Lincoln vs Cadillac Forums

(This is the forums archive - If you want to get back to the main site simply click the banner above and you will be taken to our homepage.)

Lincoln vs Cadillac Forums is the Ultimate Online Resource for Owners and Enthusiasts of American Luxury Cars. Feel free to browse through our archive - but make sure you make it back to our main site - Lincoln vs Cadillac Forums

Cadillac XLR : Cadillac CTS : Cadillac : 2005 Cadillac STS : Cadillac Forums : 2000 Lincoln LS : Lincoln Mark VIII : Lincoln Mark VII : Car Wax
Lincoln Town Car : Lincoln Air Suspension : Lincoln Continental : Lemon Law : Do It Yourself Car Repair : Lincoln vs Cadillac Forums : Mesothelioma

Back to the Archive Main Page

Pages: 1

Hurricane Katrina examination

(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: Calabrio

Popular Mechanics just published a very interesting and informative examination of the response to Hurricane Katrina. It's absolutely worth reading, and critical if you intend to discuss or debate any of the social or political topics related to it.

Quote:

Not the federal agencies tasked with preparing for catastrophes. Not the local officials responsible for aging levees and vulnerable populations. Least of all the residents themselves, who had been warned for decades that they lived on vulnerable terrain. But when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, it seemed as though the whole country was caught unawares. Accusations began to fly even before floodwaters receded. But facts take longer to surface. In the months since the storm, many of the first impressions conveyed by the media have turned out to be mistaken. And many of the most important lessons of Katrina have yet to be absorbed. But one thing is certain: More hurricanes will come. To cope with them we need to understand what really happened during modern America's worst natural disaster. POPULAR MECHANICS editors and reporters spent more than four months interviewing officials, scientists, first responders and victims. Here is our report.--THE EDITORS

Posted by: MonsterMark

Former FEMA head Brown partially vindicated in tapes.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/...n1362777.shtml

Looks like the Left needs to find another scapegoat.

Posted by: JohnnyBz00LS

Quote:

Originally Posted by MonsterMark

Former FEMA head Brown partially vindicated in tapes.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/...n1362777.shtml

Looks like the Left needs to find another scapegoat.

Put down the kool-aid man.

The ONLY reason Brown is seen as a "scapgoat" is because he was put up for sacrifice by BuSh / Chertoff (afterall, he was relieved of his duties, right?). NOT because he was singled out by anyone on the left.

The lefties here have ALWAYS contended that it was BuSh's move to suck FEMA under DHS that set us on the path of unpreparedness for Katrina. In fact, it was Phil (or Joey, can't remember which) who first posted an article here about that very issue within a day or two of the disaster. The FACT is, BuSh came out and LIED about "I don't think anyone expected the levies to break" to cover his a-s-s and deflect attention away from him.

I'm actually glad to see Brownie vindicated by these tapes, it refocuses the blame to where it belongs: BuSh / Chertoff and the FEMA-under-DHS debacle.

Posted by: TheDude

Quote:

Originally Posted by Calabrio

Popular Mechanics just published a very interesting and informative examination of the response to Hurricane Katrina. It's absolutely worth reading, and critical if you intend to discuss or debate any of the social or political topics related to it.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...h/2315076.html

Great read, thanks for the post.

(At the top of the page there is a Jay Leno link, click it, it shows pics and details of some of Leno's cars. He has a seriously cool collection.)

Posted by: Calabrio

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnnyBz00LS

Read the Popular Mechanics article.
And then place the blame where it really belongs...
The State and Local level.

Here's the newest story:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...03-02-21-00-56

Here's a taste:

Quote:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the hectic, confused hours after Hurricane Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast, Louisiana's governor hesitantly but mistakenly assured the Bush administration that New Orleans' protective levees were intact, according to a new video obtained by The Associated Press showing briefings that day with federal officials.

"We keep getting reports in some places that maybe water is coming over the levees," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said shortly after noon on Aug. 29, according to the video that was obtained Thursday night. "We heard a report unconfirmed, I think, we have not breached the levee. I think we have not breached the levee at this time."

Posted by: MonsterMark

Just More Lefty Lies. Powerline hits it out of the park.

More Leaks; This Time, Katrina

Taking a cue from the CIA, someone in the federal bureaucracy has leaked transcripts and video tapes having to do with Hurricane Katrina to the Associated Press. The AP treats the resulting story as an expose, with the headline: "Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina."

In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.
The footage — along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press — show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

Do the documents show any such thing? Beats me; the AP didn't release the documents or video footage so we could draw our own conclusions. It merely summarized them for us, in a way obviously intended to make President Bush and the administration look bad.

The AP writes:

Some of the footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 conflicts with the defenses that federal, state and local officials have made in trying to deflect blame and minimize the political fallout from the failed Katrina response:
***

Bush declared four days after the storm, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" that gushed deadly flood waters into New Orleans. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility — and Bush was worried too.

White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Brown discussed fears of a levee breach the day the storm hit.

"I talked to the president twice today, once in Crawford and then again on Air Force One," Brown said. "He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he's asking questions about reports of breaches."

Let's take that apart. The AP says the transcripts show that Bush was "worried" about the levees failing. But the quote they cite is after Katrina hit, and after levee failures had been reported. This obviously has nothing to do with what was anticipated before the fact. What, then, is the AP's basis for saying that "federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees..."? Here is the only support for that claim in the article:

The National Hurricane Center's Mayfield told the final briefing before Katrina struck that storm models predicted minimal flooding inside New Orleans during the hurricane but he expressed concerns that counterclockwise winds and storm surges afterward could cause the levees at Lake Pontchartrain to be overrun.
"I don't think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not but that is obviously a very, very grave concern," Mayfield told the briefing.

But this has nothing to do with the levees breaching; it has to do with them being overtopped--a much less dangerous threat. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, there has been endless discussion about the difference between breaching and overtopping. If these AP reporters, Margaret Ebrahim and John Solomon, really don't know the difference, they have no business reporting on Katrina.

It is possible that the materials leaked to the AP support the claim that Bush was warned about the levees breaching, but nothing cited in the article so indicates. And the idea that Bush and Chertoff were "warned" about the possibility of overtopping is hardly a news flash. Maybe they were watching CNN:

New Orleans braced for a catastrophic blow from Hurricane Katrina overnight, as forecasters predicted the Category 5 storm could drive a wall of water over the city's levees.
The huge storm, packing 160 mph winds, is expected to hit the northern Gulf Coast in the next nine hours and make landfall as a Category 4 or 5 hurricane Monday morning.

About 70 percent of New Orleans is below sea level, and is protected from the Mississippi River by a series of levees. Forecasters predicted the storm surge could reach 28 feet; the highest levees around New Orleans are 18 feet high.

Hurricane-force winds extend 105 miles from the center of the mammoth storm and tropical storm-force winds extend outward up to 230 miles. It is the most powerful storm to menace the central Gulf Coast in decades.

The last thing there was any shortage of in the days before Hurricane Katrina struck was warnings. The news media were full of often-hysterical predictions of death and devastation. The fact that a category 5 hurricane hitting the Gulf coast could cause catastrophic damage was obvious to everyone.

The real question, it seems to me, is one on which the AP article (and, as far as we know, the documents and video footage it is based on) sheds no light: how well prepared were the various local, state and federal agencies, and what was the quality of their response?

The AP asserts that "federal officials...were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster." But nothing in the article supports that claim. The AP alleges further:

In fact, active duty troops weren't dispatched until days after the storm. And many states' National Guards had yet to be deployed to the region despite offers of assistance, and it took days before the Pentagon deployed active-duty personnel to help overwhelmed Guardsmen.
This is simply untrue, as the reporters would know if they read Power Line. For a far more thorough and balanced look at the Katrina response, see Popular Mechanics:

In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest--and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm's landfall.
Dozens of National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters flew rescue operations that first day--some just 2 hours after Katrina hit the coast. Hoistless Army helicopters improvised rescues, carefully hovering on rooftops to pick up survivors. On the ground, "guardsmen had to chop their way through, moving trees and recreating roadways," says Jack Harrison of the National Guard. By the end of the week, 50,000 National Guard troops in the Gulf Coast region had saved 17,000 people; 4000 Coast Guard personnel saved more than 33,000.

These units had help from local, state and national responders, including five helicopters from the Navy ship Bataan and choppers from the Air Force and police. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries dispatched 250 agents in boats. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), state police and sheriffs' departments launched rescue flotillas. By Wednesday morning, volunteers and national teams joined the effort, including eight units from California's Swift Water Rescue. By Sept. 8, the waterborne operation had rescued 20,000.

While the press focused on FEMA's shortcomings, this broad array of local, state and national responders pulled off an extraordinary success--especially given the huge area devastated by the storm. Computer simulations of a Katrina-strength hurricane had estimated a worst-case-scenario death toll of more than 60,000 people in Louisiana. The actual number was 1077 in that state.

The AP article is fatally compromised by its factual errors, and adds nothing to our understanding of the issues surrounding Hurricane Katrina. It also raises an important point about the leaks that form the basis for many news stories these days. The AP took what appears to have been a substantial quantity of leaked material, and turned it into a brief against the Bush administration. Whether the documents themselves contain anything noteworthy, and whether, on balance, they support the AP's tendentious interpretation, is impossible to tell. In view of the fact that no one trusts the AP, the New York Times and other news outlets who make use of leaked documents and other materials to report on them objectively, here is a modest proposal: let us see them. If the AP will release the leaked materials, the rest of us will quickly figure out what significance, if any, they have.

UPDATE: Wizbang has more, including a link to the AP video, which confirms that the discussion was about levee overtopping, not breaching.