When I used to live in New Orleans (1999), there were always rumors that when 'the big one' hit, New Orleans would be underwater, and many would die as a result. In 2001, this was confirmed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which rated a hurricane in New Orleans to be one of the three most likely, most catastrophic disasters in this country. There was plenty of warning that this was coming....like this article from the Houston Chronicle from 2001, which says, in part:
" In the face of an approaching [Category 3 or above hurricane] storm, scientists say, the city's less-than-adequate evacuation routes would strand 250,000 people or more, and probably kill one of 10 left behind as the city drowned under 20 feet of water. Thousands of refugees could land in Houston. Economically, the toll would be shattering."

The warnings were there, the scenario was drawn out time and time again. But where was the money? The Bush administration had cut $20-$40 million needed to strengthen levees -- a 2004 project that was 80% complete. Al Naomi, the head of the Louisiana Army Corps of Engineers, said in early 2004, "The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest." He estimated it would take $20 million to complete the levee restoration, which he requested from the Federal Government, but the $20 million was denied, and the 2005 Bush Administration budget appropriated only $3.9 million to the project.

Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, said on June 8, 2004, "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."
(see this article for more detail: http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002331.html )

Meanwhile, FEMA also suffered from cutbacks under the Bush administration, a push to privatize the agency, and an absorption into the all-encompassing "Department of Homeland Security". The restructuring of the agency into a competitive structure based on the private, corporate model, resulted in poorer areas, like Louisiana, being left out of flood-control grant money altogether!
"In a sense, Louisiana is the floodplain of the nation," noted a 2002 FEMA report. As a result, flooding is a constant threat, and the state has an estimated 18,000 buildings that have been repeatedly been damaged by flood waters -- the highest number of any state. And yet, in summer 2004 FEMA denied Louisiana communities' pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. In Jefferson Parish, part of the New Orleans metropolitan area, flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue was baffled by the development. 'You would think we would get maximum consideration' for the funds, he says. 'This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it.'"
(see this article for more detail: http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2004-09-28/cover_story.html )

I'm not pointing these things out to place blame, but to try to explain why the flooding happened, and why the emergency response by the government has been so inadequate and inept. The levees broke because federal money was withheld that was to be used for necessary upkeep. FEMA has shown itself incapable of a thorough or speedy evacuation. Residents had to escape the city on their own, or not at all. Left behind: the sickest, oldest, poorest, youngest. Thousands are believed to have drowned, some trapped in attics as flood waters rose for 2 days.

What really hurts are the cries for help -- the chanting outside New Orleans' Superdome: "Help! Help! Please help us!", the mayor, angry and frustrated at the failure of federal support, saying that his own efforts to save his city are being held up by bureaucratic holdups at the federal level.
(listen to this segment from an emotional interview with the New Orleans Mayor on Thursday, Sep. 1: http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/42795.php )

My friend Jordan writes:
"In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge."

I read the accounts of the squalor of the refugee camps, the people who haven't had water for days, and I feel sick, and angry that this all could have been avoided. I think of the New Orleans I know and love - a city bursting with energy, with flowers and moss hanging from ancient trees along brick and cobblestone streets with antique streetcars rumbling along. I was last there this past March, and the magic of the city struck me as it often had before -- I found myself stopping to talk to artists on the street, with cars covered in beads and trinkets, watching fairy-winged angels float by on their bicycles -- the city of New Orleans is mesmerizing with its beauty and culture. Is that all gone for good? Perhaps.

In March, during my visit to New Orleans, I had dinner with Debbie and Bill Quigley, a nurse and law professor, respectively, who live in the Garden District near Tulane University in New Orleans. The dinner discussion inevitably moved toward the topic of hurricanes in New Orleans, and what would happen when "The Big One" hit. Debbie recounted stories of past hurricanes, where the nurses, doctors and their families had to 'move in' to the hospitals while the water rushed by outside. So I wasn't completely surprised when I heard Bill Quigley's voice on the radio yesterday (Thurs. Sep. 1), reporting the conditions at Memorial Hospital, where he and Debbie had not only 'moved in', but were quite literally trapped inside the hospital with no water and no electricity, and 1200 patients in need of urgent care. I haven't heard word of them since, and the hospital switchboard has no info on them.....I just hope they are able to get out, but knowing them, they will probably make sure every single patient is safe before they even attempt to remove themselves.

I think of the out-of-the-way coffeeshops where brilliant musicians would try out their voices and rhythm for the first time in front of a crowd, the street dancing and second-line jazz parades every Sunday afternoon......the New Orleans I knew........and the sweltering heat.......the heat where thirsty thousands are now marching to a very different beat. The beat of a military deployment that has been sent in to New Orleans by Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco with orders to "shoot to kill". Orders reiterated by a well-rested, long-vacationing George W. Bush.

I'll admit I've never been a fan of George W. Bush, but his actions this week in response to this catastrophe have been absolutely appalling. Where was he on Sunday, when the hurricane was clearly becoming "The Big One" that would hit New Orleans? At his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on vacation (ignoring, as he has for months, the peace delegation of mothers whose children were killed in the Iraq war, camped outside his doorstep). Where was he on Monday, when the hurricane hit, the levees broke and the city faced exactly the 'doomsday scenario' that had been predicted time and time again? Travelling to California and Arizona, acting as a salesman for the pharmaceutical companies, advocating new, high-priced drugs for Medicare recipients. What about Tuesday, as the waters rose and the city drowned? Still no word from Mr. Bush, who was busy playing guitar for a photo-op in San Diego and then rushing back to continue his vacation in Crawford. Only Wednesday, after flying over the region in his private jet and landing in Washington, did he make a statement at all, a statement described in a New York Times editorial as his "worst speech ever", in which he called on his dad to lead the relief effort. What kind of a 'leader' gets on television THREE DAYS AFTER the event and says he is depending on his father and former President Clinton to head up relief efforts??

Where is the LEADER who will say, "I WILL NOT REST until I know that every survivor of the hurricane is safe"? Where is a leader who will immediately admit the mistake of not giving the requested funds to levee restoration, and devote the needed federal money to rescue the survivors and mop up the mistake? That leader is simply not there. Instead, we have George W. Bush, who gave an interview to ABC on Thursday saying "no one expected the levees to be breached", when in fact such a scenario was listed by FEMA as one of the three most likely disasters in the US (as I mentioned earlier). Everyone expected the levees would be breached when a hurricane of this magnitude hit New Orleans: the Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (authorized by Congress in 1996 after floods killed six, but cut almost completely in 2003 by Bush administration budget cuts) -- everyone predicted this scenario, expected it -- especially after the budget cuts of 2005, and the UNPRECEDENTED budget cuts for FY2006. Everyone, it seems, except George W. Bush.

And even now, although he's finally deigned to make a visit to some affected areas (but not the hardest hit spot - New Orleans itself), Bush has made no statement committing the federal government to a significant or sustained effort to aid the areas that have been devastated by the hurricane.

I am angry, yes. But the feeling is superceded by another, an overwhelming feeling of compassion for the survivors, and a desire to do whatever I can to help them live and survive this thing. The humanitarian aid organization I work with, Pastors for Peace, is organizing an ad-hoc humanitarian aid caravan to Louisiana and Mississippi, picking up aid in different spots around the country and bringing it south to the survivors. I will be helping with this effort as much as I can before I go to Palestine.
<see http://www.pastorsforpeace.org for more info and to make a donation>

Well, this is getting long (as usual).....but I feel a need to add something about the media portrayal of survivors -- another absolutely appalling facet of this week's events....I think my friend Jordan, a survivor of the hurricane himself, says it best in his article:
"While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way to get there were left behind. Adding salt to the wound, the local and national media have spent the last week demonizing those left behind. As someone that loves New Orleans and the people in it, this is the part of this tragedy that hurts me the most, and it hurts me deeply. No sane person should classify someone who takes food from indefinitely closed stores in a desperate, starving city as a "looter," but thats just what the media did over and over again. Sheriffs and politicians talked of having troops protect stores instead of perform rescue operations. Images of New Orleans' hurricane-ravaged population were transformed [by the media] into black, out-of-control, criminals. As if taking a stereo from a store that will clearly be insured against loss is a greater crime than the governmental neglect and incompetence that did billions of dollars of damage and destroyed a city. This media focus is a tactic, just as the eighties focus on 'welfare queens' and 'super-predators' obscured the simultaneous and much larger crimes of the Savings and Loan scams and mass layoffs, the hyper-exploited people of New Orleans are being used as a scapegoat to cover up much larger crimes."
(the rest of Jordan's article is here: http://dc.indymedia.org/feature/display/129298/index.php )

check for updates and ongoing coverage at:
http://www.indymedia.us
http://neworleans.indymedia.org

much love, as always,
jenka