Hurricane Katrina Relief: Links to all American Red Cross chapters that have websites available here.

Low post alert

I'm busy now and will be for a while, so low posting will be the state of affairs here for a day or two. With all of the cross-chatter regarding Katrina and her aftermath and the elevation of the Roberts nomination, one voice less won't matter terribly.

Actually, I wouldn't mind if everyone just shut up for a couple of days.

Not likely, I know.

Rehnquist loses final argument

A little less than two months ago, SCOTUS chief William Rehnquist announced that he had no plans to step down from the Supreme Court and that he would continue to serve as long as he could. Today God announced His own plans for Rehnquist.

The credibility that George Bush has earned for his prompt and decisive leadership during the Hurricane Katrina crisis will doubtless serve him well as he nominates a new chief justice.

Technorati Tags: William Rehnquist, Supreme Court, George Bush

"I actually think the security is pretty darn good"

There's something to be said for context. Then again, there's a lot to be said for simply letting one's words stand on their own. CNN has posted a collection of quotes that show a damnable contrast between what blithe Washington officials were saying about conditions in New Orleans and what people on the ground testified to.

In my opinion, this document is Exhibit A in the case against hapless FEMA head Michael Brown.

Brown: I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot, or you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that.

CNN's Chris Lawrence: From here and from talking to the police officers, they're losing control of the city. We're now standing on the roof of one of the police stations. The police officers came by and told us in very, very strong terms it wasn't safe to be out on the street.

Brown: I've just learned today that we ... are in the process of completing the evacuations of the hospitals, that those are going very well.

Dr. Matthew Bellew, Charity Hospital: We still have 200 patients in this hospital, many of them needing care that they just can't get. The conditions are such that it's very dangerous for the patients. Just about all the patients in our services had fevers. Our toilets are overflowing. They are filled with stool and urine. And the smell, if you can imagine, is so bad, you know, many of us had gagging and some people even threw up. It's pretty rough.

Brown: I actually think the security is pretty darn good. There's some really bad people out there that are causing some problems, and it seems to me that every time a bad person wants to scream of cause a problem, there's somebody there with a camera to stick it in their face.

Lawrence: The police are very, very tense right now. They're literally riding around, full assault weapons, full tactical gear, in pickup trucks. Five, six, seven, eight officers. It is a very tense situation here.

Two words without need of context: summary dismissal.

Technorati Tags: Hurricane Katrina

The disaster next time: Katrina, my city, and yours

Ready?

Mayhem would ensue...The metropolitan area's medical services would be swamped by injured people needing attention. Health care workers would find it difficult to respond to such emergencies because the damage to roads and highways would make it hard to reach the hospitals. Indeed, some of them would be among the dead and injured. Some of the hospitals would themselves be damaged severely enough to be out of business or several days if not weeks.

Flooding would be likely, which, along with other damage, would necessitate providing food and shelter for hundreds if not thousands of survivors. Relief efforts would be slowed, not to mention local, regional, and even national commerce, as the days went by. Emergency transportation requirements would have to be met chiefly by helicopter, for airport facilitues would be limited - because of wither actual damage or loss of electrical power to run navigational aids and runway lighting. The main utility systems - electricity, gas, water, sewer - might be unavailable for days or even weeks to most residences, businesses, and other institutions. Port facilities...could be damaged beyond use, preventing any assistance from arriving by water.

Though you might guess otherwise, this is not taken from recent news accounts of the horrors of Katrina. This is a prediction of the effects of a powerful earthquake here in St. Louis, part of the final chapter of The Big One: The Earthquake That Rocked Early America and Helped Create a Science. As the authors grimly state: "If the Gateway Arch still stood, it would preside not over the proud Gateway to the West but over unprecedented suffering and chaos."

So. Given any thought lately to disaster preparedness in your neck of the woods?

Even after 9/11, the term "disaster preparedness" has had a quaint, shovels-and-fallout-shelters ring to it. But not anymore. I'll confess that "getting ready" has been less than a priority in the Waveflux household. For M and I, terrible possibilities seemed terribly remote. The tragic events unfolding in New Orleans have, as you might imagine, refocused our attention. We're making the kinds of plans and mapping the kinds of resources that we should have done some time ago. I imagine that we're not alone in this reassessment.

These are actions that are within our capabilities. What troubles me are wider responsibilities for preparedness, plans made - or not made - by local and federal authorities. It's not enough to merely say that there is a plan. New Orleans had a plan, and we've seen how that panned out. Anyone willing to place sanguine hope in official preparedness arranged pre-Katrina is whistling past the graveyard. Via Laura Rozen at War and Piece, Slate's Tim Naftali states the case most pointedly:

Bush in New Orleans? Stop and think.

John Aravosis of AMERICAblog blasts George Bush for limiting his planned visit to the embattled New Orleans area to an aerial tour. No argument from me over the style-to-substance ratio of such a helicopter tour - the White House has clearly decided that media management is Job One, given the heat the administration is taking - but does Aravosis actually think that having Bush set foot in unsecured, chaotic New Orleans is a good idea? For all kinds of reasons, ranging from the safety of the president to the probable chaos that would result from such a visit, this is a remarkably unserious idea and a needless partisan shot. There are solid reasons to criticize Bush in the matter of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Let's try focusing on those.

Technorati Tags: Katrina, New Orleans