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Update on below. The Children’s Hospital seige report by NOLA news was incorrect, but it yielded good results. See at link.

As if we didn’t already have NOLA’s worst nightmare made a living hell.

Children’s Hospital under seige
Tuesday, 11:45 p.m.

Late Tuesday, Gov. Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher described a disturbing scene unfolding in uptown New Orleans, where looters were trying to break into Children’s Hospital.

Bottcher said the director of the hospital fears for the safety of the staff and the 100 kids inside the hospital. The director said the hospital is locked, but that the looters were trying to break in and had gathered outside the facility.

The director has sought help from the police, but, due to rising flood waters, police have not been able to respond.

Bottcher said Blanco has been told of the situation and has informed the National Guard. However, Bottcher said, the National Guard has also been unable to respond.

What happened to Bush’s precious “Homeland Security”? Maybe the Secret Police aren’t built to handle a natural disaster and its consequences? The LSU Field House puts out a plea for your medical essentials. Then Tenet Memorial Hospital puts out a Mayday to America-In-General looking for assistance in evacuating their hospital. Now a Children’s Hospital, with unevacuated kids, is under seige and not even the National Guard is able to reach them.

And the Superdome. Why stash a city’s poor and infirm in a stadium that you know is likely to lose power and will turn into unsanitary chaos, instead of ferrying them out of town on fleets of buses? Most everyone has been accusing the poor of being shortsighted in not evacuating, but was the use of the Superdome a reluctance to evacuate in case the worst scenario didn’t develop and who wanted to spend the money? I’m just wondering.

How many helicopters were available today for rescue? How many boats?

NOLA News had the below article in their archive today:

Feds’ Disaster Planning Shifts Away From Preparedness
Tuesday, 8 p.m.

By Bill Walsh, Bruce Alpert and John McQuaid
c.2005 Newhouse News Service

WASHINGTON – No one can say they didn’t see it coming.

For years before Hurricane Katrina roared ashore Monday morning, devastating the Gulf Coast, officials from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have been warning about their vulnerability to the storms that swirl menacingly in the Gulf of Mexico every hurricane season.

Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.

On Tuesday, looters could be seen carrying away whole shelves of merchandise from stores in New Orleans with no police in sight. A shortage of boats left people stranded on their roofs a day after the storm passed. State, local and federal rescue workers, all supplied with different radio equipment, were having trouble communicating with one another.

All day we are told about the people being rescued. At day’s end we’re given the fine sum of 3000. Yes, this is good, great, wonderful. But there is still the question of the shortage of boats. It shouldn’t be brushed aside with a hand flagging, “But look at all the people we did save.”

Why were the state, local and federal workers all supplied different radio equipment?

Meanwhile, local officials said that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection – including fortifying homes, building up levees and repairing barrier islands – the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be.

“If we had been investing resources in restoring our coast, it wouldn’t have prevented the storm but the barrier islands would have absorbed some of the tidal surge,” said Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-La. “People’s lives are at stake. We need to take this more seriously.”

Jindal and other elected officials credited the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for positioning stockpiles of food, water and medical supplies throughout Louisiana and Mississippi more than a day before Katrina made landfall. The quick response was triggered by an unusually early emergency declaration from President Bush.

Still, the level of devastation from a storm that everyone agreed was not a “worst-case scenario” has focused attention on whether policymakers took the much-heralded threat seriously and whether adequate plans are in place for future natural disasters.

Warning signs have been everywhere. More people than ever are living near hurricane-prone coastlines, earthquake fault lines, forest fire-prone areas and in flood plains, a trend that has created a landscape of expanding risk, with more people, homes and communities in the path of danger.

Not surprisingly, disaster costs are rising to levels unheard of a generation ago, posing a growing problem for insurers, governments and the people in harm’s way. The number of federal emergency disaster declarations doubled from an average of 23 a year during 1980-84 to 53 a year during 2000-2004.

Hurricane Andrew set a record of more than $30 billion in losses in 1992, followed quickly by California’s Northridge earthquake the next year, which cost more than $40 billion. Early estimates have put the cost of Hurricane Katrina at upwards of $19 billion.

“We’ve been on this trajectory for about 15 years. We’re seeing increasingly bigger disasters and increasingly higher losses,” said Kathleen Tierney, director of the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center at the University of Colorado. “Now just about any place a hurricane is going to come in, it’s going to hit a developed area. This is the way it’s going to be from now on.”

Disaster and emergency experts have warned for years that governments, especially the federal government, have put so much stress on disaster response that they have neglected policies to minimize a disaster’s impact in advance.

“In the same way that Hurricane Andrew was a wakeup call to Florida, this storm will be a wakeup call to Louisiana and Mississippi,” said Robert Hartwig, chief economist for the Insurance Information Institute. “It’s going to be very evident that there were an enormous number of vulnerabilities that weren’t addressed. There’s going to be a lot of finger-pointing.”

Louisiana’s elected officials were quick to seize on the disaster to press for long-requested federal financial assistance in shoring up Louisiana’s coastline. The coastal wetlands erode at a rate of 24 square miles a year and expose south Louisiana to increasing danger.

Until recently, efforts to squeeze coastal protection money out of Washington have met with resistance. The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana’s coast, only to be opposed by the White House. Ultimately a deal was struck to steer $540 million to the state over four years. The total coast of repair work is estimated to be $14 billion.

In its budget, the Bush administration had also proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana’s chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need.

Leave it to Bush. That is real hurricane preparedness, fighting against preserving the wetlands and cutting hurricane protection funding. He couldn’t have done any worse than if he’d set out to destroy New Orleans, home of the busiest port in the western hemisphere.

Some critics said that in a post-Sept. 11 world, when the Department of Homeland Security is focused on preventing another terrorist attack, not enough emphasis is being placed on preparing for natural disasters.

A case in point, they say, is the decision to take away from FEMA its historic responsibility for disaster preparedness. Now the agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, will focus on post-disaster search and rescue.

The Homeland Security agency plans to create a new Directorate of Preparedness, covering planning for both terrorism and natural disasters. But it is still on the drawing board.

Russ Knocke, a Homeland Security spokesman, said the reorganization will lead to better disaster preparation.

“It will let the experts on planning and preparation focus on that and the experts on search and rescue focus on that,” Knocke said.

But experts in disaster planning say that it has already sown confusion among those on the front lines of preparing for disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

“It’s very confusing to the state and local governments,” said James Lee Witt, the FEMA director in the Clinton administration. “Who do they go to and how is it going to be coordinated now? It’s really going to be fragmented. I’ve talked to a lot of the states, and I don’t think they’re very happy about this.”

Another article on the slashes in funding:

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? ‘Times-Picayune’ Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues

By Will Bunch

Published: August 30, 2005 9:00 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans late on Tuesday. That’s because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city’s 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it’s level with the massive lake.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security — coming at the same time as federal tax cuts — was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune web site, reported: “No one can say they didn’t see it coming….Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.”

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps’ project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

“The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don’t get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can’t stay ahead of the settlement,” he said. “The problem that we have isn’t that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can’t raise them.”

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project — $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million — was not enough to start any new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

“That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said.”

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it’s too late.

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, “The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana’s coast, only to be opposed by the White House….In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana’s chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need.”

Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, “the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be.”

Source: Editor and Publisher

The news is bizarre at times. Are we so morally bankrupt that we can’t tell the difference between looting and scrambling for food in a devastated city ill-equipped to care for survivors?

Sean Jeffries of New Orleans had already been evacuated from one French Quarter hotel when he was ordered out of a second hotel Tuesday because of rising water.

The 37-year-old banker — who admitted to looting some food from a nearby supermarket — said the hotel guests were told they were being taken to a convention center, but from there, they didn’t know.

“We’re in the middle of a national tragedy,” he said as he popped purloined grapes in his mouth. “But I know this city. We will be back. It may take awhile. But we will be back.”

Source: Associated Press

The above article seems to be implying some sort of Bacchan revely and disregard with the “popping of purloined” grapes description. Because he took the grapes or because he’s a banker? And why should we care if he stole grapes when people are sitting on rooftops, rescue efforts hampered by a shortage of boats?

Crashing a convenience store or supermarket for food is not the same thing as holding seige on a children’s hospital. Where is a sense of perspective?

The NOLA News forum board is degenerating in parts into the worst sort of commentary, racist invective and some posters urging that all looters, even those taking food from shops, be shot on sight, to kill, as they are committing crimes against humanity, are part of a welfare entitlement society which accepts no responsibility and worthy of only serving as flotation devices.

In the meanwhile, appearing at Naval Air Station North Island to commemorate the anniversary of the Allies’ World War II victory over Japan, Bush gave only a glancing, dispassionate nod to the catastrophic laying waste of Biloxi and the collapse of New Orleans, as if he failed to grasp the gravity of the situation, that a large historic city had overnight been made into a ghost town which would need to be nearly completely rebuilt, hundreds of thousands of people displaced, their possessions and households lost to them, without jobs. And how many dead who were being pushed aside and tied to posts, rescuers working frantically against time and with a shortage of boats.

This morning our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens along the Gulf Coast who have suffered so much from Hurricane Katrina. These are trying times for the people of these communities. We know that many are anxious to return to their homes. It’s not possible at this moment. Right now our priority is on saving lives, and we are still in the midst of search and rescue operations. I urge everyone in the affected areas to continue to follow instructions from state and local authorities.

The federal, state and local governments are working side-by-side to do all we can to help people get back on their feet, and we have got a lot of work to do. Our teams and equipment are in place and we’re beginning to move in the help that people need. Americans who wish to help can call 1-800-HELPNOW, or log on to RedCross.org, or get in touch with the Salvation Army. The good folks in Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama and other affected areas are going to need the help and compassion and prayers of our fellow citizens.

As we deliver relief to our citizens to the south, our troops are defending all our citizens from threats abroad.

Continuing his campaign to beef up support for the war in Iraq, Bush now claimed that the fight was necessary to protect Iraq’s oil fileds from falling under the control of terrorist extremists.

This is a new reason for the war. A variation on one that people have long suspected, that America is in Iraq to take control of oil.

And in this way Bush may have referred to New Orleans, taken advantage of New Orleans, the fears people have of the interruption of gulf oil sky-rocketing gas prices.

Indeed, in this way Bush may have taken advantage of New Orleans’ pain in order to boost his war, thinking that it was ripe to bring oil into the picture, the images of frenzied oil traders fresh on the minds of Americans.