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Point of View
St. Bernard Voice

Hurricane Katrina

By
Ron Chapman

It was Friday night August 26th and the Saints were on the field, once again serving disappointing performance to adoring fans a.  Around town the high school football season had begun as well. The smell of sweat and the sound of cheers permeated the air.  Gridiron play distracted the city of New Orleans.

Few noticed that the National Hurricane Center had altered its projected course for category 2 Hurricane Katrina that night.  Prior to that evening everyone believed that this moderate hurricane would pummel the southeastern panhandle of Florida…near Apalachicola.  Instead, the cone of probability had suddenly and uncharacteristically shifted 150 miles to the west placing it on a direct collision course with southeastern Louisiana. Meanwhile, the storm intensified.  

But this all occurred unbeknownst to Louisianans.  They were still relishing football action at a variety of different venue. People tuning into the radio Friday night heard the Bobby Hebert Show and discussions about the Saint’s missed opportunities. There was only slight mention of the hurricane, and that was a statement to the effect that the “…Saints had evacuated earl.y” No one really focused on what was about to come.

New Orleaneans then went to bed.  Slept late.  Missed the news.  When they awoke they went about their Saturday business.  It was only Saturday afternoon that any hint that something was amiss begun to filter through to the population.  By then it was too late to organize an effective evacuation of over 1.5 million people.  The storm would strike within 30 hours…far quicker than the 50 hour contra-flow plan envisioned.   Many lacked the resources to escape the coming terror.

As for the much discussed emergency plan…it apparently did not exist!  A lot of talk, some expensive studies, but no true measures were devised to protect New Orleans nor its citizens.

Residents watched televisions in horror as the storm approached.  Never believing that it could actually strike where the experts predicted, never accepting that it was developing into a fierce category 5 storm. It couldn’t happen, could it?  Were the experts right? Certainly not!  They couldn’t be!  

The Federal Government knew there would be a problem.  President Bush broke precedent by declaring a disaster area two days BEFORE the storm hit.  It was now up to local and state officials to implement their plans and make specific requests of federal authorities as dictated by the constitutional process.  

The city failed to prepare.  There was no effective plan for evacuating the many poor and disadvantaged who lived in the city.  70% of the population was African/ American.  Most of whom live in poverty.  They lacked the money, credit, and vehicles to flee. Someone should have considered this plight…someone local…this was NOT a federal responsibility.

There were resources that could have been pressed into service. How is it that hundreds of school and city buses were lost to the flood?  They could have been used to remove a significant portion of the population beyond Interstate 12.  What of rail service?  Was that even considered? Who failed here?  Not the federal government!  

What about England Air Force base in Alexandria, couldn’t that have been pressed into service early as a destination?   Fort Polk?  Why wasn’t some plan devised long ago by the governor’s and mayor’s offices to address the situation?  Too many hurricanes have hit or just missed southeast Louisiana since 1965 to not be prepared. Hurricanes Betsy ,Camille, Felix, Irene, Fern, Carmen, Bob, Claudette, Danielle, Danny, Juan, Elena, Debby, Beryl, Francis, Danny, Georges, earl, Allison, Lili, Edouard, Hanna, Mathew, Cindy, and Dennis provided much needed practice. Yet, nothing was done!

Some political opportunists and apologists for the post Katrina savagery have blamed racism for the lack of preparation, but New Orleans has been under Black rule for 27 years. What racism?   The Mayor is Black, the District Attorney is Black, the Sheriff is Black, the City Council is majority Black, the School Board is Black, The Fire Chief is Black, and the Police Chief is Black.  Most local political leaders in the city are Black.   How can it be that racism contributed to the failure of local authorities to prepare when minorities controlled all of the levers of power?   This is not a Black/White issue, as much as some opportunists might want it to be.  This was a human failure that bears no racial stamp.

These are the accusations of a collection of national media personalities and political mischief makers who seek to squeeze political advantage from a cruel situation.  If there is fault…it lies with the local and state leadership, not a distant federal authority!

Where was the governor in all of this?  As an evacuee myself in Natchez Mississippi all I saw are the governor’s sorrowful, tear filled eyes.  Angst, but no leadership.  When questioned about her calls for federal help…she sputters, evades, and cries again. Then she admits that she never got around to it.  She failed!

The governor’s office should have been prepared.  The National Guard stationed, emergency rations of food and water pre-positioned, emergency transportation in place. All of the models painted a vivid picture of what would occur.  Did they not believe it?  Or, were they too incompetent to fully address the situation? Whatever the case, nothing was done.  All of the experts had accurately predicted what would happen, but no plan was set in motion.  Why is this so Governor Blanco?  Why Mayor Nagin?  Why has noting been done for 40years despite the continued threats?

Now lets talks structure.  A series of open drainage canals run the length of the city to the Lake…Industrial Canal, Peoples Avenue Canal, London Avenue Canal, Marconi Canal, Seventeenth Street Canal.  Water is pumped into them so it can flow into the lake. However, that process works when the level of the lake is lower than the height of the canal levees.  When Lake Pontchartrain’s water level gets too high, as is the case with a hurricane tidal surge, pumping water uphill is useless.  These canals then become a threat, not a valuable resource.

How is it that the 17th Street canal flooded a city that believed it has escaped the wrath of Katrina.  We all knew the danger of a broken levee.  During terrors of hurricane Betsy in 1965, forty years ago, rumors spread that the London Avenue Canal in the city’s center had been breached.  Then Mayor Victor Schiro dressed in a Civil Defense hardhat and raincoat made his famous malapropism “Don’t believe any false rumors until you hear them from me” in response.  Remember that?  But the levee held during Betsy and we all breathed a sign of relief.

The threat of a breached drainage canal levee was known 40 years ago. In the 1970s discussions were held about constructing flood gates at the terminus to prevent such flooding.  Why were these locks not fabricated at the ends of the several drainage canals that lead into Lake Pontchartrain.  Had there been some means of closing the canal, only the contents of the ditch, NOT the lake would have entered the city this past week.  But nothing was done for 40 years!  Whose fault is that?  Certainly not President Bush’s!

How unprepared was the city?   Consider this.  Despite continued warnings by the Hurricane Center, local experts, and those responsible for informing city leaders of the dangers of a strong storm from this quarter…denial prevailed.

I personally experienced this denial in a NORLI (New Orleans Regional Leadership Institute) meeting this past Spring.   An august member of our community, one who the state depends upon for his economic advise, responded to my private inquiry about the existence of a model for rebuilding New Orleans after a devastating hurricane in this way.   He informed me that no such study had been performed.  Then he added, as an aside, that he did believed the hurricane models were accurate and he considered that the projections of destruction were highly exaggerated.  What does he think now???  What price this error in judgment?

Where were the engineers?   Shouldn’t massive sandbags have been pre-positioned?  Why did they try to close the wide breach in the 17th Street Canal levee instead of immediately cutting off the canal’s access to the lake?

  Had anyone considered opening the spillway as a contra-flow for water? That was built to mitigate river flooding.  But, it can work in both directions.  The Mississippi River is at its lowest in years.  Might opening the spillway and allowing the lake to flow into the river have taken pressure off of the levees?  Had anyone even thought of that plan of action?

The levees along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet  (MRGO) are a special problem.  The people of St. Bernard Parish have been crying about that monster for years.  It was built in the mid 1960’s to a width of 500 feet.  Today it is over 3,000 feet wide in places due to erosion.  Worse, nearly 40,000 acres of cypress swamp…a natural tidal surge protection system, had been destroyed by the saltwater intrusion generated by MRGO.  We all knew the problem and have continually reported it, but the Corps of Engineers dragged its feet.  That is where the water came from that flooded the lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish, just as we have warned for nearly forty years.  Just as happened in Hurricane Betsy in 1965, just as nearly happened in Hurricanes George and Ivan.  

The MRGO protection levees are designed too low for any storm of significant strength.  The corps of Engineers knew that! Worse, these levees were below even the specified height according to the Corps of Engineers actual levee profiles.  Furthermore, the medallions used for measuring the REAL height above Mean Sea Level (MSL) had not been revisited since the 1980s.  How much subsidence had taken place?  How accurate are these benchmarks?

Just how high are the levees REALLY??? The 14-foot levee designed on paper nearest the Industrial Canal was actually less than 12 feet in places according to the profile.  But that is not taking into consideration the level of benchmark subsidence since the 1980s.  Is a foot of subsidence in twenty-five years a conservative estimate? Then the 14-foot levees that were measured from the benchmark at 11.5 feet, were actually 10.5 feet. Far below mandated height!

The blame for this tragic event runs deep and long.  New Orleans has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity! The storm could not have been stopped, but the damage visited on our fine city could have been mitigated had those in charge locally taken the threat seriously and responded with vigor over the past 40 years.  

This is not the failure of one man occupying the White House as much as some political operatives would like to make it appear.  Louisiana is run by a Confederacy of Dunces. They care not for the people of New Orleans, they are motivated by political advantage, which is sad at such times as this.  People are appointed not because they know their business, but because they know someone.  In times of crisis, such decisions come home to rest.

But despite the lack of preparation and anticipation, New Orleans experienced a far greater tragedy.

When the Twin Towers were struck on 9-11, the citizens of New York rushed to the defense of their city.  They volunteered their muscle and willpower to overcome the adversity. All rallied to the cause to defend their city.  Such was not the case in New Orleans.

In New Orleans, street gang savagery prevailed.  Taking food and water is understandable.  Rape, Murder, pillage, looting, attacking doctors and nurses for drugs, assaulting college co-eds in dormitories, and terrorizing shocked victims of the storm are not acceptable under any circumstances. There can be NO JUSTIFICATION for such heinous actions.

The likes of Maxine Waters, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton, joined at the hip by the Congressional Black Caucus and the Louisiana Black Legislative Black Caucus, have shown their true color.  They care not for law and order. They care not for the displaced citizens of New Orleans, Black and White.   They care not for the plight of their fellow African/American brothers and sisters who endured the greatest torments of these thugs. (Because that population suffered the most from the savagery visited on the city during days of mayhem.)

No!  This collection of pathetic racists sought political advantage by seeking to justify criminal atrocities as some sort of natural response to the stresses of the crisis.  Murder… Rape… Looting… shooting at rescue workers?  They consider this “a natural response?”   The victims of the Tsunami had greater respect for human life than the gangs of New Orleans.    These comments say much about these “Black leaders.”  They should be criticized, not lionized, for their vicious words. !  Criminal activity cannot be excused, justified, or glossed over.  What happened in the streets of New Orleans demonstrates that the social programs of the past 40 years have failed miserably.  America’s liberal social engineering has created a criminal under class of vast and violent proportions.

The fact remains that the areas worst hit…St. Bernard and Plaquemine’s Parishes, below New Orleans, did not experience anything like the horrors visited upon New Orleans by its citizenry.  Food and clothing might have been taken, but wholesale looting did not occur.  These people are civilized.

Furthermore, these locals did not receive any immediate assistance.  In fact they did not receive even late assistance.  The entire local government of St. Bernard was marooned on the roof of the government complex without communications, food, or water for days and NO ONE even bothered to look for them.  How can you lose an entire government and not miss it?  Do we mean so little to the media and other local authorities?  Or, is it because the residents of St. Bernard and Plaquemines do not fall into the right racial category to demand victim status.

New Orleans is a wonderful city, but it has been in the throes of a struggle for its moral core with street gangs and drug dealers for some time.  Thugs have controlled the streets for years and frustrated the legal system by threatening and killing witnesses.  They have brazenly thumbed their noses at the law and corrupt judges and manipulative attorneys have conspired with them.  

When the opportunity arose, this shadow rule of savagery rose to the surface.  They shot at rescue workers and those attempting to close the levee for a reason.  The city was finally totally in their hands and its residents their captives to victimize as they pleased…Black and White alike. They had no intention of giving it up peacefully.  This was a war for control of territory in the most basic sense.

New Orleans became Rwanda for over a week and Jesse Jackson, Maxine Waters, and Al Sharpton endorse the crimes.  How sad is that?  More African/Americans were hurt, raped, and murdered than whites, but lets make the perpetrators the victims in the twisted logic of their racial political landscape.

What took place this past week was a war for the soul of New Orleans and too many so-called Black leaders stood tall on the wrong side.  Somehow they could fabricate justification for what happened in the name racial solidarity.  

Not al,l mind you.  Mayor Nagin, Police Chief Eddie Compass, and some outstanding police officers and fireman performed heroically.  They deserve our undying gratitude for trying desperately to maintain some semblance civilization in the most trying circumstances. For attempting to save lives while they they were under attack by gunfire.  There were many heroes, but those stories are buried by a mainstream media looking for what? Controversy!  Truth was the first victim of Katrina!

There is a lot of blame to go around.  Too many missteps were taken and opportunities lost.  The cost has been heavy.  Mostly this is because, despite warnings of the impending danger of a strong storm, too many leaders did not really believe it was possible and did not prepare for its eventuality.

The feds are indeed at fault for allowing the MRGO to remain an open expressway to the Gulf of Mexico and not having an immediate emergency response ready.  Local engineers are at fault for not learning from past experiences and devising checks on the city’s drainage canals. Local and state authorities are to blame for a failure to devise some method of evacuating those many poor citizens who lacked the resources to get out and for taking an independent course of action at variance to the agreed upon coordinated plan.  

I have faith in Mayor Nagin ability to put New Orleans back together again.  This city is a national treasure.  It will come back and it will be better.  It survived the fires of 1788 and 1794, the Battle of New Orleans, the chaos of the Civil War, and the ravages of Hurricane Betsy.   New Orleans remains one of the oldest and richest repositories of History in the nation, a national historic site.   New Orleans also enjoys the talents of many community leaders reflecting the ethnic and cultural gumbo that makes us who we are.  But the city will only come back if we work together.  That cannot be accomplished if self-serving hate mongers divide us for political advantage.

Yes, we must know what went wrong. Not to assess blame, but to make the necessary corrections so that this never happens again.  We must also accept that the failures were not race driven nor were they the result of racial politics.  The problem stems from an underlying prevailing sense of denial at all levels that something like this could ever really happen.  

The “City that Care Forgot” forgot to care!


posted by Westley at 9/25/2005 10:01:21 PM