#38374: ekzept — 09/02  at  12:29 AM
bull shit, IMO.

all this fuss to let a demonstrably incompetant administration off the hook? why?

their behavior leading up to and including failure to prepare for Katrina is part and parcel. it was not a Clinton administration which cancelled Congress-allocated and Presidentially-signed funds for the improvement of New Orleans flood protection system. it was Bush. unquestionably, as documented by the Times-Picayune, and as opposed by the Army Corps of Engineers, who were the ones whose funds were cut.

how odd, that when this administration is handed something which is clearly their responsibility, when they don't do well, they want to put its responsibility onto someone else. when are they doing to embrace the statement, The buck stops here, or don't they think their Party is up to it?

#38375: ekzept — 09/02  at  12:33 AM
bull, IMO.

all this fuss to let a demonstrably incompetant administration off the hook? why?

their behavior leading up to and including failure to prepare for Katrina is part and parcel. it was not a Clinton administration which cancelled Congress-allocated and Presidentially-signed funds for the improvement of New Orleans flood protection system. it was Bush. unquestionably, as documented by the Times-Picayune, and as opposed by the Army Corps of Engineers, who were the ones whose funds were cut.

how odd, that when this administration is handed something which is clearly their responsibility, when they don't do well, they want to put its responsibility onto someone else. when are they doing to embrace the statement, The buck stops here, or don't they think their Party is up to it?

#38380: Alon Levy — 09/02  at  05:45 AM
all this fuss to let a demonstrably incompetant administration off the hook? why?

The fact that the Bush administration is incompetent has no bearing on the question of whether it bears the blame for the New Orleans flood. By the same argument, you can send an angry email to Snopes castigating them for dispelling some mythical quotes supposedly uttered by George W. Bush on the grounds that he's an obviously stupid man?

#38385: — 09/02  at  06:55 AM
"I'm telling you, nobody thought this was going to happen like this. But what happened here is they escaped -- New Orleans escaped Katrina. But it brought all the water up the Mississippi River and all in the Pontchartrain, and then when it started running and that levee broke, they had problems they never could have foreseen."

Bill Clinton on CNN, Sept 1, 2005

#38390: Raven — 09/02  at  07:20 AM
Which is why you don't try to foresee every problem that can possibly happen, but rather you give FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and others the resources to respond flexibly to whatever does happen.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA (Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project) dropped to a trickle. The (Army) Corps (of Engineers) 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. (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313)

#38392: — 09/02  at  07:24 AM
One has to wonder why assistance was not already on the way. Bush and others were taken by surprise that the levees did not hold? I guess they were still working under the old expectation that the city was going to be hit more directly by a category 5 hurricane, and so were completely fooled because the storm was wweaker and shifted its path.
I also wonder how come every television and radio news outfit managed to get there so quickly, well ahead of the Feds. Fortunately, there have been offers of assistance from El Salvador and Venezuela.

#38393: — 09/02  at  07:28 AM
Re: the BBC saying that no-one thought this could happen in the world's only superpower. Call me an old cynic, but I took that as meaning, Nobody could have believed that the world's only superpower could be so stupid as to let things happen like this.

Last night on the box I heard lots of mentions of the word "loot", even though they then showed people taking groceries, and others just begging the President for relief; one single nurse at the stadium running around looking after diabetics, old people, babies, the dehydrated, the hungry; first responders doing all they can to rescue people stuck on roofs, and trying not to despair because there is no "second response". And then I heard some dweeb playing the "Some people are too stubborn to evacuate" card, and others talking about choppers being shot at with no context or even evidence. And four days after the fact, the President is coming to town to lay his healing vibe on the folks who were too poor to leave town.

The evacuation plan, such as it was, sucked. The plans for relief suck. There aren't enough National Guard, and there wasn't enough money to keep the levees properly maintained. If the president isn't responsible for this mess, who is? The Mayor?

Yeah, it was a disaster. Bad things happen during and after a disaster. But disaster planning is about knowing that, being ready to minimise the damage, and helping those who who will be helpless in the aftermath. Not just going, "It was a disaster, no-one could have predicted it," and then just flapping around ineffectually.

#38394: — 09/02  at  07:28 AM
The most telling thing about this debacle is how completely unprepared FEMA and other federal agencies are for disasters in major cities. We had days of warning, and look at the fumbling plans. Now, after 9/11 there was all this hullabaloo about how we needed to have evacuation plans for major cities. New Orleans is pretty major. I would have expected to see signs of real planning -- evacutaion routes, supply routes, field medical centers, law enforcement to keep the peace. Plans driven with the idea that if and when some event -- terrorist or natural -- devastates a populated region, you do step A, then B, then C.

I'd also expect to see real leadership out of the White House. Instead we get excuses and empty statements like "if you don't need gas, don't buy gas". Thanks!

#38396: Buridan — 09/02  at  07:46 AM

"Let's be fair here: People have known that New Orleans was living on borrowed time since they built the first levee. If you're going to blame this on Bush, you also have to blame it on Clinton, and every other administration back to Lincoln."

No, I think it's the prevalence of this sort of retarded mindset that clearly demonstrates how screwed we really are. These incompetent morons didn't get into office on their own.

#38398: — 09/02  at  08:20 AM
Did anyone catch the New Orleans mayor's radio interview? Now that's one doggone rant! (http://www.atypical.net/mm/nagin.mp3)

#38399: metamerist — 09/02  at  08:22 AM
Note this LSU Research page from last winter:

"The study of public health impacts include trauma, fires, disease, and chemical, sewage, and corpse contamination of air and water. Recent research has revealed that even a slow moving Category 3 hurricane could cause levee overflow and severe flooding. The resultant mix of sewage, corpses and chemicals in standing floodwaters could set the stage for massive disease outbreaks and prolonged chemical exposure."

#38412: — 09/02  at  09:37 AM
"And then I heard some dweeb playing the "Some people are too stubborn to evacuate" "

You know, until the prevalence of this attitude was demonstrated, from reporters to pundits to our dipshit president himself, I never realized just how many people agree with the ideas in "The Bell Curve". Or do they think that everyone in NO is black, not just approx 99% of the people left behind who chose to stay behind?

#38418: ekzept — 09/02  at  10:08 AM

"I'm telling you, nobody thought this was going to happen like this. But what happened here is they escaped -- New Orleans escaped Katrina. But it brought all the water up the Mississippi River and all in the Pontchartrain, and then when it started running and that levee broke, they had problems they never could have foreseen."

then Clinton is an idiot, too.

#38420: — 09/02  at  10:18 AM
For what it's worth, a my rambling comments on all this:

Without wasting too much time on detail (and I'm nobody important, heh), I've got a working relationship with FEMA, and in general, they're very much my ally. We do good work together, primarily in the field of mitigation: preventing disaster damage. Most often, for us that means buying out floodprone properties, converting them to open-space forever, but other things as well. It depends on the state, the most threatening disasters, etc. There are several Federal programs, run by FEMA, that fund mitigation activities, the idea being that in the long-run, these programs pay for themselves in prevented expenses of taxpayer-funded assistance, hardship to individuals, economic damage, etc.

Early in this administration's first term, one of their first actions was to cut Project Impact, a new-ish mitigation program that had been started under Clinton's FEMA director, James Lee Witt. By most accounts this was a successful program. Project Impact was responsible for some significant earthquake-resistance work done in the Seattle area prior to the Nisqually earthquake. This almost certainly saved lives and damage. The President announced THAT DAY he was ending Project Impact.

The single largest mitigation funding program, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, has also been in the administration's sights from day one. The President's budget has called for its elimination in every annual budget. It's only been through the political sausage-making process that HMGP has been constantly reinstalled, and even then, the administration did succeed in cutting it's funding in half. It's been at that level ever since, and we definitely feel the pinch.

Partly as justification for slashing HMGP, the Administration announced a new program, Pre-Disaster Mitigation. PDM, however, worked entirely differently from HMGP. Again, sparing gory details, PDM requires much more work from FEMA to administer and implement, and was generally perceived as being set up to limit overall disaster mitigation spending, as well as possibly to enable political influence on the distribution of funds. PDM suffered badly from delays and poor implementation early on--FEMA was not given adequate time to prepare for it. Most recently, the Administration has now announced that PDM funding will also be slashed by more than half, and the rules that govern how it is distributed are being radically adjusted in ways that (again) seem to allow more wiggle room for political influence.

This does not even address general changes in attitude. Historically we have many active mitigation grants and projects with FEMA. Pressure has increased dramatically to close outstanding grants--so that unspent money can be returned. Every aspect of program management has become much more restrictive, slowly strangling our ability to run mitigation projects at all. In recent years, mitigation funds for one major disaster were delayed an entire YEAR after the disaster because the actual cash fund that supplies mitigation money was "raided" for the war on terror. And always, increasingly, the focus has drifted more towards terrorism in planning and funding, nevermind the "predictable" disasters we experience every year, costing us far more money.

In some ways I do not blame FEMA for what's happening. Planning for these disasters is the responsibility of the State and local governments, not FEMA, despite the assistance they offer in planning. True, for a disaster of this scope that's not entirely relevant--FEMA would have to have some advance planning of their own regardless of what the states and municipalities plan. And it's clear now that the local and FEMA planning and response were inadequate. Even so, I still would temper that with the understanding that the nature of this disaster would greatly hinder the response, even with good planning.

There is one criticism of this administration that I cannot entirely support. It's becoming clear that funds to reinforce New Orleans' flood protection system were reallocated for the Iraq war, and that those funds may have helped prevent the worst of New Orleans' problems. It certainly does indicate the administration's priorities.

But levees and pumps are generally not the answer. That city should not be there. I cannot refute the historical significance of New Orleans, and the reasons it was originally located there. But especially given the immense cost of this disaster, I question the wisdom of rebuilding. I would very much like to see a study of the feasibility and costs of relocating as much as possible to safer ground. Unfortunately, I know this is not what will happen. The city will be rebuilt in-place, and billions will be spent on bigger levees and more pumping stations. But I would at least like to see a serious discussion of it.

#38423: ekzept — 09/02  at  10:30 AM
interesting points, rrt. from that perspective it simply sounds like nature is reclaiming the New Orleans basin as wetlands.

#38424: Arun — 09/02  at  10:31 AM
The author of the 2001 SciAm piece has an op-ed in today's NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/opinion/02fischetti.html

I won't repeat the part about the political process not working to fund the disaster.

For myself, I'll just point out that the money required is far smaller than the $200 billion for that war of choice, the Iraq war; and that this expenditure produces jobs and saves lives.

The scientific/technological part is here:

The conceit that we can control the natural world is what made New Orleans vulnerable. For more than a century the Army Corps, with Congress's blessing, leveed the Mississippi River to prevent its annual floods, so that farms and industries could expand along its banks. Those same floods, however, had dumped huge amounts of sediment and freshwater across the Mississippi Delta, rebuilding each year what gulf tides and storms had worn away and holding back infusions of saltwater that kill marsh vegetation. These vast delta wetlands created a lush, hardy buffer that could absorb sea surges and weaken high winds.

The flooding at the river's mouth also sent great volumes of sediment west and east into the Gulf of Mexico, to a string of barrier islands that cut down surges and waves, compensating for regular ocean erosion. Stopping the Mississippi's floods starved the wetlands and the islands; both are rapidly disintegrating, leaving the city naked against the sea.

What can we do to restore these natural protections? Although the parties that devised Coast 2050, and other independent scientists and engineers who have floated rival plans, may disagree on details, they do concur on several major initiatives that would shield New Orleans, reconstitute the delta and, as a side benefit, improve ports and shipping lanes for the oil and natural gas industries in the Gulf of Mexico.

- Cut several channels in the levees on the Mississippi River's southern bank (the side that doesn't abut the city) and secure them with powerful floodgates that could be opened at certain times of the year to allow sediment and freshwater to flow down into the delta, re-establishing it.

- Build a new navigation channel from the Gulf into the Mississippi, about 40 miles south of New Orleans, so ships don't have to enter the river at its three southernmost tips 30 miles further away. For decades the corps has dredged shipping channels along those final miles to keep them navigable, creating underwater chutes that propel river sediment out into the deep ocean. The dredging could then be stopped, the river mouth would fill in naturally, and sediment would again spill to the barrier islands, lengthening and widening them. Some planners also propose a modern port at the new access point that would replace those along the river that are too shallow to handle the huge new ships now being built worldwide.

- Erect huge seagates across the pair of narrow straits that connect the eastern edge of Lake Pontchartrain, which lies north of the city, to the gulf. Now, any hurricane that blows in from the south will push a wall of water through these straits into the huge lake, which in turn will threaten to overflow into the city. That is what has filled the bowl that is New Orleans this week. But seagates at the straits can stop the wall of water from flowing in. The Netherlands has built similar gates to hold back the turbulent North Sea and they work splendidly.

- Finally, and most obviously, raise, extend and strengthen the city's existing but aging levees, canal walls and pumping systems that worked so poorly in recent days.

#38425: ekzept — 09/02  at  10:33 AM
of course, rrt, the implications of this approach to disaster mitigation won't sit well with the public. do you tell Los Angeles to close most of itself because of risk of earthquake? do you tell Seattle to relocate itself because of the possibility of devastating floods from sudden volcanic ice melt? do you tell Hawaii to plan to remove people from its smaller islands because of the danger of tsunami?

#38452: — 09/02  at  11:48 AM
Maybe someone mentioned this previously and I just didn't take the proper care to find it here, but there was an excellent segment on the NOVA NOW premiere back in February that perfectly laid out exactly what New Orlean's problem was, and what was going to happen.

No wonder the Bush administration would like to see funding cut for public broadcasting--facts are their worst enemy and information just makes them look bad.

#38464: — 09/02  at  12:28 PM
The difference I would argue is that in any place where development occurs behind (and is encouraged by the presence of) a levee, you are always just one pile of dirt away from serious flooding. New Orleans far moreso, being below sea level.

Hastert speaking out on this issue (which surprised me) brought some similar objections from some officials, asking if Californian cities should be rebuilt after earthquakes or if Chicago should have been rebuilt after the fire. The Chicago objection was just plain dumb, I assume I don't need to explain why. The California objection is different, in my opinion, because a substantial amount of mitigation can be done, and has been done, including earthquake-resistant construction. But it's true that I'm no earthquake expert...if relocation has some feasibility to it, yeah, I'd be interested.

I'm hoping this disaster brings some new attention in the Midwest to the New Madrid and other faultlines. There's been some hysteria about these in the past, but they ARE very serious threats which are very difficult to prepare for. When they do let loose, we could end up in a similarly nasty situation.

#38472: ekzept — 09/02  at  12:50 PM

I'm hoping this disaster brings some new attention in the Midwest to the New Madrid and other faultlines. There's been some hysteria about these in the past, but they ARE very serious threats which are very difficult to prepare for. When they do let loose, we could end up in a similarly nasty situation.

i very much agree. and government (at all levels) isn't the only obstacle. there's a big need for education and civil leadership to encounrage that. there's a need for more coordination on commercial development, development which puts pressure on the Corp of Engineers to dredge or encourages filling in of marshlands. this is true in Louisiana as well as any coastal or low-lying land. unfortunately, when it comes to development and commerce, people tend to favor the short term versus the long.

in fact, despite what the wingnuts like Limbaugh say about politicizing the disaster and the progressives responding to him, this isn't political first, it is economic, in the formal sense of how to allocate scarce resources. as an economic problem this issue of long term risks isn't well done or apparently understood. it affects other, bigger problems, like how to properly discount risks from pollution or global warming in today's prices and showing its costs. there's a place, i imagine for creative use of taxes, but that's sure not something the governing party wants to hear about.

#38480: — 09/02  at  01:24 PM
To about half the posters here: NO LEVEES FAILED.

Nil, noda, none, not any.

What failed was a floodwall, something else entirely.

Sheesh.

This thread sure has been a Carnival of Ignorance.

The reaction by the STATE governments is here being blamed on the FEDERAL government, for reasons only too apparent.

What is curious is that the city was not subdivided by barriers (the disappearing type used in Venice would have been expensive but probably doable), which was a bet that no part of the protection system would ever fail. That was a pretty bold gamble. But Bush wasn't the one who made it.

ekzept: All inhabited Hawaiian islands are high islands, with roads. There is a comprehensive (and very expensive) warning system that works like a charm. There is no necessity to leave an island, just move inland by, at most, a few hundred yards.

(Caveat: This is for Pacific-wide tsunami generated by earthquakes or submarine landslips. If the southeast flank of Kilauea ever collapses, which it will do sometime in the next few hundred thousand years, probably, then most of us are finished, since we live or work near the ocean. If it happens at night, I'll survive as my house is at 1,450 feet elevation; the tsunami will go higher than that in places, but not where I live.)

#38481: PZ Myers — 09/02  at  01:28 PM
How typical. Change the argument to "it was a FLOODWALL, not a LEVEE", as if that makes any difference at all.

The Republican hacks running the government allowed important safety measures to fall into disrepair, and have been so slack and incompetent in their responses that thousands die and a city has been demolished. That's the issue, not these hairsplitting distractions that wingnuts are throwing up to evade responsibility.

I say, damn the Republicans. May the label forever be a badge of shame.

#38485: ekzept — 09/02  at  01:38 PM

There is a comprehensive (and very expensive) warning system that works like a charm.

thanks, Harry. actually, we need more of that attitude in a future New Orleans. i was reacting to the suggestion that NO just be abandoned.

as far as the state vs federal thing goes, i really don't care whose responsibility it is. what's needed to be done isn't being done. on a large scale what i see is local, state, and federal governments responding to these things in the same way local government puts up stop signs and stoplights on street corners: they'll do it when there's a high enough body count from accidents. when big natural disasters strike, there's a limit to how much even the federal government can do.

my personal hope is that some time in the next decade, we'll start figuring out how to live and perhaps even benefit from some of the consequences of climate warming, including how to mitigate effects of the ferocious storms that will accompany it. i'm not sure government knows how to do that. i think the private sector does, spurred as they will be by the threat of prohibitive insurance costs or the absence of insurance altogether. indeed, some talk by economists says insurance premiums are the taxes i was referring to above, and are politically acceptable to the ruling party.

but it sure seems that government could coordinate this better so there wouldn't be such a hodgepodge approach to adjusting.

anyway, i don't get caught up too much in global warming discussions, because, according to reports in Science and places, such warming will continue for 50-70 years even if all greenhouse gas and other contributions were zeroed. (now that's what you call inertia). both sides don't address that. like i said, what matters is learning how to live with it.

#38486: Chris Clarke — 09/02  at  01:40 PM
PZ, Eager's bullshit is not only typical but uninformed. Apparently, the word "levee" seems to be good enough for the owners of said floodwalls.

#38489: Chris Clarke — 09/02  at  01:43 PM
Sorry. Forgot about the Expression Engine dislike for db URLS in comments.

Here's that link.