Peterr, this story will be published in ths Sunday’s New York Times.

Produced in tandem with ProPublica,the article cost almost 1/2 $ Million,according to reports on the net.

I read it last night and it is incredible.

Katrina and Rita are personal for me,and this piece made it all too palpable,once again.

The Deadly Choices at Memorial
by Sheri Fink, ProPublica – August 27, 2009 9:00 am EDT

The smell of death was overpowering the moment a relief worker cracked open one of the hospital chapel’s wooden doors. Inside, more than a dozen bodies lay motionless on low cots and on the ground, shrouded in white sheets. Here, a wisp of gray hair peeked out. There, a knee was flung akimbo. A pallid hand reached across a blue gown.

Within days, the grisly tableau became the focus of an investigation into what happened when the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina marooned Memorial Medical Center in Uptown New Orleans. The … more…

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Hope this links.

It is available at ProPublica site.

[Modnote: link]

Let us not forget:

The Bush flooding of New Orleans: an unnatural disaster.

To the Editor (of the Berkeley Daily Planet, Berkeley, CA):

“We don’t care, we don’t care” was the chant of pro-war, pro-Bush hecklers across the street from the Camp Casey peace vigil in Crawford, Texas in late August, 2005. This “we don’t care” chant pretty much sums up the attitude of the Bush Syndicate (B. S.) towards the rest of us in America. Actually, Bush, Cheney and the rest of this idiotic neoconical government believes that the only true function of the federal government is to create private money-making opportunities for themselves, their friends, and their corporate contributors. Any activity other than waging aggressive war to steal and colonize other countries’ natural resources falls into the category of “we don’t care.”

The Bush flood of New Orleans happened after the massive Hurricane Katrina had passed the city. It was both predictable and preventable. The Bush flood and the slow-as-molasses-in-January Bush response to it has ripped off the facade of the inept Bush Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its subsidiary, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The upper echelons of both of these massive federal bureaucracies have been staffed by incompetent and uncaring Bush buddies, cronies, hacks, frat brothers, former roommates, horse attorneys, contributors and other miscellaneous nincompoops. In making his appointments to the executive management of DHS and FEMA, Bush gave little if any thought to their actual qualifications in the field of emergency management.

Over the last several years, Bush and the GOP-controlled House and Senate have poured over one hundred billion tax dollars into “Homeland Security.” What did we get as the federal response to Hurricane Katrina? We got homeland stupidity. After the massive flooding of New Orleans, which initially covered about eighty percent of the city, thousands of residents were herded to the Superdome where they denied water, food, medicine, bedding, toilet facilities and police protection for several long days, meanwhile the Bush gang partied and carried on with their “business as usual” and “let them eat cake” imperial attitudes. George strummed his guitar, raised campaign funds, cut cake with Senator McCain, while Connie Rice did her Imelda Marcos imitation, shopping for expensive shoes in New York City before going to a Broadway play, while Cheney went on vacation, first fishing in Wyoming and then mansion shopping in Maryland, and Rumsfeld went to a professional ball game.

In the first several days of the flooding of New Orleans cable news reporters had to point out the severity of the suffering of thousands of people in the Superdome to the heads of FEMA and DHS. These two had apparently followed the lead of the ever-clueless Bush by not watching the unfolding disaster being revealed on television.

The searing images of human suffering that were shown on television in the first several days after the flooding of New Orleans showed thousands of poor people herded into the Louisiana Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center without any water, any food, any medicines, any toilet facilities, any bedding or any police protection.

The conduct of the inept corrupt Bush regime in this unnatural disaster (the Bush flood and the slow spastic Bush response of flood relief) is nothing short of criminal. Since the illegitimate Bush regime came to power in January 2001, they have allowed and encouraged massive developments in the natural low-lying wetlands around New Orleans. The presence of these wetlands traditionally helped to protect New Orleans from the storm surges which accompany hurricanes.

The first actions of FEMA after Hurricane Katrina and Flood Bush struck New Orleans was to try to stop almost all of the volunteer, state and federal help from coming into the disaster area. FEMA blocked volunteer help from WalMart, the Coast Guard, the Red Cross, AMTRAK, hundreds of airboats from Florida, the City of Chicago emergency teams, Loudoun County (Virginia) sheriffs, the Nevada police, the New Mexico National Guard, fire-fighting planes from the U. S. Forest Service and even the U. S. Bataan, a hospital ship stationed in the Gulf of Mexico. FEMA also stopped or ignored offers of help from foreign countries including Canada, Cuba and Venezuela, over twenty European counties and Asian countries including Iran and India.

One supposes that volunteer help and aid undercuts the Bush Syndicates system of private corporations making bags of money off of the Bush war on Iraq and the Bush expedited flooding of New Orleans.

It is troubling to see many no-bid federal contracts being given to large corporations for reconstruction along the Gulf Coast. The terms of “no-bid contracts” mean that the corporations get to charge their profits as a percentage of costs incurred, so there is no incentive to be thrifty; in fact, it is the opposite, the more money that the corporate contractor spends on construction, the higher their corporate profits. Add to this the fact that Bush just signed an executive order that suspended the traditional requirement that federal contractors must pay labor the prevailing wages, instead the federal contractors can now pay workers as little as minimum wage. So the folks who are the poorest, get kicked again by Bush. He kicks ‘em again when they’re down.

New Orleans should be rebuilt on a cooperative local basis. Habitat for Humanity should be the model used for the reconstruction of the many flood-damaged homes in New Orleans. As many physically-able local residents as possible should be quickly trained and employed in the reconstruction of their neighborhoods. All of the poor renters in New Orleans whose houses suffered flooding should be given title to their new homes and the land beneath them, after the landlords have been properly compensated for the pre-flood fair-market value of their properties. We owe these people a lot as some compensation for the years of neglect that they have suffered at our hands.

Yours truly,

James K. Sayre

11 September 2005

The Deadly Choices at Memorial‎ – 1 day ago
Within days, the grisly tableau became the focus of an investigation into what happened when the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina marooned Memorial Medical …ProPublica – 4 related articles »

I saw that as well. Here’s the direct link to the piece.

Lord, have mercy, indeed.

I will add to the pile my last stocktaking of Bush’s shameful Katrina response. . . . I don’t know if this qualifies as “eight months ago” or “eight years ago.”

What happened to “am I my brother’s keeper?” Got lost somewhere along the way.

Of course, there are various benchmarks by which to measure progress in New Orleans reconstruction efforts. James Parks suggests this one: “Katrina Four Years Later: Iraq Being Rebuilt Faster“

Thank you for linking.

For some reason ,my posts don’t link the greater portion of the time.

That piece should be read by all,imho, especially in light of the current health reform debate.

I hurt my neck reading that one. I think it was all the shaking my head did while I kept thinking “Oh. My. God.”

Peterr, thanks.

compassionate conservatives my ass.

What makes this tragedy even more horrific is that we all knew NOLA was vulnerable to such a hurricane, and we all knew that hurricane was heading straight for NOLA. There are NO excuses for what happened not: before, during, and after — and waaAay after.

Link instructions:

1. Type your comment into the “leave your response” box at FDL.
2. Open a new tab/window, with the item to which you want to link, and copy the URL into your clipboard.
3. Back in the FDL tab/window, highlight the text under which you want your link to appear.
4. Click on the button above the box that looks like three chain links — links: get it? — and a pop-up box will appear.
5. Paste the URL from your clipboard into the pop-up box and hit “OK”.
6. Click on “preview” to check your work.

Piece of cake, once you get the hang of it.

I am glad to see that there is now a perception that things are getting done. Let us hope that they get done.

My personal response to Katrina

Hundreds of volunteers from the southern portion of Louisiana showed up with boats to rescue human beings and they were turned away by the National Guard because it was too dangerous. WTF?

My parents lost their home. They just returned to New Orleans about six months ago. They are old but doing fairly well. But the light that made up our family was dimmed by the Katrina experience. A sadness lives in part of our hearts. We are still waiting for meaningful rebuilding to begin.

When the hurricane hit it was actually a cat two. It grazed New Orleans. The Mississippi gulf coast got the brunt of the storm. It was the levees that did the damage. They were not overtopped. They were eaten away by the water.

A contractor had sued the Army Corp of engineers a few years before Katrina. When they had gone in to re enforce the levees they found that the peat layer was much higher than anticipated and that they needed to go down further with the sheets of metal. The corp told them to continue the work the way it was contracted to be done. The contractor lost the case because it was about the contract with the corp and not the safety of New Orleans in the eyes of the law.

The levees are the responsibility of the corp and not Louisiana.

If you want more info here is a great organization:
levees.org

Right on schedule, the local radio host just launched a NOLA tribute set with Dirty Dozen Brass Band —”My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now.” The jazz community is one that has not forgotten.

How could they forget?

It would be like Jews forgetting Jerusalem or Muslims forgetting Mecca.

I guess Republicans, ConservaDems and Blue Dogs want to do to health care what they did to New Orleans.

A ton of government spending will go straight into the pockets of the rich while we get less than nothing in return.

Rethugs hate the government and prove it by the way they ran it.

OUR government. We need to take back OUR language word by word.

karen

I remember reading this in the aftermath of Katrina that Rep.Richard Baker (R) of Baton Rouge was overheard telling lobbyists,

“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”

It got VERY little play, but it was incredibly insensitive and callous verbiage,under the circumstance.

Baker was born in New Orleans,and had originally been a Democrat,but turned Repube after a row with Edwin Edwards,a former La.Dem Governor.

Baker submitted a plan to reconstruct housing after Katrina,called the Baker Plan, but Bush effectively killed it,according to my memory.

Baker swung a HUGE stick up on Capitol Hill,in DC, for many years.

Makes you wonder WHY someone would want to be a part of “club” THEY HATE?

Piece of cake, once you get the hang of it.

Thanks, Peterr. I’m going to try this.

Here’s an interesting story.

Like the Frau Barbara Bush’s lovely conclusion that those poor people didn’t have anything so they were better off. Julian Bond’s comment..someone should gag that woman. (Truth is so powerful)

I cannot bear to read the articles on the present and past; they are all much too painful, much too rage producing, much too despairing, much too hopelessness engendering.

But I’ve so often thanked God for your periodic presence, Peterr because you bring, in my language, the Lord’s presence to these pages. And that is so very much needed when it comes to NOLA, Teddy, etc.

Bless you and yes, Lord have mercy on us all,

Remember it was a Texan who did that to NOLA. Remember.

God….