Hurricane Katrina has left a new, largely unforseen problem in its path: growing unrest, anger — and chaos emerging from a sea of despair.
The catalyist has been Katrina, the death-bringing, flood-creating mega-storm. And the growing symbol for what it has brought has become the city’s once proud Superdome, now painted in news reports as a building that turned out to have apparent defects…a building seemingly overwhelmed and smelling from being crammed with increasingly angry refugees.
The chaos, anger and near anarchy at times readers like and adult version of Lord Of The Flies. It reached its culmination today when the Superdome’s evacuation was halted due to gunfire, as the AP reports:
The evacuation of the Superdome was temporarily disrupted Thursday after a shot was reported fired at a military helicopter. No injuries were immediately reported.
An air ambulance service official said that helicopter transfers of the sick and injured were suspended, but the National Guard said Thursday that able-bodied evacuees were still being moved by bus to Houston’s Astrodome.
Authorities had said Wednesday that some 25,000 people who had been in the Superdome since Sunday would be taken to the Astrodome.
But with the disruptions, the scene at the Superdome became increasingly chaotic, with thousands of people rushing from nearby hotels and other buildings, hoping to climb onto the buses taking evacuees from the arena. Paramedics became increasingly alarmed by the sight of people with guns.
“We won’t go into the Superdome landing zone until security is restored,” said Richard Zuschlag, president and CEO of Acadian Ambulance Service, which is running the evacuation of the sick and injured at the Superdome. “We are now concentrating on the roofs of hospitals.”
Another AP story noted growing unrest there:
Fights and trash fires broke out at the hot and stinking Superdome and anger and unrest mounted across New Orleans on Tuesday, as National Guardsmen in armored vehicles poured in to help restore order across the increasingly lawless and desperate city.
“We are out here like pure animals. We don’t have help,” the Rev. Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, complaining that he and others were evacuated, taken to the convention hall by bus, dropped off and given nothing.
The Superdome, where some 25,000 people were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, descended into chaos.
Huge crowds, hoping to finally escape the stifling confines of the stadium, jammed the main concourse outside the dome, spilling out over the ramp to the Hyatt hotel next door – a seething sea of tense, unhappy, people packed shoulder-to-shoulder up to the barricades where heavily armed National Guardsmen stood.
Fights broke out. A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation.
Meanwhile, the LA Times paints a picture of the Superdrome as a once-proud structure and makeshift emergency shelter that has emerged into a symbol of human degradation:
A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers.
The Louisiana Superdome, once a mighty testament to architecture and ingenuity, became the biggest storm shelter in New Orleans the day before Katrina’s arrival Monday. About 16,000 people eventually settled in.
By Wednesday, it had degenerated into horror. A few hundred people were evacuated from the arena Wednesday, and buses will take away the vast majority of refugees today.
“We pee on the floor. We are like animals,” said Taffany Smith, 25, as she cradled her 3-week-old son, Terry. In her right hand she carried a half-full bottle of formula provided by rescuers. Baby supplies are running low; one mother said she was given two diapers and told to scrape them off when they got dirty and use them again.
At least two people, including a child, have been raped. At least three people have died, including one man who jumped 50 feet to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for.
The hurricane left most of southern Louisiana without power, and the arena, which is in the central business district of New Orleans, was not spared. The air conditioning failed immediately and a swampy heat filled the dome.
An emergency generator kept some lights on, but quickly failed. Engineers have worked feverishly to keep a backup generator running, at one point swimming under the floodwater to knock a hole in the wall to install a new diesel fuel line. But the backup generator is now faltering and almost entirely submerged.
There is no sanitation. The stench is overwhelming. The city’s water supply, which had held up since Sunday, gave out early Wednesday, and toilets in the Superdome became inoperable and began to overflow.
“There is feces on the walls,” said Bryan Hebert, 43, who arrived at the Superdome on Monday. “There is feces all over the place.”
There’s a lot more in this superb long piece(read the whole thing). But the smell of anarchy wasn’t only at the Superdome, this New York Times report suggests, but in the (often flooded) streets of New Orleans itself:
In a city shut down for business, the Rite Aid at Oak and South Carrollton was wide open on Wednesday. Someone had stolen a forklift, driven it four blocks, peeled up the security gate and smashed through the front door.
The young and the old walked in empty-handed and walked out with armfuls of candy, sunglasses, notebooks, soda and whatever else they could need or find. No one tried to stop them.
Across New Orleans, the rule of law, like the city’s levees, could not hold out after Hurricane Katrina. The desperate and the opportunistic took advantage of an overwhelmed police force and helped themselves to anything that could be carried, wheeled or floated away, including food, water, shoes, television sets, sporting goods and firearms.
Crooks And Liars has THIS VIDEO showing looters — which include some police.
And the question becomes: did these events have to unfold the way they did? Or, in the end, when this is over, where there be a lot of finger-pointing from angry citizens and questions from politicians and experts about (a)how the city could and should be better protected given the fact that everyone knew a worst case scenario storm could hit, (b)how the city could get more intricate refugee plans in place to handle a large number of displaced people.
An even larger question that’s already being asked is whether plans in place tried to find way to help people who might have more problems getting out of the city — or strictly wrote those people off as a kind of unspoken collatoral damage….which is what a columnist in the Atlanta Constitution suggests.
Leonard, Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication at Kennesaw State University, details news stories BEFORE the hurricane the indicated the government had no plans to save a segment of the population that couldn’t do much for itself. Some of these stories that predicted what coudld happen were eerily accurate. His conclusion:
And yet apparently there was no emergency plan and no resources to evacuate “the carless, the homeless, the aged and infirm.”
In this era when we are a nation at risk of terrorism and natural disasters, we can only hope that what is happening in New Orleans is not built into the fabric of our national homeland security policy. We should provide security for everyone, including the poor, aged and infirm.
We have the resources. On Wednesday, it seems FEMA found 475 buses to help with the belated evacuation effort. Unfortunately, when it comes to looking after the carless, homeless, the aged and infirm in our country, we — in our quest to become an ownership society — seemed to have allowed our good senses, good will and compassion to go on vacation.
President George Bush responded to the crisis and he has already been criticized for his response. This morning Bush warned against price gouging of gasoline. (NOTE: Rumors are swirling. We got a message from someone who insisted a client had told him gas in Georgia is going for $7 a galloon and that there are long gas lines there. We haven’t seen that on the news and have seen no sign of that kind of a change here at our blogging location in Northern California’s Grass Valley.)
Meanwhile, there’s an even bigger political problem looming for Bush (and Congress) when the water has receeded: report such as this one that suggests Bush and the politicos repeatedly denied full funding for hurricane preparation and flood control. That issue could prove to be a ticking time bomb, depending on how this plays out — particularly if there is widespread gas price gouging coupled with reports of record high oil company profits.
A Washington Post editorial today, calling the New Orleans floods one of the greatest natural disasters in US history, took GWB to task for reducing money that, retrospect, was a matter of life and death (but suggests it isn’t laying blame on anyone):
This administration has consistently played down the possibility of environmental disaster, in Louisiana and everywhere else. The president’s most recent budgets have actually proposed reducing funding for flood prevention in the New Orleans area, and the administration has long ignored Louisiana politicians’ requests for more help in protecting their fragile coast, the destruction of which meant there was little to slow down the hurricane before it hit the city. It is inappropriate to “blame” anyone for a natural disaster. But given how frequently the impact of this one was predicted, and given the scale of the economic and human catastrophe that has resulted, it is certainly fair to ask questions about disaster preparations. Congress, when it returns, should rise above the blame game and instead probe the state of the nation’s preparation for handling major natural catastrophes, particularly those that threaten crucial regions of the country.
The Post editorial wonders if parts of New Orleans will ever be rebuilt. Meanwhile, Slate’s Ari Kelman notes that New Orleans has been poised on an environmental cliff for years:
In retrospect, the idea was so stupid and yet so American: Move the homeless, the elderly, the impoverished, the unlucky, all those poor souls who couldn’t get out of New Orleans in time to avoid Hurricane Katrina; move them into the city’s cavernous domed football stadium. Anyone who has seen a disaster movie could have predicted what would happen next: Katrina slammed into the Superdome, ripped off the roof, and knocked out the power, cutting off the drinking water and the air conditioning. Those trapped inside had to be moved again—to Houston’s Astrodome, of course.
If it’s not too callous to say so while the tragedy on the Gulf Coast is still unfolding, the stadium mishap is an apt metaphor for New Orleans’ environmental history. The sodden city has long placed itself in harm’s way, relying on uncertain artifice to protect it from unpredictable environs.
New Orleans is utterly dependent for its survival on engineered landscapes and the willful suspension of disbelief that technology has allowed its citizens to sustain.
Bush has now promised that more federal help is on the way. And former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton have vowed to go out on the hustings to raise money for storm relief.
A good ongoing update for Hurrican Katrina related news is here.
Meanwhile, local weblogs continue to detail the ongoing drama and tragedy:
—Building Brewsmith Dot Com:
“In case anyone in national security is reading this, get the word to President Bush that we need the military in here NOW. The Active Duty Armed Forces. Mr. President, we are losing this city. I don’t care what you’re hearing on the news. The city is being lost. It is the law of the jungle down here. The command and control structure here is barely functioning. I’m not sure it’s anyone’s fault — I’m not sure it could be any other way at this point. We need the kind of logistical support and infrastructure only the Active Duty military can provide. The hospitals are in dire straights. The police barely have any capabilities at this point. The National Guard is doing their best, but the situation is not being contained. I’m here to help in anyway I can, but my capabilities are limited and dropping. Please get the military here to maintain order before this city is lost.”
If there is any strength in the voices of small bloggers around the world, read this, and tell everyone you know, this is a message from the ground in New Orleans!!!
b>It also has a post leading you to a live video feed.
–The Brewsmith is actually quoting from a blog written from the actual disaster area. Some more directly from that blog The Interdictor, which says it has become New Orlean’s survival blog:
Situtation is critical.
I’m not leaving, so stop asking. I’m staying. I am staying until this shitstorm has blown itself out. Period. End of discussion.
Now for some updates:
1. Been too busy to debrief the police officer, so that will come later. Low priority now.
2. Buses loading people up on Camp Street to take refugees to Dallas, or so the word on the street (literally) is.
3. Dead bodies everywhere: convention center, down camp street, all over.
4. National Guard shoving water off the backs of trucks. They’re just pushing it off without stopping, people don’t even know it’s there at first — they drop it on the side in debris, there’s no sign or distribution point — people are scared to go near it at first, because the drop points are guarded by troops or federal agents with assault rifles who don’t let people come near them, which scares people off. It is a mess. When people actually get to the water, they are in such a rush to get it that one family left their small child behind and forget about him until Sig carried him back to the family.
5. Lots of pics coming soon when Sig has time to update.
It’s raining now and I guess that’s a relief from the heat. It’s hot as hell down there in the sun. Crime is absolutely rampant: rapes, murders, rape-murder combinations.
I have really cut back answering IMs. Not enough time. I apologize people.
But later entries show hope:
The word is that in Jefferson Parish and Orleans, FEMA has “bugged out.” They haven’t brought supplies in.
THE REAL MILITARY IS NOW FLOWING IN. National Guard is being replaced before our eyes. Watch the feed.
Word is that the Marines are at 1515 Poydras where our OC4s are. I think we’re coming back online in force shortly.
On another note: I’ve just been told that we’re being monitored in Iraq! To all the troops there, from one soldier to another, we’re hanging tough here and you hang tough too. No matter what you’re hearing, we love you guys and want you to know that we know how hard you’ve got it. Stay strong!
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.