Blessed
By Cicero | Related entries in General Politics, History, Hurricane Katrina
Katrina is a pivotal, historic event. While its cause is natural, its reprocussions will be comparable to 9/11. No — there is no moral equivalence between a natural disaster and the machinations of a fascist suicide cult — but disasters require moral responses. Adversity tests the caliber of nations.
Historical tipping points are often unexpected, coming from nowhere. President Bush has been confronted now with two major jolts that test American mettle. In pre-9/11 times Hurricane Katrina would have spawned a very different political response, such as during the halcyon days of 1992 when Hurricane Andrew hit Florida. Andrew was a disaster, but the political atmosphere was very different then. The country rallied, and the damage was overcome.
Hurricane Katrina is probably more calamitous than Andrew, exacting more death and damage. An entire city appears to be submerged. A large swath of the Gulf Coast is splintered. Our nation’s energy infrastructure is under duress, threatening economic fallout. There’s a potential mass migration of refugees. In the current divisive political atmosphere, Katrina’s aftermath will be a challenge for any president, much less the one we have.
Andrew Sullivan posted a quote yesterday from Editor and Publisher magazine, that gives a hint of the political firestorm to come:
On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps’ project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:
“The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don’t get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can’t stay ahead of the settlement,” he said. “The problem that we have isn’t that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can’t raise them.”
Mr. Sullivan concludes: “Yes, some would even blame Bush and the war for a hurricane. But blaming Bush and the war for the poor state of New Orleans’ levees is a legitimate argument. And it could be a crushing one.”
Crushing, indeed. I have long wondered if this nation has the resources to combat global terrorism, extend democracy abroad, manage the disruption of a descendent Europe, and pay rising costs of buttressing our expanding infrastructure from natural disasters. People who are content to point their fingers at President Bush should reserve a few more fingers for the full gamut of challenges of maintaining a cogent, functioning society in the global age.
It was interesting to note that the Department of Homeland Security has responsibilities in managing Katrina’s aftermath. Homeland Security seemed to be only about fighting terrorism. But I believe the byline to fighting terror is really just that we’re beating back chaos in all forms. Katrina is certainly chaotic. Enter Secretary Michael Chertoff, showing that natural disasters are homeland security issues too.
If people only want this disaster to oscillate with their pet political beefs, then what the heck, I’ll join in the charade: I blame bin Laden. I blame terrorists. I blame Palestinians who claim nationality without responsibility. I blame an intransigent, smug and weak Europe. I blame a thoroughly corrupt UN. I blame Katrina’s wrath on anyone or anything that unnecessarily taxes our nation’s resources, diverting our wealth away from maintaining our own infrastructure. By all means, lets all point fingers now.
Well, let’s not. Let’s get the Gulf Coast back on its feet. We’re all being tested here, not just the storm victims down south. Give to the relief fund of your choice, and take stock in how much you have. We’ve been blessed.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2005 and is filed under General Politics, History, Hurricane Katrina. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 1st, 2005 at 12:31 pm
“It was interesting to note that the Department of Homeland Security has responsibilities in managing Katrina’s aftermath. Homeland Security seemed to be only about fighting terrorism. ”
There’s a lesson for you in the fine art of reading an organizational chart. From the beginning, when DHS was pulled together, FEMA was in the department. That’s all you needed to know about who got the disaster mission in the federal government.
Other changes form that same period of history are that all the National Guards in all the states now have interlocking support agreements, which means that people from almost every state will be going to the region, attached in as members of those states’ Guard, with whatever police powers the states’ constitutions grant.
September 1st, 2005 at 6:38 pm
Cicero writes:
“If people only want this disaster to oscillate with their pet political beefs, then what the heck, I’ll join in the charade: I blame bin Laden. I blame terrorists. I blame Palestinians who claim nationality without responsibility. I blame an intransigent, smug and weak Europe. I blame a thoroughly corrupt UN. I blame Katrina’s wrath on anyone or anything that unnecessarily taxes our nation’s resources, diverting our wealth away from maintaining our own infrastructure. By all means, lets all point fingers now.”
Also, remember that we as people have choices:
-we choose to live near the forest, yet scream for help when the wildfire strikes…
-we choose to live on the faultline, yet scream for help when the big one hits…..
-we choose to live near the riverfront, yet scream for help when the flood hits….
A wise man once told me that when you point your finger at somebody or something else, there are three more fingers pointing back at you.
September 1st, 2005 at 8:06 pm
Hi I am looking for my husbands aunt, Charlotte Marie Odom, 56 years old last seen and heard from in Biloxi/Gulfport the day before Katrina hit. She has crippling arthritis in her hands real bad and last time we saw her she had black hair. All of her family is panicing because we haven’t heard from her.If anyone knows her or of her please contact me at sandywells@frontiernet.net or 251-368-5896 or 251-253-0314.
We here in Atmore, AL are loading an 18 wheeler with water, food,clothes and basic necessities and will be working with the Red Cross to distribute these things somewhere in Mississippi. Not sure of exact location but more help is on the way. We were hit fairly hard during Ivan but it was nothing compared to this and our hearts go out to each and everyone. And you all are in our prayers. But we had help during Ivan aftermath and we wanted to do something to give back atleast a little. Love and prayers to all, Sandy Wells
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:18 am
According to the Chicago Tribune, the levees that broke were those that had already been completed and had no immediate plans for construction. Whether they got additional funds or not, they would have failed anyway simply because they weren’t designed to withstand a category 4 hurricane. To quote:
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday that a lack of funding for hurricane-protection projects around New Orleans did not contribute to the disastrous flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina.
In a telephone interview with reporters, corps officials said that although portions of the flood-protection levees remain incomplete, the levees near Lake Pontchartrain that gave way–inundating much of the city–were completed and in good condition before the hurricane.
However, they noted that the levees were designed for a Category 3 hurricane and couldn’t handle the ferocious winds and raging waters from Hurricane Katrina, which was a Category 4 storm when it hit the coastline. The decision to build levees for a Category 3 hurricane was made decades ago based on a cost-benefit analysis.
“I don’t see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case,” said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the corps. “Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place.”
Strock also denied that escalating costs from the war in Iraq contributed to reductions in funding for hurricane projects in Louisiana, as some critics have suggested. Records show that corps funding for the Louisiana projects has generally decreased in recent years.
Several critics, including a former head of the Corps of Engineers, suggested in a Tribune story Thursday that the flooding in New Orleans could have been less severe had the federal government fully funded projects to improve the levees and drainage in the city.
Congress in 1999 authorized the corps to conduct a $12 million study to determine how much it would cost to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane, but the study isn’t scheduled to get under way until 2006. It was not clear why the study has taken so long to begin, though Congress has only provided in the range of $100,000 or $200,000 a year so far.
Al Naomi, senior project manager in the corps’ New Orleans District, said it would cost as much as $2.5 billion to build such a system, which would likely include gates to block the Gulf of Mexico from Lake Pontchartrain and additional levees. If the project were fully funded and started immediately, Naomi said it could be completed in three to five years.
A project to build up the levees to withstand a Category 3 hurricane was launched in 1965 after Hurricane Betsy and was supposed to be completed in 10 years, but it remains incomplete because of a lack of funding.
End quote.
With the project overdue by 30 years already, I seriously doubt that 3 years of reduced funding was the sole obstacle in the project, and even if it were completed on schedule, a category 4 hurricane lay outside its tolerance parameters. Ultimately, the problem wasn’t that the levees were underfunded; the problem was that they were underengineered, and the project to upgrade them to category-5 resistance wasn’t even planned to begin until next year.