PaPaPeng wrote:

On Sat, 03 Sep 2005 18:18:40 GMT, Shiver
wrote:


This was published in National Geographic in October of 2004. The full
text of the article is available at

http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/



I was in New Orleans for a week in July last year. I read the Nat
Geo when it came out end September but forgot all about it. I had
my full attention on the telly for the past week and while mesmerized
I wasn't surprised. So that's why I had a strange uneasy feeling of
déjà vu about Katrina.

The Nat Geo article is pretty much what the locals said about their
city. There was kind of nonchalance to the effect that "If it happens
it'll happen. But will live through it."

How much more an accurate prediction can you make than


As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground.
Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm,
and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain.
The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over.
Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—
so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly,
over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District,
until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse.
As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.


Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste.
Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease
as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry,
and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment,
a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead.
It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.


And yet when it happened no one was prepared for the consequences.
"Some 200,000 remained, however, the car-less, the homeless, the aged
and infirm, .." makes one ask why wasn't there a plan to evacuate
them. Why wasn't there a plan to house and feed them in the
evacuation zone? Why wasn't there any survival literature on what to
do should they chose to remain and face the flood? . Its obvious that
thousands would remain for the reasons already known.

Something is terribly amiss when disaster management officials could
predict so accurately the consequences of a levee breach, a breach as
a consequence of a devasting storm, and yet no one thought through as
what to do with the people.

Worse, imo. There _was_ a plan...
(repeat quote, in case this posted to misc.rural only didn't reach your
attention)


"Using information developed as part of the Southeast Louisiana
Hurricane Task Force and other research, the City of New Orleans has
established a maximum acceptable hurricane evacuation time standard for
a Category 3 storm event of 72 hours. This is based on clearance time or
is the time required to clear all vehicles evacuating in response to a
hurricane situation from area roadways. Clearance time begins when the
first evacuating vehicle enters the road network and ends when the last
evacuating vehicle reaches its destination.
Clearance time also includes the time required by evacuees to secure
their homes and prepare to leave (mobilization time); the time spent by
evacuees traveling along the road network (travel time); and the time
spent by evacuees waiting along the road network due to traffic
congestion (delay time). Clearance time does not refer to the time a
single vehicle spends traveling on the road network. Evacuation notices
or orders will be issued during three stages prior to gale force winds
making landfall.
Precautionary Evacuation Notice: 72 hours or less
Special Needs Evacuation Order: 8-12 hours after Precautionary
Evacuation Notice issued
General Evacuation Notice: 48 hours or less ”

Special Needs means people in wheelchairs, nursing homes, hospitals, and
without transportation (defined upwards in the plan). that means by LATE
THURSDAY when there was a 70% chance of NO being hit, Nagin had UNDER
HIS OWN PLAN the responsibility to get say, the 80 nursing home
residents who drowned, out of the city and to an evacuation zone. Given
that the plan defines about 100,000 people who meet this criteria the
biggest responsibility for the deaths lies with Ray Nagin (a man whom I
otherwise admire and is basically a Louisiana Republican).
What else can be said?"

SueK