HumidCity

FEMA, FEMA, FEMA….

Its like shooting fish in a barrel to take another shot at these guys but sometimes you just have to do it. So lets see, the second Hurricane Season Post Katrina looms and we will be safe this time, right?

WASHINGTON (AP) — FEMA says its new national response plan won’t be ready in time for the June first start of the hurricane season.

Oh. Maybe they just have their hands full in the wake of the Nor’easter that ripped through NY.

“There is no question that these counties need aid right away to begin the recovery from the storms,” Schumer said in a statement. “As the scope of this disaster widens, we need a swift response from FEMA and I will hold FEMA’s feet to the fire to ensure any and all aid flows quickly.” - Sen. Schumer, NY

Hey Schumer, don’t hold your breath! Still, it will be interesting to see how much assistance actually makes it to Westchester County. I hope they do better by them than they did by us. No one deserves treatment like we received and Westchester County was where the wife and I spent our exile after the Storm. If any of our friends in Dobbs Ferry are reading please leave a comment and let us know you are alright!

Hmm… Maybe they have been too busy ensuring that people in the Katrina Zone are fed to get around to it.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Emergency Management Agency Friday more than doubled its estimate of the number of prepared meals lost during the 2006 hurricane season because of storage problems to 13.4 million, up from the 6 million it reported earlier.

Guess not. Puzzling, eh? This year already looks like a doozy, and the Federal Employees Missing Again are looking like they will have a hell of a lot of things to answer for by its end. If, that is, anyone ever holds them or the Corps accountable.

We are four months shy of the two year mark. Almost two years since the failure of the levees that we were told were safe. Almost two years since FEMA was doing a “heckuva job.” Makes you wonder about those trailers just over the MS border, the ones still unused. Makes you wonder a lot of things.

It will be interesting to watch the next few weeks. Either FEMA will step up and take care of the wealthy upper east coast communities the way it should have handled its commitments here OR they will foul up egregiously again and our countrymen elsewhere will get a dose of the joy we have been experiencing here in NOLA. The interesting thing will be seeing what the politicians and mainstream media have to say (spin) about it….

The joy is only starting, after all the Corps of Engineers has classified 122 levees nationwide as at risk.

How many times must we see this rerun?

Here are two pertinent quotes from an interview with  Gina Solomon, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, and she joined us from New Orleans.

Living on Earth: New Orleans Health
“We have been comparing the numbers with the EPA’s own clean up standards that they normally use for waste sites or any other facility that might be contaminated. And we’ve discovered that the arsenic levels, lead levels, diesel fuel levels and levels of other sooty contaminants are all over numbers that would normally trigger clean up, or at least investigation. EPA has dismissed those results saying that the contamination likely was present before the hurricane. Well, first of all I’m not convinced that it’s ok just to dismiss results even if the contamination pre-existed the hurricane. And secondly, they don’t even have any evidence to say that those levels were high before the hurricane, especially for the arsenic levels, which are quite high in the city.”

Oh Look! Here is the expected 9-11 tie in near the end of he interview:

“The talk of the day down in New Orleans right now is about the 9/11 situation. I’m hearing person after person say, “We now know that the EPA wasn’t to be trusted in New York after 9/11, so why should we trust the EPA and what they’re telling us now after Katrina?” It seems ironic to people that EPA is announcing that the sediment is safe and that there are no toxic contaminants left behind from the flooding right at the same time that there’s information revealed that they gave a false all-clear in New York. So, there’s a lot of skepticism, a lot of mistrust, and EPA, frankly, has a long way to go to earn back people’s trust down here in New Orleans.”

9-11 was the first great and grievous failure of our government to protect its people. 8-29 was the next. Two great American cities, two abyssmal failures. Any question?

It is consistent with their track record that the power mongers and the corrupt have perniciously sought self aggrandizement at the expense of the citizenry throughout the course of the current administration. Now ABC seems to have joined the ranks. Their upcoming “docudrama,” about 9-11 is composed of semitruths and outright fabrications (see references below).

With Aug 29 just past and 9-11 looming I am sick with awareness of the shortcomings of our elected officials and media. Five years later the Feds have made no progress on 9-11, one year later and 80% of New Orleans is still decimated. Now the despicable subhumans are once again trying to use modern American tragedies for political gain.

Donning the yellow robes of journalism ABC prepares to push a politically slanted, pro neocon “memorial show,” on the watching public. Maybe they should run Spike Lee’s new documentary with it as a double feature. No? Thought not.

Five years later and nothing has been done at the site of a great American tragedy, Bin Laden is still free, the towers have not been rebuilt, and most New Yorkers I know complain of an abscence of progress. One year later and New Orleans is still in ruins, more than half its citizens still displaced, Federal efforts universally bungled, and the social contract abandoned.
Compare the truth of what is STILL HAPPENING in New Orleans with the mainstream national media. Google it. Do some digging here and on the blogs listed in my sidebar. Then read through the links below to see the same abscence of honesty. It will make you sick to your stomach.
1. “Writer of ABC’s 9/11 ‘Docudrama’ Is Avowed Conservative Activist,” ThinkProgress, September 1, 2006
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2047&id=8709-6594760-QXGXUsmP.Ae_JIgQJa5XiQ&t=6

2. “Clintonoids Prepare To Attack 9/11 Movie,” The Rush Limbaugh Show, August 30, 2006
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2049&id=8709-6594760-QXGXUsmP.Ae_JIgQJa5XiQ&t=7

3. “FBI Agent Who Consulted On Path to 9/11 Quit,” ThinkProgress, September 7, 2006
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/07/fbi-agent-quit/

4. “Under fire, ABC mulls yanking mini,” Variety, September 7, 2006
http://www.variety.com/VR1117949675.html

5. Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher, MSNBC appearance, September 7, 2006
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2077&id=8709-6594760-QXGXUsmP.Ae_JIgQJa5XiQ&t=8

6. “Harvey Keitel speaks out on Path to 9/11: ‘It turned out not all the facts were correct’”, Showbiz Tonight, September 7, 2006
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2078&id=8709-6594760-QXGXUsmP.Ae_JIgQJa5XiQ&t=9

Another day of rebuilding houses. I hate sheetrock.

Started the day by finding out that one of my cats had urinated on my work shoes (the only ones I can wear doing construction) so the redolent aroma of cat piss in my nostrils all day has probably impacted my attitude. Hopefully the image will at least give my audience a laugh. A long day of demolition and sheetrocking has worn me out, besides I have a several hours of web code to crunch for a commision gig so this will be a short one.

The folks in the lovely village of Dobbs Ferry, NY (where we weathered the majority of our exile) are still interested in both us and the state of the city. Thank god someone is! I did another followup interview for their paper, The Enterprise, last night. Great name for a paper doing articles on a NOLA based geek. Just don”t make me wear a red shirt! I’ll let you know how it turns out when I get a copy.

Once he recovers, PH Fred will be joining the posting team here at Humid City along with Alexis and I. It should add the needed element of dark humor that I seem to have ost the ability to provide.

Last year on this day one of the other HC authors posted an indictment, with documentation, of both FEMA and the current adminstrations actions/inactions following the storm and the horrors spawned thereby. Take a look, it is the begining of a loooong catalogue of bungling and corruption.