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September 03, 2005

Message from the front

I ran across this elsewhere on the Internet and thought it was interesting enough to post. Apologies for the length, but I can't really link to its original location, as it was buried in a message board thread that was approximately 300 posts long and counting.

Katrina, as I saw it.

Late Friday afternoon, the hurricane forecast track suddenly moved about 150 miles (!) West, to point directly at New Orleans. On Saturday morning it had not moved again, so my housemate Kristen and I waited in line to fill up the tanks of our cars. (Yes Kristen and I are just friends, snicker all you want, though at times like this the expression "just friends" seems particularly absurd.) The hurricane was still far away and seemed unlikely to be a real problem, so amusingly we spent most of the day painting and hanging pictures and generally getting ready for Kaitlyn's planned visit next weekend. However, by late Saturday the radar was starting to look ominous, so we concentrated on packing our most prized possessions. New Orleans residents have long known that a major hurricane will flood the entire city, so we feared that anything left behind might be lost forever. Condensing your possessions to a single carload is an enlightening exercise in setting priorities.

By early Saturday afternoon, traffic out of the city was heavy and slow, and many if not most gas stations were out of gas. Since "price gouging" is forbidden, gas stations do not bother to store more gas than they need for normal circumstances. By 3AM Sunday morning we were fully packed and decided to leave immediately. We headed north, seeing only moderate traffic, though the westbound route (toward the nearest safe city, Baton Rouge) was bumper to bumper. We drove about 100 miles north, to a cabin owned by Kristen's friend Susan, and tumbled into our bunkbeds for some sleep.

There were four of us in the cabin, including Susan's friend Curtis, and we all brought groceries. We spent Sunday evening watching the news and DVD movies. The women picked the movies, and they chose "Pretty Baby" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (the modern version.) Surprisingly, despite this inspiration, the orgy that one would expect under such circumstances failed to materialize. I can only conjecture that the women were too worried about the storm. Sometime Monday morning the wind picked up and the power, telephones, and cellphone towers went out, so we switched to kerosene lanterns and a battery powered radio. Susan's excellent preparation was a boon for all of us. Only one radio station was broadcasting from the city, and they had no internet, so the only source of news was the people who stayed behind, calling in to the radio station on cellphones to describe how their neighborhoods were faring. Early on, the reports described patchy, sometimes severe wind damage. Flooding was mostly (though not entirely) limited to two especially bad neighborhoods that New Orleans would be better off without.

During the storm we got little information. Once in a while a city official would call in to the radio station, but they did not seem to know much. Eventually the storm left the city and rolled right over us. By that time it was a Category 2, and to me it seemed much milder than the storms that routinely battered our mountantop home in Boone. Other than having to nail down some loose roofing, we had little trouble. Trees fell all around, but missed the cabin and cars.

While most of the city weathered the storm and stayed dry, people began calling in to complain that the huge, new, multimillion dollar water pumps, built to keep the city dry in events like this, seemed intact but were NOT TURNED ON. Eventually we found out that the pumps could not be run remotely because they were prone to overheating. Apparently the high-tech concepts of "water cooling" and "thermostat" and "remote control" and "storm proof bunker" have not yet reached this part of the world. Consequently the pumps had to be manned at all times, and it was too dangerous to man them during the storm, so they were just turned off. On hearing this news our jaws dropped, and we began to get an inkling of what sort of city government we were dealing with. Neighborhoods near these pumps quickly flooded. After the storm the pumps remained off for many hours because their crews could not be retrieved from their stations on the other side of Lake Ponchartrain. After the crisis has passed, I hope to see some public discussion of the design criteria for these pumps, and of the appropriate method of execution for all those involved. Of course the idea of paying volunteers a large cash bonus to man the pumps was not considered, as such coercion would be immoral. This theme, sacrificing the city in order to protect individuals from their own choices, would be repeated.

Once the storm had passed, it appeared that we had dodged the bullet. Most neighborhoods were dry, albeit with trees down and shingles missing. However, news soon came in that the levee had been breached in two places, of which one (the 17th street canal) was important because it was near the highest point in the city. City officials told us that their first priority was saving individuals who chose to stay behind and could not swim, and we heard of many, perhaps dozens of helicopters plucking individuals from rooftops. We begain shouting at the radio for them to use the helicopters to drop rocks in the levee breach, or sink a barge in the breach. Drop everything, bomb a freeway overpass and use the pieces if you have to, but plug that breach because everyone knows it will only get bigger as water flows through it, and it will flood the whole city. The officials assured us that the engineers working on the breech had whatever resources they needed, and that no effort was being spared.

24 hours later, when 80 percent of the city was flooded, the engineers working on the (now much larger) levee breach announced that they had just gotten access to helicopters to begin dropping rocks and sandbags into the breach, and that they had ordered harnesses for dropping sandbags and hoped they would arrive soon. Our jaws dropped again. The engineers said they had located some freeway dividers to drop in, but didn't want to use them because their hoisting anchors were uncertain. The riprap lining the entire lakeshore was apparently unsuitable, as it was not discussed. No mention of barges either. We had some suggestions about other items and individuals that might be used to plug the breach. We then heard the touching tale of a helicopter rescuing a 400 lb woman with gangrene. Later, in a televised press conference, the levee engineers looked sheepish and quickly changed the subject away from specifics to platitudes about how big the disaster was and how hard everyone was working.

A few hours later the city was at last fully up to sea level, so the water stopped rushing in. As of this writing, Thursday afternoon, apparently nothing has yet been dropped in the hole, and engineers are discussing the idea of using a barge as a plug. So far as I know, this is the first time in history that a single, obvious error of judgment has destroyed most of a major city. Somehow, "error of judgment" does not seem an adequate term.

At some point, shortly after the storm when we were utterly starved for information, the State Emergency Coordinator (or some similar title) gave an eagerly-awaited press conference. She spoke for about 20 minutes, devoting the entire time to describing how hard she was working, and thanking various officials ranging from the Mayor to herself to President Bush. The sole piece of information she conveyed was that the "Do not drink the water" order was due to a broken water main. For using our only information channel for such purposes, at such a time, I call for her immediate, summary execution. Perhaps her replacement will focus on different priorities.

Late Monday afternoon, after the storm had mostly passed, I dragged out the chainsaw to begin clearing trees out of the road. The women and some neighbors pitched in, and by dark we had cleared our neighborhood road. Susan kept us well fed, and we spent the rest of Monday night listening to the radio.

The next day, Tuesday, Kristen and I set out to find gas for Susan's car. We passed dozens of spots where locals had cleared fallen trees from the road. After a few miles we encountered a convoy of about 15 Jefferson Parish construction vehicles, stopped in front of one of the few remaining logjams. The day before, they had tried to reach the city by a different route. However they had only 2 small chainsaws and 2 small, rubber-wheeled front end loaders, and they had been stimied by fallen trees. I dragged out my saw again and we spent several hours clearing our way through roughly half a mile of continuous tangle of fallen trees, many of them thicker than the 20 inch bar on my saw. Thankfully they had plenty of fuel for the saws, because I quickly exhausted the half gallon I had brought with me. It felt good to work up a sweat doing something useful, and the synergies between a chainsaw and a loader are amazing. Once a large tree has been severed from its anchors, a loader can quickly push it out of the way. I struck up an immediate, unspeaking friendship with an older black man who was competently manning one of the other saws. Neither of us needed to be told what to cut, and when my saw got bound up by an odd shift shift of the tangled trees, he cut me loose, and vice versa. I will probably never see him again, but as we parted we shook hands and looked into each other's eyes and we both knew that we would remember each other. Nothing is more satisfying than competence when competence is needed.

After a few hours work we had a clear path to I-55. The convoy stopped (I don't know why) and we headed north. For 50 miles we saw no power and virtually no cell phone covereage. Eventually we turned West onto smaller roads, and on directions from some local good old boys we finally found a gas station whose power had been turned on 30 minutes before. Cars were lined up and they were nearly out of gas, but we were able to fill our cans and head back to camp. When we got back, it was clear that we would not be returning to New Orleans any time soon, so we dispersed to our various families. Kristen and I drove all night to my father's house in Dallas. My heartfelt thanks to those who gave the five separate offers of refuge I received.

By Tuesday morning the reports of isolated looting began to trickle in. I heard several city and state officials being questioned on the subject, and to a man they all began their response with sympathy and understanding for the difficult circumstances of the looters, who had been without food for nearly 24 hours. One volunteered that "the days of shooting looters are long past." The predictable result has followed, and as of this writing the marauding gangs of looters and carjackers are impeding the rescue and firefighting efforts. An employee of the local Home Depot here in Dallas told me that they had sent generators, gas, and water to New Orleans, but they were stolen at gunpoint. They are not likely to send more. At this very moment, a compassionate official is saying on Fox News that the looters are desperate and hungry, two days after the hurricane. Perhaps in their starvation-induced delirium they are mistaking jewelry for food. We can only hope that enough homeowners are lurking in their homes with shotguns, so that looters do not feel safe going house to house.

It now appears that Kristen's house in Uptown has probably stayed dry, but that my storage shed with my airplane and other posessions may have flooded. Surprisingly, we both find it easy to be philosophical about storm damage. It is the damage caused by stereotypical, suicidal liberal stupidity that is hard to stomach, and makes us question whether we want to return. At the moment that question is moot though, as city officials seem determined to keep us out of the city until all our possessions have had adequate time to rot, rust, or be looted. I have seen no evidence of any understanding that the rebuilding of the city will require good will and investment from "privileged" white business owners whose property is now being looted. I have seen little evidence of understanding that property owners, if allowed back in the city, will clear their own roads and protect their own property. I have seen no evidence of understanding that the critical tourist trade might be hampered when New Orleans gains a reputation for being a little piece of savage Africa. I have seen no evidence of understanding that anti-price-gouging laws (as well as anti-capitalist tirades on CNN) are part of the reason that relief supplies are in such short supply. I have seen no evidence of understanding that plucking a non-swimmer off a rooftop is less urgent than dropping a rock into a levee breach. I have seen little evidence of understanding that in circumstances like this, the only way to prevent anarchy is to shoot a few looters and brag about it.

On the brighter side, a surprising number of the stately live oaks that give old New Orleans its character have survived, nicely pruned. Many neighborhoods are dry, and most houses are elevated a foot or two so their structure (if not their contents) will survive. Many residents love New Orleans and will return, if they are not kept out so long that they establish a new life elsewhere. The French Quarter, the heart of the tourist economy, appears to be structurally intact.

Once again, thank you for the offers of refuge. Feel free to pass this email on. I would like the world to know what happened.

Posted by Jan at 12:55 AM | Comments (27)

September 02, 2005

Schools nationwide opening doors to uprooted students

One of the more uplifting stories to come out of this gargantuan mess is that elementary through post-secondary schools across the country are opening enrollment to Gulf Coast refugees. Of particular interest to some of our regular IC correspondents, although not inclusive of the dozens, possibly hundreds of schools opening their doors: Duke, the University of Chicago, and Northwestern University.

Posted by Jan at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

National Geographic says I am full of crap

Nice article on the New Orleans levee system. Relevant quote:

Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the Corps, dismissed suggestions that recent federal funding decreases or delayed contracts had any impact on levee performance in the face of Katrina's overwhelming force.

Instead he pointed to a danger that many public officials had warned about for years: The system was never designed to withstand a storm of Katrina's strength.

Posted by Jan at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2005

Foxnews: 'Fats' Domino Missing in New Orleans

Let's hope he's safe, somewhere up there on Blueberry Hill.

Posted by Eddie at 12:37 PM | Comments (2)

August 31, 2005

interesting

white people find things
whereas
black people loot things.

Posted by Eddie at 09:34 PM | Comments (29)

Sheehan, War Protesters Leave Camp Near Bush Ranch

Heard Brit Hume today on FOX tease the viewers with this: "When we get back, we'll hear about how Cindy Sheehan feels about the storm and New Orleans." Hey, while we're at it, Brit-ster, why not ask her about the Lions' quarterbacking situation and whether their defense can hold up against Bret Favre? I'm sure she has an opinion!

Posted by Eddie at 06:30 PM | Comments (3)

Katrina Prompts Higher Gas Prices

$3.09 here in Hooterville.

Posted by Eddie at 10:53 AM | Comments (10)

Can't Forget the Motor City

Nice, short look at where DW, BIL and I grew up.

Posted by Eddie at 08:44 AM | Comments (0)

White House to tap SPR

They have what, 700 million gallons in reserve? Good decision, Mr. President. Drivers everywhere, not to mention my stocks, thank you. The problem now with the storm, from an energy perspective, is the electrical grid in Louisiana. It turns out that the refineries and wells are pretty much okay, but there's no power to move that stuff in the pipelines.

Posted by Eddie at 08:15 AM | Comments (8)

Katrina Update

Entire parishes are closed! In another, you may come back, w/ID, but then you have to leave for a month. Then there's this problem. You still think you had a problem at your hotel in Hooterville last night, Enko?

Then, there's idiots like this. Why weren't those places evacuated? Why wasn't the National Guard sent in prior to the storm? There are many questions that will have to be answered down the road.

Posted by Eddie at 03:52 AM | Comments (13)

August 30, 2005

Spiegal Online: Katrina Should be A Lesson To US on Global Warming

Well, then what about Camille, an even larger storm, in '69? Was that global warming as well? I hate this rush to judgment. In fact, there's plenty of evidence that the current hurricane cycle is normal.