NationStates Jolt Archive

http://www.reason.com/rauch/091905.shtml

If It Keeps on Raining, Levee's Going to Break

The loss of New Orleans wasn't just a tragedy. It was a plan.

The evacuation plans were inadequate and then bungled. The rescue was slow, confused, often nonexistent. Yet the most striking fact of the New Orleans catastrophe has received less notice than it deserves: The plan for New Orleans in case of a hit from a very powerful hurricane was to lose the city.
In other words, if a severe hurricane struck, the city's flooding and abandonment was not what would happen if the plan failed. It was the plan.

New Orleans is built between a lake, a river, and the Gulf of Mexico, and it is lower than the surrounding waters. It was kept dry by an extensive system of levees and pumps. That system was itself contributing to the slow subsidence of the city.

The levee system was largely designed in the early 1960s. By the standards of their day, the levees were built conservatively, but within certain constraints. In particular, they were built to withstand a Category 3 hurricane.

Hurricanes come in two jumbo sizes: Category 4 and, most severe but rarest, Category 5. A storm of either magnitude could deliver a surge that would overtop or breach the levees. The city would be flooded, to depths as great as 20 feet. It would become a lake. Much of it would be destroyed, and many people would die.

All of this was well known. Press accounts and public officials have been quite open about it for years. "Evacuation is the only way to protect New Orleanians," reported the Philadelphia Inquirer last year. It quoted Terry C. Tullier, the New Orleans director of emergency preparedness, as saying, "It's only a matter of time." Col. Peter Rowan, the commander of the New Orleans District of the Army Corps of Engineers, told the Inquirer that the city was "at the mercy of chance for the foreseeable future." Media coverage was rife with such warnings. ... And yet, 400 busses remained unused. :rolleyes:

And work that could have been started (was asked for) during the Carter & Clinton administrations got sandbagged by enviornmentalists...
(But Bushitler is to blame! :rolleyes: )

(long snip to end)
... Congress should create an independent Disaster Review Board to perform and publish an annual inventory of catastrophic vulnerabilities, highlighting in red all the places where, as in New Orleans, more prevention or mitigation makes sense. The board should prioritize spending and send an overall disaster budget to Congress every year for an up-or-down vote, forcing politicians to confront the issue. If population centers lie over the San Andreas Fault, in the shadow of Mount Rainier (an active volcano that could devastate the Seattle area), or on the floodplains of the Mississippi, the disaster board should be able to propose protecting them, requiring them to protect themselves, or encouraging them to move.
Choose to live in a potential disaster area, be prepared for a disaster - don't come crying to me for help when the inevitable happens. :headbang:

I agree completely, but anything as sensible as the conclusion is unlikely to be implemented.

There's going to be a lot of federal money spent rebuilding this one, and I'll bet money they won't do it right - raise the elevation of the city with fill, as was done in Galveston in 1900. But the real question is whether, and to what extent, to rebuild with public funds.

If the government won't rebuild everyone's homes and rebuild infrastructure in known unsafe areas, then insurance rates will rise appropriately. Some cities would shrink as a result, but that's appropriate and reflects risk.

The best evacuation plan had 60% of the residents of New Orleans getting out--they got 80% out. What the fuck do you want from them?

Meanwhile, it's almost three weeks later adn FEMA doesn't have a quarter of the offices they said they'd have open in Mississippi and Louisiana open yet. I assume that's the state and local authorities' fault as well, huh. :rolleyes:

And on another point, I feel strongly that the local governments are the best and most appropriate choice as first responders, and I feel it's their responsibility to their citizens to be prepared. At a minimum, they must have a solid and rehearsed emergency plan, and appropriate supplies and transportation.

The first defense against disaster is the individual, who should attempt to save themselves if possible. Then the city/state steps in. There is no way on this earth that the federal government will get on the scene in less than 3 days, ever. It's ridiculous to expect otherwise considering the logistics and distances involved.

I would prefer to see emergency preparedness expenses come out of local/state taxes, but spending federal dollars on helping communities to prepare proactively is still cheaper than a vast FEMA mobilization after an emergency.

Sabbatis--there were assets in place, moved there by Northern Command, ready to come ashore the moment the storm passed, and they never got the order to move in and start with rescue operations. A ship, that makes its own water, that had a thousand hospital beds and rescue helicopters had followed Katrina into the Gulf, anchored and rode the storm out, and stayed there for four days while awaiting orders to help out. A lot of the stuff that takes time could have been readied just in case--there were days of prep time between the moment Katrina cleared Florida (where it hit me) and when it started beating the Gulf Coast (where it hit my daughter)--where training could have been done to get people ready to move in (training that didn't start until the day after Katrina made landfall), where supplies could have been staged and ready to deliver.

It was a two-part failure on the part of the feds--failure to prepare and then failure to execute.

I'm not saying that the state and local authorities couldn't have done more--but they did what they were supposed to, and in the case of evacuation, did better than anyone expected them to do.

And on another point, I feel strongly that the local governments are the best and most appropriate choice as first responders, and I feel it's their responsibility to their citizens to be prepared. At a minimum, they must have a solid and rehearsed emergency plan, and appropriate supplies and transportation.


While that is true, it also must be recognized that the infrastructure and personel in a disaster zone are the most likely to be adversely affected by that very same disaster. For smaller incidents, that is a fair statement. When a city gets creamed, the emergency services also got creamed. And there is only so much that you can prepare for.

Case in point, New York loosing a huge chunk of their first responders when the towers fell that put a huge dent in their ability to manage the situation. And that even was a localized event. Or, looking at other reasonable scenarios, how do the fire trucks, police, and ambulences get out and about in LA after an earthquake if they are burried in the rubble of their own buildings?

The fact is that the greater the scale of a disaster, the more likely it is that local services will be unable to respond at the level we might hope or plan that they be able to.

The first defense against disaster is the individual, who should attempt to save themselves if possible. Then the city/state steps in. There is no way on this earth that the federal government will get on the scene in less than 3 days, ever. It's ridiculous to expect otherwise considering the logistics and distances involved.


For unexpected cases such as earthquakes you have some merit to that statement. When you have two day's warning that a cat 5 is bearing down on the coast you can get your ass moving. Failures on this level happened at all levels.


I would prefer to see emergency preparedness expenses come out of local/state taxes, but spending federal dollars on helping communities to prepare proactively is still cheaper than a vast FEMA mobilization after an emergency.

FEMA WAS tasked with cooperative work with vetting disaster plans with local authorites. They even did an exercise just a couple of years ago that roleplayed the very event of a major hirricane flooding New Orleans, but when the real one came they seem to have misplaced that plan.

And economies of scale dictate that efficiency is acheived at the larger level rather than the smaller. Expecting every municipality to have the sort of disaster recovery team in place and ready for a major disaster is far more pricey than doing it at the State level, or even the federal level. As such the average per-capita tax burden to support the level of duplicated expertise that this would entail would be better served by having a top-down approach rather than bottom up.



Local planning is key, but multi-level cooperation and coordination is even more important, as is a known and immediately implemented chain of command so people aren't wasting time arguing over who is in charge of what parts of the rescue and recovery effort.


All of that shit should have been settled looooooong before the storm hit shore.

I would prefer to see emergency preparedness expenses come out of local/state taxes, but spending federal dollars on helping communities to prepare proactively is still cheaper than a vast FEMA mobilization after an emergency.

Under Clinton, that's exactly what FEMA did. Remember the floods on the Red River in 1997? After the first one, FEMA encouraged people (by buying them out, essentially) to move back from the flood zone, and if they stayed, to build their homes so that the residences were well off the ground, with the underneath used for garages, storage, etc. The result was that the next time there was a flood, there were less than a tenth of the deaths and property damage was also lessened.

Sabbatis--there were assets in place, moved there by Northern Command, ready to come ashore the moment the storm passed, and they never got the order to move in and start with rescue operations. A ship, that makes its own water, that had a thousand hospital beds and rescue helicopters had followed Katrina into the Gulf, anchored and rode the storm out, and stayed there for four days while awaiting orders to help out. A lot of the stuff that takes time could have been readied just in case--there were days of prep time between the moment Katrina cleared Florida (where it hit me) and when it started beating the Gulf Coast (where it hit my daughter)--where training could have been done to get people ready to move in (training that didn't start until the day after Katrina made landfall), where supplies could have been staged and ready to deliver.

It was a two-part failure on the part of the feds--failure to prepare and then failure to execute.

I'm not saying that the state and local authorities couldn't have done more--but they did what they were supposed to, and in the case of evacuation, did better than anyone expected them to do.

I've been doing a lot of reading on this topic - actually, I started on it prior to Katrina since my sister lives in NO. There are a lot of facts, some conflicting, and all open to individual judgement and political opinion.

I don't disagree with what you present, but there's a lot more that could have been done locally. Frankly, I think the whole thing was mis-handled from top to bottom, and that includes FEMA - from preparedness to execution.

I'm starting to lose interest in the political side of this problem - hell, I never had any in the first place. I am harder on state/local government than federal for two reasons: they could have prepared much better, and indeed made little effort to fulfill a responsibility to their citizens. I'm angry about the lack of concern locally, and there is more damning evidence of it, but i'm not going to post it now for reasons mentioned below.

I don't criticise the locals to protect Bush, nor to punish Nagin or Blanco. My life experience with emergencies is that personal and local preparedness for emergencies is the best.

Having tired of hearing and seeing the blaming going on at many levels, I'm more interested now in how to prevent such problems in the future. I'm thinking of my community as well, and will hopefully have some input regarding our emergency preparations. I'm reviewing my own resources for a short-term disaster.

What I wrote above in reply to Synik's post is largely intended to be forward thinking. What lessons have we learned from, including social issues in NO, this tragedy and how do we plan for the future.

I would rather see money spent at the community level for preparedness, possibly using federal funding, than see it spent on FEMA trying to make the impossible happen. The federal government will never be on time for a disaster, let's quit trying to make it so. Let's do the practical thing and empower communities to be self-sufficient for a few days, if possible.

I'm trying to avoid blame threads, I'm now more interested in the many issues that lie ahead and how to improve future response. Synik's post, I thought, left some room to discuss the future - at least the last quote.

Nazz, Silliopolos, Syniks -

Dang, just getting an interesting and potentially productive conversation going and I have to leave!

Sorry, work beckons - or in my situation screams loudly in an annoying voice - but I will be back to comment tonight.

The best evacuation plan had 60% of the residents of New Orleans getting out--they got 80% out. What the fuck do you want from them? Most rational people expected them to use the assets they had on hand at the time... like all the local busses that are now ruined.

To that effect, read THIS ARTICLE (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05262/573959.stm) from the Pittsburg Post Gazette. Note that ABC found it nearly impossible to find actual victims who were more angry at Bush than at Nagin.

Reporter Dean Reynolds found a dozen people -- all African-Americans -- who'd been evacuated from the flooded streets of New Orleans, sat with them outside the Houston Astrodome and interviewed them as soon as the president's speech ended. <snip> (ABC-Reynolds) "Did you harbor any anger toward the president because of the slow federal response?"

"No, none whatsoever," London replied, "because I feel our city and state government should have been there before the federal government was called in. They should have been on their jobs."

"And they weren't?" Reynolds asked.

"No, no, no, no, Lord, they weren't," she stated. "They had RTA buses, Greyhound buses, school buses that were just sitting there going under water when they could have been evacuating people." <snip>

"Cecilia," he (Reynolds) said to another woman, "did you think the president was sincere here tonight?"

"Yes, he was," she said.

"Do you think this was a little too late?" Finally he got a bite when she repeated his words without passion: "To me, it was too late."

Reynolds turned back to Connie and asked, "Do you blame anybody for this?"

"Hell, yes!" she exclaimed. "They've been allocated federal funds to fix the levee system, and it never got done. I fault the mayor of this city, I really do."<snip>

The ABC broadcast put in stark contrast the attitude of the black and lower-income flood victims and that of the privileged white men conducting the show. The survivors were calm, careful about where they directed what little anger they expressed and smilingly apologetic that they weren't giving the TV guys the roiling passions and bitter recriminations so clearly expected of them.

Oops.

Meanwhile, it's almost three weeks later adn FEMA doesn't have a quarter of the offices they said they'd have open in Mississippi and Louisiana open yet. I assume that's the state and local authorities' fault as well, huh. :rolleyes:
Nope. That's FEMA's fault. But, like all Cops/Government agencies, their job is to clean up the mess and make post-facto changes in policy - not take the blame for where others fell down on the job.

This has been a massive failure on every level of possible response.

Not one person can anymore say that Bush is not responsible for the poor and slipshod Federal level reaction because he, himself, with his own mouth and on camera, said he was responsible. That buck must stop with him.

As for state and local response, nobody has stepped up to the plate on that and I find it sad. Sean Penn went out on a leaky boat to do everything he could while busses sat idle. I, personally, saw Harry Connick jr. helping people out of their homes, while busses sat idle. Al Gore air lifted people out, while busses sat idle.

When confronted by that, the state and local response was, "Now is not the time to place blame."

I think 2006 is going to be a very interesting election year because the saddest thing of all is about to happen: political exploitation of tragedy.

This has been a massive failure on every level of possible response.

Not one person can anymore say that Bush is not responsible for the poor and slipshod Federal level reaction because he, himself, with his own mouth and on camera, said he was responsible. That buck must stop with him. Yep. No real argument there - except that FEMA was a mess before he got it. Not that the post 9/11 reorg didn't make it worse, but Presidents do have to work with what they have been handed.

As for state and local response, nobody has stepped up to the plate on that and I find it sad. Sean Penn went out on a leaky boat to do everything he could while busses sat idle. I, personally, saw Harry Connick jr. helping people out of their homes, while busses sat idle. Al Gore air lifted people out, while busses sat idle.

When confronted by that, the state and local response was, "Now is not the time to place blame."

I think 2006 is going to be a very interesting election year because the saddest thing of all is about to happen: political exploitation of tragedy.Too late. That started with the blaming of Bush for things that weren't his fault. At least he has taken the PR responsibility for those things that were... unlike the Louisania Locals.

<snip>
Sean Penn went out on a leaky boat to do everything he could while busses sat idle. I, personally, saw Harry Connick jr. helping people out of their homes, while busses sat idle. Al Gore air lifted people out, while busses sat idle.
Truth is stranger than fiction?
OFFICIALS WARN OF IMPENDING CELEBRITY OUTBREAK

Still reeling from floods and hurricane damage, remaining New Orleans residents face potential devastation from a wave of marauding celebrities, say on-site emergency response officials.

"Early on we spotted a few relatively benign native species, like Harry Connick Jr. and Ellen DeGeneris," said Jim Uhl, a field coordinator for FEMA. "These were quickly followed by an infestation of B-list singers and actors. We are now hearing reports of C-listers and reality TV programs headed from the West."

"Anytime you have this many cameras in one environment, it creates a breeding ground," explained LSU Extension Service biologist Ray Robertson. "Recording devices are a particular draw for parasitic celebrity species like Al Sharpton and Cindy Sheehan, who end up intermingling with other varieties of celebrities -- say, like Richard Simmons or Brigitte Nielsen -- potentially creating a breed of disasterous mutant supercelebrities impervious to DDT or public revulsion."

However, Robertson says the real danger lies with a possible influx of sarcastic Z-list nanocelebrity comedians from VH-1 and E! celebrity-watching programs.

"This is the doomsday scenario," he warned. "If mankind had any means to eliminate them, we wouldn't have to face horrors like 'The Best Week Ever.' "

But as for FEMA.... :headbang: (Note- the following was NOT a Republican Administration created policy...)

DISASTER VICTIMS LAUD FEMA HARRASSMENT TRAINING PROGRAM

Hurricane survivors in New Orleans praised the Federal Emergency Management Administration for insuring that federal fire rescue workers are given mandatory sexual harrassment training before deployment to the region.

"When I heard that the replacement firemen were held up in Atlanta for gender sensitivity seminars, I thought, 'thank God,'" said survivor Linda Bagwell. "If someone is going to pull me or my corpse from a burning building, I want to know that he won't be using any inappropriate remarks or touching."

Now for some interesting facts on Katrina in relation to another incident in India:

Inches of rain in new orleans due to hurricane katrina... 18
Inches of rain in Bombay (July 27th).... 37.1

Population of new orleans... 484,674
Population of mumbai.... 12,622,500

Deaths in new orleans within 48 hours of katrina...100
Deaths in mumbai within 48hours of rain.. 37

Number of people to be evacuated in new orleans... entire city
Number of people evacuated in mumbai...10,000

Cases of shooting and violence in new orleans...Countless
Cases of shooting and violence in mumbai....NONE

Status 48hours later...new orleans is still waiting for relief, army and electricty
Status 48hours later...mumbai is back on its feet and is business is as usual

Choose to live in a potential disaster area, be prepared for a disaster - don't come crying to me for help when the inevitable happens. :headbang:

Whose come crying to you, Syn? Did some displaced Orleanders just show up at your door or something?

Whose come crying to you, Syn? Did some displaced Orleanders just show up at your door or something?
My Tax Dollars at Work.

Despite claims to the contrary, I expect my taxes (and the taxes of most lower/middle income USians) to take the brunt of the reconstruction costs - rather than that of the people living there who neglected to be prepared for just such a contingency. See Spurland's post to highlight the difference in being prepard at the individual level and waiting for a handout.

Most rational people expected them to use the assets they had on hand at the time... like all the local busses that are now ruined.

To that effect, read THIS ARTICLE (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05262/573959.stm) from the Pittsburg Post Gazette. Note that ABC found it nearly impossible to find actual victims who were more angry at Bush than at Nagin.




I know, I know, Quoting myself here...

Here is a link to a wmv download of the above mentioned ABC interview. The Reporter's consternation is palpable. :D

http://thepoliticalteen.net/2005/09/16/abcbias/

Nazz, Silliopolis - I re-read the thread this morning, and I would like to mention that my post, #8 above, was not in response to your posts #6 and 7 which I hadn't read yet - I'm a slow typist. Anyway, that post was intended as a personal statement, maybe even a rant, but feel free to rebutt.

I mentioned that my concern is for the future, and I hope most citizens of the US are mentally performing an after-action analysis with hope of creating an improved emergency response in the future. At a minimum, when the 'blame game' runs its course on the streets, we'll expect an analysis from the Congress - though I'm concerned that the average person will lose interest in the topic and accept whatever the congress critters, who never lose interest in the 'blame game', produce as a political report. I wish that we make an independent judgment as citizens and address the issues of what we expect from government in emergencies, and how much we are willing to pay for - a cost/benefit analysis - and who should pay for what (federal as opposed to local taxes).




1 ...The fact is that the greater the scale of a disaster, the more likely it is that local services will be unable to respond at the level we might hope or plan that they be able to.

2 ...For unexpected cases such as earthquakes you have some merit to that statement. When you have two day's warning that a cat 5 is bearing down on the coast you can get your ass moving. Failures on this level happened at all levels.

3 ...And economies of scale dictate that efficiency is acheived at the larger level rather than the smaller. Expecting every municipality to have the sort of disaster recovery team in place and ready for a major disaster is far more pricey than doing it at the State level, or even the federal level. As such the average per-capita tax burden to support the level of duplicated expertise that this would entail would be better served by having a top-down approach rather than bottom up.

4...Local planning is key, but multi-level cooperation and coordination is even more important, as is a known and immediately implemented chain of command so people aren't wasting time arguing over who is in charge of what parts of the rescue and recovery effort.

5...All of that shit should have been settled looooooong before the storm hit shore.

I think it's important to recognize that individual disasters are unique in their effect, and that each disaster will require a different response depending upon needs, and that disasters which have fore-warning (Katrina) are in a different category than, for instance, an earthquake or terrorist event which come as a surprise.

With that said, I agree completely with you Silliopolis, except for #5. Your last sentence is spot on. We agree that failures happened at all levels, and I expect that we agree that they continue to occur today.

Economy of scale may superficially favor more federal manpower, inventory, and training, but I'm not convinced it's correct. Since my opinion is that the local response is key to survival in the first 72 hours - and this is a widely held view among emergency planners - I favor more strongly funding the local and state emergency response teams to provide short-term survivability. I believe that with the exception of troops, the comparative economy will be about the same if federal money is directed to empower the community in regards to training, salaries, and inventory. As an example, FEMA can buy water and food, warehouse it, and distribute it in an inevitably delayed fashion, or the federal government can cost-share the same commodities and warehouse it locally or regionally (close to potential disaster areas, such as the south during hurricane season). A high-risk area such as NO should have supplies within easy reach.



Under Clinton, that's exactly what FEMA did. Remember the floods on the Red River in 1997? After the first one, FEMA encouraged people (by buying them out, essentially) to move back from the flood zone, and if they stayed, to build their homes so that the residences were well off the ground, with the underneath used for garages, storage, etc. The result was that the next time there was a flood, there were less than a tenth of the deaths and property damage was also lessened.

Actually I don't remember much about the Red River, except that it happened, but I'll take your word on it. It is emminently sensible to use appropriate construction in hurricane-flood-earthquake zones, but I'm philosophically opposed to the federal government paying to build homes or add-ons for people who choose to live in a high-risk area, common sense as such a policy may seem at first glance. Policies that artificially reduce the financial/personal risk creates a dependence on government, a sense of entitlement that the feds will bail you out every time there's a problem. I would prefer to see a free-market approach that properly reflects risk, i.e. insurance rates reflect risk, property values respond to risk, people move away to avoid risk.

Federal guarantees interfere with the market and movement of people, and actually create a false sense of security. The latter point is the critical issue, vis-a-vis NO, where people did not leave in part because they thought no harm could come to them. The forces of nature continue to overcome engineering despite reasonable efforts at protection. Essentially, people who might have new and safer residence did not leave because the the government told them it was safe, they would be cared for, and they have a sense that it will get rebuilt for them.

The apparent policy of rebuilding NO with federal funds should be questioned. I mean, to what extent should that city even be there with the inherent elevation and flooding challenges? Half the refugees questioned said they probably wouldn't return to NO, but many can no doubt be enticed into returning with the promise of free housing. Are you aware that the government is asking the insurance industry (an industry I hold in low esteem) to cover losses that they were never paid a nickel for? Specifically, the insurance companies are being required to cover policyholders who did not purchase flood insurance. I see this as enticement to the working poor to repopulate the city, and actually I question the wisdom and justice of attracting the poor to live in a place that is physically unsuitable for habitation - sure, you can make it semi-safe with levees and pumps, you can create a 2-decade project to restore coastal barriers, but as long as Lake Pontchartrain and the sea are higher than the city you will have significant risk.

I think it's normal for cities to grow and shrink in population as people make choices regarding risk, value, income, and other potential.
I resist the interference of the government-created safety net and the sense of entitlement that creates, I think it robs people of the independence that comes from personal responsibility and interferes with them making good choices. I'd like to see the people of NO decide on their own, with no enticement, how they want their city to be in the future. I'd like to see the residents work hard with local government to build their future home - or not. The population of NO should not be artificially inflated by enticing people to live where they normally would not by government-provided incentives.

I need qualify a few things, however. It is clear that NO doesn't have the financial and physical resources to rebuild the city as it was, and they will certainly need both even to get started. I have no problem with a gift of taxpayer money, even a very substantial one, but I think that long-term loans in addition to construction cost bonds obtained by the city are preferable. There is no free lunch, as most of us have learned, and federal funding is a trojan horse. It's a conditional gift that now subjects many local decisions and objectives to federal approval.

Also, as in the Red River example, I have no problem with partial government aid in adapting construction, but I prefer it to come in the form of loans with terms favorably enough structured so as to ensure widespread use. A free market should reward the adaptive homeowner by reducing his property insurance and increasing his property value, but the taxpayer should not pay substantially to help him gain those rewards. Modifying homes for safety reasons obviously is in the best interests of the citizen, and offering finances at an attractive rate or on a sliding scale is appropriate.

Ok, sorry, way too long a post. I'll break it off and hopefully be able to get more in if someone responds.