Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Posts Tagged Katrina

The Real Story of Katrina

May 23

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

Not only is most of what you know about Katrina not true, but you’ve never heard the real story of Katrina: the National Guard (with lots of help from the Coast Guard, and the Lousiana Fish and Wildlife Department), supposedly overstretched and worn out from Iraq, saved tens of thousands of lives in New Orleans. Why? Quiet competence never gets media attention:

The procedure ran under a system known as EMACs (Emergency Management Assistance Compacts), a mutual aid pact among states. The conference call became a daily routine that was New Orleans’ primary lifeline to outside aid. It bypassed local officials and the fouled-up federal chain of command that led to much publicized infighting among the Governor, FEMA and the White House. According to the Senate Select Committee on Katrina, “This process quickly resulted in the largest National Guard deployment in U.S. history, with 50,000 troops and supporting equipment arriving from 49 states and four territories within two weeks. These forces participated in every aspect of emergency response, from medical care to law enforcement and debris removal…” the report said. All from the Superdome.

Meanwhile, late Monday, Louisiana National Guard HQ moved its high tech “unified command suite” and tents to the upper parking deck of the Superdome. This degraded communications for about four hours but ultimately gave them satellite dishes for phone and Internet connections to the outside world, Wi-fi, plus radios that were the only talk of the town. Helicopters and boats, as we noted, were already bringing in survivors there. About fifty men and women, black and white, worked per shift, equipped with maps, laptops, phone and radios to coordinate the rescue operation. The rescuers called it the “eagles’ nest”.

The operation was impossible to hide or ignore and some news outlets may have mentioned it in passing. Still, I haven’t seen anything reported that sounded like what the two Majors described Tuesday morning: helicopters landing every minute; big ones, like the National Guard Chinooks, literally shaking the decking of the rooftop parking lot; little ones like the ubiquitous Coast Guard Dolphins; Black Hawks everywhere, many with their regular seats torn out so they could accommodate more passengers, standing. Private air ambulance services evacuating patients from flood-threatened hospitals. Owners of private helicopters who showed up to volunteer, and were sent on their way with impromptu briefings on basic rescue needs. Overhead, helicopters stacked in a holding pattern.
…
In all this time, Dressler said, “We didn’t see a single camera crew or reporter on the scene. Maybe someone was there with a cell phone or a digital camera but I didn’t see anyone.” This was in the headquarters area. Maj. Ed Bush, meanwhile, did start seeing reporters on Tuesday and Wednesday, but inside the Dome, most were interested in confirming the stacks of bodies in the freezers, interviews with rape victims, he said, and other mayhem that never happened. He pitched the rescue angle and no one was interested. A few reporters and film crews did hitch rides on helicopters, came back, and produced stories of people stuck on rooftops, not stories about rescues, he said.

Neither Maj. Bush nor Dressler saw TV until the end of the week. They were aghast. Apart from sporadic mentions, the most significant note taken of this gigantic operation was widespread reporting of the rumor that a sniper had fired on a helicopter. What were termed evacuations in some cases, rescue operations in others, were said to have been halted as a result. “I never knew how badly we were being killed in the media,” Maj. Ed Bush says. In reality, the only shots fired at the Guard were purely metaphorical and originated with the media. Rescues continued 24/7 at a furious pace.

I’m reminded time and time again just how badly the press, which always holds others up to such high standards, does in getting stories right.

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Katrina Redux

Mar 2

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | 2 Comments

The Return of Katrina, first as tragedy, now as farce. Videos from before the disaster of various meetings with President Bush about Katrina are being touted as showing that Bush was complacent and under prepared. But when you get to the details – you have things like Bush didn’t ask any questions in a particular meeting or this sleight of hand:

“I don’t think anyone can tell you with confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but that’s obviously a very, very great concern,” Mayfield says in one. 

In a September 1 television interview, Bush said, “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees,” a statement Chertoff agreed with three days later.

Maybe I’m just a yokel from the midwest, but there is a difference between topping a levee and breaching a levee, although topping is a quick way and effective way to breach an earthen levee. Topping means that a (relatively) small amount of water will make it’s way past the levee– breaching means whatever is behind the levee is now part of what’s in front of the levee – i.e the levee isn’t holding back anything.

I’m not sure what President Bush was supposed to do a few days in advance of levees being overtopped – sent that non-existant armor that also wasn’t sent to Iraq? The time to sound such a warning and for it to have an effect is in the years before such an event, not days.

I’ll start with the highest level argument – the “fault” of Katrina lies squarely with the citizens of New Orleans, past and present, who built a city that could be devasted by a hurricane, and then didn’t take adequate steps to protect themselves. Yes, I have a lot of symphathy for the victims, but ultimately it was local failures over a long period of time that brought about this disaster. Am I blaming the victim here — to the extent the victims were the perpetrators I am. It’s not like this was a hidden hazard.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee, said the tape “demonstrates for all to see what our committee discovered during its investigation of the preparations for and response to Hurricane Katrina.””Government at all levels was forewarned of the catastrophic nature of the approaching storm and did painfully little to be ready to evacuate, search, rescue and relieve,” said the Connecticut lawmaker, who had accused the White House of stonewalling the committee.

Sen. Lieberman is correct, we just disagree on the time frame involved. The problem has more to do with human nature than anything else. The best time to fix a leaky roof is when it’s sunny, not when it’s raining, but we only think about the leaky roof when its raining. Preventative maintaince is always far easier and cheaper than heroic measures, but it gets little support and less acclaim. New Orleans was a special case, or in the words of Michael Brown, a disaster within a disaster, because people decided to put themselves in harms way and do little to prevent disaster thinking that while a disaster was statistically inevitable, it still wouldn’t happen to them and if it did, they would be taken care of. [What will you write when the New Madrid Fault levels St. Louis? I’ll change the they’s to we’s — but it won’t happen].

By that time, 11 inches of rain had fallen in New Orleans, the massive storm surge had damaged the flood protection system and about 15,000 people were in the Superdome. That figure eventually doubled, leading to days of intolerable conditions before residents could be bused elsewhere.

OK, the conditions weren’t intolerable since the people did in fact tolerate them, although I certainly wouldn’t want to go through it. There were national guard troops at the Superdome throughout the ordeal maintaining order. The conditions weren’t any worse — just the reporting about them — than when Ivan exposed how bad things could get at the Superdome during a hurricane. And Ray “Chocolate” Nagin and the rest of New Orleans didn’t make any improvements to what was demonstrated to be unacceptable.

Why didn’t people get out? The Post-Dispatch had stories in the first few days about how local St. Louisans got out after the hurricane. According to the paper, the first people to show up at the convention center were a group of St. Louis tourists who were directed there by the hotel they were staying at, and who left and came home after being warned to leave by residents. I think people thought aid would simply come to them because of their great need. Let that be a lesson to all of us – you are on your own in a giant disaster, and the first help will be from your neighbors, not your government.

I have yet to see the press own up to their own mistakes, or pursue with such fervor the timeline of their own flawed reporting. The hysterical and wrong coverage of the press caused assets to be diverted to supressing criminal behavior that was virtually non-existant. Gen. Honore uttered the memorable “Stuck on Stupid” line because the press didn’t want to do it’s job of informing people, but wanted to second guess and badger. What a President says after the fact is trivial – what the media reports at the time is vital not just because it shapes our perceptions, but because it effects the response. The media failed during Katrina, and made things worse. I’d take a lot more notice of their reporting if news people ever got fired for their mistakes, and not just making things up out of whole cloth.

And as far as the response to the disaster, the real tragedy was the decision (and it’s still not clear exactly who decided) not to provide relief in New Orleans, but to use it as a carrot to entice people to leave. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army were ready to go in, but they were prevented. That is truly what caused the suffering that we saw on TV.

Gateway Pundit writes the headline the AP should have written for this story.

Powerline focuses on the factual errors of the reporting.

The Junkyard Blog wonders why the AP is so hot to report this video but so cold to report some other facts.

Wizbang notes the ability of the media to turn on a dime – from Bush was out of touch because he was on vacation, to Bush was out of touch even though he was being thoroughly briefed.

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The Story That Wasn’t

Oct 14

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

The more we find out about what happened during Katrina and its immediate aftermath, the less the journalism of the moment holds up. Rapes, murders, chaos – not so much. People helping people, more than we ever heard about, or will hear about. You’d have been better informed to have just read these four words — storm, flooding, mass evacuation — than all the miles of column inches of rumor passed off as fact in the newspapers, and days of non-stop fear mongering on the TV.

I remember back in the floods of ’93 the same talk about how the floodwaters are toxic as we heard about Katrina. I also remember how a few days after the levees broke in New Orleans, a reporter interviewed a Doctor and the reporter was so disapointed when the Doctor pretty much downplayed the toxic angle of the floodwater, and how the danger was limited pretty much to minor skin infections from direct contact because of the extra sewage in the water. The interview came to a quick end when no spectre of mass casualties was raised. So it’s official now – at least for the press – the toxic floodwaters of Katrina aren’t so toxic after all.

Hopefully the new media will throw out some of these old media story templates and frames because no matter how many times they are shown to be inaccurate after an event, they still get used the next time a similar event occurs. The institutional memory of journalism is always the sizzle, never the steak.

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Start Afresh

Oct 12

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

As long as we’re rebuilding New Orleans, perhaps we should take a more “from the ground up” approach and start fresh with those parts of the City that didn’t work before Katrina – like the New Orleans Police Department.

Hat Tip to Ed Driscoll.

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News Or Rumors?

Oct 5

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

Mike Brown was forced out of FEMA. Blanco and Nagin still have their jobs, along with all the newsies who not just got it wrong, but made things worse in New Orleans. How’s that for accountability? Next time President Bush gives a press conference, maybe he should start by asking the reporters to repent of their mistakes.

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Poverty

Sep 13

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Culture | 1 Comment

Katrina has put poverty on, well, the middle burner these days. An op-ed in the Post Dispatch by Francie Broderick linked Katrina with recent roll backs in Medicaid coverage in Missouri noted this exchange thoughts it inspired:

“Two years ago, I was in Jefferson City when legislators debated the question of saving health care and social services by raising some taxes and closing some corporate loopholes. A woman opposing this approach literally shouted in my ear: “People should take care of themselves.” I made the mistake of responding. “Some people simply can’t,” I said, to which she again shouted “Well, they just have to do better.”…

Why have things changed so much? Why did we decide to let the most vulnerable fend for themselves? I think part of the answer is that we have been asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking “How do we make things better?” we have been asking what the individual has done or not done to get themselves in their situations. In other words: How is it their fault?

I think we also should be asking: What systems and policies have to change so that people can take better care of themselves and their families? What do we know that will work? How can we make it happen? “

Now, those are some excellent questions – I’m always a fan of “How do we make things better?” but I think it ignores the difference between people who can’t take care of themselves (or adequately participate in a market economy) and those who won’t. And for me that’s a huge difference, and oddly enough one of my problems with doctrinaire libertarianism since they want to reduce the problem to one for which they already have a solution, so doctrinaire libertarians simply the problem to one in which we are all adults sound of mind and body. But we aren’t and even my simple dichotomy of can’t and won’t isn’t so simple in real life as there aren’t simple binary functions of can/can’t and will/won’t, let alone can’t/won’t.

So if you look at the poor and see the problem of poverty as one of people who can’t, one set of solutions becomes clear; if you look at the poor and see the problem of poverty as one of people how won’t, a different set of solutions becomes clear. And since the tendency is that feedback from life only reinforces your previously held assumptions and beliefs, people of one camp find it hard to see the poor in any other way. I guess I look at it both ways, and that what’s needed for one group won’t do much for the other. For people who can’t participate adequately, whether through physical or mental issues, money by itself is a significant part of the solution. For people who won’t, money by itself only enables them in their won’t-ness and is something that they will be able to earn once they are no longer won’t-ers.

There is clearly a social/cultural aspect to poverty; I can remember watching an older writer being interviewed by Tim Russert and the writer related how he was talking to a friend of the same generation and they were talking about growing up poor during the great depression, which got them to talking about poverty today and the differences, and the writer said that the difference was that when he was growing up, the poor were middle class people without money but that being poor today is about far more than money.

Megan McArdle first looks at the poor and Katrina and has suggestions on why and how a “self-evacuation” in the face of a storm means the middle class and rich leave without difficulty and the poor stays behind. Then she effectively explores the difference between the poor and middle class, and hint, it isn’t about money:

“So I think that conservatives are right that many of the poor dig themselves in deeper. But conservatives tend to take a moralistic stance towards poverty that radically underestimates how much cultural context determines our ability to make good decisions.Sure, I go to work every day, pay my bills on time, don’t run a credit card balance and don’t have kids out of wedlock because I am planning for my future. But I also do these things because my parents spent twenty or so years drumming a fear of debt, unemployment, and illegitimacy into my head.

…

In other words, middle class culture is such that bad long-term decision making also has painful short-term consequences. This does not, obviously, stop many middle class people from becoming addicted to drugs, flagrantly screwing up at work, having children they can’t take care of, and so forth. But on the margin, it prevents a lot of people from taking steps that might lead to bankruptcy and deprivation. We like to think that it’s just us being the intrinsically worthy humans that we are, but honestly, how many of my nice middle class readers had the courage to drop out of high school and steal cars for a living?”

It is often said by advocates who only see those who can’t that nobody chooses to be poor. Well, I don’t choose to be fat, but I have looked in the mirror lately. So yes, some people choose to be poor, only the choice is never put in those terms. It’s the sum of a whole bunch of decisions not all of which seem related. And the poor have a host of influences that lead to poor decisions; the middle class has has a host of influences that lead to better decisions. So what can we do to influence the influences? And how much can government do as part of that influence? I leave these as excercises for the reader.

And to round out the trifecta, I turn to Joe Carter to has reposted his thoughts on the relativeness of poverty:

“I’m always hesitant to share this story because we in America tend to have a knee-jerk sympathy for the “down and out.” There are, however, many times, like in my family’s case, when pity is completely unwarranted. A lifetime of foolish decisions by my parents, rather than a dismal economy or lack of opportunity, led to our being poor. We reaped what they had sowed.But while being poor can be difficult, it isn’t the tragedy that many might be inclined to believe. From an early age I knew that while many people had more than I did, others had it much, much worse. That lesson was seared into my conscience while sitting in a pew watching Baptist missionaries present a slideshow detailing their latest mission trip. The images of true poverty gave our tiny congregation a glimpse into the everyday life in Ethiopia, a time of famine when a bucket of unshelled peanuts would be considered a feast. I was struck by the realization that as little as we had, these people had less. I was white-trash Texas poor; these people were Africa poor. “

My summation is that I know as a Christian I should help those in need; but I have to be careful not just because all needs aren’t equal, but all needs aren’t the same. A lack of money has many causes and the best help addresses the cause even as it addresses the lack. Even rich people have needs that money cannot solve.

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Katrina Rumblings 4

Sep 13

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

The press is taking some heat over the Katrina body count numbers. I don’t think it’s particularly fair as I don’t think the press was presenting numbers like 10,000 as anything close to accurate, but as a guess — a guess by government officials, and something of an upper bound. And there is certainly nothing wrong with reporting the quantities of body bags being requested by local and state authorities. I suppose I’m a naturaly happy guy, so I’m happy that the body count is low so far. I have no idea what the final number will be, and I’m not sure that we’ll ever have a count accurate to the last dead person.

But I also think it’s a bit premature to use the number so far to predict the final count. The other day while watching cable news I saw a feature from a reporter who was riding along with one of the teams sent out by boat to search in New Orleans for the dead and the living. They pulled up to a flooded house, knocked out a window, yelled inside in case there were survivors, and then sniffed inside to try to see if there were any dead bodies inside. Simple but effective, I suppose. Then they spray painted the side of the house to annotate their findings. The team told the reporter that they would have to actually physically search the building later when flood waters receded to make sure there were no dead bodies in the building. There’s something to look forward to.

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Katrina Ramblings 3

Sep 11

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

Barack Obama has made some fine speeches and is hailed by Democrats as a true national leader but I wonder if I’m the only one offended by has statement that the huge influx of volunteers and donations shows that Americans were ashamed by what happened. I can only speak for me and others of my acquaintance when I say that my donation was sparked not by shame but pity. I want to alleviate the sufferings of others, and I understand that government can only do so much — and besides, all that government has it has because of us, the American people. We’ll pay one way or another, and I’d just as soon have some of my money funneled through organizations I think will do a good job and spend wisely. If anything, I’m embarrassed by all the carping by people who aren’t affected and especially the political partisan posturing of people who put party before basic human decency.

He also said Katrina revealed “huge systemic problems” in emergency response systems at all levels of government. I think the best reading of the evidence to date is that it isn’t systemic at all, but confined to New Orleans by nature of its geography which provides for the twin whammies of hurricane followed by flooding and to New Orleans and Louisiana by nature of the gross incompetence of their current government officials who really ought to be horsewhipped. But since such pleasures are rightfully denied to us, does this mean that Senator Obama is calling for the recall of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin for their manifest unfitness to hold office? I doubt it, after all, he’s fine with his party in Congress being led by the unbearable duo of Pelosi and Reid. But honestly, there is a long road of recovery before us, and given the huge failures of Blanco and Nagin to date, is it likely that they will improve when it comes to spending the billions upon billions of dollars that will be thrown their way during the recovery and reconstruction?

I have a feeling that what the Senator has in mind, along with many others when they talk this way, is to completely federalize disaster planning and relief. But just because the local and state authorities failed in Louisiana doesn’t mean we need to overhaul a system that has worked in other times and places. Instead of concentrating on state and local disaster planning and relief, which where the problem is, they want to concentrate on the feds, where the problem wasn’t, and ignore the number one source of planning and relief, which is victims and bystanders. In other words, I don’t think the best response is to overhaul one of the agencies that worked but ignore the agencies that didn’t. Then you will have a huge, system problem, despite all the good intentions in the world.

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No Singing Yet

Aug 30

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

The good news is that New Orleans wasn’t wiped off the face of the earth by Katrina. The bad news is that it isn’t over yet, as a levee was damaged and it appears the flooding in the city is worsening. What a terrible time for the people caught in the storm and its aftermath.

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