Project Katrina

With the Super Bowl being played this weekend it means that everybody that is remotely famous is required to pick a winner. Well former FEMA head Michael Brown has picked the Colts to win. That’s really not like him, to abandon New Orleans like that.

In an interview with The Hill newspaper last week, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) boasted that “the best vote” he ever cast while in Congress was to deny $52 billion in aid to Hurricane Katrina victims. Yesterday, the Times-Picayune called King’s comments “heartless” and “appalling,” especially because he is from “a state that’s also vulnerable to flooding:”

Greater New Orleans suffered catastrophic destruction not only because of a powerful storm but because the flood protection system built by the federal government failed.

While some lawmakers from other parts of the country showed a lack of concern and understanding after Katrina—even questioning the wisdom of rebuilding our community—it’s hard to understand how a lawmaker from Iowa, a state that’s also vulnerable to flooding, could be unwilling to help.

Even now, officials in Des Moines are complaining about a slow and inadequate response to their flood recovery—including the lament that FEMA is underestimating the amount of money needed to replace public buildings. That’s something that South Louisianians can understand, and in fact, we feel for Iowans.

Unfortunately, when it counted, Rep. King didn’t feel for us.

Under the “Agenda” section of the site regarding Katrina, it reads:

President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.

President Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina. Citing the Bush Administration’s “unconscionable ineptitude” in responding to Hurricane Katrina, then-Senator Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims. Obama visited thousands of Hurricane survivors in the Houston Convention Center and later took three more trips to the region. He worked with members of the Congressional Black Caucus to introduce legislation to address the immediate income, employment, business, and housing needs of Gulf Coast communities.

I think US News & World Report’s pretty much says it all in their analysis of Bush’s legacy:

It was a disaster at every level. But in political terms, the government’s failure to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina in the late summer of 2005 was Bush’s biggest setback at home. “Katrina showed he is incompetent,” says Howard Dean, outgoing chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “Before Katrina, everyone, including America’s friends and enemies, believed if something awful happened in the world, you could call in the Americans and they’d fix it.” The government response to the hurricane, which devastated New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast, ruined that reputation, Dean argues.

Bush seemed slow off the mark as millions of people suffered, and he created a lasting image of isolation when the White House released photos of him, a solitary figure in his cushy seat, looking out a window on Marine One at the hurricane devastation far below. He also made a huge mistake when he praised Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with a now infamous attaboy—”Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job”—even though the agency was botching the disaster response, adding to the impression that Bush was out of touch.

White House advisers say the blame for the poor Katrina response must be shared by the federal, state, and local governments, especially in dealing with the hurricane-related problems in New Orleans. Bush defenders add that he was correct not to visit the disaster sites immediately because to do so would have greatly complicated the relief efforts on the ground.

More substantively, Bush refrained from having the federal government immediately take over the relief effort even when it became clear that the state and local governments in Louisiana were not up to the job. His aides say Bush was guided here by his experience as governor of Texas and his belief that such matters are best left to lower-level officials. “For him, it was a question of usurpation of power,” says a former senior adviser. But his failure to act while thousands of desperate people, unable to find food or water, were appealing for help on national television erased his image as an effective decision maker.

Bushie, you did one heck of a job …..

Paul Krugman of the New York Times reports in an op-ed something I’ve not heard before, which is troubling to say the least.:

Some observers have pointed out that daily briefings on preparations for Gustav, which should be coming from the Federal Emergency Management Agency—which is, you know, supposed to manage emergencies—have been coming, instead, from the U.S. military’s Northern Command.

It’s not hard to see why. Top positions at FEMA are no longer held by obviously unqualified political hacks and cronies. But a recent report by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security said that the agency has made only “limited progress” in the area of “mission assignments”—that is, in its ability to coordinate the response to a crisis. So FEMA still isn’t up to carrying out its principal task.

That’s no accident. FEMA’s degradation, from one of the government’s most admired agencies to a laughingstock, wasn’t an isolated event; it was the result of the G.O.P.’s underlying philosophy. Simply put, when the government is run by a political party committed to the belief that government is always the problem, never the solution, that belief tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Key priorities are neglected; key functions are privatized; and key people, the competent public servants who make government work, either leave or are driven out.

So almost exactly to the day, three years after Katrina hit, FEMA still can’t even handle something as basic as briefing the president on Hurricane Gustav. Sad, sad times.

In this five minute video Obama discusses the challenges we still face in rebuilding New Orleans on the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

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?

After Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast in August 2005 the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) purchased more than $85M worth of basic supplies for storm victims. For more than two years, until last month FEMA let the supplies sit in warehouses at a cost of $1M/year.

During that two year period local government officials and non-profit relief organizations in Louisiana and Mississippi made repeated public pleas for donations of the exact sort of items FEMA had already purchased and were even stored locally.

That these supplies people have needed for years just sat in warehouses until mid-June of this year is bad enough, but FEMA was able to find a way to make this story even more sad and depressing the way only George Bush’s administration can.

The supplies (GSA now says it is only $18.5M—we can’t count) called Living Kits included towels, shirts, pants, shoes, coffee makers, pillowcases, dinnerware, blankets, pots and pans, buckets, and cleaning supplies. You know the stuff people need to live when they have lost everything and are living in trailers.

So FEMA kept all its stuff under lock and key because as a spokesperson told CNN:

We were not notified that there was a great need for this particular property.

Really, no great need! You have got to be fucking joking. I guess somebody needed to put together a Bush-style post-Katrina DVD for our national emergency agency so they were aware close to 250,000 folks are still living in FEMA provided trailers and housing.

So in June of this year with a single stroke of a pen, FEMA officials declared all the goods purchased for Katrina victims surplus and developed a plan to distribute them to other federal and state government agencies (including prisons).

But before they shipped off all the supplies (121 truckloads) they of course sent a representative out to state and local agencies, non-profit aid organizations, and churches just to double check that there wasn’t a need.

Well not really, I just made that up! That would be logical. Not only didn’t they sent anybody out for a face-to-face meeting, they didn’t even place one phone call or send a single e-mail on this topic.

When the Congressional delegations from Louisiana and Mississippi found out this shocking information from a CNN investigative story they went ballistic (video of the story here). Of course FEMA officials expressed, as you might expect, outrage, cause after nearly three years of rank incompetence and untold billions in waste and fraud how could something like this happen on their watch?

And since the Bush Administration officials have fake outrage down to an art form they of course promised a full investigation, meaning they will wait until the scandal disappears from the headlines before throwing some low-level bureaucrat under the bus.

But that was not enough for Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. They requested FEMA:

Come and tell the committee how such a debacle could occur, and in the process, what are they going to do to assure Congress and the taxpaying public that it will never happen again.

Last Thursday in a pretty rare joint congressional hearing of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees officials from FEMA and the General Services Administration (GSA) got it from both sides of the aisle (some of the audio is here).

During the hearing Eric Smith, FEMA’s assistant administrator for logistics management kept to the same tired talking points when pressed on why the supplies were not distributed to folks that needed them:

They were returned to us after they were not used from different areas—Mississippi, Louisiana.

Landrieu said to Smith:

FEMA never told state officials or relief agencies involved in recovery efforts that the Living Kits meant to resettle hurricane survivors were still available. How can people ask for something they don’t know exists?

Smith’s response was mind-numbing:

They have to have a need. If they have bona fide need, it’s their responsibility to pass that need on.

Where have we heard this before? Maybe on Monday, August 29th 2005 when Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco called Bush, as more than 1,100 Americans were literally starting to drown and said:

Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you’ve got!

But days, weeks, and even months later she’d be blamed by the White House cause she didn’t say exactly what she wanted/needed. I guess in almost three years we still have not got this not so little problem figured out.

You see Mr. Smith when you have pictures like the above, and there are hundreds more like it, even one where a family wrote in duct tape on their roof:

We are Americans, please help, some can’t swim.

When you endure something like what happened as the lead agency that is supposed to ensure it doesn’t in fact happen, more fucking lame excuses almost three years after the fact just don’t cut it.

But thankfully Landrieu also would have none of his BS:

It’s like if a house was on fire. If the fire department operated the same way FEMA does, we would have to call the fire department and specifically request the hose, the pressurized water, the truck, the firefighters and the ladder, all before FEMA would acknowledge that they should send this equipment to help.

After the Congressional hearing a CNN reporter caught up with Smith and asked what mistakes were made? His response:

We did not really make any mistakes. Could things have been done better? Yes of course, but we followed our procedures.

To date only a couple truck loads of the supplies have been returned to Louisiana. None to Mississippi. But rest assured, FEMA told the committee they are still cataloguing what supplies it has left and they’ll report back to the committee. But they do admit at least 90,000 of the Living Kits have already been distributed (they don’t like to say, “given away”).

I’ve already used enough words and I just don’t really know what else to say other than I am ashamed as an America this has all happened as I was a taxpaying adult. What have we become?

I just want to end with a little quote from a BBC show I love called Top Gear. I’ve been watching it since 2005 and I can’t ever recall them ever making a single political statement. They just drive the fastest cars in the world really, really fast.

They’ve only been to the US for one show. A challenge to drive from Miami to New Orleans. They got off the road right before they hit New Orleans in 2006 and had this to say (extended video here):

Finally though we made it. And my word were we in for a shock. We’d seen on the news what Hurricane Katrina had done. But seeing the devastation for real was truly astonishing.

Every house, I’ve been driving now for what 15 miles, and there isn’t a pavement there isn’t a building there isn’t anything that isn’t smashed. It is such a vast scale of destruction.

It had been a year since Katrina had blown through and we sort of assumed that the wealthiest nation on earth would have fixed it.

But we were wrong.

How can the rest of America sleep at night knowing this is here?

Some nights I don’t sleep well. I just wonder what they’d say today almost three years later!

As I’ve written about before (and here) Republicans and White House officials keep lying about the fact that there were no oil spills caused by Hurricane Katrina and Rita in an effort to convince the American public that more off-shore drilling is both a good idea and environmentally safe. Now we have Samuel Bodman, the head of the Department of Energy (DoE), the one man in the United States that should know the facts, lying to our faces that no oil spills or rigs were damaged by Katrina and Rita. It boggles the mind.