Posted on 09/05/2005 1:43:56 AM PDT by xrhopsiomega
http://www.geocities.com/alpomega@sbcglobal.net/TimesPicayune_Aug27_29_2005b.html
Here is a cached web page with of a bunch of news briefs from BEFORE Katrina reached New Orleans. It is interesting and a bit unsetteling to read it knowing the end result. However, it does provide insight into the planning and mindset before the hurricane struck. I have to admit that I had thought the planning at the time seemed well done.
Here are some quotes made before the hurricane hit:
Saturday, August 27, 2005
* The mayor said he would stick with the state's evacuation plan and not officially call for residents to leave until 30 hours before expected landfall, allowing residents in low-lying surrounding areas to leave first. But he recommended residents in low-lying areas of the city, such as Algiers and the 9th Ward, get a heard start. We want you to take this a little more seriously and start moving right now, as a matter of fact, Nagin said.
* Nagin said the city would open the Superdome as a shelter of last resort for evacuees with special needs. He advised anyone planning to stay there to bring there own food, drinks and other comforts such as folding chairs, as if planning to go camping. No weapons, no large items, and bring small quanties of food for three or four days, to be safe, he said. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he and Nagin will likely call a curfew at some point, and would station police officers at shopping centers to prevent looting. Looters will be dealt with severly and harshly and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, he said.
* LSU scientists took projected tracks of Hurricane Katrina on Saturday evening and produced a frightening scenario: A wall of water surging in from all sides pushing up against the urban levees.
[From all the worst-case predictions I've read, they only mentioned flooding from storm surges overtopping the levees. FEMA probably was correct in saying that no one expected to have the levees actually break.]
* The city has set up ten pickup areas to take people to emergency shelters. RTA buses will be picking up citizens for free and take them to these shelters.
[There has been a lot discussed about not busing the poor as planned. It could be that their busing plan wsa to only take people to the shelters]
Sunday, August 28, 2005
* New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin called for a first-ever mandatory evacuation of the city this morning...
...The city has 30 boats at its disposal, the mayor said.
* The governor also said that President Bush had telephoned shortly before the 9:30 a.m. press conference began. She said Bush said he was very concerned about the storm's impact and urged Blanco and Nagin to order the evacuation.
* "I want to emphasize, the first choice of every citizen should be to leave the city, he said. He noted that the Dome is likely to be without power for days and possibly weeks after the storm fits, and said it will not be a comfortable place."
* The mayor urged residents to check on their neighbors and offer them help, in particular senior citizens. This is an opportunity for us to come together in a way we've never done before, he said.
* While officials were mostly concerned about preparing for the storm's impact, there was also some discussion of its aftermath.[yikes]
* 'Louisiana's senators thank Bush, urge tour Louisiana's U.S. senators' - Mary Landrieu and David Vitter - today sent a joint letter to President Bush, thanking him for his declaration of emergency in the state and his public comments urging residents to flee Hurricane Katrina. They also urged the president "respectfully but in the strongest possible terms to tour the devastated area as soon as practical," a visit they said would reassure residents that federal agencies are focused on helping the area recover.[Wow. The exact same people who are now complaining the Presidents visit was a photo-op]
* About 26,000 New Orleans residents sought refuge from Hurricane Katrina at the Superdome, which authorities describe as the "shelter of last resort," Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said late Sunday. To help keep them fed and hydrated, the Louisiana National Guard delivered three truckloads of water and seven truckloads of MREs short for "meals ready to eat." That's enough to supply 15,000 people for three days,
[One last note: If the NO mayor kept calling the Superdome the "refuge of last resort", does it hold refugees or evacuees? Who would have thought linguistics would a big story in the USA's largest disaster?]
He said to bring food for 3-4 days. I can't believe many people would have actually done this. But, the comment seems to indicate whom he thought was responsible for feeding the people.
bump
Late Friday night, 08/27/05.
That's what I thougth. Considering time needed to evacuate, and each hour counted, Governor should have made the decision immediately to order a mandatory evacuation immediately regardless of the time of day. It was always known, the levee system was never designed to protect against any storm greater than category 3.
There were enormous numbers of buses that could have been used to evacuate people who had no other means of transportation out.
One thing I thought of was to use large wide bodied aircraft to evacuate tourists from New Orleans to nearby hub airports like DFW, IAH, and ATL. With enough airlift it could be possible to get large numbers of people out much faster than could happen with busses going on round trips to cities in Texas. I was reading a thread on Airliners.net about whether 747's of international airlines would be useful for airlifting people out. Due to the time differences between cities and the length of time flights between those cities take, there are not many optimal times to schedule those flights each day. As a result many of planes used for international service spend many hours on the ground every day. The time normally spent on the ground between flights could be used in an emergency to airlift people out without affecting their availablity for their scheduled flights. If the busses only had to make round trips from MSY airport and New Orlean, they could effective evacuate many times the number of people they could evacuate making round trips to Houston or Dallas. In a full evacuation, busses could probably make a round trip to the airport in 90 minutes to two hours, while a round trip to Houston or Dallas would be maybe 17 or 18 hours.
Bumping to read later. Because this is what I've been looking for.
Did Nagin know how much food was in the Superdome?
Did someone promise him they would bring in food for the 20k people in the dome?
Did he ever ask bout the quantity of food/water supplies on hand?
My town had a similar system, on a much smaller scale, until recently. There are levees along the river, and there used to be flood control channels that go out into the neighborhoods. These channels were a constant source of flooding.
They replaced them with the biggest storm sewer pipes you ever saw. These lead to outfalls in the river that are protected by massive flapper valves to prevent the pipes from flooding. In the event of a storm, the water drains normally until the river reaches a certain point. Then the flappers close and the storm sewers shut down. The town sets up trash pumps to throw water back into the river, but this is the only way for water that actually falls on the town to get into the river.
As a result, we have occasional flooding of the streets and wet basements from time to time. But the massive levee topping ten-foot-deep floods are a thing of the past. We'll see how long it lasts...
good find. thanks.
He was responsible for feeding them if he moved them in the shelter. What good is a shelter that you starve to death in? Water and MREs can be stored for YEARS. Why did the city not have a warehouse with a supply of food to be moved into it's shelters in the event of, oh say, a hurricane! How can that not be part of a disaster plan? FEMA hauled in the food to feed them and that was not part of their responsibility at the moment. THANK GOD they did! Can you even imagine if FEMA hadn't been on the ball BEFORE the hurricane?
That rule was strictly adhered to wasn't it?
/sarcasm
BTTT
" I think this is important and being glossed over with the blame game the Dems are playing against the President. The videos show the sandbags being dropped by these walls that are only two feet thick on top. They had a NO levee expert on saying the earthen levees are all intact. If this is accurate it puts all the hysteria on federal funding of the levees to an end. Hopefully this will be picked up on."
You are 100% correct. It was a canal wall that breeched...
since this information contradicts the MSM story about cuts in levee funding creating this flooding, dont expect it to be emphasized by an MSM out to blame "budget cuts" and the Bush administration.
ping
Wow I did not realize this. Very interesting.
Sunday night when the storm was in the gulf.
I can tell you I saw scared witless by the reporting.
It had a cat 4-5 storm heading directly to New Orleans.
We averted a far far worse disaster.
To think that we have had this about of caterwauling about New Orleans, when in fact monday 10am it looked like NO averted a far far worse disaster... damage to NO was contained ... until the canal wall broke and flooded New Orleans.
had it not been for a wall breech, we'd be focussing on the real disaster that befell gulf coast communities that have been wiped off the face of the earth. The Superdome community would have gone back home, etc.
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