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Katrina scenario did not exist, no plans in place

 
 
djjd62
 
Reply Sun 4 Sep, 2005 06:35 am
good luck with the next disaster
isn't it the job of these people to think of the worse possible scenario


Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist
However, experts for years had warned of threat to New Orleans

Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.

But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years.

Chertoff, fielding questions from reporters, said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans.

"That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight," Chertoff said.

He called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise."

But engineers say the levees preventing this below-sea-level city from being turned into a swamp were built to withstand only Category 3 hurricanes. And officials have warned for years that a Category 4 could cause the levees to fail.

Katrina was a Category 4 hurricane when it struck the Gulf Coast on September 29.

Last week, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told CNN his agency had recently planned for a Category 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans.

Speaking to "Larry King Live" on August 31, in the wake of Katrina, Brown said, "That Category 4 hurricane caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated. So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we're implementing it."

Brown suggested FEMA -- part of the Department of Homeland Security -- was carrying out a prepared plan, rather than having to suddenly create a new one.

Chertoff argued that authorities actually had assumed that "there would be overflow from the levee, maybe a small break in the levee. The collapse of a significant portion of the levee leading to the very fast flooding of the city was not envisioned."

He added: "There will be plenty of time to go back and say we should hypothesize evermore apocalyptic combinations of catastrophes. Be that as it may, I'm telling you this is what the planners had in front of them. They were confronted with a second wave that they did not have built into the plan, but using the tools they had, we have to move forward and adapt."

But New Orleans, state and federal officials have long painted a very different picture.

"We certainly understood the potential impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane" on New Orleans, Lt. General Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Thursday, Cox News Service reported.

Reuters reported that in 2004, more than 40 state, local and volunteer organizations practiced a scenario in which a massive hurricane struck and levees were breached, allowing water to flood New Orleans. Under the simulation, called "Hurricane Pam," the officials "had to deal with an imaginary storm that destroyed more than half a million buildings in New Orleans and forced the evacuation of a million residents," the Reuters report said.

In 2002 the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a five-part series exploring the vulnerability of the city. The newspaper, and other news media as well, specifically addressed the possibility of massive floods drowning residents, destroying homes and releasing toxic chemicals throughout the city.

Scientists long have discussed this possibility as a sort of doomsday scenario.

On Sunday, a day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Ivor van Heerden, director of the Louisiana State University Public Health Research Center in Baton Rouge, said, "This is what we've been saying has been going to happen for years."

"Unfortunately, it's coming true," he said, adding that New Orleans "is definitely going to flood."

Also on Sunday, Placquemines Parish Sheriff Jeff Hingle referred back to Hurricane Betsy -- a Category 2 hurricane that struck in 1965 -- and said, "After Betsy these levees were designed for a Category 3."

He added, "These levees will not hold the water back."

But Chertoff seemed unaware of all the warnings.

"This is really one which I think was breathtaking in its surprise," Chertoff said. "There has been, over the last few years, some specific planning for the possibility of a significant hurricane in New Orleans with a lot of rainfall, with water rising in the levees and water overflowing the levees," he told reporters Saturday.

That alone would be "a very catastrophic scenario," Chertoff said. "And although the planning was not complete, a lot of work had been done. But there were two problems here. First of all, it's as if someone took that plan and dropped an atomic bomb simply to make it more difficult. We didn't merely have the overflow, we actually had the break in the wall. And I will tell you that, really, that perfect storm of combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight."

Chertoff also argued that authorities did not have much notice that the storm would be so powerful and could make a direct hit on New Orleans.

"It wasn't until comparatively late, shortly before -- a day, maybe a day and a half, before landfall -- that it became clear that this was going to be a Category 4 or 5 hurricane headed for the New Orleans area."

As far back as Friday, August 26, the National Hurricane Center was predicting the storm could be a Category 4 hurricane at landfall, with New Orleans directly in its path. Still, storms do change paths, so the possibility existed that it might not hit the city.

But the National Weather Service prediction proved almost perfect.

Katrina made landfall on Monday, August 29.

Tens of thousands of people in New Orleans who did not or could not heed the mandatory evacuation orders issued the day before the storm made landfall were left in dire straits.

"I think we have discovered over the last few days that with all the tremendous effort using the existing resources and the traditional frameworks of the National Guard, the unusual set of challenges of conducting a massive evacuation in the context of a still dangerous flood requires us to basically break the traditional model and create a new model -- one for what you might call kind of an ultracatastrophe," Chertoff said.

He vowed that the United States "is going to move heaven and earth" to rescue those in need.
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Paaskynen
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Sep, 2005 07:05 am
Maybe now they will get serious about coastal defences (and I don't mean guns). The Netherlands have existed as a country for many centuries even though half of it lies below sea level. They have had flooding too, but after each disaster the plans were improved and the dikes reinforced.

I was surprised, or shocked, to find out that the dikes protecting a vital city like New Orleans from the sea, were only built to withstand a once-in-200-years event (that would be the chance of a cat.4 hurricane hitting the city). In comparison the dikes and sea walls of the Netherlands are built to withstand a once-in-10.000-years event!

What I'd like to know is how the water management services in New Orleans work. Whenever there is a storm approaching in the Netherlands the National water council has all dikes controlled throghout the storm, so that any breaches or weak spots can be spotted and dealt with before they breach. But then again, the Netherlands does not have to deal with hurricanes.

(Written from a safe spot where the land rises every year instead of sinking)
0 Replies
 
Joe Nation
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Sep, 2005 07:15 am
Doesn't anyone in the Bush Administration read anything with the word Science in the title?

Drowning New Orleans
0 Replies
 
djjd62
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Sep, 2005 07:34 am
Joe Nation wrote:
Doesn't anyone in the Bush Administration read anything with the word Science in the title?

Drowning New Orleans


science = the devil :wink:
0 Replies
 
sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Sep, 2005 08:42 am
Good line, Joe. Tempted to make it my new sig, but will wait til things have calmed down a little further. (One of the top five complaints I have about Bush, but not just in this situation...)
0 Replies
 
djjd62
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Sep, 2005 02:30 pm
in my oppinion they should be making contingency plans for any and all emergencies

monster storms, terrorist attacks, alien invasions, i don't care how far fetched the scenario, better safe than sorry
0 Replies
 
roger
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Sep, 2005 04:18 pm
djjd62 wrote:
good luck with the next disaster
isn't it the job of these people to think of the worse possible scenario


Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist
However, experts for years had warned of threat to New Orleans

Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.

But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years.

Chertoff, fielding questions from reporters, said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans.

"That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight," Chertoff said.

He called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise."

But engineers say the levees preventing this below-sea-level city from being turned into a swamp were built to withstand only Category 3 hurricanes. And officials have warned for years that a Category 4 could cause the levees to fail.

Katrina was a Category 4 hurricane when it struck the Gulf Coast on September 29.

Last week, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told CNN his agency had recently planned for a Category 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans.

Speaking to "Larry King Live" on August 31, in the wake of Katrina, Brown said, "That Category 4 hurricane caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated. So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we're implementing it."


Brown suggested FEMA -- part of the Department of Homeland Security -- was carrying out a prepared plan, rather than having to suddenly create a new one.



The idea that this was not planned for is breathtaking. Now, was it or was it not - there seems a conflict, unless FEMA knows more than homeland security, a situation not impossible to imagine.
0 Replies
 
RfromP
 
  1  
Reply Fri 9 Sep, 2005 08:33 pm
djjd62 wrote:
in my oppinion they should be making contingency plans for any and all emergencies

monster storms, terrorist attacks, alien invasions, i don't care how far fetched the scenario, better safe than sorry


Exactly! That's what I had thought they have been doing all along and was the purpose of its existence. Yes? Federal Emergency Management Agency. Can that be interpreted any other way? What am I missing?

Now the Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response Michael D. Brown has been reassigned back to Washington ostensibly due to ineffectiveness. Does he lose his job? Of course not, he's still gets to be Director and collect a six figure salary. Firing a guy appointed by Bush, well that would be like admitting Bush made some kind of mistake and as we all know Bush doesn't make mistakes.

Taken as a whole, a lack of accountability can characterize the Bush administration. Almost every ill of the administration can be attributed to it. Bush is the Teflon President.


http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/4864/bushguitar4jg.jpg http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/9792/bushfish4ls.jpg
0 Replies
 
dlowan
 
  1  
Reply Fri 9 Sep, 2005 09:00 pm
I am lost.

I thought new orleans was long known to be a possible disaster site?
0 Replies
 
littlek
 
  1  
Reply Fri 9 Sep, 2005 09:03 pm
dlowan, I know plans have been discussed for likely decades. But, I don't recall hearing in the news that there was an official plan in place.
0 Replies
 
djjd62
 
  1  
Reply Sat 10 Sep, 2005 07:05 am
dlowan wrote:
I am lost.

I thought new orleans was long known to be a possible disaster site?


it seems like everybody except the proper authorities knew it

many people in the scientific and environmental community seemed to be well aware of the problem

but then aagin, this president and his buddies are less than friendly to people from those communities
0 Replies
 
 

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