PZ Myers. 2005 Sep 01. Drowning New Orleans. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/drowning_new_orleans/>. Accessed 2008 Aug 20.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Thursday, September 01, 2005
Drowning New Orleans
George W. Bush, September 2005:
"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
Scientific American, October 2001:
New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh--an area the size of Manhattan--will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. Scientists at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die. The body bags wouldn't go very far.
Read the whole thing. It's a detailed description of the problem, with suggestions about what needs to be done to correct it.
Dear gob, I wish we could impeach a president for being an incompetent boob, a disgrace to his office and the nation, and just plain dishonest twit. We can arrest someone for being irresponsible and non compos mentis while driving a car, but when he's driving the country? Heck, all we can do is watch as he kills people and wrecks the nation.
Posted by PZ Myers on 09/01 at 05:19 PM
Politics • Rethuglicans • 4 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink
Politics • Rethuglicans • 4 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink
- I was watching stuff about it on the Beeb this evening. The news reporters kept parrotting this "no-one would suspect this could happen in the world's wealthiest nation" crap. Aye! They could! They did! The wealthy part of the world's wealthiest nation doesn't give a toss (or have a clue). I don't know why they can't just say it. I'd feel really sorry for you guys if Tony Blair wasn't such a bawbag too. We're all heading to hell in a handbasket together.
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"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
The real problem is, he's probably telling the truth. -
We're all heading to hell in a handbasket together.
Well at least in hell we'll be in good company. Though I suppose we might miss folks like Lutheran theologian Bonhoeffer, who if I recall correctly, said something along the lines that ethics are things you do and not statements you make about right and wrong. Or something like that. Which probably relates to people castigating looters without considering the situation. Or being willing to donate to disaster stricken areas, but unwilling to address the perpetual and disastrous poverty these people were already living in.#: Posted by on 09/01 at 06:31 PM -
The news reporters kept parrotting this "no-one would suspect this could happen in the world's wealthiest nation" crap.
Gah, I hear that all the time. The hurricane was going to wash over new orleans and the gulf no matter what we did, but the disaster that happening in new orleans right now? That could of been prevented.
But of course no politician wants to relocate money to prevent something that could happen, but when it does happen they will be the heroes.
I read in national geographic, I believe, the inevitabily of a big hurricane hitting new orleans, especially with the surge of more and stronger hurricanes. How it will be a disaster unless something is done to protect the city further.
shrug* Came sooner than we thought, but we should of been prepared. The damn French founded New Orleans, they should be blamed! Freedom fries here we come!#: Posted by on 09/01 at 06:51 PM -
The real problem is, he's probably telling the truth.
I think Ron Zeno is right in saying that. This is an administration that never recognizes or prepares for negative potential outcomes. Won't huge tax cuts cause the national debt to soar? Of course not: an economic boom will offset everything! Won't an invasion of Iraq be a long and bloody conflict? Of course not: Happy Iraqis will shower our soldiers with flowers and we'll be out of there in a few months, maybe weeks! Won't continued uncontrolled emission of greenhouse gases contribute to global warming? Heck, no! First of all, global warming doesn't exist! Second, it'll be good for us! Third, we couldn't do anything about it if we tried (so we won't)! Isn't New Orleans in grave danger from the next big hurricane that strikes it? How silly! The levees are big piles of dirt! Where would they go? And hurricanes are just an unproven meteorological theory!
Gutting an effective government agency like FEMA and abandoning New Orleans to the elements is nothing more than par for the course with this White House gang. -
The "fat man" is missing in New Orleans.
Fats Domino, a rhythm and blues legend has not been heard from since Sunday.
But he still speaks to us. Listen.
http://www.charliewagner.net/fats.mp3#: Posted by charlie wagner on 09/01 at 07:05 PM - Bad news. It sounds like Fats didn't make it.
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Many people were aware for years of the potential for disaster. It is perhaps surprising that this storm was enough, but I have seen references 4 or 5 years old that suggest the levee system was overrated and could fail in a Cat 2/3 storm.
What is truly incomprehensible is the lack of any plan for dealing with the aftermath (sound familiar ?). Everyone knew that up to 100,000 people (mostly poor, elderly, and/or infirm) would stay in the city. Where was the plan to mobilize a relief effort ? Why is it days and so little water, food, transportation, and medical assistance is available ?
Fortunately my parents got out since their home is now submerged, along with all their belongings of 52 years except a few clothes.#: Posted by on 09/01 at 07:14 PM -
Wikipedians have edited that death announcement I quoted in the page PZ links to, because no one is reporting anything yet. Still: it doesn't look good.
#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 09/01 at 07:28 PM
- Fats Domino did make it.
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Thanks, davidm. I've corrected my page.
#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 09/01 at 08:21 PM
- Given that this scenario has been predicted for years, I too have been wondering why there was not a better plan in place for what to do in the aftermath. Why not mobilize the Guard ahead of time instead of waiting several days? Why not have food available in advance at the temporary shelters like the Superdome ahead of time? And why not have a plan (and infrastructure) in place for evacuating the areas below sea level before the storm hits? I think the questions need to be asked, and answered, in advance of any planning for rebuilding New Orleans, because the city is clearly not a safe place to live without a workable plan for these types of contingencies.
- I'm happy say that you're wrong: CNN is reporting that Fats Domino has been found alive.
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"...I wish we could impeach a president for being an incompetent boob, a disgrace to his office and the nation, and just plain dishonest twit."
More than enough justification for sure. With his performance so far this week, there might even be a majority of Americans in support of impeachment. But then we would only end up with Cheney who. I think I read somewhere today, is still on vacation. We're just screwed.#: Posted by Bill Stouffer on 09/01 at 10:07 PM -
Cheney who. I think I read somewhere today, is still on vacation. We're just screwed.
Call me naive if you like, but I doubt that even this administration would allow both the president and vice-president to go on vacation at the same time.
Of course, I'm open to the possibility that I have a severely dysfunctional cynicism gland. -
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.
-jcr#: Posted by on 09/01 at 10:22 PM -
Given that this scenario has been predicted for years, I too have been wondering why there was not a better plan in place for what to do in the aftermath.
(And similar comments)
OK, so it's not just our imagination ("us" being two Canadians living in a place where Katrina meant maybe one day of moderate rain -- we had local thunderstorms this summer that were lots heavier) that the city, the state, the USA seemed to be totally blind-sided by this thing. Hell, *I've* read Prophecies of Doom for NO from Gulf storms before -- was no one in the government(s) listening? They knew for years that something *like* this was coming, and for days that, now it was coming. But it seems to have taken, what? -- four days to start sending in the troops to stop looting, to realize the whole place needs evacuating and start doing it?
Sure, using a big stadium for a refuge seems like a great idea -- so where was the advance planning to make sure the place stayed livable?: power, running water, flush toilets....
As my wife remarked: the irony is that NO probably has an emergency plan for terrorist attack. If they had one for hurricane, it's not obvious.#: Posted by on 09/01 at 10:27 PM -
Lt Kizhe. The Government ordered the evacuation of New Orleans before the hurricane, and mostly it was done. Those trapped in the city are there against Government advice. Incredibly, rescue teams and helicopters are being shot at. I think the failure was that the National Guard was not sent in before the hurricane to provide for an orderly evacuation and did not stay to prevent looting and to organize the rescue.
We engineers design things with an eye to stand one in a hundred years events. Statistically, that event may take place tomorrow. We live by statistics, every bridge is a potential disaster in waiting.#: Posted by on 09/01 at 10:54 PM -
So, Randolph, not reading the news this week?
#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 09/01 at 10:58 PM
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Jaimito--not everyone could leave. You're right--what was needed was assistance so (for example) the sick, the elderly, and folks without cars could leave.
There were lots of problems here. Levee maintenance had been deferred by the federal government for the past few years to free up money for the war. FEMA has been pulled from its usual job of disaster preparedness, but the new agency that was to take the mission hasn't been established yet. <A HREF="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/29/AR2005082901445.html"
Here's a link to that last.</A> There weren't enough folks set up to prevent looting. (Remember, looting always starts after a huge disaster like this. A certain fraction of any large group of people are morons.) The evacuation order wasn't much more organized than "Everyone run for your lives!!!!" shortly before the hurricane hit.
Look at what's happening here, and tell me that you don't want the old '90s FEMA back. That FEMA was really, really good at this sort of situation. The current one seems barely able to get food and water to starving people.#: Posted by Llelldorin on 09/01 at 11:11 PM -
See I think that it's terrific. It's fantastic that someone as dumb George W can get to be the president of the USofA.
Why should dumb people be discriminated against? Why should intelligent people get educated and be able to move into the move influencial areas of management around the world? That's completely unfair. Dumb people should have a chance too!!!!
What a role model, what a fantastic mentor to build your life around. "Dumb as George" should be the new catch phrase for education around the world. Stupid people can do what they like in life, the sky's the limit. More power to the dumb people of our world.
He did have his father as a role model and then there was that shining light of all things dumb Ronald Reagan. What the f*&% is going with the Americans? Why the hell can't they get someone in with even the smallest semblance of a brain? Bloody hell, get your house in order!!!!!!!!!!!!
Apologies, we do have out own dumb-ass. You've probably never heard of him, good on little Johnnie.#: Posted by on 09/01 at 11:54 PM -
arensb asked:
"Call me naive if you like, but I doubt that even this administration would allow both the president and vice-president to go on vacation at the same time.
Under the heading Where's Cheney?" Dan Froomkin in The Washington Post reports on Aug. 31
Vice President Cheney, who has spent part of August at his home outside scenic Jackson, Wyo., remains there today -- although his spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, doesn't call it vacation.
"He's working from Wyoming today," McBride told me this morning.#: Posted by Bill Stouffer on 09/01 at 11:57 PM -
I must point out that the article discusses the problems of storm surge, and how bad it can be. Bush's quote is about a levee breach. Those are two different events, one worse than the other, actually.
When you are sitting in a bathtub with a rubber ducky (who doesn't?) and you slosh back and forth and the water splashes out all over the floor, it is a different problem than the tub wall coming apart and all the water getting out that way.
The article you cite doesn't neccessarily contradict Bush's statement at all, it doesn't even discuss a breach. -
"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." can be correctly reduced to "I don't think" where the Shrub is concerned.
As a Californian, I can kind of understand people being trapped in an earthquake; after all, they don't give much advance warning. Same for a tornado -- not everyone in tornado country has a storm cellar (though why that should be is a whole subject unto itself). But a hurricane??!!? Why the heck wasn't there an evacuation plan in place, along with some scheme for evacuating people who couldn't evacuate themselves?
The closest I've come to experiencing a hurricane was in the mid-'80s, when I was doing some work on site for a customer in Pensacola, Florida. I and my Californian colleagues left town two days before the storm (cat-3 Elena) hit, and I was white-knuckled driving through what I thought was unimaginably heavy rain to get to the airport. (Elena stalled in the gulf and threw lots of rain bands shoreward.) It was far more terrifying than the 1989 northern California earthquake, where I was merely hunkered down next to a cubicle wall with ceiling tiles falling on me.#: Posted by on 09/02 at 12:12 AM -
It most certainly could have been anticipated, and in fact, it was before:
For example, in the 1990s, in planning for a New Orleans nightmare scenario, the federal government figured it would pre-deploy nearby ships with pumps to remove water from the below-sea-level city and have hospital ships nearby, said James Lee Witt, who was FEMA director under President Clinton.
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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? -
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? -
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? -
"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#: Posted by on 09/02 at 06:55 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) -
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.#: Posted by on 09/02 at 07:24 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.#: Posted by on 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!#: Posted by on 09/02 at 07:28 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. -
Did anyone catch the New Orleans mayor's radio interview? Now that's one doggone rant! (http://www.atypical.net/mm/nagin.mp3)
#: Posted by on 09/02 at 08:20 AM
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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."#: Posted by metamerist on 09/02 at 08:22 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 peopleleft behindwho chose to stay behind?#: Posted by on 09/02 at 09:37 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. -
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.#: Posted by on 09/02 at 10:18 AM - interesting points, rrt. from that perspective it simply sounds like nature is reclaiming the New Orleans basin as wetlands.
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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.
- 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?
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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.#: Posted by on 09/02 at 11:48 AM -
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.#: Posted by on 09/02 at 12:28 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. -
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.)#: Posted by on 09/02 at 01:24 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. -
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. -
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.
#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 09/02 at 01:40 PM
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Sorry. Forgot about the Expression Engine dislike for db URLS in comments.
Here's that link.#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 09/02 at 01:43 PM - love that phrase from the link, strategizing with.
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indeed, some talk by economists says insurance premiums are the taxes i was referring to above, and are politically acceptable to the ruling party.
should have added that same economists don't like the idea of insurance going away, because that breaks the information flow from the future to now. -
Change the argument to "it was a FLOODWALL, not a LEVEE", as if that makes any difference at all.
When Harry's mewling once again about his daughter-in-law's having escaped a terrorist attack, I wonder if he gets all hung up on semantics then.
Actually, no, I don't, not really.
But let hundreds, possibly thousands, of poor, non-white people actually die, as opposed to potentially doing so, and Harry instantly zooms in on what's really important.
You never disappoint, Harry. -
Levees do fail, sometimes. They did in 1927, in several places up and down the Mississippi, and in that case New Orleans was saved by deliberately breaking a levee to flood out a county to the west. But they didn't fail this time.
The floodwall did NOT deteriorate because of neglect by the Bush administration. It was not deteriorated. It was not designed for the maximum potential impact. Nothing is, with the single exception of the casks used to transport nuclear waste.
Your community, if you look around, will also provide examples of potential disasters that have not been fully mitigated. Yet instead of demanding that your taxes be raised to idiotproof Flatgrass County in [YOUR STATE HERE], you mewl how it all should be used on schools.
The World Trade Centers collapsed, killing thousands, because, although they were designed to be hit by airplanes, they were not also designed to withstand a fire fueled by 10,000 gallons of kerosene.
Have all of you demanded retrofitting every highrise in your communities? After all, you've been warned.
And yet you sit on your hands and just trust to luck.
There are many things to complain of -- and many of them could have been forecast -- about the New Orleans disaster. But screaming BUSH DID IT! does not impress me as a reasoned analysis of risk management.#: Posted by on 09/02 at 05:51 PM -
The floodwall did NOT deteriorate because of neglect by the Bush administration. It was not deteriorated.
You don't know what you're talking about. The precise stretch that gave way had been identified as in need of repair by more than one agency.
It was not designed for the maximum potential impact.
And it didn't get one. It got the impact it was designed for: a surge from an indirect hit by a class three storm.
How the hell do you stay employed as a journalist with your inane approach to fact? Oh, I forgot. You're a business reporter. Never mind.
Next up: Harry tells us how Muslims started the hurricane, and Asians spurred the looting with their disregard for life.#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 09/02 at 06:06 PM -
well, Harry, there are well-documented cutbacks in spending for flood control around New Orleans during BushCo's administration. sure, the problem has been neglected for a long time, they should have had a way of withstanding a Category 5, but they didn't.
with BushCo, people know all too well how anti-science and anti-environment their policies are. while there are nutcases and nutty positions on the environment side, making wetlands more robust and adapting to consequences of global warming aren't among them. yet both those issues are things BushCo and his Party have fought.
then there is the tepid response after the hurricane. given the fragile nature of the floods protection system, which you admit, the seiche in Ponchatrain should have been monitored, as should the floodwalls and so on. hose are, after all, a project of the Army Corps of Engineers. given the evacuation the Nagin ordered prior to the hurricane, it did not take much to anticipate the costs of those controls failing.
what is disturbing to me is that the New Orleans flood controls system was identified and reported on in autumn of 2001 as one of the easiest targets for terrorists to destroy in order to wreak maximum havoc on a metro area. if nothing else, that system should have been made more robust simply for that reason. if they had a major project underway and got caught with it incomplete, i could understand and excuse it. that would just be bad luck.
but here we have a government that seems to continue to say "Shit happens. We'll come to your aid after it does, but don't expect us to do anything to prevent it." or "It's a state and local problem. We'll come to help if asked." i think this failure, if it is not recognized or acted upon, is ultimately a failure of our particular form of representative democracy, much more than simply a failure of a particular administration. BushCo is bad, but he was elected and the responsibility ultimately belongs to the people.
the people who claim national defense is the first and most important responsibility of government surely cannot claim protection and aid during disasters doesn't belong there, too, at least not and be consistent. -
The floodwall did NOT deteriorate because of neglect by the Bush administration. It was not deteriorated.
So you say. The US Army Corps of Engineers says the opposite:
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.
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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.
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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.
Given a choice between USACE's word on structural requirements, and that of Harry the Hack, I know whose are backed up with facts.
(never mind Chris' question about staying employed as a journalist, how do you get even a business reporter beat with that level of financial innumeracy, plus the inability to do a news database search?) -
the head of the Army Corps of Engineers was just on Larry King on CNN repeating the assertion that the flooding in New Orleans was anticipated, in answer to the question, essentially, about whether or not Bush was right when he stated it could not be anticipated.
this selective suppression of scientific and engineering assessments seems to be a tactic the Republicans use a lot, even if they come from government. dunno, maybe the Democrats do it, too. anyway, that letter just appeared on the AAAS ScienceNOW site. -
A pedantic question. How can you determine that this SciAm article is from October 2001? The SciAm site has a date of 8/31/2005. If this is really from 10/2001 then SciAm needs to improve how the archives can provide citation summaries. I read through the whole article, excellent as it is, but saw no publication date. Perhaps I have to have access to the actual archive and not this print-version of the article?
#: Posted by Robert Bourdeau on 09/02 at 08:21 PM
- don't know where you're lookin', Robert, but the page i see is clearly marked "October 2001". besides, i read the article in the original, and it was echoed by the New York Times the same year, although their emphasis after 11th September was upon the floods controls system as a terrorist target.
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speaking of insurance, we're beginning to get some numbers on the losses from Katrina on the Gulf. there are also some numbers on the loss from Katrina. oh, incidently, that first number is $100 billion.
also, former head of Army Corps of Engineers in charge of New Orleans flood control project a few years back, and who, i just learned, resigned when the funds were cut, was interviewed on Aaron Brown's NewsNight. he is Michael Parker. great piece. spoke a lot about how this stuff does and doesn't get funded in Washington and why. spoke about Office of Management and Budget (OMB). don't think he got enough time. - documentation regarding Mr Parker's resignation is available.
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here we go, from that last link, dated March 2002:
President Bush and the White House Office of Management and Budget have said they are vehemently opposed to such efforts, particularly in light of what they say are the heightened spending needs for homeland security and the overseas war efforts.
- the Financial Times Washington correspondent, Edward Alden, has a surprisingly negative op-ed piece on Bush's relationship to the Gulf Coast tragedy which I have printed as three GIF files, available in 3 parts: page one, page two, and page three.
- You can also verify the publication date of the SciAm article on PubMed.
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the Grey Lady reports:
As it is, criticism of Mr Bush has been unsparing, especially abroad. European newspaper headlines used words like "anarchy" and "apocalypse" and some ordinary citizens in less fortunate parts of the world spoke with virtual contempt for what they saw as an American failure to live up to its professed ideals.
it's more than noise: the differential between a broadbased international stock index fund and an S&P 500 index fund more than doubled since Monday with the international fund leading. gold is up, too. -
PZ, you have a very interesting and informative web site. Your clear science writing is second to none. I can't believe you also suffer from BDS. I'm sure with patience and encouragement you can get over it.
#: Posted by on 09/03 at 12:04 AM
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Are you sure you guys are scientists?
First, we have Chris committing the Numerical Fallacy.
The wall was not designed to a category but to a head of water.
The water overtopped the wall. Whether the wall was deteriorated or not, it did not fail. The overflow washed away its foundations, and the (still intact) wall collapsed.
I blame Bush for stealing all the good Democratic dirt under the wall and selling it at giveaway prices to a clique headed by James Watt and Arabian sheikhs.
Then ekzept says the govt. should have been prepared for a Category 5, presumably by raising higher walls. That could have been done, but it would still have made a bad bet that you would never have a failure.
It would have made more engineering and risk management sense to have used the same resources (if available) to compartment the city, although no doubt such inconvenience would never have been tolerated.
Consider a not unlikely event in a Category 5 storm: a grain ship with a mass of 50,000 tons is driven at 4 mph against the flood barrier. No wall man can devise would have held up against that, though maybe an enormously broad levee (of which examples exist, farther upriver)might have.
But there were walls instead of levees there for a reason.
Now, moving away from science a bit, Raven faults Bush for not fully funding Corps requests. What planet do you vote on, Raven?
No government fully funds engineering requests. I could look up reports going back at least 30 years demonstrating more deterioration in our bridges than in those floodwalls, and those haven't been fully funded. Guess the cost. $10 trillion wouldn't be too much.
Funny, I don't recall that when Clinton announced the coming surplus, his also saying, 'Muh fullah Mericans, we must spend every penny of this surplus fixing our scandalously deteriorated bridges.'
Government doesn't work like that.
I am not an admirer of Bush policy, nor of management in New Orleans. But the idea that this would not have happened had Al Gore kept us out of war in Iraq is just silly.#: Posted by on 09/03 at 12:14 AM -
I did not understand which international fund is leading, ekzept, but I can confirm that there is some talk if the New Orleans flood will bring down the dollar or the Nasdaq.
I heard that yesterday, but as an engineer I dont see a 50 meter levee failure a big deal, and inundations are everywhere, this year in Europe, in Asia, in Prague last year. In August I visited Bulgaria and half of the railroad system was out of order because of the floods. The physical damage must be minimal and the water will be pumped out in a few days.
But what the world saw is the chaos, the lack of preparedness, the hordes of helpless people. I suggest after you finish with apportioning the blame (and ritually beheading the river god as used to be done in the Hwang Ho floods in imperial China) pls reinforce disaster response. I need a strong Nasdaq, so ¡MANOS A LA OBRA!#: Posted by on 09/03 at 12:35 AM -
PS: What is meant to say is that the New Orleans flood is no big deal but the fact that it generates talk about bringing down the dollar or the Nasdaq worries me. It is a bad sign. People smell chaos, incompetence.
#: Posted by on 09/03 at 12:42 AM
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The Army Corps of Engineers has this to say in http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050901corps,1,7189346.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday that a lack of funding for hurricane-protection projects around New Orleans did not contribute to the disastrous flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina.
In a telephone interview with reporters, corps officials said that although portions of the flood-protection levees remain incomplete, the levees near Lake Pontchartrain that gave way—inundating much of the city—were completed and in good condition before the hurricane.
However, they noted that the levees were designed for a Category 3 hurricane and couldn’t handle the ferocious winds and raging waters from Hurricane Katrina, which was a Category 4 storm when it hit the coastline. The decision to build levees for a Category 3 hurricane was made decades ago based on a cost-benefit analysis.
“I don’t see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case,” said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the corps. “Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place.”
Strock also denied that escalating costs from the war in Iraq contributed to reductions in funding for hurricane projects in Louisiana, as some critics have suggested. Records show that corps funding for the Louisiana projects has generally decreased in recent years.
Mostly what has been cut for these various projects have been studies, it seems, and I don't know of any study that ever prevented a flood.
Folks, its way too early to fling about blame and point fingers. There will be blame for everyone, left and right, after the city is pumped out and rebuilding begins.The media is going to print a considerable amount of misleading and conflicting information, be skeptical of all of it, not just the bits that conflict with your political persuasion. -
What planet do you vote on, Raven?
Planet Balance Sheet, where spending $5.6 billion a month in Iraq means it's not available for spending somewhere else. Only in Republican fantasies do those kinds of fiscal actions have no consequences.
No government fully funds engineering requests.
Nice try at shifting the framing from "slashing" to "not fully funding", Harry. But we're talking about unprecedented major cuts here in commitments, not just projected failure to beat COLA. It's sloppy business reporting to conflate a lower rate of growth or a neutral rate with a declining rate, Harry. -
George W. Bush, September 2005:
"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
George clearly doesn't read National Geographic, either (from October 2004). -
Jason writes:
Folks, its way too early to fling about blame and point fingers. There will be blame for everyone, left and right, after the city is pumped out and rebuilding begins.The media is going to print a considerable amount of misleading and conflicting information, be skeptical of all of it, not just the bits that conflict with your political persuasion.
no, it's not. the civil and political leaders may be busy but, as for us, after we've contributed the cash, i think second-guessing and evaluating the performance of our political leaders are the most important jobs we have to do. further, Jason quotes the Chicago Tribune:“I don’t see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case,” said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the corps. “Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place.”
Strock is one voice and assesses the narrow. the failure, however, is massively political and is clearly the responsibility of both political parties. the failure is the failure to plan and act long term. Mr Bush is and has been President for five years. the Republicans control Congress. it's their watch. who else should we complain to?
Harry Eagar complains about fallacies in argument here. but by saying "Government doesn't work that way", he commits a fallacy of relevance. the problem is what needs to be done to prevent this kind of tragedy. most bridges are not in coastal areas and are not directly affected by these kinds of storms and by the increasingly severe weather which warming will bring. it hasn't even been raised as an issue yet, but that same warming will raise sea levels so make the challenge higher. seiches from even modest storms will eventually top whatever height they raise flood walls.
we are focussed upon New Orleans now. the same sea level rises will eventually challenge downtown New York City, the Florida keys, Cape Cod, and any other coast. worse, evidence is, these rises won't be gradual, there will be spurts and jumps.
Mr Bush expresses confidence that we are so big and so rich we can "take care of both", when asked about the Iraq adventure and storm recovery. Harry Eagar says we can't. i say we'd better, not only because of the direct effects upon these coastal areas, but because the economic consequences will be large. -
The wall was not designed to a category but to a head of water.
A head of water expected as a result of...
come on, Harry, even you can get this one...
The water overtopped the wall. Whether the wall was deteriorated or not, it did not fail. The overflow washed away its foundations, and the (still intact) wall collapsed.
Let's skip the forensics, guys. Harry's just saved the country some money by pulllng an engineer's report out of his ass from way out in Maui.
Consider a not unlikely event in a Category 5 storm: a grain ship with a mass of 50,000 tons is driven at 4 mph against the flood barrier.
Consider a not unlikely interpretation: a raving bullshit artist, called on his games by the people he despises, tries to emit a cloud of squid ink to cover his sorry ass.
You might look to Jason's post, Harry, for an example of intelligent, informed rebuttal to points like the ones we've been making. Jason raises some good points. I'll confess to skepticism of comments made in defense of the Bush administration by people in the chain of command. But there's a lot here to be sorted out. And Jason's last point is a good one in any event.#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 09/03 at 09:25 AM -
Jason, there was also a certain arrogance on the part of BushCo and FEMA, claiming Monday they had the matter in hand. it is widely reported FEMA head brown didn't even know about the problems at the NO Superdome late.
and, while not relevant to this immediate discussion but certainly relevant to people's consideration in evaluating the performance of government (all government, all administrations, all parties), this performance raises serious questions about the Department of Homeland Security being anything more than a boondoggle. they are supposed to respond to man-created disasters, dammit.
the confidence loss jaimito is worried about in the financial markets is IMO a sober reassessment on the part of all investors, international and othersise, about the supposed ability of the United States government to take care of its own. they're wondering, as i am, whether or not all this talk about strength and leadership and giving aid to other countries is flummery, a sales job. far worse than the decrease in any financial index, in my estimation, is the possibility that international investors will decide that our government debt is not worth holding. - incidently, Cape Cod, at least, has noticed they're on their own.
- and some of 'em are angry.
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Don't worry, it's all part of the Plan.
Ya see, with that big 2-meter-deep basin filled up, the worldwide sea level has actually dropped this week, even if some of those crummy old glaciers have continued to melt.
Our Dear Leader has said that we will find creative ways to adapt to global warming, and now he's proved it. Just pay no attention to those hate-America-first liberals who keep covering up the good news!#: Posted by on 09/03 at 02:51 PM -
I agree completely with John (#38353). I've been saying these very same things myself. The problem seems not to be the Republicans, but rather the ultra-conservatives that populate and support this sorry administration. "Compassionate Conservatism" has been exposed as the lie it always has been. Money is the only thing they care about. They vilify Bill Clinton, but do you honestly believe he would have allowed this fiasco to occur? Or would John McCain? Or Ted Kennedy? Arlen Specter? Olympia Snow? John Kerry? Even Nixon, former Public Enemy #1? No, I don't think so. The great sins of w and his puppeteers are egregious in the extreme not because they were mistakes, but because they were committed with a total lack of conscience or concern for the consequences. Because they were committed not in the hope that they were the best solution, but rather in the certain knowledge that they could not possibly be wrong. This is the same arrogance that doomed Nixon, who was orders of magnitude more intelligent than w. My fear is that when bush goes down in flames he'll take the world down with him.
#: Posted by on 09/03 at 08:23 PM
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ekzept, I did not mean that the choice is between Iraq and storm recovery. I mean we do not (and cannot) fully depreciate everything, even in peacetime.
It is not, as Democrats would have it, between guns and butter but between cake and pie. I guarantee I can come into your community and find some public facility that is not fully protected against every eventuality. And I am sure that you are not fully insured against every contingency personally. Nobody is.
It was a judgment (not made by George Bush at all or by Republicans as such) to protect New Orleans up to a point that was short of what everybody understood was the maximum exposure.
Henry Petroski, an engineering professor at Duke, goes over the background to this problem in 'To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design.'
There are parts of the country (Portland, Ore., comes to mind) where there are natural threats as big and bad as what New Orleans faced where public policy has allocated NO resources whatever to mitigation. Oregon, of course, is well known for being full of Republicans.
nrv asks if Bill Clinton would have allowed 'this fiasco' to have occurred. He is unclear about which fiasco, the failure to mitigate the maximum storm, or the incompetent recovery. If the first, we know the answer: Yes.
Clinton had no war in Iraq and he thought he had a few trillion in hand in surplus. I do not recall that he said, 'We must raise the levees in New Orleans.'
The original point of this thread was that New Orleans' storm defenses failed, and that Bush policy was the reason. This was an error of fact. They performed as designed. They were not designed big enough.
Whatever George Bush's other sins, that wasn't one of them.#: Posted by on 09/04 at 01:39 AM -
Clinton had no war in Iraq and he thought he had a few trillion in hand in surplus. I do not recall that he said, 'We must raise the levees in New Orleans.'
He didn't gut FEMA, either; he appointed competent emergency management people. Bush replaced them with cronies (a lawyer as head, I believe). If you're not going to do the work to prevent a disaster beforehand, you have to make sure you can adequately respond afterwards, with people, resources, and plans. Bush's policies of patronage to incompentents and cutting funding (not only for studies, but for projects underway as well), in addition to his actions when Katrina's scope became clear, guaranteed the response would be inadequate when something big hit.
You can't seriously be arguing that Bush did everything he could in mitigation planning beforehand to compensate for slashing funds to the prevention phase.
Whatever George Bush's other sins, that wasn't one of them.
For years now, he and the Republicans have been selling the line that if we accept retraction in our civil liberties, economic slowdown, and all the other delights he's brought us, the trade-off would be that the increased security would keep up safer. Now we have graphic evidence that this was a lie, unless you're seriously arguing that if this were a dirty bomb with no warning, rather than a natural disaster with days' warning, the outcome would have magically been better.
If you're not going to take steps to protect against a disaster--like fulfulling committments to maintain the levees already signed off on and undertaken, and properly funding and staffing agencies with competent people--then you'll more than pay for it in mitigation if something disastrous happens. That's risk management 101, Harry; another basic principle which you either should know, but don't, or are deliberately sweeping under the rug to make excuses for Bush.
For example, FEMA is now spending God knows how much on chartering 3 cruise ships for the displaced people after the fact. They could have gotten a lot more mileage and a lot less death out of that money with an evacuation plan for NOLA that used Amtrak, school buses, and ambulances, among other things.
But because this administration makes it up as they go along, and refuses to face the reality that bad things happen, they slashed the prevention end, and did not compensate on the mitigation end until far after the fact. Now it's too little, too late, and people have died as a result. People are still dying while waiting for relief efforts to get to them, which should have gotten rolling days before they did.
We certainly can and should hold his feet to the fire over the decisions that led to this, as well as calling apologists like you on excusing him for the decisions he is responsible for on his watch. As Truman said, "the buck stops here", and wanting to be President means he has to do the job, both before and after disaster strikes. Bush gambled that nothing would ever happen by skimping to an unprecedented degree on the prevention, and by--instead of redoubling on the mitigation efforts, mounting an anemic response, days after the fact
Far greater Bush fans than I agree, such as the Dallas Morning News:
Losing New Orleans to a natural disaster is one thing, but losing her to hopeless gunmen and a shameful lack of response is unfathomable. How is it that the U.S. military can conquer a foreign country in a matter of days, but can't stop terrorists controlling the streets of America or even drop a case of water to desperate and dying Americans?
and the Washington Times:
Troops are finally moving into New Orleans in realistic numbers, and it's past time. What took the government so long? The thin veneer separating civilization and chaos, which we earlier worried might collapse in the absence of swift action, has collapsed.
If even those Bush fans are calling for his accountability for once, then you know it's a big deal.
Skimp on prevention, pay for it many times over in response: Risk Management 101, Harry. Bush failed on both counts, and it is right to call him on it. - indeed Raven. and the neocons are trying to give Bush cover by blaming the aftermath of the hurricane in NO on a lack of godliness. what a friggin' joke!
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Where have you seen me saying anything good about the response, Raven?
When it is dissected, it will be, I predict, even worse than it looks now. I've been writing about hurricane threats since 1970 (and evacuating from hurricanes since 1953), and until recently (roughly, Hurricane Andrew), one of the biggest concerns of emergency managers was that Americans would not evacuate, even under mandatory orders.
There seems to have been a lot of noncompliance with mandatory orders this time, though perhaps not as much as I would have anticipated if it had happened two decades ago.
If all that is accepted, then the managers ought to have expected even more people trapped in the city, should it have been cut off, than they actually got. In other words, it looks as if they were even worse prepared than they look now.
And obviously they failed to think through to provide means of evacuation for people without autos. (According to a Washington Post story, that was a local/state responsibility. I cannot say.)
In the end, it was the biggest evacuation in our history, and that part went well. Better than most emergency managers I know would have expected.
That all said, you continue to whine about inadequate prevention. Look in the mirror, then. The decision not to armor New Orleans against the largest possible storm was made a long time ago, before George Bush was running his baseball team.
The flood control system worked as it was intended to work. It did not fail for lack of maintenance, of studies or of competent technicians. It worked.
It just wasn't big enough.
Like I said, I can come into your community and find exactly the same sort (but perhaps not the same magnitude) of bet being made. (If you live in, eg, St. Louis, bigger magnitude.)#: Posted by on 09/04 at 02:29 PM -
And obviously they failed to think through to provide means of evacuation for people without autos. (According to a Washington Post story, that was a local/state responsibility. I cannot say.)
i have a reference somewhere saying that the plan was to move school busses in to evacuate the remaining folks. that wasn't done, and it was Nagin's responsibility to do it. he may have had excellent reasons for not attempting it, part of them being that people would not have left anyway.
it sounds like a p-baked plan, p << 0.5. how do you get people with special needs out of nursing homes that way?
it's possible, that when all is said, the problem was that Katrina turned Category 5 in an interval which, by planning cycle standards, was a blink of an eye and noone had time to react. whether or not the federal should have responded faster or not is the remaining question. i have a text from NOAA forecasting devastation on Sunday night. one thing the emergency management system needs to do is have one part of the government listening to others and acting on it.
Harry is certainly right about hurricanes. the same could easily happen on Cape Cod. it did happen there in 1935 or 1938 (forget), but it was not as built up as it is now. and there evacuation is a nightmare, forcing people across two bridges which jam up every day at rush hour out of Boston. -
That all said, you continue to whine about inadequate prevention. Look in the mirror, then.
No, I am proud to say I voted against Bush both times.
The decision not to armor New Orleans against the largest possible storm was made a long time ago, before George Bush was running his baseball team.
There's no free lunch, Harry: now we're in Econ 101. Of course, there is always a certain amount of what is unfortunately called "acceptable risk" involved in the tradeoff. While other administrations had decided to accept a certain level of risk, they at least staffed FEMA with competent emergency-mangement personnel to absorb any consequences on the mitigation side of the equation. Bush shifted resources and expertise sharply down on the prevention end (changing the first derivative of the curve of resources allocated from less but still positive to negative, a crucial distinction you gloss over in excusing it as "not fully funding"), increasing the risk of catastrophic consequences. He failed to absorb that risk on the other side of the equation by aggressively ramping up the mitigation end. And he lied about how we were all safer for his efforts.
He's wrong on all counts--he played chicken to an unprecendented degree on the prevention end with his diversion of resources, and he failed on the mitigation end by not mobilizing. Your failure or unwillingness to grasp fundamental principles of economics and risk management in your eagerness to defend his pre-hurricane actions notwithstanding, there is a crucial connection between prevention efforts and mitigation. When he made decisions about where to allocate resources, he upped the degree of acceptable risk, and did not come clean about it.
Like I said, I can come into your community and find exactly the same sort (but perhaps not the same magnitude) of bet being made.
Well, duh, of course you can--there's no free lunch, despite your comforting "we can have cake and butter and a pony too!" words. But Bush unilaterally changed the magnitude of the bet (the degree of "acceptable risk") through his actions, all the while lying about doing so in his words, and you're damn right I can and will criticize him for that and for what it's cost this country.
And I really hope you've got a better argument than "two wrongs make a right", because that's just lame. -
relating to my earlier comment about evacuating the remaining with schoolbuses, there's a discussion about it at deadlykatrina.com.
also, don't forget to check out nola.com, the site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. -
Uh, Raven, I didn't say 'you can have guns and butter and a pony.' I'm the guy who said you had to choose between 'pie and cake.'
I guess I'll have to put you in the file along with Chris as people who can read but don't because all they want to do is jump up and down and scream, 'Bushitler!'#: Posted by on 09/04 at 04:52 PM -
I guess I'll have to put you in the file along with Chris as people who can read but don't because all they want to do is jump up and down and scream, 'Bushitler!'
Guess that beats actually bothering to know what you're talking about, Harry. Less work for you, anyway. -
The sole blame goes to the incompatent government of the state of La.!!! The liberals had no plans before or after the storm! The state guard was not called up! The new Orlean's police were also looting and the citizens were killing and shooting everything in sight!!! The state government is the frontlines and they failed! The mayor of New Orleans and the gov. went AWOL! They called for an evacuation and then fled with their families! It is the same thing that happens everytime liberals get caught with their pants down! They blame everybody but themselves! So sad but predictable!!!
Tommy#: Posted by on 09/04 at 10:46 PM - Oh, and one more thing, Harry, although I don't expect you to get the concept of cumulative risk
