Kathleen Blanco, Ray Nagin, and a look at Blanco's first year as Governor of Louisiana

[2004] The only time she drew any attention that morning came in House Committee Room 1, where Wayne Parent, a Louisiana State University political science professor, was expounding on his new book, Inside the Carnival: Unmasking Louisiana Politics. [...] Someone asked Parent about Louisiana's history of political shenanigans.

"All of the oil and gas money in the 20th century allowed for a political culture that could breed corruption," he said. "It wasn't the people's money. It seemed like Texaco's and Exxon's money. We don't have that money anymore. We can't afford to be corrupt anymore."

Afterward, Blanco went up to Parent. "It's an interesting theory," she said. "But I'd like to think it had something to do with people in place over the past nine years. A thief will steal no matter how much money there is." [...]

"It's so frustrating," she said. "I'm trying to stop the bleeding. We lost the oil industry, everybody's now in Houston. New Orleans has little or no corporate presence. I'm determined to recapture what we lost. I'm trying to create an economy that generates the tax dollars to get us past the crisis that we have year after year. One option is to start passing taxes. Who in the heck wants to accomplish that?"(1)

"Pundita, I'm sure both Nagin and Blanco are decent people in their own right. There's no way either of them would intentionally hurt citizens. But [their] feud explains why there wasn't any communication and coordination in the critical days and hours before and during the crisis."

Those observations from a reader who passed along old gossip in Louisiana that Ray Nagin's backing of Blanco's Republican rival for the governor's seat, Bobby Jindal, greatly angered Kathleen Blanco and caused her to signal the start of a feud. In theory she might have had good reason to dislike Nagin: he was a Republican who only switched to the Democrat camp just prior to launching his run for mayor.

My reply was that given the well-established knowledge that a hurricane striking New Orleans would be catastrophic, whatever feud that might have existed would have taken a back seat in the days running up to Katrina's landfall on the Gulf coast.

In truth Governor Blanco did not make her decisions in a vacuum; she had a legislature to answer to. That she might have buckled to pressure or conversely overridden pressure from within the legislative body about how to respond to Katrina's threat remains to be explored.

And the towering fact is that Blanco's decisions in the critical hours did not only affect Nagin's Orleans parish; they also affected nearby parishes, over which he had no control.

However, Blanco's feud might have played a role in Nagin's failure to combat crime in New Orleans -- a situation that was to have tragic consequences in Katrina's wake. Long before Nagin's tenure New Orleans had been awash in crime -- and to such extent that reportedly major hotels routinely warned tourists not to venture outside the French Quarter and a very few other locales in the city. Crime went big-time during the past decade, with TOCs (transnational organized crime) syndicates staging turf wars against the local gangs.(2)

I interject that Americans outside Louisiana should keep all that in mind, before leaping to conclusions while listening to horror stories of fleeing New Orleans residents blocked from entering neighboring towns in the storm's wake, or met with distrust in other areas of Louisiana.

Many American blacks saw this decidedly unneighborly treatment as a sign of white racial prejudice against Americans of African slave heritage. The fact that racism, and bigotry of all kinds, have not been completely purged from American society should not be confused with the crime issue in this case.

Concerns about racism in the context of Katrina's onslaught ignore the obvious: Louisiana has a large black population. Blacks and whites alike across Louisiana were very much aware of the huge crime problem in New Orleans and justifiably worried that local police forces would be no match for a sudden influx of armed, organized and very dangerous criminals.

To help you conceive of the scope of crime in New Orleans, reportedly the police force could not fill enough slots without accepting candidates with criminal records and without expunging criminal records. Reportedly 7,000 hospital jobs in New Orleans went begging because the hospitals had rules against accepting workers with criminal records and who could not pass a test to screen for use of illicit drugs.

Behind the cutsey-poo mask that New Orleans put on for the tourist world, the Big Easy was Crime, Inc.(3) Only the large presence of battle-hardened US troops with federal power behind them has put a clamp on the street crime -- a type of crime that is only the tip of the iceberg, and which intersects with entrenched corruption in Louisiana government.

Fighting the level and scope of crime represented in New Orelans would have required help from the state government. Yet Kathleen Blanco's first year in office saw her greatly focused on scaring up money for education improvements, drumming up business, and embroiled in a battle with the owner of a football team.

So, given the amount of money the federal government plans to pour into Louisiana in Katrina's wake, I thought it might be helpful to take a look at the two central characters in the unfolding fiscal drama. First we'll visit Wikipedia for orientation:

Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (born December 15, 1942 in New Iberia, Louisiana) [...] On November 15, 2003, she was elected Governor of Louisiana, defeating Republican opponent Bobby Jindal in a run-off election by a margin of 52% to 48%, becoming the first woman to hold the office.

Kathleen Blanco is a member of the Democratic Party. She was formerly Louisiana's lieutenant governor, having served two terms in that office, starting 1996. Prior to that, she was on the Public Service Commission and was a state legislator.

She graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now known as the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, in 1964.

During her time as lieutenant governor, Blanco focused on developing the state's tourism industry. Her efforts led to Franco Fête, a statewide celebration of 300 years of French influence in Louisiana in 1999. The festivities drew a large amount of tourists, especially from France and Canada.

Blanco also coordinated another large tourism success -- the state's celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase in 2003. Blanco was the perfect person for this task, utilizing and showcasing her own French-Acadian Cajun ancestry.

On 11 January of 2004 she took the oath of office in both English and French, succeeding Murphy J. Foster, Jr. as Governor of Louisiana.

A major focus of Governor Blanco's time in office has been the future of the New Orleans Saints, one of two major sports franchises in the state of Louisiana. At one time or another, Governor Blanco has proposed the construction of a new stadium for the team, a renovation of the Louisiana Superdome, and has implied that the state cannot afford to retain the team. This has led to an ongoing impasse between Governor Blanco and Saints owner Tom Benson.

In the spring of 2005, Benson halted negotiations between the team and the state until after the 2005 NFL season is over. While Governor Blanco would certainly like to resolve this issue and remain focused on issues such as education, there is little doubt that the outcome of this debate will play a major role in Louisiana's future economic development. It will also affect Blanco's chances for re-election in 2007.

Here I must interrupt the Wikipedia writer to present a somewhat different description of the issue:

In her first year, Blanco has won high marks for forcing Saints owner Tom Benson to withdraw his demand that the state build him a new stadium and for challenging his back-up demand, that the state continue paying him more than $25 million a year to stay in New Orleans and pay more than $150 million to renovate the Superdome.[1]

To continue with Wikipedia's account:

Blanco has traveled more than her predecessor, Mike Foster, to seek economic development for the state. She has visited Nova Scotia, and in December 2004, visited Cuba to boost trade with the state. On her controversial visit to Cuba, she met with Cuban President Fidel Castro. As of 2005 Governor Blanco will also be visiting Asia (primarily Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) in the near future. She has been accused of junket[sic].

I think the author means 'junketing,' a practice whereby politicians receive nice vacations and related perks in exchange for putting in an appearance at function.

Pundita very much doubts a visit to Cuba and meeting with Castro could be considered a junket. Blanco was playing hardball -- and not only to scare up trade; she was going head-on with the Bush administration.

Now we'll turn to Wikipedia's biography of Clarence Ray Nagin Jr.

[Born] June 11, 1956 in New Orleans, Louisiana) is properly the Mayor of Orleans Parish but is more commonly referred to as the Mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana, as the Parish coexists with the city. He was elected in May 2002, succeeding Marc Morial. [...]

Before his election, Nagin was a member of the Republican Party and had little political experience; he was a vice president and general manager at Cox Communications, a cable communications company and subsidiary of Cox Enterprises.

Nagin did give contributions periodically to candidates, including President George W. Bush and former Republican U.S. Representative Billy Tauzin in 1999 and 2000, as well as to Democratic U.S. Senators John Breaux and J. Bennett Johnston earlier in the decade.

Days before filing for the New Orleans Mayoral race in February 2002, Nagin switched his party registration to the Democratic Party. Shortly before the primary election, an endorsement praising Nagin as a reformer by Gambit Magazine gave him crucial momentum that would carry through for the primary election and runoff.[4]

In the first round of the crowded mayoral election in February 2002, Nagin received first place with 29% of the vote, against such opponents as Police Chief Richard Pennington, State Senator Paulette Irons, City Councilman Troy Carter and others. In the runoff with Pennington in May 2002, Nagin won with 59% of the vote. His campaign was largely self-financed.

Shortly after taking office, Nagin launched an anti-corruption campaign within city government, which included crackdowns on the city's Taxicab Bureau and Utilities Department.

Nagin also made a controversial endorsement of current Republican U.S. Representative Bobby Jindal in the 2003 Louisiana Gubernatorial Runoff over current Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco, and only reluctantly endorsed U.S. Senator John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential race.

Nagin received a B.S. degree in accounting from Tuskegee University in 1978 and an M.B.A. degree from Tulane University in 1994. [...]

With that orientation behind us, it's time to take a closer look at Governor Blanco. Writing for Gambit Weekly a seasoned Louisiana journalist, Tyler Bridges, provides an in-depth look at the governor and her first year in office in his November 2004 cover story, Blanco's Bid.

Tyler Bridges is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and a former reporter for New Orleans' The Times-Picayune newspaper. He's also the author of The Rise of David Duke and Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Edwin Edwards. (5) At least at the time of the article's publication Bridges was a Miami Herald reporter based in Lima, Peru.

Finally, for readers here and abroad who can't get enough background on Louisiana politics, here is Gambit Weekly's archive of links to journalist Clarence DuBos' writings going back to 2001; just scrolling down the list of titles is an education.

1) Quotes from Blanco's Bid; see above for link to the article.

2) 2001 Louisiana Drug Threat Assessment, published by US Department of Justice.

3) Gambit Weekly 12/2003. Note: A reader has raised a question about one of the facts cited in the commentary: "New Orleans is on track to lead all 71 major cities in per capita homicides -- for the second year in a row." He wrote that he was under the impression that New Orleans was second in homicides in 2003.

Good catch, Dan! However, the discrepancy might be due to different types of statistical analysis, so for now I will allow both views to stand. Even if the fact is in error the commentary does a good job of conveying the seriousness of crime in New Orleans, which was my reason for including the reference.

4) Gambit Weekly's endorsement of Ray Nagin for mayor. And I thought I was the only one who likened Louisiana's politics to those in a Third World country!

5) Part of a review of Bridge's book from Publisher's Weekly:

When the bayou state's oil boom bottomed out in the 1980s, Edwards decided gambling could revive the economy, but the cash flow through casinos, riverboats and video poker led to corruption, greedy promoters and "snake-oil salesmen in expensive suits," as the Times-Picayune put it. Following FBI wiretaps and raids, the 72-year-old Edwards was indicted and convicted on charges of extortion from riverboat casino companies.

Numerous quotes re-create remembered dialogue in this fascinating and fluid narrative reconstruction. Describing Louisiana as the country's most "exotic" state, Bridges does a formidable job of capturing its allure (as well as that of the former governor), but his easy flair is supported by high journalistic standards, including his meticulous attention to details and his exhaustive research which, all in all, make for an irresistible read.

The Katrina disaster report Congress is reading

Members of Congress have been studying a report titled New Orleans Levees and Floodwalls: Hurricane Damage Protection. We should also study the report because it will influence the congressional commission to investigate the federal response to Katrina -- whenever Democrat and Republican representatives finish staking out territory and get around to forming a commission.

The six-page report was issued September 6 by "CRS," which is so well known on the Hill that the author didn't bother to spell out the acronym. The report simply states, "CRS Report to Congress."

So before turning to the report, here's an introduction to the history and mission of The Congressional Research Service, which is the public policy research arm of the United States Congress.

As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS works exclusively and directly for Members of Congress, their Committees and staff on a confidential, nonpartisan basis. From the CRS website:

History and Mission
Congress created CRS in order to have its own source of nonpartisan, objective analysis and research on all legislative issues. Indeed, the sole mission of CRS is to serve the United States Congress. CRS has been carrying out this mission since 1914, when it was first established as the Legislative Reference Service. Renamed the Congressional Research Service by the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, CRS is committed to providing the Congress, throughout the legislative process, comprehensive and reliable analysis, research and information services that are timely, objective, nonpartisan, and confidential, thereby contributing to an informed national legislature.

Because CRS does not make their reports directly available to the public, we can thank the Federation of American Scientists for sharing their copy.

Because federal projects boil down to the bottom line, the CRS report goes into some detail about relevant projects underway prior to the storm. The author also summarizes available knowledge at the time of writing about the major damage to the flood control system:

Challenge of New Orleans Hurricane Protection.
Protecting New Orleans has been an increasingly difficult task. First, the city has become increasingly vulnerable. Land in the city has subsided; barrier islands and wetlands buffering coastal Louisiana have been disappearing; and sea levels have risen.

According to the Corps [of Engineers]...the breaches were at floodwalls along three canals. The 17th Street Canal breach was at a levee-floodwall combination; the breach reached 450 feet in length. According to the Corps, “it’s believed that the force of the water overtopped the floodwall and scoured the structure from behind and then moved the levee wall horizontally.”

The Industrial Canal floodwall had two breaches -- a 100-foot breach, and a 500-foot breach. The London Street floodwall had a 300-foot breach. The Corps continues to work on repairing the breaches.

The Corps noted that other levees and floodwalls were being monitored for potential failure. One reason to fear additional failures is that levees and floodwalls are not designed for extended retention of water, but are instead designed for short-term storm events. [...]

After all these years Pundita still refuses to give away the ending of The Usual Suspects; this by way of explaining that I hate to be a spoilsport. I'll make an exception in this case and leap to the last paragraph:

In what is the understatement of the century thus far, the author notes that "Hurricane Katrina has resulted in some questioning why a Category 4 or 5 hurricane storm damage system was not already in place for New Orleans, and whether it should be part of the rebuilding effort," then settles down to plopping out the brass tacks:

Others are supporting more emphasis on restoration of coastal wetlands to improve storm damage protection. Others are raising concerns about the extent of rebuilding that should take place considering the city’s hurricane and flooding vulnerability. They are concerned that higher levees and floodwalls may provide a false sense of security and continued risk of catastrophic failure. Decisions on what type and level of hurricane protection to provide New Orleans and other coastal areas in the future, as well as factors contributing to Katrina’s damages (Category 3 infrastructure, and levee and floodwall construction, maintenance, and appropriations) likely will be the subject of congressional oversight.

Now how do those last sentences read when translated into plain English? Pundita's blindfolded shot in the dark:

The lowest-lying sections of New Orleans have not been fit for human habitation for well-nigh a century, if ever. So we might as well bow to Nature and deepen and widen the NOLA port to make it fit for containerized shipping, and greatly expand the airport and feeder roads to handle increased cargo traffic from a containerized port. Take that, Singapore!

CRS Report to Congress in PDF. Or copy and past the URL:

http://www.fas.org/
sgp/crs/misc/RS22238.pdf

Do Governor Blanco's legal advisors have feathers for brains?

On Tuesday, President George W. Bush reversed course by announcing to the nation that to "the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

On Wednesday, Governor Kathleen Blanco also reversed course: "At the state level, we must take a careful look at what went wrong and make sure it never happens again. The buck stops here, and as your governor, I take full responsibility,'' Blanco told lawmakers in a special meeting of the Louisiana Legislature.

Here Pundita must also reverse course. Privately I have been clinging to the straw that Kathleen Blanco is not in full possession of her faculties. Yet on the assumption that the governor of a US state has a team of legal advisors, common sense precludes me from hoping the entire team is barking mad.

So I find myself inexorably maneuvered into wondering whether the most simple explanation isn't the likeliest: perhaps Governor Blanco and her advisors assume that Americans outside Louisiana's seat of government have the puzzle-solving capacity of a two-year old.

How else to explain why legal advisors would allow Blanco to suddenly take responsibility for what is negligence verging on a capital crime? In these days of the Internet, how long did they think it would take, before the central issue bubbled to the surface?

In the case of the New Orleans levees, which were only built to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, there are still too many variables to categorically assert that winds and flooding from a Category 4 hurricane would automatically breach or even 'top' them. Whereas in the case of the New Orleans floodwalls, it is beyond argument that they were unable to withstand a Category 4.

On the distinction turns the level of negligence indicated by Governor Blanco's failure to fully evacuate the lowest-lying sections of New Orleans ahead of Katrina's strike. That is the central issue.

There have been statements by Blanco and other Louisiana officials to the effect that no one could have predicted the catastrophic flooding that overtook New Orleans. However, the statements cannot apply to the floodwalls.

So before continuing let's be clear on the difference between a levee and a floodwall and exactly what failed in the hurricane:

Levees are broad, earthen structures, while floodwalls are concrete and steel walls, built atop a levee or in place of a levee. Floodwalls are often used in urban areas because they require less land than levees. The floodwalls in New Orleans generally are 6 to 10 feet tall and a foot wide at the top and two feet wide at the base, and they stand on earthen foundations. (1)

Yesterday I reported that Jim Huey, President Orleans Levee Board, told NBC's Investigative Unit: "As far as the overall flood protection system, it's intact, it's there today, it worked. In 239 miles of levees, 152 floodgates, and canals throughout this entire city, there was only two areas [of failure]."

Mr Huey neglected to mention the floodwalls. Yet as early as August 31, WWL-TV (CBS affiliate, New Orleans) reported that the floodwalls had failed. Here, part of the transcript:

Answers from Army Corps of Engineers on unwatering New Orleans
11:28 PM CDT on Tuesday, August 30, 2005
[...] Q.2. Why did the levees fail?

A.2. What failed were actually floodwalls, not levees. This was caused by overtopping which caused scouring, or an eating away of the earthen support, which then basically undermined the wall.

These walls and levees were designed to withstand a fast moving category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a strong 4 at landfall, and conditions exceeded the design.

Q.3. Why only Category 3 protection?

A.3. That is what we were authorized to do.

On September 4, 60 Minutes picked up on the critical distinction between the floodwalls and levees protecting New Orleans. From the transcript (published September 5 on CBS website):

Scott Pelley: "We learned something that surprised us here. Despite what you’ve been hearing, not one of New Orleans’ levees failed. All of the massive earthen levees survived. The failure was in flood walls like this one on the 17th Street canal. The flood walls are miles long, but only two feet thick."

Al Naomi is the man who manages them for the Army Corps of Engineers. He was probably the first to understand what was about to happen to New Orleans.

"Flood walls are unforgiving. They're either there or they're not," Naomi says.

The walls were designed in 1965 to withstand a Category 3 storm. Category 4 Katrina pushed her surge over the top.

"It just was overtopped and the water started pouring over the support for the flood wall, failed and it just pushed out and toppled over and that was it," Naomi explains.

Naomi was at a loss when asked how this engineering disaster could have been prevented.

"You see there was not sufficient money or time to do anything about this," Naomi says. "If someone had said, 'O.K. here is a billion dollars, stop this failure from happening for a Category 4,' it couldn't have been done in time. I’d of had to start 20 years ago to where I feel today I would've been safe from a Category 4 storm like Katrina.

"Sure it should have been done 20 years ago but what can we do about that? You have to recognize before we had Category 3 protection we didn't have anything."

The question is whether a billion dollars and 20 years would be required to upgrade the floodwalls in just the lowest-lying and thus, most at-risk residential section of New Orleans and environs. This would include the Lower Ninth Ward, where many of the city's poorest lived. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Trapped between three cascades of [flood] water were the neighborhoods of the Lower Ninth Ward, where nearly 14,000 African-Americans lived, a third of whom owned no vehicle and a third of whom had physical disabilities, according to U.S. Census data.(2)

The same WSJ article asks:

Why were the levees lining the Industrial Canal and parts of Lake Pontchartrain to the east lower than in other parts of the city? [...]

How high the wave reached hasn't been determined, but the surge poured over 15-foot high levees along the Industrial Canal, which were several feet lower than others in the central areas of the city. [...]

But let's set aside for now the technical question of how much it would have cost, and how long it would have taken, to reinforce only the most vulnerable areas of the NOLA flood protection system.

With regard to the matter at hand, the key sentence in the 60 Minutes interview is "Flood walls are unforgiving." Unlike the levees on which they perch, their construction and material provide virtually no latitude for inexact assumptions.

What we know for certain at this point, and what was clearly known to anyone managing the flood protection system or reading reports on such, is that it wouldn't have taken a Category 4 hurricane to overwhelm the flood control system protecting the lowest-lying area of New Orleans.

A slow-moving Category 3 or even lower, of the kind represented by Ophelia, would greatly weaken the levees and likely overwhelm the floodwall defenses, which are several feet lower than ones in other parts of the city.

Then it would depend on the pumping system, which reportedly was not designed to pump out floodwater; it was designed to pump rain water. And in the event of a widescale electrical outage, the pumping station would likely fail and could take days if not weeks to be fully functional in the event of catastrophic flooding.

Against all this is the inarguable fact: the Governor of the State of Louisiana did not ensure that the lowest-lying regions of New Orleans and neighboring districts were fully evacuated ahead of Katrina's landfall.

So I cannot find reason, other than a belated attack of conscience, for Kathleen Blanco to publicly assert this late in the day that she takes full responsibility.

1) CRS report.

2) Anatomy of a Flood: 3 Deadly Waves
September 7, 2005; Page A1, Wall Street Journal.

Orleans Levee Board: NBC Investigative Unit picks up story

Report featured on NBC Nightly News tonight(1):

Is the Orleans Levee Board doing its job?
Critics allege corruption, charge the board with wasteful spending

By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit
NBC News
Updated: 6:26 p.m. ET Sept. 14, 2005

MSNBC TRANSCRIPT
"The unveiling of the Mardi Gras Fountain was celebrated this year in typical New Orleans style. The cost of $2.4 million was paid by the Orleans Levee Board, the state agency whose main job is to protect the levees surrounding New Orleans -- the same levees that failed after Katrina hit.

"They misspent the money," says Billy Nungesser, a former top Republican official who was briefly president of the Levee Board. "Any dollar they wasted was a dollar that could have went in the levees."

Nungesser says he lost his job because he targeted wasteful spending.

"A cesspool of politics, that’s all it was," says Nungesser. "[Its purpose was to] provide jobs for people."

In fact, NBC News has uncovered a pattern of what critics call questionable spending practices by the Levee Board -- a board which, at one point, was accused by a state inspector general of "a long-standing and continuing disregard of the public interest."

Beyond the fountain, there's the $15 million spent on two overpasses that helped gamblers get to Bally's riverboat casino. Critics tried and failed to put some of that money into flood protection.

There was also $45,000 for private investigators to dig up dirt on radio host and board critic Robert Namer.

"They hired a private eye for nine months to find something to make me look wacko, to make me look crazy or bad." says Namer. "They couldn’t find anything."

Namer sued and the board then spent another $45,000 to settle.

Critics charge, for years, the board has paid more attention to marinas, gambling and business than to maintaining the levees. As an example: of 11 construction projects now on the board's Web site, only two are related to flood control.[2]

"I assure you," says Levee Board President Jim Huey, "that you will find that all of our money was appropriately expended."

Huey says money for the levees comes from a different account than money for business activities and that part of the board’s job is providing recreational opportunities.

And despite the catastrophic flooding, Huey says, "As far as the overall flood protection system, it's intact, it's there today, it worked. In 239 miles of levees, 152 floodgates, and canals throughout this entire city, there was only two areas."

But those two critical areas were major canals and their collapse contributed to hundreds of deaths and widespread destruction.

Lisa Myers is NBC’s senior investigative correspondent."

Pundita notes that Jim Huey, the levee board's president, doesn't mention that the levees are now so weakened they can be breached by even a tropical storm surge. And according to an earlier reports, the levees were breached in at least seven places; the two breaches mentioned by Huey were only the major ones.

Nor does Mr. Huey volunteer the information that in addition to levees, floodgates and canals there are floodwalls. It is on the question of the New Orleans floodwalls that much hangs.

For more on the Orleans Levee Board story, see Pundita post The Banana Republic of Louisiana and the French (Canadian) Connection.

(1) Link to MSNBC transcript and map of New Orleans levees, canals and flood breaches.

(2) Link to Orleans Levee Board Bids and Proposals

House of cards

Reviewing a reader's question about corruption in Peru's construction industry reminds Pundita that two states famous for corruption, Mississippi and Louisiana, are undertaking a massive reconstruction effort. So now is good time to bone up on a report about corruption in the construction industry and guidelines for averting the worst abuse of public monies....

September 2
"Dear Pundita:
I've lived in Latin America on and off for years. I've often wondered how US aid money gets from taxpayers' pockets to corrupt officials' private bank accounts. A flow chart would be fascinating (and heartbreaking).

The stealing going on must be tremendous. There is virtually no investment in infrastructure in most Latin American cities. Public works is a complete nil. I agree with one of your basic assessments (my paraphrase): it is not that rich people -- say, in Latin America -- are particularly bad or twisted, but they do not tax themselves.

Latin America does not have an IRS-type agency that has the Fear of God as a backstop. Basically, nobody pays taxes at any significant level. Or at minimum, there doesn't seem to be any honest collection and distribution system.

In any case, would you be willing to explain just how corruption works? Take for example some Minister -- say the Director, Ministerio de Vivienda of Peru. The public monies coming in cannot be all that large. Foreign aid on the other hand represents a respectable pile of cash.

How does our director go about getting his divvy of US foreign aid?
Doug in Seattle"

Dear Doug:
Actually the rich are soaked in countries without a fair tax code and enforced collection system; the taxation on the rich is whatever the traffic will bear. However, the taxation is under the table, as I pointed out in Paw a Revenuer's at the door....

In other words, there is always de facto taxation in effect. If you have to pay bribes to get anything done that's a tax albeit an illegal one.

The biggest problem with this kind of taxation is that the revenue, if it can be called that, is not spent on works that benefit the public as a whole. That sets in motion a vicious cycle. The roads or electricity will be somewhat reliable in a rich neighborhood, thanks to bribes, but because other regions or sections of a city go without, the rich end up spending exorbitant monies to do business or simply function outside their own neighborhood.

That much human stupidity is hysterically funny when looked at from the longest view. More than once Pundita has had to tell a bald-faced lie, in order to explain away her peals of laughter while listening to the complaints of the rich in countries that run on bribes.

"Bah! Nothing works in this crazy country! Our entire shipment rotted on the docks again because the roads washed out! I can't tell you how much in bribes it cost to get things moving again!"

If you see someone who is otherwise sane whacking himself in the shins with a tire iron then complaining, "I can't walk," at first you feel sympathy. But once you've heard, "This is my tradition" a few times it's hard not to think of The Three Stooges.

The good news: that much stupidity is severely punished in a globalized trade system unless there is an external force propping it up. Enter foreign aid and development loans.

So I'm going to throw you a curve ball. Even if the aid agency or development bank could somehow prevent corruption, which often can't be done without draconian, expensive oversight measures, you're not even out of the gate.

The truth is that as long as many governments have a way to stave off a realistic, enforced tax code, they'll take it. That's because the wealthy faction that put them in power throws a hissy fit when confronted with an iron-clad tax code and collection enforcement.

The World Bank has learned this lesson the hard way and USAID is catching up.(1) That's why they've gone gaga over remittances. The reasoning is that if they have to contribute to tax delinquency, at least work it so they're not the only ones. Encourage chump immigrants to send their hard-earned money over and above taxes back home.

In this way, the chumps continue to support the home administration's habit of blowing revenue to keep the rich from overthrowing them. Then we're right back at shin whacking.

Here you might ask why the wealthiest nations don't simply shut off development loans and aid except for outright disasters. The answer is that aid and development banking are mega-industries.

Even if you only gave aid in the form of outright cash, you'd be helping to support the banking sector because you have to collect, transfer and disburse the cash. However, most aid is in the form of goods or service, which helps support contractors and subcontractors.

Same principle applies to development banks. See Development Banks under the Pundita Selected Essays on the sidebar.

The industry of being helpful to the poor supports so many livelihoods that if you somehow managed the impossible and shut it down, it would spring up again virtually overnight.

The development loan industry even supports the industry that's grown up to invest in helping the poorest in the poorest nations, if you can feature that. There are funds you can invest in that specialize in providing micro loans to the world's poorest entrepreneurs. You don't get a big return, of course, but if you want to invest in 'socially responsible' projects, an industry has arisen to tend to that desire.

I hasten to add that investing in micro-projects, which can be as small as a few hundred dollars, is a good idea in principle. And in practice micro-investing brings genuine and generally corruption-free assistance to the neediest and hardest working.

Yet as soon as the poor expand beyond a tiny neighborhood business, they run into the same problems the rich run into in their country. The electricity fails during business hours, the roads are washed out, the garbage isn't picked up, and so on down the long list. So what do the fledgling entrepreneurs end up doing? They pay more bribe money.

How to break the vicious cycle? The US government has hit on the idea of promoting genuine democracy and election reforms in the poorest countries. The reasoning is that if more people in the poorest countries are brought into the voting and governing process, collective wisdom will break self-destructive traditions.

As to how aid money gets from Americans' bank accounts into the hands of corrupt officials, it depends on how the aid transfer is set up and the form it takes. Money can be skimmed or outright stolen by a virtually infinite variety of means. Close oversight, which costs a lot of money, is the only way to insure that most of the aid won't wend its way into the wrong hands.

With regard to corruption in public construction works, you will find the 2005 report by Transparency International of interest. You might want to first read their press release, which is cheerily titled, "A world built on bribes?"

Or go directly to Global Corruption Report 2005, which focuses on corruption in construction and post-conflict reconstruction. And ahem the guidelines and warnings apply as well to post-disaster reconstruction.

1) USAID Anticorruption Strategy 2005 (PDF).

The Banana Republic of Louisiana and the French (Canadian) Connection

When Paul Wolfowitz took over the presidency of the World Bank he identified corruption as a major obstacle to development in the poorest countries and observed that, "Corruption is the biggest threat to democracy since communism."

As investigative reporters unravel the tangled skein of events leading to the New Orleans horror, it is coming clear that Wolfowitz's comments might apply as much to Louisiana as a developing country.

It is public knowledge that failure to upgrade the New Orleans levee and floodwall system was a key factor in the flooding that overtook the city during Katrina's onslaught. Less known is that the local agency responsible for maintaining the flood protection system misallocated funds.

Last Wednesday Charles Gasparino, a writer for NEWSWEEK, reported to John Batchelor's radio audience that the Orleans Parish Levee Board spent revenue on casino development and other tourist attractions instead of financing projects to upgrade and repair the New Orleans levee system.

In an article for NEWSWEEK Gasparino reported that the levee board did not work with the federal government to issue municipal bonds to upgrade the levees. The bonds would be needed to make up the tax shortfall when paying for major work on the levees.

Former Louisiana congressman Bob Livingston, who represented the suburbs surrounding New Orleans for two decades, told NEWSWEEK that regional rivalries were greatly to blame in preventing federal money going to fix the levees.

The Orleans Parish Levee Board might have had a more serious reason for any unwillingness to deal with the feds: a US congressman had called for an investigation of corrupt practices at the board.

Writing for Canada Free Press, David Hawkins, Foundation Scholar at Cambridge University and Judi McLeod, award-winning journalist and founding editor of Canada Free Press, observe:

Rampant public corruption was doing big business in New Orleans long before Hurricane Katrina ever hit. What then Congressman, now Senator David Vitter [R-LA] calls "corrupt, good old boy" practices were apparent in the New Orleans Levee Board just one year before the collapse of regional levees, emergency communications and government services brought the Big Easy to the brink of anarchy.

In fact, Senator David Vitter requested a federal investigation into improper practices of a number of public utilities, including the New Orleans Levee Board, and a new Task Force was to have been initiated in the Baton Rouge office, beginning in July 2004.

As Vice-Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee, which holds jurisdiction over the Justice Department, Vitter met with and actively encouraged Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller to establish an additional Public Corruption Task Force in their Louisiana offices.

With the focus on kickbacks and bogus contractors, who was heeding experts calling for a levee disaster from a major hurricane?

The same article raises the question of a connection between corruption in Louisiana government and a French Canadian organization with ties to the UN Oil for Food scandal.

Of all the coastal regions struck by Katrina, only the State of Louisiana is in the clutches of La Francophonie. La Francophonie's detractors […] describe it as a Montreal-based, racketeering influenced and corrupt organization (RICO) with outlandish claims to represent the interests of the French-speaking world. [...] Purporting to "defend Louisiana's unique linguistic heritage", it was the Conseil pour le developpement du francais en Louisiane (CODOFIL) that brought the state into the La Francophonie tent.

"CODOFIL represents Louisiana at the signing of accords with the foreign governments: these accords dictate the nature of the relationship between Louisiana and the foreign governments." [...]

La Francophonie was funded and re-structured [...] by insiders of CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) at a 1986 meeting in Paris. [...]

Management of La Francophonie is Canadian, CIDA is the main source of funds granted by Canada to Francophonie cooperation programs and managed by La Francophonie Affairs Division. Canadian Heritage, Industry Canada (information technologies), Justice Canada (democracy, legal cooperation) and Environment Canada (particularly management of the Energy and Environment Institute of la Francophonie [...])

CIDA was founded in 1968 by the ex-president of Power Corp. of Montreal, Maurice Strong [...] In the 1990s, Strong went on to become the godfather of the $trillion Kyoto trading scandal, with the financial clout to execute his dreams for La Francophonie.

Strong's plan appears to have played out as follows: Montreal insiders of Power Corp. and La Francophonie have controlling positions in global commodity markets through oil companies (TotalFinaElf) and water companies (Suez). Former UN Secretary-General Bhoutros Bhoutros Ghali serves as La Francophonie Secretary-General. Both Strong and Ghali are under investigation by American authorities for alleged ties to the UN oil-for-food scandal.

It might take considerable digging to learn whether there is a direct connection between Maurice Strong's ventures and Louisiana-backed enterprises; seeking a connection between Strong and inappropriate expenditures by the Orleans Parish Levee Board could be even more difficult.

However, the connection between Strong, CIDA, La Francophonie and Louisiana points up the interlocked, globalized aspect of corruption in today's world. A 2004 report to the National Press Club, Public Corruption in the United States, underscores that Louisiana is by no means the only US state with entrenched government corruption.

Yet the corruption in Louisiana represents a special case because of the vital importance of the Port of New Orleans and the fact that New Orleans is dangerously below sea level and continuing to sink.

It has long been established that the city could not withstand water surges from a Category 4 hurricane. Yet the Orleans Parish Levee Board, and those holding power in Baton Rogue, didn't even bother to put on a good show of trying to raise funds to upgrade the levees and floodwalls protecting New Orleans.

And those holding power in Louisiana didn't even bother to make a show of evacuating residents most at risk from a city they knew would be a disaster zone in the wake of a powerful hurricane.

It is almost beyond comprehension that here, in America, in the 21st Century, we have a state in our midst that remarkably evokes Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe.

How, then, is US Ambassador John Bolton supposed to stand before the United Nations and demand more accountability from governments in other countries? How, then, is Paul Wolfowitz to urge the poorest nations to fight corruption in their government?

For more on the Orleans Parish Levee Board, Dan at Riehl World View provides a few nuggets, including the stunning news that the board announced they would close an evacuation route to New Orleans on the Saturday before Katrina struck.

Ironically enough, it doesn't require an engineering degree, or any type of experience with a levee to serve on the levee board in New Orleans. It says only that: they serve at his (the Governor's) pleasure. It's my understanding that the levee board is often primarily composed of business people. [...]

Let us hope that someone with engineering experience, or at least the mayor, persuaded the board to keep the evacuation route open longer.

Governor Blanco's letter to President Bush

See today's earlier post (Hidden in plain sight) for full text of Governor Blanco's Friday, August 26 declaration of a state of emergency.

Issued by Louisiana Governor's Office
"Press Release
Date: 8/27/2005 [Saturday]
Contact:Denise Bottcher or Roderick Hawkins at 225-342-9037

Governor Blanco asks President to Declare an Emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina

BATON ROUGE—Today Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco forwarded a letter to President Bush requesting that he declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina. The full text of the letter follows:

August 27, 2005
The President
The White House
Washington, D. C.

Through:
Regional Director
FEMA Region VI
800 North Loop 288
Denton, Texas 76209

Dear Mr. President:

Under the provisions of Section 501 (a) of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 5121-5206 (Stafford Act), and implemented by 44 CFR § 206.35, I request that you declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period beginning August 26, 2005, and continuing. The affected areas are all the southeastern parishes including the New Orleans Metropolitan area and the mid state Interstate I-49 corridor and northern parishes along the I-20 corridor that are accepting the thousands of citizens evacuating from the areas expecting to be flooded as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

In response to the situation I have taken appropriate action under State law and directed the execution of the State Emergency Plan on August 26, 2005 in accordance with Section 501 (a) of the Stafford Act. A State of Emergency has been issued for the State in order to support the evacuations of the coastal areas in accordance with our State Evacuation Plan and the remainder of the state to support the State Special Needs and Sheltering Plan.

Pursuant to 44 CFR § 206.35, I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster. I am specifically requesting emergency protective measures, direct Federal Assistance, Individual and Household Program (IHP) assistance, Special Needs Program assistance, and debris removal.

Preliminary estimates of the types and amount of emergency assistance needed under the Stafford Act, and emergency assistance from certain Federal agencies under other statutory authorities are tabulated in Enclosure A.

The following information is furnished on the nature and amount of State and local resources that have been or will be used to alleviate the conditions of this emergency:

• Department of Social Services (DSS): Opening (3) Special Need Shelters (SNS) and establishing (3) on Standby.

• Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH): Opening (3) Shelters and establishing (3) on Standby.

• Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (OHSEP): Providing generators and support staff for SNS and Public Shelters.

• Louisiana State Police (LSP): Providing support for the phased evacuation of the coastal areas.

• Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (WLF): Supporting the evacuation of the affected population and preparing for Search and Rescue Missions.

• Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD): Coordinating traffic flow and management of the evacuations routes with local officials and the State of Mississippi.

The following information is furnished on efforts and resources of other Federal agencies, which have been or will be used in responding to this incident:

• FEMA ERT-A Team en-route.

I certify that for this emergency, the State and local governments will assume all applicable non-Federal share of costs required by the Stafford Act.

I request Direct Federal assistance for work and services to save lives and protect property.

(a) List any reasons State and local government cannot perform or contract for performance, (if applicable).

(b) Specify the type of assistance requested.

In accordance with 44 CFR § 206.208, the State of Louisiana agrees that it will, with respect to Direct Federal assistance:

1. Provide without cost to the United States all lands, easement, and rights-of-ways necessary to accomplish the approved work.

2. Hold and save the United States free from damages due to the requested work, and shall indemnify the Federal Government against any claims arising from such work;

3. Provide reimbursement to FEMA for the non-Federal share of the cost of such work in accordance with the provisions of the FEMA-State Agreement; and

4. Assist the performing Federal agency in all support and local jurisdictional matters.

In addition, I anticipate the need for debris removal, which poses an immediate threat to lives, public health, and safety.

Pursuant to Sections 502 and 407 of the Stafford Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 5192 & 5173, the State agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the United States of America for any claims arising from the removal of debris or wreckage for this disaster. The State agrees that debris removal from public and private property will not occur until the landowner signs an unconditional authorization for the removal of debris.

I have designated Mr. Art Jones as the State Coordinating Officer for this request. He will work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in damage assessments and may provide further information or justification on my behalf.

Sincerely,
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco
Governor
Enclosure

ENCLOSURE A TO EMERGENCY REQUEST

Estimated requirements for other Federal agency programs:

• Department of Social Services (DSS): Opening (3) Special Need Shelters (SNS) and establishing (3) on Standby. Costs estimated at $500,000 per week for each in operation.

• Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH): Opening (3) Shelters and establishing (3) on Standby. Costs estimated at $500,000 per week for each in operation.

• Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (OHSEP): Providing generators and support staff for SNS and Public Shelters. Costs estimated to range from $250,000-$500,000 to support (6) Shelter generator operations.

• Louisiana State Police (LSP): Costs to support evacuations - $300,000 for a non-direct landfall.

• Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (WLF): Costs to support evacuations - $200,000 for a non-direct landfall.

• Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD): Costs to support evacuations - $2,000,000 for a non-direct landfall.

Totals: $ 9,000,000

Estimated Requirements for assistance under the Stafford Act:

Coordination: $0
Technical and advisory assistance: $0
Debris removal: $0
Emergency protective measures: $ 9,000,000
Individuals and Households Program (IHP): $0
Distribution of emergency supplies: $0
Other (specify): $0

Totals: $ 9,000,000
Grand Total: $ 9,000,000"

http://www.gov.state.la.us/
Press_Release_detail.asp?id=976

Hidden in plain sight

10:00 AM Update
A reader (thanks, Ben!)informed me that my memory was in error; Governor Blanco declared a state of emergency on Friday the 26th. I've included the declaration at the end of this post.
* * * * *
Michael Wright: There was a Keystone Cops aspect to the Katrina responses. People in charge couldn’t think as fast as the storm and the events afterward. There was ineptness across the board.

Pundita: Ineptness is the least of it. There were definitely breakdowns in communication between agencies. Those need to be examined and fixed straightaway because hurricane season is still with us. And sure there was ineptness of varying degrees; there always are, in an emergency of such complexity and scope.

However, you don’t want to lose sight of the big question, which is whether there is something about the square footage in the lowest part of New Orleans that conceivably makes it worth committing mass murder for. Or negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter, or however you want to term it.

MW: [Laughing] You’re still after Blanco!

P: What I don’t understand is why a grand jury isn’t after her yet. This is the screwiest thing I’ve ever seen in the US, at least in modern times. It’s happening in plain sight, which is what makes it screwy. I think Louisiana has a different code of law than the rest of the country; I wonder if that explains it. I think they go by the Napoleonic Code -- the French influence.

MW: If there’s anything to what you’re saying, it’s not really in plain sight. It’s a needle in a haystack of information. There’s so much going on, so many facts drifting around. I think it’s going to take time for people to sort things out, especially if they do other things with their life in addition to study news about Katrina.

P: What’s to sort out? Nothing has been done in underhanded fashion; it’s all been done in the open. That’s why Bush has been looking green around the gills. By the time he could think the unthinkable it was too late. He was sucker punched; you can always tell because he starts cracking tasteless jokes.

It’s her looks; Americans associate this kind of thing with someone who looks like Stalin, not someone whose picture could be on a box of cake mix.

MW: Then I think most people are having the same problem you say Bush had because it looks like a straight-up case of incompetence to me.

P: You’re overlooking key facts. At the time she needed to make the critical calls [Friday], Blanco [was informed] a Category 5 hurricane [could be] heading for Nola [New Orleans]. She knew that the entire city had to be evacuated. And the lowest-lying regions of the city definitely had to be evacuated or it was guaranteed there would be virtually no survivors in the Lower Ninth Ward and the entire eastern industrial section.

That was...before the storm was downgraded to a Cat 4 and of course before the storm veered slightly to the east, which was just before landfall.

She had to make the decision then to ask for federalized troops, which Bush offered, to help clear the city, including the hospitals and prison. She had to make the decision, then, how many state National Guards to deploy to start the evacuation process. She had to make the decision, then, whether to institute a state of emergency. [Correction: Blanco declared a state of emergency on Friday, the 26th.]

Blanco understood all this very clearly; she had the exact nature of the threat explained to her in front of witnesses in a video conferencing call from the head of the national hurricane agency.

Her attorneys can try to grasp at a straw by saying she was unaware that the levees, floodwalls and pumping system for Nola couldn’t handle anything greater than a Cat 3 storm surge. But that’s why a grand jury investigation is needed. They need to subpoena testimony, meeting minutes, computer records, and so on.

MW: Okay, surely she knew.

P: “Surely” doesn’t cut it in this situation. The evidence needs to be collected and entered into record. Of course they must have known -- Blanco and her emergency response team. They must have seen the engineering reports. But “must” won’t take you to criminal indictments

MW: You’re really envisioning criminal charges?

P: To think in any other terms evades the seriousness of the matter. The idea is to discover whether criminal charges need to be brought. No more federal monies, except for disaster relief for the victims, should be given to the state of Louisiana until there has been a grand jury inquiry. No clowning around with a congressional commission or naming an independent investigator. This isn’t Whitewater.

I’ll give you this much. The seriousness is not yet evident to many in the general public because the major television media have not yet run with the information in the Wall Street Journal report and the previous day’s ABC TV report. [About the flood in the Lower Ninth Ward and the eastern industrial section; see September 8 Pundita post.]

Those two reports jibe and ABC has footage of the flooding in that section. Oddly, ABC World News did not continue to run with that story after Sunday. Maybe a cable channel picked up on it but in that event it would be strange if NBC and CBS hadn’t jumped into the act.

So I don’t think most people understand yet that the lowest area of the city was under threat not just from the storm surge from one lake overflowing but from two, in addition to the surge from the Mississippi River in that part of the city.

To crib a quote from Titanic, it was a mathematical certainty; in a Cat 5 or Cat 4, there would be catastrophic flooding in that region of the city. The flooding just happened faster in this case, or it’s theorized that it happened faster, because a barge was thrown by the storm surge into a floodwall or levy portion.

The theory is that the barge tore loose a section of the floodwall or levee and water flooded into the breach although it’s still just a theory. The barge could have been tossed by the waves into a breach that was already there.

Yet even without that factor, the floodwalls would have been entirely topped and battered by the surge from 175 mph winds, which you could expect with a Cat 5. As it was, I seem to recall the Katrina winds were clocked at 145 mph.

MW: You’re saying the eastern industrial section is what to be looking at.

P: That’s where the story is but the TV cameras for the most part were trained on other parts of the city. You’re looking at a maze of facts that have been thrown at you for two weeks. The way out of the maze is to keep remembering there could not be survivors in the lowest level of the city in the event of a direct hit from a Cat 5.

How could there be survivors? You need to calculate how low the lowest-lying section of New Orleans is. It’s said that Nola is about 6 feet below sea level. That’s an average. It’s anywhere from about 1 to 10 feet below sea level. That means the lowest level, where the Lower Ninth Ward and the eastern industrial section are located, is 10 feet below sea level.

Then you have to add as much as 2 extra feet under sea level, depending on the time of day – the tide.

Now add the water surge generated by a Category 5 storm, which would immediately knock out the floodwalls, which if I recall are only 2 feet thick.

MW: Then you could be looking at 30 or 40 feet of water rushing in.

P: Not “could.” Certain. And remember you have to add the rain level in addition to the storm surge. In a direct hit from a Cat 5, the rain would have dumped as much as a half-foot or more within minutes.

Then there is the hurricane-force wind. So you’re in your house and you see the water flooding in at least a foot a minute. You run to the attic to get out through the roof. What do you do then, with 175 mph winds blowing? Try to cling to the chimney? Jump down into the floodwaters? Navigate ten foot waves or higher with 175 mph wind blowing?

Now, if you were living in the Carolinas or Florida you might be able to hold out if you clung to something high enough, if it’s a fast moving storm. That’s because the floodwaters have someplace to go --

MW: But the waters are trapped in New Orleans.

P: Sure. The city is a like a bowl set below sea level. Only the levees, floodwalls and pumps keep it from filling even when there’s no storm. Once the water gets in, it can’t get out except through leeching, evaporation or pumps. Realize the city floods from just one inch of rain.

In a Category 4 or 5 hurricane the pumps would be guaranteed to break down almost immediately. Yet even with all of them working at full tilt, they could not keep up with the walls of muddy, gunky water coming into the bowl during the height of the storm. And remember the pumps were constructed to deal with rainwater, not gunk water, which is why it’s slow going now.

And again keep in mind that the lowest section of the city is under threat not from one lake flooding but from two in addition to the Mississippi River flooding at that low elevation. They get pounded from three angles.

All this was surely known to the disaster planning team that advised Blanco; they had the engineering reports. But again, “surely” doesn’t cut it.

MW: I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the implications.

P: There’s more, much more. So to think in terms of a white paper or a 9/11-style commission report and recommendations is ridiculous. You’re not going to collect the evidence needed to get a clear picture without threat of criminal indictment. The general idea is to get the Louisiana state legislature and various members of Blanco’s administration singing like a bird in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

MW: I’m not keeping up with you. You’re saying there’s something larger than assigning blame for the lack of upgrades to the levees and the chaos that followed the storm. That much I get --

P: Assuming Blanco is in possession of her faculties, she knew on the Saturday before the storm struck that she risked impeachment, at the least, by not ordering a full evacuation of the lowest-lying portion of the city and taking every means open to her to ensure the order was enforced.

MW: But she could pass the buck to [Nola mayor] Nagin, which might have happened anyway.

P: If she thinks Nagin would take the fall for her, truly she isn’t in possession of her faculties. He’s already sent up smoke signals. And that’s just in the wake of a Cat 4 strike. Money says he would be talking a blue streak already -- provided he survived the flood -- in the event of a Cat 5. But in that event, I think he would have evacuated himself on Sunday.

MW: Provided he could do so at that point.

P: Got that right.

MW: That’s a hard way to discover how expendable you are.

P: Not only Nagin, the police and the firemen. By Sunday they had learned just how expendable they were. At least the head of the harbor patrol knew how to take being expendable; the entire patrol was ordered to leave their posts and get themselves and their families out of Nola.

MW: You have to turn everything around and ask what the motive would be; why Blanco would take such a risk.

P: You can’t ask the question at this point; you can have suspicions about motive but first you have to establish whether a crime has been committed before you can talk about motive. First enter into evidence that a Cat 5 storm would overwhelm Nola’s defenses. Then that Blanco knew this. Then that she knew all her options. And that she had certain knowledge that a Cat 5 storm coming near or hitting directly at Nola would mean no survivors in the city’s lowest part without enforced evacuation.

MW: That’s a lot of things to establish.

P: Sure. And you have a snowball’s chance of establishing them without threat of criminal indictment. But if you don’t go that route, attempt to establish all that, you’ll never get the chance to ask “Why?”

MW: None of that will happen. The Democrats and the Republicans have pretty much equal reasons for wanting to get past the situation as fast as possible. And if it would be serious enough to go to an indictment the Democrats would not want to hear about a sucker punch. They would ask why Bush didn’t override her. They’re already asking that question, without even bringing up the hint of a criminal investigation.

P: The legalities about the point seem hazy; I’m not sure they are clearly established. That’s another reason to investigate whether a crime was committed. If so, that would give weight to legislation that gives unequivocal guidelines about the conditions under which the president can override a state governor.

You’re dead in the water, if you’ll pardon the expression, if you think in political terms. I’m talking about investigating whether a crime has been committed. If politics tries to get in the way, it will fall back hard on both political parties.

MW: Politics is already in the way; you’ve said that yourself. It’s already impeding a congressional investigation.

You’ve always been a ‘square at a time’ person. You don’t like to move to square two until you’ve resolved things at the first square. That makes for a thorough investigator but society doesn’t operate that way and political life certainly doesn’t.

In a sense, you want to hold Blanco accountable for something that didn’t come to pass. Maybe the analogy in criminal justice would be intention to commit a crime. You’re going back to the event as it originally unfolded but it didn’t end up the way it started. The Category 5 storm did not hit New Orleans. There was not a direct hit; the storm veered slightly.

So I think most people are willing to breathe a sigh of relief that the worst didn’t happen, then turn their attention to helping the survivors and wrangling over whether to rebuild New Orleans. You’re still back at that Saturday, going over it like a crime scene. It’s pig disease all over again.

P: Pig illness. Remember it hasn’t been established whether it is a disease.

MW: [Laughing] That just proves my point! You demonstrated that it wasn’t necessarily a disease but after the tenth day or so of inching through essays about pig disease -- illness -- I started wondering what it would take to pry you away from the topic. Only an American city under water, I found out!

At least there was a foreign policy angle to the pig disease story, no matter how tenuous. Now what are you going to do with your readers, if you spend the next six months trying to nail Blanco?

P: What makes you assume there’s not a foreign policy angle to what happened in Louisiana?

MW: I give up!

P: Don’t give up. Stay tuned.
* * * * *
"Press Release
Date: 8/26/2005
[...]
GOVERNOR BLANCO DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY

BATON ROUGE, LA--Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco today issued Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005, declaring a state of emergency for the state Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina poses an imminent threat, carrying severe storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause flooding and damage to private property and public facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the citizens of the state of Louisiana The state of emergency extends from Friday, August 26, 2005, through Sunday, September 25, 2005, unless terminated sooner.

The full text of Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005 is as follows:

WHEREAS, the Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act, R.S. 29:721, et seq., confers upon the governor of the state of Louisiana emergency powers to deal with emergencies and disasters, including those caused by fire, flood, earthquake or other natural or man-made causes, in order to ensure that preparations of this state will be adequate to deal with such emergencies or disasters and to preserve the lives and property of the citizens of the state of Louisiana;

WHEREAS, when the governor finds a disaster or emergency has occurred, or the threat thereof is imminent, R.S. 29:724(B)(1) empowers her to declare the state of disaster or emergency by executive order or proclamation, or both; and

WHEREAS, On August 26, 2005, Hurricane Katrina poses an imminent threat to the state of Louisiana, carrying severe storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause flooding and damage to private property and public facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the citizens of Louisiana;

NOW THEREFORE I, KATHLEEN BABINEAUX BLANCO,
Governor of the state of Louisiana, by virtue of the authority vested by the Constitution and laws of the state of Louisiana, do hereby order and direct as follows:

SECTION 1: Pursuant to the Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act, R.S. 29:721, et seq., a state of emergency is declared to exist in the state of Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina poses an imminent threat, carrying severe storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause flooding and damage to private property and public facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the citizens of the state of Louisiana;

SECTION 2: The state of Louisiana's emergency response and recovery program is activated under the command of the director of the state office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness to prepare for and provide emergency support services and/or to minimize the effects of the storm's damage.

SECTION 3: The state of emergency extends from Friday, August 26, 2005, through Sunday, September 25, 2005, unless terminated sooner."

http://www.gov.state.la.us/
Press_Release_detail.asp?id=973

The Deuce

Thanks to Liz for sending me this diary of one man's odyssey in his 'deuce' vehicle to help survivors in Biloxi and New Orleans. He meets with armed looters and everything else you can imagine. And thanks to the author for his heroism and for getting his experiences down in writing. It begins:

Background:
My name is John and I live in Central Texas. I have served in three different military components totaling 25 years of service and I am recording this story for posterity. All opinions are the author's and if you disagree with them, that's really too bad.

Katrina Day 1: Monday, 29 August 2005
Watching the news today was horrific. Hurricane Katrina has devastated an area larger than the United Kingdom. When I heard that Biloxi was savaged, I immediately thought about my best friend Tracy.

Tracy was a Master Sergeant with me in the US Air Force and we were stationed together for several years. Friendships formed in the military are far stronger than anything a civilian can experience. They usually last until the grave. I won't go into the psychology of it, it is just so. You usually bond to one particular individual, and Tracy was it. He was my Best Buddy, and that is spelt with two capital B's.

I know this man well enough to know that he was not going to evacuate, he would tough it out. Now I was worried sick about Tracy and his family. I tried calling him for several hours but gave up realizing that communication would be non-existent. [..]

Visit Lonestar MVPA to read about the epic journey, or cut and paste this URL:

http://lonestar-mvpa.org/events/2005/05_Katrina.htm

Bush calls for national day of prayer, Pundita calls for national day of thinking

Yesterday President George Bush declared Friday, September 16 a national day of prayer and remembrance for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. After hearing that the federal bill for Katrina's aftermath is predicted to head toward $200 billion, Pundita's first thought was to call for the final, nuclear measure: The Taco Bell Solution.

For those too lazy to use the Google search engine on this blog, that awful measure is to herd all concerned Washington players into one place, not allow them out until they have screwed their heads back on straight, and commandeer Taco Bell to deliver breakfast, lunch and dinner for however long it takes.

But not being a mean person by nature, and in light of the scope of the tragedy, I've downgraded to calling for a national day of thinking.

Just a few months ago, ahead of the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, contingents of columnists worked themselves into fits about corruption in African governments.

So we really need to stop and think, in a very graphic detailed way, about what the state and local governments of Louisiana and Mississippi can do with a huge windfall coming their way. Government in those US states have much in common with many governments in perpetually poor countries.

Corruption is just one factor to consider when spreading around hundreds of billions without draconian oversight. We just got through a transportation bill that was laden with so much pork it oinked. The question is how much pork would attach to a $200 billion spending spree.

I think Congress needs to realize that they could double or treble the spending and this would not stop questions about how a major American city got into the position it did. No amount of guilt money will halt the questions.

We also need to think about something called the future. Yesterday Scott McClellan passed along the White House argument that the yearly bill for Medicare is much larger than a "one time" payment for Katrina. The logic is that no matter what the bill the United States economy can absorb a once-in-a-lifetime whopping payment rather easily.

The logic assumes the rest of this hurricane season, flu season, next hurricane season, weather patterns signaling drought, tinder dry forests, faults in the earth, a major infrastructure system and America's enemies won't spring a surprise.

In short, there is nothing but hope backing the assumption that lightning won't strike twice. Perhaps that is why President Bush called for a national day of prayer: he saw the estimates of the one time bill for reconstruction and relief, and hopes there won't be a second time bill anytime soon.

But I think the most important thinking on a day reserved for thought should be in the area of community preparedness. Doug Duncan went a little over the top, but I don't think he was trying to score political points when he called for a review of Greater Washington DC's disaster planning in the wake of Katrina.

Two reminders from Katrina: hurricanes can zig on a dime and hit regions that never before experienced catastrophic flooding, and at virtually the same time devastate a large region. So even with the best federal assistance program, regions anywhere near a coastline should be prepared to fend for themselves for at least 72 hours without outside help.

Top Washington area elected officials conferred [September 8] by conference call, at the request of Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan, to begin re-evaluating and strengthening emergency plans in light of concerns about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf region. The conference call was organized by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG).

Duncan and the other area officials agreed to ask COG to help the region’s local governments, the State of Maryland, the Commonwealth of Virginia and key federal agencies re-evaluate the emergency coordination plans adopted since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

COG led its member governments in creating the Regional Emergency Coordination Plan (RECP) after the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. The plan fostered improved regional coordination during Hurricane Isabel and a major snowstorm in 2003, as well as during events like the president’s inauguration.

“Frankly, I was disappointed and concerned about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina,” Duncan said. “Federal law enforcement agencies were there for Montgomery County when we were dealing with the sniper incident and because we all worked together, we apprehended the two men responsible for those murders.

But if we can no longer count on quick assistance from FEMA and other agencies, we need to re-evaluate our plans,” Duncan said.

Here I must interrupt. Pundita went through Hurricane Isabel in this region. My memory is that there was much to be desired about emergency response and preparation.

There was more than a bit of chaos in this region in Isabel's wake because electrical failures knocked out some water pumping/treatment stations and certain areas were without electricity for several days. There was delay about getting bottled water distributed to people in need.

Also, there was unexpectedly heavy flooding in Alexandria and low lying regions of the District of Columbia -- nothing life threatening, but destructive to property in residential/storefront areas.

With regard to the serial snipers my memory is that it took a few days before what I recall was the FBI setting up phone tip lines. Even with that, the Feds and the local police missed crucial tips, which focused the search on a red herring trail: everyone was looking for a white van, which allowed the snipers to keep getting away despite their rather distinctive vehicle. To continue with The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments press release:

The officials voiced concerns about the speed and comprehensiveness of the federal response to the hurricane and stressed that while first response to emergencies is a top local priority, state and federal agencies must remain ready to aid local responders, especially when the local response is overwhelmed as it was in New Orleans.

“The National Capital Region has made great strides on emergency planning,” said Jay Fisette, Arlington County Board Chair, who also serves as vice-chair of the COG Board.

“We’ve addressed health, communication and transportation issues. We are as prepared for and capable of handling an emergency as any region in the country,” he added.

Duncan highlighted the outcomes of the conference call earlier today as he and other regional officials participated in the launch of the Washington area’s “Be Ready, Make a Plan” public readiness campaign. The campaign will include advertising and community events during September, National Preparedness Month, designed to encourage area citizens to make emergency plans with their families and in schools and workplaces. The campaign will target residents, community groups and businesses.*

I think that's all very good advice. In particular, neighbors should talk with neighbors about how they would go about banding together and pooling resources if the cavalry didn't arrive within a few hours after a disaster struck.

What I remember most about Isabel's wake in this region are the 'odd' horror stories:

Children happily splashing in polluted floodwaters in Alexandria and a reporter yelling at the parents to get the kids out of the water; the confused look on the parents' face at first then realization dawning.

A few people getting electrocuted because they touched wet outlets without realizing the electric had been turned back on.

A few people dying of carbon monoxide poisoning because they ran a generator in a small enclosed space.

In light of the horrors visited by Katrina such incidents seem almost small in the grand scheme. But many people in this region were caught short without enough potable water and food to last them a few days and by their lack of knowledge about what to do and not do when a bad storm strikes.

It doesn't take a huge amount of money to bridge such knowledge gaps; just a lot of patience, persistence and periodic repetition.

Aside from "Help!" the words I recall hearing most from Katrina survivors after the floodwaters rose: "I didn't know."

They went through a hard way to find out.

* http://www.mwcog.org/news/
press/detail.asp?NEWS_ID=160

Better go directly to Plan B

Even at this early stage, one inarguable fact towers above whatever blame might be attached to agencies and individual officials for the horror that engulfed New Orleans:

For decades, it was well known in Washington, in Louisiana, in every US capital where the state economy relied on the Port of New Orleans, and to every US business dependent on the port and every American interested in civil defense that the City of New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen.

So there can be no going back to normal in the wake of Katrina. Not until Americans, as a nation, face the implications of a vital American city wrecked because of decades of negligence.

At root the nightmare that arose in New Orleans is about the abandonment of long-term comprehensive planning in the United States. The tragedy played out in New Orleans removed arguments for long-term planning from the abstractions of economic and political theories and put them in concrete, simple terms. So now, everybody understands.

The neglect of long-range planning has been across the board: in education, jobs retraining, energy exploration, maintenance of critical infrastructures, land/water management, civil defense, the list goes on.

If the disaster that befell New Orleans teaches us nothing else, it teaches that. For it is plain to see there can be no repairing storm-damaged New Orleans and moving on. The city must be built anew and in such way to prevent the next hurricane season from leveling it again.

It is also plain that disaster assistance is not enough to mend many of the lives shattered in New Orleans. Many evacuees were on public assistance or working in dead-end jobs at the lowest end of the pay scale for the gambling and tourism industries. The lives must be built anew. For the American work force cannot hope to remain competitive in the globalized markets if entire regions of our country are on the dole or working as croupiers and waiters.

Many causes led this country to drift from long-range thinking; among them:

• The two-party system of politics, which became a literal industry serving its own needs at the expense of the national welfare.
  
  
• Pork barrel politics: localities elected officials not for their foresight and governance skills but for what they could do, short-term, for a business faction or voting bloc.
  
  
• Over-idealization of democratic principles: obsessive focus on the Right and Left to ramrod ideals about freedom into legislation at the expense of basic, critical national needs.
  
  
• Abuse of the concept of federalism, which transformed many US state governments into a virtual duchy.

Meanwhile, the American west warned they were running out of water. The American coastal regions warned they were losing precious land to the ocean. The Saudis warned that the price of oil would climb -- however slowly, and with fits and starts, but it would continue to go up and up over the decades.

Meanwhile, a car industry wedded to an interstate highway system and cheap oil, and a population in love with car transport, plugged their ears and built and bought gas-guzzlers. The two-car family became standard in many regions.

Meanwhile, the oldest and most important cities creaked from lack of repairs to bridges, tunnels and other critical public works. The country's electrical grid system became a duct-tape affair.

Meanwhile, a permanent American underclass arose, at a time when China and India and other hardscrabble nations cranked out engineering PhDs with state sponsorship.

The two-party political machine way of doing things began to creak and groan two decades ago under the pressures of the modern era. The machine is now broken. Any doubts on that score, consider the squabbling in Congress these past days about the makeup of the Goat Commission to fix blame for what happened to New Orleans -- the very commission Congress called for.

Face this: the aftermath of a hurricane is sweeping away an era in American politics. If the Congress does not confront the failure of long-term planning they will lose the American public. Then the Democrat and Republican parties will find themselves facing a third party candidate by 2008.

The candidate will not be Ralph Nader or a Green Party type -- one easily blocked by Democrat and GOP machines at the state level. It will be a candidate representing the tidal wave of public outrage. The American workforce is among the hardest working, if not the hardest working, in the world. And hands down, we are the busiest people in the world. We don't have time for verbal sleights of hand from elected officials.

The American people as a whole have facing-up to do as well. The outpouring of donations and volunteer help from millions of Americans in the wake of Katrina is filling the yawning gap created by incompetence at the federal, state and city levels. Yet quite simply this heartwarming show of kindness amounts to treble taxation.

Last week, as the horror in New Orleans unfolded before the television cameras, ABC gave the nation a respite by airing the screwball chopsocky comedy, Shanghai Nights. At one point his dizzy partner shows Jackie Chan a hastily sketched football-type diagram, replete with arrows and dots, for how to break into a heavily fortified castle.

“It’s the old Hail Mary play,” he explains. “Plan B is we dig a tunnel.”

Perhaps the greatest warning given by Katrina is that it’s time for Americans to focus more on long-range planning and leave the Hail Mary plays to the divine.

Yet none may call it mass murder

During the early stages of a catastrophic event, as with war, the first reports are often woefully incomplete or simply wrong. Yet from the beginning, something didn't stack about the reported pattern of flooding in New Orleans after Katrina, when measured against the dire predictions about tens of thousands of residents possibly drowned.

The Tuesday reports spoke of two and possibly more breaches in the levees that caused water levels inside the city to rise at the rate of one foot every half hour. Attention centered on the smaller breach at the 17th Street Canal. Reports about the larger breach, in the eastern industrial section, were sketchy.

Then, on Sunday, ABC Nightly News carried a report, "The Lower Ninth Ward," which spoke of a wall of water, 20 feet or higher, surging into the Ninth Ward and other areas of the eastern industrial section. There were anecdotal accounts of thousands drowned. The camera showed part of a wrecked barge that had seemingly sliced through part of a flood wall and/or levee.

From another Sunday television report -- CBS 60 Minutes -- the floodwalls were not high or thick enough to withstand a powerful storm surge.

Anyone caught in the surge in the eastern section would have drowned. Those who sought refuge in an attic -- tried climb above the flood -- would have baked to death if not rescued very quickly. The 90+ degree temperature outside would have put the temperature in attics at 150 degrees or higher.

Then, on Monday, a lengthy front page report in The Wall Street Journal started to put the pieces together. The details explain why failure to evacuate the lowest-lying sections of New Orleans ahead of Katrina would virtually guarantee a high death toll. Drowning would have been virtually instantaneous for thousands trapped in the eastern industrial section. Here is a part of the report:

Hurricane Force
Anatomy of a Flood: 3 Deadly Waves

Canal, 2 Lakes Swamped
Eastern New Orleans
As Storm Tore Through
Mr. Mullet's Fight to Survive
By JEFF D. OPDYKE, EVAN PEREZ and ANN CARRNS
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 7, 2005; Page A1

NEW ORLEANS -- On Aug. 29, as Hurricane Katrina brought chaos to this city, three massive waves of water poured largely unseen into the eastern section of town and neighboring St. Bernard Parish.

One surged west, off a churning Lake Borgne. Another came across from Lake Pontchartrain in the north. That sent a steel barge ramming through the Industrial Canal, a major shipping artery that cuts north to south through the city, possibly scything a breach that became 500 feet long, letting waters pour into nearby neighborhoods.

The waves inundated the mostly working-class eastern districts, home to 160,000 people. In some places, the water rose as fast as a foot per minute, survivors say.

Until now, the world's attention has focused on the levee system protecting the city's central districts, and on the near-anarchy in the storm's aftermath.

But a complete reckoning of the damage and death toll will likely focus on an entirely different event, hitherto overlooked: the devastating swamping of the eastern sections of New Orleans, hours before the central flooding began.

The final tallying of the dead across the city will be substantially dictated by how many residents of these neighborhoods got out alive. [...]

For the rest of the city, and the investigators piecing together the puzzle, the floods in eastern New Orleans suggest a more complicated explanation for the disaster, one that raises new questions about how it was devastated and what must be done to make it secure.

In particular: Why were the levees lining the Industrial Canal and parts of Lake Pontchartrain to the east lower than in other parts of the city? Should residents near Lake Borgne have been more clearly warned that the lake could rise so furiously?

Are the levees outside the city limits sufficient to protect parts of the city that few tourists ever visit? Should shipping companies be required to do a better job of securing barges and vessels?

[...] According to engineers, scientists, local officials and the accounts of nearly 90 survivors of Katrina interviewed in recent days, the first of the three waves swept from the north out of Lake Pontchartrain. How high the wave reached hasn't been determined, but the surge poured over 15-foot high levees along the Industrial Canal, which were several feet lower than others in the central areas of the city.

About the same time, a similar wave exploded without warning across Lake Borgne, which separates Lake Pontchartrain from the Gulf of Mexico. It filled the lake, engulfed its surrounding marshes, raced over levees and poured into eastern New Orleans.

As Lake Borgne swallowed those neighborhoods from the east, a separate catastrophic wave rose from the other side, possibly caused by the flying barge.

Trapped between three cascades of water were the neighborhoods of the Lower Ninth Ward, where nearly 14,000 African-Americans lived, a third of whom owned no vehicle and a third of whom had physical disabilities, according to U.S. Census data.

Next door, just outside the city limits, were the virtually all-white areas of St. Bernard Parish -- Arabi, Chalmette and Meraux -- home to more than 50,000 people as well as oil refineries, docks and a fishing boat in what seemed like every other yard.

Within a few hours of Katrina's arrival, those areas sat under as much as 15 feet of water, according to witnesses.

To the north, water poured through black and Vietnamese neighborhoods closer to Lake Pontchartrain, where another 96,000 people lived. [...]

A Crucial Waterway
On normal days, the 5½-mile-long Industrial Canal hums with barge and ship traffic, moving between a lock at the Mississippi River on the southern end of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain in the north. It is a crucial waterway for vessels carrying petroleum products, industrial chemicals and oil-field pipes because it connects the river to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, which in turn leads to the Gulf of Mexico.Beside the canal is the Lower Ninth Ward, which was originally a cypress swamp prone to flooding. In recent decades, its white residents largely left for neighboring St. Bernard Parish and other suburbs. A third of those who remain live below the poverty line.

The Industrial Canal has been the area's defining presence since it was built in the 1920s. Time and heavy use have taken a toll on the canal, now operated and maintained mostly by the federal government. Barges and ships were routinely delayed because of growing traffic levels and the lock was "literally falling apart at the hinges" in 1998, according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report, which called it an "antique" and recommended replacing it.

A $600 million lock-replacement project didn't get very far. Lower Ninth Ward residents complained about noise and launched a legal fight that bogged down the work.

The levees along the Industrial Canal's eastern side are supposed to stand at a height of 15 feet, according to the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Joseph Suhayda, a retired Louisiana State University coastal oceanographer, suspects the levees aren't actually that tall, partly due to sinking of the land beneath them. Mr. Suhayda now consults for a maker of flood-protection barriers. If he's right, that would mean the levees weren't high enough to handle even a Category 2 or 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Category 4.

The Corps of Engineers concedes some of its levees in the area "have settled and need to be raised to provide" the level of protection for which they were designed, according to a fact sheet on the Corps's Web site dated May 23, 2005. But federal budget shortfalls in fiscal 2005 and 2006 "will prevent the Corps from addressing these pressing needs.

"Hurricane Katrina's storm surge -- the wave of water pushed ahead of a hurricane by its furious winds -- raced across Lake Pontchartrain. As it did so, the canal became the delivery vehicle for the first wave that would destroy the Lower Ninth Ward. Just before the water began rising, a surge hit the mouth of the Industrial Canal. The Corps of Engineers says a lock operator reported seeing water from the lake pouring over 15-foot walls on each side of the canal. Corps officials believe the flood scoured away a portion of the flood wall near the northern end of the Lower Ninth Ward.Much worse was also to come.

As storms approach New Orleans, owners of ships, tugboats and freight barges that populate the city's port and waterways attempt to secure their craft. Barges -- typically about 200 feet long, 35 feet wide and capable of hauling three million pounds of cargo -- are lashed with cables and kept in position with tug boats, according to Edward Peterson, executive director of the Louisiana River Pilots Association. Removing the barges from the area entirely is impossible.

"There is nowhere to go," Mr. Peterson says.

As the hurricane rolled into New Orleans, scores of boats broke free or sank. In the Industrial Canal, the gush of water broke a barge from its moorings. It isn't known whose barge it was. The huge steel hull became a water-borne missile. It hurtled into the canal's eastern flood wall just north of the major street passing through the Lower Ninth Ward, leading officials to theorize that the errant barge triggered the 500-foot breach. Water poured into the neighborhood.

When the storm was over, the barge was resting inside the hole. "Based on what I know and what I saw, the Lower Ninth Ward, Chalmette, St. Bernard, their flooding was instantaneous," said Col. Rich Wagenaar of the Army Corps.

It didn't help that the Mississippi River, which runs along the southern border of these neighborhoods, rose 11 feet between Sunday and Monday mornings. Coastal experts say that could have worsened flooding by limiting the water's escape route.

As the water roaring out of the Industrial Canal turned the streets of eastern New Orleans into rivers, the same areas were hit from the other side by the storm surge coming off Lake Borgne. Engineers say the estimated 20-foot surge also appeared to overflow levees just north of St. Bernard Parish. [...]