Well, the New York Times finally got around to discussing the Louisiana National Guard's response in the early days after Katrina made landfall, the discussion tracks precisely what I had been saying all along.
For a crucial 24 hours after landfall on Aug. 29, Guard officers said, they were preoccupied with protecting their nerve center from the waves topping the windows at Jackson Barracks and rescuing soldiers who could not swim. The next morning, they had to evacuate their entire headquarters force of 375 guardsmen by boat and helicopter to the Superdome.So, we have the prepositioned La. National Guard that themselves needed rescuing from rising floodwaters before they could begin the task of rescuing others. And then there's the godawful local response in New Orleans proper; Compass resigned though no one made any effort to stop him (the mayor included).
It was an inauspicious start to the National Guard's hurricane response, which fell so short that it has set off a national debate about whether in the future the Pentagon should take charge immediately after catastrophes. President Bush has asked Congress to study the question, and top Defense Department and Guard officials are scheduled to testify on the response before a House panel today.
Other elements of the response to Hurricane Katrina are also coming into question. The New Orleans police chief, Edwin P. Compass III, resigned yesterday after the department announced that 250 police officers - roughly 15 percent of the force - could face discipline for leaving their posts without permission during the storm and its aftermath.
Yet questions about the first few days haunt many Louisiana guard officials: Should commanders have moved their headquarters to higher ground before the storm? Could they have better headed off the lawlessness or built more resilient communications?Indeed, these are very good questions, and it's a wonder that someone is asking them in the major media. Because the sad fact is that the state and local officials had the money at their disposal to improve communications, and yet chose to spend it elsewhere. Homeland security monies are available to improve communications systems, hardening them against terror attacks and other calamities, and yet New Orleans did nothing to improve communications. This, despite the hard lessons learned from 9/11, where communications breakdowns may have contributed to a higher loss of life among firefighters and police who were unable to communicate with each other easily or between those stuck in the towers to alert them to impending collapse.
And especially, could they have moved more troops faster to New Orleans and other devastated areas?
Now, there are questions about whether the La. National Guard was stretched too thin between its commitments in Iraq and securing from Katrina. While there is apparently no disagreement that equipment may be stretched thin because of Iraq and Afghanistan committments, the personnel issue is less clear. However, none of that equipment would have been useful in the severe flooding that existed after Katrina swept through.
Meanwhile, power has been restored to the French Quarter. Critics are complaining that the Army Corps of Engineers is only rebuilding the levees to the prestorm levels, and not to a higher standard. At the same time, residents are slowly being allowed to return to assess damage.
Shipbuilders are working on a fast recovery, which will help not only the local economy, but help people restore their lives faster.
A New Orleans military boat builder, flooded out of its operation in the Crescent City, has moved to Gulfport so it can quickly return to operations.
United States Marine Inc., which primarily works with military customers, including special operations, expects to have 115 workers by the time it's done hiring.
United States Marine will operate out of three buildings off Lorraine Road that have a combined 80,000 square feet of production space. USMI had 56,000 square feet in New Orleans. It also has 8,000 square feet of office space.
Of five buildings it used in New Orleans, the two main buildings were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29. Three other buildings may be usable, said Barry Dreyfus Jr., CEO of USMI.
The sights and smells are overwhelming up and down the Gulf Coast. An interesting effect of the storm on some plants and trees damaged by the storm is apparently to begin budding and flowering in order to quickly reproduce, despite the fact that it is outside the usual growing season.
And while I'm on the subject of nature and how plants and animals deal with the storms' after effects, I have to wonder why someone who considers themselves a naturalist and environmentalist would back any plan to 'restore' natural habitats to what existed before the storms hit. After all, nature damaged those environments and therefore any action taken by man to alter the environment may be inflicting inadvertant damage without realizing it. Letting nature take its course in natural refuges and wildlife areas means keeping your hands off on fixing things that shouldn't be fixed. This isn't to say that access roads or paths shouldn't be fixed so that we can enjoy the changed landscape, but trying to restore what was there previously would be a mistake.
Communities around the country continue to adopt stricken Gulf Coast areas, including Pearlington.
It would appear that some of those much maligned FEMA contracted-for cruise ships are being put to use in Pascagoula, where a growing number of families are being put up.
cruise ship Holiday, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency leased along with two other vessels from the Miami-based cruise line.Also, Mississippi looks to move its casinos inshore, thus preventing the severe losses to the casino gambling industry due to the heavy damage to casino barges and steamboats.
FEMA is using the ships, leased for six months for $192 million, to provide temporary housing for storm victims.
About 500 of the rooms on-board have been taken up, mainly by Jackson County residents displaced by the storm, and that number is expected to increase when the ship is relocated to the Port of Pascagoula, FEMA spokesman Gene Romano said Tuesday.
Port Director Mark McAndrews said all the necessary preparations are in place and the ship could possibly pull into port this week.
After some port repairs were made, the main port requirement was to ensure enough potable water can be delivered to Katrina victims. A bus service has been provided for displaced residents to go to work and gather essential items.
Romano said anyone wanting to stay aboard the Holiday have to apply at one of the agency's disaster recovery centers. Rooms on the ship are also being offered to a priority list of first responders and essential personnel in the most affected communities.
More than 2,100 FEMA travel campers and mobile homes have been provided, and thousands of travel trailers and other types of temporary housing are on the way, Romano said.
Saying that placing such structures on the water is no longer safe, Gov. Haley Barbour instantly generated controversy by proposing that casinos, previously restricted to boats moored along the state's southern coast or the Mississippi River, be allowed to move as much as 1,500 feet inland. The casinos had been built on barges because, under Mississippi law, they had to float to keep them physically separate from nearby communities.
Mr. Barbour called the moment an opportunity to rebuild the coast into a world-class destination resort made up of sprawling, state-of-the-art entertainment complexes rather than simply rebuilding what was there. "In 30 years, when I'm dead and gone, people will look at the south coast and look at what it has become," Mr. Barbour said. "If it has become just another version of what it had been, we will have failed."
But many of the state's religious leaders, who have opposed casino gambling from the beginning, were trying to seize the moment to shut down the casinos. "It is unfortunate that with all the human needs in Mississippi right now, the gambling-political complex has chosen this unfortunate time to try to expand its influence," said William Perkins, spokesman for the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board.
UPDATE:
The situation with the Gulf of Mexico oil/gas wells is grim. Rita affected more rigs than even Katrina did:
Hurricane Rita has caused more damage to oil rigs than any other storm in history and will force companies to delay drilling for oil in the US and as far away as the Middle East, initial damage assessments show.There's something else to keep in mind. You keep hearing about how the SPR will be tapped or that OPEC will increase production, but those steps do nothing to actually improve the ability to produce gasoline. The SPR and OPEC produce the raw product that must be refined, and that capability was severely degraded by Katrina and Rita. It is well past time to build new refining capabilities around the country - not just limited to the Gulf Coast. Spreading out the risk of loss means that there will be less likelyhood of price spike after future disasters (natural or manmade).
Oil prices eased on Wednesday over concerns that demand for crude would be hit by the continued shutdown of refineries. US crude fell 27 cents to $64.80 a barrel by 06:444 GMT after losing 75 cents on Tuesday.
ODS-Petrodata, which provides market intelligence to the offshore oil and natural gas industry, said it expected a shortage of rigs in the US Gulf this year.
“Based on what we have right now, it appears that drilling contractors and rig owners took a big hit from Rita,” said Tom Marsh of ODS-Petrodata. “The path Katrina took was through the mature areas of the US Gulf where there are mainly oil [production] platforms. Rita came to the west where there is a lot of [exploratory] rig activity.”
Ken Sill of Credit Suisse First Boston said: “Early reports indicate numerous rigs are missing, destroyed or have suffered serious damage and several companies have yet to report. Rita may set an all-time record.”
UPDATE:
Powerline is more charitable over how Brown handled yesterday's Committee hearing. They took a far less flattering approach to Chris Shays, who I noted made the second most idiotic statement yesterday.
UPDATE:
The mold litigation lobby will have a field day in coming years. With all the area flooded by Rita and Katrina, mold has invaded thousands of buildings and many will be beyond repair. Those that are fixed may be ripe for litigators looking to get rich off dubious science about mold contamination and illnesses. While it is true that some mold types result in serious illnesses, junk science has turned this area of litigation into a mess. More immediately, mold and environmental cleanup companies will be kept busy for the foreseeable future trying to clean up the mess.
It's a problem that any homeowner who has ever had a flooded basement or a leaky roof has faced. But the magnitude of this problem leaves many storm victims prey to unscrupulous or incompetent remediators. Home test kits for mold, for example, are worthless, experts say.
Don't expect help from insurance companies, either. Most policies were revised in the last decade to exclude mold damage because of "sick building" lawsuits alleging illnesses. Although mold's danger to those with asthma or allergies is real, there's little or no science behind other claims, and a lot of hype.
"We went through a period when people were really irrational about the threat posed by the mere sight of mold in their homes," said Nicholas Money, a mold expert from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and author of "Carpet Monsters and Killer Spores," a book about mold.
"If you give me 10 minutes in anybody's home, I'll find mold growth somewhere," he said.
Mold is everywhere. Most people have no problem living with this ubiquitous fungus. It reproduces by making spores, which travel unseen through the air and grow on any moist surface, usually destroying it as the creeping crud grows.
Mold can't be eliminated but can be controlled by limiting moisture, which is exactly what couldn't be done after Hurricane Katrina. Standing water created ideal growth conditions and allowed mold to penetrate so deep that experts fear that even studs of many homes are saturated and unsalvageable.
In fact, New Orleans is where mold's health risks were first recognized.
A Louisiana State University allergist, the late Dr. John Salvaggio, described at medical meetings in the 1970s what he called "New Orleans asthma," an illness that filled hospital emergency rooms each fall with people who couldn't breathe. He linked it to high levels of mold spores that appeared in the humid, late summer months.
UPDATE:
These are some incredible pictures of torah scrolls being saved from the flooding in New Orleans. The backstory is here. ZAKA, a Jewish organization that usually assists in recovering remains from terrorist attacks in Israel but also has offices in New York, was helping in the search and recovery efforts in New Orleans and realized that one congregation had not removed the scrolls for safekeeping:
Congregation Beth Israel, an Orthodox synagogue in New Orleans, was under several feet of water and was in an area that was completely flooded. Torahs were previously removed from nine other New Orleans synagogues by a coalition of Jewish groups, but Leider says the Beth Israel synagogue was the only one inaccessible.
Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; impeach bush; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; waveland; nagin; blanco; barbour.
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