NY Times article: A Delicate Balance is Undone in a Flash,

[Be Brave]

and a Battered City Waits
September 4, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/national/nationalspecial/04reconstruct.html?pagewanted=print

It's a good read, with a timeline of the disaster, e.g. evacuations, levee breaks, pleas for help, etc.

Ms. Landrieu said she had talked to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, on Tuesday and told him: " 'You remember when I flew over the tsunami with you? This was worse than anything we saw.' He said, 'No, you've got to be kidding.' I said, 'I know it's hard to grasp.' And he said, 'We're on it.' " Mr. Frist's office did not respond to requests for comment.

By Wednesday, with little visible response from the federal government, Ms. Landrieu said that she talked to FEMA officials. "I started to sense they were thinking I was a little overwrought, that maybe I was exaggerating a little bit," she said. When she pressed Mr. Brown on when he was going to finally get buses to pick up the people who had been trapped at the Superdome, "he just mumbled," she said.

Mayor Nagin said that he could not remember whether he spoke to President Bush on Wednesday or Thursday, but that the president acknowledged the federal government could have done more and promised to fix the situation.

By then, the state leaders also had an array of complaints. People were infuriated about the lack of National Guard troops to keep order and end the looting. How could the Corps of Engineers, which builds and takes care of the levees, have not had a contingency plan for dealing with a levee breach, especially in such a critical spot? And each time another federal agency offered to help, FEMA seemed to delay in providing guarantees that it would reimburse them later.

[Erika]

1. W ignored Americans n/t

[Be Brave]

2. More excerpts...

Ms. Landrieu knew how reluctant people could be to leave. This was the first time her own father had ever left during a hurricane. She said in an interview that she knew instantly that thousands who thought they had survived the storm would now be trapped in their houses, racing the rising floodwaters to their second floors, or to their attics or rooftops.

But she and other local officials suddenly faced a new problem: convincing federal officials that just one break in one canal with such a mundane name could bring on a cataclysm.

"I have been with Michael Brown since the minute he landed in this center," Ms. Landrieu said Friday in Baton Rouge, referring to the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, "and I have been telling him from the moment he arrived about the urgency of the situation."

But, she said, "I just have to tell you that he had a difficult time understanding the enormity of the task before us."

Natalie Rule, a spokeswoman for FEMA, disputed Ms. Landrieu's account. "There was no doubt in our minds that a Category 3, 4 or 5 headed for New Orleans was going to be dangerous," Ms. Rule said. She said agency officials told state and local leaders: "We will be there for you. You just go for it. We've got your back."

But if they did, no one knew it. And as the flood-control system broke down, so soon did everything else.

There was no immediate announcement that the levee had been breeched or what it meant, but different people realized at different times that maybe the bullet had not been dodged, after all. The prestorm evacuation, as chaotic as it seemed to anyone stuck on the road, was still part of a plan. Now , a whole new ad hoc stage began.

[opihimoimoi]

4. face it, Brown is a Peter...out of his league, and by now, out of his MIND

[speedoo]

5. Ooooh... I think Mary is gonna kick some ass Sunday morning.

It looks like she certainly has the ammo to do it.

[Be Brave]

3. On the evacuation plan:

Experts disagreed on whether there were adequate evacuation plans for those most in need. Brian Wolshon, an L.S.U. civil engineering professor who consulted on the state evacuation plan, said the city relied almost entirely on a "Good Samaritan scenario," in which residents would check on elderly and disabled neighbors and drive them out of the city if necessary.

Planning was stymied by a shortage of buses, he said. As many as 2,000 buses, far more than New Orleans possessed, would be needed to evacuate an estimated 100,000 elderly and disabled people.

But Chester Wilmot, an L.S.U. civil engineering professor who studies evacuation plans, said the city successfully improvised. He said witnesses described seeing city buses shuttle residents to the Superdome before Hurricane Katrina struck.

"What I've heard is that there were buses, but they weren't very well utilized," Professor Wilmot said. "They literally carried very few people."

The two professors agreed that the evacuation of New Orleans residents with cars went well. They said a new "contraflow plan," which used all lanes of I-10 for outbound traffic, avoided the kind of traffic that snarled during a voluntary evacuation of the city during Hurricane Ivan in 2001.

"What you're going to find is that everyone who wanted to get out, got out," said Professor Wolshon. "Except for the people who didn't have access to transportation."

[aquart]

6. Anyone remember how our embassy behaved after the tsunami?

I seem to recall they were on vacation. And annoyed to be interrupted. Does anyone have a clearer recollection?

BushCo people seem curiously detached from real life. Are they waiting for the mother ship?

[Be Brave]

7. I don't know about the embassy, but Bush was in Crawford for his

holiday vacation. He emerged a few days later to utter some unmemorable words. He was criticized for late and small assistance, then a few days after that he called on Clinton and Papa to leas fund-raising effort. Sound familiar?

[aquart]

8. Yup.

Damn, he's a compassionate conservative.

[Be Brave]

9. Kick for morning coffee. n/t