Who knows what is going to happen, but if the levees fail again three years after billions of dollars was appropriated to fix them, the failure of George Bush and the entire Republican party should really be clear to anybody with half a mind.
On the eve of Hurricane Gustav’s expected arrival, many in New Orleans, from residents of the Ninth Ward to the city’s mayor to the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, have their doubts about whether the levees will hold.
“There is a real likelihood of getting some overtopping. Additionally, rain is a big factor here,” said DHS chief Michael Chertoff about water pouring over the tops of the levees.
Three years since Katrina and $3 billion later, the levees still leak and much of the repair work remains incomplete.
“Huge areas of Louisiana are going to be devastated. We’re going in essence to see what Katrina didn’t destroy, what Rita didn’t destroy in 2005 being destroyed now in 2008,” said Ivor Van Heerden, a professor at Louisiana State University who wrote a book about why the levees broke during Katrina.
At best the levees are estimated to be able to withstand water levels rising at the rate of an inch and hour. The coming storm, however, promises much more. In some places storm surge could reach 18 feet.
The Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with repairing the levees, says work was being accelerated.
Despite Congress authorizing $12.8 billion to rebuild the levees, only $3 billion has been spent. The engineers blame red tape, saying the studies, approvals and environmental committees have all slowed down the work.
The Army Corps has already been blaming environmentalists for their complete lack of process in rebuilding the levees, but considering that the local press recently found engineers filling the levees with newspaper, their protestations aren’t even really credible. In fact, they failed to use the money and are scrambling to finish in a matter of days what they haven’t done in three years since Katrina hit and the problem was identified.
Obama’s statement on how you can help residents in the path of Hurricane Gustav:
As Hurricane Gustav approaches and Gulf Coast residents evacuate their communities, our thoughts and prayers go out to those who are affected by this situation.
Mayor Ray Nagin has announced a mandatory evacuation for the City of New Orleans today, Sunday, August 31st. If you are in the New Orleans area, please contact the state emergency hotline at 1-866-288-2484 if you need more information or go to the State of Louisiana site for an updated list of evacuations by parish.
State and local government officials are working hard to ensure the safety and well-being of the people of the region, and many of you have asked how you can help too.
On Rush Limbaugh’s comedy radio show today he asked former Governor and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (R-AR) how he believed the Republican party should respond if Hurricane Gustav makes landfall in New Orleans during the Republican National Convention next week.
“I think they’ve called in Pat Robertson to pray it off the coast,” Huckabee jokingly responded. Listen to this segment:
Yeah this is really, really funny Huck. Maybe you think the best way to protect an American city is to pray, yet some of us think there is another solution. Build levees and pumping station to the specs required.
Last night on his prime time CNN show, Glenn Beck, talking with former Cheney shill senior adviser Mary Matalin, he noted the possibility that Hurricane Gustav (now only a tropical storm) could hit New Orleans on “day one of the Republican convention.” Instead of concern for the residences and the fact the levees are still not up to pre-Katrina standards (which of course still lacking) Beck expressed his displeasure that tax money is being spent in New Orleans and offered the canned Republican response to residents, just freaking “move:”
BECK: Why are we spending all this money in New Orleans? We shouldn’t spend a single dime of taxpayers’ money in a place where—I don’t care where it is—where it is in a flood zone. Move out of the place that, you know, you’re below sea level.
But of course there is a serious problem with the shit all stupid mind-set. And that would be that the New Orleans area is not even close to the only flood zone in the United States that receives federal tax dollars. Not even close actually. Parts of Minnesota, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and numerous other states are now considered flood zones.
Would Beck offer the same advice to them, “move?”
I could make the argument that Katrina and its aftermath is the worse example of the Bush administration. Iraq is just terrible, but it is thousands and thousands of miles away. Not within our own borders. Estimates are Hurricane Gustav will reach New Orleans on Monday, the same day President Bush is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention. Which of course is the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) visited an oil rig just off the coast of Louisiana in order “to highlight his support for increased domestic offshore drilling.” On Fox Noise this morning Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) promoted McCain’s oil rig visit.
In the interview Jindal oddly “emphasize that drilling alone is not enough” to address America’s energy needs. Whoops, guess he got all those various lies talking points mixed up.
This is McCain’s second attempt for a photo-op on an oil rig to drill home (sorry for the pun) his plan to open-up more offshore drilling leases. His last scheduled event was canned after a barge spilled more than 419,000 gallons of fuel oil into the Mississippi forming a slick 12 miles long slick.
There are a number of problems with McCain’s energy plan of expanded drilling. The first is he likes to say it is totally safe, as McCain did again on this visit. He and other Republicans like to point to the lie that no damage was done by Hurricane Katrina and Rita, which just isn’t true. The EPA called the spills cause by Katrina and Rita “worse than the worst-case scenario.”
Plus, we are already drilling and there just isn’t enough oil. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Web site in 1998 Louisiana produced 11,269,000 barrels of oil a month. Now it is just 6,293,000 barrels. Almost half as much. It isn’t cause of lack of production, it is cause of lack of oil.
It is also not accurate to say we’re not opening up more areas to drilling. In fact:
McCain’s visit came a day ahead of the Minerals Management Service’s lease sale in New Orleans to auction off 18 million acres of the western Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling. The tracts could potentially yield as much as 400 million barrels of oil, but that amount would only meet the nation’s oil needs for about 19 days, and it would be at least seven to 10 years until oil started flowing.
Yes you read that correctly. It will take 7-10 years to get to the oil and 18 million acres of land will only give us enough oil for 19 days. This is nothing but election year politics and somebody on our “Traditional Media” ought to call them on this shit
There are now more than 400 known dead zones in coastal waters worldwide, compared to 305 in the 1990s, according to study author Robert Diaz of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science
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Earth’s largest dead zone, in the Baltic Sea, experiences oxygen deprivation year-round, the press release said. The second largest dead zone surrounds the mouth of the Mississippi River in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite decades of efforts to clean up U.S. rivers and lakes, high nitrogen levels are currently combining with strong water flow to make that dead zone larger than it has ever been.
Several government-supported scientists are forecasting an expansion of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone to a record 8,800 square miles (23,000 square kilometers), an area larger than New Jersey.
Our Traditional Media has done a terrible job covering the real reason behind the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. But Harry Shearer, via the Huffington Post, has done his best to explain that the flood never had to happen. It was the direct fault of the Federal Government and specifically the Army Corp of Engineers. Period.
This is why Harry has for years called the aftermath of Katrina the Federal Flood. How he highlights what nobody else seems to want to write about,
This July was good to New Orleans. No major storms nearby, and a wealth of visitors packing the streets, clubs, restaurants. The Essence Music Festival, the big cocktail convention (seriously), then an international classical piano competition (ditto), and the SCLC’s national convention–compared to last July, when the streets were empty, the resettled part of the city was thriving and vibrant.
August brings a different mood. In Friday’s Times-Picayune, we learn that the Army Corps of Engineers is now scrambling—the paper’s word—to reinforce a crucial floodwall abutting a neighborhood that suffered disastrous flooding three years ago. Apparently, the Corps—which “concluded” on its own that Congress hadn’t authorized it to build a new, stronger, more deeply anchored floodwall before completing so-called 100-year flood protection in 2011—has realized the floodwall is far more vulnerable than it had thought.
More disturbing is the fact that the problem is the elevation figures the Corps used, right after Katrina, in calculating what was needed to strengthen the existing wall. They were “culled” from the original floodwall design plans. It’s been well established by the independent forensic investigations into the Katrina disaster that the Corps had a bad habit of using old, outdated elevation figures in the original design of the failed structures. So why “cull” those after the disaster proved them so disastrously wrong?
Combined with the continued reports of water leaking and puddling in backyards on the supposedly protected side of the 17th St. Canal—reports the Corps is still scrambling (my word) to explain—New Orleans is once again forced to ask: is this the best America can do?
This is a story written around the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina that I found while researching a story I am writing on the third anniversary. It is well worth a read, although sad on many different levels.
More than a week after Hurricane Katrina nearly leveled this city, workers newly assigned to collect the dead stopped on a downtown street. There before them, on its back, lay another corpse, all but baked into a pose of submission by several hot suns.
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But Hurricane Katrina denied most of the 1,464 victims in Louisiana such final flourishes of dignity; no watch chains for them, no stylish hats. The hurricane scattered bodies over hundreds of square miles, where water, heat and time distorted what many of the dead looked like in life. It was a forensic hell.
The system hastily conceived to fulfill a sacred mission—to collect, identify and release for burial hundreds of bodies—descended at times into the common ineptness of a motor vehicles bureau, ill equipped to deal with wholesale catastrophe. As a result, many families waited far too long for the release of identified bodies, delaying burial, prolonging grief.
Defying the bureaucratic impediments, pathologists, investigators and counselors rose to the sorrowful challenge. Working like wartime MASH units, they reunited families with their missing loved ones and attached names to nearly 900 of the bodies they examined. Even so, some 50 victims remain unknown to the world still, a year later.
“I wish we could have identified everybody,” Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state medical examiner, said. “Ninety-nine percent is a failing rate if it’s your kid missing. That’s the bottom line.”
