CHIMP admits response time was unacceptable.

[frets5150]

In a special report at 900 am CHIMP admits response time was unacceptable. But says he will be on top of the situation:rolleyes:

FUCKING CUNT!!!

[Nickdfresh]

How many Hurricane KATRINA threads are we going to make? I think we already have a thread on this being BUSH's fault?

http://www.rotharmy.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26571

[frets5150]

I Don't remember making a statement in this thread about this being CHIMPS fault:rolleyes:

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by frets5150
I Don't remember making a statement in this thread about this being CHIMPS fault:rolleyes:

Okay, this is called a post, not a thread. STEVE SAVICKI started the thread I linked, so I apologize, but it covers this topic, and since we have about eight redundant threads in this forum, I doubt we need one more. Not trying to be a prick, but...

[frets5150]

NP

[FORD]

Nick's right. Obviously this gulf coast clusterfuck is THE event of the week, but it doesn't need to be every thread on the front page.

I'll leave this one open, since Chimpy admitting to something is an event within itself, but please everyone, let's use the existing threads.

[ELVIS]

Event of the week ???

This is the event of a generation, of american history, of all of our lifetimes !!

[FORD]

Originally posted by ELVIS
Event of the week ???

This is the event of a generation, of american history, of all of our lifetimes !!

True. Didn't intend to minimize it by any means.

Meanwhile, the Dumbass apparently just said on CNN that "we will rebuild Trent Lott's house".

Nice to know that with thousands of people dying and homeless, our Commander in Thief is so concerned about one millionaire racist's mansion.

[ELVIS]

Hahahaha...

[frets5150]

Ok i will just post everything about NewOrleans here I just figured i could start a new thread since it was about CHIMPS Special Report




National Guardsmen Pour Into New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS (Sept. 2) - Four days after Hurricane Katrina struck, the National Guard arrived in force Friday with food, water and weapons, churning through the floodwaters in a vast truck convoy with orders to retake the streets and bring relief to the suffering.

"The cavalry is and will continue to arrive," said one general.

Rolling through muddy water up to their axles, the trucks began arriving at the New Orleans Convention Center, where 15,000 to 20,000 hungry and desperate refugees had taken shelter -- many of them seething with anger so intense that the place appeared ready to erupt in violence at any moment.

The open-topped trucks carried huge boxes of relief supplies. Soldiers sat in the backs of some of the trucks, their rifles pointing skyward.

The military convoy was followed by dozens of air-conditioned tour buses, which broke off and went to the Louisiana Superdome, where thousands of storm refugees were massed outside after suffering through the heat, the filth and the overpowering stench inside the stadium.

The soldiers' arrival-in-force came amid blistering criticism from the mayor and others who said the federal government had bungled the relief effort and let people die in the streets for lack of food, water or medicine.

On Thursday, at the Convention Center, corpses lay abandoned outside the building, and many storm refugees complained bitterly that they had been forsaken by the government. And at the Superdome, fights and fires broke out and storm victims battled for seats on the buses taking them to the Houston Astrodome.

"The people of our city are holding on by a thread," Mayor Ray Nagin warned in a statement to CNN. "Time has run out. Can we survive another night? And who can we depend on? Only God knows."

In Washington, President Bush admitted "the results are not acceptable" and pledged to bolster the relief efforts. He visited the stricken Gulf Coast, and pledged in Mobile, Ala.: "What is not working right, we're going to make it right."

Lt. Gen. Steven Blum of the National Guard said 7,000 National Guardsmen arriving in Louisiana on Friday would be dedicated to restoring order in New Orleans. He said half of them had just returned from assignments overseas and are "highly proficient in the use of lethal force." He pledged to "put down" the violence "in a quick and efficient manner."

"But they are coming here to save Louisiana citizens. The only thing we are attacking is the effects of this hurricane," he said. Blum said that a huge airlift of supplies was landing Friday and that it signaled "the cavalry is and will continue to arrive."

As he left the White House for his visit to the devastated area, Bush said 600 newly arrived military police officers would be sent to the convention center to secure the site so that food and medicine could get there.

Earlier Friday, an explosion at a warehouse rocked a wide area of New Orleans before daybreak and jolted residents awake, lighting up the sky and sending a pillar of acrid gray smoke over a ruined city awash in perhaps thousands of corpses, under siege from looters, and seething with anger and resentment.

A second large fire erupted downtown in an old retail building in a dry section of Canal Street.

There were no immediate reports of injuries. But the fires deepened the sense of total collapse in the city since Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore Monday morning.

The explosion took place along the Mississippi River about 15 blocks from the French Quarter. It was about two miles from both the Louisiana Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center, the two spots where tens of thousands of hungry, desperate and hostile refugees awaited buses to deliver them from their misery. The cause of the blast was under investigation.

City officials have accused the government -- namely the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- of responding sluggishly.

"Get off your asses and let's do something," the mayor told WWL-AM Thursday night in a rambling interview in which he cursed, yelled and ultimately burst into tears. At one point he said: "Excuse my French -- everybody in America -- but I am pissed."

The National Guard arrived in force after law and order all but broke down.

Over the past few days, police officers turned in their badges. Rescuers, law officers and medical-evacuation helicopters were shot at by storm victims. Fistfights and fires broke out at the hot and stinking Superdome as thousands of people waited in misery to board buses for the Houston Astrodome. Corpses lay out in the open in wheelchairs and in bedsheets. The looting continued.

At the Superdome, group of refugees broke through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen in a scramble to get on to the buses. And about 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at the convention center grew ever more hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead, including at least seven bodies scattered outside the building.

Police Chief Eddie Compass said there was such a crush around a squad of 88 officers that they retreated when they went in to check out reports of assaults.

"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times Thursday to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people."

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said FEMA just learned about the situation at the convention center Thursday and quickly scrambled to provide food, water and medical care and remove the corpses.

While floodwaters in New Orleans appeared to stabilize, efforts continued to plug three breaches in the levees that protect this bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city, which is wedged between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River.

Helicopters dropped sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into the mouth of the canal Thursday to close its connection to the lake.

Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, said engineers are developing a plan to create new breaches in the levees so that a combination of pumping and the effects of gravity will drain the water out of the city. Removing the floodwaters will take weeks, he said.

Associated Press reporters Adam Nossiter, Brett Martel, Emily Wagster Pettus, Robert Tanner and Mary Foster contributed to this report.


9/2/2005 12:52

[BigBadBrian]

Death toll in Louisiana could be above 10,000: US Senator

2 hours, 37 minutes ago
Yahoo News


US Senator David Vitter said that the death toll from Hurricane Katrina could top 10,000 in Louisiana alone.

"My guess is that it will start at 10,000, but that is only a guess," Vitter said, adding that he was not basing his remarks on any official death toll or body count.

Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, also called for the immediate deployment of regular US combat troops in New Orleans, saying the build-up of National Guard troops was too slow to quickly restore order.

Such a step would require Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco to formally request the dispatch of federal army soldiers, a highly unusual step.

Blanco said on Thursday that she had asked for 40,000 troops, the majority of which are National Guard units from Louisiana and elsewhere.

Five-thousand National Guard troops are expected to be on the ground in violence-wracked New Orleans by late Friday, military leaders said.

But Vitter said that timeline could be too slow, amid reports that bands of armed men are roaming the streets in the city, which is 80 percent submerged in floods brought in by a storm tide after the hurricane hit on Monday.

Vitter, speaking to reporters at the emergency response center in Baton Rouge, also said he gave the federal government a grade 'F' for its response to the disaster so far.
LINK (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050902/pl_afp/usweatherdeaths&printer=1)

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by ELVIS
Event of the week ???

This is the event of a generation, of american history, of all of our lifetimes !!

That's true isn't it? It's almost like the bomb fell and wiped out a good portion of an American city...:confused:

[Warham]

It'll be remember in much the same way as they still talk about the 1906 San Fransisco earthquake a hundred years later.

[FORD]

Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned.....

http://www.georgebushytail.com/nero/nero2asmall.jpg

...and while New Orleans drowned, Chimperor Bush played guitar.

[Denco28]

Originally posted by FORD
Meanwhile, the Dumbass apparently just said on CNN that "we will rebuild Trent Lott's house".


Shows you where his priorities are, huh?

[blueturk]

That's right. Dudya said he was satisfied with the response time , but not the results. Yet another Rove-scripted pile of bullshit.:rolleyes:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/sns-ap-bush-katrina,1,4602683.story

Bush Tours Katrina Damage Amid Criticism

By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer
Published September 2, 2005, 4:13 PM CDT


MOBILE, Ala. -- Facing sharp criticism, President Bush toured the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast on Friday and vowed the government will restore order in lawless New Orleans. He said the $10.5 billion approved by Congress was just a small downpayment for disaster relief.

"It's worse than imaginable," the president said after walking through a battered neighborhood in Biloxi, Miss. He warned of gasoline supply problems this weekend because of damaged refineries and pipelines.

"I'm not looking forward to this trip," Bush said as he toured Alabama and Mississippi and headed for Louisiana. "It's as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by the worst kind of weapon you can imagine," he said.

Bush began the day at the White House where he expressed unhappiness with the efforts so far to provide food and water to hurricane victims and to stop looting and lawlessness in New Orleans. "The results are not acceptable," said Bush, who rarely admits failure.

Later, he said he was talking about security problems in New Orleans and the fact that food and medicine had not reached thousands of people who need it.

The president's comments came after New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin lashed out at federal officials, telling a local radio station "they don't have a clue what's going on down here."

Even Republicans were criticizing Bush and his administration for the sluggish relief effort. "I think it puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

He urged Bush to name former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as the White House point person for relief efforts. Rep. John Sweeney, R-N.Y., also suggested Giuliani or former Secretary of State Colin Powell or retired Gen. Tommy Franks to take charge of the relief efforts.

In Biloxi, Miss., Bush encountered two weeping women on a street where a house had collapsed and towering trees were stripped of their branches. "My son needs clothes," said Bronwynne Bassier, 23, clutching several trash bags. "I don't have anything."

"I understand that," Bush said. He kissed both women on their heads and walked with his arms around them, telling them they could get help from the Salvation Army. "Hang in there," he said.

Asked later how the richest country on Earth could not meet the needs of its people, Bush said "I am satisfied with the response. I am not satisfied with all the results."

The White House announced Bush had approved federal disaster aid for Texas and Arkansas, which also suffered hurricane damage. Bush urged people to donate money to the Red Cross and said he would sign the $10.5 billion in federal disaster relief later Friday

The president rejected suggestions that the United States could not afford both the war in Iraq and the hurricane cleanup. "We'll do both. We've got plenty of resources to do both," he said. He also said there were plenty of National Guard troops.

While some states have suspended state motor fuel taxes, Treasury Department officials in Washington said there was no discussion about reducing the federal tax on gasoline.

Bush got a warm reception in Mobile from Govs. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Bob Riley of Alabama. Both praised the federal government's response. Still, Barbour said, "We've suffered a grievous blow that we won't recover from for a long while."

Standing with the governors in an airplane hangar, Bush said, "We have a responsibility to clean up this mess."

"What is not working right, we're going to make it right," Bush said. Referring to rampant looting and crime in New Orleans, Bush said, "We are going to restore order in the city of New Orleans."

"The people of this country expect there to be law and order, and we're going to work hard to get it," the president said. "In order to make sure there's less violence, we've got to get food to people."

"We'll get on top of this situation," Bush said, "and we're going to help the people that need help."

Bush was accompanied by Homeland Security Department secretary Michael Chertoff. The department, which oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been accused of responding sluggishly to the deadly hurricane. On the plane ride to Alabama, Bush was briefed on plans for housing the tens of thousands of people displaced by the hurricane.

"There's a lot of aid surging toward those who've been affected. Millions of gallons of water. Millions of tons of food. We're making progress about pulling people out of the Superdome," the president said.

For the first time, however, he stopped defending his administration's response and criticized it. "A lot of people are working hard to help those who've been affected. The results are not acceptable," he said. "I'm heading down there right now."

Bush hoped that his tour of the hurricane-ravaged states would boost the spirits of increasingly desperate storm victims and their tired rescuers, and his visit was aimed at tamping down the ever-angrier criticism that he has engineered a too-little, too-late response.

Amid the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, Bush has other problems besides the hurricane: Gasoline prices have soared past $3 a gallon in some places, and support is ebbing for the war in Iraq.

[Cathedral]

So, he admits it was slow and unacceptable, eh?

Someone wake me when he admits it's his damn fault that improvements weren't funded that could have lessened the blow and the death toll.

His trip out there was nothing but a photo op, and he stands like he has a corn cob up his ass, or a bannana.

I guess he packed his own lunch.................

[ELVIS]

Originally posted by Cathedral
So, he admits it was slow and unacceptable, eh

Someone wake me when he admits it's his damn fault that improvements weren't funded that could have lessened the blow and the death toll.




That is not a federal issue...

Louisiana polititians have been warned about this danger for thirty years!

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by ELVIS
That is not a federal issue...

Louisiana polititians have been warned about this danger for thirty years!

But the response to it is a Fed issue! Warnings or know, cities in Europe are undersea level as well...

I suspect one of the questions that will be asked when a handle on things is gotten is, "why was Federal funding cut for levee improvement? Iraq?" I suspect this may be the case...

[ELVIS]

Louisiana politics are a mess...

[FORD]

Originally posted by ELVIS
That is not a federal issue...

Louisiana polititians have been warned about this danger for thirty years!

But federal funds and federal programs (Army Corps of Engineers) were specifically targeted for the New Orleans area and the BCE cut that budget to scam more money for the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

All these billions going into "Homeland Security" and now your Homeland is a giant clogged toilet.

The BCE must be held responsible for that.

[blueturk]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/09/02/national/a161134D34.DTL

National Guard Delivers Goods to Big Easy
By ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writer

Friday, September 2, 2005


(09-02) 16:11 PDT New Orleans (AP) --


To cries of "Thank you Jesus!" and catcalls of "What took you so long?," a National Guard convoy packed with food, water and medicine rolled through axle-deep floodwaters Friday into what remained of New Orleans and descended into a maelstrom of fires and floating corpses.


"Lord, I thank you for getting us out of here!" Leschia Radford shrieked amid a throng of tens of thousands of storm victims outside the New Orleans Convention Center.


More than four days after the storm hit, the caravan of at least three-dozen camouflage-green troop vehicles and supply trucks arrived along with dozens of air-conditioned buses to take refugees out. President Bush also took an aerial tour of the ruined city, and answered complaints about a sluggish government response by saying, "We're going to make it right."


In what looked like a scene from a Third World country, some people threw their arms heavenward and others nearly fainted with joy as the trucks and hundreds of soldiers arrived in the punishing midday heat.


But there were also profane jeers from many in the crowd of nearly 20,000 outside the convention center, which a day earlier seemed on the verge of a riot, with desperate people seething with anger over the lack of anything to eat or drink.


"They should have been here days ago," said 46-year-old Michael Levy, whose words were echoed by those around him yelling, "Hell, yeah!"


"We've been sleeping on the ... ground like rats," Levy added. "I say burn this whole ... city down."


The soldiers' arrival-in-force came amid angry complaints from the mayor and others that the federal government had bungled the relief effort and let people die in the streets for lack of food, water or medicine.


"The people of our city are holding on by a thread," Mayor Ray Nagin warned in a statement to CNN. "Time has run out. Can we survive another night? And who can we depend on? Only God knows." Earlier, in a rambling radio interview, Nagin erupted in tears and anger, saying, "Get off your asses and let's do something."


The president took a land and air tour of hard-hit areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and admitted of the relief effort: "The results are not enough." Congress quickly passed a $10.5 billion disaster aid package, and Bush said he would sign it by day's end.


What were perhaps the first signs of real hope for recovery came on a day that was ushered in with a thunderous explosion before daybreak and scattered downtown building fires that only confirmed the sense that New Orleans was a city in utter collapse.


The explosion at a warehouse along the Mississippi River about 15 blocks from the French Quarter jostled storm refugees awake and sent a pillar of acrid gray smoke over a city that the mayor has said could be awash with thousands of corpses. Other large fires fire erupted downtown.


With a cigar-chomping general in the convoy's lead vehicle, the trucks rolled through muddy water to reach the convention center. Flatbed trucks carried huge crates, pallets and bags of relief supplies, including Meals Ready to Eat. Soldiers in fatigues sat in the backs of open-top trucks, their rifles pointing skyward.


Guardsmen carrying rifles also arrived at the Louisiana Superdome, where a vast crowd of bedraggled people — many of them trapped there since the weekend — stretched around the entire perimeter of the building, waiting for their deliverance from the heat, the filth and the gagging stench inside the stadium.


"The cavalry is and will continue to arrive," said Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, commander of the National Guard. He said 7,000 Guardsmen would be in the city by Saturday.


But another commander warned it may yet be days more before evacuations from the convention center begin, because the first priority is bringing in food and water.


"As fast as we can, we'll move them out," said Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore said. "Worse things have happened to America," he added. "We're going to overcome this, too. It's not our fault. The storm came and flooded the city."


Within minutes of the soldiers' arrival at the convention center, they set up six food and water lines. The crowd was for the most part orderly and grateful for the first major supply convoy to reach the arena.


Diane Sylvester, 49, was the first person through the line, and she emerged with two bottles of water and a pork rib meal. "Something is better than nothing," she said as she mopped sweat from her brow. "I feel great to see the military here. I know I'm saved."


Angela Jones, 24, began guzzling her water before she even cleared the line.


"Like steak and potatoes!" she said of the cool water. "I didn't think I was going to make it through that."


A rag shielding her from the searing heat and a cart holding her only belongings, 70-year-old Nellie Washington asked: "What took you so long? I'm extremely happy, but I cannot let it be at that. They did not take the lead to do this. They had to be pushed to do it."


With Houston's Astrodome already full with 15,000 storm refugees, that city opened two more giant centers to accommodate an additional 10,000. Dallas and San Antonio also had agreed to take refugees.


One group of Katrina's victims lurched from one tragedy to another: A bus carrying evacuees from the Superdome overturned on a Louisiana highway, killing at least one person and injuring many others.


At the broken levee along Lake Pontchartrain that swamped nearly 80 percent of New Orleans, helicopters dropped 3,000-pound sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into place to seal off the waters. Engineers also were developing a plan to create new breaches in the levees so that a combination of gravity and pumping and would drain the water out of the city, a process that could take weeks.


Law and order all but broke down in New Orleans over the past few days. Storm refugees reported being raped, shot and robbed, gangs of teenagers hijacked boats meant to rescue them, and frustrated storm refugees menaced outmanned law officers Police Chief Eddie Compass admitted even his own officers had taken food and water from stores. Officers were walking off the job by the dozens.


Some of New Orleans' hospitals, facing dwindling supplies of food, water and medicine, resumed evacuations Friday. Rescuers finally made it into Charity Hospital, the city's largest public hospital, where gunfire had earlier thwarted efforts to evacuate more than 250 patients.


Behind, they left a flooded morgue where residents had been dropping off bodies. After it reached its capacity of 12, five more corpses were stacked in a stairwell. Other bodies were elsewhere in the hospital.


Administrator Don Smithburg said his numbed staff was forced to subsist on intravenous sugar solutions.


"Some of them are on the brink of unable to cope any longer," he said.

[Sarge's Little Helper]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/09/02/national/a161134D34.DTL

National Guard Delivers Goods to Big Easy
By ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writer

Friday, September 2, 2005


(09-02) 16:11 PDT New Orleans (AP) --


To cries of "Thank you Jesus!" and catcalls of "What took you so long?," a National Guard convoy packed with food, water and medicine rolled through axle-deep floodwaters Friday into what remained of New Orleans and descended into a maelstrom of fires and floating corpses.


"Lord, I thank you for getting us out of here!" Leschia Radford shrieked amid a throng of tens of thousands of storm victims outside the New Orleans Convention Center.


More than four days after the storm hit, the caravan of at least three-dozen camouflage-green troop vehicles and supply trucks arrived along with dozens of air-conditioned buses to take refugees out. President Bush also took an aerial tour of the ruined city, and answered complaints about a sluggish government response by saying, "We're going to make it right."


In what looked like a scene from a Third World country, some people threw their arms heavenward and others nearly fainted with joy as the trucks and hundreds of soldiers arrived in the punishing midday heat.


But there were also profane jeers from many in the crowd of nearly 20,000 outside the convention center, which a day earlier seemed on the verge of a riot, with desperate people seething with anger over the lack of anything to eat or drink.


"They should have been here days ago," said 46-year-old Michael Levy, whose words were echoed by those around him yelling, "Hell, yeah!"


"We've been sleeping on the ... ground like rats," Levy added. "I say burn this whole ... city down."


The soldiers' arrival-in-force came amid angry complaints from the mayor and others that the federal government had bungled the relief effort and let people die in the streets for lack of food, water or medicine.


"The people of our city are holding on by a thread," Mayor Ray Nagin warned in a statement to CNN. "Time has run out. Can we survive another night? And who can we depend on? Only God knows." Earlier, in a rambling radio interview, Nagin erupted in tears and anger, saying, "Get off your asses and let's do something."


The president took a land and air tour of hard-hit areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and admitted of the relief effort: "The results are not enough." Congress quickly passed a $10.5 billion disaster aid package, and Bush said he would sign it by day's end.


What were perhaps the first signs of real hope for recovery came on a day that was ushered in with a thunderous explosion before daybreak and scattered downtown building fires that only confirmed the sense that New Orleans was a city in utter collapse.


The explosion at a warehouse along the Mississippi River about 15 blocks from the French Quarter jostled storm refugees awake and sent a pillar of acrid gray smoke over a city that the mayor has said could be awash with thousands of corpses. Other large fires fire erupted downtown.


With a cigar-chomping general in the convoy's lead vehicle, the trucks rolled through muddy water to reach the convention center. Flatbed trucks carried huge crates, pallets and bags of relief supplies, including Meals Ready to Eat. Soldiers in fatigues sat in the backs of open-top trucks, their rifles pointing skyward.


Guardsmen carrying rifles also arrived at the Louisiana Superdome, where a vast crowd of bedraggled people — many of them trapped there since the weekend — stretched around the entire perimeter of the building, waiting for their deliverance from the heat, the filth and the gagging stench inside the stadium.


"The cavalry is and will continue to arrive," said Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, commander of the National Guard. He said 7,000 Guardsmen would be in the city by Saturday.


But another commander warned it may yet be days more before evacuations from the convention center begin, because the first priority is bringing in food and water.


"As fast as we can, we'll move them out," said Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore said. "Worse things have happened to America," he added. "We're going to overcome this, too. It's not our fault. The storm came and flooded the city."


Within minutes of the soldiers' arrival at the convention center, they set up six food and water lines. The crowd was for the most part orderly and grateful for the first major supply convoy to reach the arena.


Diane Sylvester, 49, was the first person through the line, and she emerged with two bottles of water and a pork rib meal. "Something is better than nothing," she said as she mopped sweat from her brow. "I feel great to see the military here. I know I'm saved."


Angela Jones, 24, began guzzling her water before she even cleared the line.


"Like steak and potatoes!" she said of the cool water. "I didn't think I was going to make it through that."


A rag shielding her from the searing heat and a cart holding her only belongings, 70-year-old Nellie Washington asked: "What took you so long? I'm extremely happy, but I cannot let it be at that. They did not take the lead to do this. They had to be pushed to do it."


With Houston's Astrodome already full with 15,000 storm refugees, that city opened two more giant centers to accommodate an additional 10,000. Dallas and San Antonio also had agreed to take refugees.


One group of Katrina's victims lurched from one tragedy to another: A bus carrying evacuees from the Superdome overturned on a Louisiana highway, killing at least one person and injuring many others.


At the broken levee along Lake Pontchartrain that swamped nearly 80 percent of New Orleans, helicopters dropped 3,000-pound sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into place to seal off the waters. Engineers also were developing a plan to create new breaches in the levees so that a combination of gravity and pumping and would drain the water out of the city, a process that could take weeks.


Law and order all but broke down in New Orleans over the past few days. Storm refugees reported being raped, shot and robbed, gangs of teenagers hijacked boats meant to rescue them, and frustrated storm refugees menaced outmanned law officers Police Chief Eddie Compass admitted even his own officers had taken food and water from stores. Officers were walking off the job by the dozens.


Some of New Orleans' hospitals, facing dwindling supplies of food, water and medicine, resumed evacuations Friday. Rescuers finally made it into Charity Hospital, the city's largest public hospital, where gunfire had earlier thwarted efforts to evacuate more than 250 patients.


Behind, they left a flooded morgue where residents had been dropping off bodies. After it reached its capacity of 12, five more corpses were stacked in a stairwell. Other bodies were elsewhere in the hospital.


Administrator Don Smithburg said his numbed staff was forced to subsist on intravenous sugar solutions.


"Some of them are on the brink of unable to cope any longer," he said.

Oops. I wasn't paying attention. Tell me again what is going on.

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by ELVIS
That is not a federal issue...

Louisiana polititians have been warned about this danger for thirty years!

Thank you. FORD still won't believe you though. Let him read this instead. (http://www.rotharmy.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26724)

:gulp:

[BigBadBrian]

I'm watching Geraldo right now ( 9pm Eastern Friday) and am absolutely appalled.

The people at the Superdome are still there and in squalid conditions.

That FEMA director needs to be fucking shit-canned. NOW

He can't do the job.

The Police Chief for NO was on earlier and he says the crowd might right eventually, even though additional military presence has arrived to help with crowd control.

FEMA is clueless.

:mad: :mad: :mad:

[Nickdfresh]

Well I guess this proves that PHIL THE STALKER is wrong, FEMA is far overrated...

[Little Texan]

That it took the government this long to respond to this catastrophe is nothing short of an outrage! What took so fucking long? FEMA is a sad fucking joke...heads should roll for this shit, starting at the top.

[frets5150]

Mayor to feds: 'Get off your asses'
Transcript of radio interview with New Orleans' Nagin

Friday, September 2, 2005 Posted: 1859 GMT (0259 HKT) CNN) -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin blasted the slow pace of federal and state relief efforts in an expletive-laced interview with local radio station WWL-AM.
The following is a transcript of WWL correspondent Garland Robinette's interview with Nagin on Thursday night. Robinette asked the mayor about his conversation with President Bush:

NAGIN: I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice. And that I have been all around this city, and I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources and we're outmanned in just about every respect. (Listen to the mayor express his frustration in this video -- 12:09)

You know the reason why the looters got out of control? Because we had most of our resources saving people, thousands of people that were stuck in attics, man, old ladies. ... You pull off the doggone ventilator vent and you look down there and they're standing in there in water up to their freaking necks.

And they don't have a clue what's going on down here. They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn -- excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed.

WWL: Did you say to the president of the United States, "I need the military in here"?

NAGIN: I said, "I need everything."

Now, I will tell you this -- and I give the president some credit on this -- he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is [Lt.] Gen. [Russel] Honore.

And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he's getting some stuff done.

They ought to give that guy -- if they don't want to give it to me, give him full authority to get the job done, and we can save some people.

WWL: What do you need right now to get control of this situation?

NAGIN: I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.

I'm like, "You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."

That's -- they're thinking small, man. And this is a major, major, major deal. And I can't emphasize it enough, man. This is crazy.

I've got 15,000 to 20,000 people over at the convention center. It's bursting at the seams. The poor people in Plaquemines Parish. ... We don't have anything, and we're sharing with our brothers in Plaquemines Parish.

It's awful down here, man.

WWL: Do you believe that the president is seeing this, holding a news conference on it but can't do anything until [Louisiana Gov.] Kathleen Blanco requested him to do it? And do you know whether or not she has made that request?

NAGIN: I have no idea what they're doing. But I will tell you this: You know, God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price. Because every day that we delay, people are dying and they're dying by the hundreds, I'm willing to bet you.

We're getting reports and calls that are breaking my heart, from people saying, "I've been in my attic. I can't take it anymore. The water is up to my neck. I don't think I can hold out." And that's happening as we speak.

You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, "Please, please take care of this. We don't care what you do. Figure it out."

WWL: Who'd you say that to?

NAGIN: Everybody: the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA. You name it, we said it.

And they allowed that pumping station next to Pumping Station 6 to go under water. Our sewage and water board people ... stayed there and endangered their lives.

And what happened when that pumping station went down, the water started flowing again in the city, and it starting getting to levels that probably killed more people.

In addition to that, we had water flowing through the pipes in the city. That's a power station over there.

So there's no water flowing anywhere on the east bank of Orleans Parish. So our critical water supply was destroyed because of lack of action.

WWL: Why couldn't they drop the 3,000-pound sandbags or the containers that they were talking about earlier? Was it an engineering feat that just couldn't be done?

NAGIN: They said it was some pulleys that they had to manufacture. But, you know, in a state of emergency, man, you are creative, you figure out ways to get stuff done.

Then they told me that they went overnight, and they built 17 concrete structures and they had the pulleys on them and they were going to drop them.

I flew over that thing yesterday, and it's in the same shape that it was after the storm hit. There is nothing happening. And they're feeding the public a line of bull and they're spinning, and people are dying down here.

WWL: If some of the public called and they're right, that there's a law that the president, that the federal government can't do anything without local or state requests, would you request martial law?

NAGIN: I've already called for martial law in the city of New Orleans. We did that a few days ago.

WWL: Did the governor do that, too?

NAGIN: I don't know. I don't think so.

But we called for martial law when we realized that the looting was getting out of control. And we redirected all of our police officers back to patrolling the streets. They were dead-tired from saving people, but they worked all night because we thought this thing was going to blow wide open last night. And so we redirected all of our resources, and we hold it under check.

I'm not sure if we can do that another night with the current resources.

And I am telling you right now: They're showing all these reports of people looting and doing all that weird stuff, and they are doing that, but people are desperate and they're trying to find food and water, the majority of them.

Now you got some knuckleheads out there, and they are taking advantage of this lawless -- this situation where, you know, we can't really control it, and they're doing some awful, awful things. But that's a small majority of the people. Most people are looking to try and survive.

And one of the things people -- nobody's talked about this. Drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me, and that's why we were having the escalation in murders. People don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to talk about it.

You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that's the reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drugstores. They're looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.

And right now, they don't have anything to take the edge off. And they've probably found guns. So what you're seeing is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don't have the manpower to adequately deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them and hope to God that we're not overrun.

WWL: Well, you and I must be in the minority. Because apparently there's a section of our citizenry out there that thinks because of a law that says the federal government can't come in unless requested by the proper people, that everything that's going on to this point has been done as good as it can possibly be.

NAGIN: Really?

WWL: I know you don't feel that way.

NAGIN: Well, did the tsunami victims request? Did it go through a formal process to request?

You know, did the Iraqi people request that we go in there? Did they ask us to go in there? What is more important?

And I'll tell you, man, I'm probably going get in a whole bunch of trouble. I'm probably going to get in so much trouble it ain't even funny. You probably won't even want to deal with me after this interview is over.

WWL: You and I will be in the funny place together.

NAGIN: But we authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the president unprecedented powers lickety-quick to take care of New York and other places.

Now, you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody's eyes light up -- you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man.

You know, I'm not one of those drug addicts. I am thinking very clearly.

And I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem. I don't know whether it's the president's problem, but somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now.

WWL: What can we do here?

NAGIN: Keep talking about it.

WWL: We'll do that. What else can we do?

NAGIN: Organize people to write letters and make calls to their congressmen, to the president, to the governor. Flood their doggone offices with requests to do something. This is ridiculous.

I don't want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count.

Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.

WWL: I'll say it right now, you're the only politician that's called and called for arms like this. And if -- whatever it takes, the governor, president -- whatever law precedent it takes, whatever it takes, I bet that the people listening to you are on your side.

NAGIN: Well, I hope so, Garland. I am just -- I'm at the point now where it don't matter. People are dying. They don't have homes. They don't have jobs. The city of New Orleans will never be the same in this time.

WWL: We're both pretty speechless here.

NAGIN: Yeah, I don't know what to say. I got to go.

WWL: OK. Keep in touch. Keep in touch.



http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/nagin.transcript/

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Firefighting gear stockpile unused

From CNN Producer Mike M. Ahlers
Saturday, September 3, 2005; Posted: 3:37 a.m. EDT (07:37 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Nine stockpiles of fire-and-rescue equipment strategically placed around the country to be used in the event of a catastrophe still have not been pressed into service in New Orleans, five days after Hurricane Katrina, CNN has learned.

Responding to a CNN inquiry, Department of Homeland Security spokesman Marc Short said Friday the gear has not been moved because none of the governors in the hurricane-ravaged area has requested it.

A federal official said the department's Office for Domestic Preparedness reminded the Louisiana and Mississippi governors' offices about the stockpiles on Wednesday and Thursday, but neither governor had requested it.

The gear -- including generators, radios, breathing apparatus, cots and other items -- is stockpiled by DHS in nine locations. The three closest to New Orleans are College Station, Texas; Columbia, S.C.; and Clearwater, Fla. The gear is intended to replenish or sustain up to 150 first responders.

Contractors who maintain the gear are required to transport it to a disaster site no later than 12 hours after the initial request is made by local authorities and approved by DHS.

Short said that while the stashes contain some items like generators, much of the gear would not be useful in the circumstances faced by the Gulf Coast region.

But Steve Beaumont, a retired contract manager for Homeland Security's Prepositioned Equipment Program, said the gear would be helpful for fire departments wiped out by the hurricane. Each pod has 200 radios, including sophisticated equipment to make radios inter-operable, tying different communications systems together.

"The concept was basically, if you had a major incident, this equipment could be brought into the city and reconstitute the local first responders. So they get fresh bunking gear, breathing apparatus," Beaumont said.

Each stockpile consists of a tractor-trailer filled with $2.2 million in gear, he said. Contractors are on call 24 hours a day to move the gear.

"There has been no movement of this equipment to this emergency. As of now there's been no movement at all," Beaumont said.

"I think it's sad because you've got almost ... $20 million worth of gear that's ready to be distributed. You've firefighters (in New Orleans) fighting fires in shorts. That tells me they're running out of stuff."

The project is run by DHS' Office for Domestic Preparedness.