OK, YHB is still insensitive and all, but I have passed through the stage of vague interest into outrage. How could we fail to provide food, water, shelter and medicine to our own refugees?
My shock over this goes back to the thing I had talked about some time ago, my belief in Optimism as an American Virtue. Optimism is the wrong word for it, but it’s that can-do spirit that I identify as an important part of what it means to be America. Because I still believe in that, it simply had never occurred to me that when we invaded Iraq, we would do so with ill-equipped and ill-trained troops. Seriously, it never occurred to me. Yes, I know, armies are always ill-equipped and ill-trained, and I had heard the stories about the quartermasters scrounging for guns, ammunition and boots in WWII and especially WWI. I know that we have gone into war with an ill-equipped and ill-trained army before. But I was still surprised that we did it, and I will be surprised when we do it again (please the Lord, not for many years).
Similarly, when New Orleans was going to be hit by a hurricane, I knew people would die, and I knew there would be a lot of damage, but it didn’t occur to me that we would be unable to organize airlifts, that people would die of dehydration in the shelters before we could get water in or them out. It just never occurred to me.
I mean, for one thing, our emergency preparedness people have presumably been preparing for emergencies over the last four years, right? Right? The whole idea of providing food, water, transportation, medical care and shelter for tens of thousands of people is not completely new to us. This is the sort of plan that Our Previous President and Our Last-but-one President had put off, because it was too expensive, and too pessimistic, and yadda yadda yadda, but when Everything Changed, that was one of the things that changed, right?
I know that the America I believe in never existed. I think that’s the point of America, to believe in the America we have been trying to make, you and me and James Madison and Abraham Lincoln and even Ronald Reagan, not the America we have. So it’s not a shock, or it shouldn’t be, to discover that America has failed itself again, any more than it’s shock to discover that America has exceeded itself again. But this kind of thing, this sort of work, that’s what we’re good at. If we can’t take care of the people of New Orleans and rebuild, well, what are we here for?
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
i bet this gives optimistic iraqis pause
i’ll tag this here maybe because i’m too chicken to send it to a big paper somewhere.
now is the time to think of whether we still need to contain the mississippi or let it change course as it’s been trying to do. spending money to rebuild new orleans, in order to recreate the same flood danger, seems stupid. the waters have spoken so maybe it’s time to listen to them, as we’re no longer responsible for holding off the inevitable.
Well, and I do think that moving the port inland seems even more expensive than rebuilding the city where it is. Or, I suppose we could give up shipping by water, which would be even more expensive than that.
Also, and it’s fine here among friends, but I do think that it’s a trifle callous for newspapers to publish editorials saying we shouldn’t rebuild when they’re still digging out. There will be lots of logistic questions about how to rebuild, and what to do about the river and the gulf. But if I were an ersthile resident of a city that had been flooded, or earthquaked, or anything like that, I would think it would hurt a lot to hear newspapers pontificate about my stupid city was stupid to be built on a fault or a delta, and should be left to rot. It might be good policy, eventually, but let’s give people a while to rest.
Thanks,
-V.
Here’s how I think we can speak about this subject now. And we should be talking about it now, because it’s terribly important.
Yes, New Orleans must be rebuilt.
Of course New Orleans should not be rebuilt just the way it was, because it has proven a deathtrap for hundreds or thousands of its citizens. Only a much more effectively organized evacuation plan could make the citizens of the city as currently configured safer from catastrophic flooding, and even then they would still face the risk in such a circumstance of regular, catastrophic property damage.
So much we can say now, I think.
It’s a complex problem, how to rebuild to make the city safer. It’s worth remembering that this flood didn’t come from the river. The parts of the city that were not flooded, in fact, were on the south side along the river. The levees that breached were on the north side of the city, along Lake Ponchatrain. The river, I believe, is the force that can best help the city, if it treated well.
The most pressing needs for rebuilding the city are 1) changing the environmental/developmental management of the Mississippi Delta so that its marshlands can be be rebuilt and 2) keeping the city above or at least close to sea level so that it’s not so absurdly vulnerable to catastrophic floods.
If the Big Muddy is let loose, it probably won’t threaten the city: its energy is pushing it westward: it would probably jump back into the Atchafalaya Basin and move far from New Orleans. That would diminish a flooding risk for the city, but New Orleans would no longer be a port, unless, some sort of a canal system could run shipping from the Gulf through New Orleans and then up to the river. Is that feasible to engineer? Who knows–I certainly do not–what the effect on shipping on the Mississippi if the river were to establish a new main channel? What effect would it have on the established petroleum infrastructure that has been built in the marshes and swamps of Louisiana? I’m all for moving that infrastructure and rendering it irrelevant by radically changing Americans’ energy usage, but we can’t assume that such change will be easy or fast, even if the nation were committed to it.
What would happen if the river were turned loose? The LSU civil and environmental engineering program has models that can answer some of these questions, I think.
If planning starts with a good plan for the river and the marshes, then a good plan for the city that fits into a larger environmental plan for the region can follow.
if all i end up looking like is “callous” then that’s usually a good day.
what i meant was that the entire delta has been hit. damage has been done to tons of artificial systems that now need work, where before, “it ain’t broke” (which was stretching the truth) was motivating a snowballing environmental problem. there is now a chance to repair and rethink how we use that area in order to put our needs and the natural systems’ needs closer, so that the natural systems work with us.
i predict, however, that what will happen to the land now underwater will disappoint everyone watching except real estate developers. if there is work done to fix it up, the people living there next year won’t be poor and black.
my guess is that repairs have already started on the private systems to the south, and people in the oil industry will reject big changes unless the idea comes from within their group. they may advocate moving new orleans, blaming residents for living near an industrial site, the way mining companies tend to do. i’m in a dark mood today, no?
ps. all this is a pipe dream, no pun meant. the decentralization of southern politics and all. unless there’s a lot of damage to private industry…
what i meant was that the entire delta has been hit. damage has been done to tons of artificial systems that now need work, where before, “it ain’t broke” (which was stretching the truth) was motivating a snowballing environmental problem. there is now a chance to repair and rethink how we use that area in order to put our needs and the natural systems’ needs closer, so that the natural systems work with us.
Amen, brother!
As flood control for New Orleans and management of waterflow in the Delta has been a major federal project, this strong federal role could, in other circumstances, give leverage against the private power of the oil companies. However, since their flunky is President, that leverage is weakened.
It’s possible, however, that sustained public outrage at the whole corrupt cabal might provide the leverage necessary. The truth about the environmental sources of New Orleans’ vulnerability is out there, and people may be more prepared to hear the truth than they usually are and press governments to act on the truth more than they usually do.
I’m not saying that will happen, but I think there’s an opportunity here to really make things better, though your point about the poor being shunted off somewhere else if conditions are improved is all too likely.
here is our legal”is”m for the day.
i don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. they did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of new orleans is flooded, said the president.
but in fact, the city was evacuated because of the concern of flooding – and not just because of the concern of overflow, as quoted in a USA today story published saturday, 8/28:
The big fear is flooding from the storm surge, the swelling tides pushed ahead of a hurricane as it moves across the water. Computer models at the hurricane center in Miami suggested that Katrina could arrive in New Orleans with a 28-foot surge. The levees and sea walls protecting the city are designed to protect against surges of 18-20 feet.
that was the big fear. what the people who were still in the city were supposed to do about this situation, check this out: what if hurricane ivan had not missed new orleans? (11/2/2004)
new orleans did work hard between ivan and katrina to get more people out of the city. after ivan, only half the residents left when ordered. 2/3 of those who remained (about 400,000) had the means to leave but decided to stay.
“they” didn’t address the known concern that there were many who were forced by circumstance to stay. but imagine if the population still in the area had been 600,000 as before.
I also don’t understand what happened here, and I expect heads to roll as a result. After the tsunami halfway around the world, we were setting up tent cities; in our own backyard, we had people baking in the summer sun on the interstate. Someone needs to get fired here.
I agree with David, insofar as the mandatory evacuation seems to be the only thing so far which has gone even sort of well (i.e. a lot of people evacuated).
Chris, i’m not convinced that anyone is really terrifically interested in the truth. I think the spinning has been fast and furious here. While we (well, i) were still poring over neighborhood maps to correlate the locations of our friends’ houses with flooding reports, we went through “Why did these stupid people not leave?”, “Why did these stupid people live here to begin with”, “Why are these stupid people destroying their own city by looting?”, “Why did the stupid incompetent local government (i.e. the ones who ordered the evacuation, which saved tens of thousands of lives) not prepare better for this?”
You could refute any of those things if you’ve been paying any attention to this, and, you know, if you feel it’s absolutely necessary, go for it. But the victim-blaming here (not in this blog, but in the news in general, and in everything everyone affiliated with the administration has said) has been immediate and persistent, and i have no doubt it will be effective.
the combination of that disaster prep article and what i’ve read since katrina showed up lead me to think that the difference between last year and now was a grassroots effort by churches and NGOs. official emergency folk (whose plan for ivan was to leave 500,000 behind and have body bags ready, which set off the anger that got butts moving this time) appear not to have helped this time around, even to the point of making buses available to poor area organizers. i want that not to be true and it may not be true. the arc of this needs to be carefully plotted.
the two things that really stuck out from the article were the “10 days to get everyone out” and “40-50,000 dead” estimates. the loss of life is much lower than that, obviously. and the other bullet that was dodged was chance: the storm surge wasn’t big enough to turn over any train cars or storage bins of goo to poison the water. the hazmat scenario was mindbogglingly bad, and it seems to have been pretty much just left out there “TBD” like the evacuation itself.
one more thing. the refineries to the east and south are getting pumped out and repaired. those companies have the heavy equipment the emergency teams say they don’t have, and it’s busy getting the equipment back on line. the cavalry showed up days before the national guard, to help save the stranded gasoline that couldn’t be evacuated in time.
But the victim-blaming here (not in this blog, but in the news in general, and in everything everyone affiliated with the administration has said) has been immediate and persistent, and i have no doubt it will be effective.
I just don’t think that’s true in general. It hasn’t been true of the reporting on CNN, which I figure is the reporting a lot of people will see. It’s surely been the case with Faux News, but I think that (1) most everybody but the true-believer Republican base is going to see this for the Federal fiasco that it has been and (2) the left is not going to shut up about this one the way it generally shut up about the Iraq fiasco. The criminals running the country will cry “partisanship,” of course, but what effect will that have in the face of a great city destroyed?
the timing of this is hard to believe. i guess in the next few days we’ll find out what got the rest of the people out, if it wasn’t the official-grassroots effort.
target=external>thomas friedman looking at us from singapore:
Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. “Today’s conservatives,” he wrote, “differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday’s conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.
“The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. … [But] it is not only government that doesn’t show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn’t show up either, sacrifice doesn’t show up, pulling together doesn’t show up, ‘we’re all in this together’ doesn’t show up.”
that article link again
E-mail suggests government seeking to blame groups:
The [Mississippi] Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of an internal e-mail the U.S. Department of Justice sent out this week to various U.S. attorneys’ offices: “Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation.”
this is the first time i’ve done this, pls forgive if it doesn’t turn out well. i intend using the immense power of the internet to channel karl rove.
i am beginning to concentrate, and to picture being immensely powerful with an overarching concern for increasing the power and influence of the republican party.
i am in charge of tens of billions of dollars of federal money they want me to use to rebuild the gulf coast. the simpleminded liberals are worried i’m going to spend it on bush family friends or gerrymandering. it seems like they’re never going to see the bigger picture. hell they don’t even know there’s a bigger picture.
let me say that again. i am in charge of tens of billions of dollars that i can spend in any area i want where there are people displaced by the hurricane. that covers most of the southeast and many other states. the midterm election is coming. the same groups that have been doing the legwork for our campaigns are the ones applying for status as faith-based initiative organizations. see the opportunity here? billions of dollars. midterm elections. republican activists receiving the money.
too beautiful for words.
even better. i can give them what they want. act the fool, give ten billion to halliburton. they’ll scream. they’ll get aneurysms. they’ll demand hearings and the press will attack us for patronage and cronyism. chumps! while the hearings are going, i’ll drop a hundred thousand here, a million there, on “deserving charities.” for a thousandth of the total disaster relief money i can finance the next 5, 10 years of political organizing all over the country, in bits and pieces so small they won’t come near the national press’s radar.
last bit.
for instance: it’s SO IMPORTANT that disaster relief organizations have modern telecom equipment to help the victims find housing and employment. phone banks and satellite hookups are absolutely critical to the aid effort.
Since it’s a given that Our Only President will give the redintegro czar job to a crony, and it seems clear that all his cronies are some combination of crooked, incompetent, unqualified, ignorant, corrupt and partisan, I think perhaps Karl Rove, a smart, well-informed partisan who appears corrupt only insofar as it can increase Republican power, may be the best choice we could have hoped for.
At least he’s not a veterinarian.
Thanks,
-V.