Been Away.....

Spending the better part of a week in the ICU is not my idea of R&R. Still 'incarcerated' but a little more freer and feeling better than the last few days. Got some catching up to do......

When will they sever Nagin's vocal chords?

Ray Nagin once again opens
his mouth and gives New Orleans ANOTHER black eye with his
brand of humor.

Ike

Praying for all of you folks in Ike's path and wishing you all the best. This storm is a beast.

Evacuation Check List

EJ details the efforts needed for a successful hurricane evacuation

help for Gustav victims

From Greg Peters' blog, links that portray who badly hit LaFouche and Terrebone Parish were by Gustav.


Some of the communities hit hardest by Hurricane Gustav are being ignored by the larger media: The United Houma Nation, the Native Americans group located in Terrebonne parish, is facing the complete destruction of several small communities, no electricity and no water in many more, and are in serious need of money and supplies. Chief Brenda Robichaux was one of the heroes of Katrina and a straight shooter. I have no doubt it hurts her and the Houmas to ask, but they’re asking.

Local blogger Karen Gadbois and a group of friends visted the Houma Nation on Saturday. check out her site to see how much wetland loss has taken place down there.

Another NOLA blogger - Maitri - was on the same trip with Karen. Here she writes about the experience.

Photos from Pointe-au-Chien post Gustav

Here are some links where you can get more info on how to help:
Gustav Relief Blog

The United Houma Nation Relief Fund
20986 Hwy. 1
Golden Meadow, LA 70357.


All of Terrebonne parish was badly hurt, as was neighboring Lafourche parish. Assumption parish will be out of power longer than Baton Rouge. Vermilion parish, flooded and battered by Rita, was hit again, while Cameron was spared this time, but still hasn’t recovered; neither has Calcasieu parish.


pictures of the affected areas in Terrebone/LaFouche are below:

Houma


Lower LaFouche Parish



Baton Rouge was pretty beat up. for details of how they're doing, check out my cyberfriend Margaret Saizan here.

Gustav on Ms. Gulf Coast

Here's a link to conditions along the Mississippi gulf coast, miles away from Gustav's landfall

More Scuzzbuckets of the week

To whomever was responsible for dumping about 50 elderly people along the curb in Houma and left

From the above link:

..... I saw about 50 people along the curb and in the parking lot just sitting next to their luggage. (By luggage I mean garbage bags) I had seen this before, I had seen these types of faces before... Katrina evacuees had the same look to them. I knew something was wrong. And it was.

These people had evacuated before Gustav and were brought back to the civic center before the parish had a shelter ready for them. I sat down with a few of them and asked what was going on. Nobody had any idea.

Who would just drop a bunch of elderly people on the side of the road, and leave them there for hours.

Finally a school bus arrived to take them to a shelter. I saw a woman whose bag was torn to shreds, I ran to my car and grabbed a roll of tape and fixed it up. I told her "It might be hard to open up later, but it's safe now." As the folks started to load onto the bus, I noticed nobody was helping. The sheriff deputies, the National Guard... nobody. These elderly people were dragging their bags by themselves and trying to load them onto the bus.

I got on the bus and helped move the bags to the seats. After everybody was crammed onto the bus, they just sat there. And they sat some more. An hour passed and finally the bus moved. Less than a mile later, they arrived at the shelter. Had I known where they were going, I could have driven people over there using my car in the amount of time it took officials to bus them over there.

To make a really long story not as long... the people arrived safely at the shelter where a few Red Cross Volunteers were waiting with cots and blankets. No water or food just yet, but they were able to kick off their shoes and relax. I helped carry bags into the shelter and set up cots. When I left, most of the people were sound asleep. They deserve a good nights rest.

During these situations, I'm a human first and a photographer second. Yes, I took some pictures, but my main goal was to help these people anyway I could. As I left the shelter I heard a man say "The took us from heaven and brought us to Hell."


written by a photographer from the LaFouche Parish Daily Comet.

Links to pictures of these victims of neglect are here (at the bottom of the page)

Scuzzbuckets of the Week

The low life imbeciles who left pets behind in the Houma area to survive Hurricane Gustav.

From Hurricane Katrina dot org website:
in places like Terrebonne, LaFourche and St. Mary’s Parishes have been trying to work through the system to find out information. When no information could be obtained, individuals made their way to Houma on Wednesday 9/3 and again on 9/4.

Animals found include the following:

A pitbull, crated in a garage, dead from lack of food and water
A puppy, locked in a garage, no food or water
3 pitbulls, no food, 1 no shelter, 2 in kennels, all chained
7 cats with no food outside a house, no idea how many inside
3 Catahoula dogs, loose
2 yellow laborador dogs, loose, now tied to telephone pole

Dead dog and puppy were photographed, live animals were left food and water, and neighbors were left with more food in case residents do not come back within 2 days.



I am nauseated that people would treat their pets this way. I wish there were some way to keep these numbnuts from ever owning an animal again.

Gustav Annoyances

We stayed home for the storm. There were some annoyances we wanted to avoid, like trying to get back home. While escaping highway gridlock and over zealous authorities, we were held hostage by other minor irritations..


Aaron Broussard - King of Jefferson Parish
What an obnoxious little gnome this guy is. Even though there were originally 20 Parishes affected by Hurricane Gustav (Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Jefferson, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, St. Tammany, Ascension, Assumption, East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, Iberville, Lafourche, Livingston, Pointe Coupee, St. Helena, St. James, Terrebonne, West Baton Rouge and West Feliciana) Broussard insisted on parading his little gang of minions out at least twice a day for an hour on live TV to talk about every minute happening in Jeff Parish. All other Parish Presidents passed along status of things via WWL radio or call in's to local TV, including LaFouche Parish, which saw Gustav's eyewall.

Ray Nagin. Need I say more?


Jackie Clarkson - Brown-Nose-at-Large, City of NOLA
Orleans Parish was the other entity that insisted upon having all of the elected officials appear on stage while Nagin and company blathered on about how well everything was going. Clarkson seemed to be attached to Ray-Ray's hip during every press conference. She busted a gut everytime Ray said something "humorous". Ugh.

Press Coverage
I got this message from a lot of folks from out of town....all they're covering is New Orleans.

more on the talking heads here

Gustav came ashore a near Houma


Although I will admit that the video from the Intracoastal Waterway in New Orleans WAS pretty damn dramatic footage. Thank God it didn't cause a lot of damage.


Geraldo....blech


Whiners
Craig over at Metroblogging puts it well:

Speaking of bite me — it’s been pretty easy to tell who stayed during the storm and who evacuated. Those who stayed have been patient and shown a good sense of humor as we’ve come back up to speed this week. They’re just glad to have someplace to go that has power and a/c and is serving a semblance of a normal menu. A lot of them don’t have power at home yet, so they’re pretty much just happy to show up. But a lot of those who bugged out are just coming back — and they expect (they sometimes DEMAND) that things be just like they were a week ago, before the storm kinda threw everything out of whack for awhile.



The whiners evacuated as they were told to by the "authorities". However, the minute the winds died down they insisted on coming home, not understanding that things were not as they left them. The minute they got to their houses, they wanted all of the comforts of daily life, not understanding that things were not as they left them. They whined on the radio, they whined on TV. They whined at everyone who would listen. Aside from those who desperately needed electricity and running water, I have no pity on these whiners. Do like the rest of us have done and PREPARE for the conditions you were told about.

Evacuation issues

This was originally published in the Times Picayune, but was deleted by the TP.
Next time, we won't leave

Posted by James O'Byrne, staff writer, Times-Picayune September 02, 2008 8:11PM

The next time, my family will stay. I'm sure that Gov. Bobby Jindal, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Mayor Ray Nagin, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard and all the other public officials mean well. I'm sure they thought it was a good idea to panic people into leaving. I'm sure they believe it's in the public's best interest to stay away while they clean up.


But the evacuation of the metro area in advance of Gustav, and the subsequent policies regarding re-entry, will guarantee that in the next major storm to strike the region - which may occur in a matter of days or weeks - many more people will be at risk. The slightest bit of vision, combined with an open ear to the anger and frustration of this hurricane-weary citizenry, would make the government officials responsible realize that they helped to make this happen.

Under Louisiana law, it is still legally not possible to forcibly remove people from their property and make them leave in advance of an approaching storm. So every evacuation becomes an implicit contract between the officials and the public. You tell us the truth, and the risks as the scientists and forecasters see it. We'll try to make good decisions for the sake of our families.

When that contract is broken, as I believe it was in the case of Gustav, then the tradeoff is that fewer people leave the next time. Here's three rules that public officials must follow if they want people to evacuate in significant numbers again:

Rule No. 1: Don't exaggerate and force a panic.
It is not supposed to be the business of public officials to panic people with disinformation, misinformation, or downright lies. To call Gustav "the mother of all storms" 900 miles wide, as Mayor Nagin did, was demonstrably untrue, and an insult to Katrina and all who suffered through that storm. Gustav had hurricane force winds extending 50 miles from its center. Katrina, by comparison, had hurricane force winds extending 105 miles from the center. It was 50 percent more powerful, and carved a path of destruction more than twice as wide as Gustav.

Mayor Nagin on Saturday night, while foreshadowing his plan to call for a mandatory evacuation on Sunday, proclaimed that everyone should "leave now." It worked, but how shocking was it that Interstate 10 east and Interstate 59 became complete gridlock, and a place of suffering for people trying to escape the storm? At the time Nagin made his breathless proclamation, the National Hurricane Center had already issued an advisory describing how forces of shear and dry air were inhibiting Gustav's strength, and how all of the computer models -- all of them -- were showing the storm moving west of New Orleans.

To one degree or another, this pattern repeated itself across the metro area. Public officials succeeded in panicking the populace into fleeing - this time. But such a tack will not succeed as well the next. There are those who will say that people must heed the warning to leave, because even though Gustav missed New Orleans, the next one might not. It could be so much worse the next time, they argue. That may be true.

But the one commodity that is absolutely essential in communication between officialdom and its populace in times of crisis is credibility. It was cast aside this time in favor of hyperbole and exaggeration calculated to induce panic. The fact that it worked so well this time almost guarantees that the next time it won't.

Rule No. 2: Don't respond to people's criticisms and complaints about how things went by telling them this is how it's supposed to be.
Sixteen hours to Birmingham, 23 hours to Tuscaloosa, 14 hours to Pensacola. In many cases, these horrific journeys were made with infants and the elderly, trapped on the interstate, blocked from exiting for hours and hours, with no hope of food, gas or bathroom facilities. Yet when public officials, standing in their air-conditioned Emergency Operations Centers, were questioned about what went wrong, they responded that everything worked well, and this is how it's supposed to be. Back to that contract. If people don't actually have to leave, and they are telling their public officials that this evacuation did not work well, the correct response to that message is not, "You're wrong, it did." Because if there is no hope of improvement in the time it takes to get out of harm's way, then the next time many thousands won't go.

Rule No. 3: You have to let people return to their property as soon as humanly possible.
Yes, I know that in many cases, there is still some modicum of danger on the streets, what with tree limbs and power poles and all manner of difficulties, just as it's dangerous to live here in the first place, dangerous to evacuate, dangerous to return on highways clogged with angry and frustrated citizens.

News flash: We know it's dangerous to live here. We accept the possibility of no gas, no power, no readily available food. We're Katrina survivors. We'll figure it out.

But if the enduring image of Gustav is a U.S. soldier with an M-16 denying a citizen the right to return to his home, then you can pretty much write off the next "mandatory" evacuation. Leaving your home in advance of a storm is an extraordinarily stressful, difficult, traumatic and expensive proposition. The one thing that must be honored is that people must be allowed to return to their homes as soon as humanly possible.

As a journalist, I spent the past two days driving around reporting on the storm. And by Tuesday afternoon, this city was as safe as it needed to be. Indeed, all those tree branches and debris would be picked up and stacked neatly on the curb by lunchtime on Wednesday if people had been allowed to come home.

I fully appreciate the risks of letting my family stay. But I have to weigh that risk against the alternate risks, of getting trapped in an endless evacuation traffic jam, of being stranded on a highway far from help, of not being able to return in a timely manner, to secure our property and come back to as much of a normal life as possible.

New Orleans is my home. I love it, and I choose to keep living here. But if you are a public official who wants me to leave for the next storm, then you have to hear what I am telling you. It's time to rewrite the contract.
•••••••
James O'Byrne

Oh, Ray-Ray

Ray Nagin is so screwy. As we were listening to the radio yesterday, we caught a telephone interview from WDSU.com between Nagin and Eric Paulsen. In a "did he really say that" moment, we heard a few gems:



..... this was the worst storm in the history of Baton Rouge. That’s what we’re missing here. God was smiling on us. It kind of made a happy face around New Orleans, but then it took off through the rest of the state.


....no one will be turned back if you have identification card that you live in the metropolitan area. Now if you’re coming from out of town, if you’re a Tampa Bay fan, we’re turning them around. We don’t need them in our stadium anyway (chuckles). This is just today. Tampa Bay fans can come in tomorrow