“We were briefing them way before landfall,” Mayfield said. “It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped.
...
Chertoff told reporters Saturday that government officials had not expected the damaging combination of a powerful hurricane levee breaches that flooded New Orleans.
The article goes on to state that all departments and parties involved participated in a 2004 disaster plan surrounding the fictional "Hurricane Pam"
The July 23, 2004 "plan" is not reassuring (Reprinted in full. Using a government source is almost never a copyright issue):
Hurricane Pam Exercise ConcludesRelease Date: July 23, 2004 Release number: R6-04-093
BATON ROUGE, La. — Hurricane Pam brought sustained winds of 120 mph, up to 20 inches of rain in parts of southeast Louisiana and storm surge that topped levees in the New Orleans area. More than one million residents evacuated and Hurricane Pam destroyed 500,000-600,000 buildings. Emergency officials from 50 parish, state, federal and volunteer organizations faced this scenario during a five-day exercise held this week at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge.
The exercise used realistic weather and damage information developed by the National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the LSU Hurricane Center and other state and federal agencies to help officials develop joint response plans for a catastrophic hurricane in Louisiana.
"We made great progress this week in our preparedness efforts," said Ron Castleman, FEMA Regional Director. "Disaster response teams developed action plans in critical areas such as search and rescue, medical care, sheltering, temporary housing, school restoration and debris management. These plans are essential for quick response to a hurricane but will also help in other emergencies."
"Hurricane planning in Louisiana will continue," said Colonel Michael L. Brown, Deputy Director for Emergency Preparedness, Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. "Over the next 60 days, we will polish the action plans developed during the Hurricane Pam exercise. We have also determined where to focus our efforts in the future."
A partial summary of action plans follows:
Debris
* The debris team estimates that a storm like Hurricane Pam would result in 30 million cubic yards of debris and 237,000 cubic yards of household hazardous waste
* The team identified existing landfills that have available storage space and locations of hazardous waste disposal sites. The debris plan also outlines priorities for debris removal.
Sheltering
* The interagency shelter group identified the need for about 1,000 shelters for a catastrophic disaster. The shelter team identified 784 shelters and has developed plans for locating the remaining shelters.
* In a storm like Hurricane Pam, shelters will likely remain open for 100 days. The group identified the resources necessary to support 1000 shelters for 100 days. They planned for staff augmentation and how to include shelterees in shelter management.
Article comments
1 - RJ
Looks like FEMA screwed the pooch when it came to a real disaster...
2 - Cerulean
They sure didn't follow the plan and who knows if they ever were ready to. State resources adequate for three to five days? 1,000 shelters?
It's a miracle the French Quarter was saved like it was.
I've always felt that we should leave a margin of undeveloped land around all bodies of water, a minimum of 100 feet from the water line for streams and the ocean up to perhaps 500 feet for the Mississippi River, including wetlands. The land could be used for bike lanes, walking paths, occasional waterfront restaurants or pavilions, gazebos, camp grounds, beaches, rec areas but basically almost no manmade objects of size so the water can hurl inself onto soft ground and not rebound as it would against concrete. I would put it two hundred feet from the ocean in some areas. It would be wonderful to get around by bike along waterfronts everywhere, perhaps under rows of trees.
3 - Marc
Cerulean: "I would put it two hundred feet from the ocean in some areas."
Would that have worked? Along the Miss. shore Katrina sent a storm surge miles inland. Sorry it would never work.
Temple reread the section on what was expected and planned by FEMA for the local schools.
Now read what shape the local schools are in from this August 18, 2005 CNN report.
Question: If the local school administration can't even tell how many teachers are on payroll how could they be expected to pay nothing but a passing interest to what FEMA desired?
Also note the $70 million dollars that were unaccouted for last spring when they couldn't meet payroll.
Do you think that may help explain why the city Gov didn't roll out those 250 plus water logged school buses as directed by their own evac plan?
4 - Gary Brackett
There seems to be many ways to look at the events in New Orleans. I always liked Sid Vicious and his take on things, especially when ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’ came around. Now how can one even think of the ‘anarchy’ in the flooded streets of lower Louisiana as a positive thing! The word anarchy is one of those loaded words meaning different things to different people. It’s usually batted about when situations of chaos have arisen; with bomb throwers, or like here in Italy, the so-called anarchists and their mail bombs. The press likes to vehemently denounce these groups as ‘insurrectionist anarchists’. (Also the ‘anarchist’ Black Bloc whose tactics I do not support!) There is not enough time here to get into the historical roots of the word, much less the history of anarchist movements, its philosophy and the scarce number of anarchist successes (see Kronstadt, Russia 1920’s; Seattle, early 1900’s; Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War). Nor am I interested in any semantic discussions with journalists, right-wingers or Marxists. What I want to talk about is how this disaster, this horrible plague of destruction by Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing chaos puts into high relief the question of who we are for one another as a society, of the modern state (I mean government) and the rule of coercive authority, and also of what we might call the human spirit. More specifically this crisis calls into question the role of the individual and society. These are for me the proper fields of discourse when speaking about anarchy (anarchism).
The plague: the great and crazy French poet and theatre artist and theoretician Antonin Artaud used the metaphor of the plague: The theatre like the plague should strip away the veil of all societal forms: the hypocrisy, the rule of violence, the fragile veneer of social order, the banality of daily life and ALL of its tedious concerns. And equally so, the individual when faced with crisis and a life and death struggle only the real and basic concerns of life matter: the desire to survive. Or perversely one sees exploding to extremes the driving forces that move ones desire, be it gold, sex, power or ego survival.
Anarchist poster : Spanish Civil War
What is important when crisis strikes? What becomes of our cherished ideas, of government, of religion and philosophy, of a life of status and prestige, of property and power? In a crisis of great magnitude all the ruling structures of our culture are laid bare and shown for what they really are: illusions, shells of thoughts and ideas. Just talk! And in the end, when confronted with harsh, brutal, relentless and raw life, such as the plague, or Hurricane Katrina- to use the vernacular: out come our true colors.
If in New Orleans we are surprised at the lawlessness, if we are shocked by the viciousness of individuals, if we are dismayed at the blatant racism, if we are disheartened by the ineffectiveness of government, if we are disgusted by yet another media frenzy feeding upon suffering, if we are left in wonder at the posturing and dallying of our president, if we are baffled by the callousness of the many absurd and ridiculous statements expressed in the press and on the Internet, well then, Katrina is the wake-up call that perhaps we need. For beyond the immenseness of the tragedy and loss of countless persons, the lesson to be gathered from this disaster is that it raises the question of who we are as a people, as a nation, and why have we so miserably failed.
When the forms and structures of our city fall away, the jails, the police, the law, the economies of buying and selling and of work, we are left naked and exposed to the brute reality of just what is a city: and what is a city? Without going too deep into an anthropological survey of its origins, I think we can safely say that a city exists on two basic fronts: one is a state of war where many poor people, and some other less poor people, must work and survive and scramble to procure their basic necessities- necessities which by the way are NOT scarce albeit for a false sense of scarcity created by a system that must create a false sense of scarcity in order to maintain a system of privilege and wealth. And on the other front we have the multitude of citizens who pacifically co-exist with each other: creating, helping, working, loving, despairing, hoping, dying: millions of mostly poor people who simply by reason of their innate goodness get along.
Yet, and it’s a big yet, in our CULTURE, what are the prevailing ideas that guide and influence the behavior and mindsets of these multitudes? Well if we look at “Big Brother” and other reality shows, for example, where to compete, lie, maneuver and basically F___ over your competitor is the way to win; if we examine the prevailing winds that say to be greedy and selfish is the way to get ahead; if we scrutinize conflict where to launch violence against your neighbors is justified; if we see that to get ahead in the world means to step over your co-workers; if we acknowledge that a person’s worth is based on how much one accumulates money and status symbols, we see then that many if not most, aspects of our so called culture are based on the cult of competition, greed and selfish individualism. With the messages that we are bombarded with everyday (not to mention the enormous amount of violence we see, and while I’m at it, thank you NRA, the idea that we have a right to buy and use guns to defend yourself, i.e. that killing is sometimes justified), IS IT ANY WONDER that what we have seen this last week in New Orleans presents the worst characteristics of our culture?!
In simple words, a crisis brings out the best or the worst in us. WE are to blame: not Bush, not the government, not the racism of Yahoo or the media. We have not laid the necessary groundwork of a caring nation. Which do we teach: Everyman for himself, or, All for one and one for all?
To finish: last night I saw the DVD Meet John Doe (by F. Capra). It’s the story of a rising social movement outside of the political mainstream of party politics, of a grass root movement of compassion for the underdog, of getting to know your neighbors (who nobody knows in America); of people solving problems by their own initiative (there was a telling scene of a welfare administrator lamenting that their offices were now becoming obsolete thanks to the work of community organizations, the John Doe Clubs.). This is exactly what is lacking in the USA. There is little sense of helping one another, of self-initiating and not waiting for the government, of creating real communities and extended families and tribes; of a real counter-culture to this culture of selfishness and greed. (All of these positive things DO exist of course, but they are drowned out by mass media and ‘popular’ culture, a veritable swamp of lies and false values.)
When disasters strikes, and I believe we will face other disasters soon enough in this world, be it crisis from energy, ecology or economic, then we will see the great distance between our professed ideas and ideals coming again into sharp relief with our actual behavior. To talk the talk is not enough; we must begin to walk the walk: with our neighbor, the stranger, the immigrant, the person of a different color, or religion or sexuality- to walk, rich and poor together. And hopefully the rich and the many of us who emulate their ethics and morals will let go of this culture of privilege and selfishness that continues to divide us. We see now too clearly just how dangerous and evil this society of the “me-culture” has become. It’s time we started preparing ourselves. Is this asking too much?
5 - Bill
Gary Brackett:
How can you discount the individuals and groups throughout our nation that are reaching out to the victims of Katrina? There have been an inordinate number of examples where people have looked beyond themselves and reached out to others. I think you are blind if you don't see that. A prime example would be the numerous volunteers have showed-up at the Astrodome to assist the evacuees.
Also, how can you even mention the word racism? How can you take a popshot at the NRA? If guns weren't available, I guarantee that these worthless thugs would have used baseball bats to intimidate the women before they raped them. If people continue to shout racism, this is going to further divide this country. A countless number of Anglo-Saxons are contributing to this relief effort, but to have people point the finger back at them and say they're racist is unthinkable.
Bill
6 - Kurt
Gary, a deep & informed post; Saint Emma would be proud!
On a more mundane level, llok at the man Bush appointed to head FEMA - a loser crony with zero qualifications for this tough job. Look at the administration's response to Cuba's immediate offer of medical teams: "No thanks, we care more about image than about human lives." Look at the Potemkin Village photo ops Bush did at the levee. There is no concern for life in this administration - only for power & money. Perhaps we are reaping what we have sowed, politically. As I keep telling voters, "Well, you ought to like it - you bought it!"
7 - Marc
"Look at the Potemkin Village photo ops Bush did at the levee."
And I bet you were whining your little heart out because Bush didn't leave Texas before Katrina even hit the Fla coast.
It's the continous use of childish BS like that is why the Democrats can't win an election. And won't