Remembering Hurricane Katrina

NOLA Timeline:

Wednesday August 24
First alerts of a tropical storm stirring in Carribean

Friday August 26
• Most residents work a full day and take "wait and see" approach
• 5 p.m. warnings from National Weather Service show Hurricane Katrina take a turn, set New Orleans within range

Saturday August 27
• Saturday morning most residents learn that Katrina's path is set for New Orleans
• Metro-area evacuations begin en masse clogging all outbound ateries of the city for 48 hours
• St. Tammany, St. Charles, Plaquemines Parishes announce mandatory evacuations
• Orleans and Jefferson Parish both announce voluntary evacuations
• Governor Blanco sends "State of Emergency" letter to President Bush
• LSU scientists issue a projected storm surge map

Sunday August 28
• At 9:30 a.m. Orleans Parish issues first-ever mandatory evacuation
• At 10 a.m. Katrina becomes a Category 5 storm with winds of 175 m.p.h.
• At 11:30 a.m., President Bush vows to help those affected by the storm
• State puts contrflow plan into effect on interstates
• Superdome houses 26,000 residents as city's "refuge of last resort"
• Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, telephones the Times-Picayune to warn of a "worst-case scenario"
• Tropical storm-force winds close down emergency services in metro area
• At 9 p.m., Times-Picayune building loses power, generators power up

Monday August 29
• At 3 a.m., Katrina makes landfall as a Category 3 hurricane at the Southwest Pass at the mouth of the Mississippi River
• Metro-area emergency officals hold status meeting
• At 6 a.m., 317,000 households are without power
• At 7 a.m., water reported coming over the levee in the 9th Ward
• At 8:45 a.m., six to eight-foot flood waters reported in Lower 9th Ward
• At 9 a.m., winds rip hole in roof of Superdome
• At 9 a.m., eye of the storm passes to the east of New Orleans central business district. Windows in high-rise buildings blow out
• 11 a.m., NWS reports a breach in the Industrial Canal levee, emptying Lake Pontchartrain into the neighborhoods of Eastern New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward in Orleans Parish and all of St. Bernard Parish
• 2 p.m., breach in the 17th Street Canal is confirmed. Flooding of Lakeview, Mid-City, Broodmoor, Gentilly result over the next 48 hours.
• 2 p.m., flood waters in the Lower Ninth Ward reach 12 feet in some areas
• Flood waters continue to rise and it becomes apparent that it is a worst-case scenerio

Louisiana 1927
~Aaron Neville
[ 3:10 ]

Hurricane Katrina struck the New Orleans area early morning August 29, 2005. The storm surge breached the city's levees at multiple points, leaving 80 percent of the city submerged, tens of thousands of victims clinging to rooftops, and hundreds of thousands scattered to shelters around the country. Three weeks later, Hurricane Rita reflooded much of the area. The devastation to the Gulf Coast by these two hurricanes has been called the greatest disaster in our nation's history.

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"

"Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

~Martin Luther King, Jr.
August 28, 1963
"I Have A Dream"
Speech At Lincoln Memorial

FEMA-- Brownie's gone but someone is still doing a Heckuva Job. (a screw job, that is.)

How do you figure out a way to hide millions in relief supplies from the people who need it, and then give it away to other state agencies instead?

Easy-- you create an obscure office that no one knows about, send them there and then declare that since no one applied for them they are actually not needed.

Then if you have a state government run by good ol' boys (somebody must have tipped them off) they can jump in and claim the loot to plug budget holes in their own agencies.

That's what the Bush administration did with millions of dollars in supplies that never made it to Katrina victims, many of whom are still waiting (I guess it would be a good opportunity to mention that today is July 7, 2008 which makes it officially 1,043 days they have been waiting.)

BILOXI, Mississippi (CNN) -- Prisons in Mississippi got coffee makers, pillowcases and dinnerware -- all intended for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The state's Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks took more coffee makers, cleaning supplies and other items.

Plastic containers ended up with the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration.

Colleges, volunteer fire departments and other agencies received even more.

But the Mississippi hurricane victims who originally were intended to receive the supplies got nothing, a CNN investigation has found...

Last month, CNN revealed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had stored $85 million worth of household items in warehouses for two years. Instead of giving the supplies to victims of the 2005 hurricane, FEMA declared them surplus and gave them all away to federal agencies and 16 states in February.

The state of Louisiana -- the most hard-hit by the storm -- had not asked for any of the supplies, prompting outrage in the community after the original CNN report.

CNN's investigation showed that Mississippi was one of the 16 states that took the FEMA supplies, but it did not distribute them to Katrina victims.

Jim Marler, director of Mississippi's surplus agency, failed to return repeated phone calls over several months to explain what happened.

Agency spokeswoman Kym Wiggins said, "There may be a need, but we were not notified that there was a great need for this particular property."

That doesn't sit well with most aid groups in Mississippi. "You would have to be living under a rock not to know there is still a need," said Cass Woods, the project coordinator of Coastal Women for Change.

Wiggins said that nonprofit organizations must meet federal guidelines and register with the state and that no such groups helping the needy or homeless were registered with Mississippi's surplus agency.

"There is no specific designation outside of a disaster period that says we have to have sustained properties going to the disaster area," Wiggins said.

CNN interviewed the leaders of eight nonprofits helping Katrina victims at a Biloxi, Mississippi, church used as a staging area for community groups. All said they had no idea these items were available, and most had no idea the surplus agency existed.

Yeah. There are thousands of people who are still waiting for help, and they haven't gotten it.

Ultimately the fact that the state of Mississippi, where the story is focused knew about the goods but chose to give it to other state agencies instead of to the victims it was intended for is something which both the Bush administration and Governor Haley Barbour's office is going to have to answer for. In Louisiana, neither former Governor Kathleen Blanco nor current Governor Bobby Jindahl apparently even bothered to apply for the aid at all.

Like I said above, it is 1,043 days and counting that some people are waiting for assistance.

And Brownie's long gone, so it must be someone else who's doing a Heckuva job.

Flip Flopping Speed Record?

McCain Sets a New Record: 10 Flip-Flops in Two Weeks

Jon Perr, Crooks and Liars:

In his eternal quest for the Republican presidential nomination, the supposed maverick John McCain has repeatedly reversed long-held positions and compromised purportedly core principles. From the Bush tax cuts, the religious right and immigration reform to overturning Roe v. Wade, proclaiming Samuel Alito a model Supreme Court Justice and bashing France (just to name a few), McCain changed sides as changing political conditions dictated.

But over the past two weeks, McCain’s rapid fire, acrobatic flip-flops have produced whiplash, at least for voters. 10 times since the beginning of June, McCain has retreated from, upended or just forgotten positions he once claimed as his own. On Social Security, balancing the budget, defense spending, domestic surveillance and a host of other issues so far this month, McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” did a U-turn on the road to the White House.

1. Social Security Privatization.
   
2. Raising - and Slashing - Defense Spending.
   
3. First Term Balanced Budget Pledge.
   
4. The Media’s Treatment of Hillary Clinton.
   
5. The Estate Tax.
   
6. FISA, Domestic Surveillance and Telecom Immunity.
   
7. Restoring the Everglades.
   
8. Divestment from South Africa.
   
9. Fighting Job Losses in Michigan.
   
10. Opposing Hurricane Katrina Investigations.

...And so it goes. As surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west each day, so too will John McCain change positions. (Like that other law of nature, McCain’s flip-flops are literally becoming a daily occurrence. Since this piece was originally drafted on Saturday, McCain added two new policy turnabouts - on phasing out rather than repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax and on requiring a litmus test for his judicial appointees - to his litany of reversals.)

Katrina Remember

Jane Hamsher has an excellent post up about Hurricane Katrina.

Barack Obama has said, now that we approach the second anniversary the following:

America failed the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast long before that failure showed up on our television sets. America failed them again during Katrina. We cannot -- we must not -- fail for a third time. But tragically, that's what's happening today. And that's what needs to change. I am here to remember this, but also to look ahead. We need to rebuild this city. And we need to tend to the foundation that we rebuild upon.

This is the first post of many, because with 2 years since we watched as people died and very little accomplished for the black communities, we should never forget.