NO: Looters "career criminals", open letter to President, etc.

[Uiler]

The website of the New Orleans Times-Picayune that kept on printing throughout the flooding (though the paper's team had to evacuate their building due to flooding) often has news that goes into more detail than the national news (for obvious reasons as they are locals). Anyway, some tibets I found interesting,

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tporleans/archives/2005_09.html#076771

-NO police say that claims that up to 60% of their force went AWOL are incorrect and that what happened was that communications broke down so most police were left on their own.
-the paper quotes one officer who says that the looters are "career criminals"

Small gangs of heavily armed career criminals are roaming the parish's isolated eastern half and looting buildings, Stephens said.

"These are the same a------- who have been testing us for 20 years," Stephens told his SWAT team at a security briefing. "Today is the day they are going to listen to us or we're gonna take 'em out."

- there are no forced evacuations yet. Rescuers have orders to only take people who are willing to go:

"If they want to die, there is nothing I can do,’’ Bayard said. "I can’t fight them, they may tip the boat. But if I get an order later to pull them out by force, I’ll do it."

- Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center claims that FEMA, including Brown and Chertoff were personally briefed by him and his staff about the dangers that Katrina posed to New Orleans

Mayfield said the strength of the storm and the potential disaster it could bring were made clear during both the briefings and in formal advisories, which warned of a storm surge capable of overtopping levees in New Orleans and winds strong enough to blow out windows of high-rise buildings. He said the briefings included information on expected wind speed, storm surge, rainfall and the potential for tornadoes to accompany the storm as it came ashore.

"We were briefing them way before landfall," Mayfield said. "It's not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped.

"I keep looking back to see if there was anything else we could have done, and I just don't know what it would be," he said. Chertoff told reporters Saturday that government officials had not expected the damaging combination of a powerful hurricane levee breaches that flooded New Orleans.

Brown, Mayfield said, is a dedicated public servant.

"The question is why he couldn't shake loose the resources that were needed,'' he said.

Brown and Chertoff could not be reached for comment on Sunday afternoon.

In the days before Katrina hit, Mayfield said, his staff also briefed FEMA, which under the Department of Homeland Security, at FEMA's headquarters in Washington, D.C., its Region 6 office in Dallas and the Region 4 office in Atlanta about the potential effects of the storm.

He said all of those briefings were logged in the hurricane center's records. And Mayfield said his staff also participated in the five-day "Hurricane Pam" exercise sponsored by FEMA and the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness in July 2004 that assumed a similar storm would hit the city.

FEMA's own July 23, 2004, news release announcing the end of that exercise summed up the assumptions they used, which were eerily close to what Katrina delivered:

"Hurricane Pam brought sustained winds of 120 mph, up to 20 inches of rain in parts of southeast Louisiana and storm surge that topped levees in the New Orleans area. More than one million residents evacuated and Hurricane Pam destroyed 500,000-600,000 buildings. Emergency officials from 50 parish, state, federal and volunteer organizations faced this scenario during a five-day exercise held this week at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge.

"The exercise used realistic weather and damage information developed by the National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the LSU Hurricane Center and other state and federal agencies to help officials develop joint response plans for a catastrophic hurricane in Louisiana."

That plan assumed such a hurricane would result in the opening of 1,000 evacuee shelters that would have to be staffed for 100 days, and a search and rescue operation using 800 people. The storm would create 30 million tons of debris, including 237,000 cubic yards of household hazardous waste.

Mayfield said his concern now is that another named storm could hit either New Orleans or the Mississippi Gulf coast, as September is the most active month of the annual hurricane season.

"This is like the fourth inning in a nine-inning ballgame," he said. "We know that another one would cause extreme stress on the people who have been hurt by Katrina."

- just my personal statement. I find it ironic that the most "sinful" place in NO, i.e. the French Quarter which is the hang-out of the substantial gay and lesbian community in NO survived Katrina best and still have people living there (as one of the articles show). You'd think that if hurricanes really were the wrath of God (as religious right commentators like Pat Robertson often claim) that the most "sinful" places would be wiped out first.

- there's a rant from one of the writers about the Federal and State response to the disaster. At the end they make a suggestion on how to get the Federal forces and Bush to respond,

Tell them to get to ground zero on the Gulf Coast immediately because some crazy columnist claims to have absolute proof that Osama bin Laden blew up the levees!

- some horrific descriptions of conditions people were living in,

Arabi resident Patrick Lannes, who helped evacuate 17 people from the second floor of Arabi Elementary School, said he found them eating a raw turkey that had been sitting out for four days.

"One woman told her husband, 'Oh, honey, give him a Coke,'" he said. "They're eating rotting meat, and they offered me their last Coke like I was a guest just stopping by for dinner."

- news about the break in the levee that caused the flooding. For some good news it looks like they have the break under control for now.

The Army Corps of Engineers has shifted its efforts to damming the London Avenue canal's entrance to Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans, after completing a dam across the 17th Street canal.

In a news release issued Sunday morning, the Corps said it discovered several intact "but potentially weakened sections" in the 17th Street canal levee, and that it has delayed completing the filling of the levee breach into Lakeview to move on to other work. The Corps didn't complete placement of the last piece of sheet piling because officials were not yet sure that water on the Lakeview side of the breach had dropped to the same level as the lake.

With the dam closure, the Corps said, the canal will be drained and the levee will be repaired permanently.

Five pumps ordered Saturday are to be delivered in pieces to a staging area in St. Rose, where they will be partially assembled and moved to the 17th Street and London Avenue canals for final assembly and startup.

Four more pumps loaned to the Corps by St. Charles Parish were deployed to the 17th Street canal, where they are being assembled.
The Corps is acquiring two large mobile generators to power pumps at pump station 6 on the 17th Street canal and at pump station 7 on the Orleans Avenue canal.

- an open letter to the President,

Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

 

[Bugfatty300]

I don't doubt that the people still in the city looting stuff and shooting are/were already criminals before who are exploiting the absence of police to rape and pillage as they please. They killed several of them earlier today.

 

[frekk]

I think it is wrong to describe "looters" under some blanket heading. IMHO there are probably 4 entirely different phenomena happening:

1) People seeking food, medical supplies, gas etc. Police, in fact, are among this group.

2) Career criminals taking advantage of the situation. Possibly a good number of these have arrived from outside the disaster area (perhaps even before the hurricane hit). These would be well-armed, well equipped groups, but I imagine they would seek to avoid contact with authorities where possible.

3) Drug addicts. This group would be in a frenzy, being without their dependancies. They would be ransacking private residences, particularly in poorer neighbourhoods, attempting to locate drugs (as well as pharmacies). They'd probably also be looting whatever they might find along the way, hoping perhaps to trade/sell it later for drugs.

4) The frustrated. This group would be people who are overwhelmingly angry about the failure of response, or possibly perceives too much effort expended rescuing the wealthiest, feels the blockades out of the city have turned the public services into a hostile threat, etc. These people would "go it alone" depending on themselves, and I imagine if it is ever learned, it could turn out that it is this group that has been firing on the authorities.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Groups 2 and 3 deserve whatever they get. I would guess that it is group 2 doing the shooting at police, rescuers, etc. They WILL shoot it up with the cops if they think they can win. Normally they cannot, due to the fact that under normal conditions dozens of police will arrive immediately with SWAT gear and put a stop to them. However, conditions in NO are currently anything but normal.

Groups 1 and 4 should be forgiven their trespasses.

 

[Quasar1011]

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

The interstate bridge leading from New Orleans to Mississippi, 1-10, is in pieces. One cannot now drive across it. The bridge leading to the north shore, the Pontchartrain Causeway, is also in pieces. Lakefront Airport is closed, as are smaller airports around the city. So no, New Orleans is not "easy to access" right now.

 

[blackheart]

The interstate bridge leading from New Orleans to Mississippi, 1-10, is in pieces. One cannot now drive across it. The bridge leading to the north shore, the Pontchartrain Causeway, is also in pieces. Lakefront Airport is closed, as are smaller airports around the city. So no, New Orleans is not "easy to access" right now.

Oh really, how did the reporters get in?

Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

 

[cgannon64]

Groups 1 and 4 should be forgiven their trespasses.

Group 4 shouldn't. Anyone who loots anything except food and water should go to jail. Who cares if they were criminals before or were turned into criminals because of their "anger"?

Not to mention: What kind of monstrous wacko would try to beat back police and rescue forces? This can only be a wish for anarchy...