Police ready for forced evacuation of New Orleans
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200509/s1455548.htm
New Orleans police will force Hurricane Katrina's survivors to leave the city drowning in
toxic waters, as the political storm grows over relief efforts for a disaster with a death toll
feared to be in the thousands and a price tag that could hit $US150 billion.
After days of trying to change the minds of some 10,000 people who have refused to
leave the flooded metropolis since Katrina battered the US Gulf Coast last week,
authorities began to enforce a mandatory evacuation.
City Mayor Ray Nagin said floodwaters filthy with garbage, oil and putrefying bodies
will spread disease and people must go.
Police Superintendent P Edwin Compass said his men would evacuate residents, if
necessary against their will.
"We'll do everything it takes to make this city safe. These people don't understand they're
putting themselves in harm's way," Superintendent Compass said.
But die-hard inhabitants of a city mainly known for jazz and Mardi Gras before it became
a disaster area of Third-World proportions say they fear evacuation to parts of the country
where they have no family or means of support.
Martha Smith-Aguillard, 72, said she was brought against her will to an evacuation point
at the city's wrecked convention centre.
Ms Aguillard's foot was swollen after she trod on a rusty nail and she said she needed a
tetanus shot. Nonetheless, she refused to board a government helicopter.
"They manhandled me and paid no mind to what I said. I ain't never been in no helicopter
in my life, or no airplane, and I'm 72, I ain't starting now," she said.
"I'm not going to get that tetanus shot, so I guess I'll just have to die," she said, adding,
"We're all going to die and if I'm going to die, it's gonna be right here in New Orleans."
Political Storm
Meanwhile, a storm grew over responsibility for delays and disorganisation in the relief
response after the long-predicted storm punctured barriers protecting New Orleans, built
below sea level, from an adjacent lake.
US President George W Bush said he would lead an investigation into the emergency
operation, but he resisted demands for an immediate probe.
"There will be ample time for people to figure out what went right, and what went wrong.
What I'm interested (in) is helping save lives," he said.
Mr Bush's response to the crisis was rated "bad" or "terrible" by 42 per cent of Americans
surveyed for a CNN/USA Today Gallup poll released today, compared with 35 per cent
who said it was "good" or "great."
The Federal Government's performance received the same ratings, while the response of
state and local officials was viewed negatively by 35 per cent and positively by 37 per
cent.
Members of Mr Bush's Republican Party criticised relief efforts in the disaster, with a
death toll Mr Nagin has said could reach 10,000.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday the US Coast Guard's chief of staff, Vice
Admiral Thad W Allen, had been picked by Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff to essentially lead the federal recovery efforts in New Orleans.
He has been assigned to be Mr Brown's deputy and take over control of search-andrescue and recovery operations.
With levee fixed, an uncertain timetable for draining New Orleans
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2005/09/07/news/latest_news/73e2dbac6dac3f8
486257075000d4410.txt
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Progress was measured in inches Tuesday, in the slow
dropping of water levels outside New Orleans' buildings, as engineers struggled to drain
this saucer of a city in a Herculean task that could take weeks -- if they are lucky.
The Army Corps of Engineers said the timetable ranges from three weeks to nearly three
months, depending on a string of variables, including rainfall, the still-unknown condition
of the pumps abandoned to Hurricane Katrina, and whether the system can withstand the
flotsam of broken buildings, trees, trash and corpses.
Work has also been impeded by sporadic gunfire coming from "criminals with guns,"
said Col. Richard Wagenaar, the Corps' chief district engineer.
The contractors are "getting used to it and that's pretty scary," Wagenaar said.
Despite complications, "we have to get the water out of the city or the nightmare will
continue," said Louisiana Environmental Secretary Mike McDaniel. He said the water
will be pumped into Lake Pontchartrain even though it is fouled with sewage, heavy
metals, gasoline and other dangerous substances.
The pumping began after the Corps used hundreds of sandbags and rocks over the Labor
Day weekend to close a 200-foot gap in the 17th Street Canal levee that burst in the
aftermath of the storm and swamped 80 percent of this below sea-level city.
Following an aerial tour Tuesday, Mayor Ray Nagin said the water was dropping ever so
slightly, and he estimated that it covered only 60 percent of the city.
"Even in areas where the water was as high as the rooftops, I started to see parts of the
buildings," he said, adding, "I'm starting to see rays of light."
But he also warned of the horrors that could be revealed when the waters recede. "It's
going to be awful and it's going to wake the nation up again," said Nagin, who a day
earlier upped his estimate of the death toll in his city to as much as 10,000.
The job to rid the city of an estimated 30 billion gallons of water got off to a woefully
slow start.
Once all of the city's pumping stations are running, they can move water at a rate of 29
billion gallons a day and lower the water level a half-inch per hour, or about a foot per
day. But by late Tuesday afternoon, Corps officials said only three of New Orleans'
normal contingent of 148 drainage pumps were operating.
With the water dropping, military and police turned their attention to evacuating the
streets of the estimated 10,000 people still believed to be in the city. Some have been
holed up in their homes for more than a week and refuse to leave.
"You've got to protect your property, that's the main thing," said 69-year-old John
Ebanks, who waved off would-be rescuers from a porch stocked with food, mosquito
spray and other supplies. "This is all I've got. I'm pretty damn old to start over."
In a plea to holdouts who might be listening to portable radios in the powerless city,
Nagin warned that the fetid water could carry disease and that natural gas was leaking all
over town.
"This is not a safe environment," Nagin said. "I understand the spirit that's basically, `I
don't want to abandon my city.' It's OK. Leave for a little while. Let us get you to a better
place. Let us clean the city up."
To that end, the Pentagon began sending 5,000 paratroopers from the Army's storied
82nd Airborne Division to use small boats, including inflatable Zodiac craft, to launch a
new search-and-rescue effort in flooded sections of the city.
Some National Guardsmen and helicopters were diverted from their search missions
Tuesday to fight fires, an emerging threat in a city that is still at least a day and a half
away from restoring the first running water since the storm.
A candle was blamed for starting one major blaze in the lower Garden District -- a
historic neighborhood of mostly wooden homes. The flames started in an abandoned
brick building and spread to a neighboring apartment house. The blazes burned for hours
before Chinook helicopters with water pouches were brought in to fight the blaze.
New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass said lawlessness in the city "has
subsided tremendously," and officers warned that those caught looting in an area where
the governor has declared an emergency can get up to 15 years in prison. About 124
prisoners filled a downtown jail set up at the city's train and bus terminal.
"We continue to get better day by day," Compass said.
The signs of hope came against increasingly angry rhetoric over the federal response as
too little too late. In Washington, congressional leaders planned hearings into the
aftermath of the storm.
"We need to rebuild the confidence of the American people ... in our government's ability
to protect them from attack, whether it comes from nature or from terrorists," said Sen.
Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. "The government simply did not act quickly and effectively
enough."
Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard was even more blunt.
"Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area," he said on CBS'
"Early Show." "Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me
a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the
same idiot."
Five of the 13 sub-basins in New Orleans were still seriously flooded, and barges and
crews were getting into place to fix levee breaches at two other spots -- the London
Avenue canal and the Industrial canal. The London Avenue canal is in the northwestern
section of the city, the Industrial canal in the east.
The Corps is concentrating on the London Avenue canal, where workers will spend at
least two weeks filling a 45-foot hole with rocks and sandbags, Wagenaar said. Once that
drainage canal is fixed, then more pumps can start running.
Before work can even begin on the Industrial canal two barges pushed onto a bridge by
Katrina and a sunken barge need to be removed. The Coast Guard has said 110 barges,
ships and boats sank or ran aground during the storm -- 67 of them in the Mississippi
River, and another 43 along the coast.
The levees were deliberately breached in some spots to let the water flow back out into
Lake Pontchartrain, where the water level had dropped below that inside the city.
How long it takes to drain the city could depend on the condition of the pumps -especially whether they were submerged and damaged, the Corps said. Also, the water is
full of debris, and while there are screens on the pumps, it may be necessary to stop and
clean them from time to time.
"We're working every avenue to do whatever we can to get things back in order," said
Walter Baumy, Corps manager for the project. "We're going to accomplish the mission of
getting the water out of the city."
Lost in the wind
http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/112609107119
5010.xml&coll=7
The spectacular failure of the federal government in the face of Hurricane Katrina
demands a special commission
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Remember that day, after Sept. 11, when President Bush stood on a podium of rubble
speaking into a megaphone, and firefighters, police and other rescuers hollered that they
could not hear him? "I can hear you," the president shouted.
Yet for the longest time this past week, Bush and the government he leads could not seem
to hear the people suffering in New Orleans. Those desperate crowds huddled on what
passed for high ground at the New Orleans convention center needed more than food and
water. They needed leadership.
Bush and leaders of Congress vowed Tuesday to conduct investigations into the bungled
government response to Hurricane Katrina. However, a calamity like this one, with
thousands presumed dead, demands more than congressional hearings and an
administration waking up to take a hard look at itself in the mirror. It requires a special
commission.
Accountability must not be dismissed as a "blame game," and no level of government
should escape scrutiny. The immediate challenge is to pump out the water, bury the dead
and care for the homeless. But the very next step is to get to the bottom of the rescue
fiasco.
What the whole world saw was a government performance reminiscent of the old Soviet
Union, right down to the blundering command, failed communications and
embarrassingly out-of-touch top officials. Trucks full of drinking water were turned
around. Police abandoned their posts. Television viewers sometimes seemed to know
more about the facts on the flooded ground than rescue commanders.
This is in a country that has devoted tens of billions of dollars to prepare for, defend itself
from and respond to disasters. The Department of Homeland Security was supposed to be
the bureaucratic answer for just this kind of catastrophe, a centralized entity that could
bring to bear everything from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the Coast
Guard.
Instead, the response was a second disaster. It was so clumsy that now the administration
is having to fend off claims that its rescue effort was racist. In fact, the poor, mostly black
families of New Orleans were left to the floodwaters, looters, rapists and robbers for
nearly a week not because of their race or their class, but because their government was
disorganized, poorly led and overwhelmed by the catastrophe.
The understandably angry editors at the New Orleans Times-Picayune demanded on
Monday that Bush fire every official at FEMA, starting with Director Mike Brown. This
is the same Mike Brown whom Bush patted on the back last Friday, when thousands of
starving people were still stranded at the convention center, telling him, "Brownie, you're
doing a heck of a job."
It would be temporarily satisfying to see heads roll. But that alone won't make FEMA
prepared the next time a hurricane strikes, a levee breaks or an earthquake strikes. What's
needed is an independent, unblinking examination of what went wrong, who and what is
to blame, and how it must be fixed.
Disaster response is a core function of government, especially now that the nation faces
so many great risks. The next time that Americans shout for help, their government,
including their president, must hear them and come quickly, ably, to the rescue.
Population boom may lead to wild salmon extinction- King County Journal- Sept. 7
http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/216721
GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- Too many people using too much energy and natural resources
make it inevitable that wild Pacific salmon will become extinct over the next century
without a major overhaul in the way people live their lives, a group of 30 scientists,
policy analysts and advocates concluded.
``If you look at the four places on the planet that salmon runs originally occurred -- the
Asian Far East, Europe, Eastern North American and Western North America -- as the
numbers of people increased, the numbers of salmon went down,'' said Robert T. Lackey,
a salmon biologist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Corvallis, Ore., and
one of the organizers of the project. ``You can't have high salmon runs -- wild salmon
runs -- and all these people and their standard of living.''
The Salmon 2100 Project will be presented at the 135th annual meeting of the American
Fisheries Society to be held next week in Anchorage.
Lackey said the project was born over beer and pizza after a scientific conference on
salmon, where he was struck by the ``disconnect'' between the short-term optimism of the
formal presentations during the day, and the long-term pessimism of the informal
discussions in the evening.
``In my opinion, the reason it turned out that way is that in the day you weren't getting at
the core long-term policy drivers,'' he said.
William Rees, a population ecologist at the University of British Columbia who
developed the theory of the ecological footprint, said the extinction of salmon is
inevitable as long as human populations continue to increase, leaving less energy and
resources for all other species, including the fish.
The decline of salmon are a minor regional symptom of a global problem, he added.
``Even if we in the Pacific Northwest come to agreement to slow down our growth, to
totally conserve the remaining primary salmon habitat, if the rest of the world carries on
in its present development path it won't do any good,'' Rees said. ``Because climate
change may result in warming of the North Pacific to the extent that salmon migration
routes and feeding resources are diminished.''
The contributors are primarily scientists from universities and state and federal agencies,
plus a few policy analysts and advocates from environmental groups, a law firm and a
consulting firm.
The project follows a 1991 report by the American Fisheries Society titled Salmon
Crossroads that brought wide public attention to findings that 214 runs of pacific salmon
were in danger of extinction.
``Our goal is that in 2050 or 2100 we don't want somebody to look back and say, `Gee,
we didn't understand what was happening. If somebody told us this was happening we
would have made different policy choices,''' said Lackey. ``If this is the path society is
going down, we want to make sure everybody understands.''
The proposals cover a wide range of new and familiar ideas: imposing an extinction tax
on parties responsible, creating refuges to protect the healthiest runs and their habitat,
converting the primary role of hydroelectric dams from energy production to managing
river flows for salmon, giving up on saving runs too close to extinction, and developing
an ethical standard that makes room for salmon.
Brian Gorman, regional spokesman for NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency in charge of
restoring 25 populations of salmon and steelhead listed as threatened or endangered, said
the wide range of ideas in the Salmon 2100 Project illustrated the complexity of the issue.
``Clearly, if we don't do anything, I think it's accurate to say a number of populations of
salmon will be extinct or close to extinct in 100 years,'' said Gorman.
``That doesn't mean our approach or our efforts are necessarily wrong-headed or not
going to result in recovery,'' he added. ``I am hopeful that when we release our draft
recovery plans and when they become final plans at the end of next year that much of the
work that has to be done will be a little clearer, and the kinds of efforts that local entities
have to embrace will become a lot clearer.''
Memo Tells Story Of FEMA Delays
(Page 1 of 2)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/07/katrina/main821650.shtml
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7, 2005
(CBS/AP) Internal documents which came to light on Tuesday reveal that Federal Emergency Management
Agency director Michael Brown waited until about five hours after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast
before he asked his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security workers to support rescuers in the region.
Brown, in asking Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff to have workers sent to the hurricane zone, is
also said to have given the workers two days to arrive.
With debate over the slow pace of rescue in New Orleans and elsewhere in the Gulf states growing ever
angrier and louder, House leaders met Tuesday night with the Bush cabinet to discuss the situation.
There's been plenty of fingerpointing - much of it aimed at the FEMA and Brown - who some critics want
fired.
Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski says that Brown should step down.
Others are more critical of actions by state and local governments.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay says the House and Senate should conduct a bipartisan investigation
of how local, state and federal governments prepared for and responded to the hurricane.
From early on in the hurricane aftermath, to the current effort to "de-water" New Orleans, evacuate the
thousands who are left, and begin collecting the bodies, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has made it
clear that he believes the federal government could have done a lot more, a lot faster.
"My big question to anybody who's trying to shift the blame is: 'Where were you? Where in the hell were
you?'" says Nagin.
The airline industry says the government's request for help evacuating storm victims didn't come until late
Thursday afternoon. The president of the Air Transport Association, James May, said the Homeland
Security Department called then to ask if the group could participate in an airlift for refugees.
************************************************************************************************************************
CBS National Security Correspondent David Martin reports that while Coast Guard helicopters were
positioned nearby before Katrina hit, and were making rescues two hours after the storm moved on, the
military response was much slower.
"We weren't able to go for 34 hours!" says Col. Tim Tarchick of the Air Force Reserve Command, who told
CBS News that his unit was crippled by red tape. "We could have been airborne in six hours and overhead
plucking out people... but between all the agencies that have a part in the approval process it took 34 hours
to get three of my helicopters airborne."
Fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi were urged by FEMA not to send
trucks or emergency workers into the disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local
governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts.
FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials
acknowledged Tuesday the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged.
(CBS/AP) Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as "this near catastrophic event" but otherwise
lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, "Thank you for your consideration in helping us to
meet our responsibilities."
President Bush and Congress on Tuesday pledged separate investigations into the federal response to
Katrina.
"If the president says we need an investigation, he needs only to look in the mirror," says California
Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader.
Criticism of the Bush administration is not limited to the Democrats.
"Governments at all levels failed," said Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins. "If our system did such a poor
job when there was no enemy, how would the federal, state and local governments have coped with a
terrorist attack?"
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke says as FEMA director, Brown had positioned frontline
rescue teams and Coast Guard helicopters before the storm. Brown's memo on Aug. 29, according to
Knocke, was aimed at assembling a federal work force to support the rescues, establish communications
and coordinate with victims and community groups.
According to Knocke, instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees were to focus on
helping victims find the help they needed.
"There will be plenty of time to assess what worked and what didn't work," says Knocke. "Clearly there will
be time for blame to be assigned and to learn from some of the successful efforts."
Brown's memo told employees that among their duties, they would be expected to "convey a positive image
of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public."
"FEMA response and recovery operations are a top priority of the department and as we know, one of
yours," Brown wrote Chertoff. He proposed sending 1,000 Homeland Security Department employees within
48 hours and 2,000 within seven days.
Knocke says the 48-hour period suggested for the Homeland employees was to ensure they had adequate
training. "They were training to help the lifesavers," Knocke explains.
Employees required a supervisor's approval and at least 24 hours of disaster training in Maryland, Florida or
Georgia.