And they call the wind . . . Katrina
A week ago we witnessed the greatest natural disaster to ever hit a populated US city. The destruction and power have been impressive, but the aftermath is truly amazing. I'm not really sure where to start, but I AM going to ramble on about it for a while, so fasten your seat belts.
First, let's talk about the good. The impact could have actually been much, much worse. The hurricane dropped in power from a 5 to a 4 just before landfall, and it swerved to the East, just missing hitting New Orleans (from here on out referred to as NO, because it is way easier to type) head on. Because of this, the levies surrounding NO were able to catch and retain much of the water (at least for a while, until they leaked), which kept the water from rising up that much faster.
Additionally, I think the Mayor of NO has handled this crisis with an amazing amount of skill. He lost his cool when should have, he kept his cool when he should have, and he's been bitching about just this scenario for years. I'm a pretty hard guy to impress politically, but Mayor Ray Nagin will get my vote if he ever tries to run for anything I can vote for. This is not to say he hasn't made SOME mistakes, but the majority of those were from trying to make something happen on a bigger government level (he's only a mayor, not governor or president), and he wasn't getting the response he needed.
Which brings us to things that did NOT work like they were supposed to. While the city's response was appropriate, and immediately overwhelmed, the State and National resources that are SUPPOSED to kick in when that happens were MIA. Now don't get me wrong, I can appreciate the kind of logistics that go into trying to co-ordinate an effort like this. I can appreciate it more than a lot of people. I've actually attended NDMS meetings, drills, hot-washes, and have sat in my County NDMS control room and simulated a couple of disasters and I've seen how the resources need to be allocated. The coordiation and communication that are needed to pull that off are daunting, but not impossible. This is why we have preparations, drills, and tests. What infuriates me is how the state and national responses took so long to get into motion.
I know that when the infrastructure for the normal communications grid goes down, there is an emergency code that can be typed into any cell-phone that will allow it to make calls on an emergency basis. This is because during a disaster, the relays get overwhelmed by everyone calling each other. So they are shut down for everyone who doesn't know the emergency codes. Only certain emergency response and state agencies are privy to these codes, so that they can co-ordinate resources. Beyond this, there is a radio communication system called . . well, I better not let out all of the "secrets" on a public web page here. Let's just to say that there IS a protocol to be followed when a disaster hits. It is scalable, and starts small, but when small gets overwhelmed, it gets escalated to a higher level, and so on and so on until you either have the whole nation mobilized to take action, or the disaster is larger than the nation is able contain.
So how can a nation that just airlifted emergency food and water drops to Indonesia TWO DAYS after the tsunami FAIL to distribute food and water to dying citizens FIVE DAYS after Katrina?
Now here is where things start to go downhill for me. First, this disaster was not a surprise in the night event like the Tsunami. We saw the thing coming! It passed through Florida, wandered around the Gulf of Mexico for a few days, and then bee-lined for NO. We had DAYS of warning. It only takes 36 hours for NDMS to go from 0 to 60 (metaphorically speaking). With ADVANCED warning it should take even less. What the hell?
Next there is the evacuation 'plan'. I use the term loosely here. I'm sorry, but telling everyone that "there is a mandatory evacuation of the city, get out and find some hotels someplace else" is not a 'plan'. Providing some mass transportation, commandeering planes, trains, buses, and anything that can move people is a plan, but telling everyone from a region, "you're on your own" is not a plan. I've lived paycheck to paycheck before. I've also lived on welfare for a period of time. When it comes down to the end of the month, you usually have between 15 dollars and ZERO dollars to make it until the 1st of the month (naturally, this thing hit on the 29th). Additionally, you usually DON'T OWN A CAR!!! Those things are freaken expensive, and you find that you can get by on buses and begging for rides. So let's say you've got 10 bucks, and no car. How do you evacuate? Now let's say you've got a spouse, perhaps a kid, maybe an elderly parent with you also. Walk? Do you know what it's like to walk 10 miles in 24 hours under the best conditions with food and water for a healthy, full-grown adult? Now try it carrying a suitcase, a kid, and maybe your most precious photo album.
The really insulting thing is watching the press run up to these people now and ask them, "Why didn't you evacuate?" As much as I'd love to hear one of them be honest on national television and say, "I couldn't afford it!", their pride won't allow them to be that vulnerable in front of a camera. So they make up all this stuff about riding out all of the other storms, never seeing a flood like this, and their roots being here so they wouldn't move. I guarantee you that you'd get a different answer if the camera was off, and that if they could have afforded a vehicle and the freaken GAS AND the money for a hotel stay for a couple weeks, they'd have been out of there. Hell, I don't have that kind of bank right now. I'd max my credit card in the hotel after night 4, and my wife and I both have bachelor degrees.
Ok, so that's what went right, and what went wrong. Now we get to things that really, really tick me off. I'm not going to spend a lot of time here, because blind fury is not a healthy mind-set to stay in for too long. First we have this picture.
This was taken 36 hours after Katrina hit. This explains why many residents of the effected area are calling NO by the term 'Lake George'. Talk about being asleep at the wheel.
Next is this article depicting the situation around the 'refugee center' in NO 5 days after landfall. The part that really gets my goat is: "Nagin advised those gathered at the center to march over the Crescent City Connection bridge to the west bank of the Mississippi River to find relief in neighboring Jefferson Parish." Ok, so all of you refugees should hike 30 miles somehow and hope that there's help on the other side. Some actually tried that, and there was no more help there than there was at the center. There SHOULD HAVE been help at the center in the first place, but again, FEMA and NDMS were a little slow on the uptake (and yes, I know FEMA HQ in the city of NO had to evac, but there are contigency plans for just that occasion, and for some reason, those plans didn't initiate until day SIX?!?!).
Lastly, I'd like to think that I'm in the middle ground in my opinion of how the response has been. Articles like this one still warm my heart with how heroes can and do still exist and jump to action when action is called for. Conversely, articles like this one make me not believe everything I read on the internet . .. . . .because if it turns out to be proven true, I will totally burst a blood vessel trying to find a new level of rage at the current administration.
And lastly for real this time, I really can't lay all of the blame for this at the president. There is this thing called congress that is full of both democrats and republicans who have a lot more to do with how the budget is organized and approved of the new Homeland Security setup. A number of them (the majority actually) have been just as asleep at the wheel as the president, and I count members of both parties in that. A few of them are from my state, and will be receiving a vote of no confidence at the earliest opportunity.
I'm going to change the music again. The last one in memory of my grandmother seems wildly inappropriate given the latest disaster, and how many people have lost loved ones. I think I'll select something a little most post-apocalyptic instead. If it sounds a little familiar, it should. 10 kudo points to whoever recognizes the tune.
First, let's talk about the good. The impact could have actually been much, much worse. The hurricane dropped in power from a 5 to a 4 just before landfall, and it swerved to the East, just missing hitting New Orleans (from here on out referred to as NO, because it is way easier to type) head on. Because of this, the levies surrounding NO were able to catch and retain much of the water (at least for a while, until they leaked), which kept the water from rising up that much faster.
Additionally, I think the Mayor of NO has handled this crisis with an amazing amount of skill. He lost his cool when should have, he kept his cool when he should have, and he's been bitching about just this scenario for years. I'm a pretty hard guy to impress politically, but Mayor Ray Nagin will get my vote if he ever tries to run for anything I can vote for. This is not to say he hasn't made SOME mistakes, but the majority of those were from trying to make something happen on a bigger government level (he's only a mayor, not governor or president), and he wasn't getting the response he needed.
Which brings us to things that did NOT work like they were supposed to. While the city's response was appropriate, and immediately overwhelmed, the State and National resources that are SUPPOSED to kick in when that happens were MIA. Now don't get me wrong, I can appreciate the kind of logistics that go into trying to co-ordinate an effort like this. I can appreciate it more than a lot of people. I've actually attended NDMS meetings, drills, hot-washes, and have sat in my County NDMS control room and simulated a couple of disasters and I've seen how the resources need to be allocated. The coordiation and communication that are needed to pull that off are daunting, but not impossible. This is why we have preparations, drills, and tests. What infuriates me is how the state and national responses took so long to get into motion.
I know that when the infrastructure for the normal communications grid goes down, there is an emergency code that can be typed into any cell-phone that will allow it to make calls on an emergency basis. This is because during a disaster, the relays get overwhelmed by everyone calling each other. So they are shut down for everyone who doesn't know the emergency codes. Only certain emergency response and state agencies are privy to these codes, so that they can co-ordinate resources. Beyond this, there is a radio communication system called . . well, I better not let out all of the "secrets" on a public web page here. Let's just to say that there IS a protocol to be followed when a disaster hits. It is scalable, and starts small, but when small gets overwhelmed, it gets escalated to a higher level, and so on and so on until you either have the whole nation mobilized to take action, or the disaster is larger than the nation is able contain.
So how can a nation that just airlifted emergency food and water drops to Indonesia TWO DAYS after the tsunami FAIL to distribute food and water to dying citizens FIVE DAYS after Katrina?
Now here is where things start to go downhill for me. First, this disaster was not a surprise in the night event like the Tsunami. We saw the thing coming! It passed through Florida, wandered around the Gulf of Mexico for a few days, and then bee-lined for NO. We had DAYS of warning. It only takes 36 hours for NDMS to go from 0 to 60 (metaphorically speaking). With ADVANCED warning it should take even less. What the hell?
Next there is the evacuation 'plan'. I use the term loosely here. I'm sorry, but telling everyone that "there is a mandatory evacuation of the city, get out and find some hotels someplace else" is not a 'plan'. Providing some mass transportation, commandeering planes, trains, buses, and anything that can move people is a plan, but telling everyone from a region, "you're on your own" is not a plan. I've lived paycheck to paycheck before. I've also lived on welfare for a period of time. When it comes down to the end of the month, you usually have between 15 dollars and ZERO dollars to make it until the 1st of the month (naturally, this thing hit on the 29th). Additionally, you usually DON'T OWN A CAR!!! Those things are freaken expensive, and you find that you can get by on buses and begging for rides. So let's say you've got 10 bucks, and no car. How do you evacuate? Now let's say you've got a spouse, perhaps a kid, maybe an elderly parent with you also. Walk? Do you know what it's like to walk 10 miles in 24 hours under the best conditions with food and water for a healthy, full-grown adult? Now try it carrying a suitcase, a kid, and maybe your most precious photo album.
The really insulting thing is watching the press run up to these people now and ask them, "Why didn't you evacuate?" As much as I'd love to hear one of them be honest on national television and say, "I couldn't afford it!", their pride won't allow them to be that vulnerable in front of a camera. So they make up all this stuff about riding out all of the other storms, never seeing a flood like this, and their roots being here so they wouldn't move. I guarantee you that you'd get a different answer if the camera was off, and that if they could have afforded a vehicle and the freaken GAS AND the money for a hotel stay for a couple weeks, they'd have been out of there. Hell, I don't have that kind of bank right now. I'd max my credit card in the hotel after night 4, and my wife and I both have bachelor degrees.
Ok, so that's what went right, and what went wrong. Now we get to things that really, really tick me off. I'm not going to spend a lot of time here, because blind fury is not a healthy mind-set to stay in for too long. First we have this picture.
This was taken 36 hours after Katrina hit. This explains why many residents of the effected area are calling NO by the term 'Lake George'. Talk about being asleep at the wheel.
Next is this article depicting the situation around the 'refugee center' in NO 5 days after landfall. The part that really gets my goat is: "Nagin advised those gathered at the center to march over the Crescent City Connection bridge to the west bank of the Mississippi River to find relief in neighboring Jefferson Parish." Ok, so all of you refugees should hike 30 miles somehow and hope that there's help on the other side. Some actually tried that, and there was no more help there than there was at the center. There SHOULD HAVE been help at the center in the first place, but again, FEMA and NDMS were a little slow on the uptake (and yes, I know FEMA HQ in the city of NO had to evac, but there are contigency plans for just that occasion, and for some reason, those plans didn't initiate until day SIX?!?!).
Lastly, I'd like to think that I'm in the middle ground in my opinion of how the response has been. Articles like this one still warm my heart with how heroes can and do still exist and jump to action when action is called for. Conversely, articles like this one make me not believe everything I read on the internet . .. . . .because if it turns out to be proven true, I will totally burst a blood vessel trying to find a new level of rage at the current administration.
And lastly for real this time, I really can't lay all of the blame for this at the president. There is this thing called congress that is full of both democrats and republicans who have a lot more to do with how the budget is organized and approved of the new Homeland Security setup. A number of them (the majority actually) have been just as asleep at the wheel as the president, and I count members of both parties in that. A few of them are from my state, and will be receiving a vote of no confidence at the earliest opportunity.
I'm going to change the music again. The last one in memory of my grandmother seems wildly inappropriate given the latest disaster, and how many people have lost loved ones. I think I'll select something a little most post-apocalyptic instead. If it sounds a little familiar, it should. 10 kudo points to whoever recognizes the tune.
Comments
The last disaster drill in NO yielded a result that 33% of the population would "refuse" to leave during a hurricane. I think we're seeing that now.
There is a city-wide plan that states most evacuations would occur by private car, but that the city would use public busses to a common relocation center 4 days prior to a hurricane to get people out of the area to safety centers. School busses should have been ready at the superdome 4 days before to get people out, that I blame Nagin the city for. Everything else was a sore misuse of our resources.
I sure hope we take the aid we were offered from other countries.
Btw, show me how you did your counter!
it's really straight forward actually, and it'll track a single page for you for free, and give you all sorts of stats of who's visiting the page and from where. Cool stuff.