Selected comments on Hurricane Katrina (August 2005) from email lists Compiled by Ilan Kelman

to understanding natural and man-made disasters. We know what to do, but we are

not good at using what we know. Why not?
We fail to use well what we know because we rely too much on large public

bureaucracies. This was the primary lesson of the 9/11 Commission Report. Large

public bureaucracies, whether the FBI and the CIA or FEMA and the Corps of

Engineers, don't talk to each other much. They are poorly incentivized, if at

all. Budgets, the oxygen of the acronymic planets, make bureaucracy's managers

first responders to constant political whim. Real-world problems, as the 9/11

report noted, inevitably seem distant and minor: "Once the danger has fully

materialized, evident to all, mobilizing action is easier--but it then may be

too late."
Homeland Security, a new big bureaucracy, has struggled since 2001 to assemble a

feasible plan to respond to another major terror event inside the U.S. The

possibility, or likelihood, of a bird-borne flu pandemic is beginning to reach

public awareness, but the government is at pains to create a sufficient supply

of vaccine or a distribution system for anti-viral medicines. Any bets on which

will come first--the flu or the distribution system?

argue that this is an inevitable result of living in an advanced and complex

democracy. Yes, up to a point. An open political system indeed breeds

inefficiencies (though possibly the Jeb Bush administration that dealt with the

2004 hurricanes is more competent than Gov. Blanco's team in Louisiana). And

perhaps low-lying, self-indulgent New Orleans understood its losing bargain with

a devil's fate.
But we ought to at least recognize that our increasingly tough First World

problems--terrorism, viruses, the rising incidence of powerful natural

disasters--are being addressed by a public sector that too often is coming to

resemble a Third World that can't execute.

profit, to the private sector. In recent days, offers of help have come from

such companies as Anheuser-Busch and Culligan (water), Lilly, Merck and Wyeth

(pharmaceuticals), Nissan and GM (cars and trucks), Sprint, Nextel and Qwest

(communications gear and phone cards), Johnson & Johnson (toiletries and first

aid), Home Depot and Lowe's (manpower). Give contract authority to organize

these resources to a project-management firm like Bechtel. Use the bureaucracies

as infantry.

A public role is unavoidable and political leadership is necessary. But if we're

going to live with First World threats, such as the destruction of a major port

city, let's deploy the most imaginative First World brains--in the private

sector and academia--to mitigate those threats. Laughably implausible? Look at

your TV screen. The status quo isn't funny.
======

REVIEW OF HURRICANE EVACUATION PLANS AND POLICIES IN THE U.S.

2003, Pages 257-275

http://tinyurl.com/d3z9f
National review of hurricane evacuation plans and policies: a comparison and

contrast of state practices

b) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, LSU Hurricane Center,

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
Abstract

The events of recent hurricane seasons have made evacuation a leading emergency

management issue. In 1998 and 1999, Hurricanes Georges and Floyd precipitated

the two largest evacuations in the history of the United States and perhaps, its

two largest traffic jams. In response to the problems experienced during these

events, many state departments' of transportation have begun to take a more

active role in the planning, management, and operation of hurricane evacuations.

This is somewhat of a departure from prior practice when emergency management

officials directed these tasks almost exclusively. Since the involvement of

transportation professionals in the field of evacuation has been a fairly recent

development, many of the newest practices and policies have only been used once,

if ever. They also vary widely from state-to-state. To determine what the latest

policies and strategies are and how they differed from one location to another,

a national review of evacuation plans and practices was recently undertaken. The

study was carried out from a transportation perspective and included both a

review of the traditional transportation literature and a survey of department

of transportation and emergency management officials in coastal states

threatened by hurricanes. This paper highlights the findings of the survey

portion of the study. It focuses mainly on current state practices, including

the use of reverse flow operations and intelligent transportation systems. It

also summarizes current evacuation management policies, methods of information

exchange, and decision-making criteria. This paper presents the general

similarities and differences in practices and gives particular attention to

unique, innovative, and potentially useful practices used in individual states.

Copyright © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

PUBLIC ORDERS AND PERSONAL OPINIONS: U.S. HOUSEHOLD STATEGIES FOR HURRICANE RISK

ASSESSMENT

Global Environmental Change Part B: Environmental Hazards, Volume 2, Issue 4 ,

December 2000, Pages 143-155

http://tinyurl.com/d5cfd

Public orders and personal opinions: household strategies for hurricane risk

assessment

Kirstin Dow, and Susan L. Cutter

Department of Geography, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA

This paper examines the relationship between household evacuation decisions and

official emergency management practices in light of recent increases in the

availability and diversity of hurricane-related information. While we focus on

Hurricane Floyd in South Carolina, we incorporate findings of our longitudinal

research effort covering the last four years and six post-1995 hurricane threats

to the state. While only 64% of residents in the mandatory evacuation zone

complied with the Hurricane Floyd evacuation order, over 80% agreed that calling

an evacuation was an appropriate precautionary response given the uncertainties

of the storm. Longitudinal surveys indicate that Horry County residents have

developed a fairly robust strategy in making evacuation decisions. This

"hurricane savvy" population depends more heavily on individuals' assessments of

risks than on official orders. Individual assessment practices differ from

official orders in that greater weight is given to household circumstances and

preferences, the diligent monitoring of a variety of information sources, and

the incorporation of past experiences into the decision-making process. Surveys

indicate differences between the general public and officials in terms of

priorities and preferences about hurricane evacuations. The public demands more

information about the hurricane threat. Officials place more emphasis on

planning evacuation routes and public safety measures.

Copyright © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

HEADING FOR HIGHER GROUND: FACTORS EFFECTING HURRICANE EVACUATION BEHAVIOUR

December 2000, Pages 133-142

http://tinyurl.com/a6qrl

Heading for higher ground: factors affecting real and hypothetical hurricane

evacuation behavior*1
John C. Whitehead a), Bob Edwards b), Marieke Van Willigen b), John R. Maiolo

b), Kenneth Wilson b) and Kevin T. Smith a)

Greenville, NC 27858-4353, USA

b) Department of Sociology, East Carolina University, Brewster Building,

Greenville, NC 27858-4353, USA

The purpose of this paper is to assess the determinants of hurricane evacuation

behavior of North Carolina coastal households during Hurricane Bonnie and a

future hypothetical hurricane. We use the data from a telephone survey of North

Carolina coastal residents. Hypothetical questions are used to assess whether

respondents will evacuate and where in the case of a future hurricane with

varying intensities. We examine the social, economic, and risk factors that

affect the decisions to evacuate and whether to go to a shelter or motel/hotel

relative to other destinations. The most important predictor of evacuation is

storm intensity. Households are more likely to evacuate when given evacuation

orders, when they perceive a flood risk, and when they live in mobile homes.

Households who own pets are less likely to evacuate. Non-white households, pet

owners and those with more education are less likely to go to either a

motel/hotel or shelter, preferring instead to stay with friends or family.

doi:10.1016/S1464-2867(01)00013-4

Copyright © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

From : Marian Douglas

Reply-To : Marian Douglas

Sent : September 5, 2005 2:55:48 PM

To : GENDER-AND-DISASTER-NETWORK@listserv.tamu.edu

Subject : Two Faces of USA - Hurricane; Louisiana Social Issues; Governor Blanco

instructive, especially to some American disaster researchers, Americans

working in humanitarian areas, and laypeople.
For the most interesting view of New Orleans as well as the city's vital

ties to the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue - now HAITI - one of the best

books is THE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS, by Anne Rice, author of Interview with the

Vampire. FEAST was her second book but got very little attention, quite

possibly due to its subject matter - the Haitian ethnic/racial & cultural

heritage of the city of New Orleans. A few years ago a television movie was

made from the novel. It is informative but I think the book deserves a

better screen interpretation.

New Orleans.

is now clearly seeing the other - domestic - face of the USA. That face is

much browner and blacker than the face the US carefully orchestrates for the

"outside" (international) world.

the United States (like quite a few others societies) has been disconnected

from itself. I was quite fascinated with discovering my country's "outside

face" when I first lived in France at age 18. Since then I have lived,

worked and travelled in many places and my early fascination with the "US

outside face" has long since turned to disappointment, shock, disgust and

humiliation.
The history of New Orleans is a prime case in point of the US' deliberate

disconnection with itself. This includes the way in which too many people -

extremely offensively - call that city "The Big Easy." The city's respectful

nickname is The Crescent City.

this is the label that has been stuck on the community of New Orleans. This

is the same city where the French imported African women from AFRICA's

SENEGAMBIA region to be enslaved, because French males preferred them as

concubines and sexual partners, and to "shape" the commercial and social

"stock."

generations to become concubines and prostitutes for white men. They were

selected by skin colour; the lighter usually were considered the more

desirable. The saddest part is that in the 18th, 19th, and even 20th

centuries, the 'mainstream' quadroon (mixed race African descent) families

actually RAISED THEIR DAUGHTERS for this. Every year - I do not know when

this ended - the lighter brown and fair-skinned girls were subjected to an

event called "THE QUADROON BALL." It was a mating event. Socially prominent

white men with money would come to this formal social event to meet

lightskinned young women of African descent. This was not for marriage, but

for concubinage. The white men had white wives and "officially white

children", and they would acquire these "Black" female sexual partners who

were then housed separately by the man, who then also usually had children

with this woman. This was in the upper classes and was considered a white

man's "second family."
From a point of view of "race+gender" that is New Orleans, Louisiana from a

Black woman's perspective. I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, yet I have

never yet heard what white women have to say about their view of, and role

in, this "social system", which is what it was. It still influences

behaviour and thinking today.
Turning thoughts a bit, right now a "power struggle" appears to have

developed between (what I perceive as) the quite macho Bush administration

and the woman governor of the state of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.
Her official bio is here: http://gov.state.la.us/STUFF/biographykbb.htm
As of today, Monday, Sept. 5, the central issue of contention seems to be

pressure by US federal government officials - actually Bush himself - to

"federalise" Louisiana's state National Guard troops. Blanco has said no and

assertively rejected the pressure.

president) is returning to Louisiana yet allegedly the White House did not

inform Governor Blanco until early Monday morning.
In my view the United States central, federal government - the one based

downtown in Washington, DC (as opposed to the separate states plus the city

of the District of Columbia) - has not had a constructive, inclusive and

democratic domestic policy (also including funding) for its urban

communities since the 1970s.
Marian Douglas

Writer, International Consultant

Human Rights, Elections

Washington, DC / Rome, italia

From : Tony Oliver-Smith

Sent : September 5, 2005 6:20:48 PM

Subject : Fwd: [HelpAsia] Dennis Kucinich on Hurricane Katrina, Energy and Peace

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SEPTEMBER 2, 2005

12:20 PMCONTACT: Congressman Dennis Kucinich

Doug Gordon (202) 225-5871 Floor Statement of

Congressman Dennis J.

Kucinich:

WASHINGTON - September 2 - Congressman Dennis J.

Kucinich (D-OH)

gave the following speech today on the House floor

during a special

session to provide relief money for the victims of

Hurricane Katrina:

"This amount of money is only a fraction of what is

needed and

everyone here knows it. Let it go forward quickly with

heart-felt

thanks to those who are helping to save lives with

necessary food,

water, shelter, medical care and security. Congress

must also demand

accountability with the appropriations. Because until

there are basic

changes in the direction of this government, this

tragedy will

multiply to apocalyptic proportions.

"The Administration yesterday said that no one

anticipated the breach

of the levees. Did the Administration not see or care

about the 2001

FEMA warning about the risk of a devastating hurricane

hitting the

people of New Orleans? Did it not know or care that

civil and army

engineers were warning for years about the

consequences of failure to

strengthen the flood control system? Was it aware or

did it care that

the very same Administration which decries the plight

of the people

today, cut from the budget tens of millions needed for

Gulf-area

flood control projects?

"Countless lives have been lost throughout the South

with a cost of

hundreds of billions in ruined homes, businesses, and

the destruction

of an entire physical and social infrastructure.

"The President said an hour ago that the Gulf Coast

looks like it has

been obliterated by a weapon. It has. Indifference is

a weapon of

mass destruction.

"Our indifferent government is in a crisis of

legitimacy. If it

continues to ignore its basic responsibility for the

health and

welfare of the American people, will there ever be

enough money to

clean up after their indifference?

"As our government continues to squander human and

monetary resources

of this country on the war, people are beginning to

ask, "Isn't it

time we began to take care of our own people here at

home? Isn't it

time we rescued our own citizens? Isn't it time we fed

our own

Isn't it time we

provided physical and economic security for our own

people?" And

isn't it time we stopped the oil companies from

profiting from this

tragedy?

"We have plenty of work to do here at home. It is time

for America to

come home and take care of its own people who are

drowning in the

streets, suffocating in attics, dying from exposure to

the elements,

oppressed by poverty and illness, wracked with despair

and hunger and

thirst.

the 78,000

National Guard troops currently deployed overseas into

the Gulf Coast

region.

"The time is NOW to bring back to the US the equipment

which will be

needed for search and rescue, for clean up and

reclamation.

"The time is NOW for federal resources, including

closed Army bases,

to be used for temporary shelter for those who have

been displaced by

the hurricane.

"The time is NOW to plan massive public works, with

jobs going to the

people of the Gulf Coast states, to build new levees,

new roads,

bridges, libraries, schools, colleges and universities

and to rebuild

all public institutions, including hospitals. Medicare

ought to be

extended to everyone, so every person can get the

physical and mental

health care they might need as a result of the

disaster.

"The time is NOW for the federal government to take

seriously the

research of scientists who have warned for years about

the dangers of

changes in the global climate, and to prepare other

regions of the

country for other possible weather disasters until we

change our

disastrous energy policies.

"The time is NOW for changes in our energy policy, to

end the

domination of oil and fossil fuel and to invest

heavily in

alternative energy, including wind and solar,

geothermal and biofuels.

"As bad as this catastrophe will prove to be, it is in

fact only a

warning. Our government must change its direction, it

must become

involved in making America a better place to live, a

place where all

may survive and thrive. It must get off the path of

war and seek the

path of peace, peace with the natural environment,

peace with other

nations, peace with a just economic system."=

From : Barbara Rose Johnston

Sent : September 5, 2005 6:33:14 PM

To : Tony Oliver-Smith

CC : peacock@archone.tamu.edu, allan_lavell@yahoo.com, gvbutton@earthlink.net, bjohnston@igc.org, neil@edm.bosai.go.jp, bwisner@igc.org, ilan_kelman@hotmail.com, maureen.fordham@northumbria.ac.uk, susanna@smhoffman.com, lindaw@chuma1.cas.usf.edu, vgarciaa@juarez.ciesas.edu.mx, Tomesches@aol.com, , , bwisner@igc.org

Subject : National Geographic article October 2004
2004

fyi
National Geographic did an article in the October 2004 issue on New Orleans that begins with a detailed description of a hurricane, flooding from the levees, inability to evacuate, thousands of deaths, race/class based response etc --- every detail but the finally 50,000 death tally in the predictive scenario has come true, and this may well be true when all people are finally accounted for...

http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/index.html

Photographs by Robert Caputo and Tyrone Turner

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.

From : Peiser, Benny

Reply-To : Natural hazards and disasters

Sent : September 6, 2005 9:36:50 AM

To : NATURAL-HAZARDS-DISASTERS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK

Subject : New Orleans's Hurricane Evacuation "Plan"

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/09/new_orleanss_hu.html

evacuation difficult

New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major

hurricane, you're on your own. In scripted appearances being recorded now,

officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay

Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the

city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000

people without transportation.
In the video, made by the anti-poverty agency Total Community Action, they urge

those people to make arrangements now by finding their own ways to leave the

city in the event of an evacuation. "You're responsible for your safety, and you

should be responsible for the person next to you," Wilkins said in an interview.

"If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a

space for that person outside the area. We can help you. "But we don't have the

transportation."
Officials are recording the evacuation message even as recent research by the

University of New Orleans indicated that as many as 60 percent of the residents

of most southeast Louisiana parishes would remain in their homes in the event of

a Category 3 hurricane. Their message will be distributed on hundreds of DVDs

across the city. The DVDs' basic get-out-of-town message applies to all

audiences, but the it is especially targeted to scores of churches and other

groups heavily concentrated in Central City and other vulnerable, low-income

neighborhoods, said the Rev. Marshall Truehill, head of Total Community Action.

"The primary message is that eachperson is primarilyresponsibleforthemselves,

for their own family and friends," Truehill said.

make evacuation plans come from representatives of State Police and the National

Weather Service, and from local officials such as Sen. Ann Duplessis, D-New

Orleans, and State Rep. Arthur Morrell, D-New Orleans, said Allan Katz, whose

advertising company is coordinating officials' scripts and doing the recording.

The speakers explain what to bring and what to leave behind. They advise viewers

to bring personal medicines and critical legal documents, and tell them how to

create a family communication plan. Even a representative of the Society for the

Prevention of Cruelty to Animals weighs in with a message on how to make the

best arrangements for pets left behind.

into the hands of pastors and community leaders as hurricane season reaches its

height in September, Katz said.
Believing that the low-lying city is too dangerous a place to shelter refugees,

the Red Cross positioned its storm shelters on higher ground north of Interstate

10 several years ago. It dropped plans to care for storm victims in schools or

other institutions in town. Truehill, Wilkins and others said emergency

preparedness officials still plan to deploy some Regional Transit Authority

buses, school buses and perhaps even Amtrak trains to move some people before a

storm.
An RTA emergency plan dedicates 64 buses and 10 lift vans to move people

somewhere; whether that means out of town or to local shelters of last resort

would depend on emergency planners' decision at that moment, RTA spokeswoman

Rosalind Cook said. But even the larger buses hold only about 60 people each, a

rescue capacity that is dwarfed by the unmet need. In an interview at the

opening of this year's hurricane season, New Orleans Emergency Preparedness

Director Joseph Matthews acknowledged that the city is overmatched. "It's

important to emphasize that we just don't have the resources to take everybody

out," he said in a interview in late May.
In the absence of public transportation resources, Total Community Action and

the Red Cross have been developing a private initiative called Operation

Brother's Keeper that, fully formed, would enlist churches in a vast,

decentralized effort to make space for the poor and the infirm in church

members' cars when they evacuate. However, the program is only in the first year

of a three-year experiment and involves only four local churches so far. The Red

Cross and Total Community Action are trying to invent a program that would show

churches how to inventory their members, match those with space in their cars

with those needing a ride, and put all the information in a useful framework,

Wilkins said. But the complexities so far are daunting, she said.

recruit partner churches out of the storm area to shelter them, volunteers in

both places need to be trained in running shelters, she said. People also have

to think carefully about what makes good evacuation matches. Wilkins said that

when ride arrangements are made, the volunteers must be sure to tell their

passengers where their planned destination is if they are evacuated. Moreover,

although the Archdiocese of New Orleans has endorsed the project in principle,

it doesn't want its 142 parishes to participate until insurance problems have

been solved with new legislation that reduces liability risks, Wilkins said. At

the end of three years, organizers of Operation Brother's Keeper hope to have

trained 90 congregations how to develop evacuation plans for their own members.
Meanwhile, some churches appear to have moved on their own to create evacuation

plans that assist members without cars. Since the Hurricane Ivan evacuation of

2004, Mormon churches have begun matching members who have empty seats in cars

with those needing seats, said Scott Conlin, president of the church's local

stake. Eleven local congregations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

Saints share a common evacuation plan, and many church members have three-day

emergency kits packed and ready to go, he said. Mormon churches in Jackson,

Miss., Hattiesburg, Miss., and Alexandria, La., have arranged to receive

evacuees. The denomination also maintains a toll-free telephone number that

functions as a central information drop, where members on the road can leave

information about their whereabouts that church leaders can pick up and relay as

necessary, Conlin said.

rom: "Walter Hays"

To: "World Congress"

CC:

Subject: BOOTS ON THE GROUND REPORT ON KATRINA

Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2005 21:48:23 -0400

Global Alliance for Disaster Reduction

University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Colleagues:
Please see the attached short, informal, and unedited report highlighting his observations following the hurricane Katrina-flood disaster that Dr. Fred May, GADR member, provided.
The purpose is to give you one of the "boots on the ground" perspectives.
Sincerely,
Walter

From: "Walter Hays"

To: "World Congress"

CC: "Hilary I. Inyang"

Subject: BOOTS ON TEH GROUND REPORT NUMBER 2

Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 09:18:42 -0400

Global alliance for Disaster Reduction

University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Colleagues,
A second unofficial and unedited report prepared by Dr. Fred May on hurricane Katrina is attached for your information.
Sincerely,
Walter

Walter, I am currently in Biloxi studying the hurricane and likely be in New Orleans. This is one of the benefits of teaching by distance education. We end up with students most everywhere and they make things possible in going out on these events. I interviewed several people yesterday and today took many pictures in Biloxi and Gulfport. Tomorrow, I will interview several more people here in Biloxi. I have hopes of etting into the most severely impacted areas. Those are cordoned off. The other areas also have more damage than one can imagine, in terms of amount. The damage is everywhere. The degree of damage is not that surprising though. I would say it is often moderate, and at times extreme. Sometimes, there is little damage. Basically, this is a coastal pine forest and those trees snap off. One can obviously use those to determine the wind direction at the time. They often laid down in people's back yards and missed homes, sometimes got the homes. Larger diciduous trees also went down and it was interesting to see

their shallow root systems; not much was holding them up anyway.
People here are in the early stages of reaction. For the first week or so they will be much caught up in the excitement, including the President showing up. They initially have hopes that insurance or government will bail them out financially. Soon many will discover that they have serious financial loss and begin searching for assistance. Only those well insured will can through that process feeling good about it. Many though will begin to get discomforting news

and begin searching and debating what they are hearing. Roofs off come under homeowners insurance but flood damage under flood insurance and my interviewees rarely had that. This initial feeling of excitement, still being caught up in the event, will fade away. Their emotions will become more negative in a week or so. Some will lose everything with little but IFG from FEMA and a small grant from the Red Cross. The Red Cross person I spoke with was not sure what they might make available.

hour. The bodies are being taken to morgues and autopsies being done. They can

be turned over to family in five days or so.
Food is of course a problem. The Baptist Church is doing well with hot meals for all, most impressive. My student is with them. It was slim pickings even here until Thursday and now there is more food here than one can imagine. There are food stations at several locations, from other groups. The problem is that gasoline is so hard to come by that traveling here for food uses gas. They come in sometimes on fumes. For food they may need to make two trips a day in their

cars. The come for multiple families to save gas, taking large numbers of meals back with them. The Red Cross showed up yesterday, Friday. They are giving out heater meals which should reduce the need to travel here. They are in part of the parking lot where I spend much of my time and they now have a most impressive amount of items for people. This all helps very much as the needs are very real, when people get hungry. The Baptist group also has a clothing area, donated clothes. Many people look through it. Many people here (not most though) really came out of this with nothing, not even clothing. One lady today lost her home and was sleeping in a tent and needed a cot to sleep on.

Jacksonville State University

Institute for Emergency Preparedness

Jacksonville, Alabama

From :

Sent : September 6, 2005 12:19:55 PM

To : Walter Hays

CC : World Congress , hiinyang@uncc.edu, Badaoui Rouhban

Subject : Re: INSIGHT FROM THE28-29 AUGUST 2005 HUFFICANE-FLOOD DISASTER DISASTER

Preparedness, Jacksonville, Alabama.

areas around Biloxi, MS.

beaches. These sustained straight-line wind damage and there is evidence of

tornadoes (twisted and broken trees). Most houses have some damage and trees

down but generally not the heavy structural damage we see closer to the water.

Many of these people are living in their homes.
2) Homes near the water along the Back Bay of Biloxi suffered storm surge that

worked its way from the open Gulf into the Back Bay. The storm surge was about

28 feet and and had considerable hydrodynamic effect, both pushing and pulling

on homes plus buoyancy. These forces pull walls away from homes mainly on the

bay side and can leave the exterior walls alone on the back/land sides. There

is a delicacy about this, in that walls are pulled away, but yet the walls can

be laid on the ground on their sides with plates still neatly stacked in their

cabinets. One house had the bay-side walls pulled away while on the back/land

side, small sea shells arranged on a table did not move, even though the surge

went another half-mile inland; difficult to explain. These homes were within

the 100-year floodplain (A-Zone) as mapped by FEMA and met the requirement of

open basements with break-away walls. These break-away walls did break away as

planned and left the basement area open for water to pass through. Both on the

north and south sides of the Back Bay of Biloxi, homes were destroyed along the

water and up to an elevation of about 28 feet. If one drives up a road away

from the water, up to that elevation of about 28 feet, then we see the damage

described under no. 1, above. Then we see wind damage which is much less.
3) Homes along the beach and inland suffered (storm surge damage) the greatest

amount of damage. These homes faced the open sea. These had the storm surge but

also appears to have taken the brunt of the high velocity waves. These combined

forces, plus the wind, basically scoured the land with many homes disintegrated

and spread both inland and into the gulf. Biloxi does not have a seawall, but

has an east-west railroad grade several blocks south of the sea. This served as

a seawall and prevented much damage north of that. There is a highwater mark on

the railroad grade showing that it would have gone farther. The greatest damage

lies south of that railroad grade. Obviously, from what you are seeing, the

forces along this east-west stretch of Biloxi were amazing, moving casinos

about, and many other buildings. Most of the Biloxi fatalities came from this

area as some people tried to rise it out there - a mistake.

insurance disaster, with the insurance companies paying for much of the losses.

This amount will be deducted from overall disaster losses and FEMA will pick up

their portion of the tab for eligible losses. Typcally, in wind disasters, the

FEMA tab ends up being much less than the insurance tab. Flood insurance is

also a resource for those who have it.

people and groups", those who live here or who have showed up to provide a

solution. There are categories of these people and groups.
Many miraculous stories and many tragedies.
Fred May, Ph.D.
From : Patrick Boylan

Reply-To : Natural hazards and disasters

Sent : September 6, 2005 9:11:50 PM

To : NATURAL-HAZARDS-DISASTERS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK

Subject : Re: Disability Issues... and more...
Until this disaster happened I always thought that in preparing for a likely and imminent danger it was a basic rule everywhere to move the disabled and sick first, and also to empty as far as possible all hospitals in order to clear as much space and medical and nursing resources for the expected casualties.
Today's announcement of an inquiry is very welcome: I trust that colleagues from around the world will feed into it information on "best practice" elsewhere. For example, under the UK county and regional emergency plans that I was involved with through the '70s and '80s, there would have been no question of starving people "having to loot" for food, water or fuel, since all available stocks in shops, warehouses and filling stations etc. would have been immediately requisitioned for controlled distribution by the emergency management authorities on a "take now, pay later". The same would apply to all available buses, mini-buses, ambulances and similar transport during the pre- and post-disaster evacuation periods.
Patrick Boylan
From : Maureen Fordham

Reply-To : Maureen Fordham

Sent : September 7, 2005 4:58:20 PM

To : GENDER-AND-DISASTER-NETWORK@listserv.tamu.edu

Subject : Re: Gender in Disaster Management: New Orleans and Elsewhere
Hi Marian

Thank you for your active contributions to the GDN which have been

insightful, informative and actually like a breath of fresh air!
Your observations are correct. Disaster Management is traditionally a male

gendered domain dominated by militaristic, 'command and control' methods.

Women's needs and potential for active involvement are rarely recognized.

There are many examples, from both developed and developing worlds, of lack

of attention to women's requirements (sanitary needs are often unmet;

security issues in camps and rest centres are unrecognized and unplanned

for; women's participation in informal employment/labour markets is not

valued and compensated for in the same way as formal economic activity). You

will see plenty of images of heroic rescues of women (and children) but they

are 99% likely to be carried out by men. Women are beginning to make inroads

into the disaster management professions but they are still in a minority

(again). Where women are present they tend to be at the lower end of the

hierarchy. Even in the so-called 'caring professions' often men are at the

head. However that does not mean women are not responding at all, they just

tend to be invisible in the coverage. Even in the 9/11 response, the

representations of firefighters were virtually all male when there were

actually many women firefighters taking part. Two women firefighters were so

incensed about this that they write a book on it but I don't have the

reference to hand.

You will see plenty of images of helicopters, trucks and other 'toys for the

boys' but far fewer images of women rescuin g and taking taking food and

other needed items to family, neighbours and friends or engaged in all sorts

of community support activities etc. In this way we continually have these

stereotypes reinforced.

I am sure the other list members will provide other examples of for you of

women both active and invisible in disaster risk reduction, response and

recovery.

Regards