Over the last six years I’ve written on Katrina many many times (here, here, here and here. This last one is an interview with James Perry who was running for mayor of New Orleans at the time.) I think there are a lot of lessons that can be learned from this disaster. I’ve been to New Orleans twice in the last six years. New Orleans is a city that I truly love. New Orleans is a city that is completely different than any other city in the South. It’s not like Atlanta or Miami or even nearby Houston. The only city in the United States, in my opinion, that comes close to the feeling of pre-Katrina New Orleans would be San Francisco. There was something wonderful about New Orleans. It wasn’t simply a great mecca for music. It wasn’t simply one of the best places in the United States to eat. It wasn’t the unique architecture of the French quarter or even the garden district. It wasn’t brunch at Commander’s Palace or the fabulous art shops where we can buy original paintings from national and internationally known artists at prices the 10th of which you’d find in New York or Chicago. It wasn’t the abject poverty or the wealth of the financial district. It was all of this and more which made New Orleans a great city.

The tragedy of Katrina is that it exposed a dysfunctional political system. New Orleans politics has been famously dysfunctional for decades. Louisiana politics is almost laughable. It was nearly impossible to get anything done in Louisiana unless you “knew somebody.” Then, on top of this dysfunctional system you had the Bush administration. You had an administration that actually hated government. You add all of this together and tens of thousands of people suffered needlessly. My conclusion after reading tons of information on Hurricane Katrina is simply that we need to treat each other better.

I found this article in the New Orleans Times Picayune:

In April 2010, four and a half years into recovery, the Census Bureau found that Katrina cost New Orleans 29 percent of its population; Jefferson, 5 percent; St. Bernard, 47 percent; Plaquemines, 14 percent.

Some of those people settled nearby. St. Tammany’s population grew 22 percent; St. Charles Parish grew 10 percent; St. John the Baptist grew 7 percent.

But census takers counted a net loss of nearly 150,000 people who were driven out of a metropolitan area of what was once 1.3 million.

Allison Plyer of the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, a co-author with Elaine Ortiz of “The New Orleans Index at Six,” an annual recovery analysis, said the region has showed unusual resilience in facing not only Katrina, but the 2008 recession and last year’s BP oil spill. (more…)

Update: Melissa Harris-Perry does a great job at summing up the lessons of Katrina.

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Times-Picayune

I would like to say that I will come up with something brilliant never before said about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. I wish that were true. There have been endless books investigating the Hurricane Katrina tragedy from multiple angles. David Brinkley’s book, the Great Deluge, maybe the most complete. New Orleans’s own daily newspaper, the Times Picayune, has done a magnificent job at relentlessly chasing down details. Finally, Spike Lee’s documentary, When the Levees Broke, personalizes some of the pain and suffering.

Before Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Georges hit the Gulf Coast in 1998 and narrowly missed New Orleans. This hurricane revealed several problems. City, state and federal officials met in 1999 in order to plan an adequate response. The state of Louisiana formally wrote FEMA and requested a planning exercise in August of 2000. It took four years before the exercise actually happened. In July 2004, Hurricane Pam began. There were over 300 participants in this five-day exercise. Hurricane Pam, by all accounts, was a realistic category three hurricane with sustained winds up to 120 mph. Using simulations from the National Weather Service and the US Army Corps of Engineers, the participants simulated over 20 inches of rain falling in parts of southern Louisiana. The storm surge topped the levees. The simulation assumed that over 300,000 people could not get out of the city in spite of mandatory evacuations. They also assumed that over half million buildings would’ve been destroyed. Over 100,000 people were injured and 60,000 killed. This was serious.

After the simulation, an after action report was filed. The most remarkable thing about this after action report is the number of areas where the letters TBA (to be announced) up here in the report. The report is incomplete. Large responsibilities have not been decided. In football, there is a saying, “You play like you practice.” In this case, the simulation showed huge gaps in our response. In reality, there is huge gaps in our response. In my opinion, any serious look at Katrina must start with a look at Hurricane Pam and the inter-agency problems that Pam revealed.

I took this picture in 9th ward 3 years ago.

9th ward

So what are the lessons?

• there should be no political considerations when doling out aid
• experts are experts for a reason. They should be in charge of planning and resource management.
• we as Americans do a bad job of planning for future problems. Money was consistently diverted from the levees into projects that would give politicians “more to run on.”
• there is no excuse … We must get help to everyone within 48 hrs. There is no excuse.
• this could happen again.

What are your thoughts? What lessons have you learned?

From HuffPo (written by Janet Napolitano):

We’ve also made tremendous progress since Katrina and Rita in improving our country’s ability to prepare for, respond to and recover from major disasters of all kinds.

An example of this progress is the recovery efforts this summer following the worst flooding in more than a century in Nashville, Tenn. These floods took the lives of more than 30 individuals, devastated communities, and threatened the safety and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of residents. Despite this historic damage, our swift and effective response demonstrated what a difference preparation, coordination between federal, state, and local governments, and the quick deployment of resources to local communities can make.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, played a key role in the government’s response. But as our FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate would be the first to say, preparing for — and responding to — disasters truly is a shared responsibility. While we continue to strengthen and streamline efforts to prepare for disasters at the federal level, citizens, families, communities, faith organizations, and businesses all have an important role to play in our collective response to emergencies.

So, we placed the blame for the slow government response on Michael Brown, the hapless head of FEMA at the time. New documents appear to show that Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, may have been the man with the deer in the headlights look in his eyes.

The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the “principal federal official” in charge of the storm.

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina’s early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff — not Brown — was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government’s blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn’t shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department. (more…)

From MSNBC:

A federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers’ failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding by Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast in 2005.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval late Wednesday ruled in favor of residents who alleged the Army Corps’ shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish.

Many in Katrina have argued that Katrina, which struck the region Aug. 29, 2005, was a manmade disaster caused by the Army Corps’ failure to maintain the levee system protecting the city.

Let me know what you think of Mr. Perry. Would you vote for him? Will he help New Orleans?

My guest is Amy Goodman from Democracy Now. We discuss her thoughtful and well-written book, Standing Up to the Madness, Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times.  This really isn’t an interview.  It is a real discussion.  We cover many topics.  Enjoy!

In what was billed as President Bush‘s last press conference, he said a lot of amazing things. What really jumped out at me was his defense to Hurricane Katrina. I am guessing that Dana Perino and others in the press office got together with President Bush and worked on his answers to many expected questions. I think this response was rehearsed. The fact that the Coast Guard rescued hundreds, if not thousands, of people off of rooftops does not excuse the fact that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was completely inept. (I readily admit that Louisiana is a completely dysfunctional state. Louisiana and Illinois should probably arm-wrestle for the distinction of being the most corrupt state in the union. The local and state response were completely inadequate, but that does not excuse the federal response.)

The New Orleans Times Picayune has more here and here.

The federal report that was written by a Republican lead Congress. Surprise.

Keith Olbermann takes Bush to the wood shed (see clip).

An Editorial from the Times-Picayune really encapsulates my Outrage over Bush’s comments (here’s a portion):

In his last scheduled press conference, the president vigorously dismissed criticism of the government’s performance.

“Don’t tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed,” the president said, pounding the lectern. “That’s a pretty quick response. . . . Could things have been done better? Absolutely, absolutely. But when I hear people say the federal response was slow, what are they going to say to those chopper drivers or the 30,000 who got pulled off the roof?”

The U.S. Coast Guard, indeed, performed thousands of heroic rescues after the storm. But it’s indisputable that the rest of the federal bureaucracy failed miserably in aiding tens of thousands of people who waited days for water, food and evacuation. Even reports by the White House and Congress faulted the federal performance.

So did President Bush a few days after Katrina. “The results are not acceptable,” the president said Sept. 2, 2005, referring to the federal failure to timely deliver food and medicines to survivors. (more… )

Doesn’t that sound just like someone else? Someone who is rich and unaware of poverty. Uhmm – Mrs. Bush, after touring the Astrodome complex in Houston on Monday, said: ”What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”

I lived in Shreveport — Bossier City, Louisiana during the late 80s and through the mid-90s.  The first casinos were built in the early 90s.  There was a lot of speculation of increased crime.  Fortunately, this did not happen.  Minimum wage workers nearly doubled their salaries by going to work for the casinos instead of some of the other businesses in town.  This caused a relative labor shortage.  The other businesses had to raise their pay in order to get qualified workers.  The casinos were an economic boom to a relatively depressed city.  The lowest wage earners increased their income and got health benefits.

Bill Scher and Rick Perlstein, from Campaign for America’s Future, discuss Katrina and the conservative myths.

The blueprint for turning the federal government into the political wing of the Republican party can be found here.

Anna Pou is the New Orleans physician who was charged with 2nd murder. A grand jury found her not guilty on Friday. Newsweek has a very long interview with her. It is excellent. Unfortunately, Dr. Pou’s legal troubles will be continuing. There are many civil lawsuits sitting in the hopper. I’m not sure that she will ever be able to practice again. It is hard if not impossible to get staff privileges once you have been nationally labeled as she has been.

I’m not judging what she did or didn’t do.  I just don’t think that we can apply our normal standards to New Orleans during that time period.

This week, he brought Melissa Harris-Lacewell, quickly becoming on of my favorite people, Princeton University Associate Professor of Political Science and African American Studies, back on the show to discuss Katrina. Bill Moyers adds Mike Tidwell, author of Bayou Farewell in 2003 and Ravaging Tide and environmental activist, to discuss Katrina 2 years later. This is an excellent discussion.

Here’s just a little piece -

BILL MOYERS: What have you learned, the two of you, about politics, American politics from the Katrina disaster?

MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, I often say that Hurricane Katrina and it’s political aftermath is the 2006 win of the democrats in the mid-term elections. And it–

BILL MOYERS: How so?

MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: I know it seems odd.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah.

MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Because it’s not as though Katrina is at all even talked about in the 2006 elections. But you’ll remember that from September 11th, 2001 until August 28th of 2005, one was unpatriotic if you criticized the Bush administration or really any of the actions taken by our government. So, the Democratic Party and much of the American media was quite timid in terms of its critique of the administration.

But what Katrina and the bungling of Katrina does is it provides a wedge that opens the door. And the criticisms start to flow from CNN, from– and then from the Democratic Party. Now, the sad and scary thing is that all of these issues, urbanism, race, class, environmentalism which were the true core issues that made Katrina possible get lost. Because what the Democratic Party makes the choice to do is to use that wedge as an opportunity to critique Iraq. Not that it’s– I mean, it’s fine, right? But they use that. And so then Iraq becomes the story of the 2006 elections.

BILL MOYERS: At the expense of Katrina?

MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: At the expense of Katrina. And all the lessons that Katrina had the capacity to teach us about domestic politics.

MIKE TIDWELL: Well, I think there’s a lot of blame if you will to go around in terms of politics. But I would take a slightly different course. A, you know, 1,800 dead, 100 billion dollars in economic damage. A million people were displaced by Katrina. Our President went to Jackson Square a week after Katrina. Stood there in an abandoned city and he said we will stay here as long as it takes and we will do whatever it takes to bring this city back. And just like after 9/11, the whole country said, tell us what to do. Lead us. We want to help. We want to respond as a nation. We want to respond as one community. Everyone was horrified by what happened. And that commitment simply wasn’t there.

In the fall of 2005, it took until right before Christmas to get three billion dollars just to begin rebuilding the levees. Are you kidding me? 1,800 dead? It took us the entire fall of 2005. And that’s because the President really did not sustain his commitment. He did not say this is as important to me as the Iraq war. This is as important to me as tax breaks for the rich. I’m going to roll up my sleeves. And as a result, the media stopped covering it. And the American people felt like they wrote a check, they took care of it.

Surely, if the President’s not on Jackson Square every week telling us, giving us progress reports, everything must be okay. If you go to New Orleans right now, if you go there tomorrow in 2007, you would think the hurricane happened last week. You have a bubble of a society still devastated by that hurricane. And– and you get outside that coastal bubble, and it’s as if the hurricane didn’t happen. And that’s because our leaders don’t continue to say it’s an issue.

———-

From MSNBC.com:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will keep selling and donating surplus disaster-relief trailers despite concerns that they may have unhealthy levels of formaldehyde, the agency said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Health Affairs plan to test the air quality in the trailers.

“Potential buyers/recipients will be fully advised of the concerns regarding formaldehyde levels in travel trailers,” FEMA spokesman Aaron Walker said Friday in an e-mail message to The Associated Press. (more…)

The American public has seen one disaster after another.  The Iraq war.  Hurricane Katrina.  Wage stagnation.  CEO pay inflation.  Walter Reed.  Now the Scooter Libby trial.

I review the year with Amanda Terkel a researcher and blogger from the Center for American Progress. 

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