"Tantamount to Negligence" Is the Catastrophe in New 
Orleans a Catastrophe of Nature or Policy?
                                    By Ronda Hauben
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/20/20848/1.html

"It is possible to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane. 
But we've got to start. To do nothing is tantamount to negligence."
 			Al Naomi, senior project manager for the
 			Army Corps of Engineers, quoted in the
 			Philadelphia Inquirer, October 8, 2004

The disaster that was predicted to engulf the city of New Orleans in 
flood waters has happened. A catastrophe of enormous proportions is 
continuing in the New Orleans region of the US. Reports from the scene 
describe the condition of the people who remain in the area as turning 
from 'frustration' to 'desperation'.  U.S. public officials, from the 
President of the US, to the Governor of Louisiana, to the Mayor of New 
Orleans, admit that it is a problem of tremendous proportions, 
something unlike anything that has been experienced previously.  By 
Thursday, September 1, 2005. three days after the initial hurricane 
had hit on Monday morning, there was still no knowledge of how many 
people in the flood ravaged areas were still alive, or how many had 
died.

The crisis of the continuing flooding of the city, of the inability to 
repair the levees that had been breached which are responsible for the 
flooding, of the need to be able to feed and provide for the people 
who sought shelter in the Superdome or other places around the city, 
continues to grow more serious. Plans to evacuate people from the 
Superdome were complicated by many additional people arriving at the 
Superdome and hoping to be part of the evacuation, as well as by 
reports of shots being fired at some who were part of rescue 
operations.

The news from the disaster area site is intermittent and often 
involves hearing public officials giving their view of the situation. 
A few of the public officials blame the people who didn.t leave for 
the enormity of the public disaster that is continuing. The provisions 
for evacuation before Hurricane Katrina, however, were advisory with 
little provision by public authorities for assistance for those who 
didn.t have the means to leave, or a place to go. Instead, people with 
difficulty leaving were told to go to the Superdome. The conditions at 
the Superdome, however, soon deteriorated with grossly inadequate 
means of providing for the people who were there.

The catastrophe of New Orleans, is a catastrophe of a major urban city 
that is flooded. Much of the city itself was built below sea level. 
Part of the mechanism to deal with the potential for flooding were 
levees and pumping stations. The erosion of the levees and the 
possible malfunctioning of the pumping stations were potential 
problems that had been recognized. A five part series of articles 
titled, "Washing Away". in the Times-Picayune, in 2003, and articles 
such as "New Orleans Growing Danger" published in the Philadelphia 
Inquirer, in October, 2004, document that there was an understanding 
not only of the problem, but also of the efforts it would take to 
prevent a disaster from taking place. The great need for serious 
attention to the problem was identified. FEMA (Federal Emergency 
Management Agency), the U.S. government agency that had been charged 
with the obligation to identify such problems, understood that a 
catastrophe in New Orleans "was among.the three likeliest disasters 
facing" the US. Instead of being provided with the resources to deal 
with the problem, however, FEMA, previously a cabinet level agency 
reporting directly to the President, was absorbed into the newly 
created Department of Homeland Security. (1)  Walter Maestri, director 
of the Jefferson Parish's Office of Emergency Management who had 
worked with FEMA for eight years, explained the difference the change 
represented for those in New Orleans. Under the previous system "you 
had access to individuals who were the decision-makers. The FEMA 
administrator had Cabinet status,' he explained. 'Now,' he noted, 'you 
have another layer of bureaucracy. FEMA is headed by an assistant 
secretary who now has to compete with other assistant secretaries of 
Homeland Security for available funds. And elevating houses is not as 
sexy as providing gases masks'. (2) A recent article in the LA Times 
explains that under the organizational chart of the Office of Homeland 
Security, a different office has been assigned FEMA.s preparation and 
planning functions.

Similarly, the US Army Corps of Engineers, which had recognized the 
problems at least as early as 1995, and was exploring how to handle 
them in the long and short term, found its funding cut by the Bush 
administration. It was forced to institute a hiring freeze and to 
cutback its activities. Protesting these cutbacks, Mary Landrieu, 
Senator from New Orleans, complained that "the Bush administration is 
not making Corps of Engineers funding a priority". (3)

Contrary to media reports, that the devastation in New Orleans was 
unexpected ("New Orleans is Inundated", New York Times, August 31, 
2005, p. 1), or impossible to avoid ("Katrina's Awful Wake," WSJ, 
September 1, p. A10) articles like "New Orleans Growing Danger," 
published in the Philadelphia Inquirer less than a year ago, show that 
there was not only knowledge of the problem, but even more 
importantly, of the dire consequences of ignoring the problem.  Terry 
C. Tullier, city director of emergency preparedness in New Orleans, 
described a small part of the magnitude of the disaster that ignoring 
the problem would bring : "The thing that keeps me awake at night is 
the 100,000 people who couldn't leave". (4)

In the same article, Ivor van Heerden, Director of Louisiana State 
University.s Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of 
Hurricanes, estimated that 300,000 people out of the 1.2 million 
people in the New Orleans. area, would not evacuate initially from the 
city. The need to evacuate these people from the flooded city would 
pose a logistical and humanitarian crisis of serious proportions, he 
warned.

Initially, after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on Monday morning, 
city officials and others felt they had been spared the worst feared 
scenario. By Tuesday, however, the problem that had been predicted, 
hit the city. Two of the levees that kept the city from flooding, were 
breached. Also several of the pumps malfunctioned.

The situation of a major metropolitan area being under water with no 
clear idea of how to stop the flooding or how to drain the water, is 
the situation currently facing officials in New Orleans. There are 
many people still stranded all around the city. There are bodies of 
the people who have died scattered around the city. There are the 
physical and emotional losses suffered by the survivors.  These are 
only a few of the elements of the tragedy that add up to a crisis of 
immense proportions. This was a catastrophe just waiting to happen, a 
situation recognized as a problem, but deprived of the resources 
needed to address it. The gutting of the authority and funding of 
agencies like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers in the name of 
'homeland security' demonstrates the harm that the priorities of 
creating this agency have already caused.  Four days after the 
hurricane, victims of the hurricane are condemning the US government 
for failing to provide them with food, water, or other basic forms of 
help. Other areas of the Gulf region ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, 
report similar frustration with the slowness of support from the 
federal government.

The disaster of diverting the funding and institutional support needed 
to prevent the flooding of New Orleans, is compounded as the federal 
government now fails to provide the critical immediate emergency aid 
to those in the disaster area.

----------- Notes

l. Fema Scrambles to the Rescue, by Nicole Gaouett
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-fema1sep01,1,7749651.story?coll=la-news-politics-national

2. "Commentary: Disaster in the Making", Gambit Weekly, October 5, 
2004. 
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2004-10-05/commentary.html

3 "New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers faces"  by 
Dean Roberts 
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_20050606/ai_n14657367

4. Paul Nussbaum, New Orleans Growing Danger, Philadelphia Inquirer, 
Oct 8, 2004 
http://hurricane.lsu.edu/_in_the_news/phillyinquirer100804.htm

See also "Washing Away" 5 part series in the Times-Picayune, started 
September 17, 2003. 
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway/part1.html