Ghosts of New Orleans ~ 2 Years On
August 29th, 2007 | by demon princess | Published in Politics | 9 Comments
Your Demon had the great fortune to live in New Orleans for several years pre-hurricane, so the way that a great & wholly unique American city was allowed to disintegrate right before our very eyes is a continuing outrage, & a personal one, to me. It was, to me, a magic place, a polyglot of music & architecture & wonderful, truly diverse people, truly of historic significance in terms of what it gave to the rest of the country. In America, there is only one city that so captures, & deserves the distinction of capturing, America’s heart, soul & imagination.
And we let it drown.
August 29 marked the 2-year anniversary since a storm surge generated by Katrina (which could have been avoided if the two levees that breached were funded properly, which everyone seems to have known for quite a while before the disaster), but the worst of it was that Bush himself apparently lied about what he knew & when he knew it.
Remember Bush speech, “Hey, nobody had any idea the levee was gonna breach,” twaddle on TV in the aftermath? Some time later it turns out that he did know. And didn’t particularly care.
As the New York Times reported on the hearings that followed:
“In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.
“But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department’s headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.
“The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.
“FYI from FEMA,” said an e-mail message from the agency’s public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators. Conditions, the message said, “are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought - also a number of fires.”
“Michael D. Brown, who was the director of FEMA until he resigned under pressure on Sept. 12, said in a telephone interview Thursday that “he personally notified the White House of this news that night, though he declined to identify the official he spoke to.
“White House officials have confirmed to Congressional investigators that the report of the levee break arrived there at midnight, and Trent Duffy, the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much in an interview this week, though he said it was surrounded with conflicting reports.
“But the alert did not seem to register. Even the next morning, President Bush was feeling relieved that New Orleans had “dodged the bullet,” he later recalled. Mr. Chertoff, similarly confident, flew Tuesday to Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu. With power out from the high winds and movement limited, even news reporters in New Orleans remained unaware of the full extent of the levee breaches until Tuesday.
“The federal government let out a sigh of relief when in fact it should have been sounding an “all hands on deck” alarm, the investigators have found.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/10/politics/10katrina.html?ex=1188532800&en=8d558dfbeb0494f6&ei=5070
Two years later, a significant number of people have not yet made it home to New Orleans, (see Dusty’s post below), & yet others live in devastated neighborhoods that are not yet rebuilt, & struggle to figure out how they will. The wonderful musicians that give the city so much of its soul have mostly not been able to return. Many have died in the 2 years since.
The city begs for the tourists to come back, & some do. Read this CNN article for a story about tours through the 9th Ward, where a man trying to rebuild watches tour buses go by 2 times a day, with stops so video-camera-wielding tourists can film a battered house in the street where a man died trying to save his two children ~ & failed. Their mummified bodies were found much later. The tourists probably don’t know they’re standing just yards from where it occurred.
Another aged woman survived by living in a graveyard during the aftermath of Katrina.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/08/28/green.update/index.html
And, in the meantime, what have we heard from the White House lately about the mess that is still Katrina?
Anyone?
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Big Fella, thanks for the link and the smile. There are definitely some upsides to going...
August 29th, 2007at 4:23 am(#)
I think at the end of his pontificating, he will tell everyone to go shopping! ; (
August 29th, 2007at 5:08 am(#)
i saw quite a bit ago- a program that showed that there were investors who had wanted to make new orleans the ‘las vegas’ of the south ala mississippi- where they had casinos and whatnot. new orleans was fine being the way it was- so the levees got ignored. there had been scale models drawn up and everything. guess those folks were pissed. i have a feeling that’s why there has been such shameful dragging of feet.
http://www.casinogamblingweb.com/main/other-gambling-news/gulf-coast-casino-news.jsp
August 29th, 2007at 8:00 am(#)
The folks with money want to make the gulf coast into their own image..and fuck the folks that have lived there for their entire lives and raised families there.
BushCo is releasing the funds slowly on purpose I believe..he wants the people of the region to get discouraged and move on..so the carpetbaggers can move in and swoop up the property for basically nothing.
Its the biggest travesty we have ever had on our shores.
August 29th, 2007at 10:15 am(#)
I think there are sinister intentions afoot like Dusty says regarding the region. Those in power and their friends want their slices of the pie. People have to wake up to the fact that our government doesn’t care about us at all…or things WOULD truly be different than they are.
August 29th, 2007at 11:56 am(#)
yeah, new orleans would be a grand place if they could just get rid of the . . . um . . . well, you know. that way, the (good) people could, like, recover, you know, and new orleans could get rid of all that old junky looking stuff, those houses and all, and clean it up and make it into a nice big theme park with a clean french quarter without all those bars and stuff, maybe something like Epcot, you know, Disney-ish?
seriously, the destruction of new orleans was so painful to watch and the “recovery” process even more so. it is an outrage and as is typical for these asshats in washington, the entire process has been corrupt and has screwed not only the people of new orleans, but the workers who could put the city back together and those who care about what happens there.
it’s been a boon, though, for the contractors. wonder how many are bush contributors? and i may be paranoid, but i am convinced that those uninhabitable fema trailers were sitting on some mobile home manufacturer’s back lot after having failed inspection for air quality.
the disaster in new orleans was just the thing that CEO needed to unload that unsaleable housing, probably at six times the cost, on the people of new orleans who are of no account anyway, so who cares if they are poisoned. still pissed, still outraged.
August 29th, 2007at 1:08 pm(#)
What bothered me about the Levees is they were left knowingly inadequate while the money to improve them was spent to make the city more of a money maker. Today the areas for tourists and the afluent are in good shape while much of the 9th ward is still a shambles and will never be rebuilt. The levees are not scheduled to be repaired until 2012. That amazes me after all the money spent. Anyway, Katrina was allowed to do what man could not and that was clean out public housing and the lower class. What a coincidence I know. Now Republican projects are restoring the money making sections nicely. I know, just one more coincidence.
August 29th, 2007at 1:22 pm(#)
If I new about the levees~Bush et al certainly had to~or,sadly maybe not. Sad
August 29th, 2007at 2:35 pm(#)
Sage…Bush has been too concerned for finding money to fund Iraq and hopefully soon Iran. It’s all he thinks about. That explains why he takes from other funds…guts them…takes the money and runs to give it to Halliburton and other contractors in Iraq. They are cleaning up well…according to plan. Bush and his cronies will have very nice nest eggs to settle down with…”blood money”…and I hope it haunts them at night when they TRY to sleep.
August 29th, 2007at 3:21 pm(#)
Forgive the following diatribe, but I still can’t be neutral where New Orleans is concerned. I still consider the city soul home.
It’s hard to tell where & when New Orleans’ problems 1st started. Extreme power politics were virtually invented in LA with Huey Long. Corruption has long been endemic. As usual, the folks who suffer the most are those at the very bottom of the economic ladder & always have been; in short, unable to affect or influence events. In NOLA, it’s the 9th Ward & other “undesirable” sectors of the city. And throughout the city, even in “uptown,” one was never very far from the sounds of gunfire in the nearby projects & “undesireable” areas. Even so, New Orleans was not big enough (confined geographically between the river & Lake Pontchartrain) for “white flight” to occur on any any very great scale. Metairie is just one of New Orleans’ burbs where whites fled pre-Katrina (& David Duke’s home), but they’re (beyond) boring. I lived there briefly but moved back into New Orleans, a city which, for all its problems from the white middle class sensibility & pov, is unlike any other in the United States.
I LOVED New Orleans, & went back as often as I could after I moved to Seattle (talk about white & middle class but that’s another boring story), & the last time I was there (still pre-hurricane) there was a brand spanking new Harrah’s Casino near the old warehouse district, which was undergoing redevelopment into trendy upscale loft condos, like every other city in the country. Problem is, there was still no economy to speak of, so the gap between very rich & very poor was stark there. Tourism is NOT a viable alternative–it turns residents into “slaves” (forgive the non-PC reference, but its true) & forces them to live on scaps & bones.
Since Katrina, I’ve read that rents have DOUBLED. Federal aid? Read this: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1652501,00.html