Need I say more in the title today?
America's worst national disaster since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. New Orleans will be uninhabitable for at least two months, once/if order can be established again and a complete evacuation of the city can be undertaken. When the storm actually hit, there were massive storm surges, comparable to the tsunami in Asia on Boxing Day last year, in Alabama and Mississippi, apparently getting up to a mile and a half inland, Biloxi being severely damaged and Gulfport basically wiped out.
New Orleans and Louisiana seemed to have missed the worst of the storm, it veering east of the city towards Mississippi just before hitting the coast, and a sigh of relief occurred. But a few hours after the eye of Katrina passed by New Orleans the pressure on the levees protecting the city from Lake Pontchartrain, which had been engineered to withstand a category three hurricane (Katrina, when it hit the coast, was a four), proved too much to handle and broke in three places. Flooding eighty percent of the city, which is below sea level anyways.
Chaos has ensued. Not just in terms of the looting, which is somewhat expected (although worringly, there seems to have emerged quite an organised approach to it by 'armed gangs'), but the relief effort has been a joke. When you evacuate twenty thousand people to an indoor sports stadium and fifteen thousand to a convention centre, you kind of hope that there is some semblance of a back up plan rather than just stuff them in to an enclosed space.
There has been no power, no sewage system, and not much of food, water or medicine coming into New Orleans at all the past five days. The police, National Guard and US Army have been overwhelmed by the task, and very little order has been enforced on the city since the flooding started. Dead bodies have been floating all over the city, and people are continuing to die. Hospitals are basically out of their stocks of medicine trying to look after the young, elderly and everyone in between.
And that is just in New Orleans. The area affected by Katrina is ninety thousand square miles, or basically an area the size of Britain. I heard a report from one of the UN disaster agencies a couple of days ago that the scale of the disaster is comparable to the tsunami in Asia last year, the death toll being lower due to the fact that people had a few days to leave the coastline rather than just a matter of hours as in Asia.
The federal government has already passed a bill allowing ten billion dollars of aid, which Bush says is merely a downpayment on the needs of the region, meaning more will probably be approved later on down the track. The insurance industry said this may be the most costly disaster in US history, at approximately $26 billion, outranking Hurricane Andrew in Florida in 1992 - and that estimate was before the full extent of the New Orleans flooding became apparent - bodies floating in the street and a city of 500,00 becoming uninhabitable surprisingly more important than dry statistics about dollar values.
It's kind of funny (in a so not funny way, considering the circumstances) how reports from years ago suddenly come to the fore when something in them happens. Before September 11, a report from FEMA, the US federal emegency agency, said that the three most likely catastrophic disasters that would likely hit the country were a terrorist attack on New York, a direct hurricane hit on New Orleans, and a massive earthquake in San Francisco, with the New Orleans disaster probably being the deadliest of them all.
The Port of Southern Louisiana is the largest in the US, with the port of New Orleans the fifth biggest, (was news to me when I heard those two facts, but they have the entire Mississippi-Missouri basin to service) and they have basically been shut down. Nine refineries providing ten percent of US gasoline needs were closed by Katrina, with eight of them still down the last I heard. And at least nine Gulf of Mexico oil rigs have slipped their moorings, and I think I heard that a quarter of US oil imports go through Louisiana. Oil prices spiked to over $70 a barrel in the days immediately after the storm hit, and have been somewhat stabilised (at $67) by the US releasing some of their Strategic Reserve. The stuff still needs to be refined though.
For once, the dangers of a hurricane were underestimated, even with it being a category five just a few hours before landfall.
Now some time for some cynicism. A third of Louisiana's National Guard is in Iraq at the moment, with most of their equipment. Money has been withdrawn from FEMA, and especially their flood protection work, as the war in Iraq just keeps getting more expensive. Would the delay in the federal response have been acceptable if the disaster happened in the Hamptons or the Manhattan financial district rather than the Deep South (rich versus poor, white and black divide).
From Paul Krugman's column in the NY Times today, already linked above -
'I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.
At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.'
Oh dear, it looks like the New Orleans Saints, the NFL team, will be on the road for most of the year, with probable temporary housing in San Antonio and Baton Rouge, and perhaps even forays to Houston when there are scheduling issues with the Baton Rouge college team. Apparently their manager has been threatening to take the team to LA if he doesn't get a new stadium (admittedly, that was before Katrina hit). Saw a good article at MSNBC saying it will be interesting whether a sports team will have any priority in the recovery process.
Latest guesstimate of the death toll in Louisiana alone could be up to ten thousand. Five Iraq campaigns all rolled into one.
Then again, I just said to my mother that I was reading about Katrina on the web. She said Katrina who - I obviously had to say Hurricane in front of the name.
More soon
Pauly
America's worst national disaster since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. New Orleans will be uninhabitable for at least two months, once/if order can be established again and a complete evacuation of the city can be undertaken. When the storm actually hit, there were massive storm surges, comparable to the tsunami in Asia on Boxing Day last year, in Alabama and Mississippi, apparently getting up to a mile and a half inland, Biloxi being severely damaged and Gulfport basically wiped out.
New Orleans and Louisiana seemed to have missed the worst of the storm, it veering east of the city towards Mississippi just before hitting the coast, and a sigh of relief occurred. But a few hours after the eye of Katrina passed by New Orleans the pressure on the levees protecting the city from Lake Pontchartrain, which had been engineered to withstand a category three hurricane (Katrina, when it hit the coast, was a four), proved too much to handle and broke in three places. Flooding eighty percent of the city, which is below sea level anyways.
Chaos has ensued. Not just in terms of the looting, which is somewhat expected (although worringly, there seems to have emerged quite an organised approach to it by 'armed gangs'), but the relief effort has been a joke. When you evacuate twenty thousand people to an indoor sports stadium and fifteen thousand to a convention centre, you kind of hope that there is some semblance of a back up plan rather than just stuff them in to an enclosed space.
There has been no power, no sewage system, and not much of food, water or medicine coming into New Orleans at all the past five days. The police, National Guard and US Army have been overwhelmed by the task, and very little order has been enforced on the city since the flooding started. Dead bodies have been floating all over the city, and people are continuing to die. Hospitals are basically out of their stocks of medicine trying to look after the young, elderly and everyone in between.
And that is just in New Orleans. The area affected by Katrina is ninety thousand square miles, or basically an area the size of Britain. I heard a report from one of the UN disaster agencies a couple of days ago that the scale of the disaster is comparable to the tsunami in Asia last year, the death toll being lower due to the fact that people had a few days to leave the coastline rather than just a matter of hours as in Asia.
The federal government has already passed a bill allowing ten billion dollars of aid, which Bush says is merely a downpayment on the needs of the region, meaning more will probably be approved later on down the track. The insurance industry said this may be the most costly disaster in US history, at approximately $26 billion, outranking Hurricane Andrew in Florida in 1992 - and that estimate was before the full extent of the New Orleans flooding became apparent - bodies floating in the street and a city of 500,00 becoming uninhabitable surprisingly more important than dry statistics about dollar values.
It's kind of funny (in a so not funny way, considering the circumstances) how reports from years ago suddenly come to the fore when something in them happens. Before September 11, a report from FEMA, the US federal emegency agency, said that the three most likely catastrophic disasters that would likely hit the country were a terrorist attack on New York, a direct hurricane hit on New Orleans, and a massive earthquake in San Francisco, with the New Orleans disaster probably being the deadliest of them all.
The Port of Southern Louisiana is the largest in the US, with the port of New Orleans the fifth biggest, (was news to me when I heard those two facts, but they have the entire Mississippi-Missouri basin to service) and they have basically been shut down. Nine refineries providing ten percent of US gasoline needs were closed by Katrina, with eight of them still down the last I heard. And at least nine Gulf of Mexico oil rigs have slipped their moorings, and I think I heard that a quarter of US oil imports go through Louisiana. Oil prices spiked to over $70 a barrel in the days immediately after the storm hit, and have been somewhat stabilised (at $67) by the US releasing some of their Strategic Reserve. The stuff still needs to be refined though.
For once, the dangers of a hurricane were underestimated, even with it being a category five just a few hours before landfall.
Now some time for some cynicism. A third of Louisiana's National Guard is in Iraq at the moment, with most of their equipment. Money has been withdrawn from FEMA, and especially their flood protection work, as the war in Iraq just keeps getting more expensive. Would the delay in the federal response have been acceptable if the disaster happened in the Hamptons or the Manhattan financial district rather than the Deep South (rich versus poor, white and black divide).
From Paul Krugman's column in the NY Times today, already linked above -
'I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.
At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.'
Oh dear, it looks like the New Orleans Saints, the NFL team, will be on the road for most of the year, with probable temporary housing in San Antonio and Baton Rouge, and perhaps even forays to Houston when there are scheduling issues with the Baton Rouge college team. Apparently their manager has been threatening to take the team to LA if he doesn't get a new stadium (admittedly, that was before Katrina hit). Saw a good article at MSNBC saying it will be interesting whether a sports team will have any priority in the recovery process.
Latest guesstimate of the death toll in Louisiana alone could be up to ten thousand. Five Iraq campaigns all rolled into one.
Then again, I just said to my mother that I was reading about Katrina on the web. She said Katrina who - I obviously had to say Hurricane in front of the name.
More soon
Pauly
No comments:
Post a Comment