Katrina: One Year Later
by tgirschAugust 29th, 2006
I only have time for a few thoughts about Katrina:
- What’s most frustrating is how, even to this day, nobody in power has to my knowledge admitted that they screwed up, or could have done things better. Not Brown, not Nagin, not Cherthoff, not Blanco, not Bush. The finger always points elsewhere.
- The failings of the state and local governments do not in any way excuse the failings of the federal government.
- I can’t think of a better example to prove that federalism can’t work. Whether intentionally or not, it was basically left to the state and local governments to handle Katrina, and those governments failed miserably. Further, the entire nation suffered as a result of those failings, rather than just the affected areas. We saw, crystal clear, what happens when there’s no strong federal government to step in and help with large-scale disasters of this sort.
- I’m frankly sick and tired of people pointing to the worst behavior and holding it up as though it were typical. Yes, there was looting and lawlessless. Yes, there were people who foolishly remained behind when they could have left. Yes, there are some who complain that nobody will help them, yet aren’t doing anything to help themselves. I recognize and acknowledge that all of these things are true, and I ask: So f-ing what? For every person who looted, there are many people who did not. Some people foolishly passed up opportunities to evacuate, but others could not evacuate for various reasons. And for every person who complains that help isn’t coming while they themselves do nothing, there are lots of people who are struggling to clean up, recover, get by, and move on. Rather than obsess about the less-than-exemplary victims, let’s get help to the people who need it and deserve it, and worry about those negative elements after the fact. I don’t see why we should punish an entire region for the failings of a relative few.
- If New Orleans is to rebuild, survive, and thrive, a holistic approach to the whole of South Louisiana is needed. Yes, bigger, stronger levees are needed, but it goes well beyond that. Much of the surrounding area, and especially southern Louisiana, needs to be returned to natural wetlands, which act as a buffer to such storms. Flooding outside of the core city needs to be allowed, so that silt can be redeposited and water tables can be preserved. The area protected by levees needs to be more concentrated around the core of New Orleans, with the surrounding areas either filled to above sea level or allowed to flood periodically. And we need to stop fighting the Mississippi River’s natural push southward. I’m not optimistic that any of this can happen, which means that we’re likely to see much of the Katrina fiasco repeat itself.
- Yes, New Orleans is below sea level. That doesn’t disparage its right to exist, or its important as a port. Especially not when you consider that it didn’t start off that way. The city is sinking, at a rate of roughly 3 feet per century (a rate which can be expected to accelerate if the above fixes aren’t considered). This does indeed introduce special challneges, but I’m tired of people suggesting that the city as a whole should be simply abandoned, or that they somehow “had it coming” because of this. I suppose these same asshats would have told the residents of 1906 San Francisco that they “shouldn’t have built a city on a fault line.”
Categories: Katrina |
This is a shameful chapter in American history. We spend more money in a month in Iraq than we have allocated to help the people of New Orleans.
I would add to your list the following:
The failings of the federal government does not in any way excuse the failings of the state and local governments.
Ted:
Agreed, however nowhere near as many voices, at least on the national scene, are arguing in that direction. People who point out the Nagin bus fiasco tend to do so to deflect attention away from the federal failings. I haven’t seen anyone argue that the federal government’s response somehow excuses the failings of local and state governments. And if they’ve done so, they’re wrong.
At the same time, I would argue that the federal failings were more egregious: they had the resources but were slow to react, and post-9/11 they were supposed to be able to quickly respond to a disaster like this. They failed miserably, and shattered any confidence I may have had in their ability to react to something like a terror attack.
Bottom line is that the state and local failings were mostly a lack of preparedness (with varying degrees of 20/20 hindsight), but the federal failings were that and a failure to respond. All parties involved failed, but the feds were the worst of the bunch, when they needed to be the best.
tg: If New Orleans is to rebuild, survive, and thrive, a holistic approach to the whole of South Louisiana is needed. Yes, bigger, stronger levees are needed, but it goes well beyond that. Much of the surrounding area, and especially southern Louisiana, needs to be returned to natural wetlands, which act as a buffer to such storms. Flooding outside of the core city needs to be allowed, so that silt can be redeposited and water tables can be preserved. The area protected by levees needs to be more concentrated around the core of New Orleans, with the surrounding areas either filled to above sea level or allowed to flood periodically.
Fred: Who is to decide whose economic interests are protected and whose interests are to be returned to natural wetlands? The idea of filling in the below sea level area is ludicrous. What would be the advantage of putting levees around an area and them flooding it. No homes or businesses could be built there, unless you want to flood out residents and businesses. This post does explain a lot of your other posts.
Fred:
What would be the advantage of putting levees around an area and them flooding it.
Huh? I’d like you to show me where I suggested any such thing. Maybe you have trouble with the “either…or” construct. What I did suggest was building levees around a more concentrated area, and allowing the areas outside the levees to flood. As to how I would determine what should and should not be protected by levees, I’d suggest letting population density dictate that. Start by building top-notch levees around the city center, and expand from there as feasible.
Yes, that means that there will be large areas that were previously developed that cannot be re-developed. I don’t see how that can be reasonably avoided. Besides, I don’t know what you’re griping about, you’ve repeatedly suggested that because the city is below sea level, none of it should be developed.
So federalism is a bad thing? So the federal government should be able to tell the state/local governments what to do all the time, ala the United Kingdom?
Of course, I realize that you and George Bush are on the same side here. Bush wanted the local authorities to let the feds run everything. That should make you think.
Then there are the horror stories of how the authorities made volunteers wait for hours to fill out forms before these people could help.
We should have let Wal-Mart be in charge of the rescue effort.
Tg: allowing the areas outside the levees to flood
Fred: How are you going to keep the areas without a levee from flooding? Your use of the word “allow” is an indication that you somehow could keep the flooding from happening unless you “allowed” it to happen. You also said the levees need to be more concentrated around the core of New Orleans. That certainly implies that levees would be less concentrated in other places. Maybe you have trouble with the word “more.”
Keith:
Well, to be fair, as with anything else, the appropriate amount of federalism is a good thing. My point was that the sort of hyper-federalism advocated by the libertarian types, wherein the federal government has virtually no power and no say, and indeed, no role to play in major disasters such as this, it untenable. There’s an important distinction to be made between a strong federal government and an all-powerful one. For disasters like Katrina, a strong federal government is needed.
Then there are the horror stories of how the authorities made volunteers wait for hours to fill out forms before these people could help.
What was it that I was just saying about holding up the worst examples as if they were typical?
We should have let Wal-Mart be in charge of the rescue effort.
Why? We already have illegal immigrants rebuilding the city for sub-legal wages without Wal-Mart’s assistance.
Fred:
Man, I didn’t think it was all that complicated. You seem to be having trouble with the word “concentrated.” I’m not saying you should build stronger levees around the core, and weaker ones elsewhere. I’m saying that in many of the outlying areas, you wouldn’t build levees at all. When I say you’d “allow those areas to flood,” I’m saying that you wouldn’t do anything to stop it. In other words, you concentrate your levee-building and levee-fortification efforts to those areas with high population density or which are critical to the survival of the city (e.g., CBD), and let the rest return to nature.
The resulting New Orleans would be a smaller, denser city, but one which is much easier to defend from flooding, storms, etc.
Tgirsch, your post is quite understandable to me.
While I agree that a stronger response by the fed’s was called for, in general, I think regional situations require regional solutions. Mississippi needs to be able to deal with hurricanes. Colorado needs to be able to deal with blizzards. California has wild fires, etc, etc. In the case of a poor city in a poor state that is at risk, like N.O., then federal funds can be used to help create and implement a plan, but bottom line I believe that disaster preparedness and first response should be State/local. Long term relief can come from the Feds.
Mississippi has enough school buses and enough drivers to have evacuated everyone from the city. Use the Mississippi National Guard to help with traffic and drivers if required. This did not need to be a disaster in terms of human life, and it could have been handled by the State. The State did not have a good plan in place, and neither did the city.
Bottom line, some group of people needed to get the $$ together and create a plan, work through implementation details, then train those who would be executing the plan in the event of a major hurricane approaching New Orleans.. My inclination is to have said group be composed of those who are at risk (local vs federal). Because they are at risk (motivation). And since they live in a place where there are hurricanes, they probably have more knowledge (as opposed to blizzards).
If you can offer me a rationale why a federal solution would be inherently better than a local one, I might change my thinking, but I cannot think of any. My entire life experience has taught me that larger organizations are slower to respond to stimuli than smaller ones, and do so in a less efficient manner. I believe disaster first response requires specialization, adaptation, speed, and motivation. These are not attributes frequently associated with Federal agencies.
Long term relief and aid is another matter. In that regard, the federal government should be expected to play a major role, and to date has done a poor job.
tgirsch;
You might also consider that New Orleans and Lousianna weren’t the only areas affected by hurricane Katrina. Your entire post seems to rest on that assumption and so does most other commentary. Given your concern about federalism, you might want to investigate how Alabama, which was hit by a stronger storm than Lousianna, dealt with the aftermath.
As for spending on NO/LA for recovery, it was LA’s Congressional delegation that burned that bridge by larding up their request beyond even the normally corrupt standards of LA and Congress. Again, contrast with Alabama and ask why people who write posts like yours ignore that entire state.
Ted:
I don’t disagree with you, I really don’t. But the bottom line is that many states simply don’t have the resources to properly prepare for disasters of this scale, and the federal government does. Further, the point I’m trying to make is that Katrina helps show that smaller governments (state and especially local) simply can’t be trusted to properly prepare. As budgets get tight (taxes of any kind are eeevil, remember), politicians can and will gamble that they can skimp on disaster preparedness, and simply hope the big one never comes.
What makes more sense to me is to do something like the Clinton-era FEMA did, where the agency actively worked with at-risk areas on preparedness, including helping to fund the preparedness measures. That puts a good deal of control and responsibility in local hands, where we both agree a lot of it belongs, but includes both federal assistance and federal oversight, which I contend is a must.
I think you misunderstand me, however, and think that I’m arguing that the federal government should replace local involvement. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m just saying that the feds have to have a much bigger role than they have of late, both pre- and post-disaster, for the reasons I listed above.
AOG:
Yes, because Coastal Alabama has the same large concentration of impoverished residents that New Orleans had. In any case, this post concerns Hurricane Katrina, which primarily effected New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf coast, and the federal response along the Mississippi coast sucked, too.
And while I won’t bite and try to diminish the damage to Mississippi and Alabama, which was extensive, those areas weren’t submerged under floodwaters for days and in some cases weeks, as was the case with most of New Orleans. The damage done by the storm itself was actually greater in Mississippi than in New Orleans, but with no flooding, recovery efforts could begin more or less immediately. In other words, Apples != Oranges.
tg: Man, I didn’t think it was all that complicated. You seem to be having trouble with the word “concentrated.”
Fred: Man, I didn’t think it was all that complicated. You seem to be having trouble with the word “more.” You can’t have more of something if you don’t have less of something. Maybe a good ESL class would help you.
Fred:
For what it’s worth, the converse of “more” isn’t necessarily “less.” In some contexts (as in mine), it’s “fewer.” More, better levees around the key parts of the city, and fewer levees elsewhere. Funding and effort would be concentrated on those areas with the most concentrated populations and/or economic importance.
But hey, if you want to split hairs and avoid substantive discussion, I suppose that’s your prerogative. Nobody else in this thread seems to have had any trouble understanding what I was suggesting. This would seem to suggest that you’re the one who needs the ESL class, not me.
Tgirsch, I agree concerning resources. Which is why I included the bit about the feds providing funding, and a neighbor state providing help if required. If you break it down, there are four phases to a disaster like this:
predisaster: planning and education mode. I would have this done at state and local level.
first response: Hurricanes have more lead time than most disasters, but it is still logistically difficult for first responders to be anything other than local.
immediate aftermath: This is where a Federal relief force can realistically be deployed and help with cleanup, providing food and water, etc. This tends to be less specialized than first response.
long term: Rebuilding, etc. Clearly the Feds can play a major role here.
As far as I can tell, all four phases of the disaster were mismanaged. Probably the most successful was the evacuation. Given the magnitude of the operation, it went pretty well - with the exception of the infirm and poor. There was no plan in place to get them out, and they got clobbered. So, for me, most loss of life is attributed to local failings, and lack of rebuilding is attributable to lack of meaningful Federal action.
Ted:
I think our biggest disagreement starts with the “predisaster” phase. I think the feds do indeed have a role to play here, even if that role is no more than ensuring that the state and local governments are holding up their end of the bargain. After all, if the feds have some responsibility for the immediate aftermath and long-term rebuilding, then it behooves them to at least ensure that the local authorities are doing everything prudent to minimize the damage and loss of life, if not directly help with that process (I favor the latter, of course).
So, for me, most loss of life is attributed to local failings
Which is precisely why I argue that simply leaving it to the local authorities is a proven-unwise idea. Again, I’m not saying that this needs to be taken over by the feds, but the feds clearly have a role to play in preventing this sort of inexcusable unpreparedness. Maybe the threat of federal intervention would be enough in some places (i.e., “If you don’t do it right, we’ll take over and do it for you, and you don’t want that”), but given historical examples (e.g., school integration), I’m not convinced that this would be enough.
“So, for me, most loss of life is attributed to local failings”
Not really. Yes, the evacuation wa shandled poorly, but no evacuation is going to be perfect and someon has to plan to go in and pickl up the pieces. That someone has to be the federal government becasue local and state resources are going to be either taken off the board becasue of they are affected by the disastor or inadequate becasue states are just not as rich as the feds. The fact that it took days to get help to people when the fact that there would be people who needed help is inexcusable and certianly killed people. The locals and the feds share blame for those deaths, I think.
“Not really. Yes, the evacuation wa shandled poorly, but no evacuation is going to be perfect and someon has to plan to go in and pickl up the pieces.”
What a bunch of liberal self-serving crap. The city of NO had plenty of warning that the hurricane was coming and that it was a bad one. Ray “School Bus” Nagin let the buses sit in a parking lot until it was too late. How was the federal government going to correct that mistake? You can’t send people into a hurricane to “pickl up the pieces” while the wind is raging and the water is too high. Get real and quit blaming others for Nagin’s incompetence. The federal government had no(zero) responsibility to evacuate anyone prior to the storm.
Tgirsch, I agree with you.
Kevin, the vast majority of people who died died during the storm. They drowned because they were not evacuated. The implementation of an evacuation is a tactical exercise. Feds can help by providing strategic guidance when plans are being formulated (as tgirsch alludes to), but when the storm is 36 hours away, it’s all about execution. The local guys are the ones with the resources, knowledge, and authority to make it happen. I agree the Feds could/should have been quicker/better at lending aid immediately after the fact, but even under best case scenario, they might have saved an additional 100 lives (guessing here). Therefore, I can’t assign them equal blame when it comes to loss of life.
Ted:
As I’ve chewed on this, I’ve figured out why I think the federal failings are more egregious than the local ones (even though the local failings were still very bad). It’s because the local failings involved failure to properly prepare, whereas the federal failings involved a failure to respond. There’s clearly a great deal more the city could have done to prepare, but there’s also a lot of guesswork in what will be needed, when it will be needed, and where it will be needed.
Once the disaster hits, however, the needs are immediately obvious, as anyone with CNN or Fox News could have told you two days before FEMA and the feds figured it out. And, because of the nature of the disaster in question here, you have a pretty good idea in advance of what you’re going to need and even when you’ll need it, so you’ve got time to get that stuff staged and ready to move.
I’ll not excuse the obvious failings the city made, but even if the city did absolutely everything right it conceivably could have, there still would have been a great deal missed, and a great deal of need. And there’s simply no excuse as to why the feds couldn’t have had people and supplies at the ready, able to move in within hours after the storm passed through.
What makes it even worse, though, is that it was two full days before anything meaningful started to happen, and before our eyes we saw that the people who were supposed to be in charge simply had no clue what was going on.
Yeah, the locals dropped the ball big time. But the feds did a far worse job, and that’s saying something.
tg: It’s because the local failings involved failure to properly prepare, whereas the federal failings involved a failure to respond. There’s clearly a great deal more the city could have done to prepare, but there’s also a lot of guesswork in what will be needed, when it will be needed, and where it will be needed.
Fred: Failure to prepare is a failure to respond. The only reason someone prepares for something is because he is responding to a need. I know liberals are big government people, but why would the federal beauracrats be considered omniscient and the local people be too stupid to prepare for a response to a hurricane?
tgirsch, I have to echo Fred’s comment. I don’t see how local lack of preparation more easily forgiven than lack of federal preparation. I believe lack of federal response was directly attributable to lack of preparation. No plan, no clue. Bureaucracies are not nimble and do not improvise or adapt quickly. Nature of the beast. Furthermore, the locals failed those whom they were specifically elected/hired to protect. And, as mentioned before, the local failings resulted in massive loss of life. Not so with the federal failings.
Ted:
I’m not trying to downplay the local failings, I’m really not. But the feds have exponentially more resources available to them, and more experience with this sort of thing. Katrina wasn’t exactly the first time a hurricane has hit the coast, you know. Furthermore, because of the nature of the disaster, you have to stage people and supplies a couple or three hundred miles away, wait for it to pass, and then move them in. I doubt the locals even have the jurisdiction to do something like this, never mind the resources.
There’s no doubt the local government failed New Orleans and failed it badly. As I said before, I’m not going to make excuses for them. But getting back around to my original point about federalism being unworkable in this regard, I’d bet nine out of ten major cities would fail in similar fashion. Think of the current anti-tax mentality out there, and think how much money it would cost to have the necessary planning in place, and the people and resources at the ready, and tell me where that money’s going to come from. Hell, most localities have trouble funding their roads and schools, never mind spending a bazillion dollars to get ready for a disaster that might not even ever come.
All that aside, once the storm hit, the locals’ ability to do anything was neutralized. And the feds sat around and did nothing for days. The locals gambled that the storm wouldn’t be a direct hit on them, and they lost. But the feds knew the storm would hit somewhere, even if not New Orleans, and once it actually hit, they knew it had hit, and they dragged their feet and made excuses. Both are egregious failings, if you think the former is more egregious than the latter, we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Agreed.