The large building in this picture is a high school in Plaquemines Parish. My sister was talking to a family who lives near the school, and they told her that the school is not flooded. As you can see from the picture, the building is actually built on top of columns that enable it to survive even extreme flooding.
It seems to me that one of the most important tools for people who live in New Orleans is satellite/aerial photography that they can use to see the state of their residences. I’m trying to compile a list of sites with such photos:
Please post any additional similar links in the comments and I’ll add them to this post.
I honestly didn’t believe it the first time I read it, but apparently it is true that the Red Cross is not allowed to enter New Orleans and provide aid to the people who have not yet been evacuated. And don’t blame the federal government for this one, the order comes down from state officials.
Did you know that Ari Gold, the megalomaniacal agent played by Jeremy Piven on Entourage, is based on Steve Ballmer? Neither did I, until now.
Here’s a picture of swamped school buses in New Orleans. It sure seems to me like officials could have loaded up these school buses with people and evacuated them before the storm, saving a lot of lives and suffering.
Here’s an email sent to my mom by a woman who attends her church. My home town of Orange, Texas is the first exit on Interstate 10 headed west from Lousiana. Nearly all Katrina refugees headed to Texas have passed through there.
I received this, called the chamber and the next group of buses, about 800 people, will arrive around noon today. They have drinks but need food for these people. I will be buying what I can and making peanut butter sandwiches. I figured my money could feed more people on PB. Please read the email below.
I heard assistance was needed at the Texas Welcome Center (TX/LA Border), so I signed up to work the 11 PM to 1 AM shift and recruited my friend Shawn to join me. When we arrived we found out that they had just finished “greeting” 12 bus loads of people that had been evacuated from New Orleans.
We were immediately put to work filling care package bags to be passed out to the next buses that were to follow. All of the items distributed were donations (and mostly from individuals who had found out about the need). Each bag had about 3 snack items (chips, granola, bars, raisins, etc) and one juice bag. We also had fresh fruit and cold drinks to distribute. Donations of diapers, formula, hygiene items and clothing had also been donated and were distributed as needed.
Not long after we finished filling the bags, the buses began to arrive… These people had come straight from New Orleans. Many of them had no shoes and some people had resorted to wearing trash bags as clothing. They gladly accepted any article of clothing they could pull over their bodies. Most of them were shivering and many said their clothes were still wet. The little children look dazed and confused, but still managed to say, “Thank you” when we handed them our little bags of treats. I got in the habit of saying, “Welcome to Texas! We’re glad you made it.” The common response was, “So are we.”
Many were eager to talk about the traumatic events they had been through, but they were given only a short amount of time to take a bathroom break, and receive their care package before they were loaded back on the bus and continued on their journey. Most of them did not know where they were headed and those who thought they were headed to Houston had not yet been told that they were being diverted to Dallas because Houston is now full.
Shawn and I left at 4:00 AM only because we had run out of food. I think we served about 30 bus loads of people (but I honestly lost count). The last bus of people we received were given one zip-lock back of saltine crackers with peanut butter spread on them. It was heart breaking, but at the same time remarkable. One man smiled and said, “This is great… thank so much.” We still had water and drinks to give but not much of anything else left to provide the many buses that were following close behind.
There were about 2 dozen volunteers working while I was there and I understand several others had received many, many buses throughout the afternoon. This effort will continue for the next several days. If you are one of the many people who are looking for a way to help, I recommend that bring ANY TYPE OF DONATION THAT CAN BE DISTRIBUTED TO THE PEOPLE to the Texas Welcome center. They are freezing cold and desperately need shoes, socks, underwear, diapers, depends, sanitary pads, baby wipes, t-shirts, blankets, (beach towels would be great) etc. And if you have an hour (or 4 or 6) to volunteer, I promise you will come away with the gratitude of knowing you have truly helped people in GREAT need.
Food donations are desperately needed. If you have the resources, make a run by the dollar store or Wal-Mart and buy any type individually wrapped snack food. I am sure a cash donation would also be gladly accepted.
For those who have already received several emails from me, I apologize… and promise that this is the last time I will ask you to PLEASE DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO HELP WITH THIS NEED!
Good night (or good morning) and God Bless!
For the past 24 hours or so I’ve been posting about the government response to Hurricane Katrina, mainly because it has disappointed me so. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t also been thinking a lot about the basic humanitarian side of things.
The first time I really teared up was when I started reading the postings about Katrina on the New Orleans and Jackson, Mississippi Craigslist sites on Tuesday. Seeing regular people offer their spare rooms, recreational vehicles, and other accommodations to refugees really touched me. Churches in the areas surrounding New Orleans are full to the brim with refugees, and people are feeding and clothing them as best they can with the resources that they have. See the comment from my mother on this post for a short first hand account of the refugees staying at my family’s church. Universities all over the country are making special accommodations for students from New Orleans. The Washington Post reports that a private construction company stepped in where the Army Corps of Engineers failed to mend the largest breech in the levees around the city.
With all the talk of looting, disorder, and government incompetence, the other story in disasters like this is the basic triumph of the human spirit. People everywhere are going above and beyond the call of duty to care for strangers, just like they do whenever disaster strikes, and it’s hard not to swell up a bit with pride when you think about it. My ideal is that the government would be more of an expression of the fundamental goodness that we are seeing, and I get disappointed when that ideal is not even approached.
I just happened to see live video of FEMA chief Michael Brown pretending to brief President Bush on the current situation in a hangar in Mobile, Alabama. It was just about the most pathetic thing I have ever seen. I hope someone posts the video somewhere, as it was truly a sickening farce. Not least of which because the stuff Brown was telling him was stuff that everybody already knows, but also that it was obviously meant to suggest a level of engagement with the situation that we should simply be able to assume. What is it with this President and pretending to work? He pretended to be a fighter pilot, he pretends to be a ranch worker, and now he has to stand in front of the press and pretend to be getting the situation on the ground from the most incompetent jackass on the planet.
What is with the Bush administration and its inability to plan? Today we have President Bush telling Diane Sawyer that nobody could have anticipated the levees giving out in New Orleans. Leaving aside all the discussion of articles in the New Orleans paper, discussions of past FEMA drills, and other such evidence, this is something that most people knew from simple common sense. As I mentioned the other day, we discussed the implications for New Orleans if the “big one” hit from the time I was a child, just like people discuss the fate of Los Angeles if there’s a major earthquake on the San Andreas Fault.
What this really illustrates is the cost of bad government. New Orleans has been known as a poorly governed city. Louisiana has long been an example of bad state government, and the Bush administration is a pathetic joke. It’s costing lots of people their lives, as the government failed to prepare in advance of the storm and has responded inadequately in the aftermath. Beyond mere partisanship, the most important thing is to elect responsible adults who can and will solve problems. That capability seems to be missing these days.
I can remember some years ago when a hurricane was threatening the area of Texas where we lived. The government called for an evacuation, and followed up by sending in school buses to pick up all of the people who couldn’t get out of town on their own. I doubt they got everyone, but at least they gave it a shot. It turned out that the hurricane missed us entirely, but had it hit, many of the people who are most vulnerable would have been safely out of the way thanks to the local government. How sad it is that the people of New Orleans weren’t given the same benefit.
Update: See Eric Umansky on this topic.
Another update: Tim Naftali has a good piece on the ineffectual response from the government at Slate. In the meantime, US Representative Charles Melancon says that 100 of the 1500 people waiting to be evacuated from Chalmette (in St. Bernard Parish) have died.
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Just so you know
I’m not going to defend state or local officials in Louisiana for their failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina, but I do want to make sure people know that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco did, in fact, declare a state of emergency on August 26. I was outraged to read earlier today that Louisiana still had not declared a state of emergency. It turns out that was a lie put forth by the Bush administration.
My general attitude toward all of the finger pointing going on between Louisiana officials, New Orleans officials, and the federal government is to agree across the board. People have died due to incompetence and malfeasance at every level. But you have to be especially craven to make things up and anonymously tell them to reporters in service of nothing more than covering your own ass and perhaps that of your boss, even as the disaster continues to unfold. The Washington Post should have outed the source when they issued a correction for the article less than 24 hours after it was published.