Fact-esque

Katrina Relief Project

While researching volunteer match websites for work, I came across the BuxMont Katrina Project, which is an opportunity for people in Bucks and Montgomery counties to help rebuild a part of the Gulf Coast.  The Salvation Army is deeply involved and I'm no fan of that organization but if you're a Bucks or Montgomery County person looking for a way to help, this may be for you.

This Date in History

via Think Progress

Wednesday, August 31

1:45AM CDT — FEMA REQUESTS AMBULANCES THAT DO NOT EXIST: “Almost 18 hours later, [FEMA] canceled the request for the ambulances because it turned out, as one FEMA employee put it, ‘the DOT doesn’t do ambulances.’” [Wall Street Journal]

11:20 AM CDT — FEMA STAFF WARNED BROWN THAT PEOPLE WERE DYING AT THE SUPERDOME: Three hours later, Brown’s press secretary wrote to colleagues complaining that Brown needed more time scheduled to eat at a restaurant: “He needs much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes. We now have traffic to encounter to go to and from a location of his choise (sic), followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you.” [AP]

NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS ARRIVE IN LOUSIANA, MISSISSIPPI, ALABAMA, AND FLORIDA: Troops arrive two days after they are requested. [Boston Globe]

TENS OF THOUSANDS TRAPPED IN SUPERDOME; CONDITIONS DETERIORATE: “A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers. ‘We pee on the floor. We are like animals,’ said Taffany Smith, 25, as she cradled her 3-week-old son, Terry. … By Wednesday, it had degenerated into horror. … At least two people, including a child, have been raped. At least three people have died, including one man who jumped 50 feet to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for. There is no sanitation. The stench is overwhelming.”" [Los Angeles Times, 9/1/05]

PRESIDENT BUSH FINALLY ORGANIZES TASK FORCE TO COORDINATE FEDERAL RESPONSE: Bush says on Tuesday he will “fly to Washington to begin work…with a task force that will coordinate the work of 14 federal agencies involved in the relief effort.” [New York Times, 8/31/05]

JEFFERSON PARISH EMERGENCY DIRECTOR SAYS FOOD AND WATER SUPPLY GONE: “Director Walter Maestri: FEMA and national agencies not delivering the help nearly as fast as it is needed.” [WWL-TV]

80,000 BELIEVED STRANDED IN NEW ORLEANS: Former Mayor Sidney Barthelemy “estimated 80,000 were trapped in the flooded city and urged President Bush to send more troops.” [Reuters]

3,000 STRANDED AT CONVENTION CENTER WITHOUT FOOD OR WATER: “With 3,000 or more evacuees stranded at the convention center — and with no apparent contingency plan or authority to deal with them — collecting a body was no one’s priority. … Some had been at the convention center since Tuesday morning but had received no food, water or instructions.” [Times-Picayune]

PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY DECLARED FOR ENTIRE GULF COAST: “After a natural disaster, short and long-term medical problems can occur. Diseases like cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and mosquito-borne illnesses tend to break out under these conditions.” [WCBS-TV]

BUSH SURVEYS DAMAGE FROM AIR FORCE ONE: President Bush flew over New Orleans on Air Force One. “During the 35-minute tour, Bush clearly saw from his vantage point the damage to the football stadium in New Orleans as well as the flooded neighborhoods, wiped out bridges and slabs of foundations where houses used to stand.” [Fox News]

CHERTOFF “EXTREMELY PLEASED WITH THE RESPONSE” OF THE GOVERNMENT: “We are extremely pleased with the response that every element of the federal government, all of our federal partners, have made to this terrible tragedy.” [Department of Homeland Security]

EARLY AM — BLANCO AGAIN TRIES TO REQUEST HELP FROM BUSH: “She was transferred around the White House for a while until she ended up on the phone with Fran Townsend, the president’s Homeland Security adviser, who tried to reassure her but did not have many specifics. Hours later, Blanco called back and insisted on speaking to the president. When he came on the line, the governor recalled, “I just asked him for help, ‘whatever you have’.” She asked for 40,000 troops.” [Newsweek]

4PM CDT — BUSH GIVES FIRST MAJOR ADDRESS ON KATRINA: “Nothing about the president’s demeanor… — which seemed casual to the point of carelessness — suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.” [New York Times]

7PM CDT — CONDOLEEZZA RICE TAKES IN A BROADWAY SHOW: “On Wednesday night, Secretary Rice was booed by some audience members at ‘Spamalot!, the Monty Python musical at the Shubert, when the lights went up after the performance.” [New York Post, 9/2/05]

8PM CDT — FEMA DIRECTOR BROWN CLAIMS SURPRISE OVER SIZE OF STORM: “I must say, this storm is much much bigger than anyone expected.” [CNN]

This Date in History

Tuesday, August 30

11AM CDT — BUSH SPEAKS ON IRAQ AT NAVAL BASE CORONADO [White House]

MIDDAY — CHERTOFF CLAIMS HE FINALLY BECOMES AWARE THAT LEVEE HAS FAILED: “It was on Tuesday that the levee–may have been overnight Monday to Tuesday–that the levee started to break. And it was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap and that essentially the lake was going to start to drain into the city.” But later reports note that the Bush administration learned of the levee breach on Aug. 29. [Meet the Press, 9/4/05; AP]

PENTAGON CLAIMS THERE ARE ENOUGH NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS IN REGION: “Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the states have adequate National Guard units to handle the hurricane needs.” [WWL-TV]

MASS LOOTING REPORTED, SECURITY SHORTAGE CITED: “The looting is out of control. The French Quarter has been attacked,” Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson said. “We’re using exhausted, scarce police to control looting when they should be used for search and rescue while we still have people on rooftops.” [AP]

U.S.S. BATAAN SITS OFF SHORE, VIRTUALLY UNUSED: “The USS Bataan, a 844-foot ship designed to dispatch Marines in amphibious assaults, has helicopters, doctors, hospital beds, food and water. It also can make its own water, up to 100,000 gallons a day. And it just happened to be in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina came roaring ashore. The Bataan rode out the storm and then followed it toward shore, awaiting relief orders. Helicopter pilots flying from its deck were some of the first to begin plucking stranded New Orleans residents. But now the Bataan’s hospital facilities, including six operating rooms and beds for 600 patients, are empty.” [Chicago Tribune]

2PM CDT — PRESIDENT BUSH PLAYS GUITAR WITH COUNTRY SINGER MARK WILLIS [AP]

BUSH RETURNS TO CRAWFORD FOR FINAL NIGHT OF VACATION [AP]

Katrina Day: Part Two

Katrina Day

"Katrina Day" sounds too festive for what today marks.  I think the name Katrina is too beautiful anyway to be used to name a storm system that could take lives.  Storms should be named after CEO's, political leaders and other dictators.  "Remember when Cheney swept through?  Killed over 300 people."

While you're blogging around today, be sure to stop at Recording Katrina.  It's a project that Thomas Nephew, Riggsveda, That Farm Girl and I started up last September when we wanted to preserve the non-traditional reporting that was being done in Katrina's aftermath.  We needed a place to park all of the good, first-person accounts of the tragedy, which we didn't want to see disappear down the Internets' memory hole. 

Of all the witness statements collected there, this one from Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky is the one that affected me the most strongly because it goes beyond the immediate suffering of the survivors and touches on why and how that suffering was exacerbated by the people who were entrusted to mitigate it.  From their account:

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same
trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away.
Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally
berated and humiliated.  Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited
from self-evacuating the City on foot.  Meanwhile, the only two City shelters
sank further into squalor and disrepair.  The only way across the bridge was
by vehicle.  We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks
and any car that could be hotwired.  All were packed with people trying to
escape the misery New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom.  Someone stole a water delivery truck
and brought it up to us.  Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the
freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn.
We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts.  Now secure with the
two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity
flowered.  We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles.  We
made beds from wood pallets and cardboard.  We designated a storm drain as the
bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic,
broken umbrellas, and other scraps.  We even organized a food recycling system
where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and
candies for kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina.   When
individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself
only.  You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for
your parents.  When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for
each other, working together and constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the
first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would
not have set in.

Go read the rest to find out what happened to their camp on the bridge.

This Date in History

via Think Progress:

Monday, August 29

7AM CDT — KATRINA MAKES LANDFALL AS A CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE [CNN]

7:30 AM CDT — BUSH ADMINISTRATION NOTIFIED OF THE LEVEE BREACH: The administration finds out that a levee in New Orleans was breached. On this day, 28 “government agencies, from local Louisiana parishes to the White House, [reported that] that New Orleans levees” were breached. [AP]

8AM CDT — MAYOR NAGIN REPORTS THAT WATER IS FLOWING OVER LEVEE: “I’ve gotten reports this morning that there is already water coming over some of the levee systems. In the lower ninth ward, we’ve had one of our pumping stations to stop operating, so we will have significant flooding, it is just a matter of how much.” [NBC’s “Today Show”]

11:13 AM CDT - WHITE HOUSE CIRCULATES INTERNAL MEMO ABOUT LEVEE BREACH: “Flooding is significant throughout the region and a levee in New Orleans has reportedly been breached sending 6-8 feet of water throughout the 9th ward area of the city.” [AP]

MORNING — BROWN WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE POTENTIAL DEVASTATION OF KATRINA: In a briefing, Brown warned Bush, “This is, to put it mildly, the big one, I think.” He also voiced concerns that the government may not have the capacity to “respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe” and that the Superdome was ill-equipped to be a refuge of last resort. [AP]

MORNING — MAYFIELD WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE TOPPING OF THE LEVEES: In the same briefing, Max Mayfield, National Hurricane Center Director, warns, “This is a category 5 hurricane, very similar to Hurricane Andrew in the maximum intensity, but there’s a big big difference. This hurricane is much larger than Andrew ever was. I also want to make absolutely clear to everyone that the greatest potential for large loss of lives is still in the coastal areas from the storm surge. … I don’t think anyone can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but there’s obviously a very very grave concern.” [AP]

MORNING — BUSH CALLS SECRETARY CHERTOFF TO DISCUSS IMMIGRATION: “I spoke to Mike Chertoff today — he’s the head of the Department of Homeland Security. I knew people would want me to discuss this issue [immigration], so we got us an airplane on — a telephone on Air Force One, so I called him. I said, are you working with the governor? He said, you bet we are.” [White House]

MORNING — BUSH SHARES BIRTHDAY CAKE PHOTO-OP WITH SEN. JOHN MCCAIN [White House]

11AM CDT — MICHAEL BROWN FINALLY REQUESTS THAT DHS DISPATCH 1,000 EMPLOYEES TO REGION, GIVES THEM TWO DAYS TO ARRIVE: “Brown’s memo to Chertoff described Katrina as ‘this near catastrophic event’ but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, ‘Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities.’” [AP]

LATE MORNING — LEVEE BREACHED: “A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new ‘hurricane proof’ Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina’s fiercest winds were well north.” [Times-Picayune]

11AM CDT — BUSH VISITS ARIZONA RESORT TO PROMOTE MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “This new bill I signed says, if you’re a senior and you like the way things are today, you’re in good shape, don’t change. But, by the way, there’s a lot of different options for you. And we’re here to talk about what that means to our seniors.” [White House]

4:30PM CDT — BUSH TRAVELS TO CALIFORNIA SENIOR CENTER TO DISCUSS MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “We’ve got some folks up here who are concerned about their Social Security or Medicare. Joan Geist is with us. … I could tell — she was looking at me when I first walked in the room to meet her, she was wondering whether or not old George W. is going to take away her Social Security check.” [White House]

8PM CDT — RUMSFELD ATTENDS SAN DIEGO PADRES BASEBALL GAME: Rumsfeld “joined Padres President John Moores in the owner’s box…at Petco Park.” [Editor & Publisher]

8PM CDT — GOV. BLANCO AGAIN REQUESTS ASSISTANCE FROM BUSH: “Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you’ve got.” [Newsweek]

LATE PM — BUSH GOES TO BED WITHOUT ACTING ON BLANCO’S REQUESTS [Newsweek]

Nobody Could Have Known

Katrina August 28, 2005

Said "I'm With Ya'," Then He Took a Little Walk

The lead-in rap is almost as good as the song. 

Does the Pottery Barn Rule Apply Domestically?

Harry Shearer has been on this story since the beginning:

An incomplete system of defenses built in pieces over 40 years was responsible for the flooding that devastated New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said on Thursday.

A few critical links failed in the system of earthen levees and concrete floodwalls designed to protect the city, the report said.

The region's flood protection system, built by the Corps over the past 40 years, was compromised by "incompleteness in the system" and inconsistent standards of construction and protection levels.

This is what Shearer wrote today:

I have much more to write about this remarkable week in New Orleans, but quite remarkable enough is the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers' culpability for the drowning of this city has finally made major national news, thanks to the report the Corps' own inspection team issued today. Now, who will be the first Democrat, or Republican, to stand up and say, "HERE is why taxpayers north and south, east and west, have to pony up for the rebuilding of New Orleans -- because we, the federal taxpayers, made a compact with New Orleans that we, through the Corps, would protect it, and we, through the Corps, broke that commitment.

Good question.

Linkety, Link, Link, Link

Have you watched the trailer for the movie Dubya, starring Don Knotts?   Watch it again for the first time.

Will Bunch follows up on Wenyi Wang, the woman who yelled at China's President Hu to stop killing people.   It  looks like that to make up for all the WH snafus surrounding Hu's special visit, we're going make him feel right at home by trampling all over the First Amendment.  That'll warm his cockles.  (pro-war WaPo link via Atrios)

The IMF is making noise about reorganizing.  I'm trying to figure out whom to trust on that.   According to the head of the fund,  "the US needs to save more, Asian countries need to increase demand and allow their currencies to rise, and Europe needs structural reform."   I'm sure that won't meet with any resistance at all.   Shouldn't we wait until China can more comfortably take over our role as shopping basket to the world before we cut back on consumer spending.  I know WalMart et al would really appreciate it if we would.

Haiti is looking at developing an alternative fuel economy a la Brazil.  Again, I don't know whom to trust.  Right now, it sounds good to me.  Here's the NYT story on Brazil's success with ethanol.  Preval is also talking to Cuba to expand their already friendly relationship.

Chicago Dyke is working against WalMart in her community:

Once again, I’m forced to post the following admonition: don’t believe the bobbleheads on the TV or radio or papers. They may tell you that “middle America” or “most people” are happy with theocracy, the war, modern wage slavery, endless corporate expansion, and the American version of “health” care, but that’s a lie. If you need the bolstering feeling that comes from seeing this with your own eyes, go to a similar community meeting. My only regret is that I didn’t get a chance to tell my story about the nursing home and what a Wal-Mart where I used to live did to that community. But it seems I didn’t have to, Grandma and Joe Sixpack the grocery store employee did it for me.

Jenny Greenleaf, of the DNC, is helping out in NOLA.   Read her post, Moving Sand Dunes with a Teaspoon, at the American Street.

Planned Parenthood sent an email blast out about legislation in the House (H.R. 5052) designed to stop fake pregnancy centers from setting up shop.  From the petition you can sign in support of the bill:

Called "crisis pregnancy centers," they pose as women's health clinics and sources of unbiased pregnancy counseling, using neutral-sounding names and advertisements.  They lure unsuspecting women with the offer of free pregnancy testing or HIV tests.  Once inside, the "clinic" staff -- usually volunteers with no training -- try to dissuade women from exercising their right to choose by subjecting them to inaccurate, anti-choice propaganda and intimidation.

Scott Ritter is interviewed in San Diego City Beat.  (h/t Glenn Greenwald)  Be sure to read Ritter talks about Iran and what, based on his years of experience in the region, he believes to be true, but this is part caught my eye:

The other aspect of citizenship is to empower oneself with knowledge and information so that in the conduct of supervision of those whom we elect, we do so based on knowledge and information, on facts, as opposed to rhetoric, fiction and bald-faced misrepresentation of fact. It's the citizen's responsibility for this empowerment, no one else's.

And, yeah, it's hard. God, I'm busy; you're busy; we're all busy - life's a busy thing. But, you know what?  I don't want to hear that people can't go out and gain access to the data necessary, because, you know what?  I go to a bar on Monday night, and I watch baseball fans; I watch football fans - hell, I'm one of them.  And they can give me the slugging percentage of every player coming up there. How do they know that?  They spend hours reading the sports pages. If an American citizen has enough time to know all these sports statistics, they have enough time to learn about the world we live in and the role America plays and how their representatives are guiding us in this world.

So, no, I don't accept the notion that life is too complicated for American citizens to be involved. I reject that 100 percent. Democracy isn't meant to be easy.