick breaking up. Oh, you still dying? Oooo sorry, your skin color isn't going to pull more ratings. But here's a free t-shirt and thank you for calling.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/national...agewanted=print

 

These candid exchanges are just a few of the glimpses inside Louisiana's highest leadership that emerged late Friday in an extraordinary release of about 100,000 pages of state documents detailing the response to Hurricane Katrina by Ms. Blanco and her staff. The state compiled the documents - including e-mail messages, hand-written notes, correspondence with the White House, and thousands of offers of assistance and desperate pleas for help - at the request of two Congressional committees looking into the state's preparedness and response.

"As we move forward, I believe the public deserves a full accounting of the response at all levels of government to the largest natural disaster in U.S. history," Ms. Blanco said in a statement about the release of the documents.

 

...

 

She said the documents demonstrated "hard-working, sleep-deprived public servants operating under enormous pressure and rapidly changing circumstances." They also show that as Hurricane Katrina approached and inundated New Orleans, Ms. Blanco's top aides realized how quickly it was becoming both a human and a political nightmare.

 

"This is absolutely the worst-case situation we have long feared," Andy Kopplin, the governor's chief of staff, wrote in an e-mail message to the Blanco administration's top aides the day before the storm hit New Orleans. "Pray for Louisiana citizens as this storm nears."

 

The correspondence released on Friday apparently received almost no editing, other than the blacking out of certain names and telephone numbers for people not associated with the state government. It includes handwritten notes, audio recordings of conference calls and even a few doodles on legal pads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are the chances of something like this happening at the White House?

[SuperJerk 0]

Does Blanco want to run for reelection?

[SuperJerk 0]

Report: Criticism of FEMA's Katrina response deserved

Inspector general: 'Much of the criticism is warranted'

 

From Mike M. Ahlers

CNN Washington Bureau

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- After being roundly criticized in a slew of media, congressional and government reports, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's internal watchdog Friday returned its own verdict on the handling of Hurricane Katrina: The criticism against FEMA is largely deserved.

 

In a hefty 218-page reportexternal link, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general writes that the federal government and FEMA received "widespread criticism for a slow and ineffective response to Hurricane Katrina."

 

"Much of the criticism is warranted," Inspector General Richard L. Skinner writes.

 

The report gives an account of FEMA's recent history and response to Katrina, covering ground that has been well-plowed in recent months, although adding some details.

 

It describes manpower problems, a decline in planning for natural disasters as attention focused on possible terrorist scenarios, and confusion over the roles and responsibilities of officials in responding to disasters.

 

It culminates with 38 recommendations to FEMA's director and to the agency's parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security.

 

Among the findings:

 

* Comprehending the disaster: With the communications infrastructure destroyed, it took FEMA officials about three days after landfall to grasp the magnitude of the hurricane's destruction.

 

* Meeting expectations: FEMA has long held that state and local governments should be prepared to survive 72 hours before federal intervention. But the report says, "It is unclear whether this is responsive to the needs of a state and the needs of disaster victims." The report continues: "What is clear is that a 72-hour response time does not meet public expectations, as was vividly demonstrated by media accounts within 24 hours after landfall."

 

* New response plans: The federal government was phasing in two "watershed planning documents" when Katrina struck -- the National Response Plan and National Incident Management System. Katrina exposed "severe deficiencies" in the response plan, such as the role of the principal federal officer, the person designated to coordinate the federal government's response. Then-FEMA Director Michael Brown was designated as such a person for Katrina.

 

* The role of emergency managers: The report questions the need for "emergency managers," one of 14 functions carried out by FEMA staff members during an emergency. Agency staffers who created the "emergency manager" function said it was "hastily designed, is incomplete and has not been fully implemented," the report says.

 

* Integrating federal and state command structures: The report says the federal government and the state of Louisiana, in particular, had "great difficulty" in meshing their command structures and "never fully achieved a unified command with FEMA."

 

* Emergency housing: The report cites numerous shortcomings with delivering housing. It notes that cruise ships contracted to provide shelter for emergency relief workers were 35 percent occupied during the first 30 days after the disaster. "At that occupancy rate, the cost to FEMA was approximately $3,363 per week per evacuee, which was about three times higher than the existing per diem rate for federal government workers in the area," the report says.

 

* Search and rescue: FEMA was ill-prepared to conduct the massive search-and-rescue function. Its federally coordinated teams conducting secondary building searches found spray-painted symbols indicating that state teams already had looked through the buildings.

 

* Ice, water and supplies: FEMA needs to improve the tracking of supplies. Some FEMA and state workers said they had to order twice as many supplies to get half of what they needed, primarily because they had no confidence in the system.

 

* Disaster drills: FEMA conducted large-scale natural disaster exercises between 1995 and 1998 but then opted for smaller ones with fewer participants. FEMA officials also said it became more difficult to maintain relationships with local officials when the job of awarding grants was transferred to another unit within the Department of Homeland Security.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/14/fema.ig/index.html

[snuffbox 0]

How is Fema handling the Tennessee tornados?

[CBright7831 0]

I still feel bad for saying "I don't think this storm will be bad at all" before it hit.

[Vampiro69 0]

Hey, I don't think many people thought it would be that bad.

[Art Sandusky 0]

I tried to re-read this whole thread but had to stop after Kanye annoyed all the comfy white people. Particularly disgusting was the idea that Time magazine doing a piece on the guy meant that their standards had gone downhill.

 

What was most surprising though was the vein of argument that it wasn't what he said that was so bad, it was when he said it. Fuck that. Just because all of the legislative ways to make minorities equal have been used doesn't mean that there's a perception of equality. Unfortunately, all of the social and economic issues that were thrust to the fore have been forgotten. Yes, you can talk about people rebuilding and have reports from the city itself, but trying to eliminate the problems and disparities is what should be coming now. Hell, the only way you can even see any of this being discussed is to catch a random speech or conference on C-SPAN.

[snuffbox 0]

Yeah...the Kanye bashing here was pretty sad. At least a couple of us here had the sense to see where he was coming from, and have some empathy for who he was rightfully speaking out for.

 

The NO Mayor debate will be aired on MSNBC tonight...and Chris Matthews will be interviewing Heckuvajob Brownie on Hardball, I think.

[Art Sandusky 0]

Relating to that, I saw Brian Williams of NBC News on C-SPAN speaking at the Conference on the Portrayal of African-Americans in the Media, and he said that NBC has committed to keeping up with frequent reports on the rebuilding process (and not the "keeping 'em honest!" kind of stories). I figured MSNBC would air the debate if no one else did.

[Guest Felonies!]

Oh, I watched that too. I enjoyed the anchorwoman from WCBS (I think) telling the DA candidate to stop whining that he gets no coverage because he's black and actually try and do some networking with station GMs and program directors if he wants coverage. But man, there was just so much RANTING on there. These people talk and have no inflections whatsoever in their voices, just this strange rambling monotone yell.

[Special K 0]

Those in power better thank their lucky stars and suck their own dicks, because Kayne took all the heat off of them.

 

As I said, I lived in NO for 5 years. EVERYONE knew that they were in deep shit if there was a hurricane. We evacuated once, I spent the night in a car in a parking garage for the other (I was SET).

 

Equal shame has to go to the local, supremely corrupt gov't, and the national gov't, but there's apparently no shame. We didn't know the levies would break. Even though EVERYONE did. Fuck it.

[Guest Arnold_OldSchool]

Waste in Katrina Response Is Cited

Housing Aid Called Inefficient in Audits

 

By Spencer S. Hsu

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, April 14, 2006; A01

 

 

 

Nearly eight months after Hurricane Katrina triggered the nation's largest housing crisis since the Second World War, a hastily improvised $10 billion effort by the federal government has produced vast sums of waste and misspent funds, an array of government audits and outside analysts have concluded.

 

As the Federal Emergency Management Agency wraps up the initial phase of its temporary housing program -- ending reliance on cruise ships and hotels for people sent fleeing by the Aug. 29 storm -- the toll of false starts and missed opportunities appears likely to top $1 billion and perhaps much more, according to a series of after-action studies and Department of Homeland Security reports, including one due for release today.

 

The government's costliest initiative -- $6.4 billion allocated to place storm survivors in temporary trailers and mobile homes -- has ground to a halt around New Orleans this week, in part because of widespread racial and class tensions. Residents of surrounding localities have refused to accept the makeshift communities.

 

Only 71 percent of the 141,000 trailers that FEMA estimates are needed are being occupied.

 

Meanwhile, the trailer program consumes more than 60 percent of funds FEMA is spending on housing aid -- even though it benefits about 10 percent of the approximately 1 million households getting help, according to agency data and the Brookings Institution, which tracks recovery progress.

 

By contrast, a rental assistance program is serving 800,000 families, or 80 percent of households, at about one-third the total cost, or more than $3 billion. It was dramatically expanded four weeks after the storm -- a sluggish start, critics said -- after intense pressure from Congress and others who said the administration from the beginning should have taken advantage of such proven programs as low-income Section 8 rental vouchers.

 

In a recent White House report, Frances Fragos Townsend, President Bush's homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, reserved some of the toughest criticism for FEMA's mass trailer initiative. She said that it "foundered due to inadequate planning and poor coordination," and she recommended that the Department of Housing and Urban Development take over from Homeland Security in future disasters.

 

Citing lack of training, expertise and engagement with other agencies, Townsend's "Lessons Learned" report stated, "The Federal government's capability to provide housing solutions to the displaced Gulf Coast population has proved to be far too slow, bureaucratic, and inefficient."

 

FEMA officials say that they could have done better, but that Hurricane Katrina has displaced 1 million families outside their home Zip codes nearly eight months after the storm -- a far greater impact than other recent disasters.

 

Spokeswoman Natalie Rule said that although FEMA is learning from critical reports, "they do not capture everything that was done well and right." She added that "the innovative housing solutions put into place in the aftermath of Katrina will now become ready solutions we can offer in future catastrophes."

 

Still, the weight of judgments from White House, Congress and analysts is that the housing effort is a failure with many causes, including institutional neglect, lack of funding, and poor planning, decision making and execution.

 

Neither FEMA nor its predecessors had ever housed hundreds of thousands of disaster victims for a prolonged period, and the collapse of its initial trailer strategy is part of what Dennis S. Mileti, former director of the National Hazards Center in Colorado, called "the largest disaster-response failure in the history of our country."

 

Mileti said the United States should focus on helping storm evacuees start over wherever they are living. "You cannot build a temporary housing park for a million people," Mileti said. "If you did, you couldn't call it a trailer park. You'd need to call it a new city."

 

Arnold R. Hirsch, a University of New Orleans historian of race and housing, called the effort a "shuffleboard" policy "of ad hoc measures . . . susceptible to last-second changes and political influences." He added: "The primary lesson we may walk away from this incident would simply be the negative one -- of what not to do."

 

According to a 218-page audit by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general that was obtained by The Washington Post in advance of its scheduled release today, FEMA cited a New Orleans hurricane as a top threat in 2001 but never completed plans because of a lack of funds.

 

Among other things, the report refers to rushed and inefficient decisions in the first weeks after Katrina:

 

 

· FEMA spent $900 million to buy 25,000 manufactured homes and 1,300 modular homes, most of which cannot be used because agency rules say they are too big or unsafe in flood zones.

 

 

· The agency spent $632 million to subsidize hotel rooms for tens of thousands of families at an average cost of $2,400 a month, three times what it later paid families to rent two-bedroom apartments.

 

 

· The agency spent $249 million to secure 8,136 cruise-ship cabins for six months, at a cost that Inspector General Richard L. Skinner estimated at $5,100 a month per passenger. That is six times the cost of renting two-bedroom apartments.

 

Skinner's report cites a "basic lack of understanding" of FEMA regulations for the $900 million manufactured- housing fiasco and a "fundamental lack of planning" for a makeshift program under which FEMA is reimbursing localities to lease 66,000 apartments for evacuees. It found the cruise ship program "not necessarily efficient."

 

Among 38 recommendations, the report calls for FEMA to provide "funding resources and institutional support" to complete catastrophic-disaster plans, develop alternative and long-term housing plans, and tighten contracting procedures.

 

On Tuesday, at the epicenter of the crisis, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin carried out an election-season threat and formally suspended development of new FEMA group trailer sites citywide. He asked the federal government to find alternatives.

 

FEMA officials privately complain that Nagin has failed to move on 108 approved sites. In a letter last week to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Nagin said FEMA has housed only 600 families on 84 approved sites, which could hold 4,200.

 

But the problem extends beyond the city. In Louisiana, only 32 of 64 parishes are accepting FEMA trailers, and about three-fourths of those parishes permit them only for their own residents, a FEMA spokesman said.

 

In Baton Rouge, whose population swelled 50 percent after the storm, the welcome mat is also gone. Mayor Melvin "Kip" Holden told reporters at a Feb. 13 Press Club gathering: "We have taken in more FEMA trailers than any county in the USA. We are out of the FEMA trailer business."

 

Although Baton Rouge is clearly straining from the burden of providing services to newcomers, people across the region say that social conflicts are feeding the hostility.

 

"It's the not-in-my-back-yard syndrome," said Jacqueline C. Jones, lead organizer for the Jeremiah Group, a New Orleans community group affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation.

 

At the same time, Jones said, evacuees are having second thoughts about moving into 28-foot trailers. She said they are concerned that another hurricane may strike and hope for more spacious FEMA apartments or modular housing.

 

Congressional impatience has mounted. Chairman Susan M. Collins (R-Maine) and ranking Democrat Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee wrote Chertoff last month, characterizing the government's "inability to help thousands of Americans who were forced from their homes" find housing "simply unacceptable," and called for improvements.

 

They were joined April 5 by the Senate Appropriations Committee, led by Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), which approved a $27 billion Katrina relief bill that would bar Chertoff from using housing funds until he submits a comprehensive plan. It also expressed continued frustration "with the lack of a housing policy for the Gulf Coast."

 

Amy Liu of the Brookings Institution said the administration underestimated the scope of the disaster and tried to manage it piecemeal. "They did not deploy all the resources they had," Liu said, referring to 12- or 18-month rental vouchers. "Everyone should have known from Day One that people didn't need two weeks' housing . . . or a month, or three months. It was crazy."

 

Staff writer Linton Weeks in New Orleans contributed to this report.

[snuffbox 0]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080329/ap_on_...ina_collections

 

Worthless.

[SamoaRowe 0]

What a load of shit.

[Obi Chris Kenobi 0]

Talk about getting your feet knocked from under you twice, that sucks