BOMBSHELL FROM GREG PALAST:
ON THE MONDAY AFTER KATRINA HIT NEW ORLEANS, FEMA AND WASHINGTON D.C. KNEW THAT THE LEVEES HAD BEEN BREACHED BUT FAILED TO NOTIFY LOUISIANA ORANYONE http://www.democracynow.org/2006/8/28/top_hurricane_expert_says_officials_threatened
AMY GOODMAN: Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The storm was the most powerful and expensive natural disaster to hit the U.S., killing more than 1,500 people in New Orleans alone, displacing some 770,000 residents and destroying over 300,000 homes. The federal government’s response to the disaster was widely condemned. Images of the tens of thousands of New Orleans residents piling into the city’s Superdome stadium, pleading for food, water and aid, became symbolic of the government’s inaction.
In the aftermath of the storm, it became increasingly clear that the effects of Hurricane Katrina were made far worse by government incompetence and neglect. Warnings about the severity of the storm were ignored, and the levees, which were supposed to prevent New Orleans from flooding, were grossly inadequate. And, as investigative reporter Greg Palast reveals in this new Democracy Now! report, there were major holes in the city’s evacuation plan
GREG PALAST: Welcome to New Orleans, whose motto is “The City that Care Forgot.” In fact, it’s a city that everyone forgot.
BROD BAGERT: Reckless negligence that killed human beings. Old ladies watched the water come up to their nose over their eyes, and they drowned in houses just like this in this neighborhood, because of reckless negligence that’s unanswered for.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: By midnight on Monday, the White House knew. But none of us knew.
PATRICIA THOMAS: Katrina didn’t come in my house and put these gates up on my windows and things. Katrina didn’t have me walking out here looking for somewhere to stay. Man did this. This was manmade.
MALIK RAHIM: They wanted them poor niggers out of there, and they ain’t had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that’s just the bottom line.
GREG PALAST: Our president says he hasn’t forgotten a promise he made here.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I want the people down there to understand that it’s going to take a while to recover. This was a huge storm.
GREG PALAST: Well, Mr. President, I think people down here know it was a huge storm. Over half a million of them fled the flood. It’s been a full year, and only 170,000, far less than half, have come back, almost none to their own homes.
STEVEN SMITH: Stayed three nights here and one night on the bridge.
GREG PALAST: You were three nights stuck in the flood?
STEVEN SMITH: Right here. Yep.
GREG PALAST: And they weren’t looking for you?
STEVEN SMITH: We had helicopters, but they—nothing didn’t pass. At least they passed over us. I’m on a roof, holding my shirt out and saying that we had babies back here.
GREG PALAST: This is Steven Smith. Like 127,000 others in this town, he didn’t have a car in which to escape, so he was left in the rising waters. Stranded in the heat on a bridge, he closed the eyes of a man who died of dehydration after giving his grandchildren his last bottle of water.
What kind of evacuation plan would leave 127,000 to sink or swim? It turns out that the Bush administration had contracted out evacuation planning to a corporation, IEM, Innovative Emergency Management. I couldn’t locate their qualifications, but I did locate their list of donations to the Republican Party. We went to Baton Rouge to talk to them.
These are the offices of Innovative Emergency Management. They were the ones that were paid a half-million bucks to come up with an emergency evacuation plan for the city of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. One problem is, I can’t find the plan. So I’m coming here to ask them about it.
So when I showed up at their office, they would only talk to me from behind a glass wall. By phone.
Did you in fact come up with a plan, because it says it’s urgent to come up with a plan? Did you come up—can you just tell me if you came up with a plan or not? I’m just happy to talk to you one-on-one. You’re probably about 12 feet away from me. Or somewhere. I don’t know, are you hiding in this office somewhere? I’m happy to speak to you face-to-face.
AMY GOODMAN: Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The storm was the most powerful and expensive natural disaster to hit the U.S., killing more than 1,500 people in New Orleans alone, displacing some 770,000 residents and destroying over 300,000 homes. The federal government’s response to the disaster was widely condemned. Images of the tens of thousands of New Orleans residents piling into the city’s Superdome stadium, pleading for food, water and aid, became symbolic of the government’s inaction.
In the aftermath of the storm, it became increasingly clear that the effects of Hurricane Katrina were made far worse by government incompetence and neglect. Warnings about the severity of the storm were ignored, and the levees, which were supposed to prevent New Orleans from flooding, were grossly inadequate. And, as investigative reporter Greg Palast reveals in this new Democracy Now! report, there were major holes in the city’s evacuation plan
GREG PALAST: Welcome to New Orleans, whose motto is “The City that Care Forgot.” In fact, it’s a city that everyone forgot.
BROD BAGERT: Reckless negligence that killed human beings. Old ladies watched the water come up to their nose over their eyes, and they drowned in houses just like this in this neighborhood, because of reckless negligence that’s unanswered for.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: By midnight on Monday, the White House knew. But none of us knew.
PATRICIA THOMAS: Katrina didn’t come in my house and put these gates up on my windows and things. Katrina didn’t have me walking out here looking for somewhere to stay. Man did this. This was manmade.
MALIK RAHIM: They wanted them poor niggers out of there, and they ain’t had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that’s just the bottom line.
GREG PALAST: Our president says he hasn’t forgotten a promise he made here.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I want the people down there to understand that it’s going to take a while to recover. This was a huge storm.
GREG PALAST: Well, Mr. President, I think people down here know it was a huge storm. Over half a million of them fled the flood. It’s been a full year, and only 170,000, far less than half, have come back, almost none to their own homes.
STEVEN SMITH: Stayed three nights here and one night on the bridge.
GREG PALAST: You were three nights stuck in the flood?
STEVEN SMITH: Right here. Yep.
GREG PALAST: And they weren’t looking for you?
STEVEN SMITH: We had helicopters, but they—nothing didn’t pass. At least they passed over us. I’m on a roof, holding my shirt out and saying that we had babies back here.
GREG PALAST: This is Steven Smith. Like 127,000 others in this town, he didn’t have a car in which to escape, so he was left in the rising waters. Stranded in the heat on a bridge, he closed the eyes of a man who died of dehydration after giving his grandchildren his last bottle of water.
What kind of evacuation plan would leave 127,000 to sink or swim? It turns out that the Bush administration had contracted out evacuation planning to a corporation, IEM, Innovative Emergency Management. I couldn’t locate their qualifications, but I did locate their list of donations to the Republican Party. We went to Baton Rouge to talk to them.
These are the offices of Innovative Emergency Management. They were the ones that were paid a half-million bucks to come up with an emergency evacuation plan for the city of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. One problem is, I can’t find the plan. So I’m coming here to ask them about it.
So when I showed up at their office, they would only talk to me from behind a glass wall. By phone.
Did you in fact come up with a plan, because it says it’s urgent to come up with a plan? Did you come up—can you just tell me if you came up with a plan or not? I’m just happy to talk to you one-on-one. You’re probably about 12 feet away from me. Or somewhere. I don’t know, are you hiding in this office somewhere? I’m happy to speak to you face-to-face.
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 3:30 PM
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