This is the sad truth of the human suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Many outside the city lost much, some even died, but none were kept in hell like the people left in New Orleans at the Superdome and Convention Center:

It looks like the aftermath of a disaster in a 3rd world country, but this is a major United States city.

Poverty, racism, and an extremely poor government response caused the unfathomable to happen in the United States. By 48 hours after the storm, rescue efforts should have been in high gear. The National Guard was ready. Buses were ready. But Governor Blanco was overruled by FEMA and the National Guard wasn’t allowed to go in, bring food and water, and rescue people. The State of Louisiana wasn’t allowed to go into one of its own cities and rescue its people. The people who were trapped weren’t allowed to walk out of New Orleans over the Mississippi River Bridge to Gretna where there were [Incorrect: National Guard troops ready with water, food, shelter, basic medical care,] and clear roads buses could have used to evacuate those people. The west bank was damaged, but it was dry. People could have been led over there to safety [and aid] as they arrived at the Superdome.

Why were they kept in squaller for days when there was a way out? No one knows, especially not the guy who was supposed to be giving the orders, President George W. Bush or his incompetent FEMA lieutenant Brownie. President Bush’s flyover of the disaster area even prevented rescue efforts from starting earlier than they did. He was flying over New Orleans in Air Force One on Wednesday and blocked all air space for several daylight hours. He didn’t know what to do and didn’t know how to get out of the way so those who did could start doing what needed to be done.

If the richest country in the world can treat its own people this badly, how are we supposed to help other countries do a better job of taking care of their people? What kind of example are we to the rest of the world? A pretty bad one. And we’re supposed to be in Iraq to help those people work together and run their own country in freedom, peace and prosperity with our help? We don’t know how to do that in America. But we’ve sent in troops and destroyed a country’s government. Now we can’t leave until we fix what we started. The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, but the cost of getting rid of him is extremely high and growing each day. How much longer will it be before Iraq is able to govern itself? No one can answer that question either.

President Bush thought the worst that could happen in America happened on September 11, 2001 and that terrorists are the worst threat the U.S. faces. He forgot all about Mother Nature and the far greater power She wields. He set FEMA up to manage emergencies from a terrorist perspective. How wrong can one president go in two terms in office? There were a significant number of strong hurricanes throughout the years 2000-2005. There are still people living in FEMA trailers in Florida from Hurricane Charlie from back in 2004.

The 2nd Bush Administration and FEMA will go down in shame in history, and rightfully so.

There is a Presidential election coming at the end of this year (2008). Senator Hillary Clinton came to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast very soon after Katrina, before Hurricane Rita and spoke to the unnecessary suffering and massive devastation. Senator John McCain was here in April 2008 saying “never again”. Where was he right after the storm? Senator Barak Obama hasn’t been down here at all to my knowledge. I still don’t know who I’m voting for, but I know that Senator Clinton cared enough to come and offer help right away.

I know that in spite of the government debacle, there were individual people and small organizations who went in and helped anyway, who brought what food, water and supplies they could and gave them to the people they could reach during this week of hell in New Orleans. There were survivors in New Orleans who helped a great deal even though they were suffering themselves. The local National Guard troops also did whatever they could to ease the suffering with no support from their chain of command for several days. These people are the real heroes.

The volunteers who came and who keep coming with money and supplies to rebuild the Gulf Coast are some more of the real heroes and the people to whom we owe a great deal of gratitude and appreciation. If you’re a volunteer reading this, thank you. We can’t rebuild and thrive again without you. To hell with the government. Our fellow Americans are who have come and will continue to come and help make us whole again.

See more pictures in the Hurricane Katrina Picture Book by Jeffery Morgan

Read Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City
by Jed Horne.

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Posted on June 24th, 2008 by joubess
Filed under: Stories, Videos | 4 Comments »

This ABC news footage is very short and brings up the urban legend that the Lower 9th Ward levee was blown up to save richer neighborhoods. Before I present the video I want to present some facts to keep in mind while watching it. It’s named the “forbidden video” but it should be named the “how urban legends get started” video.

People often don’t comprehend that the strongest forces in the world belong to nature. People don’t have a real feel for the amount of energy of the water held back by the levees. They don’t have a real feel for the amount of energy of a raging hurricane. The forces involved are astronomical.

The forces the levees were built to withstand are extremely high as well, even though the levees failed after Katrina. There are still unanswered questions about exactly how all the engineering failures occurred, but one question is easy to answer. The levees were not blown up. The banging noises people heard were from the levees breaking as the structures gave way.

Let’s do a comparison of the energy released by a hurricane and the energy released by the first U.S. atomic bombs:

“Little Boy”, a Uranium-235 fission bomb, was dropped on Hiroshima and yielded the equivalent of 12 -15 kilotons of TNT.

“Fat Man”, a Plutonium-239 fission bomb, was dropped on Nagasaki and yielded the equivalent of 20 - 22 kilotons of TNT.

A hurricane on average yields the equivalent of 12,000,000 (12 million) kilotons of TNT per day.

That means it would take 800,000 “Little Boy” bombs or 545,455 “Fat Man” bombs to equal the amount of energy produced by a hurricane in one day!

Let’s do a few more comparisons to give everyone a really good picture. The rate of energy released by a hurricane in one day is also equivalent to:

70 times the world energy consumption of humans

200 times the world-wide electrical generating capacity

Exploding a 10-megaton TNT-equivalent nuclear bomb every 20 minutes (there are 1,000 kilotons in one megaton of TNT)

There is no way even a well-placed bundle of dynamite could do the kind of damage the New Orleans levees sustained. The video presented next contains an urban legend of legendary proportions.

Video posted on YouTube by chokes01.

See more pictures in the Hurricane Katrina Picture Book by Jeffery Morgan

Read Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City by Jed Horne.

References:
Wikipedia on Tropical Cyclones
Wikipedia on Nuclear Weapons Yield

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Posted on May 10th, 2008 by joubess
Filed under: Science, Videos | 2 Comments »

This is what it’s like to be in a strong hurricane in an area where there’s a lot of storm surge.

The Vaccarellas stayed in their home in Meraux, LA, in St. Bernard Parish (county) east south east of New Orleans. The eye of Katrina came ashore just a few miles west of this location. St. Bernard Parish was one of the most severely devastated areas because it was just east of the eye of the storm and you can see in the video that two-story houses were submerged up to their roofs in storm surge water. It looks to be 25-30 feet of storm surge.

People reported that the water came into their houses and went from the floor to the roof in about 3-5 minutes. This is why we keep axes in the attic. If you have to evacuate in a hurry to the attic, you have to be able to chop a hole to get out and onto the roof so you can be rescued. If you’re trapped in the attic you could drown from rising water or suffocate from lack of ventilation.

Video taken by Vaccarella Family during/after Hurricane Katrina and posted by askwestley on YouTube.

See more pictures in the Hurricane Katrina Picture Book by Jeffery Morgan

Read Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City by Jed Horne.

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Posted on May 7th, 2008 by joubess
Filed under: Videos | No Comments »

This slideshow was posted on YouTube by Tara3121.

This is a video to shed some light and encouragement during one of the greatest natural disasters we have ever witnessed. Music by American Idol finalist and gospel recording artist George Huff featuring “Hold onto love”.

More than two years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas; all many people still have to hold onto is love and hope.

Thank you, Volunteers. You are making the difference in rebuilding lives and communities.

See more pictures in the Hurricane Katrina Picture Book by Jeffery Morgan

Read Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City by Jed Horne.

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Posted on January 19th, 2008 by joubess
Filed under: Slideshows | No Comments »

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity were quite silent about building in disaster-prone areas in California after the wildfires while they were extremely negatively vocal about it after Hurricane Katrina.

It’s all in the spin

Louisianians, Mississippians and Alabamans were frequently told by said assholes on their radio shows that we should have known better than to build in flood-prone areas and that New Orleans needed cleaning up anyway. I heard them say such things with my own two ears several times over the past 2 years, and I have stopped listening to their shows entirely. If this is what compassionate conservatism is I must be a flaming, bleeding-heart, enabling liberal. They’re long on conservative and extremely short on compassion, unless the definition of compassion has changed recently.

These two talking heads can’t seem to wrap their pea-brains around the fact that some Americans are very poor and that not everybody can just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. What’s worse is they have tens of thousand of other Americans buying it. It’s easy to pull yourself up when you have millions of dollars and tens of thousands of people praising your every word and worshiping the ground upon which you walk. Most of their listeners are either in a similar boat or jumping boats quickly to get in their boat.

Some are more equal than others

Hannity and Limbaugh often quote “I worked my way to where I am today”. Well, they had a head start over southern blacks. They went to good schools and graduated from college.

Their ancestors weren’t slaves and their white complexions protected them from racial hatred and discrimination. Their ancestors came to this country by choice. Many southern black people’s ancestors came to this country in chains against their will.

Not only were they not discriminated against, they actually had/have quite an advantage because they are white males in a time when being a white male is still a great advantage. Even with the decades of laws and programs to assist minorities and women to become equal to white men, we’re still not equal. Just look at our paychecks if you don’t believe me.

Rush and Sean, you’ve lost one listener. I hope more people with real compassion will also stop supporting you two cold-hearted jerks.

See more pictures in the Hurricane Katrina Picture Book by Jeffery Morgan

Read Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City by Jed Horne.

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Posted on December 25th, 2007 by joubess
Filed under: Stories | No Comments »