I'll admit it. The top of my closet is filled with vampire novels from stem to stern, from the trashy to the truly profound. I simply love the genre, and though there seems to be no shortage of writers, there also never seems to be enough.

Some of my favorites, of course: Anne Rice, Laurel K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, Kim Harrison, Barb and JC Hendee, Vickie Taylor and MaryJanice Davidson. If you know of any others I should pick up, please fee free to send me a note!

You can imagine my surprise and pleasure when I saw that Anne Rice had written a piece either for or picked up by the New York Times concerning the destruction of her home town, New Orleans.

As always, it's an absolute must read with great insights and palpable detail.

I was a little disappointed in her concluding point, however. Not in its veracity, certainly, but in the sharp and to the point finger that she points towards Congress, the Federal government and even America as a whole while at the same time defending Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin.

And where was everyone else during all this? Oh, help is coming, New Orleans was told. We are a rich country. Congress is acting. Someone will come to stop the looting and care for the refugees.

And it's true: eventually, help did come. But how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid? Why did America ask a city cherished by millions and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life for so long? That's my question.

To take this a step further, Anne Rice believes that America as a whole had turned their backs to what they perceived as "Sin City".

But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.

I'm sorry, but I can't agree with you on this one, Ms. Rice. I can't think of anyone that could or did "turn their backs" on the people of New Orleans. I perceive that there was mistake after mistake made in responding to this horrible disaster, but I don't think that any of it was motivated by a disdain for the people of New Orleans in any form, on any level.

A horrible thing happened, and it is good and right to examine the root causes of what went wrong. Should, heaven forbid, anything even similar to this happen again, we want to be able to respond quickly and efficiently, sans erreurs.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

1. Wikipedia has a great summation of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, though the glaring omission of the catastrophic flooding as a second successive tragedy is lamentable.
2. The Bush Administration drastically reduced funding for the "U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Hurricane Protection Project".
1. This project was designed to "protect residents between Lake Pontchartrain and the Missisippi River levee from surges in Lake Pontchartrain", and were designed for Category 3 level storms.
2. The decision to build levees for a Category 3 hurricane was made decades ago based on a cost-benefit analysis.
3. This project was scheduled to be completed by 2015
4. The levee breach occured on the 17th Street Canal levee. This was one of the levees that had been already been completed and upgraded by to the Hurricane Protection Project. The Army Corps of engineers stated that they had not imagined the levee ever actually breaching in the manner that it had; they had only envisioned the waters topping the levees.
5. A study was currently in progress looking for ways to further upgrade the levees to protect residents from Category 4 or 5 storms. Implementation of the study's recommendations would not be complete for another 20-25 years.
6. I would like to point out that this year President Bush and the dominantly Republican Congress passed one of the largest pork-filled transportation bills in the history of spending money. If the Republican congress had actually spent much of their time being frugal, I might be able to forgive them for the reduction of spending on the Hurricane Protection Project, since despite it simply offending sensibility it does not seem to have played a role in this specific disaster. But since we have a spending-spree congress in session, they do not have my forgiveness at all.
3. The shrinking of Louisiana's Wetlands/Coastlines has reduced one of the natural buffers that New Orleans had against storm surge.
1. One of the largest contributors to the loss of wetland and coastline is the push to have a "straighter" Mississippi River to make it easier for ships to traverse. A straight river does not, however, deposit silt along the shores of Lousiana, however, and the coastline suffers. Pressure to reroute the Mississippi has been applied as far back as the 1920's and acting on that pressure has now eroded hundreds of square miles of potetnially protective land.
2. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has championed the restoration of the coastline and wetlands. Working with Reblicans since 2003 on the Energy bill which recently passed in July of 2005, she helped keep the $5 million for a Terrebonne hurricane-protection project and $20 million for the Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration Study still intact. In fact, the Energy Bill provides $1 billion for Louisiana and other states to shore up their coastlines. Just over half the money will go to Louisiana, with smaller portions going to Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Alaska and California.
4. The City of New Orleans had an evacuation plan, but they didn't follow it. They had the resources and buses and authority to clear the city. They didn't use them. They assumed the levees would hold. They didn't. FEMA also assumed the levees had survived, and set up shop in NOLA Monday before the rain stopped--and were drowned out of their base in hours, costing nearly a day's delay in response. By the time the logistics routes into the area began to open up, New Orleans was flooded and the interior of the city unreachable. (verbiage by Tully, a commenter on the CenterField blog)
1. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (D) and Terry Ebbert, head of the New Orleans' Emergency Operations were two of the most vocal critics of Federal aid. It is interesting that less than a mile away from the neglected superdome, under control of Mayor Nagin and Mr Ebbert, were almost 150 buses that were left to be rendered useless by the storm. Not far away, at the Ray Nagin Memorial Motorpool were another 250+ buses. Even more details here
5. Local Government resisted Federal assistance:
1. On Friday (8/26) Governor Blanco (D) declared a state of emergency for the State of Lousiana, increasing her power to prepare and respond to the disaster.
2. See Update Shortly before midnight Friday (8/26), the Bush administration sent Governor Blanco (D) a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.
3. On Saturday (8/27) President Bush declared a State of Emergency in Louisiana. This authorizes the FEMA to coordinate all disaster relief efforts and to provide appropriate assistance in a number of Louisiana parishes, or counties. "Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency continue to coordinate with state authorities in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, and have prepositioned supplies in areas expected to be affected.", the President said.
4. On Saturday President Bush (R) called Governor Blanco (D) and made a personal appeal to evacuate New Orleans.
5. See Update On Saturday Governor Blanco (D) hired James Lee Witt, FEMA director in the Clinton administration, to advise her on the relief effort
6. Sunday Morning Governor Blanco (D) and Mayor Ray Nagin (D) announced the official mandatory evacuation of New Orleans.
7. On Sunday (8/28) Terry Ebbert, identified as the New Orleans director of homeland security, said more than 4,000 National Guardsmen were mobilizing in Memphis and will help police New Orleans streets.
8. On Sunday (8/28) it was reported that people reporting to the Superdome "lined up for blocks as National Guardsmen searched them for guns, knives and drugs". If the National Guard were already present, doesn't this sort of imply that someone was actually in charge there?
9. On Sunday (8/28) State Police said that at the peak of the evacuation, 18,000 people an hour were streaming out of southeastern Louisiana.
10. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said one reason federal assets were not used more quickly was "because our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor."

Anyway, it is hours after I started this article and my wife is giving me evil glares; I promised her that I would help her with a few things before my parents come over for dinner. Over at Protein Wisdom, a great blog if there ever was one, Jeff Goldstein puts together a great summary of what happened from this point forward. Please, continue reading it over there.

Once you have read everything (here and there) then you sort of understand what happened every step of the way. I have to admit, now that I have pieced together much of what happened and why, I don't feel any better. It was a huge process filled with human beings that made mistakes along the way.

We need a more streamlined system that can still be run by people and not leave the potential for so many mistakes and power struggles to take place.

...is such a system the death-knell of State's power? In today's day an age, where even Standard Overnight with FedEx is not fast enough, where Instant Messaging has arisen to satiate a need to move even faster than e-mail... is such cooperation even possible?

I'll end this echoing one of the comments that a reader made over at InstaPundit:

Buried at the end of the WaPo's critical article on FEMA's decline is this crucial paragraph:

Other federal and state officials pointed to Louisiana's failure to measure up to national disaster response standards, noting that the federal plan advises state and local emergency managers not to expect federal aid for 72 to 96 hours, and base their own preparedness efforts on the need to be self-sufficient for at least that period. "Fundamentally the first breakdown occurred at the local level," said one state official who works with FEMA. 'Did the city have the situational awareness of what was going on within its borders? The answer was no."

Measuring from the passage of the storm from the target area -- say 1500 hours on Monday, THE PLAN would therefore expect federal aid at the earliest at midday Thursday.

...which was exactly when they arrived in force.

UPDATE 050904 2000hrs: One of the commenters over at Wizbang reveals that the order to use schoolbuses to assist in the evacuation came from the Governors office on Thursday, September 1st, the same day that National Guard troops began to arrive in force.

UPDATE 050905 1019hrs: Gen Ralph Lupin of the National Guard was in charge of the Superdome shelter, and they seemed to have medical staff and some food on hand. The General was expecting 25k-35k refugees, was expecting the power to go out, had some sort of triage process in place to send the mo0re vulnerable to "other cities". So why did it look so different on the news? Why did it turn out to be so desperate and horrible if the Lousiana Guard was already there?

Curtis Cockran, 54, a diabetic who recently had hip surgery, sat in his wheelchair on a loading dock at the dome while nurses, emergency technicians and doctors attended to refugees' needs.

"I just want a place I can be quiet and left alone," he said. "I don't know if I'll have a place to go back to, but there's no reason to worry about that now. For the time being I just want to be safe."

More serious cases had to be taken to other cities in Louisiana for medical care.

The 77,000-seat stadium, home to the NFL's New Orleans Saints, provided few comforts but at least had bathrooms for the refugees and food donated by several charities.

"They may be here for a while," said Gen Ralph Lupin, the National Guardsman in charge of the shelter. "The electricity will be out after the storm; streets will be almost impassable. So once they get here, they'll have to stay for the duration."

Here is more from the same AP article that that was drawn from, stating that the National Guard was being thorough in their search for weapons and contraband as people entered the Superdome:

Guardsmen made able-bodied people clasp their hands behind their backs while they patted them down, feeling the seams and hems of clothing, then ran metal detectors over them. The backpacks, suitcases and plastic grocery bags that held their belongings were searched.

Alice George, 76, a homeless woman wearing shorts and a T-shirt with the word Love on the front, was searched for almost 10 minutes.

"They took my cigarettes and lighter," she said. "I guess I'll do without."

Joey Branson wasn't worried. The 42-year-old breezed through the search with just a fresh apple pie and a paperback mystery.

"That's all I need," he said, smiling. "I'm set for the duration."

Here is another article that has quotes from General Lupin citing an 11:00pm curfew, people that were forwarded to local hospitals, people that were forwarded to other local cities.

UPDATE 050906 1921hrs: Reading the comments over at Protein Wisdom which point out an article over at NOLA.COM, it appears that the Friday that President Bush send Governor Blanco the memorandum asking her to cede authority of for the evacuation was in fact September 2nd. Governor Blanco hired James Witt on Saturday, September 3rd. According to the article at NOLA, the Federal Government had troops on the ground under their control during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 while the governor retained control of the National Guard, so this is not without precedent.

Posted by Michael at September 4, 2005 11:55 AM