News Service Histrionics During Crisis - Good or Bad?

[Rebel_RN]

I agree completely with Highlander, now that it's all said and done most people will be screaming injustice at the levees not  being fixed beforehand. Why does it seem that after catastrophe the people who have gone through it tend to have the mind-set that "golly gee no one told me to do that, or no one warned me that this would happen, or jeez no one took me by the hand and explained each step to me in minute detail" When will people truly start to think for themselves and quit pointing fingers and tossing blame to all and sundry for their own shortcomings? Katrina was a horrific catastrophe yes, the biggest catastrophe to come IMHO will be all the accusations and blame games that will be laid at everone else's door because help wasn't there soon enough, the levees weren't fixed, etc. etc...........

 

[SpruceTree]

48highlander and Rebel_RN,
The way I understand it so far, it the Army Corps of Engineers is the body responsible for levee work in NO. ACoE is a federal agency, therefore it draws funding from the federal coffers. As well, NO is one of the United States largest ports and oil import facility. This, IMO, would make it critical national infrastructure and thus should entail some sort of federal responsibility for protection. I don't think Edadian is out of line criticising the Bush administration's budget cuts. This does not mean responsibility falls soley with the federal gov't. I'm sure the lessons' learned from this will be many.

 

[The_Falcon]

Sometimes watching CNN turn out to be benenficial,  yesterday at some point they were talking with a person from the Army Corps of Engineers who helped design the leeves back in the 60s  (I should really learn to write down some names, but oh well).  His opinion of was that even if the budgets hadn't been slashed recently, the only way the leeves would have been able to survive the storm would be if they had started upgrading the system 20 YEARS ago.  (Use google to find the dudes name, or call CNN and ask them) That was his take.  They could have started upgrading five years ago when Dubya came into, and the same thing would still have happened.

 

[Kirkhill]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050905.wxstormevacuate05/BNStory/National/

This is really curious, IF TRUE:

Mr. Anderson had seen lots of storms come and go in his 41 years living in the Big Easy. Katrina was bad, but not the worst he'd seen. It didn't knock a window out of his house. After it fled Louisiana for Mississippi, Mr. Anderson and his neighbours went out on their lawns to compare notes.

"Then we heard a loud boom," says Mr. Anderson, a juvenile detention officer. "We thought it was a generator at first but then we later learned that it was the levee. That someone was trying to put a hole in it to relieve some of the water pressure or divert some water or something and that hole led to a much bigger one.

I wonder if the Boom was just the sound of the levee going or if indeed some engineer was trying to relieve pressure.

 

[DBA]

I would suggest reading more on the levee system and waterways in general for that geographical region before commenting on a few million dollars cut from a budget making any difference at all.

It's pretty obvious with the facts coming out now that city and state officials gambled in not calling for a general evacuation and they lost leading to a massive loss of life. It's pretty much inexcusable in my view to not have at least evacuated the sections of the city most at risk should the levee be breached. Local government sat on it's ass when it should have been bussing people out of the most dangerous areas. Friday before the storm they should have been asking Federal and State governments for assistance in the evacuation for the most at risk areas not just calling a general evacuation sunday.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

I agree, lets see...I'm below sea level and a "storm of the century" is coming.......hmmmm.

 

[tomahawk6]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0902_050902_katrina_levees_2.html

National Geographic story about levee's in both New Orleans and California.