Katrina Weekend Update, Sunday Edition

Miserable Donuts has a picture essay from his travels through the Gulf Coast, assessing the damage.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (D-clueless) is calling for people to return to New Orleans, but apparently the feds don't quite think that's a wise idea. On the one hand, the sooner people can get in, the quicker assessment of damage can begin. The problem is that some areas may be quite toxic and hazardous to one's health that it isn't a good idea to enter residences flooded by Katrina.***

Many people throughout the Gulf Coast are wondering whether they should even rebuild. That decision is going to come after assessing a combination of factors, including whether infrastructure is rebuilt in a timely fashion, whether neighbors and businesses decide to rebuild, and whether insurance will cover losses.

Making sure that people have safe drinking water is a paramount concern throughout the Gulf Coast. A Georgia company has sent two of its water purification units to Waveland to provide potable water to the mobile hospital units set up there. Waveland's infrastructure was completely wrecked by a huge storm surge, which was in excess of 30 feet. Other areas will need similar equipment to make sure that there is sufficient potable water for returning residents and relief efforts.

Rail lines all along the Gulf Coast will need to be repaired.

Near Port Bienville, Miss., Katrina left another calling card: 10 shrimp boats, swept up by the storm surge and deposited almost on top of the rails. The stranded boats -- one containing 100,000 pounds of shrimp, rotting in the Gulf Coast heat -- make it impossible for trains to pass, blocking shipments in and out of an adjacent plastics plant.

Elsewhere along the corridor, boxcars and locomotives lie in woods and bayous, tossed aside like toys. In some places, the rails themselves are gone. In others, entire railroad bridges have disappeared, leaving behind only their concrete supports, rising above the muddy water like the fossils of lost dinosaurs.

The worst damage is between New Orleans and Pascagoula, Miss., and cleaning it up figures to be a huge task. One of the principal players will be Nicholasville businessman Rick Corman, whose R.J. Corman Railroad Group last week won a major contract to repair and rebuild roughly 40 miles of CSX Transportation Inc. track between New Orleans and Bay St. Louis on the Mississippi coast, roughly halfway to Pascagoula. Corman has 90 days to reopen the line.

The sheer magnitude of that task is daunting, with mile upon mile of track that must be rebuilt -- or hauled out of the mud and put back in the roadbed. But working conditions will be just as tough. In many places, repair crews will be toiling in marshes and swamps where snakes and alligators abound, and where any piece of heavy equipment that ventures off the roadbed risks sinking into the muck.

In some places, the entire infrastructure was just wrecked - roads, rails, airports. This means that everything that needs to make its way to people for hurricane relief needs to come in by helicopter, and that is a very tough task indeed. Getting the rail lines reestablished is going to be a huge effort, but one that will significantly improve the situation as the rail traffic can haul far more goods than the roads and air assets can.

Six of the nation's seven biggest railroads converge in the New Orleans area: CSX and the Norfolk Southern from the east; the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroads from the west; and the Kansas City Southern and Canadian National railways from the north. Several smaller railroads also operate in the area.

Many of those lines were damaged by Katrina. Norfolk Southern's huge bridge across Lake Pontchartrain, for example, was heavily damaged. But that bridge and most of the damaged tracks were back in service late last week. However, the CSX line between New Orleans and Pascagoula remains out of action. It hugs the Gulf Coast for about 100 miles and bore the brunt of Katrina's fury when the storm came ashore.

As I keep saying, the key to the hurricane relief is logistics. The quicker these assets can be restored, the better the situation will become. Reopening the Norfolk Southern bridge across Lake Ponchartrain is a big boost to getting equipment and items into and out of New Orleans. However, there are literally hundreds of miles of lines that need to be rebuilt.

The sights and sounds can't begin to convey the devastation in Katrina's wake.

Along Louisiana's State Rt. 23 in the Mississippi Delta, south of New Orleans, a different smell surfaced. Gulf waters that flooded already-flattened towns had mixed with oil, gas, diesel fuel, and other chemicals, producing a foul, scary odor and a daunting cleanup task.

Not surprisingly, every native you met had a story. How could they not.

One minute, they're thinking about Friday night football, dinner menus, and yard chores. The next, they're sleeping on a high school gymnasium floor surrounded by 1,000 strangers, their remaining possessions filling a single plastic grocery bag, and wondering if their lives will ever be whole again.

Yet, this is the South, where civility is a fiercely practiced tradition unmatched elsewhere. Thus, "Yes, sir, I did lose everything I had." And, "No, sir, I haven't found my sister yet."

Amid the despair, glimmers of hope and acts of compassion were witnessed every waking hour in every damaged town.

In Slidell, La., Dwayne Ginn, owner of a landscaping business, lost his home and most of his tools. Within a few days he was back in business, clearing felled trees and planning a new home. Nothing, he said, would keep him down or chase him away.

Competing naval shipyards are relying on each other to restore their operations. One of the arguments in favor of closing or consolidating these shipyards is that they will save money. The problem is that if there's a natural disaster, then you could conceivably cripple the country's ability to produce ships, conduct repairs, and maintain the readiness of the US fleet. Our nation's enemies know this and can take actions that further complicate the US strategic and tactical picture.

Here's a further roundup of activity in Mississippi.

UPDATE:
*** MSNBC reports on the differing views between the feds and Mayor Nagin over letting people back into New Orleans. Considering that Nagin was clueless over how to get everyone out of the city, one should take his views with a grain of salt with respect to allowing people back into the city. The city's infrastructure was badly damaged - many areas are still without power, water, or sewage. The chance of disease spreading is a distinct possibility under those conditions.

To complicate matters, Tropical Storm Rita is poised to hit Florida on its way into the Gulf of Mexico. Many of the Gulf Coast communities are not prepared to deal with another major storm, and the New Orleans area is least prepared given the weakened state of the levee and flood control systems.

Many residents lined up at military checkpoints around the city on Saturday to get a first look at their ravaged homes after the mayor and city officials laid out plans to let them return.

Nagin defended his call for many citizens to return, saying the repopulation was vital to New Orleans’ revival.

“We believe our reentry plan properly balances safety concerns and the needs of our citizens to begin rebuilding their lives,” Nagin said in a statement Saturday.

Katrina’s death toll so far stands at 883, with 646 of those in Louisiana, 219 in Mississippi and a total of 18 in Florida, Georgia and Alabama.

Medical experts in New Orleans said they feared a “second disaster” as returning residents suffered injuries amid the rubble, toppled trees and dangling power lines.

“The second wave of disaster is when you welcome the people back and the infrastructure of the city is not in place,” said Dr. Peter Deblieux, an emergency room doctor at downtown New Orleans’ Charity Hospital.

And one has to wonder whether the city is prepared, let alone capable, to evacuate those people should Rita turn towards New Orleans.

UPDATE:
As if we need more evidence that Mayor Nagin needs a real dose of reality, New Orleans' medical care system is in critical condition. Several facilities may be beyond repair. Letting people return under these circumstances may be folly.

Essentially the health care infrastructure of New Orleans is gone -- it no longer exists," said Cappiello, who just completed a three-day mission to the city along with a colleague from the Illinois-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

Although the city has more than a dozen hospitals, none have resumed normal operations. Officials at Children's Hospital, which Mayor Ray Nagin had hoped would be ready when residents are allowed to return to the Uptown neighborhood this week, said they may need 10 more days to prepare.

Nagin's plan is to start repopulating the city neighborhood by neighborhood, starting Monday with the Algiers section, across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans. Over the next week and a half, the Garden District and the French Quarter, the city's historic heart, are due to open to residents and businesses.

Hospitals wont be up to accreditation standards.


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