The New York Times reports this morning that after examining documents pertaining to the response by government officials to Hurricane Katrina, that there were “missteps at all levels” and that the Bush Administration knew of the damaged 17th Street levee which eventually put 80% of the city underwater on Monday night instead of Tuesday afternoon.
To briefly address the issue about the levee, it appears that the Times, in their continuing effort to blame the Bush Administration for the disaster, have cherry picked one report out of hundreds that were flooding into FEMA headquarters on Monday evening (the day of the storm) and offered it as “proof” that the Administration failed to act in a timely manner with regards to the levee break:
But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department’s headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.
“FYI from FEMA,” said an e-mail message from the agency’s public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators. Conditions, the message said, “are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought — also a number of fires.”
Mr. Marty Bahamonde, is listed in the FEMA Staff Directory as a “Public Affairs Specialist.” Not to take anything away from Mr. Bahamonde who I’m sure is a dedicated public employee but if the City of New Orleans, the State of Louisiana, and others at FEMA who are more technically competent are telling me one thing and a PR “Specialist” is telling me something else, whose information do you think should be acted upon?
A brief look at the Katrina Timeline I amassed from the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports should make things a little clearer.
Late Monday morning, the National Weather Service announced that the 17th Street Levee “gave way,” flooding about 20% of the city. At this point, the system of massive pumps designed to keep Lake Pontchartrain at bay were working at maximum capacity – and fighting a losing battle. According to this report, by late Monday evening, the water was still rising slowly from the damaged levee.
It was at this point that Mr. Bahamonde took his helicopter survey and reported to DHS headquarters that things “are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting.”
What were those media reports based on? Why information coming from city officials and state DHS employees of course. And as far as those officials knew, the Army Corps of Engineers was dealing with the problem of the levee:
Officials of the Army Corps of Engineers have contingencies for levee breaches such as the one that happened Monday, but it will take time and effort to get the heavy equipment into place to make the repair. Breach repair is part of the corps’ planning for recovery from catastrophic storms, but nobody Monday was able to say how long it would take to plug the hole, or how much water would get through it before that happened.
In fact, the Engineers hadn’t even started, mostly because the overtopping of the levee was much more extensive than the Corps itself realized. They couldn’t get their equipment to the point of the breach due to flooded roads and the the Corps’ massive cranes placed on boats couldn’t navigate the swollen canal.
On Tuesday morning, the water was still rising, something that mystified officials.
By Tuesday afternoon, it became apparent that the pumps were going to fail and the city would be inundated.
Recall that the Administration was saying on Tuesday morning that they had “dodged a bullet” because the damage from the hurricane would evidently be minimized. Even Mr. Bahamonde’s report didn’t mention that the pump system would be unable to handle the flooding as of Monday night.
What ended up “surprising” the Administration – and every one else – was that by early Tuesday evening, the water pouring in from Lake Pontchtrain overwhelmed the pumps causing them to shut down. This is what caused the massive flooding.
To say that this could have been forseen in the dark, on Monday evening, by a PR “Specialist” is absurd. Again, taking nothing away from Mr. Bahamonde, but if you were Michael Chertoff and received a report that, if acted upon would have meant transferring millions – perhaps tens of millons of dollars of resources, wouldn’t you want that information coming from someone who was in perhaps a little better position to know? Especially when local officials were telling you something totally different.
Let me make it clear that this does not in any way excuse the wildly incompetent response by FEMA to this tragedy. But for the Times to try and shift blame to the White House based on an email that contained a report predicting dire consequences unless something was done when the Administration was getting dozens of other reports telling them differently, only shows an inherent bias on the part of the Times that has become all too commonplace.
If all this sounds familiar, consider the way the Times handled leaks from intelligence analysts about Iraq WMD. They used the same method of cherry picking reports that questioned whether or not WMD was there while ignoring the fact that the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002 clearly said the opposite.
As for the rest of the article, there are no major surprises. The move of FEMA from independent agency to an arm of DHS was cited as a major cause of government paralysis, something I pointed out here months ago. And horse impresario Brown (who testifies before the House DHS Committee today), and the disaster tag team of Blanco-Nagin all come in for their share of blame. But as I said here, the politics of disasters have changed enormously:
When all is said and done. When all the fingers have pointed and tongues wagged. After the dead are buried, the hearings held, the pundits pontificate and bloggers blog, it all boils down to this; a force of nature that no one could stop raised a mighty fist a slammed it down on a city and people that didn’t deserve it. It’s a tragedy. It’s an act of God so blame him. “Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minues to hours?†is a line from Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. For both believers and non-believers alike, blaming God is not an option.
So in the end, politicians will get their pound of flesh. A fat lot of good it will do for the people of New Orleans or which ever city is next in line to feel the random wrath of Mother Nature.
10:07 am
Monday morning quarterback graduates of the Mentally Retarded University (AKA The United States Congress) are at work again. They’re now investigating why no one knew something that the entire world knew the minute it happened. Makes sense to me, the entire congress just figured out something every ‘wino’ in America has know for months, a hurricane will go whereever it wants and do the damage it’s gonna do and no amount of planning will stop it. Of course the decades long corruption (building casino’s with levie money) in La. had nothing to do with the levies not being upgraded, and their failure, but again according to the members of congress the only area effected by the hurricane was N.O., so I guess the other states were just naturally run down and the hurricane had nothing to do with their damage.
11:47 am
[...] Rick Moran comments. [...]
1:30 pm
The NYT has quit cherry picking passages, the now just add a sentence here and there to make it fit their left wing anti-american rant. They aren’t necessarly anti-Bush, they are truly anti-american, in plain language they are traitor to the country that allows them to make millions of dollars with a free press. As traitors they should be arrested and shot like all good traitors. They just did it again to hype their story about the ‘blocked’ attack on L.A. If you can’t tell the truth then make up a story (no one reads the correction page, if they bother to print a correction) has been their motto for the past 10 years.
2:45 pm
“What ended up “surprising†the Administration – and every one else – was that by early Tuesday evening, the water pouring in from Lake Pontchtrain overwhelmed the pumps causing them to shut down. This is what caused the massive flooding.”
This is nonsense. I see the report you linked to you linked to and that too is nonsense.
Trust me brother. My grandmother’s ruined house is one block from the 17th street canal. Her house was well flooded by Monday afternoon.
I won’t write long. But the 17th street canal levee was breached on Monday morning about 10:00 a.m, the London Avenue Canal levee and the Industrial Canal levee shortly thereafter.
Your whole scenario is out of whack. The lake level was higher than most of the city at that point (hence the flooding) So with giant levve gaps-how the hell was pumping the water back into the lake going to do a bit of good?
I’m not a Bush basher btw. I actually detest my state officials far worse. But this statement of your makes no sense.
9:11 pm
Rick Moran: A Study in Incompetence
I stumbled across a post by certified imbecile Rick Moran the other day, and like corpses in the streets of post-Katrina New Orleans, I’ve tripped over another one before I expected to. Today’s knee-slapper was found by following a link…
9:58 pm
The Gordon Lightfoot line was EXACTLY what I was thinking as I followed the events from here.
Having seen a couple baby monsters stomp a mud hole in whatever gets in its way, gave me all the perspective I’ll ever need when it comes to “preparing” for the next one. As I recall there were no Asian casualties. Could it be that “typhoon/hurricane coming soon” is more than just a movie title. The knowledge gained from experience is what I would call wisdom and to say the knowledge is power is akin to saying ice cream is cold, snow is white and cold and water crashing onto your shores and pouring in from the lake you live beneath is all of the above!
If you live in the bottom of a mud hole and you’ve been served a three day notice, that the mother of all hurricanes is on its way to a county near you, one would wonder why you’re still there. Size matters! When the water reaches your waist and you bend over to see the reflection in the water, hopefully you’ll see the reason why you’re in trouble.
FEMA, to my knowledge, has never been able to “Git er Done” in an effective or timely manner as its history indicates. Some enormous Government Agency runnin’ around with bandaids and bottles of water in helicopters just takes my breath away at their heroism and power. NOT! How many times do you watch the same movie, before you get the story line.
Depending on someone else to do your thinking/actions is preposterous! When’s the last time you saw our government do an effective job at say anything? I’m not bashing my country by saying this, though it might appear that way. The “Size Matters” thing and the people that make up this system is where the seeds of stupidity have been fertilized and grown into the fruits of what we have to this day.
The Times bangin’ away on the politics drum, is its natural redundant position, solves nothing and is precisely the problem with any system that does not reward good actions by good people. Worse yet, the inverse is elevated to higher position-easier than firing them for just being stupid cause “you can’t say that”, without the ACLU and PC police inspecting your large intestine with busted hooks and barbed wire.
I’m waiting for the day when we’ll hear the monster Government toilet flush and the gangrene meat on staff in virtually every level of City,County,State and Federal Government, but I’m not holding my breath.
Martin- I’m not pickin’ on you and truly sorry to hear about your Grandmothers house.
12:56 am
Forest I’m with you man-I grew up in New Orleans but when it was time to buy a house I moved out the flood plain.
(Granted it takes money to do that)
I only cried once during the hurricane. That was Friday=three days before it hit. Because I knew what was going to happen, and New Orleans would be hurt bad. I drove in Saturday to get my grandmother out and here we are.
Anyone with a modicum with a sense knew what was going to happen, but the planning was never done.
Basically, the politicians were too greedy and shortsighted and the people were to stupid to keep New Orleans alive.
The bummer now is I have the same feeling about the United States as a whole.
1:28 am
People complained about the slowness of FEMA during Floyd?
Don’t you expect government or relief organizations to be slow if the devastation is great? No roads, no airstrips or communication lines…and some of the NO police bugged out of the city.
What was Bush surprised by?
“In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/10/politics/10katrina.html?_r=1&ei=5094&en=d6fcffd6820bf50d&hp=&ex=1139547600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
The Bush administration knew about levee toppings. I might sound silly but is there a difference between levee topping and a levee breech?
http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2005/09/04/katrina-response-timeline/
3:13 am
The Bush administration knew about levee toppings. I might sound silly but is there a difference between levee topping and a levee breech?
Lisa Said:
1:28 am
Lisa,
Yes there is a big difference. A levee topping is just water flowing over the top of the INTACT levee, a breech means the levee is damaged and has a hole in it, with topping the water will stop flowing and you get a lot less water if it is breeched there is nothing holding the water back and you get massive flooding. As I recall from watching the news when this was happening they reported the Army Corps of Engineers were reporting the levee was just being topped.
3:23 am
Lisa:
Naturally, FEMA would be slow due to the magnitude of the catastrophe, but more so based on as I said their history and the people that make up the “organization”. Their track record is what it is for variant reasons, legit and not.
I think a levee topping is when the water is at the top of the levee and a breech/opening is called a levee breach, but I’m no expert.
Also, as was mentioned briefly in the post, the damned politics. It’s likely that had a much greater impact than any one like me can ever know. It seems clear that the NO’s city/County officials really bear the brunt of the planning failures, certainly in the pre-disaster portion.
The inherent problem with crooked or incompetent people throughout (as I said earlier) the various agencies has a great deal to do with what’s lacking. GOOD leadership is built long before and even during the hard times. Cops on payroll that don’t exist and cops walking out are clues to the who’s, if someone wants to find out what’s broke and fix it, as opposed to those pointing fingers blaming the White House for every thing under the sun. (I wonder how many knee replacement surgeries would’ve been done if Jack Bauer had been site)
Personal responsibility seemed as rare as clean water. Big screen TV’s and shopping carts heaped with clothes being toted off, filled our TV screens every day over here(JAPAN). My Japanese friends were trying to figure out why all these things were being done and why people were there at all. I told them that many who stayed behind were thieves and gang members. Others were likely people who wanted to protect their belongings from the irresponsible jerks that thrive in situations such as those.
Martin:
The US is the best place I know of, but it most certainly can be better. It’s up to good people to do good things as a matter of habit, as natural as breathing. Feeling is not an actionable resolve, though it serves as internal motivation, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. GAMBATTE!
3:30 am
“The Bush administration knew about levee toppings. I might sound silly but is there a difference between levee topping and a levee breech?”
a little silly,yeah.
but you’ve got several outs:
-when the city is 80% below lake level,
either one will cause
the low elevation areas to flood.
the only “plus” of a levee topping is that the water level can subside.
with a breach the levee needs repair before a subsidence in level will show any benefits(ie Lake Ponchartrain would continue to empty water into NO until the city and lake reached the same water level across the barrier of the now broken levee).
it’s like the difference between an overflowing bath-tub flooding your bathroom,
and a bath-tub with a hole in the side of it.
_________________
martin’s point about the city’s (failed)pump-system being of minimal help once the levee has been breached
is well taken.
given what was likely faulty levee construction(due to graft?corruption?
inadequate funding or specifications??
take your pick)the levee was going to break regardless of the pump-system performance….
the whole system was overloaded:lake level,storm surge,pump failure,levee breach.
3:46 am
Gumshoe’s got it zactly right! When the bow of the boat is all that sticks out, even the rats swim off-so nobody’ll steal’em!
10:02 am
The Times Picks Nits On Katrina
The NY Times has sold it’s soul for partisan purposes. In yet another example, today Eric Lipton takes another stab at President Bush over Hurrican Katrina. In making a case it references a communication timeline that shows several hours earlier
11:05 am
Should FEMA should be separated from DHS?
I think it make sense to consolidate departments to make them streamline.
FEMA was created in 1979 when Carter decided to combined different departments in the federal government so victims of natural disaster will get assistance right away. This would avoids tripping over each other and prevent turf warfare between departments.
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761569608/Federal_Emergency_Management_Agency.html
Has FEMA worked as designed in the past? Have they fouled up before?
My British relatives were questioning the plight of New Orleans too. I told them 60% of the population wouldn’t leave if a major hurricane came along.
“Many residents won’t evacuate New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS, July 22 (UPI)—A major hurricane, with 130 mph winds and an 18-foot-high storm surge, would not scare 60 percent of southeast Louisiana residents, a survey found.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20050722-18422300-bc-us-hurricanes.xml#
I told my relatives, ACE have been tinkering around with the Mississippi River for over 75 years trying to make the river run straight and in the process LA is losing their coastal wetlands. In the 70’s the ACE wanted to build floodgates around the city but the eco’s put a court order to stop construction. They were concerned over wildlife being displaced from development. Why couldn’t they compromise to save the city and the birds and bees? Couldn’t they create a National Park like the Everglades? I told them it was a ecological disaster.
People are People. Sometimes they don’t listen to authorities to clear out of the soup bowl. Was it due to people being too poor to leave or just plain stubborness? Or did the populace put too much faith in the levee systems and the city pumps?
New Orleans did not take a direct hit from Katrina. That was the main concerned for the engineers. They were prepared for a direct hit not the storm surge.
Floyd was the same way. FEMA was prepared for the hurricane but not the floods. The poor lived in the flood zones and they got the short end of stick too. Many faced pollution from pig farms.
What are we going to do if terrorist used a chemcial attack on a major city. Were SOL! The past evacuation from hurricanes is futile. Cars were back up for miles in recent hurricanes and it was the same way during Floyd.
The problem is like a Rubic’s Cube. You think you have it solve but you don’t.
It’s scary if you live in a urban area.
3:22 pm
Rick – several times in your post you reference the number of conflicting reports the White House was receiving about the state of affairs in New Orleans on that critical Monday. This is certainly a probable assumption, but the number of reports and the degree of their conflicting nature is by definition a whole lot of supposition on your part. I perused your timeline and there’s very little (if anything) on the nature of these “hundreds” of reports for either Monday or Tuesday. But you seem to be implying (unless I’m totally misreading your words) that FEMA/DHS were better off trusting than someone on the ground, empirically observing the scene. Let’s not forget Brownie was in Baton Rouge at this point.
Do you have any substantiation to the claim of contradictory reports by the “City of New Orleans, the State of Louisiana, and others at FEMA who are more technically competent”?
I think Martin Morgan has it right above when he points out that once the levees were breached, it was a done deal. That really makes this rather a silly thing to write:
Unfortunately your blog software won’t let me follow your “gave way” link, but it should be patently obvious to anyone that thinks about it that once any of the levees “broke” (NOLA quote) that the City was doomed. There isn’t a pump system in the world that is going to be big enough to wage a successful battle the rain-swollen Mississippi or Lake Ponchatrain (which equates the entire damn ocean in essence). And an massively overtopped levee very quickly turns into a breeched one; that’s Hydraulics 101.
But back to the apocryphal conflicting reports for a second…
You claim:
My recall is somewhat different. While early reports did indeed report the Federal government’s line, I distinctly recall the news media quickly disconnecting from the ‘official’ proclamations and beginning to report that the true dimensions of what was unfolding were much more severe than what officials (i.e., Chertoff’s clueless interview on NPR) were saying publicly, especially as they, too, began to talk to people on the ground.
None of this is to say that any one party is the guilty one – certainly there was enough confusion frosted with incompetence to go around. But my most salient memory of those times was of that political photo-op Bush on Tuesday. You know the one – it was much-ballyhooed by the Left.
Here’s what I wrote to friends and family that Wednesday:
And so maybe in a weirdly ironic way, the note cluster depicted is really quite the fitting analogy to the President’s actions over the past two days as well as the appropriateness of this particular photo op. I just am not sure the White House realized it at the time.
The tradegy that unfolded in New Orleans was in no way surprise. That is clear from reading about the reports, disaster simulations, etc. that were done for years and years preceding the event. It was one of FEMA’s two most critical worries (the other being a disasterous West Coast quake). The preparation and response by everyone – but most especially at the Federal level, owing to the magnitude of resources that can be mobilized only at this level of government – really borders on criminally negligent IMHO.
I’ll guess this comment will count among your readers as a Bush-bashing, anti-American screed, so I’ll now withdraw prepare to get flamed out of existence…
3:26 pm
Oh and Lisa: Rubik’s cubes are incredibly easy to solve if you know the “formula”. I learned it when they first came out and would often be pressed to put on the “amazing 11 year old” show when my parents had guests over…
5:07 pm
To worn,
Formulas? You need a formula for the Rubik’s Cube?
Can you solve the FEMA Cube?
8:50 pm
Had John Kerry been president (thank you, Lord) the night the levee in question broke, would he or his administration have done anything different to prevent its breaking, etc.? No.
What has been constantly missed (ignored?) by all the critics of the administration’s “failures,” FEMA’s “failures,” the “failures” of all who had anything whatsoever to do with the Katrina run-up and aftermath is that this storm was a HUGE event. No amount of previous work and prep by the administration and/or various agencies, not to mention the same during the storm’s aftermath, could have prevented the massive destruction and loss of life which happened.
The only way anything close to such a rapid response could occur is if every town, city, county in the country had emergency crews sitting by, 24/7, 365 days a year, with engines idling and gear on, ready to go at a second’s notice. And that ain’t going to happen, nowhere, no how.