I agree. I have been appalled by the bias that the media has shown. So many things that have been missed or overlooked. This truely is one of the saddest events of our lifetimes. One that has or will affect all of us in one way or another. The best we can individually do from here is to make choices that will count. Donate time, money, resources to the relief. Conserve gas and energy. Pray for all those affected. This has brought out the worst and without a doubt it will bring out the best in people, wherever you're from. The world and this nation has been through so much in the past 5 years, we're all in this together.

John

The note below was e-mailed into our community radio station news department from a HAM Radio operator. Take it for however many grains of salt you wish. To my ears, it sounds like typical Bush Administration: all flash, no advance planning, unwillingness to put in the resources needed to do the job, and completely unprepared for real world situations. I'm sure the civilians of Baghdad and the G.I.'s living in tents in the desert can relate.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
-------- Original Message --------

Hello Norm.

I took a different approach to DXing the hurricane... and it pissed me
off, bigtime.

I tried listening to National Weather service long haul frequencies the
night before the storm hit... nothing. I expected to hear the National
Hurricane Center in Miami, and the NWS offices spread from the Virginia
Capes to Galveston, but not a peep.

I next hit FEMA frequencies... a little traffic, but nothing really
interesting.

I got to the 20 meter ham band, and found a VERY active storm net on
the air, and much to my surprise THAT'S where the Hurricane Center was
operating.

The bush people have been cutting costs at NWS and NOAA; they've been
closing manned offices all along the Gulf Coast. I was amazed to hear
the Hurricane Center frantically collecting reports from HAMS along the
coast who were sending temperature, barometric pressure, and wind
readings in that they were collecting with thier OWN INSTRUMENTS! The
National Hurricane Center was reduced to gathering data from K-Mart
barometers and such! There wasn't even any uniformity to them; some
folks sent pressure in millibars, and others sent in inches of mercury.
Ditto temps, Celsius and Fahrenheit. God only knows how accurate the
readings were; there obviously is no way of knowing how the hams had
calibrated thier instruments beforehand... or if they were calibrated
at all.

There was one other manned NWS station I heard at Slidell, LA. They
suddenly dropped out of the net, and pretty soon Miami came up to ask
if there were any hams listening in the Slidell area; they had lost
all contact with thier office there. A ham came on and said he was in
the area, had a 4 wheel drive, and some emergency power and equipment.
He offered to go to the office & help out, and the office was accepted.

A couple of hours later he came back up at the Slidell office, but as
the winds picked up he apparently lost his antenna and went down again.
Telco, internet, and satellite comms to Slidell were dead, and
Slidell's weather RADAR was down due to loss of electrical power.

An hour later Miami said they were still getting intermittent
information from Slidell; the ham apparently had a 2 meter handy talkie with him,
was hitting the Slidell ham repeater, and using the repeater's autopatch to
dial into Miami!

The National Hurricane Center internet connection was getting flaky;
they wound up using a slow line to Oklahoma City to upload what they had and
get it out to the public thru Oklahoma City's servers.

There's NO excuse for this kind of ****!!!

When something like this hits, the first thing you do is call out the
Louisiana & Mississippi National Guard and the region's Reserve units.

Guess where THEY are right now?

The ones who have carried the mail on this was the United States Coast
Guard. Checking Coastie frequencies revealed that they were calling in
stuff (mostly helicopters) from up & down the Atlantic coast, and I
even heard a California unit sending in it's Sea Stallions to help out. The
Coasties came thru, but it's clear that nobody was expecting anything
in advance and hadn't planned for anything major. The Coasties are
GOOD, but there wasn't enough of them, and there was no plan; they were just
improvising.


In the meantime... FEMA frequencies were pretty quiet. They didn't
seem to know what to do, and there was an apparent lack of leadership there.
It reminded me of the disorganized **** I'd heard there on 9/11, but
with a LOT less radio traffic.


There's just one word to describe almost 20 hours of monitoring. The
word is "cluster***". Not enough people, not enough resources, no one
running the show, everybody improvising.

Mr. T.

... I don't start needless wars, ignore people who are hit by disaster, etc. ...

I won't disagree with you about the war, but to say that Bush (who is the implied subject of your sentence) is "ignoring" people hit by the disaster can only be characterized as dangerous hyperbole and is not something anyone should be thinking, much less stating in the open. The relief effort has sure as heck not been as immediately effective as I would have expected it to be, but to not only hint, but in fact to openly state that this is the result of Bush and his administration ignoring those people is, to put it bluntly, untrue, inflammatory, shameful, and once again, in amazingly poor taste, given the hell these people are going through.

No one in this country -- least of all the president -- is ignoring these people.

France (that's right, FRANCE) was among the first to offer aid. The Germans are offering fuel from their strategic reserves. In the beginning, the US said it didn't need help.

Not surprisingly (to me), our press NEVER reported this, instead whining that other countries were not stepping forward!

=====================================================

UUUUUUHHHHHH, I heard this on FOX news. So, apparently some news outlets are reporting it.

It was also reported, at length, today in the Wall Street Journal.

Face it, the BushHaters will throw anything they can against the wall, hoping that something eventually sticks.

As for the "Bush is at fault because he diverted funds for his illegal war" line, I came across this press release a few minutes ago:

"...The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday that a lack of funding for hurricane-protection projects around New Orleans did not contribute to the disastrous flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina.
In a telephone interview with reporters, corps officials said that although portions of the flood-protection levees remain incomplete, the levees near Lake Pontchartrain that gave way--inundating much of the city--were completed and in good condition before the hurricane.

"However, they noted that the levees were designed for a Category 3 hurricane and couldn't handle the ferocious winds and raging waters from Hurricane Katrina, which was a Category 4 storm when it hit the coastline. The decision to build levees for a Category 3 hurricane was made decades ago based on a cost-benefit analysis..."

"Ah," but the BushHaters will say, "but they HAD to say that; everyone knows that Karl Rove controls the Corps of Engineers..."

It never ends.

As to World help, I do believe we haven't asked. This may have changed. I know that Canada offered military help early.

The Canadian armed forces have offered their help to America on the New Orleans disaster.


Russia has offered help. Israel, others.

This just in
We have announced today that we will accept foreign help.




Foregin Aid offers pour in.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=a0.gjA9574Jg&refer=europe

Kent,

Unless somebody edited their post, you are first person to talk about looters. I don't think scape goat referred to looters. It seems to be directed towards government officials/civil authorities.

To my ears, it sounds like typical Bush Administration: all flash, no advance planning, unwillingness to put in the resources needed to do the job, and completely unprepared for real world situations. I'm sure the civilians of Baghdad and the G.I.'s living in tents in the desert can relate.

Right on the nose.

Governments line up to help after Katrina

Here's a good round up of Aid offers.

Just heard on the radio that 26 countries are going to release oil from their stategic reserves to help relieve price increases in the US.

I made the scape goating point originally. I was alluding to the fact that while I'm sure there are people doing some attrocious and largely innexcusable things in NO at the moment, they represent one fraction -- and a tiny one by comparison -- of the larger situation of the desperate, hungry, tired, dehydrated masses currently stranded there. The reports of looting are overblown and the implicit racism in them (carried into some of the responses here) is staggering (but not patricularly surprising).

The disaster is a result of mixed things, but among them are plenty of things the administration (and moreover, the country at large) will never own up to:

The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

(from the Blumenthal article as it originally ran at Salon under the title "No One Could Say They Didn't See It Coming," which I see as neither awful nor hateful, but perhaps the truth hurts and you're responding to the sting)

Yesterday, Bush passed on addressing the larger crisis at hand and instead highlighted the actions of the looters. FEMA authorities ducked questions and the responsibility of the rescue effort, which while apparently underway today, will ultimately for many now dead or dying, prove to be a case of too little too late. As a friend of mine put it elsewhere:

I don't doubt that there are some bad people running amuck in NO (and they should be arrested and thrown in jail), but the majority of people are, at this point, in pure panic mode. There are angry, scared, feel betrayed, and there are years of racism imbuing their experience with rage and what may be seen as paranoia. The theme that I keep reading, for example, from people at the Superdome is that they feel like the government sent them there to die. And this isn't very far off the mark. They were instructed by officials to go to the Superdome and when they did there was no there to help them, only misery.

The chaos after 9/11 wasn't a fluke. We've had years of preparation for the next terrorist attack, and when something on the order is instead served up by mother nature the response is no better, if not worse. We have a government that is defective, incapable of serving the needs of its citizens.

Sorry - this is a load of whooey. I live in NY (Staten Island is one of the five boroughs) and pass the WTC site every day, twice a day - The chaos you refer to was so small in comparison to this (Katrina) it doesn't bear talking abouit. However, On September 11, 2001 - I saw so many folks lining up to donate blood at the local hospital they had to turn them away - I got a bus home (yes it was late but I got home before dark) - I saw the best in people as all sorts of support workers (police, fire, EMS, construction, etc...) came from around the region THAT DAY to help in any way they could !

I didn't see ONE incidence of looting or any other form of lawlessness. I didn't hear anyone complaining they had to walk miles to get home where the public transportation couldn't bring them. This is NY and we are jaded and don't suffer fools well (if at all) and here if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem!

So I don't know what chaos you saw on 9/11 - All I saw was the best in human spirit rise to the occasion!

By way of clarification:

I meant that aid was offered the US by other countries far earlier than everyone seemed to think. But that wasn't widely known because, for whatever reason, our media wasn't reporting that aid was OFFERED us, but only reported on the aid when it had been ACCEPTED by us--- a considerable (and, I think, disgraceful) gap.

So it may have APPEARED to us that no foreign powers seemed to want to help at first. Wrong.

I think you're missing his point, but moreover you're making statements about a generalised condition from the perspective of whether you personally saw something or not (from the comfort of a window seat on a Staten Island bound bus, no less -- at least roads were navigable and you had a home to return to).

You've made the statement that both situations can't be compared (and in one sense you're right -- this is in some ways far worse), and then you proceed to compare them. You cite people in NY not bitching about walking -- as if many in NO even have the option. There's no point in arguing that -- you're not making sense.



6 looting arrests in New York City on Sept. 11; by Oct. 11, 54 more had been made

My friend's point was not to start a pissing match over the two tragedies but to point out the various glaring innadequacies of the gov't in the face of them. And... it's not just this administration -- the whole culture of denial in America has taken it on the chin with this one. Maybe people will wake up.

So where is the National Guard?

Here they are ....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9131097/site/newsweek/

'Nuff said.

Cheers,
-Matt

Mayor to feds: 'Get off your asses'

That guy gets my vote.

The chaos after 9/11 wasn't a fluke.

jlafferty,
should this be was or wasn't? It doesn't seem to make sense the way it's written.

No one knew the morning of 9/11 a tragedy was about to happen. But in the case of Katrina we definitely knew it. The satellite photos of Katrina coming across the gulf are fightening. The storm seems to cover 1/10 of the entire Gulf of Mexico. Even without the levee failure in New Orleans, we would still have utter destruction in the bayou communitees in LA, Biloxi, Gulfport etc. Was anything planned for that? Were supplies prepositioned and National Guard on alert. It doesn't seem to be.

It hit me a couple of days ago, that this is much bigger than 9/11. That day I had to walk home, but I had a home to go to. I was never in physical danger that day. I had food, I had water. I would not want to be in NYC without water, electricity or gasoline for several days with hazardous conditions everywhere and few options. I love this city, but the grace we showed on 9/11 would not have held up for five days under conditions like New Orleans. As civilized as I am have no idea how I would behave if I didn't have water for four or five days or if my family didn't have water.

I know so many people in NYC without cars, how would they be able to evacuate?

Here is an image of what I was talking about. Sends a shiver down my spine.



Good to hear the National Guard is coming in today.

jlafferty,

I think it makes sense as is, or maybe would have made more sense if he'd written that the chaos after Katrina is no fluke given the government's response after 9/11. Look at the statement "It's like 9/11 all over again: a president and his officials who play dumb, are slow to react and when they do, they initiate a military operation...It's astonishing. Send the troops today, the food and water later." The problem with this is of course that the lack of food and water has become itself a catalyst for chaos, yet we're fed BS logic that "aide can't be brought to people who are angry and violent." As the same friend says:

there is a cause and effect logic at work; people are left to die and so, yes, the rule of law then deteriorates. The news reports we have been given instead suggest that this reversion to a "state of nature" was the result of the people of New Orleans themselves, from having been left to their own devices--and the patently racist implications therein. What I'm saying is that the racism just beneath the surface in American culture raised its ugly head in the past few days and has created its own logic--and created its own momentum and the inevitable results we are seeing.

Relatedly:

On NBC this morning, a reporter on the scene at the convention center stressed that the people that he saw in NO were peaceful and the anchors also stressed that the reports of violence may have been overblown and may have impeded relief. I haven't watched NBC much so I don't know what they were saying vis a vis looters before this. One thing I did notice was that every reporter on the ground kept saying the same thing, the people needed help and were angry, but were not violent. This was in constrast to the soundbites. This isn't to say that there isn't chaos in the city. Given the variables how could things be any different? But that in no way excuses the negligent response, as such things have happened during every catastrophic disaster around the world.

What you wrote here is exactly right and worth repeating:

Even without the levee failure in New Orleans, we would still have utter destruction in the bayou communitees in LA, Biloxi, Gulfport etc. Was anything planned for that? Were supplies prepositioned and National Guard on alert. It doesn't seem to be.

Okay, the horse is out of the barn. The question is, or should be, who left the door open and when? How far back should the blame go?

For example, New Orleans is an "old" well-established city in this country. But ever since I can remember I've wondered: Why build such an important/strategic city (port) in an area that is below sea level?

To be sure, I'm not saying those folks deserved this, but it was bound to happen, sooner or later. Build and grow a city below sea level in an area that is highly susceptible to hurricane strikes and it's going to get hit and hit hard.

So who do you blame?

Well New Orleans is nearly 300 years old.

Wikipedia:
The site was selected because it was a rare bit of natural high ground along the flood-prone banks of the lower Mississippi It was already an important trade route for tribes in that area.

So 300 years ago, they had their reasons. A question for our times may if you have an important/strategic port that needs protection from the surrounding waters, should you make sure the levees are maintained?