buggery | Entries tagged with katrina

There's an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent in which a character commits a particularly ingenious murder by "repairing" the leaks in a partly-rotted old boat with a mixture of cake frosting and white glue, knowing that when their intended victim took the boat out, the concoction would keep water out only long enough for the boat to get dangerously far from shore.

It appears that the US Army Corps of Engineers might as well have repaired New Orleans' levee, pump, floodwall and floodgate systems with cake frosting and white glue, according to this National Geographic article.

( And, since URLs change... full text behind the cut. )

I suppose it's good news that there's a class-action suit already under way... but it's hardly likely that it will be resolved before the "repaired" systems are put to the test by this year's hurricane season. Even if a judge were to rule in the plaintiffs' favour, *and* the Corps were to take immediate action to do the repairs right this time, it might still be impossible to shore up New Orleans' defences before the next big storm hits. Is it also a good thing that most former residents of the Lower Ninth Ward and St Bernard's Parish haven't returned to the city (and can't because those areas are still full of contaminated and condemned buildings with no utilities or other municipal services)? For crying out loud. If you have engineers from the *Netherlands* coming over to help you design and implement your *flood-control* systems, and they're *still* not working, then *you can't really be trying* to make them functional.

I don't even know what to say at this point -- other than, perhaps, You're doing a heckuva job, ~~Brownie~~ U.S. Army Corps of Engineers!

Current Mood: AAAAAAARRRGH

Mostly I'm selfishly using all your friends pages to remind myself to add the get your war on webcomic to my webcomics bookmarks when I get back on my own computer. Muahahaha!

But this provides me a convenient opportunity-cum-kick-in-the-pants for a couple of political things I've been wanting to blog about, even though I mostly use my LJ as a fannish vehicle more than as a blog in the loaded sense that term has come to have.

Cut from here down, partly because I get ranty and long-winded, partly for those who get hives from political stuff; I'm hippie enough not to want to harsh anyone's buzz, man.

( Firstly, Iraq )

( On to Hurricane Katrina )

Speaking of which, there's no cut-text for Lebanon (or anything else) because I am currently all ranted out.²

( About my choice of icon )

Speaking of *that*, those who want something political they can feel (mostly -- he does explain in some detail which crap it was that drove him to change his mind) good about might check out this Apology From a Bush Voter. It made me feel better.⁴

1. Part of the reason I got so involved in following, and posting about, the Katrina disaster last year was that, as a disabled person myself, I was acutely aware of the logistical impossibility facing most physically disabled people in Katrina's path even if they wanted to evacuate, and I began looking through reports of what was happening with the specific intent of finding out how many such people were left to drown, starve, dehydrate, or die from lack of medical care or due to violence when most everyone who could get out did so. There still hasn't been near enough reportage in this regard, but as we all know, many people who physically could not walk out were indeed left to die.

2. FOR NOW.

3. Or, for those with no inclination to reproduce or raise children, other young people in our families or of our acquaintance, once a generation born after 2010 grows up.

4. Of course, it also helped motivate me to rant at length...

Current Mood: the laughter means I'm enraged
Current Location: Te's computer Beulah
Current Music: Te snoring gently and adorably

My heroic search for the story of Sean Penn's rescue efforts, a story abandoned by the media in their rush to point fingers

Before last week, I wouldn't have called myself a Sean Penn fan... and I still don't, actually. I'm old enough that, no matter how many accolades he may receive for his acting, regardless of how I feel about his acting, he'll always, first, be that guy who beat his then-wife Madonna and had a habit of breaking photographers' cameras. But I don't think I had a thought *about* Penn in the last ten years, except maybe fleeting impressions based on previews of films he's been in. I just wanted to get that out of the way.

Among other Katrina-related posts I've made recently, I pointedly sought out first-person accounts of what's been going on 'on the ground' for those affected by the storm and its aftermath. In researching that post, it puzzled me that I could not find an official statement by actor Sean Penn, even though, as most of us have heard, the actor went to New Orleans early last week -- to help, Penn himself has said; or as an ill-thought-out publicity stunt, as is now predominantly being reported by our news media. But as with many Katrina-related disputes of fact vs. spin, the timeline tells the tale.

( My heroic search for the story of Penn's rescue efforts, abandoned in the rush to point fingers... )

Second: If we have learned anything from this disaster, it is that getting the pictures out is *crucial* to getting the people out. The directors of FEMA and Homeland Security have admitted (this one I don't need to link to, it's everywhere) that they did not know about conditions at the Convention Center or the Superdome in New Orleans until after TV news crews had been covering them for *days*; the *first* they heard about conditions at either site was when they were asked what they were going to do, directly, by journalists interviewing them. If I were able to go into the area devastated by Katrina, I would damned sure make sure I had somebody with me to document what I would see!

( My quest for the truth leads me into the blogosphere... )

One last thing. I want to reiterate that, according to Penn, he spent eight hours in the toxic, stinking waters of New Orleans on Monday, trying to help. No one has disputed Penn's claim directly. NO ONE. That is not a 'photo op.' When George W. Bush makes a 'photo op' appearance, as we know, he's there briefly, makes speeches for the cameras, and then is gone -- often taking the apparent help which accompanied him to the site away with him.

If Penn's motive really was publicity for himself, he could easily have granted more interviews, or even just had his publicist contact various media outlets with his side of the story and/or mentions of the couple of interviews he did give.

Why, in the end, should we care about Penn's reputation or even his motives? Actually, Penn's story merely provides an instructive example to illustrate my true point in making this post: Clearly it's not yet time for us to relax and trust the mass media to be sure they have the truth before giving us the news, about Katrina or anything else, even well after the fact.

* I had seen either this article or another of the very few articles which contained these two sentences, either Monday or Tuesday, while perusing Katrina information. The fact that the article mentioned Penn had declined comment at the time stuck in my mind and, when I went looking specifically for first-hand accounts, I thought to see if he was ready to tell his story yet. And thus my quest to rescue this poor story suffering from national indifference began.

(A quick note, mostly so *I* don't forget: I will be doing posts on Sean Penn and on the Houston Astrodome later this weekend.)

Like the subject line says. There's only so long I can think about / read about / write about some of these things -- good or bad news -- before I have to walk away, for my own sanity.

Here are some other LJs I recommend you check for Katrina news. In most cases, if I see something on one of these, I *won't* post about it here. Though there are exceptions.

brown_betty

debchan

decarnin

gairid

interdictor

janni

koimistress

makesmewannadie

neworleans

seperis

thebratqueen

thete1

twistedchick

tzikeh

How can this not make you smile? Several LJ users who are donating $1 for every comment they receive on a particular post, usually to the Red Cross.

Other blog sites:
http://12thharmonic.com/wordpress/
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/120/pg1/srtpages
http://www.crooksandliars.com/
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/
http://www.thisisnotover.com/
http://whitewashingblack.blogspot.com/

Now I will go look at something else for awhile.

(I lifted this entire entry word-for-word from

elekdragon's post. I wish I could be more surprised, but the Bush administration has been persecuting transfolk as alleged security risks for years now... and the bathroom issue is an even older one. My own personal rant about this news would not have been substantially different.)

A 20-year-old transgendered Hurricane Katrina evacuee remained in the Brazos County Jail on Thursday, five days after being arrested for showering inside a women's bathroom at Reed Arena.

Arpollo Vicks of New Orleans and her 16-year-old cousin were arrested Sunday night for criminal trespass after Texas A&M University Police noticed the two exiting a women's shower facility at the shelter. The two were born male but live as women and consider themselves female, Vicks said Thursday in an interview from the jail.

They are the only people who have been arrested at the local shelters since the first one opened Aug. 31, shelter officials said.

( elekdragon's rant behind the cut )

( EDIT: She's been released )

Current Mood: SCREAMING

(Click here to read the earlier post in this journal regarding the now -- perhaps -- abandoned plan to set up the Falls Creek campground in Oklahoma as 'housing' for Katrina evacuees, at which: they would receive only two meals a day for up to five months; neither charitable foundations, the camp's owners, or other private individuals would be allowed to donate any additional food or other supplies of any kind, or even to visit evacuees; and the evacuees themselves would be afforded no real opportunity to leave aside from walking for miles through unfamiliar and barely-inhabited terrain just to get to the middle of nowhere.)

Just as if I had my own Associated Press card, I am going to credit the source for this account as a Massachusetts National Guard MP officer, speaking on condition of anonymity. If the national media can't be bothered to fact-check the dates on which well-known elected officials holding high political office made certain public statements, I see no reason to choose silence over a slightly relaxed journalistic standard. (Which is not to say, however, that I *wouldn't* verify this soldier's credentials if I had the means to track him down and travel to Massachusetts to check his ID.)

( Plans for a huge increase in security forces to protect against the possibility of evacuees 'escaping' from a relocation site on Cape Cod -- military officials refer to evacuees as 'prisoners' )

If anyone in eastern Massachusetts or in the Massachusetts National Guard can confirm or refute this account, I urge you to try. The above-cited account regarding the Falls Creek camp in Oklahoma might never have become public if not for one woman's determination to investigate, through direct observation and questioning of others, the FEMA-directed and frankly terrifying plan to treat evacuees sent there as detainees; and it's possible that the public attention drawn to that site may have led to its being abandoned, at least for now, as a site for Katrina survivors to be sheltered.

Edited to add: Thanks to

brown_betty, who pointed me to this link: A staff columnist with the Denver Post reports that over 100 evacuees are being held in dormitory buildings at the Lowry Campus of the Community College of Aurora, fenced in, heavily guarded, and visitors -- journalists, and at least some volunteers offering assistance -- are being kept out; more evacuees are expected. Note that at least one of the persons denied access to the site was offering, not boxes of redundant supplies, but jobs for evacuees to help them get back on their feet. (It seems chillingly 'coincidental' that the Lowry Campus is located at the decommissioned former Lowry Air Force Base, given the reports about plans to send evacuees to Camp Edwards and other military sites.)

The other side of the equation is that housing in other states is still needed to relieve the pressure on Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, where the majority of evacuees remain.

As his state's ability to absorb evacuees began to falter, Texas governor Rick Perry appealed directly to his counterparts in other states, and many governors agreed to help take some of the evacuee-housing pressure off of Texas -- but then FEMA took over.

"Planes carrying evacuees had been expected to leave the state Sunday night when the airlift was under the direction of state officials. Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the state's refugee shelters had reached their limit. Then federal authorities took over the operation and by Monday planes still weren't taking off. At the same time, for the first time in days, there were no buses or planes in the official evacuation effort carrying evacuees into Texas, the governor's office said. It was unclear when any flights might actually leave. Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman Dean Cushman said Monday, 'We are not coordinating it as of right now.' Perry announced the airlift Sunday to ease the pressure that nearly a quarter million refugees had placed on Texas shelters."

FEMA is getting in the way again, thwarting efforts set up around the country. ( Specific examples from various states behind the cut... )

Conditions at locations in Texas, particularly the Astrodome, remain far short of ideal for evacuees staying there. Another post about the Astrodome will follow.

Another case where this is too damned important not to get its own post.

First-hand account of a location FEMA is setting up in Oklahoma for evacuees from the areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina

Go and read the full account. Then call/write/e-mail/fax your own representatives in Congress (if you are a US citizen or resident); the governor, the Senators and members of the House of Representatives for Oklahoma (edited to add:) and Colorado; the White House; FEMA; and your local news media. RAISE HELL. Contact information for elected government officials at all levels for all states can be found here. Don't forget to spread the news to less-internet-savvy friends, family, neighbours, co-workers, etc., and encourage them to speak out as well. Evacuees may or may not be getting subjected to this treatment RIGHT NOW in Oklahoma, but if or when evacuees do arrive there -- or at certain other sites around the country set up for evacuee relocation -- there has not even been the pretence, from any FEMA or other government official, that treating evacuees like prisoners is not considered acceptable. (edit: there is now a major-newspaper confirmed account of evacuees being held at a location with similar restrictions near Denver, Colorado; see the bottom of this post.)

Selected excerpts from the account, to underscore exactly how EVIL the government's current plans for 'housing' evacuees are:

FEMA will not allow any of the kitchen facilities in any of the cabins to be used by the occupants due to fire hazards. FEMA will deliver meals to the cabins. The refugees will be given two meals per day by FEMA. They will not be able to cook. In fact, the "host" goes on to explain, some churches had already enquired about whether they could come in on weekends and fix meals for the people staying in their cabin. FEMA won't allow it because there could be a situation where one cabin gets steaks and another gets hot dogs - and...

it could cause a riot.

It gets worse.

He then precedes [sic] to tell us that some churches had already enquired into whether they could send a van or bus on Sundays to pick up any occupants of their cabins who might be interested in attending church. FEMA will not allow this. The occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason. If they leave the camp they may never return. They will be issued FEMA identification cards and "a sum of money" and they will remain within the camp for the next 5 months. (underlined emphasis mine; bolded emphasis in original)

Two meals a day for five months. No one can visit you. You can't leave. Donations of food from the Red Cross, church groups (including the churches which *own* the cabins which are being used at this site) or private individuals will not be allowed in. WTF.

We start unloading our snacks. Mom appeared to have cornered the market in five counties on pop-tarts and apparently that was an acceptable snack so the guy started shoving them under the counter. He said these would be good to tied people over in between their two meals a day. But he tells my mother she must take all the breakfast cereal back. My mother protests that cereal requires no cooking. "There will be no milk, ma'am." My mother points to the huge industrial double-wide refrigerator the church had just purchased in the past year. "Ma'am, you don't understand...

It could cause a riot."

He then points to the vegetables and fruit. "You'll have to take that back as well. It looks like you've got about 10 apples there. I'm about to bring in 40 men. What would we do then?"

My mother, in her sweet, soft voice says, "Quarter them?"

"No ma'am. FEMA said no...

It could cause a riot. You don't understand the type of people that are about to come here...."

AMERICAN CITIZENS are the type of people who will be going there! AMERICAN CITIZENS! What is this, 1942?! WE DO NOT LOCK PEOPLE UP FOR THE CRIME OF HAVING SURVIVED HURRICANE KATRINA.

And no, being free (*maybe* -- it could, after all, cause a riot) to walk out -- into the middle of bloody nowhere in an unfamiliar state with nothing but the clothes FEMA deigned to allow to be donated to you -- is not being 'free' at ALL if doing so means that you lose your disaster-relief benefits by doing so. These people have no homes or jobs to go back to; they are dependent on others' assistance, whether from (if they're lucky) friends or family, or private charities or other institutions, or the government.

There are, by the way, going to be children at this camp. One of the 'hosts' (and what a horrifying euphemism that is -- clearly the evacuees are not to be treated as guests, so maybe we're supposed to read them as parasites?) explained that some of the camp's cabins had been designated men-only (for 'men' 14 and up), some women-only, and others for families. But NO MILK, along with that generous TWO MEALS A DAY. Including for the children sent there, presumably, because if the kids get the nutrition their growing bodies need but every adult doesn't get the same ration, it could cause a riot.

RESTRICTING PEOPLE TO TWO MEALS A DAY FOR FIVE MONTHS WILL CAUSE RIOTING BY ITSELF, YOU FAPPING MORON FUCKTARDS AAAAAGH.

More about where this internment camp -- or, as Valhall (Val Hall?), the author refers to it, detainment camp -- is located...

From the moment I heard about Falls Creek being scheduled to receive refugees I had two thoughts run through my mind:

1. What a beautiful place to be able to stay while trying to get your life back in order.

2. What a terrible location to be when you're trying to get your life back in order.

The first thought is because Falls Creek is nestled in the Arbuckle Mountains of south central Oklahoma. One of the more beautiful regions of the state. It would be a peaceful and beautiful place to try to start mending emotionally, and begin to figure what you're going to do next.

The second thought comes because Falls Creek is very secluded and absolutely no where near a population center. The closest route from Falls Creek to a connecting road is three miles on a winding narrow road called "High Road" (It gets that name for two reasons - it's goes over the mountain instead of around it like "Low Road" does, and it's where the teenagers of the area go to party). The road has not a single home on it for over 3 miles. After battling that 3 miles over mountains, you'll find yourself about 5 miles from the nearest town, Davis, Oklahoma, population ca. 2000. This is no place to start a new life.

She also notes that the area is notorious as a 'dead zone' for cellular phone service due to geography. There's no specific information on landlines at the camp, but my own experience of summer camps (which is how the facility is normally used) is that the cabins kids stay in do not have phone, only some administrative buildings do, and there are a small number (sometimes only one) of payphones for kids to use to call home or get calls from home. How are these people supposed to make any arrangements on their own for housing or employment if they have to wait on line for hours waiting to use the phone? Oh, wait, if anybody gets to use a telephone, that might cause a riot, so probably there will be no phone use allowed for the evacuees at all.

Updates and further details posted in the comments on the original account follow. ( Behind a cut, copied more for convenience of access than because it needs to be on the top-level pages. )

This LJ post has now been edited to add: I have copied out all of Val's updates as of 7am ET on Saturday 10 September. Based on her most recent updates, the Falls Creek camp, according to official reports, will not be receiving any evacuees and never housed any, though plans to do so had been made and were later put on hold. This does not explain, however, the eyewitness report of "between 50 and 100 people," mostly black, who were seen at Falls Creek along with approximately 10 busses which appeared to have brought them there, sometime between Monday 5 September and Thursday 8 September -- in other words, roughly contemporaneously with the announcement that the Falls Creek camp would not be used to house refugees. No one from the church groups affiliated with the camp, at last report, had been back to the site in several days to be able to confirm the presence or absence of Katrina evacuees.

For all we know, evacuees *are* being sent to Falls Creek, and there's no reason to think conditions there would be improved by having independent outside contact cut off or the media turning their attention away, if that were the case.

The most important thing is not whether this one particular camp is going to house evacuees or not. The most important thing is that FEMA was all ready to go ahead with plans to send evacuees there under the conditions described above.

This could happen almost anywhere in America.

As a people, we have to choose whether to be vigilant, or to be silent. (Check out what the media were reporting about Falls Creek, as quoted in or linked from the transcribed updates above, and think twice about accepting at face value any news item about conditions at sites you could investigate for yourself.) But one thing is clear -- if we are not watching, this is what the federal government will try to do. That's not wild speculation; it's not speculation at all. It is what happened in Oklahoma.

A related account about a relocation site being prepared for evacuees in Massachusetts can now be found in a separate entry here. (Thanks for your patience.)

And, just a reminder, evacuees will NOT be able to tell friends, family, the media, or anyone else where they're being sent for interim shelter before they get to their destination, because FEMA won't be telling THEM where they're going.

Other first-hand accounts I have linked to, transcribed and/or excerpted can be found here.

Edited to add: Thanks to

Current Mood: I just. can't. even...

This first link is actually not specific to the situation now facing the nation with regard to Katrina -- it appears to have been written sometime before the last few days of August -- but it has chilling implications for the distribution of relief resources for evacuees as well as anyone else who has been affected by Katrina's destruction throughout the lower Mississippi (river) region: The 'New Poor' Versus The 'Old Poor': Who Gets Prioritized? by freelance writer Kirsten Anderberg. Sobering historical precedents are cited which we all ought to keep in mind in the coming weeks -- and make sure any organisation we contribute (time, goods, money, publicity) to, as well as any elected or appointed government officials with a say in what happens to Katrina survivors being succored in our own areas, understand that we will not accept any division of the have-nothings from the have-less-than-nothings. If and when we see any example of this -- I'm looking at YOU, former First Lady Barbara Bush -- we must immediately and loudly speak out against it... and *keep on* making noise until things are made right.

(Current White House talking-point spin on Barbara's remarks is that they were 'personal'. I'm sure it will cheer the hundreds of thousands of people accused of *profiting* from the loss of every possession they owned, not to mention friends and family members who are missing and possibly dead, to know that they were *personally* insulted by the mother of the man who's running this country, and that the executive branch itself can't be bothered to stop lying long enough to add any further *direct* insult to their grievous injuries.)

Now, some more first-hand accounts.

Rabbi Yossi Nemes, Director of the Chabad Center of Metairie, Louisiana (just upriver from New Orleans proper) describes the situation as waters rose and people discovered, sometimes despite their preparations, that immediate evacuation was simply impossible. (As near as I can tell, a Chabad Centre is something like a ~~Jewish~~ Hasidic Community Centre. For further clarification of this point, see

lomedet's comments below, which I won't attempt to condense or paraphrase.) Some key moments from his story:

"Some elderly people had no way of leaving and needed to be walked through a virtual checklist of items that they should bring up to the highest floor."

( More... )

I could not find an official statement by actor Sean Penn, even though, as most of us have heard, the actor went to New Orleans earlier in the week -- to help, Penn himself has said; or as an ill-thought-out publicity stunt, as is now predominantly being reported by our news media. What I eventually found wound up meriting its own LJ entry, which ~~I will link to from here once I get it posted~~ I finally finished and posted. And here it is: My heroic search for the story of Penn's rescue efforts.

From

rynia (taken from comments originally posted here):

"As a resident of Lafayette, Louisiana - one of the areas that's being *overwhelmed* by refugees at the moment - I don't know what to think. I don't have cable, so I can't keep up with the official news. The most news I get is from the emergency medical personel (sp?) themselves - I do the fire watch for the dorm where they are housed.

(Basically, the dorm didn't pass fire inspection, so it couldn't be used this year. The fire marshall let the university house EMTs there on the condition that someone walks the halls of each floor every hour. That's my job.) Some of the stories I'm hearing are just... It makes you lose faith in humanity."

(At this point, Te and I asked Paige to share more details of what she was seeing and hearing in Lafayette.)

( More... )

Survival of New Orleans Blog: "This journal exists to share firsthand experience of Hurricane Katrina her aftermath with anyone interested."

interdictor is part of a group of people who remained in downtown New Orleans throughout the crisis in order to keep essential services running.
Where exactly they are located.
Who the other members of the team (besides the journal owner) are.
Why they remained in the city.

A 1 September interview conducted via cellphone with a man stuck at the Convention Center. Excerpt: "They had no food, no water, and no medicine for the last three days, until today, when the National Guard drove over the bridge above them, and tossed out supplies over the side crashing down to the ground below. Much of the supplies were destroyed from the drop. Many people tried to catch the supplies to protect them before they hit the ground. Some offered to walk all the way around up the bridge and bring the supplies down, but any attempt to approach the police or national guard resulted in weapons being aimed at them."

( More... )

Click here to search Survival of New Orleans Blog entires by date (August).
Click here to search Survival of New Orleans Blog entires by date (September).
Live cam mirror #1 -- Live cam mirror #2 -- Live cam mirror #3
Mirror site for all still images from SoNO blog site
Off-LJ mirror for interdictor's journal

Orlando Sentinel (FL) reporter Kevin Spear spent the night of Sunday 4 September-Monday 5 September in New Orleans' Garden District. "A bottle of oxygen, not firepower, was all an 84-year-old lifelong New Orleans resident needed. Yet when she sought medical help, she was taken to the airport and was told she would be flown to another part of the country." (There are two pages to this article; don't miss page 2.)

Older posts on this blog dealt with surviving and evacuating from Katrina. This post in particular describes the blogger's 'six-hour marathon session of Disaster Relief Bingo' on Tuesday 6 September as he filled out various agencies' relief paperwork in Tallahassee, where he had been evacuated to.

Previously posted about in my LJ, a first-hand account of being stranded by Hurricaine Katrina and the difficulties faced by those trying to evacuate, by Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, emergency medical services workers from San Francisco who were attending an EMS conference in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck.

Edited to add -- new link: A separate post in my LJ with links to and excerpts from an account of a campground in Oklahoma which FEMA planned to house evacuees at... where they would receive only two meals a day for up to five months, unauthorised visitors like the camp's owners and charity groups would be denied access and barred from donating additional food or other assistance, and evacuees housed there would have no real option to leave the grounds.

Edited (11 September) with another new link: Nearly 200 photos taken in New Orleans before, during and after Katrina struck by a man named Alvaro, all with descriptive captions for context. (Thanks to

teenygozer for pointing me to that link.)

Finally, a little bit of good news: Michael D. Brown, the embattled head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, today was relieved of his duties overseeing recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast region. ...the hurricane-recovery mission would now be led by Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, the third-ranking officer in the Coast Guard.

Don't cheer yet.

Brown has NOT been fired. He remains FEMA director, and Michael Chertoff, who announced Brown's reassignment, is still running the Department of Homeland Security (in circles).

Vice Admiral Allen's assignment *is* good news, no question. Having authority over continuing rescue, recovery, relocation and rebuilding efforts will no doubt save lives, prevent deprivation and injury, and eliminate needless delays in getting aid to already-devastated survivors and their families.

But those survivors, those who did not survive, and we as a nation, and as human beings around the world -- we deserve better news than that.

Current Mood: like Edvard Munch's painting

It's often said that Wikipedia and Google are the two most important tools for internet users -- and anyone who uses them can tell you it's true. So, in addition to the invaluable resource Google News searches have been as I sought to verify facts and find concise reports of various news items, I shouldn't have been surprised to find that there's already a Wiki article on the 'Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans', replete with all the sorts of hyperlinks one expects from Wikipedia articles. Peruse this at length, share the link, and contribute information as appropriate.

The other link I have to share relates to something we don't usually think of as an Internet resource, but which I was looking forward almost desperately last night (before zonking out too soon for the initial broadcast): the first episode of The Daily Show since before Katrina struck Louisiana. This morning, Te hunted up a streaming video clip of the opening of last night's monologue. (Be warned, watching just the one clip made even Te's souped-up and normally streaming-happy computer system crash.) We were both laughing out loud, and I mean *loud*, at more than one point. It was just what we needed.

We'll be watching the rebroadcast of the full episode tonight at 8pm ET, and we encourage everyone else to do the same if you haven't seen the episode already. Since not everyone will get the chance -- no cable, no television service that shows Comedy Central programming, busy doing other things at the time, etc. -- and since the video clips at the official site can't be saved to disk on top of being likely to crash computers, I'm going to ask outright for anybody with a transcript (or means to provide one) point me in the right direction.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart airs (regularly) Monday-Thusday at 11pm ET, with rebroadcasts of the most recent episode at 1am, 10am, and 8pm the following day.

Mediachannel.org has a different clip up which can be downloaded (and which we saved a copy of, so that if that disappears we can use YouSendIt or another site to redistribute it). This is Ed Helms's coverage of the Katrina story, specifically on the Bush government's focus on spin. Like the monologue, though, it provides a much-needed laugh without shying from the importance of the issues.

I was planning a post -- several, actually, at least one round-up of news relating to Katrina too important for anyone to miss, and at least one round-up of links to things people can do to help no matter how limited they think their ability to help might be -- but I just saw a link

lcsbanana posted that needs its own post, no waiting.

It's a first-hand account of what evacuating from New Orleans was really like, from someone who lived through it -- from the rising water to the arrival of National Guard units under FEMA orders to what happens to evacuees after their evacuation.

Highlights -- though somehow that seems the wrong word:

The heroic work of those unsung in the media because they were too busy helping where they were needed to stop for photo ops, "the working class of New Orleans"... The maintenance workers who used a forklift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, 'stealing' boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hotwire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the city. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens, improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.

Day by day progress -- from frying pan into fire into flood into famine... By Day Four, our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously bad. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that “officials” had told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses.

Evacuees turned back at New Orleans border, as reported by FOXNews's Shepard Smith... All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away--some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot.

The part of that story which didn't make the news... From a woman with a battery-powered radio, we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the city. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway. The officials responded that they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. 'Taking care of us' had an ominous tone to it. Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking city) was accurate. Just as dusk set in, a sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces and screamed, 'Get off the fucking freeway.' A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

The direct effect of George W.'s grandstanding... W[e arrived] at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We eight were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op.

Conditions after being evacuated to Texas... Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport--because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly and disabled, as we sat for hours waiting to be 'medically screened' to make sure we weren’t carrying any communicable diseases.

(yes, all those links go to the same article. Really, I can't repeat the link enough.)

In addition to all this, the account answers, perhaps, the question of where FEMA's National Guard *got* those buses they used to evacuate the Convention Center and the Superdome -- we already knew that the troops themselves arrived in military vehicles, not the buses which were infamously used to take 'clean' and 'dry' Hyatt hotel guests out of New Orleans ahead of the families (many including children and elderly or disabled members) who had been waiting for days *without* food or water at the Superdome.

It wasn't entirely clear who the "police commander" referred to was, but given the tone (and content) of most other reports coming from people on the ground, it's entirely possible that he himself had been lied to. I have to believe that *some* of the people in authority (to whatever degree and of whatever sort) in the areas devastated by Katrina are and have been good people doing the best they could in an impossible situation. I have to, to keep my sanity. And there have been other examples of simple miscommunication in the chaos of Katrina's aftermath, such as when it was postulated that a busload of evacuees were turned away from Baton Rouge due to fears that evacuees would begin committing crimes there, but it turned out that the bus was sent further on simply because all available shelters in Baton Rouge were already full at the time.

(Some might question the validity of this report, based on the slant of the site where it appears -- yes, it's the newspaper of the International Socialist Party. The gaping hole in such an argument, however, is that we already know what kinds of things have been going on from reports in the mainstream media; there's no need to make up a story that's 'merely' just as bad as substantiated facts, if the aim is to make the people ~~coordinating~~ utterly failing to coordinate relief efforts look bad.)

(Further note: Thanks to

tzikeh for the icon, which she encourages all to take and spread widely across LJ-land.)

Current Mood: they did WHAT??

Two days ago,

thete1 posted a Katrina-related entry on her journal entitled, 'When in the course of human events...' This post follows hers, in much the same way that the one phrase follows the other in the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, from the signing of which Americans date the birth of our nation.

I chose to leave out, for now, the next few words, 'to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,' because we're still not at that point, yet.

But we're closer.

The Bush administration on Friday asked Blanco to give the president control of local law enforcement and the Louisiana National Guard that now answer to the governor. Blanco refused.

Blanco said, when asked about the issue of federalizing state troops, that the issue involves the hurricane recovery organizational structure, not how rescuers are deployed.

Blanco said she needs flexibility to run the Louisiana National Guard.

If you've been following this national crisis the way I have, you're cheering Governor Blanco, who arguably saved the lives of countless Louisianans by refusing. ( Cut for length, but please, don't skip this post; follow the links, read on, and pass the word... )

I sincerely hope that we don't get to the point where Te or I (or

tzikeh or

lcsbanana or anyone else) will be making a post along these lines entitled '...of Right ought to be Free and Independent States...' -- in fact, I'm hoping this country doesn't get anywhere near the '...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive...' point. But until the need for me to do so ends, I will keep watching, and I will keep speaking out.