World stunned as US struggles with Katrina

Let me rephrase my question so the slippery lawyer can't evade the question.

If the governor of New Orleans was a republican, would you support her as a member of your party?

BBB

Again, nimh, primary responsibility for disaster relief is on the state and local governments of this country. The federal government supports this effort in times of national emergencies .

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

Let me rephrase my question so the slippery lawyer can't evade the question. If the governor of New Orleans was a republican, would you support her as a member of your party?
BBB

If you were trying to phrase that question so a slippery lawyer couldn't evade it, you did a poor job. If the governor of New Orleans was a republican, what would the Mayor of Louisiana be?

I'll answer anyway, it doesn't matter to me what the governor's political affiliation is.

WASHINGTON - Baby formula from the Agriculture Department, communications equipment and medical teams from the Defense Department and generators, water and ice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency are among the assistance ready for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

As the Category 4 the storm surged ashore just east of New Orleans on Monday, FEMA had medical teams, rescue squads and groups prepared to supply food and water poised in a semicircle around the city, said agency Director Michael Brown.

Brown, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, said the evacuation of the city and the general emergency response were working as planned in an exercise a year ago. "I was impressed with the evacuation, once it was ordered it was very smooth," he said.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report from before September 11, 2001 detailed the three most likely catastrophic disasters that could happen in the United States: a terrorist attack in New York, a strong earthquake in San Francisco, and a hurricane strike in New Orleans. In 2002, New Orleans officials held the simulation of what would happen in a category 5 storm. Walter Maestri, the emergency coordinator of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans , recounted the outcome to PBS' NOW With Bill Moyers:

Maestri, September 2002: Well, when the exercise was completed it was evidence that we were going to lose a lot of people. We changed the name of the [simulated] storm from Delaney to K-Y-A-G-B... kiss your ass goodbye... because anybody who was here as that category five storm came across... was gone.

--by Matthew Barge

DANIEL ZWERDLING: The American Red Cross lists the worst natural disasters that might strike America. They worry about earthquakes in California, and tropical storms in Florida. But they say the biggest catastrophe could be a hurricane hitting New Orleans.

People have known for centuries that they picked a risky spot to build this city. In fact, some of the first French settlers wanted to abandon it.

The biggest river on the continent snakes around it. Most of the land here is below sea level. And every time people tried to expand the city, the Mississippi promptly flooded it.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Why did people stay here? I'm, it became obvious very, very quickly after the French came that this was a really lousy place to live.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Maestri says, imagine what happens if a hurricane like Andrew comes raging up from the Gulf:

WALTER MAESTRI: The hurricane is spinning counter-clockwise. It's been pushing in front of it water from the Gulf of Mexico for days. It's now got a wall of water in front of it some 30, 40 feet high. As it approaches the levies of the-- the-- that surround the city, it tops those levees. As the storm continues to pass over. Now Lake Ponchetrain, that water from Lake Ponchartrain is now pushed on to that - those population which has been fleeing from the western side and everybody's caught in the middle. The bowl now completely fills. And we've now got the entire community underwater some 20, 30 feet underwater. Everything is lost.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Remember the levees which the Army built, to hold smaller floods out of the bowl? Maestri says now those levees would doom the city. Because they'd trap the water in.

WALTER MAESTRI: It's going to look like a massive shipwreck. There's going to be-- there's going to be, you know-- everything that that the water has carried in is going to be there. Alligators, moccasins, you know every kind of rodent that you could think of.

All of your sewage treatment plants are under water. And of course the material is flowing free in the community. Disease becomes a distinct possibility now. The petrochemicals that are produced all up and down the Mississippi River --much of that has floated into this bowl. I mean this has become, you know, the biggest toxic waste dump in the world now. Is the city of New Orleans because of what has happened.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Federal officials say that nobody in America has confronted these conditions before. Not across an entire city. Not after an earthquake. Not after floods. Not even after September 11th: