The media is full of “Katrina – One Year Later” stories right now, as it is the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina lambasting the Redneck Riviera. This gives us a chance to look back at how things went down through the lens of the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-wise Monday Morning Deity. To quote New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin “There’s plenty of blame to go around”. We’re going to deliver a bunch.
To start, we must remember that Katrina was one of many last year, as it was a particularly busy hurricane season. The US National Hurricane Centre did give New Orleans and Mississippi at least 48 hours warning that they were in the path of badness that was getting meaner by the minute as the storm gathered power in warm Gulf of Mexico water. The oil companies, with hundreds of rigs in the Gulf, did the wise thing and got the hell out of Dodge when Katrina crossed Cuba. The rigs were evacuated nearly four days before Katrina landed. They had the sense to look at the maps and made their own predictions.
A reasonable number of people looked at the weather map and said “time to go”. Things looked bad, even to untrained civilians who have sat out several dozen hurricanes. They loaded the vehicles and got going north, away from the Gulf of Mexico.
A data point here: From Galveston, Texas to Tallahassee, Florida, the land is mostly swamp or recovered swamp. The high point is sea level: A lot of the land is lower than the Gulf, protected by levees and dikes made by humans. The Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for much of the work. The Corps is not filled with idiots, but like all humans, they make their best guess, add 20 percent for Murphy’s Law then cross their fingers hoping the science boffins got the numbers right.
Unfortunately, the state of Louisiana, under Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans under Mayor Ray Nagin, didn’t look too closely at the TV. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, under Michael Chertoff, played in the puddles around the edge of the pond, sending a few emails and ordering up some ice. Mississippi, under Governor Haley Barbour did start working the evacuation plan, but remember that this area of the US gets tropical storms and hurricanes every year, so complacency is an issue.
There is also the issue of the hierarchy of Federal, State and Local. The US has a long tradition of the State Government being the one who must ask for assistance from the Feds. The local mooks must plead their case to the State, who may or may not pass it up to the Feds. States don’t usually have extensive resources for emergency help. The State will rely on the National Guard. The National Guard gets their resources from the Federal Department of Defence. Now lay the whole Department of Homeland Paranoia/FEMA clusterfuck over top of the situation and you have a group of people spending more time pointing fingers and posturing for the cameras than actually doing anything.
Roughly 24 hours before the hurricane made landfall, Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco finished pissing on each other long enough to pull their heads out of their respective asses and ordered a mandatory evacuation. New Orleans proper has a population just under 500,000, while the Metro area has a population around 1.4 million. Gulfport, Mississippi houses about 72,000. Biloxi, Mississippi, about 50,000 souls. In round numbers, let`s call it 1.8 million folks who are in the path of badness on either side of the state lines.
Economically, this area of the US is not in the class of an Atlanta, Boston or Charlotte: Not everyone has the economic throw weight to pack it up and stay in a hotel in Baton Rouge or Jackson for a couple of weeks. Not everyone has a car, or a friend with a car. Some people didn’t want to leave, as they knew that if they did, other folks would steal everything, including things nailed down.
Then there is the whole issue of domestic pets and how do you transport the family Rover, Fluffy and Nemo. We’ll have to accept that a percentage of the population is not going to be leaving. The estimates from a FEMA disaster planning exercise in 2004 were that 100,000 people would not leave the area. This leaves, best case, 1.7 million people taking the roads out of town.
Look at a map of the interstate highway system in the Gulf. Interstate 10 goes from left to right. I-59 and I-55 go up and down. The rest are back roads and secondary roads that wind their way around a big lake in the middle, called Lake Pontchartrain. There are not enough roads out of town, even if all four lanes are used. Even if Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco conscripted every school bus and driver in the whole state, it wouldn’t have mattered. The evacuation call was simply too late.
Stores were swamped by people looking to buy food, water, batteries, diapers, gas and all the other little things that make a life. Eventually the stores run out and the time runs out.
In large-scale natural disaster planning there comes a point where you have to just hunker in the bunker and let it blow over. You need to have fire, police, ambulance, medical, power, water and sewer people alive after the event to pick up the pieces. About four hours before the anticipated landfall, you climb in and bolt the doors shut. One of those shelters of last resort was the New Orleans Superdome. The other was the Convention Centre.
If you invite 50,000 people to come over to your place, you have to find a way to feed them, give them water and provide a reliable way to get rid of the waste products. Face it, 50,000 people create a lot of waste, even if everyone is neat, orderly, dignified and behaving as supportive and positive as they can. Now, scare the hell out of 50,000 people and see how they behave.
As people entered the Superdome, the National Guard and the cops were frisking everyone, especially the males. This takes time and made everyone feel like prisoners. Lighters were confiscated as they posed a fire risk and naturally, those with guns were treated to handcuffs. The Superdome did have a supply of water and military Meals Ready to Eat.
MRE’s are acceptable foods in an emergency and are designed to be eaten cold or hot. Each box contains a full meal in a retort, or boil-able, bag. With the accessory pouch you also get instant coffee, whitener, chewing gum, Tabasco sauce, grape drink powder, paper matches and a wet nap. They even include a chemical no-flame heater pack to warm up the MRE if you want. So much for patting down the prisoners (sorry, our guests) for lighters and flammables.
The best that can be said about an MRE is that they are edible: Tabasco is mandatory and wisely included. MRE’s do have a five-year shelf life and in an emergency they are the easiest, fastest and cheapest way to feed 50,000 people. One shipping pallet of MRE’s will feed about 500 people, once. 50,000 people takes 100 pallets, or roughly five transport truck loads.
Three days of MRE’s would be the area taken up by, give or take, 45 tractor trailer loads. Fill the football field in the Superdome with pallet after pallet of MRE’s to feed the people up in the stands of the Superdome and over at the convention centre for three days. Of course, this was not done. Nobody had the foresight, leadership or sheer nerve to make it happen, despite emergency planning exercises and nearly 48 hours notice that Katrina was coming to drill the Gulf right between the eyes.
The storm hit and the first thing that went out was the electricity. New Orleans has, because it is below sea level, a very high water table. Several huge industrial pump stations scattered around the city pump water out of the ground and into the canals to keep the city somewhat dry. These pumps are powered by electricity. Electricity is used to power pumps for drinking water and sewage systems. Those pesky electrons also power the cell phone infrastructure, toaster ovens, lights, fans and traffic signals.
Power being out for a couple of days is part of the planning for any disaster. Hospitals have generators to keep things going on an emergency basis. Radio and television stations have their own standby generators. My highrise apartment has a diesel generator that powers the fire alarm, the rescue lighting system and one elevator. Businesses in Ontario and Quebec commonly have gas, diesel or propane powered stationary generators wired into the system. Quite a few rural houses do too. We learned the “Electricity = Good” lesson in a ferocious ice storm in January of 1998.
Without electricity to run the groundwater pumps, New Orleans started to flood from the torrential rain in Hurricane Katrina: Flooding, but copeable flooding. A foot or two in the lowest areas. It was expected, planned for and one of those things that happens.
Hospitals went over to standby power. Radio and television stations swapped over too, covering the emergency as best they could. The national media were live and on the scene. It played out on our televisions for us and we watched.
More to come.
RoadDave 