It begins with Katrina

[jonnygemini]

www.boingboing.net/2005/09/07/katrina_rape_murder_.html





www.flickr.com/photos/ioerror/sets/905698/

Here's a rough partial transcript of an IM chat I maintained with Jacob Appelbaum throughout the day today. He's inside the Houston Astrodome, and has been talking to Katrina evacuees and tech aid volunteers who are there to set up computer banks and a low power FM station (see bottom of post for reports that FEMA's blocking that, despite FCC having granted the LPFM organizers a temporary license exemption).

I have no way of substantiating the statements of those Jacob spoke to, but I present them here as a snapshot of first-person accounts. While some misinformation may be circulating as rumor among evacuees, let's also remember that reports of deaths and violence inside the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center were dismissed as "rumor" in early days by authorities before reporters proved them to be true.

Joel Johnson, who's traveling with Jacob, adds:

While much of the news sounds very dire -- and nobody will argue this is a bad situation for the evacuees, no matter how well it is run -- many of the people in the Astrodome complex were in very good spirits and were quick to offer praise of the people of Houston. There are plenty of issues that need to be discussed, but the evacuees are keeping the area very clean and equilaterally said they were happier to be in the Astrodome than stuck in the Superdome or elsewhere in New Orleans.

Chat transcript with Jacob follows. Times shown in Pacific. Image: a snapshot from Jacob's mobile phone.

10:23: Joel just got removed. Almost arrested. Fox News is down on the floor. I'm in dome, hiding in seats. They're allowing some media on the floor, not others.

10:31 Just met members of the Polish press, they are being stopped from entering floor. Says this is like the former USSR.

10:57 Raw transcript of comments by NOLA evacuee Clara Barthelemy: "The 17th street levee was bombed by the Army Corps of Engineers to save the more valuable real estate in the city… to keep the French Quarter protected, the ninth ward was sacrificed… people are afraid to speak out… everyone who was near there heard the bombings… they bombed seven times. That's why they didn't fix the levees… 20 feet of water. Gators. People dying in water. They let the parishes go, not the city center. Tourist trap was saved over human life. A six year old girl was raped in here.. 9 year old boy killed. A man in the shower beaten. No hot food. No help for elderly."

Another evacuee: "Over 20 rapes per night happening inside this place. They bring in national guard for media purposes. Bush wants us to stay here to raise his ratings. Some workers are stealing the good stuff, like shoes."

11:16: Rough transcript of comments by NOLA evacuee, male: "We are treated like prisoners here. Placed under mandatory curfew. We are citizens!"

11:22 Now I'm speaking to someone else, another woman, who says some people report having witnessed "bomb sounds," believe 17th street levee and others were blown up to manage water flow and protect more valuable portions of real estate.

Evacuee Dianne Stafford: "They blew the levee to save the city…" Saying a barge broke the levee. She is from St. Bernard Parish. "More expensive places were saved at the expense of the neighborhoods that aren't as valuable… Rebuilding Bourbon Street matters more to the government… that's what mattered to Governor Blanco…"

11:36 I'm speaking to a man who's been wearing the exact same pair of 2XL stretch pants since the storm hit. Some clothing is available for evacuees, but he is a large man and can't find anything available to fit his body. He's a diabetic but has good medical care. This so depressing. Its so hard to not cry when you hear this shit. The very large and very old have little help.

11:59 CNN have no problem getting in. Nobody's stopping them from accessing the floor, but other credentialed press who already have press badges are being stopped.

12:09 Evacuees I'm talking to are all telling me about rapes, murders, beatings which are taking place inside the Astrodome.

12:24 Man I'm speaking to, Danny Smith, says he cannot get housing because he has a felony. Aid workers found him a house but he is a felon, so they turned him away. FEMA has agreed to pay for his apartment, but he cannot get one. "Everyone has a felony here," he says. He thinks that people are going to riot

12:29 Evacuee Irvin Skinner: We have a curfew. We're being kept inside after 11pm. Forced to stay inside. They threw guns on everyone. Said 'come inside or your out of here'. Shoved guns, pointed them at adults. I'm a grown man, I have rights. This is an instituion to us, it's like a jail. I'm a middle class man with a home being trated like a criminal because I'm black. If we were white, we wouldn't have this problem."

"We are not here by choice."

13:03 Harris County will not allow any radio station inside without a FEMA form even if operator has FCC permission. Austin Airwaves says trying to get form now, been waiting 2.5 days. No radio station inside the dome until that form is filled out.

Reader comment: Bryan says,

Seeing the stories of the violence going on... and considering how the medical system has been pumping people full of anti-depresents... and personally seeing what happens when you try to take someone on heavy dosage to cold turkey, I wonder how many of the people acting out are acting out of shock combined with drug withdrawal. Nobody seems to be asking this question.

[jonnygemini]

Katrina: account from an EPA rep
A Boing Boing reader who owns an environmental cleanup services company -- and asks to remain anonymous here -- says,

Thanks for publishing my plea to get involved the other day. Unfortunately nothing has come of that. No one is proceeding at this point. However, plenty of opportunities to help refugees in Atlanta are now available, so that's where my time has gone.

My company cleans up waste industrial gas cylinders and specialty chemicals. As such we are in contact with the EPA regularly and often work for the government. As you might imagine, there is expected to be a large number of cylinders recovered from Katrina, and many will probably be in bad shape, or even unknowns, which can present hazard. Today a consultant who works with us and the EPA came back from the Gulf region. Here are some of the things that he had to report:

* He said that the 30 elderly who died in the nursing home were simply forgotten. They were supposed to be rescued but someone dropped the ball and they died.

* There are now 130,000 people working in the Gulf region, including 60,000 National Guard. Conditions for these workers, especially the contractors, are extremely hard. Many are sleeping in their cars and have to supply their own food and water. There is as yet no infrastructure in place to support this group. 80% of these people have terrible diarrhea and some have been hospitalized.

* Under Homeland Security, FEMA is supposed to be in charge, but they have been marginalized due to their obvious screw ups. The National Guard is now in charge in the region and they have no experience in these matters. This is aggravating a bad situation.

* The plan going forward for New Orleans is to demolish all the houses and burn them. There is nowhere to bury the waste in the region so they will incinerate it all. Before that can go on, they will have to search every house for chemical hazards.

* They have found large numbers of seals in and around the houses in NOLA and no one is clear where they came from. An aquarium?

* They are shooting hundreds of dogs a day to protect search and rescue workers. The Humane Society shelters in the region have over 4000 animals.

* The entire Gulfport region is blocked by National Guard and only authorized contractors can get in. An RV campground has grown up outside the roadblock of 80 or more contractors hoping to get a piece of the action. These people have signs outside saying, "Mold Expert," "Asbestos Contractor," etc. They are having cookouts at their RVs just to try to get people to come and talk to them.

* Cell phone towers are on their way from Germany to get the communication infrastructure back in place. The EPA ordered 40 satellite phones to get their people in contact. Those phones have arrived, but no one ordered SIM cards and these phones are currently useless.

* This contractor has been organizing reverse osmosis (RO) water purification units from all over the country since last Tuesday. He has over 100 units of various sizes available to move into the region, but no one will give the go ahead. No one will sign their name to a piece of paper for fear recriminations later. He says that over 80 million pint bottles of water have been purchased at $0.75 each. The RO units can produce a gallon of water from contaminated water for $0.01 and they can produce thousands of gallons a day. Two are staged near the zone and these alone can produce 250,000 gallons per day. The Army has RO units, but every functional one, and every operator trained to use them, is in Iraq or Afghanistan.

* The Navy ship Bataan, which has been widely reported to be available for producing water, can only do desalination, but cannot handle contaminated water.

* All of the Army's good gear, including vehicles and generators are overseas. Humvees and other vehicles in the Gulf region are breaking down frequently.

Certainly I cannot attest to the absolute reliability of all this information, but it is from a reliable source who has been involved with EPA response to hazardous situations for 20 years.

He confirms what everyone else has already said: the clusterfuck down there is beyond all imagining.

[jonnygemini]

www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml


EMS & Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina - Our Experiences
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note: Bradshaw and Slonsky are paramedics frorm California that were attending the EMS conference in New Orleans. Larry Bradsahw is the chief shop steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790; and Lorrie Beth Slonsky is steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790.[California]

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed,were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New

Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of

New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement".

We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together and constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not have set in.

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.

There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist.

There was more suffering than need be.

Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.

[jonnygemini]

Katrina: "evacuees with criminal records can't get housing" update
Joel Johnson blogs from Houston:
joeljohnson.com/archives/2005/09/astrodome.html

This is Danny Smith.

Danny saw my media badge and asked if I could listen to his problem. He is homeless evacuee staying inside the Astrodome. He got a check (debit card? credit slip?) from FEMA today that he is looking to trade in for free rent with an apartment or house, as arranged between FEMA and local housing agencies.

He called the Oak Brook Apartment complex in Houston (Link to GMaps) and was told they have an open apartment. They then asked if he was a felon. Danny had a conviction in 2001 (I didn't ask for what) and told them he did. He was told that he would not be allowed to move in because they did not accept felons.

I'm at a loss. If this is a Houston-wide issue, it will affect many people—people who have commited a crime in the past, but are now on the street, having served their time. If this is the individual policy of the Oak Brook apartments, then I think they're making a big mistake.

I told Danny there wasn't much I could do, but that I would write about it. At the moment, I don't really have much of a chance to confirm or disconfirm if this is an official policy at FEMA. I did call Janet at Oak Brook Apartments. She confirmed this is their policy.

[Healthy Merking]

injustices

this is not a society of men

everybody is relying on something that is not there

[jonnygemini]

wow...fucking uncanny accuraccy on this...
check the link so you believe this:
www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/

By Joel K. Bourne, Jr.
Photographs by Robert Caputo and Tyrone Turner

The Louisiana bayou, hardest working marsh in America, is in big trouble—with dire consequences for residents, the nearby city of New Orleans, and seafood lovers everywhere.

It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

"The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours—coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city's hurricane armor. "I don't think people realize how precarious we are,"
Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. "Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it's going to make things much worse."

The chances of such a storm hitting New Orleans in any given year are slight, but the danger is growing. Climatologists predict that powerful storms may occur more frequently this century, while rising sea level from global warming is putting low-lying coasts at greater risk. "It's not if it will happen," says University of New Orleans geologist Shea Penland. "It's when."

Yet just as the risks of a killer storm are rising, the city's natural defenses are quietly melting away. From the Mississippi border to the Texas state line, Louisiana is losing its protective fringe of marshes and barrier islands faster than any place in the U.S. Since the 1930s some 1,900 square miles (4,900 square kilometers) of coastal wetlands—a swath nearly the size of Delaware or almost twice that of Luxembourg—have vanished beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Despite nearly half a billion dollars spent over the past decade to stem the tide, the state continues to lose about 25 square miles (65 square kilometers) of land each year, roughly one acre every 33 minutes.

A cocktail of natural and human factors is putting the coast under. Delta soils naturally compact and sink over time, eventually giving way to open water unless fresh layers of sediment offset the subsidence. The Mississippi's spring floods once maintained that balance, but the annual deluges were often disastrous. After a devastating flood in 1927, levees were raised along the river and lined with concrete, effectively funneling the marsh-building sediments to the deep waters of the Gulf. Since the 1950s engineers have also cut more than 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) of canals through the marsh for petroleum exploration and ship traffic. These new ditches sliced the wetlands into a giant jigsaw puzzle, increasing erosion and allowing lethal doses of salt water to infiltrate brackish and freshwater marshes.

While such loss hits every bayou-loving Louisianan right in the heart, it also hits nearly every U.S. citizen right in the wallet. Louisiana has the hardest working wetlands in America, a watery world of bayous, marshes, and barrier islands that either produces or transports more than a third of the nation's oil and a quarter of its natural gas, and ranks second only to Alaska in commercial fish landings. As wildlife habitat, it makes Florida's Everglades look like a petting zoo by comparison.

Such high stakes compelled a host of unlikely bedfellows—scientists, environmental groups, business leaders, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—to forge a radical plan to protect what's left. Drafted by the Corps a year ago, the Louisiana Coastal Area (LCA) project was initially estimated to cost up to 14 billion dollars over 30 years, almost twice as much as current efforts to save the Everglades. But the Bush Administration balked at the price tag, supporting instead a plan to spend up to two billion dollars over the next ten years to fund the most promising projects. Either way, Congress must authorize the money before work can begin.

To glimpse the urgency of the problem afflicting Louisiana, one need only drive 40 minutes southeast of New Orleans to the tiny bayou village of Shell Beach. Here, for the past 70 years or so, a big, deeply tanned man with hands the size of baseball gloves has been catching fish, shooting ducks, and selling gas and bait to anyone who can find his end-of-the-road marina. Today Frank "Blackie" Campo's ramshackle place hangs off the end of new Shell Beach. The old Shell Beach, where Campo was born in 1918, sits a quarter mile away, five feet beneath the rippling waves. Once home to some 50 families and a naval air station during World War II, the little village is now "ga'an pecan," as Campo says in the local patois. Gone forever.

Life in old Shell Beach had always been a tenuous existence. Hurricanes twice razed the community, sending houses floating through the marsh. But it wasn't until the Corps of Engineers dredged a 500-foot-wide (150-meter-wide) ship channel nearby in 1968 that its fate was sealed. The Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, known as "Mr. Go," was supposed to provide a shortcut for freighters bound for New Orleans, but it never caught on. Maybe two ships use the channel on a given day, but wakes from even those few vessels have carved the shoreline a half mile wide in places, consuming old Shell Beach.

Campo settles into a worn recliner, his pale blue eyes the color of a late autumn sky. Our conversation turns from Mr. Go to the bigger issue affecting the entire coast. "What really screwed up the marsh is when they put the levees on the river," Campo says, over the noise of a groaning air-conditioner. "They should take the levees out and let the water run; that's what built the land. But we know they not going to let the river run again, so there's no solution."

Denise Reed, however, proposes doing just that—letting the river run. A coastal geomorphologist at the University of New Orleans, Reed is convinced that breaching the levees with a series of gated spillways would pump new life into the dying marshes. Only three such diversions currently operate in the state. I catch up with Reed at the most controversial of the lot—a 26-million-dollar culvert just south of New Orleans named Caernarvon.

"Caernarvon is a prototype, a demonstration of a technique," says Reed as we motor down a muddy canal in a state boat. The diversion isn't filling the marsh with sediments on a grand scale, she says. But the effect of the added river water—loaded as it is with fertilizer from farm runoff—is plain to see. "It turns wetlands hanging on by the fingernails into something quite lush," says Reed.

To prove her point, she points to banks crowded with slender willows, rafts of lily pads, and a wide shallow pond that is no longer land, no longer liquid. More like chocolate pudding. But impressive as the recovering marsh is, its scale seems dwarfed by the size of the problem. "Restoration is not trying to make the coast look like a map of 1956," explains Reed. "That's not even possible. The goal is to restore healthy natural processes, then live with what you get."

Even that will be hard to do. Caernarvon, for instance, became a political land mine when releases of fresh water timed to mimic spring floods wiped out the beds of nearby oyster farmers. The oystermen sued, and last year a sympathetic judge awarded them a staggering 1.3 billion dollars. The case threw a major speed bump into restoration efforts.

Other restoration methods—such as rebuilding marshes with dredge spoil and salt-tolerant plants or trying to stabilize a shoreline that's eroding 30 feet (10 meters) a year—have had limited success. Despite the challenges, the thought of doing nothing is hard for most southern Louisianans to swallow. Computer models that project land loss for the next 50 years show the coast and interior marsh dissolving as if splattered with acid, leaving only skeletal remnants. Outlying towns such as Shell Beach, Venice, Grand Isle, and Cocodrie vanish under a sea of blue pixels.

Those who believe diversions are the key to saving Louisiana's coast often point to the granddaddy of them all: the Atchafalaya River. The major distributary of the Mississippi River, the Atchafalaya, if left alone, would soon be the Mississippi River, capturing most of its flow. But to prevent salt water from creeping farther up the Mississippi and spoiling the water supply of nearby towns and industries, the Corps of Engineers allows only a third of the Mississippi's water to flow down the Atchafalaya. Still, that water and sediment have produced the healthiest wetlands in Louisiana. The Atchafalaya Delta is one of the few places in the state that's actually gaining ground instead of losing it. And if you want to see the delta, you need to go crabbing with Peanut Michel.

"Peanut," it turns out, is a bit of a misnomer. At six foot six and 340 pounds, the 35-year-old commercial fisherman from Morgan City wouldn't look out of place on the offensive line of the New Orleans Saints. We launch his aluminum skiff in the predawn light, and soon we're skimming down the broad, café au lait river toward the newest land in Louisiana. Dense thickets of needlegrass, flag grass, cut grass, and a big-leafed plant Michel calls elephant ear crowd the banks, followed closely by bushy wax myrtles and shaggy willows.

Michel finds his string of crab pots a few miles out in the broad expanse of Atchafalaya Bay. Even this far from shore the water is barely five feet deep. As the sun ignites into a blowtorch on the horizon, Michel begins a well-oiled ritual: grab the bullet-shaped float, shake the wire cube of its clicking, mottled green inhabitants, bait it with a fish carcass, and toss. It's done in fluid motions as the boat circles lazily in the water.

But it's a bad day for crabbing. The wind and water are hot, and only a few crabs dribble in. And yet Michel is happy. Deliriously happy. Because this is what he wants to do. "They call 'em watermen up in Maryland," he says with a slight Cajun accent. "They call us lunatics here. You got to be crazy to be in this business."

Despite Michel's poor haul, Louisiana's wetlands are still a prolific seafood factory, sustaining a commercial fishery that most years lands more than 300 million dollars' worth of finfish, shrimp, oysters, crabs, and other delicacies. How long the stressed marshes can maintain that production is anybody's guess. In the meantime, Michel keeps at it. "My grandfather always told me, Don't live to be rich, live to be happy," he says. And so he does.

After a few hours Michel calls it a day, and we head through the braided delta, where navigation markers that once stood at the edge of the boat channel now peek out of the brush 20 feet (six meters) from shore. At every turn we flush mottled ducks, ibis, and great blue herons. Michel, who works as a hunting guide during duck season, cracks an enormous grin at the sight. "When the ducks come down in the winter," he says, "they'll cover the sun."

To folks like Peanut Michel, the birds, the fish, and the rich coastal culture are reason enough to save Louisiana's shore, whatever the cost. But there is another reason, one readily grasped by every American whose way of life is tethered not to a dock, but to a gas pump: These wetlands protect one of the most extensive petroleum infrastructures in the nation.

The state's first oil well was punched in south Louisiana in 1901, and the world's first offshore rig went into operation in the Gulf of Mexico in 1947. During the boom years in the early 1970s, fully half of the state's budget was derived from petroleum revenues. Though much of the production has moved into deeper waters, oil and gas wells remain a fixture of the coast, as ubiquitous as shrimp boats and brown pelicans.

The deep offshore wells now account for nearly a third of all domestic oil production, while Louisiana's Offshore Oil Port, a series of platforms anchored 18 miles (29 kilometers) offshore, unloads a nonstop line of supertankers that deliver up to 15 percent of the nation's foreign oil. Most of that black gold comes ashore via a maze of pipelines buried in the Louisiana muck. Numerous refineries, the nation's largest natural gas pipeline hub, even the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are all protected from hurricanes and storm surge by Louisiana's vanishing marsh.

You can smell the petrodollars burning at Port Fourchon, the offshore oil industry's sprawling home port on the central Louisiana coast. Brawny helicopters shuttle 6,000 workers to the rigs from here each week, while hundreds of supply boats deliver everything from toilet paper to drinking water to drilling lube. A thousand trucks a day keep the port humming around the clock, yet Louisiana 1, the two-lane highway that connects it to the world, seems to flood every other high tide. During storms the port becomes an island, which is why port officials like Davie Breaux are clamoring for the state to build a 17-mile-long (27-kilometer-long) elevated highway to the port. It's also why Breaux thinks spending 14 billion dollars to save the coast would be a bargain.

"We'll go to war and spend billions of dollars to protect oil and gas interests overseas,"
Breaux says as he drives his truck past platform anchors the size of two-story houses. "But here at home?" He shrugs. "Where else you gonna drill? Not California. Not Florida. Not in ANWR. In Louisiana. I'm third generation in the oil field. We're not afraid of the industry. We just want the infrastructure to handle it."

The oil industry has been good to Louisiana, providing low taxes and high-paying jobs. But such largesse hasn't come without a cost, largely exacted from coastal wetlands. The most startling impact has only recently come to light—the effect of oil and gas withdrawal on subsidence rates. For decades geologists believed that the petroleum deposits were too deep and the geology of the coast too complex for drilling to have any impact on the surface. But two years ago former petroleum geologist Bob
Morton, now with the U.S. Geological Survey, noticed that the highest rates of wetland loss occurred during or just after the period of peak oil and gas production in the 1970s and early 1980s. After much study, Morton concluded that the removal of millions of barrels of oil, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, and tens of millions of barrels of saline formation water lying with the petroleum deposits caused a drop in subsurface pressure—a theory known as regional depressurization. That led nearby underground faults to slip and the land above them to slump.

"When you stick a straw in a soda and suck on it, everything goes down," Morton explains. "That's very simplified, but you get the idea." The phenomenon isn't new: It was first documented in Texas in 1926 and has been reported in other oil-producing areas such as the North Sea and Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. Morton won't speculate on what percentage of wetland loss can be pinned on the oil industry. "What I can tell you is that much of the loss between Bayou Lafourche and Bayou Terrebonne was caused by induced subsidence from oil and gas withdrawal. The wetlands are still there, they're just underwater." The area Morton refers to, part of the Barataria-Terrebonne estuary, has one of the highest rates of wetland loss in the state.

The oil industry and its consultants dispute Morton's theory, but they've been unable to disprove it. The implication for restoration is profound. If production continues to taper off in coastal wetlands, Morton expects subsidence to return to its natural geologic rate, making restoration feasible in places. Currently, however, the high price of natural gas has oil companies swarming over the marshes looking for deep gas reservoirs. If such fields are tapped, Morton expects regional depressurization to continue. The upshot for the coast, he explains, is that the state will have to focus whatever restoration dollars it can muster on areas that can be saved, not waste them on places that are going to sink no matter what.

A few days after talking with Morton, I'm sitting on the levee in the French Quarter, enjoying the deep-fried powdery sweetness of a beignet from the Café du Monde. Joggers lumber by in the torpid heat, while tugs wrestle their barges up and down the big brown river. For all its enticing quirkiness, for all its licentious pleasures, for all its geologic challenges, New Orleans has been luckier than the wetlands that lined its pockets and stocked its renowned tables. The question is how long Lady Luck will shine. It brings back something Joe Suhayda, the LSU engineer, had said during our lunch by Lake Pontchartrain.

"When you look at the broadest perspective, short-term advantages can be gained by exploiting the environment. But in the long term you're going to pay for it. Just like you can spend three days drinking in New Orleans and it'll be fun. But sooner or later you're going to pay."

I finish my beignet and stroll down the levee, succumbing to the hazy, lazy feel of the city that care forgot, but that nature will not.

[jonnygemini]

Katrina: Infectious disease research in and around NOLA
BB pal Russ Kick says,

No one is covering this angle of the Katrina disaster yet: Infectious Disease Research in and Around New Orleans.

At the very least, there are two Level-3 biolabs in New Orleans and a cluster of three in nearby Covington. They have been working with anthrax, mousepox, HIV, plague, etc. There are surely other labs in the city.

[jonnygemini]

www.laweekly.com/ink/05/42/deadline-finke.php

Deadline Hollywood
They Shoot News Anchors, Don’t They?
Media moguls, not looters, killed Katrina’s truth tellers
by NIKKI FINKE


For the first 120 hours after Hurricane Katrina, TV journalists were let off their leashes by their mogul owners, the result of a rare conjoining of flawless timing (summer’s biggest vacation week) and foulest tragedy (America’s worst natural disaster).

No one could have anticipated that, suddenly, TV’s two prettiest-boy anchors would be boldly and tearfully (CNN’s Anderson Cooper and FNC’s Shep Smith, to their immense credit) relating horror whenever and wherever they found it, no matter if the fault lay with Mother Nature or President Dubya. The impact was felt immediately. The depth of their reporting, along with that of other TV newscasters who were similarly unashamed to show their outrage, bested almost anything written by the most talented and experienced newspaper reporters. And the rawness of that televised despair spurred a still-new generation of Internet blogs and Web magazines to abandon their potty-mouthed snarking for long enough to start snarling at the proliferation of government lies and lying liars who tell them. (Wonkette, Gawker, Boing Boing, Sploid, and TVNewser all deserve immense kudos. But it was Slate’s Jack Shafer, the best media critic in the business, who first asked why there was no mention of race or class in TV’s Katrina coverage, prompting CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to plow new ground with unprecedented candor: “You see these poor individuals... almost all of them are so poor, and so black...”)

All of a sudden, broadcasters, and the Web media who shadow them, narrated disturbing images of the poor, the minority, the aged, the sick and the dead, and discussed complex issues like poverty, race, class, infirmity and ecology, that never make it on the air — in this Swift Boat/gay marriage/Michael Jackson media-sideshow era.

So began a perfect storm of controversy.

Contrary to the scripture so often quoted in these areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, the TV newscasters knew the truth, but the truth did not set them free. And the truth telling soon turned to backslapping. Lost amid all the self-congratulation by broadcasters once the crisis point had been passed was the fact that TV journalists went back to business-as-usual by the weekend. Their choke chains had been yanked by no-longer-inattentive parent-company bosses who, fearful of any FCC regulatory fallout from fingering Dubya for the FEMA fuckups, decided yet again to sacrifice community need for corporate greed.

Now comes the real test of pathos vs. profit: whether the TV newscasters will spend the fresh reservoir of truth and trust earned with the public to challenge FEMA’s attempt to perpetrate a campaign of mass deception. That’s the only way to describe what Reuters says is the agency’s attempt to block the news media from photographing the dead — officials have readied 25,000 body bags — as they are recovered from flooded New Orleans. Yet again, as it did with the coffins coming home from the Iraqi War and its violent aftermath, the Bush administration wants to hide from the public the lethal consequences of its flawed programs and policies.

Slate’s Shafer termed what happened during Katrina as “The Rebellion of the Talking Heads.” Now, they must rattle Bush’s cage but also battle their own bosses, who no doubt will seek to comply with every Dubya directive no matter how wrong and reprehensible. The TV newscasters have access to the microphones, and the moguls have licensed the airwaves. Why can’t Katrina’s dead have at least the last word, even if it’s just the sight of a body bag or coffin?

Already, Katrina’s wake is being sanitized and spun into a web of deceit by the Bush administration and disseminated with the help of the Big Media boy’s club (see the New York Times’ story on how Karl Rove spent the weekend conjuring up ways to shift blame). Only CNN appears not to have thoroughly read the proverbial memo — at least not yet.


So, as early as Saturday, certainly by Sunday, inevitably by Monday, and no later than Tuesday, the images and issues were heavily weighted once again to the powerbrokers and the predictable. The angry black guys were gone and the lying white guys were back hogging all the TV airtime. So many Congressional Republicans lined up on air to denounce the “blame-Bush game” — all the while decrying the Louisiana Democrats-in-charge — that it could have been conga night at the Chevy Chase Country Club.

And the attitudes of some TV personalities did a dramatic 180.

At MSNBC, right-winger Joe Scarborough had exorcised his newfound empathy and once again embraced the dark side of his personality. For a few days, he’d looked genuinely disgusted by the death and destruction that went unrelieved around him in Biloxi, even daring to demand answers from Bush on down. But Scarborough was back to his left-baiting self within short order.

Inside FNC’s studio, conservative crank Sean Hannity had been rendered somewhat speechless by the tragedy. Yet by Friday, he was back in full voice, barking at Geraldo Rivera (who was days late arriving in New Orleans to start scooping up starving babies) and Shep Smith (who was still staking out that I-10 bridge and sympathizing with its thousands of refugees) to keep “perspective.” The Mississippi-bred Smith boomed back in his baritone, “This is perspective!”

FNC’s Bill O’Reilly, who spent last month verbally abusing the grieving mother of a dead Iraqi war soldier, then whiled away the early days of Katrina’s aftermath giving lip to New Orleans’ looters and shooters and then basically blamed the hurricane’s poorest victims for expecting any government help at all. “First, the huge, bureaucratic government will never be able to protect you. If you rely on government for anything, anything, you’re going to be disappointed, no matter who the president is,” he scolded. And, “If you don’t get educated, if you don’t develop a skill, and force yourself to work hard, you’ll most likely be poor. And sooner or later, you’ll be standing on a symbolic rooftop waiting for help.

“Chances are that help will not be quick in coming.”

By the weekend, FNC downplayed the dismal and played up the hopeful, alternating its “things are going great” mantra with laundry lists of arriving military hardware, division transfers and other boots-on-the-ground matters.

Contrast that with CNN, not just the only network to report nearly 24/7 while FNC and MSNBC went into snooze mode with recycled shows, but also the only network, both on air and on its Web site, to compare and contrast the wildly contradictory statements by federal, state and local officials, sometimes within hours, but often within minutes of each other. The candor paid off strategically for CNN, which regained some of the ratings it had lost to FNC.

It was CNN, for instance, that posted the first full transcript of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s profanity- and passion-filled Sept. 2 interview on local radio. It was also CNN that exposed the gruesome nature of conditions at the Superdome, the Convention Center, and the hospital corridors.

A heart-wrenching online blog was kept by CNN staffers, while on air, Cooper, Soledad O’Brien, and Tom Foreman all held officials’ feet to the fire, from Bush on down. Cooper’s best moment came when, fed up with Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu’s blatant brownnosing of fellow officials, he fired back that it was hard to hear politicians thanking each other when rats were gnawing dead bodies in the streets. (Nominating Cooper for “Secretary of Take No Shit,” Wonkette.com congratulated: “We were sort of waiting for an anchor to go native, and Cooper does it in the best possible way.”)

CNN’s resident curmudgeon, Jack Cafferty, expectedly opined that he’d never seen anything as “bungled” as the Katrina aid operation. Even CNN’s eye-candy anchors went from saccharine to sarcastic in the bat of an eyelash.

Daryn Kagan described as “odd” that “the president [was] finally making it to the Gulf Coast after five days and then spending a big chunk of time — when he could be out seeing the damage — getting a briefing that, frankly, he could have gotten back at the White House.” Paula Zahn chided FEMA jackass Mike Brown (formerly head of the Arabian Horse Association): “Sir, you’re not telling me you just learned that the folks at the Convention Center didn’t have food and water until today, are you?”

By comparison, CNN’s Headline News talk star Nancy Grace looked like an insensitive shrew when, on Monday night, she cut off CNN correspondent Deborah Feyerick in the middle of her description of one nursing home that evacuated 35 people, and left 35 others to drown in their beds. “Oh,” was Grace’s only response, before stopping to play a video clip of the mayor. Of course, a day later, The New York Times fleshed out this story.

But the fix still wasn’t in at CNN as late as Tuesday night, when political correspondent Ed Henry was given expanded air time to report on that closed-door session between House members and Cabinet secretaries in charge of directing Katrina relief. Henry countered claims by House Majority Leader Tom Delay that local officials and not the feds were to blame, with the juicy nugget that a Republican congressman had stood up in that secret confab and screeched, “All of you deserve failing grades. The response was a disaster.”

In contrast to CNN, NBC deserves an “F” for its Katrina about-face.

It wasn’t enough that the network had the audacity to edit its news transcripts so its bosses wouldn’t look bad. It wasn’t enough that the network hardly let NBC photojournalist Tony Zumbado show any grisly footage. It wasn’t just that the network edited out Kanye West’s “Bush doesn't care about blacks” rant (Mike Myers’ deer-caught-in-headlights expression was priceless) for the West Coast feed of its televised fund-raiser. It wasn’t just that inexplicable hire Rita Cosby looked ridiculous reporting from Aruba instead of New Orleans for the first few days of Katrina. It wasn’t just that MSNBC’s executive producer, Rick Kaplan, was put in charge of the network’s Katrina fund-raiser at the height of the crisis. It wasn’t just that Meet the Press host Tim Russert cut off Jefferson Parrish’s Andre Broussard during one of TV’s most moving and memorable outpourings of emotion. It wasn’t just that Russert, to fill up airtime, let Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour praise Bush’s response ad nauseum without once reading back his sharp criticism of the feds days earlier.

It wasn’t just that Hardball’s hardbrained Chris Matthews chided viewers and guests alike not to talk about who’s to blame. (Unless you think it’s Blanco or Nagin. Interesting how Barbour’s state was also dehydrated and starving, but nobody on TV news blamed him, since he just happens to be a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.) It wasn’t just that Don Imus decried Dubya’s “disgusting performance” at the start of his MSNBC TV show (simulcast on the Viacom/CBS-owned Infinity radio network) and then turned over just 24 hours later, directing blame at Mayor Nagin.

None of this is surprising since MSNBC is owned by NBC, which in turn is owned by General Electric, which let its network and cable news cheerlead the run-up to the Iraqi War without ever bothering to tell viewers it had billions in contracts pending.

If the Big Media boys increasingly look like they’re doing everything possible to prop W’s presidency, they are. GE’s No. 1 and No. 2, Jeffrey Immelt and Bob Wright, are avowed Republicans, as are Viacom’s Sumner Redstone (CBS), Time-Warner’s Dick Parsons (CNN) and News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch (FNC).

Supporting the Bush administration can be good for corporate coffers, in the form of government contracts, billion-dollar tax breaks and getting the feds to provide special security favors. (For more on this, see my previous story, “When Might Turns Right: Golly GE, Why Big Media Is Pro-Bush, www.laweekly.com/ink/04/45/deadline-finke.php)

Meanwhile, the situation is about to get worse. Already, incoming Disney CEO Bob Iger has tried repeatedly to dismantle Nightline. And CBS chairman Les Moonves wants to reinvent TV news to be more like entertainment shows — as if it’s not that way already — hosted by even prettier people. Surely they can’t be counted on to go up against the Bush administration on the body-bagging issue. Forget Murdoch and Immelt, too. And Parsons is iffy at best.

Unless the newscasters themselves keep rebelling and keep trying to show the truth, it won’t be long before TV news will be taken out in a coffin, too.

[UniverseSeven]

Great article on the news coverage.

Keep Digging!

[jonnygemini]

[jonnygemini]

www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/topstory/3342643

Tally of evacuees in Houston shelters drops dramatically
By BECKY BOWMAN and SALATHEIA BRYANT
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

The number of Katrina evacuees counted at Houston's largest shelters is dropping dramatically as people leave for new accommodations, new jobs and new lives.

According to the latest headcount, considered the most reliable to date, 8,066 hurricane victims are still stranded at the three Reliant Park shelters and the downtown George R. Brown Convention Center, down from an estimate of 25,400 just Tuesday. It's evident at a glance that evacuees have more breathing room than they did last weekend, but it's hard to track how many people are simply switching shelters, moving in with relatives or actually finding more permanent housing. In fact, it's hard to arrive at any accurate numbers at all.

After Reliant Park imposed a curfew for the first time last night, authorities were able to do their most accurate headcount so far. But during the day, no one stands guard at the gates to ask evacuees whether they're going out for groceries or leaving for good, so even the latest numbers are fluid. People are free to pack up and go without notifying anyone, and they do just that.

"I wouldn't say there was a large exodus in the last 24 hours," said Coast Guard Lt. Joe Leonard, who's in charge of Houston's megashelters.

Although no one's fighting over cots anymore, there are still plenty of people in need of help. This morning's tally of evacuees came to 2,930 in the Astrodome, down from 16,000 on Tuesday; 1,800 in the Reliant Arena, down from 4,500; 2,000 in Reliant Center, down from 2,400; and 1,336 in the George R. Brown Convention Center, down from 2,500.

Gregory Smith of the Red Cross warned that the constantly changing numbers should be regarded as "a living thing."

"People should be prepared to be flexible with these shelter figures," he said.

The opportunities to leave are growing by the day.

Continental Airlines, for instance, has set up stations at each of the shelters, and Houston's largest airline is offering free tickets to any shelter resident seeking to relocate to one of 48 states. Meanwhile, friends and relatives are arriving to whisk evacuees away, empty rent houses and government-subsidized apartments are becoming available, and today's decision by the federal government to pass out $2,000 debit cards will pay for gasoline or bus tickets that were out of reach before.

Wanda Payton, 44, said she was expecting to leave tomorrow for a three-bedroom house offered by a Channelview resident and she sees a lot of people making similar plans.

"It has died down. There are getting people out," she said.

But for some of those who've arrived from New Orleans, the prospect of venturing out into Houston is intimidating.

Eighteen-year-old Marcus Poole, a community college student who worked at a rental car agency back home in Louisiana, is finding that looking for a job is no easy task in a city so sprawling. Houston's even bigger than he remembers it as a child visiting AstroWorld.

"I feel like I'm in another country, being in a city so big," he said.

Many of those who choose to stay are still trying to connect with loved ones. Still sitting on her cot with some of her family today, Alisha Bush, 33, is anxious to reach her 15-year-old daughter, who was taken to shelter in Arkansas. Bush thinks she has the best chance of a reunion if she stays put.

She has been in the Astrodome since last Wednesday, when the overcrowded floor forced people to sleep in the stands.

"The lines are getting shorter and shorter," Bush said. "It is clearing out."

With so many people looking for jobs and permanent housing, plans to move as many as 4,000 evacuees to cruise ships in Galveston have been put on hold. Some of those still holed up in Houston's giant inner-Loop shelters are fed up with moving, and by today only 100 people had expressed interested on moving to a ship.

"I don't want to be on no water," said James Givens, 48, a longshoreman who is trying to find a place other than the Astrodome to live. "I've seen enough water to last me a long time."

When she heard about the offer to live on a cruise ship, Bobbie Williams, 44, rose from her cot, shaking her head emphatically.

"No, no, no, no more water," she said. "I don't want to see no more water. I've been there, done that. Not right now."

Chronicle reporters Matt Stiles, Armando Villafranca, Jennifer Radcliffe, Monica Guzmán and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

[jonnygemini]

WSJ: White rich elude Orleans chaos, don´t want poor blacks back
09/08/2005 @ 1:30 am

The Wall Street Journal front-page headline reads, "Old-Line Families / Escape Worst of Flood / And Plot the Future / Mr. O´Dwyer, at His Mansion, / Enjoys Highball With Ice; / Meeting With the Mayor."

That is, however, just the beginning. According to the (paid-restricted) Journal, New Orleans´ wealthy white neighborhoods emerged very much intact, while black neighborhoods are swimming in toxic sludge. The Journal piece, by Christopher Cooper, reads as something torn from the pages of Fitzgerald´s iconic portrait of the roaring twenties--The Great Gatsby.

"NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week," Cooper writes, "Ashton O´Dwyer stepped out of his home on this city´s grandest street and made a beeline for his neighbor´s pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in his home."

He continues: "The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas, streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly intact and powered by generators. Yesterday, officials reiterated that all residents must leave New Orleans, but it´s still unclear how far they will go to enforce the order."

"The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city´s Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city´s rich -- and a terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O´Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By yesterday, the city water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor´s pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline."

How do they want the city rebuilt?

"The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won´t simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.
"The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I´m not just speaking for myself here. The way we´ve been living is not going to happen again, or we´re out."

Not every white business leader agrees, Cooper notes.

"Some black leaders and their allies in New Orleans fear that it boils down to preventing large numbers of blacks from returning to the city and eliminating the African-American voting majority. Rep. William Jefferson, a sharecropper´s son who was educated at Harvard and is currently serving his eighth term in Congress, says, "This is an example of poor people forced to make choices because they don´t have the money to do otherwise," Mr. Jefferson says.

rawstory.com/news/2005/WSJ_White_rich_escape_New_Orleans_chaos_dont_want_blacks_poor__0908.html

[jonnygemini]

BRITISH PETROLEUM

........Kent's choice

.......

BP oil rigs back in business after hurricane [THAT WAS FAST!]

The Atlantis oil field is the third largest oil field in the Gulf of Mexico, estimated at about 600 million barrels. The British oil company BP owns the field, which is expected to produce about 200,000 barrels a day beginning in late 2006. The oil field was discovered in 1998 by the Ocean America semi-submersible, mobile drilling rig operating in a water depth of 1870 meters. 20 oil rigs missing in Gulf of Mexico No Gas in the SouthEast US Forum

9/3/2005 8:30:43 AM Pacific Standard Time

second battle of new orleans

#1 contributer to evacuating NO=BP

#1 advertiser pro global warming=BP

NO to be mega LNG terminal>>britannia to rule waves once again

north sea oil is about shot to hell

9/3/2005 5:56:09 PM Pacific Standard Time

British Petroleum Confirmed Largest Ever Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Field: BP announced that offshore areas leased by MMS had confirmed the largest oil and gas discovery ever in the Gulf of Mexico. Virtually all of Interior's work on these leases occurred in the Reagan-Bush Administration. The one-billion barrel field is located 125 miles southwest of New Orleans in 6,000 feet of water. Initial production from the field is expected by 2005 with production of 250,000 barrels of oil per day at peak rate. BP also announced another major discovery nearby that could rank in the top five discoveries ever in the Gulf of Mexico.

China Awards LNG Project to British Petroleum Company British Petroleum in Indonesia: The Tangguh Project British Petroleum and Oil Politics in Colombia

New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize-why the city Must Return www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/messages.cfm/forumid:5/threadid:18556

9/3/2005 2:26:42 PM Pacific Standard Time

geopolitics awaits its einstein. you have a squint on it that nobody else does. hastert is the official mouthpiece for TPTB. thats ALL he is. NO public utterance by him is spontaneous. known him well since 1966- ultimate loyal party member. the plan is to off NO. bourban st will be a mini disneyland. this was originally the idea of klaus barbie/william casey/beurt ser vass
9/4/2005 6:55:54 AM Pacific Standard Time


No Brit can understand , at first, what a macro-NO of murder and
corruption the USG is.

CIA is whipping boy for FEMAs engorgement on 1980s protected cocaine
biz. originated by william casey, beurt servass and klaus barbie in 1976
and using the US Army protected secure waterways (mississippi and
tributaries ESPECIALLY including illinois river) to ship cocaine UP and
"non-sporting firearms" and anhydrous ether DOWN.

FEMA was originated by pres carter with best of intentions.

it was quickly taken over by NSC which is a wholly owned subsidiary of
chevron-texaco.

FEMA sees its function as eliminating "trash populations"

Condi doesnt realize shes black.

Most loyal (to US) CIA officers resigned in disgust in 1980s, including
the highest ranking african-american who was and is a close personal
friend of mine.


PS both hyde and hastert got to where they are by being super-reliable
protectors of cocaine import agency {formerly CIA} i have known hyde
since he was a democrat. hes scum. i have known hastert since 1966.
hes less than scum. hes a wind-up monster that jim schirott and pat
durante built in their basement monster factory.
consider this and every other statement i have ever made as being sworn
under penalty of perjury- it is. they are.

the whole purpose of the mississippi river casinoes is to make huge sums
of money untraceable ; read "financial laundromat" thats the WHOLE,
ENTIRE purpose.

community-4.webtv.net/kennnthomas/doc1/page5.html
busses were corralled as prelude to evac west. causeway was not ordeed converted to one way traffic.

this is per page one of NO emergency plan

NO has LOTS of busses- white ones are RTA

order stopped after step one= smoking gun

mayor and gov have unlimited authority to order mandatory evac. either separaely or together.

who prevented?

John Browne, group chief executive, The British Petroleum Co. As head of one of the world's largest corporations, John Browne, group chief executive of the British Petroleum Company, has become a pioneer in defining the social responsibilities of private industry and championing the need for corporations to protect the environment.

Browne joined BP in 1966 as a university apprentice. He holds a degree in physics from Cambridge University and a master of science degree from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and an honorary fellow of St. John's College Cambridge.

Between 1969 and 1983, Browne held a variety of exploration and production posts in Anchorage, New York, San Francisco, London and in Canada. In 1984, he became group treasurer and chief executive of BP Finance International and, in 1986, executive vice president and chief financial officer of the Standard Oil Company. Following the BP/Standard merger in 1987, Brown was appointed chief executive officer of Standard Oil Production Company, in addition to his position as executive vice president and chief financial officer of BP America.

In 1989, Browne was made managing director and chief executive officer of BP Exploration based in London. In 1991 he was appointed to the board of the British Petroleum Company as managing director. Browne became group chief executive of the company on July 1, 1995. Brown is a non-executive director of SmithKline Beecham and the Intel Corporation and a member of the supervisory board of Daimler-Benz, a trustee of the British Museum and a member of the governing body of the London Business School. He is also emeritus chairman of the advisory board of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a trustee of the Conference Board, a vice president and member of the board of the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum and a board member of SAIS.

nothing in there not already provenin case 94CH0664 (star chamber)

star chamber courts supposedly dont exist in US (hahahaha)

they have a big blue star that they stamp on their papers

chicago tribune legal dept on case 0664 to judge: "we dont trust star chamber courts"

the name comes from the secret court that sentenced william wallace to be hanged, castrated, drawn and quartered.....the ceiling was painted as night sky with stars.

freedom

kenneth b thomas

[jonnygemini]

9/6/2005 5:18:26 PM Pacific Standard Time

i found out that the ion streaks you mentioned are in fact a u.s. anti hurricane gizmo manufactured by raytheon. they aim to decohere self sustaining eyewall reducing cat- 5 to cat- 4 for a few minutes.

they dont think it worked but aren't sure.

thats all i will ever be able to find out for sure other than a couple details i decided on my own to shut up about

i thought they were windshield streaks

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEMA Deliberately Sabotaging Hurricane Relief Efforts

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

9/7/2005 3:24:33 PM Pacific Standard Time

scalar weapons cannot affect your thinking if you stay just slightly dehydrated. that increases the capacitance of the membranes and arachnoid net surrounding the brain and moves you out of critical resonance.

this is the only counter measure that has ever been found to work in real-world situations.

encryptions are put on scalar to induce compulsive water drinking but a little will power overcomes these- watchbehavior of those you know well. you will be amazed.

groups.yahoo.com/group/crimgov/message/40337

groups.yahoo.com/group/crimgov/message/40357

groups.yahoo.com/group/cia-drugs/message/31179

[jonnygemini]

Re: The real Future of New Orleans....read if you dare !!!

** All this is in the mainstream news, this is not Conspiracy theories, it´s is out in the open.


Ohh, you got that right buddy.

Thing is, everyone is so fuckin´ numb -- all we can do is keep talkin´ about it. All this is gonna be water under the bridge for them; in a week, maybe two, at most.

Christ, we don´t need a long memory - like what was grampa´s life about. Shit, we only have to remember a few days ago, and that´s going down the memory hole so fast, it´s bloody scary.

You can see it happening on any forum or any newsgroup, people are going back to business as usual. Shoot, man, we will have hell to pay for our short term memory.