Hurricane Katrina

[Rex Hudler]

That's odd, I don't see any dog, either.

 

Nor do I......... which is why I don't make assuptions as to its meaning.

[Mercy!]

Nor do I.........  which is why I don't make assuptions as to its meaning.

 

Well, okay, I guess you must be right. But could you try a little test first?

 

Pick out a few people – your mother, father, your wife or girlfriend, your boss, the loudmouth behind you in the movie theater. Go ahead, interrupt what they’re saying with a really forceful “SHUT UP b****!!!”

 

Come on now, no trying out that line "b**** is used in many ways," or pretending that you’re talking to your cocker spaniel as you let ‘em have it. After you're discharged from the ER, can you come back and let us know what those folks ASSUMED you meant?

 

Peace and love.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Do you people realize that you've hijacked the thread with about a dozen meaningless posts about my avatar?!

 

 

WOWZERS!!!

[southsider2k5]

Congressman uses National Guard to check on house

[Steff]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9337631/

 

 

So I guess the hospitals will also be charged. :headshake

[Balta1701]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9337631/

So I guess the hospitals will also be charged.  :headshake

So if people did die because of the delayed federal response, and the President says "He takes responsibility" for that poor response...shouldn't there be involuntary manslaughter charges a-comin'? I mean, the man just confessed!

 

How does one do half-sarcasm in color?

[tonyho7476]

So if people did die because of the delayed federal response, and the President says "He takes responsibility" for that poor response...shouldn't there be involuntary manslaughter charges a-comin'?  I mean, the man just confessed!

 

How does one do half-sarcasm in color?

 

Every other letter in green.

Edited September 14, 2005 by tonyho7476

[Balta1701]

Congressman uses National Guard to check on house

Interestingly enough, that same Congressman had his homes in New Orleans and D.C. Raided by the Feds as part of some sort of criminal investigation, the details of which we still don't know.

 

Supposedly, from the house he retrieved:

 

a laptop computer, three suitcases, and a box about the size of a small refrigerator, which the enlisted men loaded up into the truck.

Anyone want to engage in idle speculation about the backstory here?

[southsider2k5]

A man was rescued from his home emaciated and dehydrated after 16 days. Officials were amazed he was still alive.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050914/wl_af...er_050914172358

[WilliamTell]

A man was rescued from his home emaciated and dehydrated after 16 days.  Officials were amazed he was still alive.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050914/wl_af...er_050914172358

 

16 days??? That's insane, but very awesome. That's so cool that they're finding people alive.

[Balta1701]

16 days??? That's insane, but very awesome. That's so cool that they're finding people alive.

Not only that, but had the California National Guard (the people who found him) followed the orders from FEMA...the guy would never have been found. OC Register...Registration Required.

 

This was just another body in the growing number of bodies that they encounter every day.

 

A human foot arching at an odd angle was visible through the front window of a locked and dark home.

 

The National Guard team of searchers was about to call in a "DB," or dead body, at 1927 Lopez St. in the Broadmoor district when Lt. Frederick Fell decided to investigate.

 

In the past few days, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has ordered searchers not to break into homes. They are supposed to look in through a window and knock on the door. If no one cries out for help, they are supposed to move on. If they see a body, they are supposed to log the address and move on.

 

The morticians will remove the deceased later.

 

But Fell broke the rules and ordered his men to bash open the door, launching a series of events that would save a man's life and revitalize California Task Force 5 from Orange County. In the past two days, the 80-member task force had identified seven dead bodies in the same neighborhood, and they had rescued no one.

 

But Tuesday, 16 days after Hurricane Katrina smacked this aging community in the face, an unconscious and emaciated man identified as Edgar Hollingsworth, 74, was rescued. The man is expected to survive.

 

Hollingsworth had been lying naked on his blue-green couch. It was unclear if he had eaten or drunk anything for several days. He was not surrounded by food or water containers. His house was still in disarray from the storm. A chair had landed on top of the kitchen table. Medical vials with the name Lillian Hollingsworth were lying on an easy chair on the other side of the room.

 

A pit-bull puppy was also pulled from the house. It appeared to be healthy and was transported to the hospital along with Edgar Hollingsworth.

 

The rescue pumped up the spirits of Task Force 5, which has been mostly marking the locations of bodies for the last week. Earlier, they had been frustrated when FEMA delayed their deployment for four days, housing them in the Hyatt Regency in Dallas.

 

They were frustrated further when they were given the FEMA order that they weren't allowed to force their way into houses to search them. They hope Hollingsworth's rescue will coax FEMA to rethink its directive.

[southsider2k5]

Not only that, but had the California National Guard (the people who found him) followed the orders from FEMA...the guy would never have been found.  OC Register...Registration Required.

 

The interesting thing to see would be how many people died because groups who weren't following orders and instead were breaking into peoples houses to check on dead bodies, meanwhile having people who needed rescuing die waiting to get it, because they wasted precious time with people who were already dead. But I guess there isn't really a way to quantify that.

 

I would be curious to hear more about why they decided to break into this particular guys house if he gave no real indications of being alive.

[LosMediasBlancas]

How is Ophelia doing? Hit land yet?

[Steff]

As if they don't have enough problems...

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9316512/

 

Katrina victims face identity crisis

With vital records under water, proving they're themselves can be difficult

[Steff]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9339191/

 

 

Katrina floods wipe out years of research

Work on heart disease, cancer, AIDS, other ailments may be lost forever

 

Updated: 1:15 p.m. ET Sept. 14, 2005

As rising floodwaters swamped New Orleans, Louisiana’s chief epidemiologist enlisted state police on a mission to break into a high-security government lab and destroy any dangerous germs before they could escape or fall into the wrong hands.

 

Armed with bolt cutters and bleach, Dr. Raoult Ratard’s team entered the state’s so-called “hot lab,” and killed all the living samples.

 

“This is what had to be done,” said Ratard, who matter-of-factly put a sudden end to his lab’s work on dangerous germs, which he wouldn’t name.

 

At least Ratard’s team was able to retrieve laptop computers containing vital scientific data. Many other scientists in the region weren’t so fortunate, losing years of research, either through storm damage or voluntary destruction.

 

Not since the torrential floods from Tropical Storm Allison, which badly damaged the Texas Medical Center in 2001, has scientific research been disrupted on such a large scale. Doctors and researchers in the Crescent City became exiles overnight, indefinitely locked out of their labs and unable to see patients.

 

Thousands of laboratory animals — many genetically engineered with human diseases like cancer and painstakingly bred and cared for — perished along with vital tissue samples thawed in abandoned labs.

 

'It's irreplaceable'

Important work on heart disease, cancer, AIDS and a host of other ailments may be lost forever to scientists at Tulane and Louisiana State universities’ medical schools in New Orleans.

 

LSU lost all of its 8,000 lab animals, including mice, rats, dogs and monkeys. Many drowned. Others died without food and water and the rest were euthanized, said Dr. Larry Hollier, dean of the LSU Health Sciences Center School of Medicine.

 

About 300 federally funded projects at New Orleans colleges and universities worth more than $150 million — including 153 projects at Tulane — were affected in some way, according to an initial survey by the National Institutes of Health.

 

One of the biggest blows is the likely destruction of frozen urine and blood samples from thousands of patients enrolled in the Bogalusa Heart Study, the world’s longest-running racial study of risk factors for heart disease.

 

Samples collected and frozen since 1973 thawed out when the hurricane knocked out electricity and backup generators failed at a Tulane lab in New Orleans.

 

“It’s irreplaceable. That’s decades of research,” aid Dr. Paul Whelton, senior vice president for health sciences at Tulane. “It makes you want to cry.”

 

If the blood and urine samples are damaged or contaminated, future tests can’t be done using them. However, Bogalusa’s chief researcher, Tulane cardiologist Dr. Gerald Berenson said he had analyzed much of the data already collected and saved it on his computer, which was not damaged.

 

“The Bogalusa Heart Study will go on,” said Berenson who visited New Orleans, but not his lab, on Tuesday. “We’ll just have to pick up the pieces from what we have.”

 

Dangerous germs not released

Tulane cancer specialist Dr. Tyler Curiel was one of the few researchers who decided to ride out the hurricane in New Orleans in an effort to salvage decades worth of research.

 

After the storm passed, Curiel spent the first few days transferring vials from broken freezers to liquid nitrogen tanks with the help of a flashlight.

 

He later fled to his in-laws’ house in Denver and then returned to his lab for a day, grabbing whatever he could in an effort to save blood and tissue samples from an ongoing ovarian cancer project.

 

But he had to leave most of his experiments behind.

 

“This is a dramatic blow to our research,” said Curiel, who plans to temporarily relocate his lab to the University of Alabama in Birmingham. “My researchers are scattered across the country and our facilities are still contaminated.”

 

One thin silver lining to all the lab damage: It appears that no deadly diseases were released from the area’s “hot labs,” where researchers routinely handle and store some of the world’s most dangerous germs.

 

In Covington, just north of New Orleans, Tulane’s high-security National Primate Research Center reported only minor damage and said none of its 5,000 research animals escaped.

 

Ratard, the state epidemiologist, said the lab he returned to appeared undamaged and untouched by looters. He wouldn’t disclose what germs the laboratory was working on when Katrina struck.

 

All the labs in Katrina’s path that handle bioweapons defense research involving pathogens such as anthrax reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that their security wasn’t compromised, according to CDC spokesman Von Roebuck. “A few reported minor damage, but there was no issue of escape.”

[Steff]

Oh how sweet... :headshake

 

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachus..._boston?mode=PF

 

 

Student displaced by Hurricane Katrina stabbed in Boston

September 14, 2005

 

BOSTON --Two Loyola University students attending classes at Boston College after their school was shut down by Hurricane Katrina were stabbed on a Boston street early Wednesday morning.

 

Joseph Vairo, 19, was in serious condition at Beth Israel Hospital after being stabbed twice, Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn said. An unidentified 20-year-old was treated and released. Vairo is originally from Holden.

 

The students -- among 150 from Loyola and Tulane University who are temporarily attending Boston College -- got into an argument with five men at 1:30 a.m. outside a Store 24 in Cleveland Circle, said Officer Mike McCarthy, a Boston police spokesman.

 

They walked away, but were attacked moments later, McCarthy and Dunn said. McCarthy said there have been no arrests, and that witnesses were being interviewed.

 

"It's clear that they were the victims here," Dunn said.

 

Vairo was stabbed "multiple times" in the "left and right chest area," Dunn said.

 

"His condition is stable and he is improving," Dunn said at midday Wednesday.

 

The other student's name was withheld pending notification of his family in Oakland. He suffered lacerations and a broken nose, Dunn said.

 

It was not immediately known if the students had been in the New Orleans area when Katrina struck. On Sept. 6, they began attending classes at Boston College, one of many schools around the country that reached out to displaced students.

 

"They have been most grateful for the opportunity to study here while their universities are closed and had been widely embraced by the Boston College community, which is why this random and unusual act of violence is so upsetting," Dunn said.

 

Loyola, located in Alexandria, La., is closed for the fall semester. The school's Web site said the campus suffered only minor physical damage and will reopen for the spring semester.

 

A spokeswoman for Loyola could not be immediately reached for comment.

 

A call to the Vairo family in Holden was not immediately returned.

 

The two victims were living off campus, although most displaced students are on campus. After the hurricane, the city of Boston approved an emergency permit to allow Boston College to house 100 displaced students in a building it recently purchased from the Archdiocese of Boston.

 

"It's a very safe area, that's why it's all so surprising and upsetting to us," Dunn said of Cleveland Circle.

[Balta1701]

How is Ophelia doing? Hit land yet?

[Balta1701]

Yeah, because The last thing we'd ever want in response to Katrina is an independent investigation.

 

Senate Republicans on Wednesday scuttled an attempt by Sen. Hillary Clinton to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to Hurricane Katrina.

 

The New York Democrat's bid to establish the panel - which would have also made recommendations on how to improve the government's disaster response apparatus - failed to win the two-thirds majority needed to overcome procedural hurdles. Clinton got only 44 votes, all from Democrats and independent Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont. Fifty-four Republicans all voted no.

 

Now let's cover this really quickly...Senate Democrats vote unanimously in favor of an independent investigation where both sides would have subpoena power and where failures all around could be investigated.

 

Republicans veto that in favor of a Congressional investigation, where only the majority party has any sort of subpoena power or ability to decide what is investigated.

 

You tell me which side is trying to cover their arses.

[JUGGERNAUT]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I vote for the least cost approach.

[SoxFan1]

Well, okay, I guess you must be right.  But could you try a little test first?

Pick out a few people – your mother, father, your wife or girlfriend, your boss, the loudmouth behind you in the movie theater.  Go ahead, interrupt what they’re saying with a really forceful  “SHUT UP b****!!!”

 

Come on now, no trying out that line "b**** is used in many ways," or pretending that you’re talking to your cocker spaniel as you let ‘em have it.  After you're discharged from the ER, can you come back and let us know what those folks ASSUMED you meant?

 

Peace and love.

 

This post has been edited by the Soxtalk staff to remove objectionable material. Soxtalk encourages a free discussion between its members, but does not allow personal attacks, threats, graphic sexual material, nudity, or any other materials judged offensive by the Administrators and Moderators. Thank you.

Edited September 15, 2005 by Heads22

[Balta1701]

Greenpeace Press Release:

 

'WASHINGTON - Newly released satellite image maps taken since Hurricane Katrina show large oil slicks in the Gulf of Mexico.  The images, which were made  public today by Greenpeace and satellite imagery experts at SkyTruth.org, indicate that large oil spills are coming from multiple sources, including spills originating from known oil platform locations.  Some of these slicks are just a few miles offshore and the larger ones are 30-40 miles in length.

 

'These images appear to illustrate a substantial and ongoing problem that has not yet been addressed," said John Coequyt, Greenpeace's Energy Policy Specialist.  "The energy industry has been silent on the condition of its offshore oil rigs, platforms and

pipelines, focussing instead on oil supply and capitalizing on the national tragedy of Hurricane Katrina to push for expanded oil and gas drilling."

 

'On September 6, Rebecca Watson, Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management at the Department of Interior stated, "We are pleased that in the aftermath of Katrina, there have been no reported significant oil spills from production," in testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Natural Resources....

 

'Last week, more than 100 companies sent a letter to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and other Republican leaders, asking Congress to open up coastal areas in other parts of the country for offshore oil and gas exploration.'

 

The satellite image maps are here.

Edited September 15, 2005 by Balta1701

[southsider2k5]

CNBC was talking about 6-7 major oil slicks days ago.

[Texsox]

With people stranded and dying, the oil slicks are not a high priority. I'm as much of an environmental wacko as they come, and even I can see that. There are groups monitoring the beaches here, looking for signs of oil.

 

This tragedy will ripple out for quite a while longer I fear.

[Balta1701]

With people stranded and dying, the oil slicks are not a high priority. I'm as much of an environmental wacko as they come, and even I can see that. There are groups monitoring the beaches here, looking for signs of oil.

 

This tragedy will ripple out for quite a while longer I fear.

I was hoping we were past the stranded and dying stage.

[FlaSoxxJim]

With people stranded and dying, the oil slicks are not a high priority. I'm as much of an environmental wacko as they come, and even I can see that.

 

I agree, but that hasn't stopped Big Oil's lobbyists from exploiting this national tradegy to their own ends, both as justification for future price increases and as a reason to pursue more drilling in other areas.

 

If anything, this should serve as strong evidence that no matter what promises the oil companies give that there will be no environmental impact from their operations, the reality of unforseen events (natural and manmade) is an entirely different matter.