More Katrina Madness

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UPDATE

Wizband has uncovered the fact that the writer of this hitpiece was a 60 Minutes II producer around the time of Rathergate…..who would of thunk it?

Have a look at the byline to the AP story:

By MARGARET EBRAHIM and JOHN SOLOMON

WASHINGTON (AP) – In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

Here’s an interesting detail on someone who certainly looks like one of the story authors from the French-American Foundation’s membership roles:

Margaret Ebrahim (2003)
Producer
CBS News, 60 Minutes II

This CBS News page confirms that a Margaret Ebrahim was a 60 Minutes II producer in 2005. Ironically it was Mary Mapes who gave her away…

Not surprising that someone related to 60 minutes is involved in this shoddy piece of journalism

END UPDATE
Everyday there is a new story that the left hopes with all their might will take down Bush, and everyday they go away with their tail between their legs. This Katrina story is no different. Lets take a look at the article:

In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

Get outta here, he knew the levee’s would be breeched and did nothing about it? Once again the MSM bias rears it’s ugly head. What was he REALLY told?

…”I don’t think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not but that is obviously a very, very grave concern,” Mayfield told the briefing.Other officials expressed concerns about the large number of New Orleans residents who had not evacuated.

Ohhhh, so now the levee overfilling is equivalent to breached? Kinda like my bathtub overfilling or the whole tub collapsing….same thing huh? Wholly Christ is this just too easy or what?

The article attempts to portray Bush as uninterested and uncaring but then tells us he was worried:

Bush declared four days after the storm, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” that gushed deadly flood waters into New Orleans. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility ? and Bush was worried too.

Um, huh? So either he didn’t care and didn’t send what needed to be sent or he was worried about the possibility of disaster. Which is it AP?

Another point, who in the hell WASNT warned prior to landfall? Hell, it was non-stop 24/7 updates.

New Orleans braced for a catastrophic blow from Hurricane Katrina overnight, as forecasters predicted the Category 5 storm could drive a wall of water over the city’s levees.

The huge storm, packing 160 mph winds, is expected to hit the northern Gulf Coast in the next nine hours and make landfall as a Category 4 or 5 hurricane Monday morning.

About 70 percent of New Orleans is below sea level, and is protected from the Mississippi River by a series of levees. Forecasters predicted the storm surge could reach 28 feet; the highest levees around New Orleans are 18 feet high.

Of course the article attempts to lay the blame at the federal level, when the response by the fed’s was actually steller:

In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest–and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm’s landfall.Dozens of National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters flew rescue operations that first day–some just 2 hours after Katrina hit the coast. Hoistless Army helicopters improvised rescues, carefully hovering on rooftops to pick up survivors. On the ground, “guardsmen had to chop their way through, moving trees and recreating roadways,” says Jack Harrison of the National Guard. By the end of the week, 50,000 National Guard troops in the Gulf Coast region had saved 17,000 people; 4000 Coast Guard personnel saved more than 33,000.

These units had help from local, state and national responders, including five helicopters from the Navy ship Bataan and choppers from the Air Force and police. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries dispatched 250 agents in boats. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), state police and sheriffs’ departments launched rescue flotillas. By Wednesday morning, volunteers and national teams joined the effort, including eight units from California’s Swift Water Rescue. By Sept. 8, the waterborne operation had rescued 20,000.

While the press focused on FEMA’s shortcomings, this broad array of local, state and national responders pulled off an extraordinary success–especially given the huge area devastated by the storm. Computer simulations of a Katrina-strength hurricane had estimated a worst-case-scenario death toll of more than 60,000 people in Louisiana. The actual number was 1077 in that state.

The problem was the local and state response was a disaster, and they are the first responders. The feds showed up within 3 days, which is to be expected. The local officials should have showed up within hours but thanks to Nagin and Blanco, that was a huge failure.

MR. RUSSERT: Many people point, Mr. Mayor, that on Friday before the hurricane, President Bush declared an impending disaster. And The Houston Chronicle wrote it this way. “[Mayor Nagin’s] mandatory evacuation order was issued 20 hours before the storm struck the Louisiana coast, less than half the time researchers determined would be needed to get everyone out. City officials had 550 municipal buses and hundreds of additional school buses at their disposal but made no plans to use them to get people out of New Orleans before the storm, said Chester Wilmot, a civil engineering professor at Louisiana State University and an expert in transportation planning, who helped the city put together its evacuation plan.” And we’ve all see this photograph of these submerged school buses. Why did you not declare, order, a mandatory evacuation on Friday, when the president declared an emergency, and have utilized those buses to get people out?

MAYOR NAGIN: You know, Tim, that’s one of the things that will be debated. There has never been a catastrophe in the history of New Orleans like this. There has never been any Category 5 storm of this magnitude that has hit New Orleans directly. We did the things that we thought were best based upon the information that we had. Sure, here was lots of buses out there. But guess what? You can’t find drivers that would stay behind with a Category 5 hurricane, you know, pending down on New Orleans. We barely got enough drivers to move people on Sunday, or Saturday and Sunday, to move them to the Superdome. We barely had enough drivers for that. So sure, we had the assets, but the drivers just weren’t available.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Mr. Mayor, if you read the city of New Orleans’ comprehensive emergency plan– and I’ve read it and I’ll show it to you and our viewers–it says very clearly, “Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the mayor of New Orleans. The city of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas. Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific life-saving assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedure as needed. Approximately 100,000 citizens of New Orleans do not have means of personal transportation.”

It was your responsibility. Where was the planning? Where was the preparation? Where was the execution?

MAYOR NAGIN: The planning was always in getting people to higher ground, getting them to safety. That’s what we meant by evacuation. Get them out of their homes, which–most people are under sea level. Get them to a higher ground and then depending upon our state and federal officials to move them out of harm’s way after the storm has hit.

MR. RUSSERT: But in July of this year, one month before the hurricane, you cut a public service announcement which said, in effect, “You are on your own.” And you have said repeatedly that you never thought an evacuation plan would work. Which is true: whether you would exercise your obligation and duty as mayor or that–and evacuate people, or you believe people were on their own?

[…]MR. RUSSERT: Since 2002, the federal government has given New Orleans $18 million to plan and prepare for events like this. How was that money spent?

MAYOR NAGIN: It’s my understanding that most of the money–I’ve only been in office about three years. So we’ve mainly used most of the money that we get from the federal government to try and deal with levee protection and the coordination of getting people to safety. That’s primarily what we use the money for.

Either way it’s obvious the concern was that the water could flow over the levee due to the winds and amount of water. EVERYONE sighed with relief that first day because everyone thought they had dodged a bullet, but then the actual BREACH occurred.

The best post I have seen yet comes from Wizbang who had a local engineer at the scene the day of the disaster:

I invite you to look through our Katrina archives from the beginning – you can learn a lot about what actually happened and when. Wizbang was in the unique position to have one of our bloggers, Paul – an engineer by trade, who just so happened to live in New Orleans. That provided us with a unique local angle on the story.

On August 27, 2005 Paul noted everything discussed in the briefings seen on the AP video and more. How did he know this? Well for starters the entire New Orleans area had avoided a similar fate in 2004 when it looked like they were headed for a direct hit by a Category 5 hurricane (Andrew). The Katrina being discussed in the AP video is the monster Category 5 version of Katrina that was bearing down directly on New Orleans.

And that’s where the dishonesty in the AP story really lies. Contrary to popular belief New Orleans DID NOT take the brunt of Katrina. The Gulf Coast in Mississippi had that honor. As it veered east of New Orleans the force that Katrina hit the New Orleans area with was the equivalent of a Category 1 (or possibly Category 2) hurricane. On the video those officials are discussing a direct hit of a Category 5 storm, just as Paul was. A Category 5 storm didn’t hit New Orleans…

When the President said, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” he probably should have been more specific for the casual arm-chair quarterbacking of the left. What he should have said was, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees in New Orleans from a Category 1 hurricane, since the levees were built to withstand the storm surge from a Category 3 hurricane.”

On August 29, 2005 I noted from U.S. Army Corp of Engineers data that the levees did not top. Less than 24 hours later Paul noted that New Orleans was 80% underwater and was for all intents and purposes destroyed.

What changed in the interim? We all know now that the levees were not topped, they crumbled in many spots (most of which were less than a decade old) were they could not withstand the surge they were designed to contain. As Paul noted November 11, 2005, Katrina did not flood New Orleans. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did.

Absolutely no one in the AP story mentions the possibility that monumental incompetence, generations of corruptions, and shoddy engineering would doom New Orleans even if it did manage to avoid a direct hit…

Puts a little more context into a obvious hit piece by the AP doesn’t it?

One other thing. Who leaked this stuff? Heeere Brownie Brownie Heeere.

Other’s Blogging:


Either way it’s obvious the concern was that the water could flow over the levee due to the winds and amount of water. EVERYONE sighed with relief that first day because everyone thought they had dodged a bullet, but then the actual BREACH occurred.

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Curt, thanks for this. I have commented extensively on the Katrina Lie. My relatives were out a week in South Mississippi. None of what I understand the media showed during that week, or afterwards, matched what happened in their Mississippi.

HERE: No panic, no looting, no lack of cooperation at local or state or federal level. No thought of racism. Only incredible loss with lots of people needing help, denied that by partisan attacks on the government agencies who were there to help.
By the way, H. Barbour, the Governor, did personally fire up the Gulf Coast with his warning of THIRTY FOOT storm surge. No one wanted to believe him, but much of the Coast left. Barbour helped save a lot of lives. I don’t think anyone could– or wanted– to believe how bad Katrina would maul (not New Orleans) but Mississippi. (Hey, we had lived through Camille!)
I have on file a post-hurricane story from the NWS claiming they warned everyone. Not so. They and the govt agencies as a whole simply threw out verbiage. NWS didn’t accurately forecast the path of the hurricane. No one here REALLY knew where the storm would strike until just HOURS before. AND worse for non Coastal Mississippi was the MISSED CALL of the eye windspeeds. Those speeds were supposed to die shortly after landfall. Instead they persisted long enough to ruin Southern Mississippi, in addition to the damage on the Coast. NOT FORECASTED at all, or told too late to matter.
Nature was just that big. The politicization that occurred afterwards sickened many survivors. We needed help. Instead we got despicable hurricane circus put on by media firestorm.
Who did come through were the churches and citizen volunteers–unfazed by the political scum. Those groups were there first. And are still on the Coast helping. The Hurricane zone survivors can never completely thank those average, real Americans from Vermont to Oregon. Their selflessness, and the courage of the survivors, was the real Katrina story. THE MSM never told that. America is good and great.

Your gonna make me blush.

I appreciate the compliment Kevin, always nice to hear.

That was an incredible piece of writing. The synopsis is perfect and it leaves no wiggle-room whatsoever for liberals and others who are attempting to place the blame for the disaster on Bush.

I’m going to use this post as a reference whenever I get into a conversation with anyone over the whole Katrina disaster (with proper citation of course!). Thank you.