HumidCity

Remember the promises to rebuild infrastructure, promises that three years later remain unfulfilled.

Remember us in your thoughts as Gustav and Hanna approach.

7AM CDT — KATRINA MAKES LANDFALL AS A CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE [CNN]

7:30 AM CDT — BUSH ADMINISTRATION NOTIFIED OF THE LEVEE BREACH: The administration finds out that a levee in New Orleans was breached. On this day, 28 “government agencies, from local Louisiana parishes to the White House, [reported that] that New Orleans levees” were breached. [AP]

8AM CDT — MAYOR NAGIN REPORTS THAT WATER IS FLOWING OVER LEVEE: “I’ve gotten reports this morning that there is already water coming over some of the levee systems. In the lower ninth ward, we’ve had one of our pumping stations to stop operating, so we will have significant flooding, it is just a matter of how much.” [NBC’s “Today Show”]

11:13 AM CDT - WHITE HOUSE CIRCULATES INTERNAL MEMO ABOUT LEVEE BREACH: “Flooding is significant throughout the region and a levee in New Orleans has reportedly been breached sending 6-8 feet of water throughout the 9th ward area of the city.” [AP]

MORNING — BROWN WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE POTENTIAL DEVASTATION OF KATRINA: In a briefing, Brown warned Bush, “This is, to put it mildly, the big one, I think.” He also voiced concerns that the government may not have the capacity to “respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe” and that the Superdome was ill-equipped to be a refuge of last resort. [AP]

MORNING — MAYFIELD WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE TOPPING OF THE LEVEES: In the same briefing, Max Mayfield, National Hurricane Center Director, warns, “This is a category 5 hurricane, very similar to Hurricane Andrew in the maximum intensity, but there’s a big big difference. This hurricane is much larger than Andrew ever was. I also want to make absolutely clear to everyone that the greatest potential for large loss of lives is still in the coastal areas from the storm surge. … I don’t think anyone can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but there’s obviously a very very grave concern.” [AP]

MORNING — BUSH CALLS SECRETARY CHERTOFF TO DISCUSS IMMIGRATION: “I spoke to Mike Chertoff today — he’s the head of the Department of Homeland Security. I knew people would want me to discuss this issue [immigration], so we got us an airplane on — a telephone on Air Force One, so I called him. I said, are you working with the governor? He said, you bet we are.” [White House]

MORNING — BUSH SHARES BIRTHDAY CAKE PHOTO-OP WITH SEN. JOHN MCCAIN [White House]

11AM CDT — MICHAEL BROWN FINALLY REQUESTS THAT DHS DISPATCH 1,000 EMPLOYEES TO REGION, GIVES THEM TWO DAYS TO ARRIVE: “Brown’s memo to Chertoff described Katrina as ‘this near catastrophic event’ but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, ‘Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities.’” [AP]

LATE MORNING — LEVEE BREACHED: “A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new ‘hurricane proof’ Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina’s fiercest winds were well north.” [Times-Picayune]

11AM CDT — BUSH VISITS ARIZONA RESORT TO PROMOTE MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “This new bill I signed says, if you’re a senior and you like the way things are today, you’re in good shape, don’t change. But, by the way, there’s a lot of different options for you. And we’re here to talk about what that means to our seniors.” [White House]

4:30PM CDT — BUSH TRAVELS TO CALIFORNIA SENIOR CENTER TO DISCUSS MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “We’ve got some folks up here who are concerned about their Social Security or Medicare. Joan Geist is with us. … I could tell — she was looking at me when I first walked in the room to meet her, she was wondering whether or not old George W. is going to take away her Social Security check.” [White House]

8PM CDT — RUMSFELD ATTENDS SAN DIEGO PADRES BASEBALL GAME: Rumsfeld “joined Padres President John Moores in the owner’s box…at Petco Park.” [Editor & Publisher]

8PM CDT — GOV. BLANCO AGAIN REQUESTS ASSISTANCE FROM BUSH: “Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you’ve got.” [Newsweek]

LATE PM — BUSH GOES TO BED WITHOUT ACTING ON BLANCO’S REQUESTS [Newsweek]

To see the full Think Progress Katrina Timeline, click here.

On WTUL FM’s Community Gumbo tomorrow morning at 9am. I’ll be talking about Katrina, media democratization, and the social web. Go here and click “listen live” in the morning.

Go figure, people are people warts and all no matter where you go. This one is the first of many dedicated to those who continue to excoriate us rather than assist. It is not a hand out that we want or need. It is a hand up.

In that spirit allow me to shout about whats going on in Iowa. For them it is a manner of weeks since their flood, not the years we have had to navigate the dilirium, for them the red tape and greed factors are only just rearing their heads.

Via Iowa’s Gazette Online (hat tip to the inimitable Karen Gadbois for the this first one):

CEDAR RAPIDS � Three more residents have been accused of fraudulently claiming to be flood victims in order to receive money from the American Red Cross � taking more than $3,000 in assistance.

Patrice Howard, 36, and Willie Morris, 38, both of 1200 First Ave. SE, Apt. 1, were arrested this week on charges of second-degree theft, police said.

On June 21, the two gave Red Cross officials their previous address of 1806 M St. SW and said they lost their home in the flood. Investigators later found that house was not damaged by the flood.

For those keeping count that make seven so far in Cedar Rapids. I really feel for them, even a pale spectral version of what happened to our Crescent City is more than I would wish on anyone. It is close enough however that I can see the same pattern of news stories developing: thievery, red tape, failure of infrastructure. Just like home in that respect.

Wait, did I say red tape? Lets check back in on the Gazette, different article this time:

I called up John Gillick, who was flooded out of his house on 10th Street NW two months ago this week. His home was trashed, his Ellis Harbor boathouse was smashed, and the cops had his flooded car towed before he could get back into his neighborhood. He’s given up trying to get it back.

Still, Gillick is remarkably positive. I caught up with him Wednesday morning as he and his wife were moving into a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer in Hiawatha.

“It’s good and it’s bad,” said Gillick, who’s happy to have a place to live but laments how he got here. “At least it’s a place to stay.”

He figures the decision to pull out dozens of moldy FEMA trailers extended his wait for housing. “Tell Patty Judge thanks,” one of his moving helpers yells, referring to the lieutenant governor’s snap, late-night order last month to remove the tainted trailers.

Gillick’s house also has been on a bureaucratic roller-coaster ride. First it was yellow-carded. Then yellow turned to that infamous shade of purple. Then, for some reason, purple turned back to yellow. He’s weighing the costs of rebuilding or renovation or putting in a modular home. But for now, like a lot of people, he’s just waiting for the feds, state and city to make some key decisions.

Right now Katrina is on everyone’s mind (at least here on the Gulf where there is no choice), in the spirit of generosity shown to us by those who came from states away to help while the official effort floundered I would like to advise readers to remember all the victims of infrastructure failure across the country.

Levees are everywhere.

-Loki, HumidCity Founder

Its almost three years since the day Katrina hit our shores. Three years of government ineptitude, three years of the “new normal,” three years in which voices from New Orleans have been handed the virtual megaphone here on HumidCity.

This year I would like to commemorate the occasion by bringing in a variety of voices to share their thoughts and reflections on post levee failure New Orleans. Where we’ve been, where we’re going, and this Third Battle of New Orleans that bridges the gap between the two.

This started off earlier this week in a pair of guest posts, one by Steve O’Keefe and one by Bethany Bultman. Then the idea began to grow. Now I have decided that this will be the First Annual Blog Carnival. I’ll be handing the site over to a variety of voices from here and beyond. A wide variety of voices will be presented over the next few weeks, I encourage you to follow their signature links and check out their blogs/sites.

Coming soon: Adrastos, Greg Peters/Suspect Device, and more! (For a complete and continually updated list of all Blog Carnival Posts visit this page.)

-Loki, HumidCity Founder

Ladies, Gentlemen, and Undecided,

The schedule of events and speakers for Rising Tide III is now available! In this third year of our “blogger conference” there is much of interest, as can be seen below. More details and online registration are available at the Rising Tide Conference Blog. Come on down and get the skinny on Year 3K, from levee failure to living in the aftermath this one has it all. Even better, if you wish to levy abuse upon yours truly then you can do so at the Conference as I will be liveblogging the proceedings for HumidCity and Katrina: An UnNatural Disaster.

-Loki, HumidCity Founder

Friday night, 8/22, 7:30 PM - Meet and Greet at Buffa’s Lounge, 1001 Esplanade Avenue. Pick up your badges, grab some refreshments, and chat with other bloggers. Drinks are not included in the conference fee.

Saturday, 8/23, 9:00 - Conference begins at Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center, 1618 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd - coffee and pastries are served.

The following presentations include 15-minute Question and Answer sessions:

9:30- 10:30 - Keynote speaker: John Barry, author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America and commissioner for the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - East

10:45 - 12:00 - The Past, Present, and Future of Elementary and Secondary Education in New Orleans.

Panelists:

� Dedra Johnson � author, professor and blogger, author of Sandrine’s Letter to Tomorrow

� Jeffrey Berman - teacher, Booker T. Washington High School and Schwarz Alternative School

� Grayling Evans - teacher, Coghill Elementary School

� Leigh Dingerson - Education team leader of the Center for Community Change, editor and contributor to Keeping The Promise?: The Debate Over Charter Schools

� Clifton Harris - concerned parent and blogger

� Christian Roselund - UTNO Communications, blogging at Dirty South Bureau

Moderator: Patrick Armstrong, former Recovery School District teacher and blogger

12:00 - 1:00 - Lunch provided by J’anita’s

1:00 - 2:15 - Journalism and Blogging: Intersections and Digressions

Panelists:

� Lee Zurik: WWL-TV investigative reporter

� Kevin Allman: author, journalist, and blogger, frequent guest blogger at Gambit’s Blog of New Orleans

� David Winkler-Schmit: journalist and frequent contributor to Gambit Weekly and the Blog of New Orleans

� Eli Ackerman: blogger at We Could Be Famous

Moderator: Jeffrey Bostick

2:30 - 3:45 - Local Politics Panel - Panelists and Moderator TBA

Refreshments can be purchased at the Zeitgeist concession stand for the duration of the conference.

Sunday, 8-24: Community Service Activity TBA

The video shows why we all need the 8/29 Investigation - a truly independent and complete analysis of the Katrina levee failures on August 29, 2005. Best if done by NOON THURSDAY JUNE 5.

Help launch Levees.Org to the top of the YouTube charts!

Want to do more? You can also:

1. Register at YouTube and rate the video.

2. View and rate our other videos on YouTube.

Help spread the word. Help show why New Orleans and people nationwide deserve the 8/29 Investigation. We have shown that the levee study done by the government is flawed and controversial. We also know that the review done by the ASCE was shoddy and biased.

-Loki, HumidCity Founder

A bill to find the truth about the levee failures is stalled in Homeland Security and YOU can kick this bill into action!

If you haven’t yet, please make two (2) important phone calls today:

1. Call Senator Landrieu at 202-224-5824 and tell her we need hearings on the 8/29 Investigation Act.

2. Call Senator Vitter at 202-224-4623 and ask for him to co-sponsor Senate Bill 2826 so we have a bipartisan bill.

It’s quick and simple - just start your phone call with this:

“I would like to leave a message for the Senator…. ” And leave your message.

Your Senators represent YOU; make sure your voice is heard!

Best if done by 6pm CST today Tue June 3.

Syndicated from the Levees.org email.

This post is dedicated to all of the soulless cretins who denigrated my neighbors and I for moving back to New Orleans. This ones for you!

Most of America has “Katrina Fatigue.” They’re sick of hearing about the minor issues that have displaced half our city. It almost makes me wish I was sadistic enough to revel in this news article, but I’m not and I can’t.

You see the Army Corps of Engineers is not just the source of an overflowing cornucopia of woes for the Crescent City, oh no! Their pernicious incompetence ranges far further than that, at least if you believe….MSNBC:

ST. LOUIS - Across America, earthen flood levees protect big cities and small towns, wealthy suburbs and rich farmland. But the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that oversees levees, lacks an inventory of thousands of them and has no idea of their condition, the corps’ chief levee expert told The Associated Press.

The uncertainty, amid an unusually wet spring that has already caused significant flooding across many states, is creating worry even within the corps.

“We have to get our arms around this issue and understand how many levees there are in the country, who’s watching over them, what populations and properties are behind them,” Eric Halpin, the corps’ special assistant for dam and levee safety, said in an interview last month. “What is the risk posed to the public?”

Critics are troubled that the government doesn’t know the answer.

Its disturbing on a level that New Orleanians are all too familiar with. And it makes me come back to an old mantra of mine I have not voiced in awhile: “We must not let this happen to anyone else.”

If there is a lesson to be learned from the Levee Failure that followed Katrina it is one that has been lost to the members of modern American sound-bite culture. Not everyone, but enough of a percentage that I run across them frequently whenever I travel north and visit anyplace else in the country.
Go read. Especially if you are from somewhere else. Trust me, you do not want to experience what we did in August of 2005.

Really, you don’t.

In the midst of the Jazz Fest Daily Deluge the following article snuck through between the raindrops:

A federal court judge cleared the way Friday for the Army Corps of Engineers to face trial on claims that defects in its Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet destroyed wetlands and turned the navigation channel into a funnel for storm surge..

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval’s 40-page ruling “paves the way for the first and only trial that will likely be held on how the Army Corps of Engineers drowned New Orleans” during Hurricane Katrina, said California attorney Pierce O’Donnell, who leads the legal team that filed the case two years ago on behalf of a group of plaintiffs that includes WDSU-TV anchorman Norman Robinson, who lived in eastern New Orleans.

The suit alleges the controversial shipping channel flooded thousands of homes in eastern New Orleans, the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish.

After the way previous suits against the Corps have gone this is a lovely breath of fresh air. In order to engender respect from the community there needs to be responsibility, accountability and some from of pennance besides. Accountability has been evaded because of decades outdated immunities still on the books. Need I remind the world yet again that the winds that hit New Orleans were Cat 2, we were on the weaker backside of the storm. The levees were certified for Cat 3.

Now the Corps is using newspapers to seal the gaps in the levees? Drag them through the court system and enforce accountability.

Without proper flood protection the world will lose a lot, not just the residents of New Orleans. Newsweek said it very well recently:

This subtropical port, which looks to the Mediterranean, Africa and the Caribbean for inspiration, has always marched to the beat of a multitude of different and very funky drummers. Which city has more beguiling street names - Abundance, Beaujolais, Cupid, Desire? Other places have the Rotary and the Elks. New Orleans has Social and Pleasure clubs and the Mardi Gras Indians - African-Americans masquerading as Native Americans in a tradition dating from when Indians and slaves were natural allies. A Mardi Gras Indian designs and sews a new costume every year: one chief put the cost, in time and materials, at $100,000 each. There are secret rituals, songs and chants; even parade routes are classified. Masking is crucial - disguise, misdirection, all in the service of nutty, impractical, unclassifiable mystery - and it’s one key to understanding the city and its culture. New Orleans elevates the chores of daily life to a high level of culture. Porch railings are wrought into sculpture. In the kitchen, the humblest food becomes piquant. Even the funeral procession is an art form.

In the wake of Katrina, New Orleans is doing what it does best: making something extraordinary out of next to nothing. There’s no Marshall Plan here - just small miracles in individual neighborhoods. “The culture of New Orleans emanates from the bottom up, not from the top down,” says Ellis Marsalis, pianist, composer and patriarch of the musical clan. The resurrection of the neighborhoods is doubly important because thousands of residents are still trying to come back, and because the city’s culture - particularly its music - is anchored in the neighborhoods. Unless they are revived, “the music won’t have a home anymore,” says saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr., who is also the Big Chief of the Congo Nation, a Mardi Gras Indian tribe. “New Orleans needs the neighborhoods, because it’s the only city in America that retains its traditional styles.”

In the increasingly mobile and digital age the world needs places like New Orleans. This is the last true American bohemia in so many ways, a place with a rich and vibrant (and yes, in many case unfortunate) history.

This is one of those rare moments of sanity over the past three years, I hope it goes the distance!

Now back to my foul weather Jazz Fest Blogging…

Loki, Founder and Cat Herder, HumidCity

in the most inane govermental scientific report to date, scientists now blame pigeons for the recent bridge collapse in Minnesota. WTF? WTFFF? well, it appears that the acidic content of pigeon excrement is strong enough to rust through the bolts that help hold the bridge together… AND this ubermensch-like poop caused or at least contributed to the bridge’s demise… IF ONLY the corps of engineers had thought of such a preposterous EXCUSE for the levee breachesin New Orleans.  Nutria droppings anyone? Pelican pooala mode? BTW i wonder if State Farm, Allstate, or Louisiana Citizens covers this. It could fall under wind or flood damage…

Just sounds like more bull stool to me… speaking of which, our fearless leader will be visiting on wednesday since he missed our anniversary last year.  Now can we REALLY talk about BS…BLOG THIS!

 phfred@notthat.com

NEW ORLEANS - Residents whose homes were flooded during Hurricane Katrina can sue the Army Corps of Engineers over claims the agency ignored warnings about defects in a nearby navigation channel, a federal judge ruled Friday.

The ruling, one of the first significant decisions in a set of cases over what caused the flooding, may force the Corps to hand over documents about the management of the channel. (via yahoo news)

I had given up hope for this! The unassailable position of immunity that the Corps(e) has held is finally getting some scrutiny and action!

The Corps and federal government had argued they were immune to legal challenges because decisions about the waterway were based in policy.

But U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval said there is no way to know that at this point, and said plaintiffs should get a hearing for their allegations.

Is that the tiniest flickr of hope I feel begining to ignite? Stanwood Duval is my new hero, one I’m sure will enter our peculiar local pantheon. Now the question is, will the suit have a chance?

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Forensics report on Levee Failures

A group of forensics experts led by some professors from UC Berkeley released a damning 738-page report on the levee failures during hurricane Katrina. They found a system that was “pervasively flawed” (surprise, surprise), and said that the failure was at all levels of government, including the Feds, the local levee board, and to a lesser extent the Army Corps of Engineers.

Go check it out as an audio report at the link above, go on, I’ll wait. Well Christian Roselund gets thanks for putting this out there. I doubt we will see any accountability, after all why break a solid trend? We keep re-establishing the fact that no level of government did their job, yet no real repurcussions are felt. It is absolutely nauseating.

As Memorial Day receeds I ponder the fact that my father did time in a Viet Namese prison camp to defend this country only to have it abandon us.