John Hinderaker’s Account of Rathergate Documents
Mr. Kalb: I was stunned to receive a copy of your email response to Mr. Charles Thomas...With all due respect, your answer betrays an astonishing lack of awareness of many facts that have been publicly available for a long time.
How do we know the documents are fakes? Here are a few of the most basic reasons:
1) Read the summary of the report of Mr. Peter Tytell, document expert, which is Appendix 4 to the Thornburgh Report. You can find it here. Mr. Tytell "concluded that the Killian documents were generated on a computer. He does not believe that any manual or electric typewriter of the early 1970s could have produced the typeface used in the Killian documents."
2) Read the analysis of Dr. Joseph Newcomer, one of the founders of modern electric typesetting, which you can find ">here. Dr. Newcomer's conclusion: "These documents are modern forgeries."
3) The "Killian documents" are in Times New Roman font. Times New Roman is common on modern word processors, but was never licensed for use on any typewriter.
4) The Thornburgh Report found that whoever forged the documents got no fewer than six military acronyms wrong.
5) One of the fake documents says that General "Buck" Staudt was pressuring Lt. Col. Bobby Hodges to sugarcoat Lt. Bush's evaluation. The document is dated August 1973. General Staudt retired in April 1972.
6) The source of the documents was Bill Burkett, a notorious Bush-hating crank with a personal vendetta against the National Guard. He lied about where he got the documents. First he said they were given to him by someone named "Conn" who promptly left for Europe. (CBS never made any attempt to locate Mr. Conn, who turned out to be fictitious, to verify Burkett's story or, more important, find out where Conn got them.) After the 60 Minutes story blew up, Burkett admitted that Conn didn't exist. His revised story was that he got a call from someone named "Lucy Ramirez" who told him to go to the Texas Livestock Show. He went to the Texas Livestock Show. A man he'd never seen before walked up to him and handed him an envelope, which contained the documents. He took them home, photocopied them, and burned the originals. Do you find that story credible? Would it be credible even if it were the first story he told?
7) Jerry Killian's widow and sons say that he did not write the memos, and that he did not agree with the sentiments they express.
8) President Bush's evaluations from that time period are glowing. His superiors, including Jerry Killian, described him as a first-rate officer and pilot. You can access the evaluations on my web site,Power Line.
There is a great deal more, but that should be sufficient. I would add that the burden of proof is not on those who have pointed out multitudes of reasons why the documents are fakes. Anyone can type up "documents" and claim that they were mysteriously given to him by an anonymous stranger.The burden of proof is on those who claim that the documents are genuine.
As to the broader issue, there is no support for the claim that Bush received some kind of "special treatment." General Staudt, who approved Bush's application, has said repeatedly that he received no communications of any kind from anyone in connection with that application, and accepted it because he thought Bush would be a good pilot. There was no waiting list for pilots in the Texas Air National Guard at that time, so there is no reason to think that some kind of "special treatment" was necessary. Nor did Bush volunteer for the National Guard to escape service on Vietnam; on the contrary, he volunteered to go to Vietnam while in the Guard, but was turned down because he did not have the required number of pilot hours. Col. Ed Morrisey, who served in the TANG with Bush, says: "The Air Force, in their ultimate wisdom, assembled a group of 102's and took them to Southeast Asia. Bush volunteered to go. But he needed to have 500 [flight] hours, but he only had just over 300 hours so he wasn't eligible to go." You can read about it here.
Interestingly, the Thornburgh Report says that Mary Mapes' file on her investigation that led up to the 60 Minutes story shows that she learned, in the course of the investigation, that Bush had not in fact received any kind of preferential treatment, but went ahead with the story anyway.
With all due respect, Mr. Kalb, it is unfortunate that you have enabled Mr. Rather's ongoing perpetration of a notorious fraud without taking the time to apprise yourself of the facts.
John Hinderaker
We'll let you know if Kalb responds, but we're not holding our breath.
Friday, September 30, 2005
Friday, September 23, 2005
Bird's-Eye View
You have to know her. We're in a Motel-6 in McKinney, TX - waiting for Rita to quit so we can go back to Houston to see what's left of our home. Lynne looks out the window and sees the biggest power pole I've ever seen (pics to come). On the very top wire, a few dozen sparrows were perched.
In a serious, non-joking tone she says, "They must have a bird's-eye view!"
... you should live with her, I hear 'em every day!
In a serious, non-joking tone she says, "They must have a bird's-eye view!"
... you should live with her, I hear 'em every day!
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Yorkie Travel
Travelling with 2 neurotic yorkies is a blast. You can only eat take-out; resturants don't have doggie seats, and even wearing dark glasses and swinging a white cane in front of me doesn't work. Nobody belives in seeing-eye Yorkies.
Motel-6 does allow "one small pet" in the room. So far I've seen 2 boxers and a Great Dane.
I have to say, so far, EVERY one I've met has been extremely polite and anxious to be helpful!
Reporting live (thank God) from McKinney,
---------
Dave (b²)
Friday, September 16, 2005
No News Today?
No News Today?
It’s either a really slow day for news, or a blatant manifestation of, “… let’s print anything that might embarrass Bush!” when the lead item on all MSM is a note from the President saying he needs to take a piss.
Jeezum-crow!
It’s either a really slow day for news, or a blatant manifestation of, “… let’s print anything that might embarrass Bush!” when the lead item on all MSM is a note from the President saying he needs to take a piss.
Jeezum-crow!
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
That Wasn't What I Said!
On Monday night (the 12th) – FOX (Ch 360 on DirecTV) was on. I wasn’t paying too much attention. But I heard them start to rag on MSM for hyping the predictions of “tens-of-thousands” expected deaths in New Orleans alone, when only 279 had been recorded so far. With 45 of those coming from one hospital, a death toll of under 250 for all of New Orleans sure seems way low to me.
I thought the emphasis was misplaced, so I wrote the following email and sent it to Capt. Ed, Glenn Reynolds, and Michelle Malkin.
(I’ve been reading much more Morrissey than Reynolds lately because I’m getting way tired of:
Click here!
- or-
OUCH. (Via Stephen Green).
- or-
HURRICHICANERY?
C’mon Glenn, if you’re gonna link, at least give me some taste of where I’m about to go.
… and when you have guest bloggers , make ‘em use a byline!)
Sent: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 06:39:19 -0500From: PajamaGuy <PajamaGuy@gmail.com>Subject: Only 279 ? ??!?!?!To: Captain Ed, Glenn Reynolds,
& Michelle Malkin
Glenn, Michelle,
Captain,
Louisiana’s death toll is about 279.
Fox started spouting
last night that it was
MSM who was predicting 10,000+.
What do you
really think?
Didn’t we ALL expect thousands?
C’mon, we knew there were
1,000’s of poor
folks who couldn’t or wouldn’t get out.
MSM
wasn’t alone.
MSM sucks! (Unless you’re a far-left
liberal) Make no mistake – but please, let’s not blame – OR CREDIT - MSM
because the death toll was/is so low. Could it just be because a few
million folks got on their virtual knees and said, “God help them?”
- (…and weren’t you three among us?
Could it
just be because prayers were answered?
-PajamaGuy
I didn’t expect an answer. But I got one from Ed.
---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 07:10:10 -0500
>From: "Captain Ed" <captain@captainsquartersblog.com>
>Subject: Re: Only 279 ? ??!?!?!
>To: PajamaGuy
>
> I think that's confirmed deaths so far, not a comprehensive total.
> Link: File-List
>
> Cheers!
>
> Edward Morrissey
> Captain's Quarters
>
> Thus every blogger, in his kind,
> is bit by him who comes behind ...
Whoooooaaaa! Captain Ed sent me a reply! (no sarcasm meant!) I wasn’t sure he got my point – I mean yeah, I know there will be more – so I wrote back:
Sent: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 08:29:31 -0500From: PajamaGuy
Subject: Re: Only 279 ? ??!?!?!To: Captain Ed
Yes Sir - I agree it will go higher, but still - didn't you really think there'd be several multiples of that by now?
Can't you believe at least some life was spared because of prayer?
(Why wasn't it a direct hit? Why did the wind speed decrease? What meteorological occurrence deflected the storm by 30 miles? With all the 90° water and even Joe Bastardi calling for wind speed increase, why did it drop to 145? I’m no soapbox preacher, but I choose to believe prayers were answered.)
- PajamaGuy
Wasn’t I surprised when Bloglines popped me with the following CQ RSS feed!!!!!
Not only did I NOT even mention WaPo, Ed chooses to ignore my underlying point altogether.
I just shake my head……
The Captain Missed My Point (of Did He?)
By Captain Ed on Current Affairs
CQ reader PajamaGuy points to this Washington Post report about the gruesome discovery of 45 bodies found at a New Orleans hospital that appear to have been abandoned patients that drowned in the flood. While that story may well wind up as one of the most disturbing -- who would have left 45 helpless people to die? -- the Post buries the lead past the jump. Only 279 deaths have been confirmed, and it doesn't appear at this point that the toll will escalate much further:
That prediction by Mayor Ray Nagin may yet still come to pass as more of the city emerges from the floodwaters. At this point, though, it will provide yet another example of the hysteria that finds its home with the unprepared and the passive, those who want others to do the work that should have already been done by themselves. The figure got a lot of press play because of its spectacular nature and because of the official status of the man proclaiming it.
The Exempt Media should ask themselves whether the estimate of 10,000 casualties had any other basis in fact. If so, they need to explain what else prompted them to report that as a reliable range. If not, then they need to rethink using reports from overwhelmed local politicians who used such estimates to shove attention off of their own performances.
This brings us back to the dead bodies in the hospital. Questions have arisen about why the city did nothing to evacuate the hospitals, which (again) comprise part of the New Orleans EOP:
The bodies of 45 patients left in a hasty evacuation were recovered from a New Orleans hospital, officials said Monday, as the city braced for the scenes left by the receding waters. ...
Officials said the bodies found Sunday in the Memorial Medical Center were left there after a frantic evacuation, days after the storm passed and floodwaters began to rise. An official of the hospital owners said the patients died before the evacuation and their bodies were left in the facility.
But the discovery was certain to raise new questions about why so many city hospitals were not evacuated before the storm. Two medical professionals inside the Memorial Medical Center said conditions began to turn desperate shortly after the floodwaters cut off roads. The darkened corridors were jammed with families. Drinking water grew scarce. Medical supplies exhausted quickly; even IVs were being rationed, they said.
"Things looked like they were going downhill quickly," said Scot Sonnier, an oncologist there. He left before the evacuation, thinking other doctors were handling it, he said.
Mayor Nagin's failure to follow the emergency operations plan again resulted in more deaths and unnecessary panic. The hospitals should have been the first sites evacuated when the voluntary evac order got published, and certainly should have been at the top of the list for the mandatory evacuation. The buses should have rolled to the hospitals before anywhere else, but even without the buses, the mayor's office should have contacted the hospitals and ordered them emptied by the Friday before landfall.
Will this gruesome discovery finally wake up the Exempt Media to the utter failure of New Orleans city management in minimizing the deaths and hardship of Katrina's effects?
CQ reader PajamaGuy points to this Washington Post report about the gruesome discovery of 45 bodies found at a New Orleans hospital that appear to have been abandoned patients that drowned in the flood. While that story may well wind up as one of the most disturbing -- who would have left 45 helpless people to die? -- the Post buries the lead past the jump. Only 279 deaths have been confirmed, and it doesn't appear at this point that the toll will escalate much further:
The city braced for more grim discoveries as the receding waters allowed
search parties to reach isolated buildings. But the death toll -- 279 for
Louisiana -- was still far below the initial prediction of the city's mayor that
10,000 perished.
"It's hot. It smells. But most of the houses we are looking at are
empty," Oregon National Guard Staff Sgt. James Lindseth, 33, said as his
platoon, inspecting for people dead or alive, worked its way through dank and
broken homes that had been in the water a few days ago.
That prediction by Mayor Ray Nagin may yet still come to pass as more of the city emerges from the floodwaters. At this point, though, it will provide yet another example of the hysteria that finds its home with the unprepared and the passive, those who want others to do the work that should have already been done by themselves. The figure got a lot of press play because of its spectacular nature and because of the official status of the man proclaiming it.
The Exempt Media should ask themselves whether the estimate of 10,000 casualties had any other basis in fact. If so, they need to explain what else prompted them to report that as a reliable range. If not, then they need to rethink using reports from overwhelmed local politicians who used such estimates to shove attention off of their own performances.
This brings us back to the dead bodies in the hospital. Questions have arisen about why the city did nothing to evacuate the hospitals, which (again) comprise part of the New Orleans EOP:
The bodies of 45 patients left in a hasty evacuation were recovered from a New Orleans hospital, officials said Monday, as the city braced for the scenes left by the receding waters. ...
Officials said the bodies found Sunday in the Memorial Medical Center were left there after a frantic evacuation, days after the storm passed and floodwaters began to rise. An official of the hospital owners said the patients died before the evacuation and their bodies were left in the facility.
But the discovery was certain to raise new questions about why so many city hospitals were not evacuated before the storm. Two medical professionals inside the Memorial Medical Center said conditions began to turn desperate shortly after the floodwaters cut off roads. The darkened corridors were jammed with families. Drinking water grew scarce. Medical supplies exhausted quickly; even IVs were being rationed, they said.
"Things looked like they were going downhill quickly," said Scot Sonnier, an oncologist there. He left before the evacuation, thinking other doctors were handling it, he said.
Mayor Nagin's failure to follow the emergency operations plan again resulted in more deaths and unnecessary panic. The hospitals should have been the first sites evacuated when the voluntary evac order got published, and certainly should have been at the top of the list for the mandatory evacuation. The buses should have rolled to the hospitals before anywhere else, but even without the buses, the mayor's office should have contacted the hospitals and ordered them emptied by the Friday before landfall.
Will this gruesome discovery finally wake up the Exempt Media to the utter failure of New Orleans city management in minimizing the deaths and hardship of Katrina's effects?
To Glenn, Michelle, & Captain
Glenn, Michelle, Captain,
Louisiana’s death toll is about 279. Fox started spouting last night that it was MSM who was predicting 10,000+. What do you really think?
Didn’t we ALL expect thousands? C’mon, we knew there were 1,000’s of poor folks who couldn’t or wouldn’t get out. MSM wasn’t alone.
MSM sucks! (Unless you’re a far-left liberal) Make no mistake – but please, let’s not blame – OR CREDIT - MSM because the death toll was/is so low. Could it just be because a few million folks got on their virtual knees and said, “God help them?” - (…and weren’t you three among us?
Could it just be because prayers were answered?
-PajamaGuy
Louisiana’s death toll is about 279. Fox started spouting last night that it was MSM who was predicting 10,000+. What do you really think?
Didn’t we ALL expect thousands? C’mon, we knew there were 1,000’s of poor folks who couldn’t or wouldn’t get out. MSM wasn’t alone.
MSM sucks! (Unless you’re a far-left liberal) Make no mistake – but please, let’s not blame – OR CREDIT - MSM because the death toll was/is so low. Could it just be because a few million folks got on their virtual knees and said, “God help them?” - (…and weren’t you three among us?
Could it just be because prayers were answered?
-PajamaGuy
Friday, September 09, 2005
The “Dammed-If-You-Do” would have been much worse!
To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Ms. Blanco would have resisted surrendering control, as Bush administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established.
"Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?" asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential.
Can’t you just imagine what Hillary would have said?!
"Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?" asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential.
Can’t you just imagine what Hillary would have said?!
What really happened...
In case you aren’t familiar with how our government is SUPPOSED to work:The chain of responsiblity for the protection of the citizens in New Orleans is:
What did each do?
The disaster in New Orleans is what you get after decades of corrupt (democrat) government going all the way back to Huey Long.
Funds for disaster protection and relief have been flowing into this city for decades, and where has it gone, but into the pockets of the politicos and their friends. Decades of socialist government in New Orleans has sapped all self reliance from the community, and made them dependent upon government for every little thing.
Political correctness and a lack of will to fight crime have created the single most corrupt police force in the country, and has permitted gang violence to flourish. The sad thing is that there are many poor folks who have suffered and died needlessly because those that they voted into office failed them. For those who missed item 5 (where the President’s level of accountability is discussed), it is made more clear in a New Orleans Times-Picayune article dated August 28:
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In the face of a catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, a mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday for New Orleans by Mayor Ray Nagin. Acknowledging that large numbers of people, many of them stranded tourists, would be unable to leave, the city set up 10 places of last resort for people to go, including the Superdome.
The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could leave the city should.
He exempted hotels from the evacuation order because airlines had already cancelled all flights. Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.
The ball was placed in Mayor Nagin’s court to carry out the evacuation order. With a 5-day heads-up, he had the authority to use any and all services to evacuate all residents from the city, as documented in a city emergency preparedness plan. By waiting until the last minute, and failing to make full use of resources available within city limits, Nagin and his administration screwed up.
Mayor Nagin and his emergency sidekick Terry Ebbert have displayed lethal, mind boggling incompetence before, during and after Katrina. As for Mayor Nagin, he and his profile in pathetic leadership police chief should resign as well. That city’s government is incompetent from one end to the other. The people of New Orleans deserve better than this crowd of clowns is capable of giving them.
If you’re keeping track, these boobs let 569 buses that could have carried 33,350 people out of New Orleans–in one trip–get ruined in the floods. Whatever plan these guys had, it was a dud. Or it probably would have been if they’d bothered to follow it.
As for all the race-baiting rhetoric and Bush-bashing coming from prominent blacks on the left, don’t expect Ray Nagin to be called out on the carpet for falling short.
---------------- Do you want to know why?
Here’s why:
- The Mayor
- The New Orleans director of Homeland Security (a political appointee of the Governor who reports to the Governor)
- The Governor
- The Head of Homeland Security
.... and then... - The President
What did each do?
- The mayor, with 5 days advance, waited until 2 days before he announced a mandatory evacuation (at the behest of the President). The he failed to provide transportation for those without transport even though he had hundreds of buses at his disposal.
- The New Orleans director of Homeland Security failed to have any plan for a contingency that has been talked about for 50 years. Then he blames the Feds for not doing what he should have done. (So much for political appointees)
- The Governor, despite a declaration of disaster by the President 2 DAYS BEFORE the storm hit, failed to take advantage of the offer of Federal troops and aid. Until 2 DAYS AFTER the storm hit.
- The Director of Homeland Security positioned assets in the area to be ready when the Governor called for them.
- The President urged a mandatory evacuation, and even declared a disaster State of Emergency, freeing up millions of dollars of federal assistance, should the Governor decide to use it.
The disaster in New Orleans is what you get after decades of corrupt (democrat) government going all the way back to Huey Long.
Funds for disaster protection and relief have been flowing into this city for decades, and where has it gone, but into the pockets of the politicos and their friends. Decades of socialist government in New Orleans has sapped all self reliance from the community, and made them dependent upon government for every little thing.
Political correctness and a lack of will to fight crime have created the single most corrupt police force in the country, and has permitted gang violence to flourish. The sad thing is that there are many poor folks who have suffered and died needlessly because those that they voted into office failed them. For those who missed item 5 (where the President’s level of accountability is discussed), it is made more clear in a New Orleans Times-Picayune article dated August 28:
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In the face of a catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, a mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday for New Orleans by Mayor Ray Nagin. Acknowledging that large numbers of people, many of them stranded tourists, would be unable to leave, the city set up 10 places of last resort for people to go, including the Superdome.
The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could leave the city should.
He exempted hotels from the evacuation order because airlines had already cancelled all flights. Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.
The ball was placed in Mayor Nagin’s court to carry out the evacuation order. With a 5-day heads-up, he had the authority to use any and all services to evacuate all residents from the city, as documented in a city emergency preparedness plan. By waiting until the last minute, and failing to make full use of resources available within city limits, Nagin and his administration screwed up.
Mayor Nagin and his emergency sidekick Terry Ebbert have displayed lethal, mind boggling incompetence before, during and after Katrina. As for Mayor Nagin, he and his profile in pathetic leadership police chief should resign as well. That city’s government is incompetent from one end to the other. The people of New Orleans deserve better than this crowd of clowns is capable of giving them.
If you’re keeping track, these boobs let 569 buses that could have carried 33,350 people out of New Orleans–in one trip–get ruined in the floods. Whatever plan these guys had, it was a dud. Or it probably would have been if they’d bothered to follow it.
As for all the race-baiting rhetoric and Bush-bashing coming from prominent blacks on the left, don’t expect Ray Nagin to be called out on the carpet for falling short.
---------------- Do you want to know why?
Here’s why:
It’s more convenient to blame a white president for what went
wrong than to hold a black mayor and his administration accountable for gross
negligence and failing to fully carry out an established emergency preparedness
plan.
To hold Nagin and his administration accountable for dropping the ball amounts to letting loose the shouts and cries of “Racism!”. It’s sad, it’s wrong, but it’s standard operating procedure for the media and left-wing black leadership.
Mark these words: You will not hear a word of criticism from Jesse Jackson Sr., Randall Robinson, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, or Kanye West being directed toward Clarence Ray Nagin Jr. Why? Because he is just another black politician instead of a responsible elected official who happens to be black. In the mindset of more-blacker-than-thou blacks, black politicians who are on their side can do no wrong.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Katrina: ABC Notices The New Orleans Emergency Plan
Katrina: ABC Notices The New Orleans Emergency Plan
By Captain Ed on Current Affairs
At least one major media outlet has finally noticed that New Orleans had an emergency response plan for hurricanes and evacuations that somehow never got implemented. ABC News yesterday asked why Mayor Ray Nagin not only did not follow the plan, but actively sent non-evacuees to a site that had no preparations to handle them:
New Orleans' own comprehensive emergency plan raises the specter of "having large numbers of people ... stranded" and promises "the city ... will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas."
"Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves," the plan states.
When Hurricane Katrina hit, however, that plan was not followed completely.
Instead of sending city buses to evacuate those who could not make it out on their own, people in New Orleans were told to go to the Superdome and the Convention Center, where no one provided sufficient sustenance or security.
ABC also asked Governor Kathleen Blanco's office about their response to the evacuation. They responded that they never asked for evacuation assistance from the federal government as part of their interaction with FEMA, only for assistance with shelter and provisions. They assumed that the city of New Orleans had followed its own evacuation plan.
That assumption wound up costing lives. Did they ask Nagin if his administration had followed the plan, and if so, what kind of response did they get? If ABC's report is correct, then the feds may not have known of the evacuation breakdown until the flood on Tuesday made it a critical situation -- and then were forced to respond by getting the correct assets in place within 72 hours for evacuation while almost all the roads and bridges were unusable. By that time, FEMA had begun to use what roadways were left open to move in the supplies and temporary shelter they had prestaged in the area. The feds would have had to quickly shift to a massive evacuation effort instead, a difficult and time-consuming transformation.
Kudos to ABC for asking the right questions. The answers will prove very disturbing for those who want to cast blame at the feds for what eventually will prove to be a heroic response, under the circumstances. The answers ABC published already prove most of that conjecture wrong.
UPDATE and BUMP TO TOP: Perhaps the media might notice this November 2004 analysis of the dry run Hurricane Ivan provided city officials in evacuating the city as a hurricane approached. It would address the meme that only the very poor and infirm resisted the mandatory evacuation, and noted that New Orleans did a poor job in communicating the evacuation order then as well (emphases mine):
The fact that 600,000 residents evacuated means an equal number did not. Recent evacuation surveys show that two thirds of nonevacuees with the means to evacuate chose not to leave because they felt safe in their homes. Other nonevacuees with means relied on a cultural tradition of not leaving or were discouraged by negative experiences with past evacuations. ...
Residents who did not have personal transportation were unable to evacuate even if they wanted to. Approximately 120,000 residents (51,000 housing units x 2.4 persons/unit) do not have cars. A proposal made after the evacuation for Hurricane Georges to use public transit buses to assist in their evacuation out of the city was not implemented for Ivan. If Ivan had struck New Orleans directly it is estimated that 40-60,000 residents of the area would have perished.
That may well turn out to be the death toll for Katrina, and for the exact same reason. They had this data well ahead of the storm, and the evacuation called for the buses to roll for this exact reason. Why didn't Mayor Nagin follow the plan? Why didn't Governor Blanco do something to check her assumptions that he had?
By Captain Ed on Current Affairs
At least one major media outlet has finally noticed that New Orleans had an emergency response plan for hurricanes and evacuations that somehow never got implemented. ABC News yesterday asked why Mayor Ray Nagin not only did not follow the plan, but actively sent non-evacuees to a site that had no preparations to handle them:
New Orleans' own comprehensive emergency plan raises the specter of "having large numbers of people ... stranded" and promises "the city ... will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas."
"Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves," the plan states.
When Hurricane Katrina hit, however, that plan was not followed completely.
Instead of sending city buses to evacuate those who could not make it out on their own, people in New Orleans were told to go to the Superdome and the Convention Center, where no one provided sufficient sustenance or security.
ABC also asked Governor Kathleen Blanco's office about their response to the evacuation. They responded that they never asked for evacuation assistance from the federal government as part of their interaction with FEMA, only for assistance with shelter and provisions. They assumed that the city of New Orleans had followed its own evacuation plan.
That assumption wound up costing lives. Did they ask Nagin if his administration had followed the plan, and if so, what kind of response did they get? If ABC's report is correct, then the feds may not have known of the evacuation breakdown until the flood on Tuesday made it a critical situation -- and then were forced to respond by getting the correct assets in place within 72 hours for evacuation while almost all the roads and bridges were unusable. By that time, FEMA had begun to use what roadways were left open to move in the supplies and temporary shelter they had prestaged in the area. The feds would have had to quickly shift to a massive evacuation effort instead, a difficult and time-consuming transformation.
Kudos to ABC for asking the right questions. The answers will prove very disturbing for those who want to cast blame at the feds for what eventually will prove to be a heroic response, under the circumstances. The answers ABC published already prove most of that conjecture wrong.
UPDATE and BUMP TO TOP: Perhaps the media might notice this November 2004 analysis of the dry run Hurricane Ivan provided city officials in evacuating the city as a hurricane approached. It would address the meme that only the very poor and infirm resisted the mandatory evacuation, and noted that New Orleans did a poor job in communicating the evacuation order then as well (emphases mine):
The fact that 600,000 residents evacuated means an equal number did not. Recent evacuation surveys show that two thirds of nonevacuees with the means to evacuate chose not to leave because they felt safe in their homes. Other nonevacuees with means relied on a cultural tradition of not leaving or were discouraged by negative experiences with past evacuations. ...
Residents who did not have personal transportation were unable to evacuate even if they wanted to. Approximately 120,000 residents (51,000 housing units x 2.4 persons/unit) do not have cars. A proposal made after the evacuation for Hurricane Georges to use public transit buses to assist in their evacuation out of the city was not implemented for Ivan. If Ivan had struck New Orleans directly it is estimated that 40-60,000 residents of the area would have perished.
That may well turn out to be the death toll for Katrina, and for the exact same reason. They had this data well ahead of the storm, and the evacuation called for the buses to roll for this exact reason. Why didn't Mayor Nagin follow the plan? Why didn't Governor Blanco do something to check her assumptions that he had?
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
AMERICAN MORNING
AMERICAN MORNING
Grim Mission in New Orleans
Aired September 5, 2005 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Carol. I'm Miles O'Brien. A grim mission in New Orleans. Teams going house-by-house to find the victims of Katrina who couldn't escape in time. The death toll expected to be in the thousands. How high could it go? Frightening to imagine. We're live in New Orleans this morning -- Soledad. SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Soledad O'Brien on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. This morning, you're going to hear my interview with the city's mayor. He'll tell us very candidly about his response before Katrina hit. Is he responsible for some of the blame? Also, we'll hear some details of the conversation that he had with the state's governor and President Bush on Air Force One. That's ahead -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: And President Bush in the disaster zone again Friday and will be back there today. That's on this AMERICAN MORNING.S. O'BRIEN: Good morning. And welcome, everybody. We're coming to you live from New Orleans this morning right near Bourbon Street. And you're looking at something we really haven't seen here before lately, and that is the Sheraton. And it's got power. They've got some massive generators working finally, and that means that they also have air-conditioning and lights, clearly you can see. The security there is working around the clock. They're trying to bring in a limited water supply as well in a city that has none of these things. Also, we're told that the Sheraton has and had port-a-potties well before they had port-a-potties at the Superdome. We also want to show you what they're working on today. You can see the water level here right by Bourbon Street. The entrance to Bourbon Street is still pretty high. And that means that in the neighborhoods that are even more low-lying, Miles, it's a massive problem. They are going to be focusing on search and rescue again today, but really the focus is on recovering the bodies. We went out yesterday with a search team to try to see who could be rescued. The neighborhoods are so eerily quiet that it's pretty clear that now we've entered another phase. And that phase, of course, is recovery of the bodies. And I have to say it's going to be a high count, one can tell as you just go through some of these neighborhoods -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: Well, as the mayor said, Soledad, you just have to do the math on that one. Thank you very much. We'll be back to you shortly. We begin with some of the mission critical issues facing Katrina survivors as we speak. President Bush making his second visit to the storm-ravaged Gulf region today. He'll make stops in staging areas in Baton Rouge and Poplarville, Mississippi. The recovery and count of the dead has begun in New Orleans, as Soledad mentioned. The first confirmed numbers since the storm a week ago now, 59 bodies recovered, including 10 at the Superdome. But city and state officials say the count will ultimately be in the thousands. Also in New Orleans, reports that police have shot eight people, killing at least five. Authorities say gunmen opened fire on a group of contractors crossing a bridge on their way to make repairs. Police then returned fire. A plane carrying evacuees from Louisiana arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, overnight. It's the first group of evacuees to arrive in that state. About a quarter-million displaced people are already housed in Texas shelters, as we have been telling you. But officials say the shelters are overwhelmed there. The governor of Texas is asking other states to take some evacuees as well -- Soledad. S. O'BRIEN: Yes, clearly that is going to be part of this massive problem. The other fork, I think it's fair to say, Miles, in this problem is the sheer number of bodies, because, frankly, here in New Orleans, they really have no idea. The official number is quite low. What people are actually predicting will be the final number, though, astoundingly high.Let's get right to Nic Robertson. He's been on this story. No one has any idea, because there are so many people trapped in neighborhoods that no one has been able to access. NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And they don't know until they knock on the doors of the houses, are they find somebody living there? Are they going to find somebody really sort of on their last gasp of breath upstairs? Or are they going to find a body inside a house?And what we are finding, they are going on and they are finding bodies. And at the moment they can't do anything with the bodies. They just have to leave them there in the house, mark the house for a team to come back. Those teams to recover the bodies are coming in now. The disaster mortuary operation response teams, they are coming back, 3 by 31-member teams. They are going to consist of coroners, medical examiners, morticians. They are going to be responsible for finding those bodies, getting information of where they are, finding the bodies, putting them in refrigerated trucks, moving them to a mortuary. At that mortuary there, a sort of formal identification process can be gone through. And this is also going to be a very big and very slow and very cumbersome process. DNA analysis, dental records, fingerprints if possible. None of this, it seems, is going to happen quickly. And as we both know from watching the operation rescue and relief going on here, it's a massive area that they have to go through. And it's clearly going to take a long time. Nobody is out there saying, hey, come to this house, there is somebody here. They just don't know. S. O'BRIEN: They have no idea, because they people are displaced everywhere. In addition, I think water is so destructive. As we saw in the tsunami, it really -- I mean, it's grizzly. But it destroys evidence of human bodies, and that's going to really compromise their ability to identify people. I mean, they had people -- floating bodies, floating down the streets, which basically were rivers. ROBERTSON: And the longer they are left in the water -- yesterday, the mayor was talking about his concerns about disease with the bodies being in the water. But the other concern, as you say, is, you know, the longer the bodies are in the water, in these temperatures here, decomposition. And, you know, you lose the fingerprints. So that's -- one of the quick analysis is gone. Then you're going to have to perhaps go to dental records or DNA. These things take a lot of time. You've got a lot of cross- referencing matching to be done. So, yes, very slow. S. O'BRIEN: There will be some influx back into the city, because some people will be allowed to come back into their homes. And that's going to be a whole other huge problem, I think. ROBERTSON: Jefferson parish today, 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., curfew lifted for families who lived here. They have to have photographic I.D. and show they have residency in the area. They've been advised to bring cash, bring food, bring water with them. They won't find any of that here. But it is a hard curfew. They have to be out by 6:00 p.m. S. O'BRIEN: I think that's going to be tough certainly for those families. Nic Robertson, thanks as always.Let's get right back to Miles -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: Thank you, Soledad. Thanks, Nic.An hour from now, President Bush will leave Washington, head to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He'll also stop in Mississippi today. National correspondent Bob Franken at the White House.Bob, what is the president's mission today? BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, he was stunned by the charges that his administration had at least initially indifferent response to the tragedy that unfolded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. So, he's making his second trip in three days. The president is going to be showing the presidential flag as he stops in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the capital of the state. He's going to be meeting with some of the people involved in the massive rescue operation. Of course, we now know that there's a blame game going on of sorts, and the administration discussed with officials of Louisiana at least a partial takeover. That was rejected by the state, a federal takeover of some of the state functions. In any case, after all that, the president will move to Poplarville, Mississippi. He'll be taking a helicopter flight to Poplarville. There are many people in Mississippi who believe that there just hasn't been enough attention to their plight. The president will be appearing at Pearl River Community College in that area. We know of 17 who died. So, the president is now trying to provide reassurances, to provide the symbol of leadership that many people say was lacking at the beginning. He is now trying to, in the words of many administration people, make up for lost time and end the discussions of the past and try and move forward -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: Bob, let's talk about this federalization of this whole effort. Clearly, the federal government is the entity that can best afford and handle this kind of a scope of a problem. We know the president asked the governor of Louisiana, apparently has been in some talks with the governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour. Is that going nowhere with both governors? FRANKEN: Well, there is a lot of dynamic involved here. First of all, the state of Louisiana makes the argument that the local officials, the state officials best know their areas. They should be the ones who maintain the tradition of being in charge. But there is also the question of who is to blame for what now many people believe was an inadequate response. And federal officials are now saying they were at the mercy of state officials and local officials who didn't do the job. And the state and local officials are saying that's absolutely not the case. There was an inadequate federal response. So all of that is going on. At the moment, everything is staying the same. And at the moment, the White House officials are telling us they don't need to impose the powers they have under the Insurrection Act, under the ability of FEMA, to expand its powers if it wants to, saying that there is a belief now they can work with state officials. M. O'BRIEN: Bob Franken at the White House, thanks. Let's check some weather for you now. (WEATHER REPORT)M. O'BRIEN: Now let's go to Indonesia, where a passenger jet has crashed into a residential area. A Mandela Airlines jet crashed just after takeoff from the city of Medan. It was heading for Jakarta. Conflicting reports this morning on whether anyone survived. The jet was carrying 112 passengers, 5 crew members. Residents on the ground expected to be among those killed. Still to come on the program, tough words from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Find out what he has to say about Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and how she handled the crisis. And later, what kind of progress is the military relief effort making? We'll talk with the man in charge, the raging Cajun, Lieutenant General Russell Honore, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)CHERYL HARDIN, LOOKING FOR UNCLE: I'm Cheryl Hardin. I'm out of Houston, Texas. And I'm looking for my Uncle Henry Smith Jr. He's out of Louisiana. And he's been missing for some days now. And if you could, give us a call if you see him at 713-614-6900. (END VIDEO CLIP)(COMMERCIAL BREAK)S. O'BRIEN: One week after Hurricane Katrina struck, we're in New Orleans. And you can still see the damage, and you can still see the rescues that are continuing to be under way often with volunteers, often with the police department as well. It is a big problem. They're getting some people off the roofs, but in many cases when you're talking about an elderly population that cannot possibly pull themselves up on the roof or wave to a helicopter, you are certainly to see at this point now people dying. They cannot survive without water and food for this long, especially the older populations. Mayor Ray Nagin says the big problem too, now, is disease, because the bodies that are, frankly, in these homes and in the water, along with the sewage, could breed some disease. We got a chance to speak with the mayor yesterday, and asked him very bluntly, how much blame should he shoulder for all of these problems now?(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)S. O'BRIEN: There are people who say your evacuation plan, obviously in hindsight, was disastrous. MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS: Which one? S. O'BRIEN: Your evacuation plan before -- when you put people into the Superdome. It wasn't thought out. You got 20,000 people in there. And that you bear the brunt of the blame for some of this, a large chunk of it. NAGIN: Look, I'll take whatever responsibility that I have to take. But let me ask you this question: When you have a city of 500,000 people, and you have a category 5 storm bearing down on you, and you have the best you've ever done is evacuate 60 percent of the people out of the city, and you have never issued a mandatory evacuation in the city's history, a city that is a couple of hundred years old, I did that. I elevated the level of distress to the citizens. And I don't know what else I could do, other than to tell them that it's a mandatory evacuation. And if they stayed, make sure you have a frigging ax in your home, where you can bust out the roof just in case the water starts flowing. And as a last resort, once this thing is above a category 3, there are no buildings in this city to withstand a category 3, a category 4 or a category 5 storm, other than the Superdome. That's where we sent people as a shelter of last resort. When that filled up, we sent them to the Convention Center. Now, you tell me what else we could have done. S. O'BRIEN: What has Secretary Chertoff promised you? What has Donald Rumsfeld given you and promised you? NAGIN: Look, I've gotten promises to -- I can't stand anymore promises. I don't want to hear anymore promises. I want to see stuff done. And that's why I'm so happy that the president came down here, because I think they were feeding him a line of bull also. And they were telling him things weren't as bad as it was. He came down and saw it, and he put a general on the field. His name is General Honore. And when he hit the field, we started to see action. And what the state was doing, I don't frigging know. But I tell you, I am pissed. It wasn't adequate. And then, the president and the governor sat down. We were in Air Force One. I said, 'Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two have to get in sync. If you don't get in sync, more people are going to die.' S. O'BRIEN: What date was this? When did you say that? When did you say...NAGIN: Whenever air Force One was here. S. O'BRIEN: OK. NAGIN: And this was after I called him on the telephone two days earlier. And I said, 'Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two need to get together on the same page, because of the lack of coordination, people are dying in my city.' S. O'BRIEN: That's two days ago.NAGIN: They both shook -- I don't know the exact date. They both shook their head and said yes. I said, 'Great.' I said, 'Everybody in this room is getting ready to leave.' There was senators and his cabinet people, you name it, they were there. Generals. I said, 'Everybody right now, we're leaving. These two people need to sit in a room together and make a doggone decision right now.' S. O'BRIEN: And was that done? NAGIN: The president looked at me. I think he was a little surprised. He said, "No, you guys stay here. We're going to another section of the plane, and we're going to make a decision."He called me in that office after that. And he said, "Mr. Mayor, I offered two options to the governor." I said -- and I don't remember exactly what. There were two options. I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision. S. O'BRIEN: You're telling me the president told you the governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision? NAGIN: Yes. S. O'BRIEN: Regarding what? Bringing troops in? NAGIN: Whatever they had discussed. As far as what the -- I was abdicating a clear chain of command, so that we could get resources flowing in the right places. S. O'BRIEN: And the governor said no. NAGIN: She said that she needed 24 hours to make a decision. It would have been great if we could of left Air Force One, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out. It didn't happen, and more people died. (END VIDEOTAPE)S. O'BRIEN: The mayor making it clear that much politicking was going on, even as people here were continuing to suffer. The mayor clearly thinking that the governor did way too little, way too late for her part. We put a call into Governor Blanco's office. They declined to come on our show this morning and talk to us. Her spokesperson did say, though, that it was a -- this was a tragedy now that was being reduced to politics. I think, though, Miles, there is certainly lots and lots and lots of blame to go around. The mayor, of course, for his part, advising elderly people to be sure to grab an ax and be able to climb out on your roof and cut your way out. Obviously, not going to be feasible. Many of the people, it is believed, who perished in the subsequent flooding were elderly. And we've seen entire neighborhoods where the bulk of the population is elderly. No way they're going to grab an ax and stand on their fridge and cut their way out of their house, and then lift themselves up and flag down a chopper as it flies overhead. That's just not going to happen.Today, we're seeing a lot of blame, again, going around. And I think there's enough blame for everybody to share, frankly -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: All right, Soledad. That is for sure. There's about as much blame as there is water in New Orleans right now. Thank you very much. Let's go to Jefferson parish. Jefferson parish is fortunate to be on the higher side of that canal with that levee that breached. And as a result today, the parish president is allowing people, as he puts it, the head of the household to go to homes in Jefferson parish and make an assessment on the damage, perhaps recover some items and so forth. Also encouraging people to carpool doing that. As you can see, there's a long line of cars there as people have been waiting to do this, knowing this was going to be happening. Our Elizabeth Cohen is in Jefferson parish, and she is witnessing this scene as it unfolds -- Elizabeth. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, I'm watching people pour in. There are hundreds of probably thousands of cars pouring into Jefferson parish. Now, they let people in starting at 6:00 this morning. So that was just about 20 minutes ago. People had been waiting all night to get in. The line, we're told by police, was three miles long. It stretched from one parish line to another parish line. Now, people are allowed to stay for just a matter of hours. Jefferson parish President Aaron Broussard told them to come in, get what they needed, clean up a bit if they can, and then get out. He warned women not to travel alone. He also advised that people leave their children at home, less that image of their devastated home would be etched forever in their minds -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: I assume one of the big concerns here would be -- and this is the dark side of all of this, Elizabeth -- this would be an opportunity for looters. What are they doing to control that? COHEN: I don't think that they are really, per se, so concerned about looters going into people's homes. They have secured this area. When I talked to the head of the emergency office, Dr. Walter Mastrie (ph), yesterday, he said that they really felt that this was secure, that they had gone, that they had made sure as much as they could that that was not going to happen. The concern seems to be more about just the congestion, the mechanics of getting this many people in and then this many people out. M. O'BRIEN: Elizabeth Cohen in Jefferson parish, thank you very much. Still to come on the program, Katrina dealt a devastating blow to a vital part of Mississippi's economy, the casino industry. A closer look at whether it can really bounce back, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.(COMMERCIAL BREAK) M. O'BRIEN: In Mississippi, shipments of relief and aid are getting through, and the cleanup is making progress. But the death toll is more than 160. And that is expected to rise as the cleanup accelerates. Chris Huntington live in downtown Biloxi. Chris, are they getting the relief they need there? CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, yes. The essential supplies of food, water, extra clothing, even basic sanitation needs are being delivered to the folks here. A lot of it by private donations, folks from all over the country bringing goods down here, helping to set up tent areas, distribution centers. The streets are being cleaned. The Mississippi Power Company, with help, again, from all around the region, is trying to restore power. But just as an example of how this process goes, two steps forward and sometimes a step backward. Just in the last 20 minutes, there have been amazing green and red blares up into the sky here in Biloxi. A police officer just now confirming to us that transformers have been blowing all over town, he said, this morning, as they try to restore the power. We've seen the light crews out. Amazing falances (ph) of these trucks with cherry-pickers and big drills erecting new light poles, putting up, restringing the power all over town. But clearly now, maybe getting ahead of what the current grid can withstand. The military presence is impressive. We've got a Navy amphibious unit camped out on the beach here near us. Checkpoints up all over the place. That's good. That's calming things down. It does make travel a little bit slower. This is Labor Day, Miles, and, you know, a time when people would be taking a day off from work, celebrating the fact that they get a little rest here. No rest here. The big concern looking forward here in this area of Mississippi is, what are people going to do for work? The bulk of the jobs here in coastal Mississippi are either directly with or related to the casino industry. And if you look over my shoulder here, you can see a damaged building. And this back here may look like a building. It's actually one of the casino barges. By law, the casinos had to be floating on the water. So there are these massive barges, the size of ocean liners. This one is about 500-feet long. It's essentially a 50-story building that's been thrust up here about 200 yards onto the ground here. Sixteen thousand jobs in Biloxi alone, about $100 million into the state coffers of Mississippi. A huge debate over whether you even rebuild the casino business on the coast, because it will be vulnerable again. There is talk about bringing it inland. But that sets off a whole other debate. Do you allow casinos across the state?So, casino workers are feeling the pain. They're really concerned about whether this industry can revive in any meaningful time -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: Chris Huntington a Biloxi. Lots of questions still there obvious this morning. Thank you very much. Still to come in the program, have military relief efforts turned the corner in New Orleans yet? We'll ask the man in charge on the ground. He is definitely in charge. Lieutenant General Russell Honore, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Grim Mission in New Orleans
Aired September 5, 2005 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Carol. I'm Miles O'Brien. A grim mission in New Orleans. Teams going house-by-house to find the victims of Katrina who couldn't escape in time. The death toll expected to be in the thousands. How high could it go? Frightening to imagine. We're live in New Orleans this morning -- Soledad. SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Soledad O'Brien on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. This morning, you're going to hear my interview with the city's mayor. He'll tell us very candidly about his response before Katrina hit. Is he responsible for some of the blame? Also, we'll hear some details of the conversation that he had with the state's governor and President Bush on Air Force One. That's ahead -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: And President Bush in the disaster zone again Friday and will be back there today. That's on this AMERICAN MORNING.S. O'BRIEN: Good morning. And welcome, everybody. We're coming to you live from New Orleans this morning right near Bourbon Street. And you're looking at something we really haven't seen here before lately, and that is the Sheraton. And it's got power. They've got some massive generators working finally, and that means that they also have air-conditioning and lights, clearly you can see. The security there is working around the clock. They're trying to bring in a limited water supply as well in a city that has none of these things. Also, we're told that the Sheraton has and had port-a-potties well before they had port-a-potties at the Superdome. We also want to show you what they're working on today. You can see the water level here right by Bourbon Street. The entrance to Bourbon Street is still pretty high. And that means that in the neighborhoods that are even more low-lying, Miles, it's a massive problem. They are going to be focusing on search and rescue again today, but really the focus is on recovering the bodies. We went out yesterday with a search team to try to see who could be rescued. The neighborhoods are so eerily quiet that it's pretty clear that now we've entered another phase. And that phase, of course, is recovery of the bodies. And I have to say it's going to be a high count, one can tell as you just go through some of these neighborhoods -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: Well, as the mayor said, Soledad, you just have to do the math on that one. Thank you very much. We'll be back to you shortly. We begin with some of the mission critical issues facing Katrina survivors as we speak. President Bush making his second visit to the storm-ravaged Gulf region today. He'll make stops in staging areas in Baton Rouge and Poplarville, Mississippi. The recovery and count of the dead has begun in New Orleans, as Soledad mentioned. The first confirmed numbers since the storm a week ago now, 59 bodies recovered, including 10 at the Superdome. But city and state officials say the count will ultimately be in the thousands. Also in New Orleans, reports that police have shot eight people, killing at least five. Authorities say gunmen opened fire on a group of contractors crossing a bridge on their way to make repairs. Police then returned fire. A plane carrying evacuees from Louisiana arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, overnight. It's the first group of evacuees to arrive in that state. About a quarter-million displaced people are already housed in Texas shelters, as we have been telling you. But officials say the shelters are overwhelmed there. The governor of Texas is asking other states to take some evacuees as well -- Soledad. S. O'BRIEN: Yes, clearly that is going to be part of this massive problem. The other fork, I think it's fair to say, Miles, in this problem is the sheer number of bodies, because, frankly, here in New Orleans, they really have no idea. The official number is quite low. What people are actually predicting will be the final number, though, astoundingly high.Let's get right to Nic Robertson. He's been on this story. No one has any idea, because there are so many people trapped in neighborhoods that no one has been able to access. NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And they don't know until they knock on the doors of the houses, are they find somebody living there? Are they going to find somebody really sort of on their last gasp of breath upstairs? Or are they going to find a body inside a house?And what we are finding, they are going on and they are finding bodies. And at the moment they can't do anything with the bodies. They just have to leave them there in the house, mark the house for a team to come back. Those teams to recover the bodies are coming in now. The disaster mortuary operation response teams, they are coming back, 3 by 31-member teams. They are going to consist of coroners, medical examiners, morticians. They are going to be responsible for finding those bodies, getting information of where they are, finding the bodies, putting them in refrigerated trucks, moving them to a mortuary. At that mortuary there, a sort of formal identification process can be gone through. And this is also going to be a very big and very slow and very cumbersome process. DNA analysis, dental records, fingerprints if possible. None of this, it seems, is going to happen quickly. And as we both know from watching the operation rescue and relief going on here, it's a massive area that they have to go through. And it's clearly going to take a long time. Nobody is out there saying, hey, come to this house, there is somebody here. They just don't know. S. O'BRIEN: They have no idea, because they people are displaced everywhere. In addition, I think water is so destructive. As we saw in the tsunami, it really -- I mean, it's grizzly. But it destroys evidence of human bodies, and that's going to really compromise their ability to identify people. I mean, they had people -- floating bodies, floating down the streets, which basically were rivers. ROBERTSON: And the longer they are left in the water -- yesterday, the mayor was talking about his concerns about disease with the bodies being in the water. But the other concern, as you say, is, you know, the longer the bodies are in the water, in these temperatures here, decomposition. And, you know, you lose the fingerprints. So that's -- one of the quick analysis is gone. Then you're going to have to perhaps go to dental records or DNA. These things take a lot of time. You've got a lot of cross- referencing matching to be done. So, yes, very slow. S. O'BRIEN: There will be some influx back into the city, because some people will be allowed to come back into their homes. And that's going to be a whole other huge problem, I think. ROBERTSON: Jefferson parish today, 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., curfew lifted for families who lived here. They have to have photographic I.D. and show they have residency in the area. They've been advised to bring cash, bring food, bring water with them. They won't find any of that here. But it is a hard curfew. They have to be out by 6:00 p.m. S. O'BRIEN: I think that's going to be tough certainly for those families. Nic Robertson, thanks as always.Let's get right back to Miles -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: Thank you, Soledad. Thanks, Nic.An hour from now, President Bush will leave Washington, head to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He'll also stop in Mississippi today. National correspondent Bob Franken at the White House.Bob, what is the president's mission today? BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, he was stunned by the charges that his administration had at least initially indifferent response to the tragedy that unfolded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. So, he's making his second trip in three days. The president is going to be showing the presidential flag as he stops in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the capital of the state. He's going to be meeting with some of the people involved in the massive rescue operation. Of course, we now know that there's a blame game going on of sorts, and the administration discussed with officials of Louisiana at least a partial takeover. That was rejected by the state, a federal takeover of some of the state functions. In any case, after all that, the president will move to Poplarville, Mississippi. He'll be taking a helicopter flight to Poplarville. There are many people in Mississippi who believe that there just hasn't been enough attention to their plight. The president will be appearing at Pearl River Community College in that area. We know of 17 who died. So, the president is now trying to provide reassurances, to provide the symbol of leadership that many people say was lacking at the beginning. He is now trying to, in the words of many administration people, make up for lost time and end the discussions of the past and try and move forward -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: Bob, let's talk about this federalization of this whole effort. Clearly, the federal government is the entity that can best afford and handle this kind of a scope of a problem. We know the president asked the governor of Louisiana, apparently has been in some talks with the governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour. Is that going nowhere with both governors? FRANKEN: Well, there is a lot of dynamic involved here. First of all, the state of Louisiana makes the argument that the local officials, the state officials best know their areas. They should be the ones who maintain the tradition of being in charge. But there is also the question of who is to blame for what now many people believe was an inadequate response. And federal officials are now saying they were at the mercy of state officials and local officials who didn't do the job. And the state and local officials are saying that's absolutely not the case. There was an inadequate federal response. So all of that is going on. At the moment, everything is staying the same. And at the moment, the White House officials are telling us they don't need to impose the powers they have under the Insurrection Act, under the ability of FEMA, to expand its powers if it wants to, saying that there is a belief now they can work with state officials. M. O'BRIEN: Bob Franken at the White House, thanks. Let's check some weather for you now. (WEATHER REPORT)M. O'BRIEN: Now let's go to Indonesia, where a passenger jet has crashed into a residential area. A Mandela Airlines jet crashed just after takeoff from the city of Medan. It was heading for Jakarta. Conflicting reports this morning on whether anyone survived. The jet was carrying 112 passengers, 5 crew members. Residents on the ground expected to be among those killed. Still to come on the program, tough words from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Find out what he has to say about Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and how she handled the crisis. And later, what kind of progress is the military relief effort making? We'll talk with the man in charge, the raging Cajun, Lieutenant General Russell Honore, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)CHERYL HARDIN, LOOKING FOR UNCLE: I'm Cheryl Hardin. I'm out of Houston, Texas. And I'm looking for my Uncle Henry Smith Jr. He's out of Louisiana. And he's been missing for some days now. And if you could, give us a call if you see him at 713-614-6900. (END VIDEO CLIP)(COMMERCIAL BREAK)S. O'BRIEN: One week after Hurricane Katrina struck, we're in New Orleans. And you can still see the damage, and you can still see the rescues that are continuing to be under way often with volunteers, often with the police department as well. It is a big problem. They're getting some people off the roofs, but in many cases when you're talking about an elderly population that cannot possibly pull themselves up on the roof or wave to a helicopter, you are certainly to see at this point now people dying. They cannot survive without water and food for this long, especially the older populations. Mayor Ray Nagin says the big problem too, now, is disease, because the bodies that are, frankly, in these homes and in the water, along with the sewage, could breed some disease. We got a chance to speak with the mayor yesterday, and asked him very bluntly, how much blame should he shoulder for all of these problems now?(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)S. O'BRIEN: There are people who say your evacuation plan, obviously in hindsight, was disastrous. MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS: Which one? S. O'BRIEN: Your evacuation plan before -- when you put people into the Superdome. It wasn't thought out. You got 20,000 people in there. And that you bear the brunt of the blame for some of this, a large chunk of it. NAGIN: Look, I'll take whatever responsibility that I have to take. But let me ask you this question: When you have a city of 500,000 people, and you have a category 5 storm bearing down on you, and you have the best you've ever done is evacuate 60 percent of the people out of the city, and you have never issued a mandatory evacuation in the city's history, a city that is a couple of hundred years old, I did that. I elevated the level of distress to the citizens. And I don't know what else I could do, other than to tell them that it's a mandatory evacuation. And if they stayed, make sure you have a frigging ax in your home, where you can bust out the roof just in case the water starts flowing. And as a last resort, once this thing is above a category 3, there are no buildings in this city to withstand a category 3, a category 4 or a category 5 storm, other than the Superdome. That's where we sent people as a shelter of last resort. When that filled up, we sent them to the Convention Center. Now, you tell me what else we could have done. S. O'BRIEN: What has Secretary Chertoff promised you? What has Donald Rumsfeld given you and promised you? NAGIN: Look, I've gotten promises to -- I can't stand anymore promises. I don't want to hear anymore promises. I want to see stuff done. And that's why I'm so happy that the president came down here, because I think they were feeding him a line of bull also. And they were telling him things weren't as bad as it was. He came down and saw it, and he put a general on the field. His name is General Honore. And when he hit the field, we started to see action. And what the state was doing, I don't frigging know. But I tell you, I am pissed. It wasn't adequate. And then, the president and the governor sat down. We were in Air Force One. I said, 'Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two have to get in sync. If you don't get in sync, more people are going to die.' S. O'BRIEN: What date was this? When did you say that? When did you say...NAGIN: Whenever air Force One was here. S. O'BRIEN: OK. NAGIN: And this was after I called him on the telephone two days earlier. And I said, 'Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two need to get together on the same page, because of the lack of coordination, people are dying in my city.' S. O'BRIEN: That's two days ago.NAGIN: They both shook -- I don't know the exact date. They both shook their head and said yes. I said, 'Great.' I said, 'Everybody in this room is getting ready to leave.' There was senators and his cabinet people, you name it, they were there. Generals. I said, 'Everybody right now, we're leaving. These two people need to sit in a room together and make a doggone decision right now.' S. O'BRIEN: And was that done? NAGIN: The president looked at me. I think he was a little surprised. He said, "No, you guys stay here. We're going to another section of the plane, and we're going to make a decision."He called me in that office after that. And he said, "Mr. Mayor, I offered two options to the governor." I said -- and I don't remember exactly what. There were two options. I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision. S. O'BRIEN: You're telling me the president told you the governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision? NAGIN: Yes. S. O'BRIEN: Regarding what? Bringing troops in? NAGIN: Whatever they had discussed. As far as what the -- I was abdicating a clear chain of command, so that we could get resources flowing in the right places. S. O'BRIEN: And the governor said no. NAGIN: She said that she needed 24 hours to make a decision. It would have been great if we could of left Air Force One, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out. It didn't happen, and more people died. (END VIDEOTAPE)S. O'BRIEN: The mayor making it clear that much politicking was going on, even as people here were continuing to suffer. The mayor clearly thinking that the governor did way too little, way too late for her part. We put a call into Governor Blanco's office. They declined to come on our show this morning and talk to us. Her spokesperson did say, though, that it was a -- this was a tragedy now that was being reduced to politics. I think, though, Miles, there is certainly lots and lots and lots of blame to go around. The mayor, of course, for his part, advising elderly people to be sure to grab an ax and be able to climb out on your roof and cut your way out. Obviously, not going to be feasible. Many of the people, it is believed, who perished in the subsequent flooding were elderly. And we've seen entire neighborhoods where the bulk of the population is elderly. No way they're going to grab an ax and stand on their fridge and cut their way out of their house, and then lift themselves up and flag down a chopper as it flies overhead. That's just not going to happen.Today, we're seeing a lot of blame, again, going around. And I think there's enough blame for everybody to share, frankly -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: All right, Soledad. That is for sure. There's about as much blame as there is water in New Orleans right now. Thank you very much. Let's go to Jefferson parish. Jefferson parish is fortunate to be on the higher side of that canal with that levee that breached. And as a result today, the parish president is allowing people, as he puts it, the head of the household to go to homes in Jefferson parish and make an assessment on the damage, perhaps recover some items and so forth. Also encouraging people to carpool doing that. As you can see, there's a long line of cars there as people have been waiting to do this, knowing this was going to be happening. Our Elizabeth Cohen is in Jefferson parish, and she is witnessing this scene as it unfolds -- Elizabeth. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, I'm watching people pour in. There are hundreds of probably thousands of cars pouring into Jefferson parish. Now, they let people in starting at 6:00 this morning. So that was just about 20 minutes ago. People had been waiting all night to get in. The line, we're told by police, was three miles long. It stretched from one parish line to another parish line. Now, people are allowed to stay for just a matter of hours. Jefferson parish President Aaron Broussard told them to come in, get what they needed, clean up a bit if they can, and then get out. He warned women not to travel alone. He also advised that people leave their children at home, less that image of their devastated home would be etched forever in their minds -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: I assume one of the big concerns here would be -- and this is the dark side of all of this, Elizabeth -- this would be an opportunity for looters. What are they doing to control that? COHEN: I don't think that they are really, per se, so concerned about looters going into people's homes. They have secured this area. When I talked to the head of the emergency office, Dr. Walter Mastrie (ph), yesterday, he said that they really felt that this was secure, that they had gone, that they had made sure as much as they could that that was not going to happen. The concern seems to be more about just the congestion, the mechanics of getting this many people in and then this many people out. M. O'BRIEN: Elizabeth Cohen in Jefferson parish, thank you very much. Still to come on the program, Katrina dealt a devastating blow to a vital part of Mississippi's economy, the casino industry. A closer look at whether it can really bounce back, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.(COMMERCIAL BREAK) M. O'BRIEN: In Mississippi, shipments of relief and aid are getting through, and the cleanup is making progress. But the death toll is more than 160. And that is expected to rise as the cleanup accelerates. Chris Huntington live in downtown Biloxi. Chris, are they getting the relief they need there? CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, yes. The essential supplies of food, water, extra clothing, even basic sanitation needs are being delivered to the folks here. A lot of it by private donations, folks from all over the country bringing goods down here, helping to set up tent areas, distribution centers. The streets are being cleaned. The Mississippi Power Company, with help, again, from all around the region, is trying to restore power. But just as an example of how this process goes, two steps forward and sometimes a step backward. Just in the last 20 minutes, there have been amazing green and red blares up into the sky here in Biloxi. A police officer just now confirming to us that transformers have been blowing all over town, he said, this morning, as they try to restore the power. We've seen the light crews out. Amazing falances (ph) of these trucks with cherry-pickers and big drills erecting new light poles, putting up, restringing the power all over town. But clearly now, maybe getting ahead of what the current grid can withstand. The military presence is impressive. We've got a Navy amphibious unit camped out on the beach here near us. Checkpoints up all over the place. That's good. That's calming things down. It does make travel a little bit slower. This is Labor Day, Miles, and, you know, a time when people would be taking a day off from work, celebrating the fact that they get a little rest here. No rest here. The big concern looking forward here in this area of Mississippi is, what are people going to do for work? The bulk of the jobs here in coastal Mississippi are either directly with or related to the casino industry. And if you look over my shoulder here, you can see a damaged building. And this back here may look like a building. It's actually one of the casino barges. By law, the casinos had to be floating on the water. So there are these massive barges, the size of ocean liners. This one is about 500-feet long. It's essentially a 50-story building that's been thrust up here about 200 yards onto the ground here. Sixteen thousand jobs in Biloxi alone, about $100 million into the state coffers of Mississippi. A huge debate over whether you even rebuild the casino business on the coast, because it will be vulnerable again. There is talk about bringing it inland. But that sets off a whole other debate. Do you allow casinos across the state?So, casino workers are feeling the pain. They're really concerned about whether this industry can revive in any meaningful time -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: Chris Huntington a Biloxi. Lots of questions still there obvious this morning. Thank you very much. Still to come in the program, have military relief efforts turned the corner in New Orleans yet? We'll ask the man in charge on the ground. He is definitely in charge. Lieutenant General Russell Honore, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
KATRINA: RESPONSE TIMELINE
{The following is from Rightwing Nuthouse – I’m copying it to PJP just so I have it}
September 04, 2005
From: RIGHTWING NUTHOUSE
KATRINA: RESPONSE TIMELINE
CATEGORY: KATRINA | Katrina Timeline
REVISED 9/6
The following is a timeline that details the response of local, state, and federal authorities to the disaster in New Orleans.
I have not included any information for other areas hit by the storm.
I used one source almost exclusively – the online editions of the New Orleans Times-Picayune (hereinafter referred to as TP). I daresay the paper will receive a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage. (9/6): More sources have been used as they have become available.
IT IS NOT MY INTENTION TO PLAY THE “BLAME GAME” BY PUBLISHING THIS TIMELINE.. In fact, if you have a link to a story that contradicts or adds to this timeline, I urge you to send it along. My sole purpose is to place this timeline on the record to dispel the rumors, the spin, and the outright falsehoods being flung about by both right and left bloggers and pundits.
The timeline runs from Friday, August 26 to Friday September 2.
UPDATE: 9/6
Several excellent suggestions and comments from various readers include the following:
1. Why not include on-the-ground- observations from bloggers? Short answer, it’s hearsay and unconfirmed. I have riveting accounts from various parts of the city in the hours after the disaster but there’s just no way to confirm the information. Perhaps what ever commission or Congressional panel is empowered to look into this fiasco will call them as witnesses. I hope so.
2. What? Nothing on the submerged busses? Sorry, I wish I could include stuff that either the locals or the feds didn’t do or should have done but the nature of a timeline only lends itself to what was actually done. Which brings me to my final point:
3. All that stuff prepositioned by the feds never got to the people, why put it in there? The fact is, unless I see some hard evidence that all of that stuff wasn’t in place it remains as part of the response and hence part of the timeline. I daresay that similar questions will be asked by folks with the power of subpenoa – something I don’t have.
************************************************************
FRIDAY, AUGUST 26
Afternoon
Dozens of local, state, and federal disaster officials meet to discuss FEMA Disaster Declaration No. 1601 that was issued as a result of tropical storm Cindy damages that occurred in July.
They also briefly discussed Katrina – although not quite in the context you might think:
“We’ve got this one storm we’re clearing up, yet we have another in the Gulf,” he said of Katrina, a rapidly strengthening storm that crossed south Florida on Thursday night and is expected to make a second landfall as a strong Category 3 hurricane somewhere between Louisiana and Florida late Sunday or Monday.
The subject of Friday’s meeting was serious, but as is often the case, participants relied on a bit of humor to ease the tension.
“Shouldn’t we just apply for Katrina money now? It would save time and taxpayers’ money,” joked Jim Baker, operations superintendent for the East Jefferson Levee District, one of the public agencies in line for a FEMA check.
Wonder what the group thought about this?
Off and on throughout the morning, Smith and Col. Steve Dabadie, Louisiana National Guard chief of staff, used a hand-held device to keep a check on Katrina’s track.
When the storm began a slight shift to the west, the device was passed from hand-to-hand for others to get a look.
Bet that room sobered up quite a bit after that.
The Mississippi Valley Division of the Army Corps of Engineers activates teams along the Mississippi and Louisiana Gulf Coasts to prepare for a potential response to Hurricane Katrina. (HT: Random 10)
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27
Morning
Overnight, Katrina strengthened and was drawing a bead on the gulf coast, moving west-northwest at 15 miles an hour and packing winds of 115 MPH.
In response to a letter from Governor Blanco, President Bush ordered a state of emergency for Louisiana, authorizing federal emergency management officials to release federal aid and coordinate disaster relief efforts.
Afternoon
A press conference with Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco sounded the alarm. The Mayor urged residents to take the storm seriously saying to residents of low lying areas, “We want you to take this a little more seriously and start moving — right now, as a matter of fact,” Nagin said he would open the Superdome as a shelter of “last resort” for people 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.
Nagin spokeswoman Tami Frazier stressed that the mayor does not want citizens to plan on staying in the Dome—instead, they should make arrangements to leave the city if possible.
Police Superintendent Edward Compass said that looters would be “dealt with severly and harshly and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
By mid-afternoon, officials in Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, Lafourche, Terrebonne and Jefferson parishes had called for voluntary or mandatory evacuations.
Mayor Nagin issued a voluntary evacuation order at 5:00 PM.
Nagin said late Saturday that he’s having his legal staff look into whether he can order a mandatory evacuation of the city, a step he’s been hesitant to do because of potential liability on the part of the city for closing hotels and other businesses. “Come the first break of light in the morning, you may have the first mandatory evacuation of New Orleans,” Nagin told WWL-TV.
The National Hurrican Center warns officials that Katrina is strengthening and will probably make landfall as a Category 4 or 5. This is really scary. This is not a test, as your governor said earlier today. This is the real thing,” said Director Max Mayfield. “The bottom line is this is a worst-case scenario and everybody needs to recognize it,” he said.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 28
Morning
By 8:00 AM, Katrina has been upgraded to a category 5 hurricane and is headed straight for New Orleans. This is what finally precipitated the mandatory evacuation order issued at 9:00 AM:
The Superdome opens at 8:00 AM and begins to take people in.
In the face of a catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, a mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday for New Orleans by Mayor Ray Nagin.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation. The President’s call came just prior to the news conference and occurred after the decision had already been made. for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding. Revised 9/6 (HT: Jay)
There doesn’t seem to be any relief in sight,” Blanco said.
At 11:30 AM the President delivers a statement vowing to help those affected by the hurricane.
By noon, the city puts its contraflow traffic system in effect so that both sides of major highways will allow for traffic out of the city.
Afternoon
The Coast Guard Auxillary was preparing to deploy. “William Crouch, Vice Commodore of the Auxiliary Eighth District Central Region stated this afternoon that “units from outlying areas are preparing to depart for the disaster area as soon as the situation becomes clear.”
By 3:00 PM, more than 10,000 people had either made their way into the Superdome or were standing outside. Those with medical problems were shuffled over to one side of the dome. Everyone else went to the other side:
“The people arriving on this side of the building are expected to fend for themselves,” said Terry Ebbert, the city’s homeland security director. “We have some water.”
About 150 National Guard soldiers, New Orleans police and civil sheriff’s deputies were patrolling the facility. Some weapons were confiscated.
Officials were settling in for what they predicted would be an incredibly hot and uncomfortable night. They expected flooding on the field and loss of power early today.
But officials were confident they could care for those with special needs.
“I’m not worried about what is tolerable or intolerable,” he [Ebbert] said. “I’m worried about, whether you are alive on Tuesday.”
Mayor Nagin ordered a curfew for the city beginning at 6:00 PM.
Evening
Louisiana Senators send a joint letter to the President thanking him for his actions and requesting that he visit the storm ravaged area “as soon as practical.”
The Coast Guard closes the ports and waterways into New Orleans. “The Guard also moved 40 aircraft and 30 boats and cutters in positions surrounding the expected strike zone, such as Houston and Jacksonville, readying to conduct search and rescue and humantarian missions, the Guard release said. ”
A 10:00 PM Katrina advisory by the National Hurricane Center has the storm moving slightly to the east and weakening.
About 26,000 people are taking refuge in the Superdome. “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, according to Col. Jay Mayeaux, deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Emergency Preparedness.
Louis Armstrong Airport closes late Sunday night.
MONDAY, AUGUST 29
Overnight and Morning
More than 4,000 National Guardsmen are mobilizing in Memphis” to help police New Orleans streets.
The city’s director of homeland security said tonight that officials hope Katrina gets through the region Monday with several hours of daylight left so they can get up in the air and assess the damage.
“We are going to have very limited communication,” Terry Ebbert said. “The first order of business will be life-saving operations.” That may mean relocating thousands of people in the Superdome once power goes out and temperatures start to rise above 100 degrees, he said
At 3:00 AM the National Hurricane Center reported Katrian three hours from landfall with winds of 150 MPH.
Aircraft in position to help assess the damage and carry out rescues:
Aircraft are positioned from Hammond to the Texas border ready to fly behind the storm to check damage after it passes over New Orleans, said Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau, head of the Louisiana National Guard.
Search and rescue operations are being coordinated by the Guard with the state Wildlife and Fisheries Department and Coast Guard poised to help search for survivors stranded by the storm. Guardsmen are also deployed at the Jackson Barracks ready to head into the city using high-water vehicles, Landreneau said.
Director Ebbert said rescue priorities would be given to those stranded in their homes and those hospitalized. “If the storm passes by 2 p.m., Ebbert said, “we have a few hours to get these people out before dark. It may involve some airlifts.’’
Hurricane Katrina strikes New Orleans at 8:00 AM with winds at 150 MPH and a storm surge of 18 feet.
As the Category 4 surged ashore just east of New Orleans on Monday, FEMA had medical teams, rescue squads and groups prepared to supply food and water poised in a semicircle around the city, said agency Director Michael Brown.
Brown, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, said the evacuation of the city and the general emergency response were working as planned in an exercise a year ago. “I was impressed with the evacuation, once it was ordered it was very smooth.”
Levee break at 17th street floods about 20% of the city.
At 11:00 AM, FEMA Director Brown arrives in Baton Rouge at the State Office of Emergency Preparedness.
Afternoon
At 1:30 PM, boil order goes into effect for water.
At 1:45 PM, President Bush declares the states of Louisiana and Mississippi “Major Disaster Areas.”
Midafternoon: First reports of looting. TP terms it “widespread.”
At midafternoon Monday, a parade of looters streamed from Coleman’s Retail Store at 4001 Earhart Blvd. The looters, men and women who appeared to be in their early teens to mid-40s, braved a steady rain and infrequent tropical-stormforce winds to tote away boxes of clothing and shoes from the store.
By 2:00 PM, “Wes McDermott, from the office of emergency preparedness in New Orleans, said officials have fielded at least 100 calls from people in distress in the Lower 9th Ward and eastern New Orleans.”
At 3:00 PM President Bush said in a speech in Arizona “the federal government has got assets and resources that we’ll be deploying to help you.”
At 3:00 PM, Director Ebbett said “Everybody who had a way or wanted to get out of the way of this storm was able to. For some that didn’t, it was their last night on this earth.’’ He also said that the city had 100 boats to carry out search and rescue operations.
By 5:00 PM, hundreds of reports are coming in of people trapped by the flood.
At 6:50 PM, more reports of looting.
Evening
Search and Rescue teams work through the night to bring people to safety.
[Wildlife Secretary] Landreneau said by dawn he will have more than 200 boats in the water, 120 more than he had Monday. He said he has a commitment from Texas for another 50 boats.
Red Cross issues a statement. Expects largest recovery operation ever:
American Red Cross spokesman Victor Howell said 750 to 1,000 Red Cross personnel are now at work on hurricane recovery in Louisiana, and 2,000 more volunteers will be here in the next few days.
The Red Cross will bring in three large mobile kitchens to prepare 500,000 meals per day. There are 40 shelters statewide, housing about 32,000 people, “and you’re going to have more,” Howell said.
Mayor Nagin, in an interview with TP relates a conversation with federal disaster officials. “FEMA said give us a list of your needs,” said Nagin, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “And let me tell you, we’re giving them a hell of a list.”
TUESDAY, AUGUST 30
Morning
Water continues to rise with officials at a loss how to explain it.
It is announced that 500 “special needs patients” at the Superdome will be moved by the end of the day “by whatever means necessary.” Also, Director Landenreau says that 350 boats are in the water looking for trapped residents with 60 more on the way from Texas.
By midmorning it is confirmed that 4 people have died at the Superdome; 3 sick patients and one probable suicide.
Prisoner evacuation from two jails begins.
President’s statement on Katrina devastation.
At the request of FEMA, the military begins to move additional ships and helicopters to the region. (HT: Jay) Revised 9/6
TP evacuates - moves to Houma
Pentagon spokesman Di Rita issues statement saying “the states have adequate National Guard units to handle the hurricane needs, with at least 60 percent of the guard available in each state. He said about 6,500 National Guard troops were available in Louisiana, about 7,000 troops in Mississippi, nearly 10,000 in Alabama and about 8,200 in Florida.
At 4:30 PM, officials send out a call for anyone with boats to help in the rescue effort.
TP reports that police and firefighters are joining in the looting:
At the Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas Street, an initial effort to hand out provisions to stranded citizens quickly disintegrated into mass looting. Authorities at the scene said bedlam erupted after the giveaway was announced over the radio.
While many people carried out food and essential supplies, others cleared out jewelry racks and carted out computers, TVs and appliances on handtrucks.
Some officers joined in taking whatever they could, including one New Orleans cop who loaded a shopping cart with a compact computer and a 27-inch flat screen television. (Um…read the whole thing. You won’t believe it. Ed.)
Director Ebbert announces that work has begun to plug the 17th street levee. (Note: Work on plugging the levee did not begin at this time. It is unclear whether he was told that it was beginning or whether he assumed it was from a conversation with the Army Corps of Engineers who said work would begin that afternoon. Ed.)
Levee repair timeline uncertain. This from National Guard Commander Jeff Smith:
Col. Jeff Smith with the Louisiana National Guard said the Corps has informed the state that they are beginning to plan how exactly to fill the holes in the levee, which observers described as several hundred feet long.
Ebbert says work has started. Smith says work has started on planning. This would be a possible explanation for both Ebbert and the Mayor’s frustration. Could they have misunderstood?
Also, hospitals are being evacuated and rescue operations continue. The Governor made it clear that search and rescue was the highest priority:
Blanco said that while search and rescue operations continued that officials were also getting supplies to hospitals and people who sought refuge at the Superdome, which is receiving more residents as people are rescued. After officials have completed all of their rescue operations, they will begin to assess how to evacuate other people in the city who are in high, dry locations.
People being rescued and others looking for food and water are told to go to the Convention Center by local officials. When they get there they find no food, no water, and just a few police. (First mention of Convention Center shelter by TP at 11:09 PM on Wednesday)
A man in a passing pickup truck from the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries finally directed Wallace and the 50 other evacuees under the overpass to the convention center.
But they would find little relief there.
New evacuees were being dropped off after being pulled from inundated eastern New Orleans and Carrollton, pooling with those who arrived on foot. Some had been at the convention center since Tuesday morning but had received no food, water or instructions. They waited both inside and outside the cavernous building.
The influx overwhelmed the few staffers and Louisiana National Guardsmen on hand. Added 9/5.
Afternoon
At 5:50 PM Bush announces he is cutting short his vacation and returning to Washington.
As of Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the storm had passed over the area, this represented the federal response to date to the disaster. Here are some highlights:
FEMA deployed 23 Disaster Medical Assistance Teams from all across the U.S. to staging areas in Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, and Louisiana and is now moving them into impacted areas.
Seven Urban Search and Rescue task forces and two Incident Support Teams have been deployed and propositioned in Shreveport, La., and Jackson, Miss., including teams from Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Three more Urban Search and Rescue teams are in the process of deployment.
FEMA is moving supplies and equipment into the hardest hit areas as quickly as possible, especially water, ice, meals, medical supplies, generators, tents, and tarps.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) dispatched more than 390 trucks that are beginning to deliver millions of meals ready to eat, millions of liters of water, tarps, millions of pounds of ice, mobile homes, generators, containers of disaster supplies, and forklifts to flood damaged areas. DOT has helicopters and a plane assisting delivery of essential supplies.
The National Guard of the four most heavily impacted states are providing support to civil authorities as well as generator, medical and shelter with approximately 7,500 troops on State Active Duty. The National Guard is augmenting civilian law enforcement capacity; not acting in lieu of it.
At 6:30 PM Mayor Nagin issued an urgent bulletin:
Nagin said efforts to stop the flow of water at the breach on the 17th Street Canal are failing, which means the floodwaters will rise again.
Nagin said the waters will soon overwhelm the pump, shutting it down. He said the water will rise to 3 feet above sea level – or 12-15 feet in some places of east Jefferson and Orleans parishes.
The additional flooding causes 80% of the city to be underwater.
At 8:10 PM, TP reports that more than 24 hours after it started, looting is now city wide.
“People are leaving the Superdome to go to Canal Street to loot,” Thomas said. “Some people broke into drug stores and stole the drugs off the shelves. It is looting times five. I’m telling you, it’s like Sodom and Gomorrah.”
At 8:55 TP reports that the Army Corps of Engineers is working frantically to try and fix the breach in the 17th street levee.
Mark Lambert, chief spokesman for the agency, said that a convoy of trucks carrying 108 15,000-pound concrete barriers – like those used as highway construction dividers—was en route to the site Tuesday night
At 9:02 PM TP reports that the State Attorney General’s office is denying that martial law has been declared.
At 10:40 PM TP reports that 40 additional state troopers have been deployed more than 28 hours after initial reports of looting.
At 10:15 PM, Governor Blanco releases a statement calling for the evacuation of the Superdome.
She set no timetable for the withdrawal but insisted that the facility was damaged, degrading and no longer able to support the local citizens who had sought refuge in the Dome from Hurricane Katrina.
“It’s a very, very desperate situation,” Blanco said late Tuesday after returning to the capital from her visit, when she comforted the exhausted throngs of people, many of whom checked in over the weekend. “It’s imperative that we get them out. The situation is degenerating rapidly.”
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31
Morning
Governor Blanco called for a total evacuation of the city of New Orleans.
In an interview on Good Morning America, the Governor said “We’ve sent buses in. We will be either loading them by boat, helicopter, anything that is necessary.”
When asked about looting the Governor said “We don’t like looters one bit, but first and foremost is search and rescue.”
Blanco said she wanted the Superdome — which had become a shelter of last resort for about 20,000 people — evacuated within two days, along with other gathering points for storm refugees. The situation inside the dank and sweltering Superdome was becoming desperate: The water was rising, the air conditioning was out, toilets were broken, and tempers were rising.
Governor Blanco asks the President to send federal troops to conduct law enforcement activities.
At 10:00 AM TP reports that a spokesperson for the Texas Governors office says refugees from the Superdome will be put up in the Astrodome:
FEMA is providing 475 buses for the convoy and the Astrodome’s schedule has been cleared through December for housing evacuees, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry said.
A spokseman for Homeland Security:
Mark Smith, a Louisiana Department of Homeland Security spokesman, said 3,000 Louisiana National Guard members are helping with the rescue effort and that more guard troops are on their way from other states. The main focus Wednesday morning is to evacuate patients from hospitals and to evacuate the Superdome, where conditions are deteriorating for the estimated 15,000 people sheltered there. (HT: Blueguitar boy) Revised 9/6
Yahoo News:
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she has asked the White House to send more people to help with evacuations and rescues, thereby freeing up National Guardsmen to stop looters.
“We will restore law and order,” Blanco said. “What angers me the most is that disasters like this often bring out the worst in people. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior.”
Afternoon
Governor Blanco announces that Superdome evacuation will begin Wednesday evening.
Department of Social Services Secretary Ann Williamson said the buses should start rolling later Wednesday. About 475 vehicles have been arranged to ferry the evacuees to Houston.
State officials said they hope that bringing in the Army to help with search, rescue and relief efforts will allow National Guard troops to redirect their efforts to restoring order and curtail the widespread looting taking place in New Orleans and elsewhere. “We’re trying to shift our resources,” said Denise Bottcher, a Blanco spokeswoman.
“This is one of the largest, if not the largest evacuations in this country,” said Col. Jeff Smith, deputy director of the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
“This (plan) buys us some time so we can figure things out,” said FEMA spokesman Bill Lokey.
At 1:40 PM State Secrertary of Transportation and Development Johnny Bradberry said Lake Pontchatrain has receded by two feet since yesterday as water levels equalized between the lake and the flooded city interior.
“The good news here is that we’ve stabilized. Water is not rising in the city,” Bradberry said.
The feds declare a Public Health Emergency:
HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt Wednesday declared a federal public health emergency and accelerated efforts to create up to 40 emergency medical shelters to provide care for evacuees and victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Working with its federal partners, HHS is helping provide and staff 250 beds in each shelter for a total of 10,000 beds for the region. Ten of these facilities will be staged within the next 72 hours and another 10 will be deployed within the next 100 hours after that. In addition, HHS is deploying up to 4,000 medically-qualified personnel to staff these facilities and to meet other health care needs in this region.
Governor Blanco issues an Executive Order allowing the National Guard to seize school busses in order to help in the evacuation:
National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Pete Schneider, said the order, signed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco late Wednesday, means “we are going to take the buses. We need to get people out of New Orleans.. . . .Either they will give them up or we will take them.’’ It is unclear whether the Governor is referring to the hundreds of school busses in a New Orleans city parking lot 1.2 miles from the Superdome that contained 255 busses, all underwater. (HT: Tony & Junkyard Blog) Revised 9/6
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1
Morning
At 12:30 AM evacuees from the Superdome begin arriving in Houston.
Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard said this morning that the evacuation of the rest of New Orleans was in full swing. At least 70 buses had picked up refugees from the Superdome, and officials were considering using trains and boats to ship people to safety.
At 4:15 AM TP reports that the Coast Guard says it has rescued 3,000 stranded victims from the city.
President Bush calls for “zero tolerance” for looters or price gougers in an interview with Diane Sawyer.
More snafus in attempts to fix the levee at 17th street:
Spokeswoman Cleo Allen of the state Department of Transportation and Development said the agency is coordinating with railroads and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to raise the Seabrook bridge, the Almonaster Ave. bridge and the Danziger Road bridge. Farther southwest, authorities are also trying to raise a bridge at Larose so that a barge loaded with relief supplies can get through Bayou Lafourche.
More National Guard troops on the way:
Lt. Col Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard also said 7,500 guard soldiers from around the country are en route to Louisiana to complement the 3,000 from Louisiana who have been helping with search and rescue operations and security since Katrina struck on Monday.
President Bush visits New Orleans, taking a helicopter tour with Mayor Nagin. According to the Mayor Bush tells him that “he [the President] was fully committed to getting us the resources we need,” Nagin said in the tattered Hyatt hotel next to the Superdome. “I told him I knew we could work together, and he said he understood.”
President Bush agrees to have the federal government pick up the entire tab for relief efforts.
Afternoon
Governor Blanco announces at a press conference that there are less than 2400 people left at the Superdome.
The Defense Department announces the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops to the Gulf region.
State and Federal authorities begin the evacuations of Charity and University Hospitals. They are halted briefly when shots are fired at helicopters evacuating patients.
In an article on Thursday afternoon, Brian Thevenot of TP reports that officials are starting to get control of the city.
As military and humantarian efforts finally began to take hold, the anarchy that has consumed New Orleans over the past two days, making the city resemble a Third World war zone, had not fully subsided but authorities appeared to have amassed sufficient numbers to seize the upper hand.
Neighborhoods that had been populated by bands of wanderers and armed thieves looked nearly empty, save for police patrols that were non-existent a day earlier. In Uptown, the Central Business District and the French Quarter, substantially smaller crowds of refugees and potential looters found themselves surrounded by ever increasing numbers of National Guard troops and police officers.
Mayor Nagin explodes on live radio, railing against federal relief efforts. If you’ve come this far with me, all I ask is that you read his comments and compare them to what has been reported in this timeline previously.
“You know the reason why the looters got out of control?” Nagin said. “We have most of our resources saving people. They were stuck in attics, man, old ladies. You pull off the doggone ventilator and look down and they’re standing there in water up to their fricking neck.”
“I need reinforcements,” he said. “I need troops, man. I need 500 buses.”
The relief efforts made so far had been pathetically insufficient, Nagin said.
“They’re thinking small, man, and this is a major, MAJOR deal,” Nagin said. “God is looking down on this and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price. Every day that we delay, people are dying, and they’re dying by the hundreds, I’m willing to bet you.”
Rolling now, Nagin described distress calls he’d heard. Nagin mocked the efforts to block the 17th StreetCanal breach.
“I flew over that thing yesterday and it was in the same shape it was in after the storm hit,” he said.“There is nothing happening there. They’re feeding the public a line of bull and they’re spinning and people are dying down here.” (HT: Ghosty) Revised 9/6 – moved from Friday to Thursday.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2
In the early morning, 20 deputies and six emergency medical technicians from Loudon County, Virginia were turned away because “neither FEMA nor the Louisiana authorities was willing to act on the request from Jefferson Parish.” (HT: Jay) Revised 9/6
State Rep. Karen Carter, D-New Orleans, made an urgent plea Friday morning for gasoline and buses to ferry victims to safety who have been stuck in New Orleans under deteriorating conditions since Hurricane Katrina struck the city four days ago.
“If you want to save a life get a bus down here,” said Carter, whose district includes the French Quarter. “I’m asking the American people to help save a wonderful American city.” Her voice cracking with emotion and her eyes bloodshot from fatigue and distress, Carter said pledges of money and other assistance are of secondary importance right now to the urgent need for transportation.
“Don’t give me your money. Don’t send me $10 million today. Give me buses and gas. Buses and gas. Buses and gas,” she said. “If you have to commandeer Greyhound, commandeer Greyhound. … If you donn’t get a bus, if we don’t get them out of there, they will die.”
Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, who is coordinating federal relief efforts on behalf of the National Guard, could not say when people can expect to be rescued. “If you’re human you’ve got to be affected by it, Blum said. “These people, their heartstrings are torn as are yours. (But) the magnitude of this problem is you cannot help everybody at the same time.”
The Coast Guard announced it has rescued more than 4,000 victims of the hurricane and flood.
In an interview with CNN on 9/5, Mayor Nagin says that Governor Blanco resisted a request from the Federal government to nationalize the relief effort when meeting with President Bush aboard Air Force I. Blanco is reported to have asked for 24 hours to “think about it.” (HT: Sue Hanley) Revised 9/6
UPDATE: 9/5
First, thank you all for your emails and comments.
I will be carefully going through and adding to and in some cases, editing the existing timeline thanks to some excellent information. Since I have something close to 50 emails and comments to work through, please be patient. If you’re interested, I will probably post a revised timeline by 2:00 PM Central time on 9/6.
Also, if you want me to respond to any of your comments, don’t you think it would be a good idea to like, you know, PUT YOUR REAL EMAIL ADDY IN THE COMMENT? I’ve just spent a half an hour responding personally to 4 different people none of which left a real email address. From now on, if you want a response to something, you’ll have to email me directly by clicking the link at the top left of the site.
UPDATE: 9/6
The first set of corrections/ additions is done. Now let’s get serious and concentrate on specifics.
1. The levee break at 17th street. I need further info (please don’t duplicate what we already have) on the efforts to plug the hole especially on Tuesday and Wedensday. I haven’t had time to read some recent MSM articles on this so any help would be appreciated.
2. The busses. When did bus service stop in New Orleans on Sunday? I need links not speculation please. And when the Governor issued her executive order commandeering school busses, was she aware of the 200 or so school busses underwater in the New Orleans municipal parking lot? Or was she asking for busses from outlying parishes? Links please.
3. Any reason when evacuating the sick no one was brought to The Bataan, an amphib op ship sitting off the coast since the hurricane hit? Links please.
4. National Guard deployment. As it stands now, we have about 3500 LA National Guard troops on the ground helping with rescue ops on Tuesday. Another 7000 showed up on Thursday afternoon escorting some trucks and were immediately deployed to try and keep the peace. Why the delay? Links please.
5. Convention center. I understand Geraldo Rivera was talking about those people on Wed. afternoon. No other mention in media until late Wednesday night. This is crucial because of FEMA’s response that they didn’t know about those folks until late morning on Thursday. BTW, I need a link to Brown’s statement that day.
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September 04, 2005
From: RIGHTWING NUTHOUSE
KATRINA: RESPONSE TIMELINE
CATEGORY: KATRINA | Katrina Timeline
REVISED 9/6
The following is a timeline that details the response of local, state, and federal authorities to the disaster in New Orleans.
I have not included any information for other areas hit by the storm.
I used one source almost exclusively – the online editions of the New Orleans Times-Picayune (hereinafter referred to as TP). I daresay the paper will receive a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage. (9/6): More sources have been used as they have become available.
IT IS NOT MY INTENTION TO PLAY THE “BLAME GAME” BY PUBLISHING THIS TIMELINE.. In fact, if you have a link to a story that contradicts or adds to this timeline, I urge you to send it along. My sole purpose is to place this timeline on the record to dispel the rumors, the spin, and the outright falsehoods being flung about by both right and left bloggers and pundits.
The timeline runs from Friday, August 26 to Friday September 2.
UPDATE: 9/6
Several excellent suggestions and comments from various readers include the following:
1. Why not include on-the-ground- observations from bloggers? Short answer, it’s hearsay and unconfirmed. I have riveting accounts from various parts of the city in the hours after the disaster but there’s just no way to confirm the information. Perhaps what ever commission or Congressional panel is empowered to look into this fiasco will call them as witnesses. I hope so.
2. What? Nothing on the submerged busses? Sorry, I wish I could include stuff that either the locals or the feds didn’t do or should have done but the nature of a timeline only lends itself to what was actually done. Which brings me to my final point:
3. All that stuff prepositioned by the feds never got to the people, why put it in there? The fact is, unless I see some hard evidence that all of that stuff wasn’t in place it remains as part of the response and hence part of the timeline. I daresay that similar questions will be asked by folks with the power of subpenoa – something I don’t have.
************************************************************
FRIDAY, AUGUST 26
Afternoon
Dozens of local, state, and federal disaster officials meet to discuss FEMA Disaster Declaration No. 1601 that was issued as a result of tropical storm Cindy damages that occurred in July.
They also briefly discussed Katrina – although not quite in the context you might think:
“We’ve got this one storm we’re clearing up, yet we have another in the Gulf,” he said of Katrina, a rapidly strengthening storm that crossed south Florida on Thursday night and is expected to make a second landfall as a strong Category 3 hurricane somewhere between Louisiana and Florida late Sunday or Monday.
The subject of Friday’s meeting was serious, but as is often the case, participants relied on a bit of humor to ease the tension.
“Shouldn’t we just apply for Katrina money now? It would save time and taxpayers’ money,” joked Jim Baker, operations superintendent for the East Jefferson Levee District, one of the public agencies in line for a FEMA check.
Wonder what the group thought about this?
Off and on throughout the morning, Smith and Col. Steve Dabadie, Louisiana National Guard chief of staff, used a hand-held device to keep a check on Katrina’s track.
When the storm began a slight shift to the west, the device was passed from hand-to-hand for others to get a look.
Bet that room sobered up quite a bit after that.
The Mississippi Valley Division of the Army Corps of Engineers activates teams along the Mississippi and Louisiana Gulf Coasts to prepare for a potential response to Hurricane Katrina. (HT: Random 10)
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27
Morning
Overnight, Katrina strengthened and was drawing a bead on the gulf coast, moving west-northwest at 15 miles an hour and packing winds of 115 MPH.
In response to a letter from Governor Blanco, President Bush ordered a state of emergency for Louisiana, authorizing federal emergency management officials to release federal aid and coordinate disaster relief efforts.
Afternoon
A press conference with Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco sounded the alarm. The Mayor urged residents to take the storm seriously saying to residents of low lying areas, “We want you to take this a little more seriously and start moving — right now, as a matter of fact,” Nagin said he would open the Superdome as a shelter of “last resort” for people 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.
Nagin spokeswoman Tami Frazier stressed that the mayor does not want citizens to plan on staying in the Dome—instead, they should make arrangements to leave the city if possible.
Police Superintendent Edward Compass said that looters would be “dealt with severly and harshly and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
By mid-afternoon, officials in Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, Lafourche, Terrebonne and Jefferson parishes had called for voluntary or mandatory evacuations.
Mayor Nagin issued a voluntary evacuation order at 5:00 PM.
Nagin said late Saturday that he’s having his legal staff look into whether he can order a mandatory evacuation of the city, a step he’s been hesitant to do because of potential liability on the part of the city for closing hotels and other businesses. “Come the first break of light in the morning, you may have the first mandatory evacuation of New Orleans,” Nagin told WWL-TV.
The National Hurrican Center warns officials that Katrina is strengthening and will probably make landfall as a Category 4 or 5. This is really scary. This is not a test, as your governor said earlier today. This is the real thing,” said Director Max Mayfield. “The bottom line is this is a worst-case scenario and everybody needs to recognize it,” he said.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 28
Morning
By 8:00 AM, Katrina has been upgraded to a category 5 hurricane and is headed straight for New Orleans. This is what finally precipitated the mandatory evacuation order issued at 9:00 AM:
The Superdome opens at 8:00 AM and begins to take people in.
In the face of a catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, a mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday for New Orleans by Mayor Ray Nagin.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation. The President’s call came just prior to the news conference and occurred after the decision had already been made. for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding. Revised 9/6 (HT: Jay)
There doesn’t seem to be any relief in sight,” Blanco said.
At 11:30 AM the President delivers a statement vowing to help those affected by the hurricane.
By noon, the city puts its contraflow traffic system in effect so that both sides of major highways will allow for traffic out of the city.
Afternoon
The Coast Guard Auxillary was preparing to deploy. “William Crouch, Vice Commodore of the Auxiliary Eighth District Central Region stated this afternoon that “units from outlying areas are preparing to depart for the disaster area as soon as the situation becomes clear.”
By 3:00 PM, more than 10,000 people had either made their way into the Superdome or were standing outside. Those with medical problems were shuffled over to one side of the dome. Everyone else went to the other side:
“The people arriving on this side of the building are expected to fend for themselves,” said Terry Ebbert, the city’s homeland security director. “We have some water.”
About 150 National Guard soldiers, New Orleans police and civil sheriff’s deputies were patrolling the facility. Some weapons were confiscated.
Officials were settling in for what they predicted would be an incredibly hot and uncomfortable night. They expected flooding on the field and loss of power early today.
But officials were confident they could care for those with special needs.
“I’m not worried about what is tolerable or intolerable,” he [Ebbert] said. “I’m worried about, whether you are alive on Tuesday.”
Mayor Nagin ordered a curfew for the city beginning at 6:00 PM.
Evening
Louisiana Senators send a joint letter to the President thanking him for his actions and requesting that he visit the storm ravaged area “as soon as practical.”
The Coast Guard closes the ports and waterways into New Orleans. “The Guard also moved 40 aircraft and 30 boats and cutters in positions surrounding the expected strike zone, such as Houston and Jacksonville, readying to conduct search and rescue and humantarian missions, the Guard release said. ”
A 10:00 PM Katrina advisory by the National Hurricane Center has the storm moving slightly to the east and weakening.
About 26,000 people are taking refuge in the Superdome. “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, according to Col. Jay Mayeaux, deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Emergency Preparedness.
Louis Armstrong Airport closes late Sunday night.
MONDAY, AUGUST 29
Overnight and Morning
More than 4,000 National Guardsmen are mobilizing in Memphis” to help police New Orleans streets.
The city’s director of homeland security said tonight that officials hope Katrina gets through the region Monday with several hours of daylight left so they can get up in the air and assess the damage.
“We are going to have very limited communication,” Terry Ebbert said. “The first order of business will be life-saving operations.” That may mean relocating thousands of people in the Superdome once power goes out and temperatures start to rise above 100 degrees, he said
At 3:00 AM the National Hurricane Center reported Katrian three hours from landfall with winds of 150 MPH.
Aircraft in position to help assess the damage and carry out rescues:
Aircraft are positioned from Hammond to the Texas border ready to fly behind the storm to check damage after it passes over New Orleans, said Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau, head of the Louisiana National Guard.
Search and rescue operations are being coordinated by the Guard with the state Wildlife and Fisheries Department and Coast Guard poised to help search for survivors stranded by the storm. Guardsmen are also deployed at the Jackson Barracks ready to head into the city using high-water vehicles, Landreneau said.
Director Ebbert said rescue priorities would be given to those stranded in their homes and those hospitalized. “If the storm passes by 2 p.m., Ebbert said, “we have a few hours to get these people out before dark. It may involve some airlifts.’’
Hurricane Katrina strikes New Orleans at 8:00 AM with winds at 150 MPH and a storm surge of 18 feet.
As the Category 4 surged ashore just east of New Orleans on Monday, FEMA had medical teams, rescue squads and groups prepared to supply food and water poised in a semicircle around the city, said agency Director Michael Brown.
Brown, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, said the evacuation of the city and the general emergency response were working as planned in an exercise a year ago. “I was impressed with the evacuation, once it was ordered it was very smooth.”
Levee break at 17th street floods about 20% of the city.
At 11:00 AM, FEMA Director Brown arrives in Baton Rouge at the State Office of Emergency Preparedness.
Afternoon
At 1:30 PM, boil order goes into effect for water.
At 1:45 PM, President Bush declares the states of Louisiana and Mississippi “Major Disaster Areas.”
Midafternoon: First reports of looting. TP terms it “widespread.”
At midafternoon Monday, a parade of looters streamed from Coleman’s Retail Store at 4001 Earhart Blvd. The looters, men and women who appeared to be in their early teens to mid-40s, braved a steady rain and infrequent tropical-stormforce winds to tote away boxes of clothing and shoes from the store.
By 2:00 PM, “Wes McDermott, from the office of emergency preparedness in New Orleans, said officials have fielded at least 100 calls from people in distress in the Lower 9th Ward and eastern New Orleans.”
At 3:00 PM President Bush said in a speech in Arizona “the federal government has got assets and resources that we’ll be deploying to help you.”
At 3:00 PM, Director Ebbett said “Everybody who had a way or wanted to get out of the way of this storm was able to. For some that didn’t, it was their last night on this earth.’’ He also said that the city had 100 boats to carry out search and rescue operations.
By 5:00 PM, hundreds of reports are coming in of people trapped by the flood.
At 6:50 PM, more reports of looting.
Evening
Search and Rescue teams work through the night to bring people to safety.
[Wildlife Secretary] Landreneau said by dawn he will have more than 200 boats in the water, 120 more than he had Monday. He said he has a commitment from Texas for another 50 boats.
Red Cross issues a statement. Expects largest recovery operation ever:
American Red Cross spokesman Victor Howell said 750 to 1,000 Red Cross personnel are now at work on hurricane recovery in Louisiana, and 2,000 more volunteers will be here in the next few days.
The Red Cross will bring in three large mobile kitchens to prepare 500,000 meals per day. There are 40 shelters statewide, housing about 32,000 people, “and you’re going to have more,” Howell said.
Mayor Nagin, in an interview with TP relates a conversation with federal disaster officials. “FEMA said give us a list of your needs,” said Nagin, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “And let me tell you, we’re giving them a hell of a list.”
TUESDAY, AUGUST 30
Morning
Water continues to rise with officials at a loss how to explain it.
It is announced that 500 “special needs patients” at the Superdome will be moved by the end of the day “by whatever means necessary.” Also, Director Landenreau says that 350 boats are in the water looking for trapped residents with 60 more on the way from Texas.
By midmorning it is confirmed that 4 people have died at the Superdome; 3 sick patients and one probable suicide.
Prisoner evacuation from two jails begins.
President’s statement on Katrina devastation.
At the request of FEMA, the military begins to move additional ships and helicopters to the region. (HT: Jay) Revised 9/6
TP evacuates - moves to Houma
Pentagon spokesman Di Rita issues statement saying “the states have adequate National Guard units to handle the hurricane needs, with at least 60 percent of the guard available in each state. He said about 6,500 National Guard troops were available in Louisiana, about 7,000 troops in Mississippi, nearly 10,000 in Alabama and about 8,200 in Florida.
At 4:30 PM, officials send out a call for anyone with boats to help in the rescue effort.
TP reports that police and firefighters are joining in the looting:
At the Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas Street, an initial effort to hand out provisions to stranded citizens quickly disintegrated into mass looting. Authorities at the scene said bedlam erupted after the giveaway was announced over the radio.
While many people carried out food and essential supplies, others cleared out jewelry racks and carted out computers, TVs and appliances on handtrucks.
Some officers joined in taking whatever they could, including one New Orleans cop who loaded a shopping cart with a compact computer and a 27-inch flat screen television. (Um…read the whole thing. You won’t believe it. Ed.)
Director Ebbert announces that work has begun to plug the 17th street levee. (Note: Work on plugging the levee did not begin at this time. It is unclear whether he was told that it was beginning or whether he assumed it was from a conversation with the Army Corps of Engineers who said work would begin that afternoon. Ed.)
Levee repair timeline uncertain. This from National Guard Commander Jeff Smith:
Col. Jeff Smith with the Louisiana National Guard said the Corps has informed the state that they are beginning to plan how exactly to fill the holes in the levee, which observers described as several hundred feet long.
Ebbert says work has started. Smith says work has started on planning. This would be a possible explanation for both Ebbert and the Mayor’s frustration. Could they have misunderstood?
Also, hospitals are being evacuated and rescue operations continue. The Governor made it clear that search and rescue was the highest priority:
Blanco said that while search and rescue operations continued that officials were also getting supplies to hospitals and people who sought refuge at the Superdome, which is receiving more residents as people are rescued. After officials have completed all of their rescue operations, they will begin to assess how to evacuate other people in the city who are in high, dry locations.
People being rescued and others looking for food and water are told to go to the Convention Center by local officials. When they get there they find no food, no water, and just a few police. (First mention of Convention Center shelter by TP at 11:09 PM on Wednesday)
A man in a passing pickup truck from the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries finally directed Wallace and the 50 other evacuees under the overpass to the convention center.
But they would find little relief there.
New evacuees were being dropped off after being pulled from inundated eastern New Orleans and Carrollton, pooling with those who arrived on foot. Some had been at the convention center since Tuesday morning but had received no food, water or instructions. They waited both inside and outside the cavernous building.
The influx overwhelmed the few staffers and Louisiana National Guardsmen on hand. Added 9/5.
Afternoon
At 5:50 PM Bush announces he is cutting short his vacation and returning to Washington.
As of Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the storm had passed over the area, this represented the federal response to date to the disaster. Here are some highlights:
FEMA deployed 23 Disaster Medical Assistance Teams from all across the U.S. to staging areas in Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, and Louisiana and is now moving them into impacted areas.
Seven Urban Search and Rescue task forces and two Incident Support Teams have been deployed and propositioned in Shreveport, La., and Jackson, Miss., including teams from Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Three more Urban Search and Rescue teams are in the process of deployment.
FEMA is moving supplies and equipment into the hardest hit areas as quickly as possible, especially water, ice, meals, medical supplies, generators, tents, and tarps.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) dispatched more than 390 trucks that are beginning to deliver millions of meals ready to eat, millions of liters of water, tarps, millions of pounds of ice, mobile homes, generators, containers of disaster supplies, and forklifts to flood damaged areas. DOT has helicopters and a plane assisting delivery of essential supplies.
The National Guard of the four most heavily impacted states are providing support to civil authorities as well as generator, medical and shelter with approximately 7,500 troops on State Active Duty. The National Guard is augmenting civilian law enforcement capacity; not acting in lieu of it.
At 6:30 PM Mayor Nagin issued an urgent bulletin:
Nagin said efforts to stop the flow of water at the breach on the 17th Street Canal are failing, which means the floodwaters will rise again.
Nagin said the waters will soon overwhelm the pump, shutting it down. He said the water will rise to 3 feet above sea level – or 12-15 feet in some places of east Jefferson and Orleans parishes.
The additional flooding causes 80% of the city to be underwater.
At 8:10 PM, TP reports that more than 24 hours after it started, looting is now city wide.
“People are leaving the Superdome to go to Canal Street to loot,” Thomas said. “Some people broke into drug stores and stole the drugs off the shelves. It is looting times five. I’m telling you, it’s like Sodom and Gomorrah.”
At 8:55 TP reports that the Army Corps of Engineers is working frantically to try and fix the breach in the 17th street levee.
Mark Lambert, chief spokesman for the agency, said that a convoy of trucks carrying 108 15,000-pound concrete barriers – like those used as highway construction dividers—was en route to the site Tuesday night
At 9:02 PM TP reports that the State Attorney General’s office is denying that martial law has been declared.
At 10:40 PM TP reports that 40 additional state troopers have been deployed more than 28 hours after initial reports of looting.
At 10:15 PM, Governor Blanco releases a statement calling for the evacuation of the Superdome.
She set no timetable for the withdrawal but insisted that the facility was damaged, degrading and no longer able to support the local citizens who had sought refuge in the Dome from Hurricane Katrina.
“It’s a very, very desperate situation,” Blanco said late Tuesday after returning to the capital from her visit, when she comforted the exhausted throngs of people, many of whom checked in over the weekend. “It’s imperative that we get them out. The situation is degenerating rapidly.”
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31
Morning
Governor Blanco called for a total evacuation of the city of New Orleans.
In an interview on Good Morning America, the Governor said “We’ve sent buses in. We will be either loading them by boat, helicopter, anything that is necessary.”
When asked about looting the Governor said “We don’t like looters one bit, but first and foremost is search and rescue.”
Blanco said she wanted the Superdome — which had become a shelter of last resort for about 20,000 people — evacuated within two days, along with other gathering points for storm refugees. The situation inside the dank and sweltering Superdome was becoming desperate: The water was rising, the air conditioning was out, toilets were broken, and tempers were rising.
Governor Blanco asks the President to send federal troops to conduct law enforcement activities.
At 10:00 AM TP reports that a spokesperson for the Texas Governors office says refugees from the Superdome will be put up in the Astrodome:
FEMA is providing 475 buses for the convoy and the Astrodome’s schedule has been cleared through December for housing evacuees, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry said.
A spokseman for Homeland Security:
Mark Smith, a Louisiana Department of Homeland Security spokesman, said 3,000 Louisiana National Guard members are helping with the rescue effort and that more guard troops are on their way from other states. The main focus Wednesday morning is to evacuate patients from hospitals and to evacuate the Superdome, where conditions are deteriorating for the estimated 15,000 people sheltered there. (HT: Blueguitar boy) Revised 9/6
Yahoo News:
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she has asked the White House to send more people to help with evacuations and rescues, thereby freeing up National Guardsmen to stop looters.
“We will restore law and order,” Blanco said. “What angers me the most is that disasters like this often bring out the worst in people. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior.”
Afternoon
Governor Blanco announces that Superdome evacuation will begin Wednesday evening.
Department of Social Services Secretary Ann Williamson said the buses should start rolling later Wednesday. About 475 vehicles have been arranged to ferry the evacuees to Houston.
State officials said they hope that bringing in the Army to help with search, rescue and relief efforts will allow National Guard troops to redirect their efforts to restoring order and curtail the widespread looting taking place in New Orleans and elsewhere. “We’re trying to shift our resources,” said Denise Bottcher, a Blanco spokeswoman.
“This is one of the largest, if not the largest evacuations in this country,” said Col. Jeff Smith, deputy director of the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
“This (plan) buys us some time so we can figure things out,” said FEMA spokesman Bill Lokey.
At 1:40 PM State Secrertary of Transportation and Development Johnny Bradberry said Lake Pontchatrain has receded by two feet since yesterday as water levels equalized between the lake and the flooded city interior.
“The good news here is that we’ve stabilized. Water is not rising in the city,” Bradberry said.
The feds declare a Public Health Emergency:
HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt Wednesday declared a federal public health emergency and accelerated efforts to create up to 40 emergency medical shelters to provide care for evacuees and victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Working with its federal partners, HHS is helping provide and staff 250 beds in each shelter for a total of 10,000 beds for the region. Ten of these facilities will be staged within the next 72 hours and another 10 will be deployed within the next 100 hours after that. In addition, HHS is deploying up to 4,000 medically-qualified personnel to staff these facilities and to meet other health care needs in this region.
Governor Blanco issues an Executive Order allowing the National Guard to seize school busses in order to help in the evacuation:
National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Pete Schneider, said the order, signed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco late Wednesday, means “we are going to take the buses. We need to get people out of New Orleans.. . . .Either they will give them up or we will take them.’’ It is unclear whether the Governor is referring to the hundreds of school busses in a New Orleans city parking lot 1.2 miles from the Superdome that contained 255 busses, all underwater. (HT: Tony & Junkyard Blog) Revised 9/6
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1
Morning
At 12:30 AM evacuees from the Superdome begin arriving in Houston.
Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard said this morning that the evacuation of the rest of New Orleans was in full swing. At least 70 buses had picked up refugees from the Superdome, and officials were considering using trains and boats to ship people to safety.
At 4:15 AM TP reports that the Coast Guard says it has rescued 3,000 stranded victims from the city.
President Bush calls for “zero tolerance” for looters or price gougers in an interview with Diane Sawyer.
More snafus in attempts to fix the levee at 17th street:
Spokeswoman Cleo Allen of the state Department of Transportation and Development said the agency is coordinating with railroads and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to raise the Seabrook bridge, the Almonaster Ave. bridge and the Danziger Road bridge. Farther southwest, authorities are also trying to raise a bridge at Larose so that a barge loaded with relief supplies can get through Bayou Lafourche.
More National Guard troops on the way:
Lt. Col Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard also said 7,500 guard soldiers from around the country are en route to Louisiana to complement the 3,000 from Louisiana who have been helping with search and rescue operations and security since Katrina struck on Monday.
President Bush visits New Orleans, taking a helicopter tour with Mayor Nagin. According to the Mayor Bush tells him that “he [the President] was fully committed to getting us the resources we need,” Nagin said in the tattered Hyatt hotel next to the Superdome. “I told him I knew we could work together, and he said he understood.”
President Bush agrees to have the federal government pick up the entire tab for relief efforts.
Afternoon
Governor Blanco announces at a press conference that there are less than 2400 people left at the Superdome.
The Defense Department announces the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops to the Gulf region.
State and Federal authorities begin the evacuations of Charity and University Hospitals. They are halted briefly when shots are fired at helicopters evacuating patients.
In an article on Thursday afternoon, Brian Thevenot of TP reports that officials are starting to get control of the city.
As military and humantarian efforts finally began to take hold, the anarchy that has consumed New Orleans over the past two days, making the city resemble a Third World war zone, had not fully subsided but authorities appeared to have amassed sufficient numbers to seize the upper hand.
Neighborhoods that had been populated by bands of wanderers and armed thieves looked nearly empty, save for police patrols that were non-existent a day earlier. In Uptown, the Central Business District and the French Quarter, substantially smaller crowds of refugees and potential looters found themselves surrounded by ever increasing numbers of National Guard troops and police officers.
Mayor Nagin explodes on live radio, railing against federal relief efforts. If you’ve come this far with me, all I ask is that you read his comments and compare them to what has been reported in this timeline previously.
“You know the reason why the looters got out of control?” Nagin said. “We have most of our resources saving people. They were stuck in attics, man, old ladies. You pull off the doggone ventilator and look down and they’re standing there in water up to their fricking neck.”
“I need reinforcements,” he said. “I need troops, man. I need 500 buses.”
The relief efforts made so far had been pathetically insufficient, Nagin said.
“They’re thinking small, man, and this is a major, MAJOR deal,” Nagin said. “God is looking down on this and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price. Every day that we delay, people are dying, and they’re dying by the hundreds, I’m willing to bet you.”
Rolling now, Nagin described distress calls he’d heard. Nagin mocked the efforts to block the 17th StreetCanal breach.
“I flew over that thing yesterday and it was in the same shape it was in after the storm hit,” he said.“There is nothing happening there. They’re feeding the public a line of bull and they’re spinning and people are dying down here.” (HT: Ghosty) Revised 9/6 – moved from Friday to Thursday.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2
In the early morning, 20 deputies and six emergency medical technicians from Loudon County, Virginia were turned away because “neither FEMA nor the Louisiana authorities was willing to act on the request from Jefferson Parish.” (HT: Jay) Revised 9/6
State Rep. Karen Carter, D-New Orleans, made an urgent plea Friday morning for gasoline and buses to ferry victims to safety who have been stuck in New Orleans under deteriorating conditions since Hurricane Katrina struck the city four days ago.
“If you want to save a life get a bus down here,” said Carter, whose district includes the French Quarter. “I’m asking the American people to help save a wonderful American city.” Her voice cracking with emotion and her eyes bloodshot from fatigue and distress, Carter said pledges of money and other assistance are of secondary importance right now to the urgent need for transportation.
“Don’t give me your money. Don’t send me $10 million today. Give me buses and gas. Buses and gas. Buses and gas,” she said. “If you have to commandeer Greyhound, commandeer Greyhound. … If you donn’t get a bus, if we don’t get them out of there, they will die.”
Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, who is coordinating federal relief efforts on behalf of the National Guard, could not say when people can expect to be rescued. “If you’re human you’ve got to be affected by it, Blum said. “These people, their heartstrings are torn as are yours. (But) the magnitude of this problem is you cannot help everybody at the same time.”
The Coast Guard announced it has rescued more than 4,000 victims of the hurricane and flood.
In an interview with CNN on 9/5, Mayor Nagin says that Governor Blanco resisted a request from the Federal government to nationalize the relief effort when meeting with President Bush aboard Air Force I. Blanco is reported to have asked for 24 hours to “think about it.” (HT: Sue Hanley) Revised 9/6
UPDATE: 9/5
First, thank you all for your emails and comments.
I will be carefully going through and adding to and in some cases, editing the existing timeline thanks to some excellent information. Since I have something close to 50 emails and comments to work through, please be patient. If you’re interested, I will probably post a revised timeline by 2:00 PM Central time on 9/6.
Also, if you want me to respond to any of your comments, don’t you think it would be a good idea to like, you know, PUT YOUR REAL EMAIL ADDY IN THE COMMENT? I’ve just spent a half an hour responding personally to 4 different people none of which left a real email address. From now on, if you want a response to something, you’ll have to email me directly by clicking the link at the top left of the site.
UPDATE: 9/6
The first set of corrections/ additions is done. Now let’s get serious and concentrate on specifics.
1. The levee break at 17th street. I need further info (please don’t duplicate what we already have) on the efforts to plug the hole especially on Tuesday and Wedensday. I haven’t had time to read some recent MSM articles on this so any help would be appreciated.
2. The busses. When did bus service stop in New Orleans on Sunday? I need links not speculation please. And when the Governor issued her executive order commandeering school busses, was she aware of the 200 or so school busses underwater in the New Orleans municipal parking lot? Or was she asking for busses from outlying parishes? Links please.
3. Any reason when evacuating the sick no one was brought to The Bataan, an amphib op ship sitting off the coast since the hurricane hit? Links please.
4. National Guard deployment. As it stands now, we have about 3500 LA National Guard troops on the ground helping with rescue ops on Tuesday. Another 7000 showed up on Thursday afternoon escorting some trucks and were immediately deployed to try and keep the peace. Why the delay? Links please.
5. Convention center. I understand Geraldo Rivera was talking about those people on Wed. afternoon. No other mention in media until late Wednesday night. This is crucial because of FEMA’s response that they didn’t know about those folks until late morning on Thursday. BTW, I need a link to Brown’s statement that day.
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