Katrina made landfall five years ago this morning. The first levee at New Orleans was breached at 8:14 am. By the next day, 80% of the city was underwater.
Spike Lee’s documentaries When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts and If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, David Simon’s Treme, and Dave Eggers’s excellent book Zeitoun
What you heard and saw on TV during the actual event was mostly bull shit.
NewMexiKen wouldn’t want to dis a career as an archivist like I had, but it occurs to me every once in awhile — like while watching the Grammy Awards show — that I should have given more thought to being a rock god.
There was a group of about 20 British school kids (13-15 year olds) on the plane last night from Atlanta to Albuquerque. They were flying from London to Taos for a week’s skiing. Privileged brats. (Though the U.S. is cheap these days if we’ll let you in.) Personally, I’d have given a visa to Amy Winehouse instead.
(While I think of it, I saw Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke on DVD last week with Jill. This is Lee’s four part documentary on New Orleans and Katrina. After the first two parts, we wondered what could be added, but actually it’s pretty riveting over the better part of the full four parts. I strongly recommend you see the film — if only to better understand what happened in light of so much contemporary news that got it wrong and the overall chaos. It will make you very disappointed in our country.)
Aretha, honey, no one loves you more than I do, but you’ve got to consider Jenny Craig or something.
This photo has nothing to do with anything, but I suggest it’s worth seeing and reminding ourselves every day until November.
Dylan has been right about so much, and certainly not least with: “I was thinkin’ ’bout Alicia Keys, couldn’t keep from crying.” She is something.
I saw an ad today for a wireless SD memory card for digital cameras. Move photo files from your camera to your computer via your home wireless network. 2GB for $100, so it’s pricey, but that will change. It’s called Eye-Fi.
I’d like to point out that the video for the Record of the Year was posted here nearly six weeks ago — Rehab.
NewMexiKen posted a number of items about the aftermath of Katrina two years ago today that you might find worth revisiting.
Christmas shopping in the U.S. has been a reliable source of anxiety and stress for well over a century. “As soon as the Thanksgiving turkey is eaten, the great question of buying Christmas presents begins to take the terrifying shape it has come to assume in recent years,” the New York Tribune wrote in 1894. But recently millions of Americans, instead of trudging through malls in a desperate quest for the perfect sweater, have switched to buying gift cards. The National Retail Federation expects that Americans will buy close to twenty-five billion dollars’ worth of gift cards this season, up thirty-four per cent from last year, with two-thirds of shoppers intending to buy at least one card; gift cards now rival apparel as the most popular category of present. This is, in part, because of clever corporate marketing: stores like gift cards because they amount to an interest-free loan from customers, and because recipients usually spend more than the amount on the card—a phenomenon that retailers tenderly refer to as “uplifting” spending. But the boom in gift cards is also a rational response to the most important economic fact about Christmas gift giving: most of us just aren’t that good at it.
James Surowiecki in an interesting little essay on gifting. There’s more including this key point: “My idea of what you want, it turns out, has a lot to do with what I want.”
NewMexiKen posted it a year ago today (September 5, 2005):
In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.
They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.
Well, Digby brings us up to date. Go read.
“President Bush is traveling around the country. Today he flew to New Orleans. There was one awkward moment when he said, ‘Oh my God, what happened here?!'”
Conan O’Brien
There’s a lot of raves this morning about Spike Lee’s HBO Katrina film — When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Word is that it’s quite moving and not overtly political, at least the first two parts that aired last night.
HBO really is about the only essential TV, isn’t it?
Why is it that George W. Bush is still President?
“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we’re having to deal with it and will.” – George W. Bush, Sept. 1, 2005
Only now the AP has unearthed videotape of the president being warned that just that could happen the day before Katrina hit.
Chris Matthews ran the tape just a few minutes ago on Hardball.
See the report on it here.
Late Update: video link here.
White House Knew of Levee’s Failure on Night of Storm
How surprised are we?
“[A]ccording to NBC, both Louisiana and Mississippi requested 40,000 FEMA trailers. Thus far, Mississippi, whose governor chaired the Republican Party, has gotten 33,000, while Louisiana, whose governor is a Democrat, has gotten 2,000 or so.”
“To admit to fucking up on Katrina would only embolden the terrorists who wish to destroy us. Did we mention 9/11?”
TBogg on the White House’s refusal “to turn over certain documents about Hurricane Katrina or make senior White House officials available for sworn testimony before two Congressional committees investigating the storm response.”
Beats Per Minute has the latest on New Orleans.
Beats Per Minute is written by Vernon who identifies himself: “I’m Dineh and I’m a physician living in New Orleans. I grew up on the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona. Although I now live in the Louisiana, I also consider the Navajo Reservation my home.”
Kevin Drum has posted this information about the coal mine where 12 miners died:
How bad was the accident and injury rate at the Sago Mine? Terrible. The national average for mining accidents (non-fatal days lost) in 2004 was 5.66 per 200,000 manhours worked. The Sago Mine, which was owned by Anker West Virginia Mining Co. at that time, had an accident rate of 15.90. In 2005, Sago’s accident rate increased to 17.04, and 14 miners were injured.
From a report in The New York Times:
JACKSON, Miss., Nov. 19 – When the federal government and the nation’s largest disaster relief group reached out a helping hand after Hurricane Katrina blew through here, tens of thousands of people grabbed it.
But in giving out $62 million in aid, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Red Cross overlooked a critical fact: the storm was hardly catastrophic here, 160 miles from the coast. The only damage sustained by most of the nearly 30,000 households receiving aid was spoiled food in the freezer.
The fact that at least some relief money has gone to those perceived as greedy, not needy, has set off recriminations in this poor, historic capital where the payments of up to $2,358 set off spending sprees on jewelry, guns and electronics.
For NewMexiKen’s part, I’m perfectly happy buying jewelry, guns and electronics for the fine people in Jackson, Mississippi, with my tax dollars, aren’t you?
A gallery of posters to support the Katrina relief effort. Some of these are very cool.
NewMexiKen apologizes for missing this a week ago when it was more timely, but Vernon’s report on Halloween in New Orleans is well worth a click.
Vernon has returned home to New Orleans and tells of life and work (he’s a doctor) in the aftermath.
The best writing I’ve seen on New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina — New Orleans native Michael Lewis, Wading Toward Home from The New York Times Magazine.
“If things go as they are apparently planned, the rebuilt [New Orleans] will be Santa Fe by the bayou — an overpriced city, most of whose residents of color will find themselves priced out even as the city projects a multicultural atmosphere as its main selling point.”
From an article in The New York Times:
When the definitive story of the confrontation between Hurricane Katrina and the United States government is finally told, one long and tragicomic chapter will have to be reserved for the odyssey of the ice.
Ninety-one thousand tons of ice cubes, that is, intended to cool food, medicine and sweltering victims of the storm. It would cost taxpayers more than $100 million, and most of it would never be delivered.
The somewhat befuddled heroes of the tale will be truckers like Mark Kostinec, who was dropping a load of beef in Canton, Ohio, on Sept. 2 when his dispatcher called with an urgent government job: Pick up 20 tons of ice in Greenville, Pa., and take it to Carthage, Mo., a staging area for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Mr. Kostinec, 40, a driver for Universe Truck Lines of Omaha, was happy to help with the crisis. But at Carthage, instead of unloading, he was told to take his 2,000 bags of ice on to Montgomery, Ala.
After a day and a half in Montgomery, he was sent to Camp Shelby, in Mississippi. From there, on Sept. 8, he was waved onward to Selma, Ala. And after two days in Selma he was redirected to Emporia, Va., along with scores of other frustrated drivers who had been following similarly circuitous routes.
At Emporia, Mr. Kostinec sat for an entire week, his trailer burning fuel around the clock to keep the ice frozen, as FEMA officials studied whether supplies originally purchased for Hurricane Katrina might be used for Hurricane Ophelia. But in the end only 3 of about 150 ice trucks were sent to North Carolina, he said. So on Sept. 17, Mr. Kostinec headed to Fremont, Neb., where he unloaded his ice into a government-rented storage freezer the next day.
“I dragged that ice around for 4,100 miles, and it never got used,” Mr. Kostinec said.
“… I request that you declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period beginning August 26, 2005, and continuing. The affected areas are all the southeastern parishes including the New Orleans Metropolitan area …”
— Governor Blanco letter to President Bush, August 27, 2005
REPRESENTATIVE BUYER: “So I’d like to know why did the president’s federal emergency assistance declaration of August 27th not include the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines?”
[FORMER FEMA DIRECTOR] BROWN: “[I]f a governor does not request a particular county or a particular parish, that’s not included in the request.”
— During sworn testimony September 27, 2005
Pointer via Think Progress
As floodwaters forced tens of thousands of evacuees into the Dome and Convention Center, news of unspeakable acts poured out of the nation’s media: evacuees firing at helicopters trying to save them; women, children and even babies raped with abandon; people killed for food and water; a 7-year-old raped and killed at the Convention Center. Police, according to their chief, Eddie Compass, found themselves in multiple shootouts inside both shelters, and were forced to race toward muzzle flashes through the dark to disarm the criminals; snipers supposedly fired at doctors and soldiers from downtown high-rises.
In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of “babies,” and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of “hundreds of armed gang members” killing and raping people inside the Dome. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, “we couldn’t count.”
The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. Nagin told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an “almost animalistic state.”
Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.
Source: Excerpt from the Times-Picayune
David Remnick has an excellent piece in The New Yorker on New Orleans and the aftermath of Katrina. Good historical perspective.
“[T]he Louisiana delegation’s $250 billion bill would cost more than the Louisiana Purchase under the Jefferson administration on an inflation-adjusted basis.”
My mom was feeling very hopeful through all this. Then we met with FEMA this morning. After two hours waiting in line for it’s cold bureaucratic embrace, her hope started to flicker. This is what it looks like when poor people have lost it all, and are told to get in line. Which line? Did you fill out that form? I hear they suspended the vouchers. Who do I call for shelter? Call this 800 number to get your number. But sir, I don’t have a phone. Go to this website to get a number. But sir, I don’t have a computer, or a home to put it in, or a phone to connect it to.
Get in line, ma’am.
This what it looks like when you can’t take anymore. If I could strangle an entire bureaucracy with my bare hands, I would.
Go see the photo of his mother at Operation Eden.