Hurricane Katrina

[Balta1701]

If I'm reading this right...I think we can say precisely why it is the Republicans have increased the size of the Federal Government by 33% in the last 4.5 years since Bush took office. At least 1 Congressional Republican thinks $500,000 is greater than $223 million. Anchorage Daily News.

 

In any case it won't die: the idea that Alaska, to help Hurricane Katrina victims, should forfeit the dough it got in the federal highway bill for the Knik and Gravina bridges.

 

The New York Times: "Surely Rep. Don Young, the Alaska Republican who is chairman of the transportation committee, might put off that $223 million 'bridge to nowhere' in his state's outback. It's redundant now -- Louisiana suddenly has several bridges to nowhere."

 

The Wall Street Journal: "That same half a billion dollars (for the two Alaska bridges) could rebuild thousands of homes for suffering New Orleans evacuees."

 

No doubt to make Alaskans look bad, city leaders in Bozeman, Mont., are investigating whether they can give Katrina victims the $4 million they got in the federal bill for a downtown parking garage.

 

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., raised the charitable pork idea on the Senate floor last week, although he stopped short of endorsing it.

 

So, how about it, Mr. Chairman?

 

"They can kiss my ear!" Young boomed when Sam Bishop, Washington correspondent for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, asked him about the many pleas to redirect the bridge money.

 

"That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Young went on, noting that Louisiana did quite well in his highway bill.

 

And, the congressman said, he helped the seafood industry donate more than $500,000 for hurricane victims. (That was at the "Seafood Invitational," a charity golf tournament Sept. 9 in Roslyn, Wash., Bishop reported Friday.)

 

"I raised enough money to give back to them voluntarily," he said, "and that's it!"

[southsider2k5]

If I'm reading this right...I think we can say precisely why it is the Republicans have increased the size of the Federal Government by 33% in the last 4.5 years since Bush took office.  At least 1 Congressional Republican thinks $500,000 is greater than $223 million.  Anchorage Daily News.

 

A Clinton recession, terrorism, and war will do that to a budget.

 

Also interesting from that article

 

ACCURATE FEMA PREDICTION

 

Katrina, to understate it, was a disaster for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

 

In an interview with The New York Times last week, just-resigned FEMA director Michael Brown told of frantic calls he made to the homeland security secretary and the White House, complaining over and over that he couldn't "get a unified command established" as the storm was bearing down. He said he was hobbled by the limitations on FEMA's power, according to the Times.

 

And who knew that was going to happen? Alaska Congressman Don Young.

 

When the Homeland Security Department was created in 2002, Young warned that burying FEMA in the big department would hurt its ability to respond to natural disasters, because Homeland Security is focused on terrorism.

 

"If FEMA becomes part of the Department of Homeland Security, what will happen to these other important functions?" Young asked fellow Congress members back then. "Will Homeland Security continue to provide disaster relief for hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico ...?? Will they have time to provide accurate flood maps and work with homeowners to mitigate against future flood losses?"

 

Young was criticized at the time for being territorial -- for trying to keep FEMA out of the new department so he, as chairman of the Transportation Committee, could continue to exercise control over it. He said he just wanted to make sure FEMA, which used to be a Cabinet-level agency, kept its clout and focus.

 

"There is tremendous concern that the (Homeland Security) bill as introduced will create a great deal of bureaucratic chaos and inaction," he said at the time.

 

There were SIX THOUSAND items added by congressmen to the Highway Bill. Even worse than things like bridges to no where were items that had NOTHING to do with easing traffic flow such as these...

 

$2.3 million for the beautification of the Ronald Reagan Freeway in California; $6 million for graffiti elimination in New York; nearly $4 million on the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio, and the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.; $2.4 million on a Red River National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center in Louisiana; and $1.2 million to install lighting and steps and to equip an interpretative facility at the Blue Ridge Music Center, to name a few.

 

Those over 6000 items that were added to the Highway Bill were worth $24 billion ALONE, which would supply potentially 15% or so of the expected cost of Katrina. That isn't even touching any other of the wasteful bills and budgets that exsist out there.

[southsider2k5]

Rita's approach has suspended Mayor Nagins plan for returning to New Orleans.

 

NEW ORLEANS -- Bars, restaurants and shops had just begun showing signs of life when the mayor suspended the reopening of the city and ordered nearly everyone to leave town again as a new tropical storm headed toward the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The call for another evacuation came after repeated warnings from top federal officials -- including President Bush himself -- that New Orleans was not safe enough to reopen. Federal officials warned that Tropical Storm Rita could breach the city's weakened levees and swamp New Orleans all over again.

 

Although Mayor Ray Nagin backed off his plan to begin readmitting residents to parts of the city, a rift between local and federal officials remained.

 

On Tuesday, Nagin had harsh words for the federal government's top official in the city, Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, who he said "stepped outside his lane by talking directly to the citizens of New Orleans."

 

"I respect what federal officials are doing down here, but they do not fully comprehend what it's like to lose your home, to lose everything and not know and to be sitting out there for three weeks. So I think it's important for people to come back and at least take a look," Nagin said on NBC's "Today" show.

 

Nagin said he does not believe officials will have to enforce the renewed evacuation order. But some business owners who started selling cleaning supplies and serving po' boys said they wanted to stay put.

 

Del Juneau, owner of a Bourbon Street lingerie shop in the once-raucous French Quarter, said it would be premature to order another evacuation based on the storm nearing Florida. "Where are you going to go? What are you going to do?" he said. "I'm not going anywhere."

 

The president was scheduled to make his fifth trip to the Hurricane Katrina zone on Tuesday to get an on-the-ground briefing on the cleanup and visit a business trying to get back on its feet.

 

The death toll in Louisiana jumped by 90 to 736 on Monday, as receding floodwaters allowed search crews to reach more of the city's devastated neighborhoods. The toll across the Gulf Coast was 973.

 

The mayor reversed course even as residents began trickling back to the first neighborhood opened as part of his plan, the lightly damaged Algiers section.

 

"Now we have conditions that have changed. We have another hurricane that is approaching us," Nagin said Monday. He warned that the city's pumping system was not yet running at full capacity and that the levees were still very weak.

 

Nagin ordered residents who slipped back into the still-closed parts of the city to leave immediately. He also urged everyone already settled back into Algiers to be ready to evacuate as early as Wednesday.

 

The city requested 200 buses to assist in an evacuation. They would start running 48 hours before landfall from the downtown convention center and a stadium in Algiers.

 

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, in a televised address Monday, urged residents of coastal southwestern Louisiana also to make preparations to leave.

 

"We will pray that Rita will not devastate Louisiana, but today we do not know the answer to that question," Blanco said.

 

Tropical Storm Rita was headed toward the Florida Keys and was expected to become a hurricane, cross the Gulf of Mexico and reach Texas or Mexico by the weekend. But forecasters said it also could veer toward Louisiana.

 

"We're watching Tropical Storm Rita's projected path and, depending on its strength and how much rain falls, everything could change," said Col. Duane Gapinski of the Army Corps of Engineers task force that is draining New Orleans and repairing the levees.

 

Brig. Gen. Robert Crear said the Corps hopes to have the levees back to being capable of handling a Category 3 storm by June, the start of the next hurricane season.

 

Under the mayor's original plan, the Garden District, the French Quarter and Uptown were supposed to reopen one ZIP code at a time between Wednesday and next Monday, bringing about 180,000 of New Orleans' half-million inhabitants back.

 

The dispute over the reopening was just the latest example of the lack of federal-local coordination that has marked the disaster practically from the start.

 

Nagin saw a quick reopening as a way to get the storm-battered city back in the business of luring tourists. But federal officials warned that such a move could be a few weeks premature, pointing out that much of the area does not yet have full electricity and still has no drinkable water, 911 service or working hospitals.

 

With the approach of Rita, the president added his voice, saying he had "deep concern" about the possibility that New Orleans' levees could be breached again.

 

"The mayor -- you know, he's got this dream about having a city up and running, and we share that dream," Bush said. "But we also want to be realistic about some of the hurdles and obstacles that we all confront in repopulating New Orleans."

 

About 20 percent of the city is still flooded, down from a high of about 80 percent after Katrina, and the water was expected to be pumped out by Sept. 30.

[Texsox]

Well, just call it a guess, but I believe we'll be needing some oil in a decade.  But I could be wrong.  And for the oil companies wanting to drill in other areas, wtf is wrong with that?  We need oil, they are in business to supply it to us.  When 25% of our domestic oil comes from one geographic area, and it gets hammered with a natural disater, it seems diversity in location just might be a good idea.

 

There are economic concerns as well. If this is $100 a barrel oil based on the logistics of getting it to market, will it be viable? There are some places that it just doesn't make sense to drill. Easy example, 1 mile from the water intake for Chicago, where a spill would result in the city having no clean water. So the oil for profit companies do need to be held in check for the public's greater good.

[Texsox]

Looking at the weather map all I can think of is Rita, nothing can come between us.

[southsider2k5]

Looking at the weather map all I can think of is Rita, nothing can come between us.

 

I just hope she doesn't tow your heart away...

[Texsox]

I just hope she doesn't tow your heart away...

 

I just wonder about those standing by a parking meter.

[southsider2k5]

I just wonder about those standing by a parking meter.

 

Especially those that look like military men

[Balta1701]

Balta, I had a question.  There's a lot of yahoos talking about heat extraction of oil from oil shale rock finally being technically feasible, if not yet economically so.  Of course I hope they never try this on a commercial scale since it will be the beginning of the end of a lot of relatively intact hatural habitat out west.  But when the oil yahoos hear stats that note we have like half the world's oil shale deposits, and that there are billions of gallons of oil locked up in the shale (regardles of theimpractibility of extraction), they start to hatch some wild schemes.

 

What's your professional take?  Is big energy going to turn more attention to the shale, other than the pilot heat-extraction studies that have been carried out so far?

It is actually technically feasible...but the cost per barrel is prohibitive. Right now, the cost of producing 1 barrel of oil from oil shale is about $100-$125, depending on who's process you're using and what your source rock is.

 

Think of it this way...to generate oil, what you need to do is take oil shale, bury it, expose it to slightly elevated temperatures, and let it decay. As time goes on, the oil that we know and love comes off of it as the organic matter itself decays.

 

In order to process oil shale into fuel...we're basically taking the step that was formerly done by the Earth and having to do it ourselves. So in other words, there's a hell of a lot more processing done, and it takes a hell of a lot more energy to produce 1 barrel of oil. Therefore, the costs go up dramatically, and it becomes economically difficult to pull it off.

 

Furthermore, this doesn't even begin to take into account the environmental problems associated with processing oil shale. Because it consumes quite a bit of energy in the refining process, plants that refine the stuff release a huge amount of pollution. On top of that, because the material they're processing hasn't gone through the natural refining step, you wind up with almost every possible impurity showing up in the material you're processing. Something has to be done with these impurities - most notably sulfur, but also nitrogen, sand, etc. When you process this stuff, you release a huge amount of sulfuric acid, nitric acid, other pollutants. And even on top of that, it's basically strip-mining on a massive scale, so you're also destroying a mountain and exposing everything in the mountain to air, which can create further problems.

 

As a stop gap solution, oil shale might be able to buy you a few years after peak oil production arrives. But It's going to cost you a ton to do it, and the environmental impact will be huge.

[southsider2k5]

An intesting spin on racism in the response to Katrina.

 

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?acti...PARKER-09-16-05

 

The truth about black poverty today, as Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute has aptly put it, is that it is "intricately intertwined with the collapse of the nuclear family in the inner city."

 

Consider that black households that are headed by married couples have median incomes almost 90 percent that of white households headed by married couples.

 

The problem in the black community is that far too few black households are headed by married couples.

 

Black social reality in New Orleans at the moment when the floodwaters started pouring in was fairly typical of black inner-city social reality around the country. Upwards of 70 percent of the households were headed by single parents, mostly women.

 

Now realize that the writer of this column was black and it puts a different spin on it.

[Balta1701]

Here's a new part of the "why weren't the New Orleans buses used" question that I haven't heard before...Link

 

Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina raged ashore, Gov. Kathleen Blanco still wants one question answered.

 

Where were the buses?

 

Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.

 

On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.

 

Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said.

 

During the delay, misery and mayhem mounted in the Dome, thousands gathered in desperation at the nearby convention center, and Americans watched in shock as dead and dying New Orleans residents were broadcast on national television.

 

The state had sent 68 school buses into the city on Monday.

 

Blanco took over more buses from Louisiana school systems and sent them in on Wednesday, two days after the storm. She tapped the National Guard to drive them. Each time the buses emptied an area, more people would appear, she said.

 

The buses took 15,728 people to safety, a Blanco aide said. But the state's fleet of school buses wasn't enough. On Wednesday, with the FEMA buses still not in sight, Blanco called the White House to talk to Bush and ended up speaking to Chief of Staff Andy Card.

 

"I said, 'Even if we had 500 buses, they've underestimated the magnitude of this situation, and I think I need 5,000 buses, not 500,'" Blanco recounted.

 

"'But, Andy, those 500 are not here,'" the governor said.

 

Card promised to get Blanco more buses.

 

Later Wednesday night, Blanco walked into the State Police Communications Center and asked if anyone knew anything about the buses.

 

An officer told her the buses were just entering the state.

 

"I said, 'Do you mean as in North Louisiana, which is another six hours from New Orleans?,'" Blanco recalled in the interview. "He said, 'Yes, m'am.'"

 

It was at that point, Blanco said, that she realized she had made a critical error.

 

"I assumed that FEMA had staged their buses in near proximity," she said. "I expected them to be out of the storm's way but accessible in one day's time."

 

It was late Wednesday. The buses wouldn't get to New Orleans until Thursday. By then, many of the sickest and the weakest were dead or dying.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Furthermore, this doesn't even begin to take into account the environmental problems associated with processing oil shale.  Because it consumes quite a bit of energy in the refining process, plants that refine the stuff release a huge amount of pollution.  On top of that, because the material they're processing hasn't gone through the natural refining step, you wind up with almost every possible impurity showing up in the material you're processing.  Something has to be done with these impurities - most notably sulfur, but also nitrogen, sand, etc.  When you process this stuff, you release a huge amount of sulfuric acid, nitric acid, other pollutants.  And even on top of that, it's basically strip-mining on a massive scale, so you're also destroying a mountain and exposing everything in the mountain to air, which can create further problems.

 

As a stop gap solution, oil shale might be able to buy you a few years after peak oil production arrives.  But It's going to cost you a ton to do it, and the environmental impact will be huge.

 

Thanks for the overview. It pretty much confirmed that trying to extract oil from shale on a large scale would be the eco-nightmare I imagined it would be. Sadly, however, there is going to come a time soon when $100-125/barrel is not cost prohibitive anymore. And if they can improve the process just a bit it will look even more favorable to the "it's ours so why shouldn't we use it?" yahoos.

[Texsox]

I was just thinking, in all this talk about readiness to respond, has anyone considered that some disasters are on a scale that we could never be ready for? Maybe we can't make every situation come out happy for everyone. Maybe there truly isn't anything we can do to stop every conceivable catastrophe from happening.

[FlaSoxxJim]

I was just thinking, in all this talk about readiness to respond, has anyone considered that some disasters are on a scale that we could never be ready for? Maybe we can't make every situation come out happy for everyone. Maybe there truly isn't anything we can do to stop every conceivable catastrophe from happening.

*sigh* Makes you feel so, sort of, insignificant, doesn't it?

 

Yeah, yeah. . . Can we have your liver, then?

 

[Rex Hudler]

I was just thinking, in all this talk about readiness to respond, has anyone considered that some disasters are on a scale that we could never be ready for? Maybe we can't make every situation come out happy for everyone. Maybe there truly isn't anything we can do to stop every conceivable catastrophe from happening.

 

In all honesty, that is how I have viewed this from the beginning. In some situations, no amount of preparedness can assure orderly execution of the plan. Sometimes, situations are so big, that chaos naturally ensues.

[FlaSoxxJim]

In all honesty, that is how I have viewed this from the beginning.  In some situations, no amount of preparedness can assure orderly execution of the plan.  Sometimes, situations are so big, that chaos naturally ensues.

Spoken like a true Sox Fan in September. . .

[Balta1701]

I was just thinking, in all this talk about readiness to respond, has anyone considered that some disasters are on a scale that we could never be ready for? Maybe we can't make every situation come out happy for everyone. Maybe there truly isn't anything we can do to stop every conceivable catastrophe from happening.

The magnitude 9+ earthquake in the Pacific Northwest (directly under Seattle and Portland) and associated tsunami (last one 300+ years ago killed people in Japan) which is entirely possible at any time would be on that scale.

 

Another Earthquake on the New Madrid fault line, right in the middle of the Ohio Valley, would do the same, since there's been basically no preparation for it. One of those could critically damage Chicago.

 

And then of course, there's the ol' terrorist with a fission device.

[fathom]

The magnitude 9+ earthquake in the Pacific Northwest (directly under Seattle and Portland) and associated tsunami (last one 300+ years ago killed people in Japan) which is entirely possible at any time would be on that scale.

 

Another Earthquake on the New Madrid fault line, right in the middle of the Ohio Valley, would do the same, since there's been basically no preparation for it.  One of those could critically damage Chicago.

 

And then of course, there's the ol' terrorist with a fission device.

 

Or just a big f***ing asteroid in the sky. Hopefully Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck can save us!

[Balta1701]

In all honesty, that is how I have viewed this from the beginning.  In some situations, no amount of preparedness can assure orderly execution of the plan.  Sometimes, situations are so big, that chaos naturally ensues.

The remarkable thing about this post is that it illustrates exactly why a well-run FEMA is such a necessity.

 

In any disaster the scale of Katrina or larger, there is going to be a nearly complete breakdown of any order that can be provided by local and state authorities. They are simply going to be overwhelmed. Policemen may lose their homes, they may even be killed. People with guns will start doing stupid things. Communication lines may be cut. Supply lines may be cut. Evacuees will be competing with looters for space on the roads. Hospitals may be damaged or even out of commission. Doctors will spend days doing black trioge (done at the airport in NOLA for about 1 week after the storm).

 

This is where FEMA, if run properly, can be vital. FEMA can marshall the resources of the Federal government, which simply cannot be matched by any state or local authority. They can bring in resources from outside the disaster area. But most important of all...they can give orders that everyone will listen to, because those orders are coming basically from the President. They can give orders to the Guard, the military, the local law enforcement, relief agencies, and everything else.

 

That's why a working FEMA should be such a priority...it's job should be to be a voice cutting through the confusion.

[Balta1701]

Or just a big f***ing asteroid in the sky.  Hopefully Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck can save us!

Happily...with most of those, at this point we'll have a few decades worth of warning before they hit. At least the ones that can do real, major damage.

[YASNY]

The remarkable thing about this post is that it illustrates exactly why a well-run FEMA is such a necessity.

 

In any disaster the scale of Katrina or larger, there is going to be a nearly complete breakdown of any order that can be provided by local and state authorities.  They are simply going to be overwhelmed.  Policemen may lose their homes, they may even be killed.  People with guns will start doing stupid things.  Communication lines may be cut.  Supply lines may be cut.  Evacuees will be competing with looters for space on the roads.  Hospitals may be damaged or even out of commission.  Doctors will spend days doing black trioge (done at the airport in NOLA for about 1 week after the storm).

 

This is where FEMA, if run properly, can be vital.  FEMA can marshall the resources of the Federal government, which simply cannot be matched by any state or local authority.  They can bring in resources from outside the disaster area.  But most important of all...they can give orders that everyone will listen to, because those orders are coming basically from the President.  They can give orders to the Guard, the military, the local law enforcement, relief agencies, and everything else.

 

That's why a working FEMA should be such a priority...it's job should be to be a voice cutting through the confusion.

 

Which in itself is playing a very dangerous game. FEMA, if it declares martial law, basically makes the constitution null and void. FEMA has to have it's checks and balances as well as the federal govt.

[Texsox]

I also think we have come to believe that nothing is impossible for America. I love that. Despite how badly we executed in New Orleans, I have no doubt that the nest one will be better, and the one after that even better.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Despite how badly we executed in New Orleans, I have no doubt that the nest one will be better, and the one after that even better.

 

Damn, man. How many times do you want New Orleans to be hit?!?

[Texsox]

Damn, man.  How many times do you want New Orleans to be hit?!? 

 

Thank you for making me look evil.

[southsider2k5]

See video of casino barge impolsion