#38726: ekzept — 09/04  at  04:23 PM
CNN breaking news:

AP: Army Corps of Engineers says police killed some of its workers as they crossed a bridge on the way to repair a canal.

#38728: ekzept — 09/04  at  04:39 PM
update, from CNN:

AP: Army Corps of Engineers says its contractors were not killed by police, but gunmen who fired at them were killed.

sounds like war zone confusion to me.

#38737: coturnix — 09/04  at  05:37 PM
Have you seen this:
http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2005-09-04T005508Z_01_N03598462_RTRIDST_0_KATRINA-HELPLESS-UPDATE-1-PICTURE.XML

#38739: Chris Clarke — 09/04  at  06:09 PM
Some of it, as in the case of our old friend Steve Sailer, is actual malice.

#38743: Ben — 09/04  at  06:51 PM
Beaurocracies are, by their nature, set up to buffer and protect those who are in power. There's an increasing MO within Western governments of setting up your communication systems like a mob family, so that when a scandal is leaked, the "Mr Bigs" can blame human error in the front office, point to the lack of paper-trail evidence, and immunise themselves from implication. The fall guy is then transferred to another department, and the scandal is forgotten. But nobody ever considers the fact that incompetence is just as unacceptable as corruption. That's right. I see no distinction in the public sector.

You know what I blame this on the breakdown of? Society. And where's my bloody gravatar? I can't even remember what it was.

#38752: Jim Harrison — 09/04  at  08:54 PM
The problem with FEMA is not that it has a bureaucracy. Every large organization public or private is bureaucratic. From what we've learned so far, the problem seems to have resulted from the inertia and helplessness of political appointees like Brown, who was forced out of his last private gig for incompetence but got his new job through patronage. The same bureaucracy that performed splendidly under Witt, flopped miserably under the leadership of hacks.

#38759: ekzept — 09/04  at  10:18 PM
here's the latest on that police shooting folks story from above.

#38769: Llelldorin — 09/04  at  11:40 PM
I think Jim Harrison nailed it.

There's nothing intrinsicly wrong with bureaucracies. If anyone has some idea of how to manage the displacement of a reasonable fraction of the population of two states while providing food, water, and medical care without one, I'd love to hear it.

Without competent leadership on the top, though, bureaucracies tend to move slowly and at cross purposes. What we saw last week was a lot of individually competent lower-level people trying to do their jobs with a total vacuum at the top where the coordination should have been coming from. That's how we had insane nonsense like the Bataan being right on scene off New Orleans on Monday and Tuesday, then getting orders that vastly underused its capabilities.

Democrats like me are often accused of loving bureaucracies. When an effective bureaucracy is desperately needed, though, that's not a bad thing at all.

#38771: coturnix — 09/05  at  12:04 AM
Steve Sailer is despicable!!!!

#38772: coturnix — 09/05  at  12:08 AM
I've been collecting and updating (daily, around midnight EST) links to good blog posts on Katrina here.

#38773: LochNess — 09/05  at  12:45 AM
Please, Chris, would you at least warn us that you are linking to a fascist website?

#38775: Alon Levy — 09/05  at  02:46 AM
No, he's not a fascist - just an ordinary racist. "Immigration was a massive blow to democracy" is a real gem from this article, for instance.

#38779: ¡El Gato Negro! — 09/05  at  03:37 AM
Arbusto, he ees no, how-joo-say "incompetent"...


he ees, how-joo-say, "Mal-competent".


so.

#38780: — 09/05  at  04:50 AM
FEMA isn't simply incompetent. Last year the team of Bush, Chertoff and Brown somehow handled three hurricanes that mauled Florida, proactively and pre-positioned Guardsmen and supplies. The same people were in charge this time.

What changed? What clue was missed at the top? Was it as simple as Jeb calling his idiot brother last year and telling him to get on it?

#38782: — 09/05  at  06:12 AM
Offered without comment, because anything said in the face of such naked contempt for humanity would be utterly pointless:

The Department of Homeland Security wants you to know that September is National Preparedness Month.

#38785: — 09/05  at  06:42 AM
Looking objectively at New Orleans, the physiscal damage is unsignificant, whatever CNN tries to exaggerate. The levees were repaired soon (it is a few hours job) and pumping out the water is a question of 3 days, if the pumps were in working order. Facilities like electricity and water can be repaired in a day or two. In fact, most of New Orleans has not been touched by the flood. But the flood brought to surface to everybody to see a social order we rarely see, and the absolute, Zimbabwean incompetence and corruption of local elites. As Tibor Mende wrote a generation ago (Hydraulic Despotisms), to manage complicated hydraulic systems like irrigated agriculture or mantaining dry a city under sea level, you need a competent authoritarian elite. Maybe New Orleans´s hydraulic system should be run by the US Corps of Engineers (a exceedingly competent engineering body) or its Canadian equivalent, or contracted out to Israeli water engineers. I would not visit New Orleans knowing that the pumping stations are run by the City.

#38786: Alon Levy — 09/05  at  06:50 AM
As Tibor Mende wrote a generation ago (Hydraulic Despotisms), to manage complicated hydraulic systems like irrigated agriculture or mantaining dry a city under sea level, you need a competent authoritarian elite.

Can you expand on this argument a little bit? What I've heard is that authoritarian elites go hand in hand with massive irrigation or maintaining a city under sea level dry because these projects serve to make the people dependent on the government.

#38796: Arun — 09/05  at  08:01 AM

In fact, most of New Orleans has not been touched by the flood.

This minor mendacity is put to rest by the satellite photo published by the NYT on Friday Sept2, on page A20.

#38797: Arun — 09/05  at  08:08 AM

The levees were repaired soon (it is a few hours job) and pumping out the water is a question of 3 days, if the pumps were in working order.

This is a bigger lie. The breach in the 17th street canal levee was still being filled on Friday. The Army Corp of Engineers says it will be 36 to 80 days (depending on the part of the city) to drain the city. If the water level in Lake Pontchartrain goes down fast enough, to below the level of water in the city, then they might actually breach some levees to speed up the process. The New Orleans pumps are able to deal with about an inch of rainfall per hour type of situations, not more than that.

If one cannot get stuff that is plainly in the newspapers right, I for one am not disposed to believe anything from such a source about ancient hydraulic civilizations, from where the information is, shall we say, sparser?

#38799: Arun — 09/05  at  08:14 AM
Finally, let's not forget the Netherlands, shall we? It is not run by a "competent authoritarian elite". Reminder, 27% of the Netherlands is under sea level, and this area is home to 60% of the country's population of 16 million people.

!Plonk!

#38804: coturnix — 09/05  at  08:58 AM
These two articles (September 2004) detail the changes in FEMA under Bush Jr. and how those changes affect the preparedness on the ground:

http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2004-09-22/cover.html

http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2004-09-22/cover2.html

#38808: ekzept — 09/05  at  09:15 AM
there's lots that could have been done by everyone.

my take about Nagin and bussing the residual folks of NO out, based upon readings, is that he couldn't get them mobilized fast enough, and that he knew he'd need to use threat of force to move them, knowing them to be stubborn, and that required National Guard.

that said, what happened here is similar to what happened to emergency services on 11th September 2001 in that everyone was paralyzed by failing to have a robust communications system. in this case, it extends to the citizens of NO and to elsewhere on the Gulf. while people are trying to remedy this now, one thing that seems to be absolutely essential for any future disaster recovery is a preexisting, self-powered network of communications devices, whether pure digital SMS or voice or both. to me that sounds like a satellites hub network activated upon emergency with lots and lots of handhelds prepositioned, duplicated, and operated only in emergency and relying upon long-lived batteries supplemented by solar. also needs to operate in cities without LOS to the satellite.

that crosses state boundaries. sounds like a federal mandate.

#38815: Chris Clarke — 09/05  at  10:21 AM

could you at least warn us that you are linking to a fascist website?

Sorry about that, Nessie.

And I'm even sorrier about the turn to rank racism that seems to have infected Jaimito, whose comments I once enjoyed. Maybe you'd be happier commenting at that website Loch Ness complained about, Jaimito. You'd certanly find people with whom you're more sympatico. Of course, you'd have to change your handle.

Trackback: Best Katrina Quote Tracked on: The OpenScience Project (129.74.222.150) at 2005 09 05 10:53:39
By way of Pharyngula, we have this quote from The Sideshow: Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. ...

#38826: — 09/05  at  11:14 AM
"In fact, most of New Orleans has not been touched by the flood."

Every single news source I have seen states that 80% has been flooded for several days (eg here,) and maps of the bloody place confirm it, nevermind your other ridiculous innaccuracies.

The Red Cross has credited Nagin with saving lives by opening the Superdome and Convention Centre to people too poor to leave, pointing out that the alternatives were much worse.

-Schmitt.