New Orleans UNDERWATER!
Lake Pontchartrain at top, Mississippi River bottom right
To visit the CNN site where this photo is located click on the link below.
(once the page loads, click on the tab that reads “Before and
(once the page loads, click on the tab that reads “Before and
After Comparison” at the top left corner of the map)
A National Disaster
News from Austin:
My friend Hannah and her daughter Kate, both have spare bedrooms in their houses and have gone online (to a disaster relief website: MoveOn.org) and put their names in the hat for each providing housing for a refugee family.
Click on this link Hurricanehousing.org to get on the list to provide housing to a refugee family.
New Orleans Refugee Praying in Houston Shelter
The most comprehensive list of resources (including FEMA) to aid victims of the hurricane is at the CNN link below, with several links to message boards to find missing friends/relatives.
Cargo containers thrown and scattered by
Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
News from Associated Press online:
Soldiers: Storm-Ravaged Areas Are No Iraq
By BRIAN SKOLOFF
GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) - For some soldiers back from Iraq and now helping the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort, serving in the Middle East doesn't seem so bad after all.
“We had it made in Iraq, absolutely had it made,'' said Col. Brad MacNealy of the Mississippi National Guard, who spent a year commanding the 185th Aviation Brigade's 134 helicopters there.
“In Iraq, we had TV, communication, sleeping quarters, showers,'' MacNealy said Sunday. ``Here, these people haven't had a shower. They're using baby wipes. They can't use cell phones... The year we spent in Iraq, the creature comforts were fantastic. I mean, people were complaining there because they didn't have exercise equipment.''
The group is now flying 42 choppers out of the Trent Lott National Guard Training Complex here, delivering food, water, ice, diapers and baby food to people stranded in the bayou.
Communication is a mess here, pilots say. Crews are flying into areas with chopper loads of bottled water and MRE's - meals ready to eat - and finding supplies have already been delivered.
“If they say they've already got stuff, we just fly around until we find someone who needs it,'' said pilot Michael Fair, a chief warrant officer with the Ohio National Guard.
The helicopter crews are given drop locations, then they're on their own.
“There's no communications out there. We don't know much until we get on the ground,'' said pilot Michael Bess, also of the Ohio National Guard. ``If they've already got something, we just circle around the area looking for people who are stranded.''
MacNealy said planning for aid drops is intense and confusing because very few messages get from the outlying areas where folks are stranded with the base's main operation center.
“In Iraq, we had to and did a lot more detailed planning because we were being shot at,'' he said. “Here, it's touch and go.''
But one thing truly separates this mission from Iraq, where commanders are constantly giving “a lot of motivational speeches, slapping soldiers on the backs,'' MacNealy added.
“I have never seen the morale any higher anywhere in the world. You don't have to motivate anybody here. They know their mission. We're here to help our neighbors,'' he said. ``Every time they go out and see a woman crying because she just got food and water for her children, they come back fired up.''
And troops here share at least one other thing in common with the stranded, hungry and thirsty masses.
“These guys are subsisting on the same rations we're bringing out to the people,'' said the Mississippi National Guard's Col. Greg Kennedy. ``Even so, as tough as it is, not one complaint, not one single complaint from anyone.''
© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
A woman mourns after her long-time partner died
in New Orleans, four days after the disaster.
He died when he ran out of oxygen. He was battling cancer.
in New Orleans, four days after the disaster.
He died when he ran out of oxygen. He was battling cancer.
News from Houston:
from Houston Area NOW member
I just wanted to say that the relief effort here in Houston and the near-by cities is nothing short of amazing. While I share Hannah's shame for our government I am proud of my city and the people here who are doing everything they can to help those most effected. Our mayor, Bill White has provided the kind of leadership that we wished the President (or King George as a friend of mine likes to call him) would provide. Mayor White personally greeted and welcomed people as they got off the buses. He got systems in place and was already working to respond before Bush even acknowledged the disaster.
There was chaos and problems at first, but thank goodness there were people who had sense enough to step up and take charge. I live close to the Astrodome and the level of work going on there and at the Geo. R. Brown Convention Center is most impressive. There is little disruption of traffic in the area, even though the sound of sirens and helicopters was heard fairly steadily over a two day period. My neighborhood grocery store (one of the closest to the Dome) was full of people with distinctive Louisiana accents this afternoon. I saw a car license plate that said "Bon Ton".
Every charity, every company, every organization I know of is doing something to help. I worked with a Democratic group collecting food and clothing yesterday - this coming week I will be staffing phones and other tasks. We even have special efforts for the GLBT community and those with HIV/AIDS. We are already getting kids enrolled in school, helping to care for displaced animals, taking care of medical needs for what equates to a small town just in the Astrodome (now with its own zipcode: 77230).
The full impact of what this situation will mean for Houston and probably the State of Texas is yet to be known. When you think it through there is so much to consider. There are the immediate needs to get people clothed, housed, and fed and then the long-term considerations having to do with re-establishing lives. Just due to geography, Texas will now become the permanent home of several hundreds of thousands people. I know that efforts are already in place to move some of the folks here to other cities in the state and I hope those cities will be as welcoming as Houston has been. It looks like Austin is on the ball. We are responding to the immediate and are in for the long haul with this.
Many folks in Houston have family from the effected areas. Families are accommodating relatives and friends and total strangers. I heard a great story about Barnes & Noble and how they are helping relocate their New Orleans employees. So many touching stories. My Mother's Mississippi relatives are dealing with the aftermath, although thank goodness they are safe. A cousin and her family rode out the storm in Biloxi (foolishly, I think). Others further inland had their power knocked out for several days. Gasoline is at a premium not only in price but in availability. My brother (the trucker) had trouble finding gas even in Kentucky. He warned me right away that coffee will go through the same situation as 90% of the coffee that comes into the States comes through the port of New Orleans.
Thank you all for any donations or help you can offer wherever you can. As bad off as some of us are, at least we have not gone through the hell so many of gulf coast state neighbors have.
New Orleans suburbian church and neighborhood
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- The Times-Picayune of New Orleans printed this editorial in its Sunday edition, criticizing the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina and calling on every FEMA official to be fired:
An open letter to the President
Dear Mr. President:
We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we're going to make it right."
Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.
Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It's accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.
How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.
Despite the city's multiple points of entry, our nation's bureaucrats spent days after last week's hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city's stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.
Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.
Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.
Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.
We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame.
Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don't know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city's death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.
It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren't they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn't suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?
State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn't have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.
In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn't known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We've provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they've gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."
Lies don't get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.
Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You're doing a heck of a job."
That's unbelievable.
There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.
We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We're no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.
No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn't be reached.
Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.
When you do, we will be the first to applaud.
New Orleans police car under water
P.S.
On Sunday, Sept 4 the President of Jefferson Parish said on NBC's MEET THE PRESS, that FEMA turned away from New Orleans, the 13 big rigs sent by Wal-Mart, full of bottled water and food, stating they weren't needed!
On Sunday, Sept 4 the President of Jefferson Parish said on NBC's MEET THE PRESS, that FEMA turned away from New Orleans, the 13 big rigs sent by Wal-Mart, full of bottled water and food, stating they weren't needed!
No comments:
Post a Comment