“There was no way we
could have predicted this kind of catastrophe.” — Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff.
While we send money to help the victims; while doctors and
nurses treat the injured, the ill, the traumatized; while the displaced mourn
their losses and continue their frantic search for loved ones; while law
enforcement officers guard the city, and search teams find and dispose of the
dead, and other workers begin the arduous task of cleanup and restoration, it
is time to study the history, old and recent. It is time to draw conclusions,
and accept the hard lessons.
Michael Chertoff is flat wrong.
There not only was a way we could have predicted the Katrina catastrophe, it was predicted, for years. Repeatedly.
Worse: Had we acted on what we knew, we could have prevented
much of the pain, suffering, and loss of life and property that New
Orleans is experiencing now.
The easy out is to say that we can’t stop hurricanes. Leave
aside the growing concern among some scientists that global warming is
changing, for the worse, the patterns and intensity of hurricanes. We have made
choices in the past that made the impact of this particular hurricane, on this
particular city, worse.
The levees and canals that were built to benefit shipping
and prevent flooding have prevented the normal deposit of silt onto the land,
causing the city to sink. It is sinking still. And the harnessing of the
Mississippi has had another effect: It has prevented silt from replenishing the
wetlands in the southern part of Louisiana; in better shape, they would have
absorbed some of the energy from the storm and the surge.
None of that has been a secret. Nor has the threat to New
Orleans. In 2002, the city’s daily newspaper, the Times-Picayune, ran a five-part, award-winning series spelling out
exactly what would happen if a storm of Katrina’s magnitude struck New
Orleans. National Public Radio ran a similar series.
The New York Times spelled out the
danger.
Army Corp of Engineers in New Orleans
knew this well, and they pled for help. A year ago, an article commissioned by
the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies detailed the cutbacks to the FEMA
budget and the administration’s penchant for privatizing — and for pushing
down to the states the responsibility for dealing with disasters. The article
quoted emergency specialists who warned that administration policies “are
sapping FEMA’s long-term ability to cushion the blow
of hurricanes, floods, tornados, wildfires, and other natural disasters.”
Instead, the president and Congress slashed funds for storm
protection in New Orleans.
And so when the storm that New Orleans feared hit, the water poured in. And subsequent government
dithering and denial resulted in unimaginable tragedy.
It is not playing politics to note the misdeeds that led to
this. And it is indeed the time to point fingers, to demand answers, to rage
until there is accountability — and change. Because lives have been lost
needlessly. And because other storms will come. And because San
Francisco waits for its own Category 4 calamity. And
because the aftermath of Katrina has shown what could lie in store for us if
there is another terrorist attack in the United States.
Two short weeks before the fourth anniversary of 9/11, a
trauma in which police and fire units could not talk to one another because
their radios couldn’t communicate with each other, officials in New
Orleans could not talk to one another — because
their radios couldn’t communicate with each other.
A city in which, according to the New York Times’ Jason DeParle, 35 percent
of black households and 15 percent of white households don’t own a car, the
evacuation plan called simply for people to get in their cars and get out of
town. There was no plan for evacuating the poor — or the tourists on whom the
city’s economic health depends so heavily.
Four days into the suffering in New
Orleans, the head of Homeland Security insisted that
he didn’t know there were thousands of people sheltered at the convention
center. The president brags that he doesn’t read newspapers, but don’t these
people even watch television?
The federal government that is to help us deal with
terrorist attacks at home and all manner of challenges abroad could not get
troops to New Orleans for five days, could not get help to the ill, the dying,
the newborns in hospitals where doctors had been pleading for help for days.
“We expected to see the skies full of helicopters on
Tuesday,” a doctor at one hospital told National Public Radio.
As with so much in
this country, there is a racial aspect to this tragedy. It is not just that
most of the victims we saw on television were African America. It is why that
is so. This country’s racial divisions, and its inability to heal them, have
resulted in poverty that disproportionately affects African Americans in New
Orleans and in other cities. The poverty that trapped much of New Orleans’
blacks as Katrina bore down is a poverty that the more affluent respond to
with, at best, hand-outs, and at worst, blindness. For days, the New Orleanians needing help were invisible to federal
government officials. That is nothing new; the poor, particularly poor
non-white Americans, are invisible to much of America
— unless they erupt into violence.
Now this great American city lies crippled and in distress.
But so many Americans do not love cities anymore. Do not like them. Flee them,
and flee — if not purposely, nevertheless in fact —the problems of cities.
And in fleeing, magnify those problems.
In an op-ed piece in Sunday’s Times, novelist Anne Rice said New Orleanians
will return and will rebuild. “But,” she added, “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.”
How to help
Disaster-aid officials are urging concerned people to help
Katrina victims principally by donating money. Among the numerous organizations
collecting funds is the Red Cross. You can make an online donation at
www.redcross.org, or to the Rochester-area Red Cross,
www.RochesterRedCross.org; or call 241-4420.
This article appears in Sep 7-13, 2005.
