Saturday, September 3

Katrina Fallout: The Goat Commission, testing the limits of America's federalism, FEMA's Catch-22 and other frightening factoids

Katrina turned up many crucial interlocked situations, all of which point to complex issues that Americans have long put off dealing with in a systematic fashion. So the storm and immediate aftermath are just the beginning.

John Batchelor dedicated his entire Friday show to discussing various aspects of the Katrina disaster. The discussions included much sound advice from experts. His show is not archived but the website posts articles relating to the discussion segments. My comments about three segments:

For those who are unfamiliar with the name, John Timoney is the Miami, Florida chief of police. He's had tremendous experience dealing with looting in hurricane conditions.

Dr. Henry Miller stressed that a huge health threat from the floodwaters trapped in New Orleans is from Hepatitis A, B and C; also, from tetanus.

Charles Gasparino's discussion about Louisiana's credit rating (with regard to issuing bonds) is based on his article for Newsweek, which is linked on the Batchelor website.

"Red River" might have been engaging in wishful thinking when he observed that in years past Louisiana could have issued bonds to pay for reinforcing the levees. (See yesterday's post.) In any case, during the 90s, at least, Louisiana was intent on paying down half their debt.

Several jaw-dropping factoids revealed on Friday's NOW (PBS television) segment on the Louisiana levees and the flooding threat to New Orleans. The transcript is not yet up on the PBS website but they have transcripts from earlier years on the disappearing wetlands and the threat this poses to Louisiana and the nation's economy. Fascinating and very troubling reading.

One factoid from the NOW show: The New Orleans pumps were not built to pump out floodwater and it's silt and other gunk. They were built to pump out rain water. So of course several if not all pumps would fail very quickly in serious flooding.

The Goat Commission
It's a good bet that a commission will be formed to investigate the botched handling of the evacuation and relief efforts in New Orleans. From discussions on Friday Talking Head shows, here are the current Top Ten candidates for scapegoat:

1. Bush (The buck always stops with the president.)

2. Bush (He created Department of Homeland Security, which reportedly took away FEMA's authority to oversee planning.)

3. Bush-Pentagon (Deploying Guardsmen with critical skills to Iraq.)

4. FEMA.

6. Mayor Nagin of New Orleans.

7. The sick, elderly and poor for not levitating themselves out of New Orleans ahead of the storm.

8. Department of Homeland Security.

9. Everybody except the Coast Guard.

10. Bush.

So far, it looks as if Governor Kathleen Blanco's grandmotherly routine has gotten her off the hook, except for inclusion in a generic condemnation of everyone concerned except the Coast Guard, which did their job heroically and well.

And interestingly, the Congress has not yet come in for much criticism. However, in his thoughtful essay today about fixing blame, Dave Schuler mentions almost in passing:
The Army Corps of Engineers has had primary reponsibility by statute for flood control on the Mississippi since the 1930’s IIRC. Congress funds the Corps, directs its operations, and provides oversight. The Chief Executive and the military administers the Corps and provides day-to-day direction. Neither the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, the Reagan administration, nor the Carter administration (and so on) nor any of the Congresses -- some dominated by Democrats some by Republicans -- saw fit to correct the problems with the defense of New Orleans against the water.
From Friday's Inside Washington panel show (just moved to PBS TV): Charles Krauthammer, when it was his turn to name the goat, said with a chuckle that we could blame it on America's Founding Fathers or at least on federalism.

His point was that we really don't have a central government so it's very hard to muster highly coordinated interstate responses to a variety of problems.

I am in profound agreement with his observation. The question is how we're going to solve the root problem, which is a hideous jumble of individual state regulations.

Charles mentioned in another context that to his understanding Louisiana does not have a provision in their constitution for invoking martial law. If he is right, that would explain why the New Orleans "mandatory" evacuation order had no teeth.

In any case it seems the Louisiana constitution gives the governor enough powers that Blanco could have invoked martial law although it might have required an emergency session of the legislature.

That situation is small chips next to other ones Katrina has dredged up. Consider another stunning fact from the NOW segment:

New Orleans faced potentially as much danger from the flooding set off by a Category 3 storm as from 4 or 5 hurricane.

Reason: The barrier islands and marshlands are disappearing so fast that now even the storm surge from a Category 3 could have breached the levees. The strength of the waves has remained the same, but now there is less between them and the levees.

This situation is only deepening. Essentially, levees are increasingly under pressure to hold off the entire force of an ocean. Before, thousands of miles of barrier islands and wetlands acted as a buffer between the levees and the Gulf waters. The buffer is now greatly weakened and it's continuing to weaken at a great pace. So conceivably within a decade or so the storm surge from even a Category 2 hurricane would batter holes in the levees or top them.

Given the importance of the region to the rest of the US, this situation has to be dealt with. It's not an individual state matter. A lot of situations like that exist now. So we are testing the limits of federalism.

Catch-22
FEMA can't evacuate private hospitals, only public ones. So if staff and patients are still trapped in New Orleans and located in a private hospital, they have to find other means to evacuate or wait until FEMA cuts through a lot of red tape.

That story and this one from Inside Washington Friday discussion:

Al Gore tried to use his influence and money to get FEMA to evacuate a doctor and some critically ill patients from a private hospital; he even had the plane on standby. FEMA wouldn't authorize without a "special number," which could only be obtained through a lot of red tape.

As to why critically ill hospital patients were not evacuated ahead of the storm, it will be interesting to hear the explanation from Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco.

Newt Gingrich has suggested that Bush appoint Rudy Giuliani to oversee the entire relief effort. Best idea I've heard from Newt in a long time. New York's former mayor has proven experience at overseeing a massive, highly complex relief effort involving many different agencies at the city, state and federal levels. Such experience is greatly needed because Katrina's devastating swath in Louisiana and Mississippi has created a bureaucratic nightmare.

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