Post Katrina. Aug 30, 2005 Photos and news coverage

[uppityperson]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/31/national/nationalspecial/31storm.html?_r=1

New Orleans Is Now Off Limits; Pentagon Joins in Relief Effort
A day after New Orleans thought it had narrowly escaped the worst of Hurricane Katrina's wrath, water broke through two levees on Tuesday and virtually submerged and isolated the city, causing incalculable destruction and rendering it uninhabitable for weeks to come.

With bridges washed out, highways converted into canals, and power and communications lines inoperable, government officials ordered everyone still remaining out of the city. Officials began planning for the evacuation of the Superdome, where about 10,000 refugees huddled in increasingly grim conditions as water and food were running out and rising water threatened the generators. The situation was so dire that late in the day the Pentagon ordered five Navy ships and eight Navy maritime rescue teams to the Gulf Coast to bolster relief operations. It also planned to fly in Swift boat rescue teams from California.

As rising water and widespread devastation hobbled rescue and recovery efforts, the authorities could only guess at the death toll in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast. In Mississippi alone, officials raised the official count of the dead to at least 100. "It looks like Hiroshima is what it looks like," Gov. Haley Barbour said, describing parts of Harrison County, Miss.

Across the region, rescue workers were not even trying to gather up and count the dead, officials said, but pushed them aside for the time being as they tried to find the living....

http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/hurricane/post-hurricane-katrina-photos.htm

Hurricane Katrina Photographs August 30, 2005

Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wetlands Research Center have surveyed the impacts of Hurricane Katrina on the barrier islands, barrier shoreline, and the Mississippi River Delta along the Louisiana coastline.

On August 30, the day after Hurricane Katrina struck the gulf coast, USGS research wildlife biologist Tommy Michot and USGS geographer Chris Wells conducted a post-hurricane flight to photograph and assess damage from Raccoon Island to the Isles Dernieres, just east of the important oil port, Port Fourchon. They continued to the mouth of the Mississippi River Delta by Grand Isle, then Venice, up along the Chandeleur Islands, and finally back west over the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain to natural and wildlife areas around Fort Pike, Slidell, and then Mandeville.

Their primary focus was the impacts on the ecosystems, such as fish kills, the destruction of rookeries, and the endangerment of seagrass beds that provide habitats for fish, birds, and shellfish.

In addition to addressing these biological concerns, Michot and Wells also witnessed the destruction of many human structures. For example, on Grand Isle, a recreational area for sport fisheries, almost everything was damaged: several homes and camps were completely obliterated, debris was scattered across the island, and several cars and boats were displaced. The town of Venice, just west of the Delta National Wildlife Refuge, was completely flooded and suffered similar damage, leaving boats, lumber and dead vegetation washed up against the levee.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2495.htm

ug. 31, 2005 � NOAA today posted online more than 350 aerial images of the U.S. Gulf Coast areas that were decimated by Hurricane Katrina. NOAA will be flying more missions in the days ahead that will yield hundreds of additional aerial digital images. The regions photographed on Tuesday range from Bay St. Louis to Pascagoula, Miss. The southeast coastal areas of Louisiana are being photographed on Wednesday. The aerial photograph missions were conducted by the NOAA Remote Sensing Division the day after Katrina made landfall at approximately 7:10 a.m. EDT on Aug. 29, 2005, in Plaquemines Parish, La. (Click NOAA aerial image for larger view of the destruction in Pascagoula, Miss., left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina taken on Aug. 30, 2005. Click here for high resolution version. Please credit “NOAA.”)


Click NOAA aerial image for larger view of the devastation in Ocean Springs, Miss., taken on Aug. 30, 2005, after Hurricane Katrina slammed the region. Click here for high resolution version. Please credit “NOAA.”)


Bay St Louis


New Orleans


Gulfport, MS

MS

Damage to homes following Hurricane Katrina is seen in this August 30, 2005 photo. Insurance reform proponents say ongoing struggles with coastal insurance costs are stifling coastal Mississippi's rebuilding efforts.

[azureblue]

1. And I post this, to keep the record straight

In 1995 a flood did millions of dollars of damage to La., a flood caused by weaken levees. Now, levees are not static things- they erode, they develop flaws, they sink, they are not built correctly or high enough. But whatever, the flood caused a program to be started called SELA, which was designed to inspect and repair all of the levees. It is common knowledge that the levees that failed were not constructed correctly, and they were built from sub par material. But the SELA program was to take care of that.


But, when Bush took office, here is what he did:

February 2001

Bush’s first budget proposed more than half a billion dollars worth of cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers for the 2002 fiscal year. Bush proposed half of what his own officials said was necessary for the critical Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project (SELA)—a project started after a 1995 rainstorm flooded 25,000 homes and caused a half billion dollars in damage.
Bush did this to offset the tax break he gave to the top 1% of rich Americans. The first major economic initiative pursued by the president was a massive tax cut for the rich, enacted in June of 2001. Bush signed his massive $1.3 trillion income tax cut into law-a tax cut that severely depleted the government of revenues it needed to address critical priorities.

February 2002

Bush provided just $5 million for maintaining and upgrading critical hurricane protection levees in New Orleans—one fifth of what government experts and Republican elected officials in Louisiana told the administration was needed. Bush knew SELA needed $80 million to keep working, but the he only proposed providing a quarter of that.

February 2004

The SELA project sought $100 million to repair the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain levees, but Bush offered only $16.5 million. The Army Corps of Engineers asked for $27 million to pay for hurricane protection upgrades around Lake Pontchartrain—but the White House cut that to $3.9 million. Gaps in levees around Lake Pontchartrain & the Industrial Canal, which were supposed to be filled by 2004, were not filled because of budget shortfalls. Repair work on the levees, including the ones that failed, was stopped due to lack of funds.

Bush destroyed New Orleans.

To add to the injury:
A COMPARISON OF PREVIOUS HURRICANE RESPONSES:

President Nixon -- August 1969
when Cat-5 Hurricane Camille hit roughly the same area as Katrina, President Nixon had already readied the National Guard and ordered all Gulf rescue vessels and equipment from Tampa and Houston to follow the Hurricane in. There were over 1,000 regular military with two dozen helicopters to assist the Coast Guard and National Guard within hours after the skies cleared.

President Clinton -- September 1999,
Hurricane Floyd -- Cat-3, was bearing down on the Carolinas and Virginia. President Clinton was in Christchurch, New Zealand - meeting with President Jiang of China. He made the proclamation that only Presidents can make and declared the areas affected by Floyd "Federal Disaster Areas" so the National Guard and Military can begin to mobilize. Then he cut short his meetings overseas and flew home to coordinate the rescue efforts. All one day BEFORE a Cat-3 hit the coast.

President Bush (41) -- August 1992 --
was in the midst of a campaign for re-election. Yet, he cut off his campaigning the day before and went to Washington where he martialed the largest military operation on US soil in history. He sent in 7,000 National Guard and 22,000 regular military personnel, and all the gear to begin the clean up within hours after Andrew passed through Florida.

George Bush (43) -- August 2005 --
Cat-5 Hurricane Katrina bears down on New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf. Both states are down nearly 8,000 National Guard troops because they are in Iraq -- with most of the rescue gear needed.
Bush is on vacation. The day before Katrina makes landfall, Bush rides his bike for two hours. The day Katrina hits, he goes to John McCain's birthday party, and lies to old people about the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical company welfare boondoggle.
People are dying, the largest port of entry in the United States (and fifth largest in the World) is under attack. Troops and supplies are desperately needed. The levees are cracking and the emergency 1-1/2 ton sandbags are ready, but there aren't enough helicopters or pilots to set them before the levees fail. The mayor of New Orleans begs for Federal coordination, but there is none, and the sandbagging never gets done. Bush goes to San Diego, to play guitar with a country singer.

[uppityperson]

2. Thank you.

[uppityperson]

3. "Emergency crews estimate that 80 percent of New Orleans is underwater after levee breaches flooded"

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weather/july-dec05/katrina_8-30.html

Emergency crews estimate that 80 percent of New Orleans is underwater after levee breaches flooded the city. Search and rescue teams remain focused on lifesaving efforts and medical attention for survivors. Following a recap of a press conference, an emergency official provides an update of the rescue efforts.
(clip)
SEN. MARY LANDRIEU: The devastation that we witnessed is very hard to describe. The city of New Orleans, the region, St. Bernard, Blackman, areas of St. Taminy have more water than most of us have ever seen. The search and rescue mission is still under way. I can't stress that enough. We passed over houses in New Orleans east neighborhoods that have very high water that people are still on the roofs.
(clip)
GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO: I just need to remind people, there's no electricity and won't be any for quite a while. It's impossible to even begin to estimate. There's no water. There was a 50-inch main that severed in the city. In many, many neighborhoods there are no passable streets. You cannot drive on the streets there's so much water on them. And there's no food to be had. We are having to bring shipments of food in to the emergency personnel and to those people who are in shelters.

We're going to try to get to people in shelters, because they're isolated by water in most cases. But we're going to try to get those people relocated as soon as we possibly can get a plan together. And a lot of people lost their lives and we still don't have any idea, because the focus continues to be on rescuing those who have survived. We don't want to lose any more people than we absolutely have to.
(clip)
OL. SMITH, U.S. Army: I know there's been a lot of concern about the levee breaches. We had a conference call just about an hour ago with Col. Wagner, with the Corps of Engineers. He has been up in a helicopter surveying the entire situation, and they are diligently working on a plan that is going to close these breaches.

But one of the things that they want to make sure that they do is that the plan they come up with is one that will hold because certainly it would set the efforts back considerably if we do something that is not going to hold. They feel like the efforts will probably start by late this afternoon, and for sure tomorrow. And they feel like that they can get this accomplished in reasonably short order, but you can imagine they're not willing to commit exactly at this time how long it will take. But we know that they are diligently working on it. They realize the gravity of the situation; they're not sparing any resources on getting this fixed. And we're confident the Corps will come up with a solution to this problem quickly....(more)