In the October 2004 edition of National Geographic Magazine there is an eerily accurate description of a figurative hurricane much like Katrina.
Excerpt from the article:
It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.
But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.
The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.
"The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours—coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast...
A prediction by climatologists of more frequent powerful storms, an immenent danger according to Shea Penland, a geologist of the University of New Orleans and one of the top three threats in the United States according to FEMA were not enough to goad our government into an effictive response.
Alfred Naomi, project manager for the Army Corp of Engineers "had warned for years of the need to shore up the levees." The Bush Administration and Republican Congress constantly cut back on funding for projects that would build and improve levees, floodwalls and pumping stations. He had drawn up plans to build a Category 5 protection system that would have cost $2.5 billion dollars, a meager amount in comparison to the tens of billions of dollars and thousands of lives that have been and will be lost to this catastrophe.
At the same time natural defensive barriers were being destroyed. Louisana marshes were disappearing at the rate of 1 acre every 33 minutes despite nearly half a billion dollars spent over the last decade to preserve it.
Even without the $2.5 billion dollar plan the Bush Administration interfered with a decade long $430 million plan from the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA). Funds were diverted to Iraq in 2003. Couple that with the Tax-Cuts from 2001-2003 and you can see the burden engineers in New Orleans had to endure. After 2004, the worst hurricane season in decades, the government still made large cuts in the budget forcing Louisiana to raise regional taxes.
There were several cases where the federal government hampered the development of the project. The Louisiana Congressional delegation recieved $10.4 million after requesting over $70 million in recent years. A project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain for $15 million was denied. After a request for $4 million over the next four years the Bush Administration agreed to give $300,000 that the state agreed to match and they were then asked to do no study so the funds could be used for the Iraq war this year. It doesn't help further to know the Louisiana National Guard had many of their troops sent to Iraq further hampering the ability to rescue victims in the immediate stages.
There is much more to see in the articles below.
Why is it Mr. Bush is allowed to ignore the threats that are real and visible at our homeland? He chased imaginary threats going after Iraq. He speaks about the welfare of the United States when we have a disaster that may be 15 times more deadly than 9/11 and has caused more destruction than any other disaster. Where it took him several minutes to respond to America being attacked it has taken him several days to respond to Katrina. This isn't a plane that was diverted from a 5 hour course. This is a hurricane that took several days for it's damage to materialize.
Perhaps I am wrong to judge him. Maybe he is slow. Maybe he honestly doesn't care about New Orleans and he wants us to accept that. Maybe he just believes Iraq is the most important thing in the world rihgt now. The priorities are not straight in this mans mind.
Credits:
Common Dreams
Editor&Publisher.com
National Geographic
TPM Cafe
No comments:
Post a Comment