You knew they knew, but you couldn’t bring yourself to believe it was possible. Hell, you knew yourself two days in advance what was going to happen, just from watching “The Weather Channel.”
The Washington Post is reporting this morning that the White House was fully briefed up to 48 hours in advance on the effects Hurricane Katrina would have on New Orleans.
In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm’s likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property, documents show.
The information, in a 41-page assessment from the Department of Homeland Security’s National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), was e-mailed to the White House “Situation Room” at 1:47 AM Aug. 29th (early Monday morning, the day Katrina hit NOLA).
President Bush, in a televised interview three days after Katrina hit, suggested that the scale of the flooding in New Orleans was unexpected. “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm,” Bush said in a Sept. 1 interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
The NISAC paper “predicted economic losses in the tens of billions of dollars, including damage to public utilities and industry that would take years to fully repair. Initial response and rescue operations would be hampered by disruption of telecommunications networks and the loss of power to fire, police and emergency workers…”
The Post also obtained copies of a second document, a FEMA slide presentation given 9 AM August 27 (Saturday) that said the result of Katrina would be worse than that of the fictional Hurricane Pam” used in their disaster preparation exercises. And again: Katrina hit the following Monday.
The hurricane’s Category 4 storm surge “could greatly overtop levees and protective systems” and destroy nearly 90 percent of city structures, the FEMA report said. It further predicted “incredible search and rescue needs (60,000-plus)” and the displacement of more than a million residents.
The NISAC analysis accurately predicted the collapse of floodwalls along New Orleans’s Lake Pontchartrain shoreline, an event that the report described as “the greatest concern.” The breach of two canal floodwalls near the lake was the key failure that left much of central New Orleans underwater and accounted for the bulk of Louisiana’s 1,100 Katrina-related deaths. [And thousands more unaccounted for to date – KP]
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will convene hearings today into the federal government’s response to Katrina. Sen. Lieberman is the committee’s ranking Democrat. He responded to the new Post documents by saying the administration’s failure to fully heed the warnings it had up to 48 hours in advance of landfall from its analysts “compounded the tragedy.” Leave it to Joe to come out with a hard-hitting response appropriate to these revelations </snark>
From this revelation it’s but a small mental step to believing these people could allow 9-11 to happen. One wonders how many Americans will cross that threshold after this.
Cue the footage of Bush telling Diane Sawyer that “no one could have anticipated that the levees would break” on Wednesday morning.
Exactly! This isn’t really a new story, but the new revelations are like ripping open an old wound. I sure hope this new revelation adds fuel to the calls for impeachment over domestic spying.
From NOLA.com, Sunday, 28 Aug 2005:
I will grant you every single federal failure save one: Nagin also knew bloody well what was coming, had all those busses ready to roll, and yet delayed a mandatory evac until 10 a.m. Sunday. His failure to act was the proximate cause of virtually every single instance of suffering by the people of NOLA, including those in the dome, the hospitals, and the convention center, who would have been moved out of harm’s way.
The balance of the absolutely reprehensible and criminal failures to act may indeed be laid at FEMA’s door. But the feds weren’t in charge in NOLA on Sunday. Nagin was.
Even if he had ordered a mandatory evacuation earlier, the roads were full. Only so many people could have gotten out, even out of those who had access to cars. It took my brother 8 hours to get to Baton Rouge. What are you going to do, force people to carpool at gunpoint?
What are you going to do, force people to carpool at gunpoint?
No. Start the mandatory evac on Saturday with outbound-only traffic (which they delayed implementing), rather than dithering for a full 30 hours after they knew what was coming. Time was of the essence:
That quote is from NOLA.com’s news on Saturday. He had the time, he acted too late.
I’ve always wondered where these people that he was supposedly going to be able to evacuate were going to go. Assuming that he evacuated them for free at the sole cost of NOLA, was NOLA going to pay to put them all in hotel rooms, how was he going to coordinate gettting the sick and infirm into hospitals and health centers. I’m not being petty and reducing people to money. These people should have been saved — but to save them requires more than just getting them out.
I’ve always thought that getting people out should have been easy even at the last minute — back a freight train into the nearest train yard and load people onto it. That way the buses didn’t have to go hundreds of miles — just to the train yard and back. But does the mayor of a city have the ability to coopt a freight train?
But again — what happens then? Where do those people go?
Yes he bears some responsibility — but coordination is KEY in those cases and the mayor of a city has no power once he leaves the city limits. He can’t force hospitals in other jurisdictions to take the sick, he can’t force hotels to open up.
The coordination and pre-staging had already begun, and Blanco’s declaration triggered the State and federal responses on Friday night. Further, once that order had been given, all the resources in the State – including private – fell under State control. Ordering the mandatory evac triggers the entire range of State “assets”, including provisions for medical and transport.
Nagin had the time and resources as of Saturday morning, and elected to wait. How many people could have been moved in that 24 hours? I stand by my comments. And you’re right, we absolutely disagree.
OK, let’s say that I decide to completely agree with you about Nagin and proclaim that he was absolutely incompetent. There is still blame to be had at the state and federal level.
Not everyone is lucky enough to live in a city with a competent city government. To say that the whole blame is placed on Nagin is to say that if you happen to be poor and live in a city with an incompetent mayor, you will die. I don’t agree with that. The state and federal government has a responsibility to go in and help an incompetent mayor make the correct decision when an entire city is at stake (that’s why state and federal monies are budgeted for emergencies). I continue to believe that if a competent FEMA and Department of Homeland Security had been in place, they would have convinced Nagin to do things differently. That’s why we fund those types of programs — because we all know that local city governments are often incompetent in times of crises. A competent FEMA and state government would have simply lined up the buses and started setting up tent cities and told Nagin that there was no downside to him ordering the evacutation when he should have.
I do not, and did not, claim the State and Federal officials were blameless. Nor am I placing blame solely on Nagin for the death and destruction in NOLA. What I am saying is above: but for Nagin’s delay, the people trapped in NOLA would have gotten out.
I agree with you that if Nagin had ordered the evacuation earlier, many of the people who died would be alive today. The people who wanted to leave (or simply obeyed orders) would have had a better chance of getting out. Nagin screwed up. People died. Nagin should have foreseen that his screw up would cause those deaths. If he hadn’t screwed up fewer people would have died — but there still would have been deaths. I disagree with a sweeping statement that the people trapped in NOLA would have gotten out but for Nagin’s failure. MORE would have gotten out, not all.
My point is that it was also reasonably foreseeable that if the federal government was not standing by with aid and transportation and housing, etc. that people were going to die whether Nagin did a good job or not. A city the size of NOLA could not have been evacuated completely even if Nagin had ordered the evacuation at the time he should have.
It is one thing to have a hurricane evacuation plan for smaller oceanside communities, but to evacuate a city with millions of people is impossible. If it was announced tomorrow that a category 5 hurricane was bearing down on Miami and everyone should evacuate over the next three days – it wouldn’t happen. Most people would get out (maybe) but it is completely foreseeable that a large percentage of (mostly poor) people would be trapped in the city. Look what happened when they tried to evacuate Houston.
And sure, some of them would be trapped because they were too stubborn or stupid to leave. Or because they were too scared to leave the few possessions they owned. But, they would be trapped and in need of help.
And so if a Category 5 hurricane was bearing down on Miami in three days, the federal government should reasonably foresee that no matter how competent the mayor of Miami
may be, more resources than he can provide will be needed. And if it begins to appear that the mayor is screwing up, the government should reasonably foresee that after the hurricane hits, they are going to be called upon to take extraordinary measures to insure any further loss of life.
Therefore in NOLA the federal government should have reasonably foreseen that people were going to die if the federal government was not completely prepared to render aid whether or not the mayor of NOLA was competent or incompetent. Incomptenece simply meant that more help would be needed.
This type of aid was possible, we fund a federal emergency management agency and a federal homeland security department so that these types of extraordinary measures can be coordinated and resources provided. There was no excuse, given the advance warning of the storm, that this aid was not available. It was going to be needed EVEN if Nagin had ordered the evacuation earlier. Because not everyone would have gotten out.
Agreed on “more” v. “all”. As to the rest, you apparently agree with my basic argument regarding Nagin’s inaction. The obvious and simple fact is that the entire emergency response network failed at every level of government. There is no single source to blame.
Does that mean that, legally, the state could just take stuff and use it to evacuate people? Buses? Planes? They could just commandeer it? Is that what the law says?
KP, I only wished I were legally minded enough to address this. Until such time that the legal thoughts/minds come out on this, I must say only my views. I feel given the information in this material, yes there are new grounds for impeachment. [my wishing only] That is only from a lay persons view. Ethically and morally, they did very wrong. I do understand, in the Constitution, that, when a President bankrupts the nation, he is to be impeached. This administration has given me, the lay person, the feeling he is going to bankrupt it for the debt he is concurring for us all, as a nation. When we have a national disaster, the likes of Katrina, there ought to be rapid and distinct functions, of all local, state and federal, to justify the standards of the Nation as a whole. He has bolstered the renown fact that he has and still remains being the biggest mouth in the world. That what he says, is either a no truth or a delusion or mental illness. We saw before our very own eyes what was happening on a moment to moment basis; yet, this administration refuses to see anything but farce and continues to fraud America in anything she concurs. NOw to let it be said high crimes and misdemeanors, yes, I think this is it, exactly. But remember I am not of a legal mind. Just an ethical and moral person.
Admendment: If given the fact this president states he has sworn to protect this nation, that should be also from Mother Nature too…:o) JMHO….:o)
Bankrupted the nation both fiscally and morally.
Katrina Non-response.
Sanctioned Torture.
Domestic Spying.
Lying to go to war.
Any one of those should justify impeachment.
…not to mention the national debt, holes cut in the “safety nets” of society, our energy and environmental policies of “Party like it’s 1999.”
Fortunately the constitution allows multiple articles of impeachment…
It truly will take 20 years of concerted effort to recover from the last five years of mismanagement.
Like we say in Tennessee, Brenda: Any jackass can knock down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.
I tend to believe those residents who claim they heard or saw the levees being blown up. I believe the WTC towers fell a little too neatly and professionally, too.
I’ve spent a lot of my life contemplating God and religion, but I never believed in the devil until the year 2000. I’d like to think people are just dumb, but there is an awful lot of malice around. It’s really getting brazen now.
We may be dumb, but we do recover from shock eventually.
I’ve spent a lot of my life contemplating God and religion, but I never believed in the devil until the year 2000. I’d like to think people are just dumb, but there is an awful lot of malice around. It’s really getting brazen now.
I’m another one of those people who always believed people were stupid, not evil. But this last five years has certainly sorely tested my faith in that proposition.
Writing this the thought occurs to me that framing the discussion in terms of “stupid, not evil” may oversimplify the discussion (even if that was the framing used by Aquinas). The problem with these people is not a lack of rational thought (well, OK, maybe on W’s part, but certainly Cheney and Rumsfeld are rational) it’s an emotional problem, a total lack of empathy and sympathy for the pain they inflict on others for their own gain. Which I believe is pretty darn close to the psychological definition of a psychopathological mind.
I may have to change the framing to: “not stupid, not evil, just viciously mad.”
The lunatics are running the asylum.
Sad how all that old music is oh-so-timely timely again. I’ll have to go home and play some Pink Floyd tonight…
Those were really great lyrics.
On the good and evil in regard to framing. There may be a use for this in getting through to the religious groups. BushCo has exploited many religious principles based on Biblical fundamental values. The killing of innocent people whether collateral or now, in some cases, as the result of torture is acceptable because the will of God is being followed. I’ve seen the most horrendous subjects rationalized by Bible passage but they usually get stuck on the sins of falling to the mastery of deception by evil. Convince them that pursuing the ends of Bible prophecy by one who is based in deception and the fruits of that struggle will be poisoned.
It could even be presented as…I may not believe in your Bible but I respect your right to follow it truthfully and will fight to overcome the deceptions of evil to help. There will be a fine line between the gifts of discernment(heh, not working) and the ability of those strongest in faith to be more susceptible to the deception.
“Dark Side Of The Moon” has taken up more-oe-less permanent residence on my portable MP3 player, along with its lesser-known but still amazing followup “Wish You Were Here.”
Of course it may say something about me that I also like the Austin Lounge Lizards’ bluegrass version of “Brain Damage,” complete with hot mandolin lick.
There are so many possibilities of who, why and what could have compromised the levees deliberately. One simple motive comes to mind in any of this and that’s insurance. All of the tragedies with doubtfull circumstances and great opportunities for government also have profit potential for several groups. It wouldn’t have to be a conspiracy for a group to commit a crime that involved the interests of other criminals. The added bonus of secrecy to protect would benefit the criminals all the way around.
It’s not conspiracy theory as much as it is opportunity theory.
Impeachment is for high crimes and misdeameanors. It’s unclear what crime exactly was committed — I just haven’t thought about it.
But if negligently losing an American city on your watch as president isn’t a High Misdeameanor — what is? Oh yeah. Blow jobs.
Maybe we can frame the hurricane as the Big Blow Job.
If I thought the Democrats had any courage left, I’d say that the Prez was writing their campaign ads for them. Unfortunately, I doubt they’ll have the guts to use this, and wouldn’t be surprised if they wound up defending the Chimp against attacks from his fellow Republicans later this year.
Please remember all (I’m sure you will recall) GW was “busy” getting ready to start another week of his most excellent summer vacation at the ranch near Crawford Texas at the time. (that Saturday)
Avoiden Cindy SHEEhan is hard work!
…and PLEASE, do not forget who he was celebrating a BD with too…while he was IN AZ…