Gulf States, NOLA finally get aide; Senate opens Katrina Investigation

[Babbler]

BBC NEWS
Hurricane aid efforts gather pace

Aid operations have been stepped up and are starting to ease the plight of victims in the hurricane-devastated city of New Orleans.

Military convoys have been arriving with supplies of food, medicine and water, and evacuations are continuing.

Tens of thousands of people, mainly from the poor African-American areas of the city, are still stranded, five days after the storm struck the Gulf Coast.

President George W Bush is due to address the nation on the crisis.

The decision to deliver the address live from the White House is being seen as a reflection of the pressure that he is under.

The Senate is opening an investigation into how the disaster has been handled.

On Friday, Mr Bush visited the affected area.

He toured parts of Alabama and Mississippi, before taking a helicopter flight over the Louisiana city.

Mr Bush admitted that the initial response had not been acceptable, but he said progress was now being made.

But correspondents say the arrival of relief convoys has not defused the anger in New Orleans.

The BBC's Adam Brookes says that if casualty figures start to mount, President Bush will come under more pressure to explain what many see as a huge failure of America's emergency response system.

Cheers and tears

National Guard convoys managed to deliver long-awaited supplies to the New Orleans Convention Centre on Friday.

We have hurricanes all the time. We had no idea it was going to be like this
Shantarelle, Mississippi

They were met with cheers, tears and frustration from some of the 20,000 people huddled amid the filth and the dead.

"They should have been here days ago," Michael Levy said.

Troops stockpiled supplies and distributed bottled water and ration packs, as a hospital was evacuated.

The city mayor said he was "cautiously optimistic" after meeting Mr Bush. "I feel like we've gotten everyone's attention," Ray Nagin said.

The city of New Orleans will never be the same again
Mayor Ray Nagin

The evacuation of New Orleans is expected to take several days.

National Guards halted the emptying of the Superdome stadium on Saturday after buses stopped coming, but the 2,000 people left remained calm.

Most flights out of the stricken area will take refugees to Texas, which is providing emergency shelter for 75,000 survivors in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.

Relief supplies have also started to arrive in the neighbouring state of Mississippi, where tens of thousands have been made homeless by the storm.

Mr Bush has signed a $10.5bn (£5.7bn) emergency aid package passed by Congress.

More than 44 foreign governments and international organisations have offered help. Cuba and Venezuela put aside their differences with the Bush administration to offer assistance.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary John Snow has said that the financial impact of Hurricane Katrina may not be as bad as first feared and will not cause significant change in long-term economic prospects.

He described the impact of the storm as mind-boggling, but said that both he and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, felt the inherent strength of the economy meant that growth would only be slowed for three to four months.

Political storm

Five days after the hurricane struck, the scale of the casualties is still not known.

However one Louisiana senator has predicted the death toll could climb above 10,000 in the state alone.

Army engineers have begun work on New Orleans' breached levees, but say it will take up to 80 days to pump the flood waters from the low-lying city.

Looting has swept the city. There have also been outbreaks of shootings and car hijackings, and reports of rapes.

In Washington, senators said they would launch an inquiry on Wednesday into the federal response to Katrina and emergency preparedness.

Some African-American leaders in Congress have also criticised the administration's approach.

"We cannot allow it to be said by history that the difference between those who lived and... died... was nothing more than poverty, age or skin colour," congressman Senator Elijah Cummings said.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4210646.stm

Published: 2005/09/03 10:49:29 GMT

© BBC MMV

Good. Let's hope thing continue to improve and the Senate gets to the bottom of it.

 

[The Yankee]

I hope the Senate will also investigate itself, as a branch of Congress, it should have funded the work needed to raise the levees in years past.

 

[Sparta]

That's a good point, Yankee. I almost don't want to know how many pet projects received funding in lieu of NO's badly needed improvements.

I just think that there have to be repurcussions somewhere for the pathetic lack of logistical planning for this disaster. They had two or more days warning for what they'd already identified as one of the worst potential weather-related disasters years ago, and it almost seems like deployment started on day +2 instead of -2 for some unfathomable reason.

In general though, I'm with you Babbler - let's just hope things keep improving and that some progress is made regarding the mistakes of this incident.

 

[Quasar1011]

The Senate could fund the National Weather Service better.

 

[Birdjaguar]

So, now we've seen how well prepared we are for a disaster we know is coming to a major city. Imagine how well it would go if an unexpected disaster struck a big metro area. Say, a small nuke or dirty bomb in Denver, or Detroit? A big quake in LA? We are woefully unprepared. This should be a wake up call for all the emergency planners in the US.

 

[Uiler]

So, now we've seen how well prepared we are for a disaster we know is coming to a major city. Imagine how well it would go if an unexpected disaster struck a big metro area. Say, a small nuke or dirty bomb in Denver, or Detroit? A big quake in LA? We are woefully unprepared. This should be a wake up call for all the emergency planners in the US.

What was 9/11 then? That *was* the wakeup call. What we are seeing now is the completely failure of the wakeup call.

 

[Babbler]

What was 9/11 then? That *was* the wakeup call. What we are seeing now is the completely failure of the wakeup call.

It did, but only for terrorism. Gov't officals started to neglect natural disaster planning; hence NOLA under water.

 

[Uiler]

It did, but only for terrorism. Gov't officals started to neglect natural disaster planning; hence NOLA under water.

But a lot of the issues are the same. For example a big problem in 9/11 was a breakdown in communications between groups of emergency workers and law enforcement. Individual workers were basically left on their own with no central co-ordination. The same thing happened in New Orleans and has to have contributed to the feeling of "Is *anyone* in charge here?" that permeated the city. In fact I think communication was one of the major areas identifed in need of reform after 9/11. If they failed so spectacularly in New Orleans for an event that they had ample warning for it is highly likely they fail spectacularly in an event which they have no warning for.

 

[Birdjaguar]

What was 9/11 then? That *was* the wakeup call. What we are seeing now is the completely failure of the wakeup call.

9-11 was a sudden, shameful attack, but one which only impacted a very small geographic area. Evacuation meant going 20 blocks north to a friends apartment. A real disaster would be if everyone on Manhatten had to be moved out or left to die. 9-11 may have taught us to manage small disasters better; New Orleans shoud help us see that we cannot handle big ones.