Levee Funding Cut

Poststructural Pub
1

This would be really sad if this turns out to be correct (article by former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal). Actually depending on the facts this could spell real political trouble for the Bush administration as this seems to imply that becasue of the expenses incurred by the Iraq war specific projects were cut domestically to pay for the war resulting in disastrous consequences"

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans’ levees, but it was too late.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372455,00.html

Disclaimer: I, under no circumstances, endorse or encourage trolling. This article is presented as an informational item only. All views, implicitly or explicitly, expressed or implied are purley the opinion of the poster and are not meant to offend, upset, and/or disparage anyone. The poster is not responsible for the accuracy of the source. Any side effects from reading this post are purely coincidental and are not directly related to the post. If symptoms persist poster advises seeing a psychiatrist.

2

It’s a sad statement for the board when we feel that we have to post this sort of disclaimer – I hope it works.


Anyway, I posted something similar on Simon's thread, and it's very disturbing indeed.  I'm sure the availability of National Guard troops was compromised for the ridiculous war in Iraq as well.  I noticed they were showing the same two trucks over and over again on the news.  That might just be TV editing or whatever, but the fact that the troops needed have been displaced is still a problem that the Bush Administration is liable for.
3

I’m sure the availability of National Guard troops was compromised for the ridiculous war in Iraq as well. I noticed they were showing the same two trucks over and over again on the news

I don’t blame anybody for maybe misjudging the impact this was going to have but by Monday afternoon it was pretty clear that many people stranded had no access to power, food or drink. How hard is it to send a bunch of c-130’s and drop care packages? It’s been done many times before. Today even on Fox they kept saying that people had been standing on this one bridge for 2 days with no supplies being dropped off. I don’t blame the locals since they have limited resources but why it took 3 days for the Feds to move is beyond me at this point. One general was asked point blank today why he is not sending any support and he said that he can’t until the president ordered it, which he finally did today after his flyby. 3 days!! They knew it was a category 5 on Sunday! At least put troups on alert and be prepared to submit aid if needed. That’s basic contingency planning. Bush does not act decisively in a crisis, that’s why he read childrens books for 7 1/2 minutes on 9/11. He freezes like a deer in the headlight.

I hope we’re not seeing a trend here, but every time something major happens to the US Bush is on vacation (i.e 9/11, Katrina, some of last year’s hurricanes)

4

From what I have been reading, I would have to agree that funds that the Army corp of engineers said were needed to protect the people of New Orleans from flooding were cut off and redirected to fund the war in Iraq and homeland security.

5

I just have to make the point that it’s a LOT harder than it sounds to just “send a bunch of c-130’s”. There are finite number of resources (resource = equipment + the person/people to operate it) and people demanding help from many different directions. In this case you have people from Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisana all demanding help (and all desperately needing help). Part of the problem with this disaster is the size of it - thousands of square miles are affected. Don’t forget that there’s still people in Florida recovering too - they weren’t hit nearly as hard, but there’s still over 200,000 people there without power, and with lots of damage. You have city, parish, county, state, and federal officials all trying to work together, and unfortunately no matter how hard they try and how much they all have the common goal of helping people, it often turns into pissing matches. And there are huge decisions that have to be made. Who gets help first? Who can wait?

Mistakes are being made here - they always are. But lessons will be learned here too. The knowledge gained from what’s been done wrong and what’s been done right will be passed on for years and make the next response to a disaster, big or small, better.

6

Strain of Iraq War Means the Relief Burden Will Have to Be Shared

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 31, 2005; A14



With thousands of their citizen-soldiers away fighting in Iraq, states hit hard by Hurricane Katrina scrambled to muster forces for rescue and security missions yesterday – calling up Army bands and water-purification teams, among other units, and requesting help from distant states and the active-duty military.

As the devastation threatened to overwhelm state resources, federal authorities called on the Pentagon to mobilize active-duty aircraft, ships and troops and set up an unprecedented task force to coordinate a wider military response, said officials from the Northern Command, which oversees homeland defense.

National Guard officials in the states acknowledged that the scale of the destruction is stretching the limits of available manpower while placing another extraordinary demand on their troops – most of whom have already served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland defense missions since 2001.

More than 6,000 Guard members were mobilized in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida when the storm struck on Monday, with the number rising to 8,000 yesterday and hundreds more expected to be called to active duty, National Guard officials said yesterday.

“Missing the personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people,” said Lt. Andy Thaggard, a spokesman for the Mississippi National Guard, which has a brigade of more than 4,000 troops in central Iraq. Louisiana also has about 3,000 Guard troops in Baghdad.

Mississippi has about 40 percent of its Guard force deployed or preparing to deploy and has called up all remaining Guard units for hurricane relief, Thaggard said. Those include the Army band based in Jackson, Miss. “They are mustering transportation to move them south,” he said. Soldiers who have lost their homes are exempt, he said.

Mississippi has requested troops and aircraft from about eight other states – including military police and engineers from Alabama, helicopters and crews from Arkansas and Georgia, and aircraft-maintenance experts from Connecticut, who are filling in for a Mississippi maintenance unit that is heading to the Middle East.

“This is the biggest disaster we’ve ever had, so we’re going to need more aircraft than we’ve got,” said Col. Bradly S. MacNealy, the Mississippi Army National Guard’s aviation officer. Mississippi has had to borrow from Arkansas UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters fitted with hoists, using them together with the Coast Guard to pluck to safety several dozen people stranded by floodwaters, he said.

Chinook helicopters from Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi are flying the equivalent of 18 large truckloads of critical supplies – including ice, water, food and chain saws for road-clearing crews – to Mississippi’s coast, he said.

In Alabama, all the major Guard units activated for the disaster have already served in Iraq, and some still have contingents there, said Alabama Guard spokesman Norman Arnold.

Capt. Richard Locke of the Guard’s 1st Battalion 167th Infantry headed toward Mobile yesterday with a force of 400 soldiers cobbled together from four units because the rest of the battalion is in Iraq.

Carrying M-16 rifles and 9mm pistols, the soldiers are assigned to control traffic at unlighted intersections, and patrol in Humvees and on foot to prevent looting.

Recruiting and retention problems are worsening the strain on Guard forces in hurricane-ravaged states. Alabama’s Army National Guard has a strength of 11,000 troops – or 78 percent of the authorized number. “We’re just losing too many out the back door,” Arnold said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083002162_pf.html[/quote]

7

I’m not sure I agree about blame. Here’s a snippet from an easily accessible NOAA site:

Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

I mean a category 4 hurricane in 1900 was responsible for the greatest disaster in US history. NO is all set for a massive repeat. And there is no planning to prevent a repeat? I mean, US officials go to school and learn US history, don’t they?

I don’t think this failure is just a US thing; it could easily have happened here. Yet here and in America, if there is a one in a billion chance of baby food being poisoned by a blackmailer, shelves are cleared and stocks recalled. I think our attitude to risk assessment globally is pretty crazy. I don’t know why.

8

History? I doubt Bush even knows the meaning of that word. Can you say Viet Nam?

9

I started to post some rant about how the Republicans have never done much for the South, and all that, but decided it’s no time to start blaming people. I was listening to right-wing radio, for a while today, while I was waiting on my mother and sister out shopping (I’m not in the habit of listening to these programs, but was in my father’s car and that’s where he keeps it tuned), and was quite saddened at all the talk of needing to shoot all looters… or the slightly moderated version… shoot looters who weren’t looting food.

I realize that looters are to be seen as making the problem bigger, but it really doesn’t help matters to turn on everybody at times of intense crisis.

There are lots of things that, in hindsight, ought to have been done differently, but a hurricane is an act of God, so to speak, and there’s nothing can be done to prevent it, and certainly nothing to be done to go back and undo it.

Many lessons are being learned the hard way, but it was a long way better than it could have been. The destruction, and more importantly, loss of lives, has been minimal compared to what it would have been if the storm had hit prior to modern warning systems and communications and meteorological advances.

10

It is Karma.

11

As much as I hold Republicans and the Bush Administration accountable for redirecting funds to their stupid war that were intended for building up the levees in NO, I don’t think they’re so stupid as to start shooting looters, (or rounding up,) while there’s still people to be rescued etc. The images of people being shot or rounded up on TV while the disaster still has victims in its grip would look too much like the authorities value property over human life.

Right wing pundits are amazing. I remember the following day after the Okalahoma City bombing that a right-wing talk show host, Michael Savage, demanded that Clinton immediately bomb Libya in retaliation, and if he doesn’t – he should be impeached. There’s a reason they’re referred to as “reactionaries.”

12

I’m not really interested in blaming people (except the truly guilty) but I really wish I understood why we don’t do enough in advance. I don’t mean Americans, I don’t mean Republicans, I mean human beings. (Would Huey Long have done better?)


I’m more interested in the things that people had foresight of. First, the 1900 tragedy told us you need to evacuate everyone. Second, the 1900 tragedy told us you need levees adequate to the size of hurricane teh experts are predicting. I believe Galveston now has them. N.O. didn’t and neither did Biloxi. But these places are just down the road from East Texas and the news has had 105 years to get there.

Since the lessons weren’t learnt well enough the first time, I doubt that they are being learnt now. Let’s look at improvements. Most people did evacuate rather than sit around to watch the show. But will the body count be proportionally less than in 1900, given the numbers of people who might have been killed? Almost certainly yes.

But. The warning systems were plenty adequate in 1900 for people to evacuate to higher ground. I have too questions really. Why inadequate levees? Why no contingency plan to evacuate the poor and infirm given the 1900 experience?

As I said before, this could happen anywhere anytime, but I really have no idea why human beings just cruise along taking risks of this magnitude when we don’t tolerate much smaller risks.

13

Blackwood

Thanks for posting this. I had read snippets on other sites but hadn’t seen the full article yet. I had asked, in another thread, how long it would take before people started to ask why something wasn’t done before. New Orleans has sat below sea level since it’s founding and the potential for catastrophy has always been on peoples minds.
Lack of action is bad enough but the deliberate removal of funding for such an important project bumps the whole thing to another level.

14

Well, as you are now no doubt aware, it’s reported on the news that some of the individuals that had been involved in rescue efforts have been pulled from that task in order to “restore order”, stop looters, etc.

Tom

15

:laughing: :laughing:
You ought to add the line “Use only as directed.”



Great article, by the way! :smiley:

16

1500 of the individuals me thinks. And “looters” seems to be used rather loosely. Armed gangs and arson look to be becoming serious problems.

17

With regard to the Bush administration’s successful efforts to redirect the funds that were badly needed to upgrade the levees protecting NO, my grandmother, God rest her soul, had a folk expression for everything. She would have said that redirecting funds away from levee improvement was “a penny wise and a pound foolish”. Smart old woman, my grandma.

18

more details are emerging on cuts and preparedness and they are not pretty. In fact I saw Miles O’Brien of CNN get into a testy exchange with the governor of Arkansas (who is a Republican) when asked how he felt about the federal response (or slowness of it). The governor is a Republican loyalist and got strongly on the reporters case for even raising the question. In any event, as the article below mentioned you have to wonder how the news media manages to get a bunch of teams into the disaster areas within hours but no federal teams are there…

I hope one of the lessons will be is that we don’t start a war overseas and drain domestically needed resources unless absolutely necessary. As it turns out the war in Iraq is costing us much more than we ever realized…

Posted on Wed, Aug. 31, 2005

Federal government wasn’t ready for Katrina, disaster experts say

By Seth Borenstein

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The federal government so far has bungled the job of quickly helping the multitudes of hungry, thirsty and desperate victims of Hurricane Katrina, former top federal, state and local disaster chiefs said Wednesday.

The experts, including a former Bush administration disaster response manager, told Knight Ridder that the government wasn’t prepared, scrimped on storm spending and shifted its attention from dealing with natural disasters to fighting the global war on terrorism.

The disaster preparedness agency at the center of the relief effort is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which was enveloped by the new Department of Homeland Security with a new mission aimed at responding to the attacks of al-Qaida.
“What you’re seeing is revealing weaknesses in the state, local and federal levels,” said Eric Tolbert, who until February was FEMA’s disaster response chief. “All three levels have been weakened. They’ve been weakened by diversion into terrorism.”
In interviews on Wednesday, several men and women who’ve led relief efforts for dozens of killer hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes over the years chastised current disaster leaders for forgetting the simple Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared.

Bush administration officials said they’re proud of their efforts. Their first efforts emphasized rooftop rescues over providing food and water for already safe victims.

“We are extremely pleased with the response of every element of the federal government (and) all of our federal partners have made to this terrible tragedy,” Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said during a news conference Wednesday in Washington.
The agency has more than 1,700 truckloads of water, meals, tents, generators and other supplies ready to go in, Chertoff said. Federal health officials have started setting up at least 40 medical shelters. The Coast Guard reports rescuing more than 1,200 people.
But residents, especially in Biloxi, Miss., said they aren’t seeing the promised help, and Knight Ridder reporters along the Gulf Coast said they saw little visible federal relief efforts, other than search-and-rescue teams. Some help started arriving Wednesday by the truckloads, but not everywhere.

“We’re not getting any help yet,” said Biloxi Fire Department Battalion Chief Joe Boney. “We need water. We need ice. I’ve been told it’s coming, but we’ve got people in shelters who haven’t had a drink since the storm.”
The slow response to Katrina and poor federal leadership is a replay of 1992’s mishandling of Hurricane Andrew, said former FEMA chief of staff Jane Bullock, a 22-year veteran of the agency.
Bullock blamed inexperienced federal leadership. She noted that Chertoff and FEMA Director Michael Brown had no disaster experience before they were appointed to their jobs.
The slowness is all too familiar to Kate Hale. As Miami’s disaster chief during Hurricane Andrew, Hale asked: “Where the hell’s the cavalry?”

“I’m looking at people who are begging for ice and water and (a) presence,” Hale said Wednesday. “I’m seeing the same sort of thing that horrified us after Hurricane Andrew. … I realize they’ve got a huge job. Nobody understands better than I do what they’re trying to respond to, but …”

Budget cuts haven’t made disaster preparedness any easier.

Last year, FEMA spent $250,000 to conduct an eight-day hurricane drill for a mock killer storm hitting New Orleans. Some 250 emergency officials attended. Many of the scenarios now playing out, including a helicopter evacuation of the Superdome, were discussed in that drill for a fictional storm named Pam.
This year, the group was to design a plan to fix such unresolved problems as evacuating sick and injured people from the Superdome and housing tens of thousands of stranded citizens.
Funding for that planning was cut, said Tolbert, the former FEMA disaster response director.
“A lot of good was done, but it just wasn’t finished,” said Tolbert, who was the disaster chief for the state of North Carolina. “I don’t know if it would have saved more lives. It would have made the response faster. You might say it would have saved lives.”
FEMA wasn’t alone in cutting hurricane spending in New Orleans and the surrounding area.

Federal flood control spending for southeastern Louisiana has been chopped from $69 million in 2001 to $36.5 million in 2005, according to budget documents. Federal hurricane protection for the Lake Pontchartrain vicinity in the Army Corps of Engineers’ budget dropped from $14.25 million in 2002 to $5.7 million this year. Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu requested $27 million this year.

Both the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper and a local business magazine reported that the effects of the budget cuts at the Army Corps of Engineers were severe.

In 2004, the Corps essentially stopped major work on the now-breached levee system that had protected New Orleans from flooding. It was the first such stoppage in 37 years, the Times-Picayune reported.

“It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay,” Jefferson Parish emergency management chief Walter Maestri told the newspaper. “Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”

The Army Corps’ New Orleans office, facing a $71 million cut, also eliminated funds to pay for a study on how to protect the Crescent City from a Category 5 storm, New Orleans City Business reported in June.

Being prepared for a disaster is basic emergency management, disaster experts say.

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.
Federal officials said a hospital ship would leave from Baltimore on Friday.

“These things need to be planned and prepared for; it just doesn’t look like it was,” said Witt, a former Arkansas disaster chief who won bipartisan praise on Capitol Hill during his tenure.

FEMA said some of its response teams were prepared.
The agency had 18 search-and-rescue teams and 39 disaster medical teams positioned outside storm areas and moved them in when the hurricane died down.
Nonetheless, victims of this week’s hurricane should have gotten more, said John Copenhaver, a former southeastern regional FEMA director.

“I would have difficulty explaining why there has not been a visible presence of ice, water, tarps - the kind of stuff that typically get delivered to hurricane areas,” Copenhaver said.

A FEMA spokesman, James McIntyre, blamed the devastation in the region for slowing down relief efforts.
Roads were washed out and relief trucks were stopped by state police trying to keep people out of hazardous areas, he said.

That explanation didn’t satisfy Joe Myers, Florida’s former emergency management chief.

“I would think that yesterday they could have flown in,” said Myers. “Everyone was flying in. Put it this way, FOX and CNN are there. If they can get there …”

FEMA moved quickly with its search-and-rescue teams, which took precedence over delivering water and ice, McIntyre said.

“We’re trying to save lives,” McIntyre said. “The rescue teams are FEMA people. The medical assistance are FEMA people. Right now, getting people off roofs and keeping people from drowning are a priority.”

Further complicating the relief effort in Louisiana is scandal within the state agency. Recently, three top officials of Louisiana’s emergency management office were indicted in an investigation into the misuse of hurricane funds from last year’s Ivan.

None of this matters to residents of the Gulf Coast.
“We’re lost,” said Steve Loper of Pascagoula, Miss. “We have no direction, no leadership. People are in bad trouble.”

Alison Young, Ron Hutcheson and Tish Wells of the Knight Ridder Newspapers Washington Bureau, Pete

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12528233.htm

19

I’m nervous about getting into this discussion at all, but in relation to the statement

several men and women who’ve led relief efforts for dozens of killer hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes over the years chastised current disaster leaders for forgetting the simple Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared.

it seems to me that the worst piece of lack of preparedness was the approach to evacuation. As reported on this side of the Atlantic, people were encouraged to get out of New Orleans by their own efforts (i.e. by car), and it seemed that it was mainly those who hadn’t got cars of their own who were left behind. Wouldn’t it have been better to use relatively inexpensive public resources like school buses preventively and save lives in the process, rather than have to use Black Hawk helicopters etc. to evacuate survivors after the event?

20

Here’s an editorial from the Biloxi Sun Herald asking for desperately need help to save lives but wondering where the National Guard is.

========================================

South Mississippi needs your help

Wed, Aug. 31, 2005

  • "People are hurting and people are being vandalized.

    Yet where is the National Guard, why hasn’t every able-bodied member of the armed forces in South Mississippi been pressed into service?

    On Wednesday reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics.

    Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!

    When asked why these young men were not being used to help in the recovery effort, our reporters were told that it would be pointless to send military personnel down to the beach to pick up debris.

    Litter is the least of our problems. We need the president to back up his declaration of a disaster with a declaration of every man and woman under his command will do whatever is necessary to deal with that disaster.

Full article