Tag: Katrina

Katrina–20 Years On

On this day, 29 August 2005, a massive hurricane kicked the crap out of the Gulf Coast….a normal hurricane lasts about 5 hours, Katrina lasted 13 hours and 48 minutes with destructive winds and a huge storm surge….it left the Coast looking like a war zone.

  1. Hurricane Katrina was the largest and 3rd strongest hurricane ever recorded to make landfall in the US.^[National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Hurricanes in History.” National Hurricane Center. Accessed March 2, 2014. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/outreach/history/#katrina.%5D
  2. In New Orleans, the levees were designed for Category 3, but Katrina peaked at a Category 5 hurricane, with winds up to 175 mph.^[National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Hurricane Katrina: A climitalogical perspective.” National Hurricane Center. Accessed March 2, 2014. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/tech-report-200501z.pdf.%5D
  3. The final death toll was at 1,836, primarily from Louisiana (1,577) and Mississippi (238). More than half of these victims were senior citizens. Keep seniors safe and sound, and help them plan for hurricane season.^[Jorgenson, Ellen. “Hurricane Katrina: Humanitarian Obligations and Lessons Learned.” University of Denver.Accessed March 2, 2014. https://www.du.edu/korbel/criic/humanitarianbriefs/ellenjorgenson.pdf.%5D
  4. The storm surge from Katrina was 20-ft (six meters) high.^[Ahrens, C Donald. “Hurricanes.” InStudyguide for meteorology today by ahrens, c. donald, isbn 9780840054999. S.l.: Academic Internet Publish, 2012. 447.]
  5. 705 people are reported as still missing as a result of Hurricane Katrina.^[Jorgenson, Ellen. “Hurricane Katrina: Humanitarian Obligations and Lessons Learned.” University of Denver. Accessed March 2, 2014. https://www.du.edu/korbel/criic/humanitarianbriefs/ellenjorgenson.pdf.%5D
  6. Hurricane Katrina affected over 15 million people in different ways varying from having to evacuate their homes, rising gas prices, and the economy suffering.^[FREY, ASHLEY ELIZABETH. “THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON HURRICANE FLOODING INUNDATION, PROPERTY DAMAGES, AND POPULATION AFFECTED.” Texas A&M University. Accessed March 2, 2014. https://repository.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-05-616/FREY-THESIS.pdf?sequence=2.%5D
  7. An estimated 80% of New Orleans was under water, up to 20 ft deep in places.^[Cooper, Anderson, Kathleen Koch, David Mattingly, Jeanne Meserve, Miles O’Brien, Jim Spellman, Gary Tuchman, and John Zarrella. “New Orleans shelters to be evacuated.” CNN. Accessed March 2, 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/30/katrina/index.html?section=cnn_us.%5D
  8. Hurricane Katrina caused $81 billion in property damages, but it is estimated that the total economic impact in Louisiana and Mississippi may exceed $150 billion, earning the title of costliest hurricane ever in US history.^[Answers Corporation. “New Orleans Economy Still Recovering from Hurricane Katrina.” Business Answers. Accessed March 2, 2014. http://business.answers.com/economics/new-orleans-economy-still-recovering-from-hurricane-katrina.%5D
  9. Hurricane Katrina impacted about 90,000 square miles.^[National Research Council. Environmental Public Health Impacts of Disasters: Hurricane Katrina, Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2007.]
  10. The region affected by the storm supported roughly 1 million non-farm jobs, and still, hundreds of thousands of local residents were left unemployed by the hurricane.^[Burton, Mark L.; Hicks, Michael J. “Hurricane Katrina: Preliminary Estimates of Commercial and Public Sector Damages.” Marshall University: Center for Business and Economic Research. September 2005. Retrieved on March, 2, 2014.]
  11. More than 70 countries pledged monetary donations or other assistance after the hurricane. Kuwait made the largest single pledge of $500 million, but Qatar, India, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh made very large donations as well.^[“From abroad, offers of aid for Katrina victims.” People’s Weekly World, September 10, 2005.Retrieved March 2, 2014. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103×155747.%5D

But if facts are not your forte then take gander at the destruction….it is a short video but tells the story….

And this fly over after the storm….

Being on the ground the destruction looked so much worse than from a fly over.

It was pure Hell for weeks afterwards…..

A memory that none of us that stayed will ever forget.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Never Ask What Could Be Worse

I live on the Gulf Coast…a lovely place if you are in a coma…..but enough of that….in 2005 Hurricane Katrina kicked our ass…in case you are not aware Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast, NOT New Orleans…..NO was a man made disaster…the levies could not hold….the after math of the storm was a complete breakdown in the community and an environmental nightmare….

And just when things were getting a bit better…BP gave us a real cool piece of news….yet another environmental disaster was heading our way……the seafood and fishing industries were one of the major employment blocks  in the are…..hopefully, everyone will remember just how really great that disaster was for about a 100 days before BP put a cork in the leak…..

The fix, the cork as it were has worked well for a time now….but just when we thought things would start to return to a chaotic norm we have this bit of news……

An offshore petroleum platform exploded and was burning Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico about 80 miles off the Louisiana coast, west of the site where BP’s undersea well spilled after a rig explosion.The Coast Guard says no one was killed in the blast, which was reported by a commercial helicopter flying over the area Thursday morning. All 13 people aboard the rig have been accounted for, with one injury. The extent of the injury was not known.

Seven Coast Guard helicopters, two airplanes and three cutters were dispatched to the scene from New Orleans, Houston and Mobile, Ala., Ben-Iesau said. She said authorities do not know whether oil was leaking from the site.  (Thanx to AP for the story)

While writing this post it is being reported that the Coast Guard has found a small oil sheen 100 feet wide and about a mile long……the Gulf Coast may have dodged a bullet on this rig explosion….but it is still early and as we know a lot can go wrong….

I will update this post as needed……

So, You Thought You Had Heard It All?

From the VOMITORIUM

You thought you heard some weird sh*t during the health reform debate…..just wait it gets better….

This would be tragic if it were not so godd*mn funny…..

First, I will give a little history lesson….on 30 August 2005, Hurricane Katrina kicked the shit out of the Mississippi Gulf Coast…and then during the clean up and repair, on 26 December 2005, I was thrown from a ladder onto concrete and broke my right leg in 5 places….and until recently I have been under the care of Worker’s Comp…after 2 operations and a piece of metal the size of Rhode Island…I still have pain issues and have been under the care of a pain management doctor for about a year…in this past month I have settled with the insurance company and now I am on my own…as far as the medical care goes……I have too much for Medicaid and not old enough for Medicare….and I am a high risk patient to other insurance companies……why?  Pre-existing condition…remember that from the past health reform debate?

I tell you a bit of my life to set the stage for this piece of news…..today I went for my appointment with pain management as a private citizen that will be footing the bill on my own dime….I will be paying the doctor and the medication out of my own money….cool right?

After my session with the doctor, I was told that I would need to get some sort of insurance if my doctor was going to continue to treat me…that they do NOT accept self-pay patients.  I was aghast!  Why I asked?  He said that the possibility the an addict would come in pop down the cash and get scripts for drugs was high.  I understand that he is trying to protect himself from future lawsuits…but what the Hell?  He said to treat me properly he needs to have some other tests run on me, like a psych eval and others, to be sure that I am not some sort of addict or pusher in hiding…….WTF?

Just how f*cked up is American health care when you cannot pay cash for services?

I mean come on….are you trying to tell me that you do not accept cash?  Hit it on the head, bubba!  So now I must search for an insurance company that will cover me for my medical needs…Good luck with that, Chuq-ie boy!

Katrina’s Human Debris?

Gulf South Free Press

A Daily Agitation

Warning:  This post may be offensive to some.  Read at your own risk.

It is time to shut the fuck up!

I have heard a lot of crap coming from the right,  Neal Boortz.  He has over the years demonized many groups from women to blacks to Latinos, but his attacks on the Katrina refugees is unparalleled for hate and vile comments.

When he heard of the Pres promise to rebuild New Orleans he tweeted (or whatever the obsession is called):

Rebuild New Orleans?  Why?  Build it and they will come?  They?  The debris that Katrina washed out?

Boortz, who regularly mocks Latinos, women and the poor — even calling Rep. Cynthia McKinney a “ghetto slut” — made an expansive case that the combined natural and human disaster of Hurricane Katrina actually helped the city of New Orleans on his June 24, 2009 radio show. Although Katrina’s devastation cost this nation $80 billion, killed thousands, and displaced a million people, Boortz believes “Katrina cleansed New Orleans“:

Katrina cleansed New Orleans. It just washed out a lot of debris, including human debris.

Boortz has also called the overwhelmingly black and poor victims of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans “human parasites” and “deadbeats,” even suggesting that a victim of Hurricane Katrina consider prostitution instead of “sucking off taxpayers.”

Thanx to thinkprogress.org for the above information.

Wait a goddamn minute!  Me and my friends and family were effected by the storm,  homes were lost, legs were broken, and lives lost;  but maybe Boortz is not talking about me because I am white.

I am sick of sanctimonious assholes making judgments they have no fucking knowledge of, to begin with.  I am sick of hate filling bastards making judgments while sitting on their million dollar bank accounts.  Katrina was a horrible disaster that destroyed lives and property and to think of it in any other context is just show one’s true racist colors.

These fucking cowards did nothing to help their fellow countrymen and in turn spend inordinate amount of time spitting on the victims of Katrina.  I have had enough of these mealy mouth, yellow belly asaswads.  Time for these dickheads shut the hell up!

I have had enough!  The stories that people (I use the term loosely), like these racist pricks are the ones about any crime or similar thing……more people had their lives destroyed than committed any crime….I do not hear these buttwads mentioning anything about the assholes that were ripping people off while doing repairs….why is that?  The pricks that ripped off the victims of the storm are more like trash and parasites than anyone that Mr. Boortz would be talking about.  Shut the fuck up!

If this post offended anyone then I have done what I set out to do….you were warned!

Blackwater and Gustav

Last Friday, Blackwater sent out an email. This, of course, is the famous mercenary company that not only has operated in Iraq and Afghanistan, but was actually in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and beyond, in 2005 made $70 million in federal money just off of its Hurricane Katrina contracts. Last Friday, Blackwater sent out an email to its network of independent contractors. The company boasts of having some 20,000-plus individuals that it can call out at a moment’s notice. And the contract was looking for personnel that would be interested in deploying in, what the email said, areas affected by Hurricane Gustav.

And the kinds of individuals that Blackwater was looking to hire for operations potentially in the hurricane zone were law enforcement officers who were sworn, currently sworn, and wanted the specification of their arms status, if they were allowed to use semi or auto, automatic weapons; individuals with arrest powers; armed security officers. And it said that all of the applicants must be US citizens. And so, Blackwater, as of last week, was already starting for this—toward this mobilization.

What we know from experience with Blackwater in the hurricane zone is that this is not a company that believes it needs orders from any government agency to deploy, armed, on the streets of an American city. Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater—I had this confirmed to me by a senior Blackwater executive—Blackwater’s owner Erik Prince simply decided in Hurricane Katrina to send over 180 men, armed, onto the streets of an American city. And when I interviewed them in New Orleans, they told me that they were there to confront criminals and stop looters.

Now, a week after Blackwater arrived in Hurricane Katrina on the streets of New Orleans, they were hired by the Bush administration through the Department of Homeland Security Federal Protective Service, and Blackwater billed the United States government $950—nine-five-zero—$950 per man per day for its operations in the hurricane zone. At one point they had 600 men stretching from Texas through Mississippi and the Gulf. And Blackwater made, as I said, over $70 million just in its federal contracts. That’s doesn’t count the work that Blackwater picked up with wealthy individuals, private businesses, etc.

And finally, what I would say is that several of the men that I talked to were veterans of the Iraq occupation, had just been there two weeks earlier. Some of them were complaining that in New Orleans there wasn’t enough action for them. This is a company that is under multiple investigations, whose operatives are accused of killing civilians. The idea that they would once again be invited to deploy or allowed to deploy, armed on the streets of an American city, I think should be disturbing not just to residents of the Gulf but to all people in this country who are concerned about the fate of those residents of the Gulf right now.

Opportunists to the last!  THis company in NO WAY should profit from the horror of a hurricane.  The need for mercenaries would not be necessary if we had more troops at the disposal of the states.  To have that amount of troops available for hurricanes would mean that dumbass wars need to be avoided.

Oil Industry Damaged By Katrina

McCain in his attempt to convince the American people that offshore drilling is a good and safe thing, has said that Hurricane Katrina did not substantially damage the oil industry. To this I say, BS!

Hurricane Katrina damaged or displaced an estimated 58 Gulf of Mexico oil platforms and drilling rigs, according to the American Petroleum Institute.

Among those, 30 rigs and platforms have been reported lost. No company breakdown was available, said Tim Sampson, an API spokesman.

One of the more significant reported losses of platforms or rigs came from Houston-based Apache Corp. On Thursday, Apache said it lost eight platforms that produce 7,158 barrels of oil and 12.1 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

That’s about 10 percent of the lost oil production and 2 percent of the shut in gas reported earlier this week, said company spokesman Bill Mintz.

Earlier in the week, Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc.’s Ocean Warwick was found about 60 miles from its original position near Dauphin Island off the coast of Alabama. A photo of the displaced rig found its way on Internet sites and newspapers worldwide, creating one of many indelible images of Katrina’s strength.

Speaking of oil spills, SkyTruth images revealed significant spills covering a large area of the northern Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. At the time, nobody was talking about what had happened to the 4,000 offshore oil platforms – and 34,000 miles of pipeline on the seafloor – when Katrina ripped through the Gulf as a Cat 5 storm, followed a few weeks later by Hurricane Rita. Attention was rightly focused on the unfolding human tragedy, as well as the 7-9 million gallons of oil spilled from damaged pipelines, refineries and storage tanks onshore.

But for months after the storms, officials from government and industry repeatedly claimed that there were no “significant” spills in the Gulf. That line is still heard even now. Yet in May 2006, the U.S. Minerals Management Service published their offshore damage assessment: 113 platforms totally destroyed, and – more importantly – 457 pipelines damaged, 101 of those major lines with 10″ or larger diameter. At least 741,000 gallons were spilled from 124 reported sources (the Coast Guard calls anything over 100,000 gallons a “major” spill).