Respectfully MD, you don't understand much about the hurricane evacuation from your perspective in Pearland, Texas. Anybody who lives in New Orleans or Baton Rouge will tell you what a clusterfugg the interstates are for hurricane evacuation. Baton Rouge is a giant bottleneck. Traffic backed up for hours on end. All New Orleans interstates should add two outbound lanes for hurricane evacuation capacity. A south loop around BR with a second Mississippi River bridge needs to be built. Who gives a chit what the interstates were designed for, they are essential to hurricane evacuation and need upgrading. It is far cheaper than the alternative. The city has been there for over 300 years, amigo. How can they it just decide not to be there? It is the vital seaport on America' largest river. There are giant cities cities in danger from earthquakes (San Francisco , Los Angeles, St. Louis), from volcanos (Seattle), and from tsunamis (every coastal city on the planet). Those cities are not going to be moved either. If we can spend 200 billion to destroy and then rebuild Iraq, we can spend it to rebuild our own cities. What makes the costs exorbitant? It will be cheap versus relocating a major city to high ground that doesn't exist anywhere nearby. The city in three centuries has only been hit badly this one time, it is far from uninhabitable. If the levee hadn't failed, this crisis would have been easy. We would be foolish to abandon New Orleans, which would bankrupt the state of Louisiana and negatively impact the entire US economy. No. We fix the levees. We institute strict building codes in low-lying areas. No more ranch-style houses on slabs. They should be elevated with above-ground basements built with brick like the old New Orleans mid-city houses. Houses than can take six feet of water without being totalled. More and better pumps must be installed. A better system to evacuate people without automobiles must be implemented. Stockpile old city buses from around the country and keep them maintained for use in emergencies. Keep one of the abandoned rail yards filled with unused railroad passenger cars. Then Amtrack, KCS, UP, CN, and CSX locomotives can pull many thousands of evacuees out of the area instead of just saving valuable freight loads. All of this is far cheaper than the economic loss to the state of abandoning New Orleans.
The underfunding of louisiana flood protection has gone on for the last 100 years... year after year after year we have asked for money for the marshlands and for the levee systems and the fed has ignored it.. now its time for the fed to pay up for its negligence... Imagine if the 30 miles of marshland that used to be in the Barataria area was still there.. that is 30 more miles of land that the hurricane would have to pass over.. 300 less of open water... that could have knocked another 10-20 mph off the storm winds, maybe saving some lives...
The only way the interstates would be good for evacuation routes is to expand them beyond what is needed on a normal basis. It's the responsibility of local gov't, IMO, to develop a viable plan using other roadways. I'm not going to split hairs about the best way to do it, b/c I don't know the solution. I do know, however, that I don't think it's a federal issue. I'm not saying they shouldn't rebuild NOLA. I do think they should scale it back significantly, and local gov't should support a large chunk of that expenditure, be it in La., California, or anywhere else. The Iraq comparison is w/o merit, IMO. They are unrelated matters, beginning with it being a foreign operation (which puts it squarely in the feds hands.) Whether it was a good decision or not is beyond this discussion. Overall, I just think the impetus for handling these measures starts locally (and admittedly doesn't end there.) Even your point about the codes points this out clearly. I don't disagree with you overall, just disagree with the idea of shoehorning what I consider excessive means to deal with a city that would be better served as a scale model of the metropolitan area that had developed.
I just have a request. Sourdoughman & others, could you post a part of the article or atleast give us some kind of hint what it's about in the opening thread. I'm disinclined to just click on links with the title, "Could this be?" and no description, no paraphrase, no quotes - nothing. It could be gay porn, could be viruses. I don't know what it is & I'd prefer to not find out the hard way... - Thanks, Management :hihi:
I haven't absolved Blanco or Nagin. If you have bothered to read any of my posts you will see that I criticise all three and spread the blame widely. I was responding to your post where you criticised ONLY Blanco and Nagin, suggesting that they did nothing, which is absurd. FEMA and the Corps is going to take the brunt of the criticism, in my opinion, and the guy that appointed the incompetents there will have to answer for it and he knows it. Blanco will have to answer for state failures and Nagin for city failures. I haven't called for any heads yet, except for Brown. There will be investigations and it will all come out. Why are you so anti-Blanco and Nagin politically? They ain't really your problem in Colorado. Why do you defend FEMA so vociferously? If you lived around here and heard the ongoing FEMA horror stories, you might feel differently.
Traffic planning is the responsibility of the La. DOTD, but Interstate and US Highways are largely federally funded and must meet federal criteria. It is definitely a federal issue, but the state and city must play their parts. FEMA also gets involved with evacuation planning. Better planning in the last century would have been great, for sure. The backswamps probably should have never been developed. But they were and levees were built to protect them. We are stuck with it now.
Fair enough Red, can't disagree with that. I know you're a perpetual moderate (a good thing), so my concern probably doesn't lie with your analysis. I get concerned when overreactions result in foolish projects. And I also get perturbed when Iraq expenditures are used for either comparison or for justification of expenditures...on anything. Compared with Iraq, just about any expenditure can be made to sound reasonable and prudent.
Why do you and others claim its a political thing? I don't get it, aint my problem in Colorado? I don't scare away that easy! :hihi: Why do people attack me because I live in Colorado? :dis: Its not like I don't have plenty of connections to the state. :shock: My mom and dad, brother, aunts and uncles, cousins live in Louisiana so I here about the politics and such all the time. Seems kinda mean spirited. :wink: I have never defended Fema, definitely not vociferously, other than saying that they are not a first responder like some claim at this forum. I'm against homeland security and Fema being part of homeland security btw. We did anything to please the idiots on the 911 commission. Why did we always create bigger government to solve our problems. :wink: Lets look at what FEMA says at there website, they are part of our government. http://www.fema.gov/fema/first_res.shtm State and Local Guide (SLG) 101: Guide for All-Hazard Emergency Operations Planning This guide outlines the preparedness, response and short-term recovery planning components that FEMA recommends be included in state and local emergency operations plans. It offers FEMA's best judgment and recommendation on how to handle the entire planning process. It also encourages emergency managers to address all the hazards that threaten their jurisdictions in a single operations plan rather than stand-alone plans. Comprehensive HazMat Emergency Response-Capability Assessment Program (CHER-CAP) CHER-CAP is a comprehensive preparedness program offered by FEMA to local communities and Tribal governments to address HazMat incidents. It is designed to help communities better understand HazMat risks, identify planning deficiencies, update plans, train first responders and identify systemic strengths and needed improvements. Federal Response Plan A signed agreement among 27 federal departments and agencies, and the American Red Cross, that provides the mechanism for coordinating delivery of federal assistance and resources to augment efforts of state and local governments overwhelmed by a major disaster or emergency. CONPLAN - Federal Interagency Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operations Plan The CONPLAN provides overall guidance to federal, state and local agencies concerning how the federal government would respond to a potential or actual terrorist threat or incident that occurs in the United States, particularly one involving WMD.
The American Red Cross is part of FEMA according to the information above. http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00.html#4524 Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans? Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders. The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city. The Red Cross has been meeting the needs of thousands of New Orleans residents in some 90 shelters throughout the state of Louisiana and elsewhere since before landfall. All told, the Red Cross is today operating 149 shelters for almost 93,000 residents. The Red Cross shares the nation’s anguish over the worsening situation inside the city. We will continue to work under the direction of the military, state and local authorities and to focus all our efforts on our lifesaving mission of feeding and sheltering. The Red Cross does not conduct search and rescue operations. We are an organization of civilian volunteers and cannot get relief aid into any location until the local authorities say it is safe and provide us with security and access. The original plan was to evacuate all the residents of New Orleans to safe places outside the city. With the hurricane bearing down, the city government decided to open a shelter of last resort in the Superdome downtown. We applaud this decision and believe it saved a significant number of lives. As the remaining people are evacuated from New Orleans, the most appropriate role for the Red Cross is to provide a safe place for people to stay and to see that their emergency needs are met. We are fully staffed and equipped to handle these individuals once they are evacuated.
Yeah my bad on that. The Iraq line was pretty dumb. The war had absolutely nothing to do with Louisiana not getting its fair share of federal pork. This isn't sarcasm either. I just get pissed to see senators from New Mexico, California and another western landlocked and mountanious state south of Wyoming vote down legislation that would have funded coastal restoraition, improved levees and roads here in Lousisiana pretty much just for the hell of it.
