Rising waters.
As my cousin awaits evacuation from New Orleans, I read Sidney Blumenthal's breakdown in Salon of how the current administration gutted flood protection budgets for New Orleans to pay for the Iraq War.
Blumenthal writes:
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent.
The administration should consider a new motto, perhaps "We spring to close the door as soon as the horse leaves the barn."
My cousin, meanwhile, sits and waits (along with a bunch of other doctors who volunteered to stay and try to care for patients who couldn't be evacuated). They tried to evacuate him yesterday, but gangs of thugs seized the boats, dumped the crew, EMTs, and patients, and made off with the boats. Today they will try again, with a military escort.
Follow-up: My cousin was finally evacuated after seven days in Charity without water or power, where he tried his best to provide medical care to the patients there with them. Thank you to everyone who commented or emailed with support.
Blumenthal writes:
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent.
The administration should consider a new motto, perhaps "We spring to close the door as soon as the horse leaves the barn."
My cousin, meanwhile, sits and waits (along with a bunch of other doctors who volunteered to stay and try to care for patients who couldn't be evacuated). They tried to evacuate him yesterday, but gangs of thugs seized the boats, dumped the crew, EMTs, and patients, and made off with the boats. Today they will try again, with a military escort.
Follow-up: My cousin was finally evacuated after seven days in Charity without water or power, where he tried his best to provide medical care to the patients there with them. Thank you to everyone who commented or emailed with support.
posted by The Malcontent at 10:26 AM
4 Comments:
While everything Blumenthal writes may be true, I find it really hard to imagine that anything could have been done to stop Katrina's effects between the time funding dried up in 2003 and the time the storm rolled through this week. Reading Ari Kelman's explanation of why N.O. was built where it was in the first place (http://slate.msn.com/id/2125346/nav/tap2/), it makes it a little easier to understand that N.O. was living on borrowed time anyway and was to the point where there wasn't a whole lot more that could have been done to protect the city from a natural disaster; you can only build levees so thick and so tall. And nothing that may have been done to protect it could have possibly been put in place within 2 years even if there was additional funding rather than funding cuts.
It's easy to sit back and point fingers, but sometimes people have to realize they can't fight nature and win forever. Even if they did advise a president.
I do sincerely hope your cousin gets out ok.
Thanks for the good wishes for my cousin. Sounds like he is going to need them.
My core point is less about whether anyone could build levees high enough and more about the tendency of politicians, and particularly the current administration, to be reactive and not proactive policy makers. What is the point in having tons of truly expert advice if not to use it to prepare?
One cannot prepare for all contingencies, but this one (as Kelman's article makes all too clear) was a matter of when, not if.
So, I agree that New Orleans has been living on borrowed time, but you address the situation you've got, not the one you would like to have ideally.
The average person in that area is too black, too poor, and too unlikely to vote for the Bushies to care about them. I'm most amazed that it took FOUR DAYS (and being cursed out by the mayor of New Orleans) for them to get their shit together. If Long Island faced a similar risk, the levies would be WORLD CLASS.
So is your relative out of there yet? One of our secretaries' family is missing and her parents' house no longer exists.
your cousin is heroic-- i'm praying for his safety while i share your point of view regarding how this was (not) handled. please let us know if he's okay?
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