Questions grow over rescue chaos in wake of Hurricane Katrina by Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, Reuters 10:03am 3rd Sep, 2005   September 3, 2005    "Katrina response a failure: US Senators". (AAP)    Two key US senators said on Friday they will open a bipartisan investigation into what they described as an "immense failure" of the government response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.    Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who heads the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the panel''s top Democrat, said they plan to begin an oversight investigation next week when the full Senate returns from a summer recess.    "We intend to demand answers as to how this immense failure occurred, but our immediate focus must and will be on what Congress can do to help the rescue and emergency operations that are ongoing," the senators said in a joint statement.    "It is also our responsibility to investigate the lack of preparedness and inadequate response to this terrible storm," they said, adding that it was "increasingly clear that serious shortcomings in preparedness and response have hampered relief efforts at a critical time."    The Bush administration''s handling of the disaster that wreaked havoc in the Gulf Coast and spilled a devastating flood into New Orleans has come under sharp criticism.    As President George W. Bush toured the disaster area, Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu said the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which the Bush administration placed under the Department of Homeland Security, failed to deploy enough resources to the area quickly.    She called on Bush to appoint a Cabinet-level official to direct the national response to the calamity. "There was a time when FEMA understood that the correct approach to a crisis was to deploy to the affected area as many resources as possible as fast as possible," Landrieu said. "Unfortunately that no longer seems to be their approach."    Congress sent Bush a $10.5 billion emergency spending bill on Friday to cover some of the initial costs of the recovery effort and lawmakers have promised much more. © 2005 AAP    September 2, 2005    "A Can''t-Do Government", by Paul Krugman. (New York Times)    Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.    So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.    First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you''d expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn''t provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.    There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn''t they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government''s response.    Even military resources in the right place weren''t ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"    Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.    Second question: Why wasn''t more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain." In 2002 the corps'' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration''s proposed cuts in the corps'' budget, including flood-control spending.    Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA''s effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.    Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared."    I don''t think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn''t rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn''t get adequate armor.    At a fundamental level, I''d argue, our current leaders just aren''t serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don''t like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.    Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.    So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can''t-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.    © 2005 New York Times    September 2, 2005    ''A National Disgrace'': Questions Grow Over Rescue Chaos. (BBC News)    In New Orleans, state officials have described the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a national disgrace.    And increasingly across the country, questions are being asked: "How could this happen?" "Why is help taking so long?" and "How can thousands of Americans be stranded?".    There has been criticism from opposition politicians and members of the public that spending on the war on Iraq diverted money away from flood-control projects. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has angrily accused Washington of not having a clue about what was going on. On Thursday, he issued what he called a "desperate SOS" for help for up to 20,000 refugees stuck in a convention center in New Orleans which he said was "unsanitary and unsafe" and running out of supplies.    On Friday, authorities in Louisiana were trying to crank up the rescue operation. Convoys of school buses were trying to ferry out the thousands of people sheltering in the convention Centrex and the nearby New Orleans Superdome amid the filth and the dead.    The questions being asked focus on why it has taken so long to get those buses on the road - and why thousands of people sheltering in the places where they were told to take refuge are now going hungry and thirsty.    Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco says she has asked for a "Berlin drop" of food and water. In an interview with Good Morning America on Friday, she said that they were finally starting to see the response from the federal authorities.    Much of the frustration has been directed at the national authority, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).    The head of the New Orleans emergency operations, Terry Ebbert, has questioned when reinforcements will actually reach the increasingly lawless city. "This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control," Mr Ebbert said. "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can''t bail out the city of New Orleans."    One man, George Turner, who was still waiting to be evacuated, summed up much of the anger felt by the refugees. "Why is it that the most powerful country on the face of the Earth takes so long to help so many sick and so many elderly people?" he asked. "Why? That''s all I want to ask President Bush."    And John Rhinehart, the administrator of a New Orleans hospital without power and water, said: "I''m beginning to wonder if the government is more concerned about the looting than people who are dying in these hospitals."    There is widespread agreement among commentators that somewhere there has been a breakdown in the system. The Biloxi Sun Herald in Mississippi asked: "Why hasn''t every able-bodied member of the armed forces in south Mississippi been pressed into service?" And on Friday the Washington Post wrote: "Though experts had long predicted that the city, which sits below sea level and is surrounded by water, would face unprecedented devastation after an immense hurricane, they said problems were worsened by a late evacuation order and insufficient emergency shelter for as many as 100,000 people."    The BBC''s Jamie Coomarasamy in Baton Rouge says that on the ground in some areas, it is largely volunteers, including those from the Red Cross and other organizations, who are leading the relief efforts.    But he said these efforts were fairly haphazard, with local radio and television stations putting out requests for people to do what they could.    Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief co-ordinator has written to US ambassador to the UN John Bolton offering help. "I understand people''s frustration, but I also know from bitter experience that this, the fifth and the sixth and the seventh days are always among the worst, because it is before you reach, really, the largest amount of people," he told the BBC.    "Could more have been done? I would say every society in the world is not preparing adequately for catastrophic events. Disaster prevention is something that we are campaigning for all over the world, and I would say no society is fully prepared for all eventualities."    © Copyright 2005 BBC    September 2, 2005    "World Stunned as U.S. Struggles with Katrina", by Andrew Gray. (Reuters)    The world has watched amazed as the planet''s only superpower struggles with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with some saying the chaos has exposed flaws and deep divisions in American society.    World leaders and ordinary citizens have expressed sympathy with the people of the southern United States whose lives were devastated by the hurricane and the flooding that followed.    But many have also been shocked by the images of disorder beamed around the world -- looters roaming the debris-strewn streets and thousands of people gathered in New Orleans waiting -- as the authorities fail to provide food, water and other aid.    "Anarchy in the USA" declared Britain''s best-selling newspaper The Sun. "Apocalypse Now" headlined Germany''s Handelsblatt daily.    The pictures of the catastrophe -- which has killed hundreds and possibly thousands -- have evoked memories of crises in the world''s poorest nations such as last year''s tsunami in Asia, which left more than 230,000 people dead or missing.    But some view the response to those disasters more favorably than the lawless aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.    "I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering," Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, as he watched a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka. "Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world''s population is."    Many newspapers highlighted criticism of local and state authorities and of President Bush. Some compared the sputtering relief effort with the massive amounts of money and resources poured into the war in Iraq. "A modern metropolis sinking in water and into anarchy -- it is a really cruel spectacle for a champion of security like Bush," France''s left-leaning Liberation newspaper said.    Commentators noted the victims of the hurricane were overwhelmingly African Americans, too poor to flee the region as the hurricane loomed unlike some of their white neighbors. New Orleans ranks fifth in the United States in terms of African American population and 67 percent of the city''s residents are black.    "In one of the poorest states in the country, where black people earn half as much as white people, this has taken on a racial dimension," said a report in Britain''s Guardian daily.    Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, in a veiled criticism of U.S. political thought, said the disaster showed the need for a strong state that could help poor people. "You see in this example that even in the 21st century you need the state, a good functioning state, and I hope that for all these people, these poor people, that the Americans will do their best," he told reporters at a European Union meeting in Newport, Wales.    David Fordham, 33, a hospital anesthetist speaking at a London underground rail station, said he had spent time in America and was not surprised the country had struggled to cope. "Maybe they just thought they could sit it out and everything would be okay," he said. "It''s unbelievable though -- the TV images -- and your heart goes out to them."    (With reporting by Reuters bureaux around the world)    September 2, 2005    "Two Americas: Sink or Swim", by Laura Flanders. (CommonDreams.org)    Hurricane Katrina is probably the worst disaster to hit our country in over a century. Its waters have covered streets and sidewalks and schools and homes and stores. Perhaps five million people are homeless, without access to healthcare, clean food and water, relief. Katrina’s covered not just one city – New Orleans – but several, and its taken no doubt thousands of lives.    As much as the storm waters have covered, they have uncovered something too. The reality that there are two Americas, or at least two: those who can escape disaster and those who can''t. The people left behind in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, those stranded on their rooves, the waters have been rising around those of us who are poor, and weak, disproportionately black and treated as dispensable – the waters have been rising around those of us for a while.    While those who could, long ago left for higher ground, the levees around the rest of us have been sinking in plain sight for years. Access to healthcare, housing, relief, clean air and water, Katrina''s made what we have made -- a sink or swim society --very literal, very clear.    The Census Bureau’s statistics tell it for the umpteenth time. For the fifth straight year, only the top 5 percent of Americans have been thriving; incomes and resources for the other 95 percent have been flat or on the decline. There are shameless looters in New Orleans but the most shameless are the ones with the most power. The policy makers who have looted our treasury to help a few at the expense of the rest, and the polluters who are willing to loot mother nature to make a buck. Local National Guard are serving in a President’s war of choice. People in trouble need them here.    What’s next. Not a return to normal. I hope. We need better. The promise of equal protection demands not just shipped in relief, but a shift in priorities – and that will take all the Americas to work as one.    (Laura Flanders is the host of "The Laura Flanders Show" heard weekends, on the new Air America Radio network).    September 2, 2005    "Amid Stench of Death, Poor Bear the Brunt ", by Gary Younge. (The Guardian/UK)    The entrance to Pascalouga reveals crushed homes and dilapidated stores alongside queues for petrol and food.    "I''ve got enough supplies for another two days but I don''t know what I''m going to do after that," said Sarah Jackson as she entered her second hour in a queue outside Wal-Mart. "I keep telling myself I''m lucky because it could have been worse, but with each day I feel less and less lucky.." While everyone here was hard hit by Katrina, not everyone was affected in the same way. The wealthy lost property on the seafront. But the lives and the livelihoods of the poor without cars to escape, sturdy homes to protect them and insurance to fall back on, were the most vulnerable.    In one of the poorest states in the country, where black people earn half as much as white people, this has taken on a racial dimension. "People who live in poverty and don''t have the means to evacuate were definitely more likely to perish," said Michael Matthews, an African American who was nudging his car slowly up the four-hour queue for petrol in Lucedale.    In Yvonne Trailer park in Lucedale, residents hold out little hope of speedy government help. "I don''t think we''ll see any of that here," said Raybelle Perrymon, sitting in the shade on her wheelchair, stricken by polio. She is an elderly black woman cared for by a younger white man, Charles Childens, who shares her trailer and her Kools. She cannot get her disability benefit because the banks are closed. That means she cannot pay her rent or buy food. "We need help, but I don''t think we''re going to get any, until everybody else has gotten theirs," she said. Mr Childens nodded. "We need something to eat," he said. "We need it pretty soon."    Pascalouga residents expressed frustration with the relief effort, complaining it was too slow in doling out provisions and information. "We can''t wait for the kind of help they are giving," said Sharon Jones, sitting on her porch. "The lines [for handouts] are ridiculous. You need to wait five or six hours for water and ice and that''s all the authorities are giving. I''ve got food for one more day; after that I''ll have to pray."Ms Jones said her mother had lost everything.    "They keep telling us to call FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency]. When we try to call we can''t get through; she''s just lucky I''m here."    4 September 2005    US accepts UN offer to rush aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina. (UN News)    The United Nations announced today that the United States Government has accepted the world body''s offer of help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.    A small UN Coordination team is in Washington now consulting with government officials on how the UN can best complement the US''s own emergency efforts.    “The UN''s coordination team in Washington will be based at the newly established USAID Hurricane Katrina Operations Center, where offers of international assistance are being coordinated,” a UN spokesman said in a statement released in New York.    Among those “ready to provide emergency staff and a wide variety of relief supplies as and when necessary” are the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Children''s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), according to the statement.    2 September 2005    United Nations offers United States full UN help in Hurricane Katrina disaster. (UN News)    Underscoring the enormous aid the United States has given other countries in times of disaster, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has offered all the help the United Nations can provide, whether materially or logistically, to help the American people recover from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.    “The American people - who have always been the most generous in responding to disasters in other parts of the world - have now themselves suffered a grievous blow,” Mr. Annan said in a statement issued by his spokesman last night. “I know that I speak for the whole world in offering them my heartfelt sympathy, and any assistance that the United Nations can give.    “Of course the United States is also the country in the world best prepared to cope with such a disaster. But the sheer size of this emergency makes it possible that we can supplement the American response with supplies from other countries, or with experience we have gained in other relief operations,” he added.    “I know we will not be alone. We will be happy to work with other parts of the international community to support the efforts of President Bush and his administration, the American Red Cross, and other U.S. relief organizations who have been our partners in the past.”    Mr. Annan’s statement followed an offer of help contained in a letter from UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland to US Ambassador John Bolton.    31 August 2005    United Nations expresses sympathy for Hurricane Katrina victims.    United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today expressed his sympathy for victims of Hurricane Katrina in the United States and extended condolences to those affected by the storm.    In a statement issued by his spokesperson, the Secretary-General said he is deeply saddened by the loss of life and large-scale destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina along the US Gulf Coast. He also extended condolences to all the victims and their families, it added.    “I hope, in the coming weeks, all will be done to provide support for those who need it,” Mr. Annan said later at a press briefing. “There has to be effective coordination in these efforts. And I think efforts are being made to ensure that assets are in place and effective coordination is organized because without that, it is going to be very, very difficult to get urgent help to all those who need it, and to help them rebuild,” he said in response to a question.    Earlier this week Sálvano Briceño, Director of the Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), called for more systematic prevention and mitigation measures, noting that the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina and recent deadly floods in Central Europe and Switzerland prove that anyone can be affected, any day, anywhere by natural disaster.    He also said that recent weather-rated catastrophes provide an opportune moment for the media to pass the message that it is important for all to be prepared in the future.    Visit American Red Cross to help: http://www.redcross.org/index.html    Click on the link below to listen to a BBC radio interview with Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, who pulls absolutely no punches about the Bush Administrations incompetence in dealing with this national tragedy. 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