Preparing America

In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort. The new Department will also prioritize the important issue of citizen preparedness. Educating America's families on how best to prepare their homes for a disaster and tips for citizens on how to respond in a crisis will be given special attention at DHS.

Additional Resources

The National Response Plan establishes a comprehensive all-hazards approach to enhance the ability of the United States to manage domestic incidents.

National Response Plan



"One team, one goal...a safer, more secure America"


The National Response Plan establishes a comprehensive all-hazards approach to enhance the ability of the United States to manage domestic incidents. The plan incorporates best practices and procedures from incident management disciplines—homeland security, emergency management, law enforcement, firefighting, public works, public health, responder and recovery worker health and safety, emergency medical services, and the private sector—and integrates them into a unified structure. It forms the basis of how the federal government coordinates with state, local, and tribal governments and the private sector during incidents. It establishes protocols to help

Save lives and protect the health and safety of the public, responders, and recovery workers;
Ensure security of the homeland;
Prevent an imminent incident, including acts of terrorism, from occurring;
Protect and restore critical infrastructure and key resources;
Conduct law enforcement investigations to resolve the incident, apprehend the perpetrators, and collect and preserve evidence for prosecution and/or attribution;
Protect property and mitigate damages and impacts to individuals, communities, and the environment; and
Facilitate recovery of individuals, families, businesses, governments, and the environment.

Rice added that the brief mentioned conventional hijackings, not the possibility that planes would be used as weapons.

We thought we had the standard hurricane and that we'd immediately respond and have things in order in a couple of days and then the levee broke and that hampered us and then some idiots decided they'd get guns and start shooting and that almost put our rescue efforts at a halt.

Bush had the legal authority to order the National Guard to the disaster area himself, as he did after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks . But the troops four years ago were deployed for national security protection, and presidents of both parties traditionally defer to governors to deploy their own National Guardsmen and request help from other states when it comes to natural disasters.

Though slow at the beginning, out-of-state Guard help was markedly increasing by the start of the weekend. As of Friday, nearly half the states had Guard members in Louisiana, boosting the total to at least 5,600 from out of state. Hundreds more were on the way.

Michigan, which was ready to help before the storm began, was sending 500 National Guard troops Friday and Saturday to help with water purification in Mississippi and police duty in New Orleans.

Arizona didn't get a request for military police until Thursday, when it received an urgent message sent to all state National Guards by the National Guard Bureau at the request of Louisiana, said Capt. Paul Aguirre. He said the unit cannot leave Phoenix until Sunday because arriving units must arrive at a pace the receiving end can handle.

Among those headed in were several hundred from Wisconsin, where the governor took the unusual step of declaring a disaster outside his state to activate his Guard.

"This was the first time a governor ever declared a natural disaster in another state and activated to that other state," said Gov. Jim Doyle, who issued his order Wednesday. "We were ready to be deployed within 24 hours of that order."

In addition to Guard help, the federal government could have activated, but did not, a major air support plan under a pre-existing contract with airlines. The program, called Civilian Reserve Air Fleet, lets the government quickly put private cargo and passenger planes into service.

A grim Mayor C. Ray Nagin conceded Katrina's storm surge pushing up the Mississippi River would swamp New Orleans' system of levees, flooding the bowl-shaped city and causing potentially months of misery.

"We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared," he said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."

As many as 100,000 inner-city residents didn't have the means to leave, and an untold number of tourists were stranded by the closing of the airport. The city arranged buses to take people to 10 last-resort shelters, including the Superdome.

Nagin also dispatched police and firefighters to rouse people out with sirens and bullhorns, and even gave them the authority to commandeer vehicles to aid in the evacuation.

I am specifically requesting:

Individual Assistance, including the Individual Assistance and Household Program (IHP), Disaster Unemployment Assistance, Crisis Counseling, Public Assistance (Category A-G funding at 100%), Small Business Administration (SBA) Disaster loans and Direct Federal Assistance (DFA) funding at 100% for the following parishes:

To support the evacuation/sheltering effort, I am also requesting: Individual Assistance, including the Individual Assistance and Household Program (IHP), Disaster Unemployment Assistance, Crisis Counseling, Public Assistance for the following parishes:

A visibly angry Mayor Daley said the city had offered emergency, medical and technical help to the federal government as early as Sunday to assist people in the areas stricken by Hurricane Katrina, but as of Friday, the only things the feds said they wanted was a single tank truck.

That truck, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency requested to support an Illinois-based medical team, was en route Friday.

"We are ready to provide more help than they have requested. We are just waiting for their call," said Daley, adding that he was "shocked" that no one seemed to want the help.

[snip]

Daley said the city offered 36 members of the firefighters' technical rescue teams, eight emergency medical technicians, search-and-rescue equipment, more than 100 police officers as well as police vehicles and two boats, 29 clinical and 117 non-clinical health workers, a mobile clinic and eight trained personnel, 140 Streets and Sanitation workers and 29 trucks, plus other supplies. City personnel are willing to operate self-sufficiently and would not depend on local authorities for food, water, shelter and other supplies, he said

And now I'm watching Greta interview a young man (maybe high school age 16-19 or so). He went to a school yard, commandeered a school bus ("You stole it," said Greta bluntly), went around picking people up until it was full and then drove them to Houston because that's where the radio said refugees should go. They pooled money to pay for gas. Think about this for a moment. One young man who had never even driven a bus before in his life acted on his own and was able to get dozens of people safely away and drive them to another state. (The laughable finale was that they were initially refused entry because refugees were supposed to show up in Greyhound buses, not school buses.) Greta called his story inspiring.

Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, also sees God's mercy in the aftermath of Katrina -- but in a different way. Shanks says the hurricane has wiped out much of the rampant sin common to the city.

The pastor explains that for years he has warned people that unless Christians in New Orleans took a strong stand against such things as local abortion clinics, the yearly Mardi Gras celebrations, and the annual event known as "Southern Decadence" -- an annual six-day "gay pride" event scheduled to be hosted by the city this week -- God's judgment would be felt.

“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now," Shanks says. "God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again."

The New Orleans pastor is adamant. Christians, he says, need to confront sin. "It's time for us to stand up against wickedness so that God won't have to deal with that wickedness," he says.

Believers, he says, are God's "authorized representatives on the face of the Earth" and should say they "don't want unrighteous men in office," for example. In addition, he says Christians should not hesitate to voice their opinions about such things as abortion, prayer, and homosexual marriage. "We don't want a Supreme Court that is going to say it's all right to kill little boys and girls, ... it's all right to take prayer out of schools, and it's all right to legalize sodomy, opening the door for same-sex marriage and all of that.”

Air America Radio's Public Voicemail is a way for disconnected people to communicate in the wake of Katrina.

Here's how it works:

Call the toll-free number above, enter your everyday phone number, and then record a message. Other people who know your everyday phone number (even if it doesn't work anymore) can call Emergency Voicemail, enter the phone number they associate with you, and hear your message.

You can also search for messages left by people whose phone numbers you know.
Air America Radio will leave Public Voicemail in service for as long as this crisis continues. You can call it whenever you are trying to locate someone, or if you are trying to be found.

Obviously, for this to work, people need to know about it so please forward the number to as many people as you can. You can find out more about Katrina and the affected areas at www.airamericaradio.com.

Air America Radio brings you Emergency VoiceMail in conjunction with VoodooVox.

3:34 P.M. - (AP) The evacuation of Superdome refugees was interrupted briefly when school buses rolled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt hotel. They were move to the head of the line to be evacuated -- much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the stinking Superdome for days.

The 700 had been trapped in the Hyatt just like the others, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome.

3:14 P.M. - St. Bernard Parish officials say that FEMA has not called them yet...five days after the storm.

[Note from me: St. Bernard Parish is ENTIRELY under water]

3:07 P.M. - BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- U.S. Sen. David Vitter said FEMA's efforts to deal with the hurricane have been completely ineffective, and he called the federal government's response a failure.

"I think FEMA has been completely dysfunctional and is completely overwhelmed, and I don't know why. This situation was utterly predictable," said Vitter, R-Metairie. "It seems like there was no coherent plan, which I don't understand because this precise scenario has been predicted for 20 years," he said.

3:03 P.M. - BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- Three New Orleans-area hospitals remain open. The Louisiana Hospital Association says they're asking their workers to report.

Those are East Jefferson General Hospital in Metairie, West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero and Ochsner Clinic Foundation in Metairie.

The hospital association says all three have power, air-conditioning and security, and remain committed to serving their communities during these difficult times.

2:54 P.M. - WWL Reporter Jonathan Betz says the refugees at I-10 and Causeway are standing in squalid conditions. He said there are only 10 portable toilets for thousands of people and the Interstate median is full of human waste.

2:50 P.M. - WWL-TV LIVE pictures show thousands still wait to be picked up from I-10 and Causeway. Buses arrived a few hours ago, but the refugees say that it's the first sighting of buses in 12 hours. Some of the refugees have been waiting four days. State Police say five people died Thursday while waiting.

Sidney Smith, Matthew Von Stetina, his wife Bridget and 2 small children along with Adele Bertucci and her mother are trapped on the roof at 97 Fontainebleau Dr. water and food supplies have run out. A nearby rooftop is on fire. Boats and helicopters have passed them by! Dead
bodies of neighbors are floating around. PLEASE HELP!!!!

*****

100 residents are still left in The Point (Algiers) and they are now under seige from the mob that was released from the convention center. They have had to kill 4 people in an attempt to protect their property and life.

Please get state police in!

*****

75 people slowly dying at Broad and Tulane. My adopted daughter's sister, Brandi Gautreaux, 26 may be among them. She left there Sunday headed for Superdome and we have not heard from her. Can you get some rescuers to go to that location. The people are text messaging and are still alive but the e-mail said they are slowly dying. I think they are in attic or upper floor or apt. house or hotel. I cannot reach state patrol or coast guard to get them help. Please try.

Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans -- and the delay helping stranded people get out or even get water and food -- is raising doubts that U.S. cities may be ill-prepared to cope with a potentially worse disaster: a major attack.

Four years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the storm disaster marked the first time the federal government has invoked its post-September 11 response plan aimed at enhancing Washington's ability to deal with national incidents.

But as Americans reeled at images of death and desperation among the city's refugees, experts on domestic security said a nuclear or biological attack on a big U.S. city could cause greater mayhem, and unlike the storm, come without warning.

The New Orleans disaster is already viewed as an illustration of what can go wrong in an American city under siege.

"In many ways, this is a test of our national capacity," said James Carafano, senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "If we can't do this 24-7-365, we aren't doing our job for preparedness."

This event is emblematic of Republican governance. It encompasses every fuck-up they've perpetrated since they took over the entire national governament --- failure to plan, embracing only the best case scenario, lagging response, ignoring the experts, slashing funds and endless, endless happy talk that we can SEE WITH OUR OWN EYES is bullshit. (They are already saying that nobody is reporting all the "good news.")

The fact that most of these refugees (a word that I can hardly believe I'm typing) are black and poor residents who were unable to leave and were therefore, left to die, is emblematic also.

No, this is all about politics. It is about a GOP era of massive tax breaks for very rich Americans, billion dollar a week elective wars that we are losing while more and more people fall into poverty and the infrastructure of this country crumbles around our ears.

This failed experiment in free-market magical thinking can be summed up entirely by pictures of dead elderly Americans on the streets of New Orleans.

Look for the Republican response in the coming weeks: tax cuts for favorite industries and wealthy people, relaxation of environmental and labor laws, an massive infusion of funding for "faith based relief efforts," etc.... in other words, same shit different day.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, the president also was going there to bring, on behalf of the nation, "support and compassion for the victims and our appreciation" for those helping with the ongoing response.

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer on ABC's "Good Morning America."

That statement was wholly untrue, as Sidney Blumenthal noted on Wednesday in Salon -- and as the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., the former chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency all tried to warn in recent years. Cutbacks in funding for flood control and emergency preparedness by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress over the past several years probably made a terrible event much worse.

The president's defenders can tolerate no discussion of those realities, however, because they have no plausible answers. Instead they urge us all to keep quiet or be accused of undermining America.

Does this all sound strangely familiar, like a nightmarish flashback?

A repetitive pattern is emerging whenever a terrible event occurs that is due at least partly to governmental incompetence. The president and other high officials offer deceptive utterances to excuse themselves. And reinforcing their self-serving statements is a chorus of admonishments from the right against any dissent or criticism.

After 9/11, the White House falsely claimed that there had been no warnings and that the Bush administration had been preparing for an attack by al-Qaida since its earliest days in office. Anyone who said otherwise -- or who merely wanted to investigate the underlying weaknesses that had enabled the attackers -- was a "partisan" seeking to "undermine the war on terror."

There was also, we should recall, much chatter back in those dark times about the wonderful unity and generosity of the nation. That is true now and was true then, as far as it went. Unfortunately, the "united we stand" spirit didn't survive the moment when, several weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Bush advisor Karl Rove boasted to his fellow Republicans about his plan to use the war on terror to win the 2002 midterm elections.

The pattern continued with the invasion of Iraq, which has become a disastrous misadventure owing to the poor planning, inept management and mendacious propaganda of the White House. To examine the errors and lies that have landed our troops in quicksand and drained away hundreds of billions of dollars is to provide aid and comfort to America's enemies -- or so we have been warned, especially since the president's popularity ratings have been in free fall.

And now we are told that only bad people dare to criticize their bad government.

So we are not to mention the downgrading of the Federal Emergency Management Agency from a Cabinet-level agency to a neglected sideline of the Department of Homeland Security. We must not say that FEMA was turned away from its mission when the president replaced its superb director, James Lee Witt, with political cronies who knew nothing about disaster planning. We cannot talk about the consistent underfunding of the Army Corps of Engineers, whose efforts to rebuild the Louisiana levees practically halted because of budget cuts last year. Above all, we must never, ever ask whether global warming might be making the annual perils of tropical weather systems much, much worse.

None of this is to say that the hurricane is "Bush's fault," which would obviously be unfair. But as with 9/11 and Iraq, the president and his administration deserve to be held accountable for poor judgment, damaging decisions and false statements.

The Right, as embodied by Limbaugh, Frist, Bush, Hastert, DeLay. They would move heaven and earth to save the life of one White Woman in Florida to combat the very idea of euthanasia (which technically it was not). A woman that a decade earlier had lost her ability to so much as ask for help, much less have coherent thoughts about the quality of her own life.

And they would sit on their ass and watch as tens of thousands of poor men, women, children, babies, and elderly bake in the New Orleans heat surrounded by water, sewage, gasoline and an abandoned city, now devoid of anyone with the means to have escaped ahead of the storm.

This is the culture of life. The culture of life wants to save brain dead white women and unborn children. The culture of life wants you to watch endless non-news about the disappearance of one white teenager in Aruba. The culture of life wants you to support your nation as it kills tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in its Quixotic quest against a non-threat. The culture of life wants a zero-tolerance for looters policy to sound authoritative as babies die of dehydration. The culture of life expects you to take care of yourself, and if you can't, then it is your own fault for getting into that situation in the first place. Fuck off. You had your shot. Station in life, where you hang your hat, and whether you have the $40 at the end of the month to pay for the overpriced gasoline to get out of that home in time is all up to you.

Always I have argued with Republican friends--the reasonable ones--that not everyone was dealt the same cards on their original Birth Day. Not everyone has been given the same gifts by God, friends, family, or luck. Always those Republican friends believe that they deserve where they have gotten in life, and that no one, including the government, should be asking for their hard-earned cash to help the less affluent. It is always the fault of the lesser-affluent themselves. Circumstances are irrelevant in all cases and constitute class warfare if the question is raised.

Bullshit.

But that's their thing. That's how they see the world. They earned everything they got. Their parents might have given them a nudge, but nothing more. Get a fucking clue.

Bush came away from his mega vacation one day early...Wednesday. Hastert doesn't know why we should rebuild. Condie Rice went to the show on Broadway.

All of these people support the Culter of Life. But none seem to support American Culture. New Orleans, as much as any city, represents distinctly American Culture. A melting-pot of language, music and revelry unlike any other. But it is desperately poor. Over 50% of the children in the state live below the poverty level. But no matter. Mostly black folk down there. They shouldn't have lived there in the first place. They should have gotten out while they had the chance. It's their own fault.

Michael Chertoff was interviewed on NPR this afternoon. He was asked if he had heard of thousands of people at the Convention Center in New Orleans, without water or food or sanitation. Elderly dying. Little girls being raped. Mr. Chertoff was eloquent in his cluelessness. Completely unaware of what had been on the television all day long on both MSNBC and CNN. Unaware that he, at the top of the agency charged with bringing relief to the affected areas, had not been informed of something every American with a remote already knew. That the situation there was desperate. That people needed help. And that noone seemed to be providing it. The man in charge was not in charge at all, folks. It took the Bush Administration 4 years since 9/11... 4 years of chasing ghosts and old demons in Iraq to not do a fucking thing about stateside preparedness. To gut the national guard's responsiveness by sending so many of them overseas. To cut funding for the levee system that allowed Lake Ponchartrain to roll into the city. To put someone in charge of Homeland Security and FEMA that is eloquent, but so impossibly incompetent that he is incapable of establishing a staff capable of letting him know the worst of a situation so large.

Mr. Chertoff said, that he had not heard of such things. That you couldn't believe every rumor from the streets of the area. That he wasn't in a position to argue about what the NPR Reporters had witnessed.

Get the people to our staging areas, he stated, and they can get water there.

Thanks, asshole.

I almost cried last night. A little girl was with her grandfather, their late model sedan stalled in hip deep water. She was standing on what I think was the highway divider next to the car. Soaked. Crying. Her grandfather, dismayed and dazed behind her. Both of them looked at the car, but it was the begging of the young girl that got me. She couldn't have been more than 2 years older than my daughter. And there she was, in the middle of a lake that wasn't there the day before, in the middle of a city that had been destroyed, begging and pleading for the people filming her, and those they were with, to help them. They just needed a push. To higher ground.

And there she stayed, as the vehicle the camera rode in pulled away.

this is not about red states v. blue states...this is not about left v. right...this is not about liberal v. conservative...

the people in louisiana, mississippi and alabama are americans. this is about america. and americans have historically always rolled up their sleeves and pitched in to help out their fellow countrymen in need.

skippy has donated $100.01 to the red cross for hurricane relief. and now, skippy challenges everyone who writes a political blog, no matter what side of the spectrum they inhabit, to do the same.

but that's not all of the challenge. skippy then dares everyone on his blogroll (who will be receiving an email with this double-dog dare), after they donate, to (a) blog about it, and (b) send an email to everyone on their blog roll.

the $100 is to make a difference. if every political blog donates $100, think of the hundreds of thousands of dollars the red cross can use to buy food and supplies for the people that need it now.

and the 1 cent is to let everyone know where that the donations came from blogtopia (yes! we coined that phrase!) and know that for once, in reality, the blogs are making a difference.

if the server is busy, call 1-800 help now.

if you can't contribute $100.01, then make it $50.01 or $20.01, or at least $5.01 (the minimum the red cross requires, plus 1 cent). give up your saturday movie date this week, take your lunch to work instead of eating out, do something!

americans are starving, with no place to live, in conditions that are rapidly deteriorating. it's time we all pitched in and helped our fellow citizens! do it!

Where 9/11 cast a light on the basic compassion of America in the light of a tragedy, Katrina has apparently cast a light on its hatred. In my wildest dreams I wouldn't have thought right-wingers would start attacking impoverished citizens, let alone start demanding their deaths. The are a lot of suggestions about this, the more plausible ones being racism, class ignorance, and of course, ass-saving fervor toward lines of dialogue not related to Bush's mistakes. I don't really know which one, or ones, are true, if any.

What I do know is that in less than 24 hours, a media punditry that spent the last four years insisting that they're the only people who "love America" is now discussing how much they hate other Americans.

But the Kingston embassy, while stating its appreciation for the support, politely declined the offers, saying in a statement: "The United States Government is not yet requesting international assistance at this time."

The evacuation of the Superdome was suspended Thursday after shots were reported fired at a military helicopter and arson fires broke out outside the arena. No immediate injuries were reported.

The scene at the Superdome became increasingly chaotic, with thousands of people rushing from nearby hotels and other buildings, hoping to climb onto the buses taking evacuees from the arena, officials said. Paramedics became increasingly alarmed by the sight of people with guns.

Richard Zeuschlag, chief of the ambulance service that was handling the evacuation of sick and injured people from the Superdome, said it was suspending operations "until they gain control of the Superdome."

He said shots were fired at a military helicopter over the Superdome before daybreak.

He said the National Guard told him that it was sending 100 military police officers to restore order.

"That's not enough," Zeuschlag said. "We need a thousand."

Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard said the military - which was handling the evacuation of the able-bodied from the Superdome - had suspended operations, too, because fires set outside the arena were preventing buses from getting close enough to pick up people.

“I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon. [No one predicted] that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,"
-- Rice, CBS News, 5/17/02

BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

"I want people to know that there is help coming. I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm, but these levees got breached and as a result, much of New Orleans is flooded - and now we're having to deal with it, and we will."

It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

"The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours—coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city's hurricane armor. "I don't think people realize how precarious we are,"

French humanitarian aid officials met on Thursday to examine ways of providing support for victims of Hurricane Katrina in the United States, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said. France is considering ways of mobilizing relief teams from the French Antilles in the Caribbean, ministry spokesman Denis Simonneau said at a news conference.

"France expresses its readiness to bring this aid based on the needs American authorities express," he said. French authorities were following Katrina's aftermath "with particular attention," he added.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said on Thursday Germany was ready to help the United States with the havoc caused by Hurricane Katrina, offering water treatment facilities and mobile shelters.

"The terrible pictures are gradually showing us the extent of the devastation caused by the hurricane," Schroeder said at a book presentation in Berlin.

He said he had directed government ministries to investigate what help Germany could offer to the United States if requested.

"The citizens of the United States should know that in such a situation, Germany is firmly at their side and will do everything it can to organize whatever help we can provide as far as it is desired," he said.

"I'm thinking here of water treatment plants or mobile accommodation, the kinds of things that are needed in such a devastating situation."

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.

[snip]

In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."

"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.

A specialized urban search and rescue team from Vancouver will be joining the rescue efforts in Louisiana in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

B.C. Solicitor General John Les said the province decided to send Vancouver Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) after officials in Louisiana asked for help.

"We're the first non-U.S.-based team to be requested," said Les. "They're going to be helping as many people as they can."

CTV Vancouver has learned that the team will board a plane Wednesday night heading to Lafayette, Louisiana, where local authorities will direct them to devastated areas.

Sounds great! Except for one problem -- this team wasn't allowed to fly into the US, blocked by Homeland Security from entering. A Canadian reader sends this report:

On tonight's news, CTV (Canadian TV) said that support was offered from Canada. Planes are ready to load with food and medical supplies and a system called "DART" which can provide fresh water and medical supplies is standing by. Department of Homeland Security as well as other U.S. agencies were contacted by the Canadian government requesting permission to provide help. Despite this contact, Canada has not been allowed to fly supplies and personnel to the areas hit by Katrina. So, everything here is grounded. Prime Minister Paul Martin is reportedly trying to speak to President Bush tonight or tomorrow to ask him why the U.S. federal government will not allow aid from Canada into Louisiana and Mississippi. That said, the Canadian Red Cross is reportedly allowed into the area.

Canadian agencies are saying that foreign aid is probably not being permitted into Louisiana and Mississippi because of "mass confusion" at the U.S. federal level in the wake of the storm.

Katrina already is measured as one of the worst storms in American history. And yet, President Bush decided that his plans to commemorate the 60th anniversary of VJ Day with a speech were more pressing than responding to the carnage.

A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease.

You wonder, given the notice that we had, that this thing was out there and it was getting to be just as deadly and nasty as they're capable of being, you wonder if more could have been done, should have been done to prepare, to evacuate, to do some contingency planning... You wonder with almost a week's notice from the time this thing crossed the Florida peninsula if enough was done to protect the people in the path of this storm.

An evangelical Christian group that regularly demonstrates at LGBT events is blaming gays for hurricane Katrina.

Repent America says that God "destroyed" New Orleans because of Southern Decadence, the gay festival that was to have taken place in the city over the Labor Day weekend.

"Southern Decadence" has a history of filling the French Quarters section of the city with drunken homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public streets and bars" Repent America director Michael Marcavage said in a statement Wednesday.

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city." Marcavage said. "From ‘Girls Gone Wild’ to ‘Southern Decadence’, New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. May it never be the same."

"Let us pray for those ravaged by this disaster. However, we must not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long," Marcavage said.

"May this act of God cause us all to think about what we tolerate in our city limits, and bring us trembling before the throne of Almighty God," Marcavage concluded.

"It's totally wiped out," he told aides at one point during the hastily-arranged inspection flight.

[snip]

McClellan said that after viewing one particularly hard hit coastal community, the president noted: "It's totally wiped out."

The spokesman, describing the rare scene aboard the president's plane, said that aides were with Bush, pointing out various sights and that the president was hearing commentary on what he was seeing.

"There wasn't a whole lot of conversation going on," McClellan said. "I think it's very sobering to see from the air. I think that at some point you're just kind of shaking your head in disbelief to see the destruction that has been done by this hurricane."

"This is a major catastrophe," McClellan said earlier. "We are certainly going to do everything from the standpoint of the federal government to make sure the needs are met. This is a time when all Americans need to come together and do all we can to support those in the Gulf state region."

McClellan said the government was declaring the hurricane an "incident of national significance," a designation that triggers a recently developed national emergency plan for the first time and will allow better coordination among government agencies. McClellan said he expects the administration will request a supplemental appropriation to pay for disaster relief and recovery efforts.

Under the national response plan, which was finalized in January, the federal government intervenes only when emergencies exceed what state and local capabilities can handle. Though state and local officials have not formally declared that they can no longer manage the disaster on their own, that is the case, said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke.

The president decided he should be in the nation's capital given the magnitude of destruction and death caused by Katrina, one of the most severe storms to ever hit the United States.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "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. 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."

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. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

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."

• American Red Cross
  1-800-HELP-NOW
  
  


• Salvation Army
  1-800-SAL-ARMY
  
  


• Network for Good
  
  


• Mennonite Disaster Service
  
  


• Catholic Charities
  1-800-919-9338
  
  


• Noah's Wish
  
  


• Episcopal Relief & Development
  1-800-334-7626
  
  


• Union for Reform Judaism Hurricane Disaster Relief Fund
  
  


• United Methodist Committee on Relief
  1-800-554-8583
  
  


• Samaritans Purse
  
  


• American Baptist Churches USA
  
  


• National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster
  
  


• Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
  
  


• Also worth reading is FEMA's When Disaster Strikes...Donations Are Needed

The insurgency is on the rise in our area, with a most impressive coordinated assault on one of my sister FOBs (St. Joe) under their belt. Apparently they have enough folks and sophistication in my back yard where they can simultaneously place accurate mortar rounds on three seperate locations (at least 30k apart) to tie up any ground mounted quick reaction forces, as well as offer up multiple RPG strikes on the guard towers at Joe. These RPG attacks really bring out the QRF who face their own ambush as they come out the gate, at least 12 insurgents occupying buildings with an overwatch position to Joe's only entrance armed with more rpg's and small arms. The only possible responses are tanks or Apaches. Luckily we have both on call. 12 dead insurgents, destroyed buildings, a compromised FOB, sustained, accurate and unaswered indirect fire and lots o unanswered questions later... I'm here.

What the fuck has my chain of command been doing? We were winning somewhat when I left. And now we're being pinned down in our own fucking homes? Insurgents are pushing locals out of their homes and taking over my area at will? What kind of fucktarded plan have we been half-assedly executing? Obviously the kind that neglects sound contact with locals. Obviously the kind that gives further distance to unbridged gaps between soldiers and locals. Obviously the kind that has shown enough weakness when confronted by the insugency that it has been encouraged to grow.

Back home (the USA kind) I have no home, no job, and my commander in chief is on vacation (he's about 20 days behind Ronald Reagan right now in the race to become the most vacationing president ever. Hey W! we all got our fingers crossed! Here's to you and two more years of presidency...er vacationing!). Luckily pretty much everything that is important to me can fit into the back of a truck. Luckily I just paid off one of those.

In their fear to build relationships and get out of their hiding holes the FOBbits above me have fucked my friends and I.

We've just completed the first 1/4 of our tour. we've sent 4 of 24 members of this platoon home with injuries.

Thankfully we're not like another who has sent 8 home in body bags...but we got 9 months to go.

This is an immense human tragedy, one that will work hardship on millions of people. It is beyond the capabilities of state and local government to deal with. It requires a national response.

Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, at this moment, the country's premier agency for dealing with such events -- FEMA -- is being, in effect, systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security.


Apparently homeland security now consists almost entirely of protection against terrorist acts. How else to explain why the Federal Emergency Management Agency will no longer be responsible for disaster preparedness? Given our country's long record of natural disasters, how much sense does this make?

The creation of the federal agency encouraged states, counties and cities to convert from their civil defense organizations and also to establish emergency management agencies to do the requisite planning for disasters. Over time, a philosophy of "all-hazards disaster preparedness" was developed that sought to conserve resources by producing single plans that were applicable to many types of events.

But it was Hurricane Andrew, which hit Florida in 1992, that really energized FEMA. The year after that catastrophic storm, President Bill Clinton appointed James Lee Witt to be director of the agency. Witt was the first professional emergency manager to run the agency. Showing a serious regard for the cost of natural disasters in both economic impact and lives lost or disrupted, Witt reoriented FEMA from civil defense preparations to a focus on natural disaster preparedness and disaster mitigation. In an effort to reduce the repeated loss of property and lives every time a disaster struck, he started a disaster mitigation effort called "Project Impact." FEMA was elevated to a Cabinet-level agency, in recognition of its important responsibilities coordinating efforts across departmental and governmental lines.

Witt fought for federal funding to support the new program. At its height, only $20 million was allocated to the national effort, but it worked wonders. One of the best examples of the impact the program had here in the central Puget Sound area and in western Washington state was in protecting people at the time of the Nisqually earthquake on Feb. 28, 2001. Homes had been retrofitted for earthquakes and schools were protected from high-impact structural hazards. Those involved with Project Impact thought it ironic that the day of that quake was also the day that the then-new president chose to announce that Project Impact would be discontinued.

Indeed, the advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA. The newly appointed leadership of the agency showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed Witt. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Soon FEMA was being absorbed into the "homeland security borg."

This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission.

FEMA will be survived by state and local emergency management offices, which are confused about how they fit into the national picture. That's because the focus of the national effort remains terrorism, even if the Department of Homeland Security still talks about "all-hazards preparedness." Those of us in the business of dealing with emergencies find ourselves with no national leadership and no mentors. We are being forced to fend for ourselves, making do with the "homeland security" mission. Our "all-hazards" approaches have been decimated by the administration's preoccupation with terrorism.