[BRIEF NOTE] New Orleans Roundup

[rfmcdonald]

Thanks to owlfish for pointing out interdictor, a New Olreans-based LJ user who is maintaining an activesurvey of what's going on in New Orleans. At last report the city is still being evacuated, with law and order having collapsed altogether, with the New Orleans Police department apparently doing some looting of its own.

Elsewhere on the web, David Dunlap reports in The New York Times that the process of reconstruction is going to be long and expensive. It may have to be done, however, if only because residents of New Orleans weren't that likely to leave their city before Katrina.

In 2000, 85.4 percent of the population of New Orleans ages 5 and older was living in the same county (Orleans Parish) as in 1995, according to census figures provided by the Queens College department of sociology. Nationwide, 79.1 percent of the population was living in the same county in 2000 as in 1995.

"It is one of our more stable cities in terms of a population that has stayed," Mr. Farmer said. "It's not a city where people leave in large percentages or arrive in large percentages, except as tourists. So I think you're going to see a very strong impulse among the people there to rebuild."

Of course, if (as discussed at, among other places, alt.history.future reconstruction plans focus on restoring the most historic districts, gentrifying much of the remainder, and not bothering to build the more vulnerable and/or poorest regions, New Orleans' poor might not have much choice.

Molly Ivins, writing for the Chicago Tribune, argues that the Bush administration bears direct responsibility for the severity of the catastrophe in New Orleans.

Just plain political bad luck that, in June, Bush took his little ax and chopped $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. As was reported in New Orleans CityBusiness at the time, that meant "major hurricane and flood projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now."

The commander of the corps' New Orleans district also immediately instituted a hiring freeze and canceled the annual corps picnic.

[. . .]

Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. Recruiting for the Guard is also down significantly because people are afraid of being sent to Iraq if they join, leaving the Guard even more short-handed.

The Louisiana National Guard also notes that dozens of its high-water vehicles, Humvees, refuelers and generators have also been sent abroad. (I hate to be picky, but why do they need high-water vehicles in Iraq?)

This, in turn, goes back to the original policy decision to go into Iraq without enough soldiers and the subsequent failure to admit that mistake and to rectify it by instituting a draft.

The levees of New Orleans, two of which are now broken and flooding the city, were also victims of Iraq war spending. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said on June 8, 2004, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."

This, friends, is why we need to pay attention to government policies, not political personalities, and to know whereon we vote. It is about our lives.

The political fallout from this will be interesting, though I fear I have to agree with the commenters over at pauldrye's LJ that this will only deepen partisan divides in the United States.

The final death toll? I've heard nothing definitive so far, but apparently FEMA predicted that 30% of the thirty thousand people trapped in New Orleans would be killed in a like situation. My sympathies to the dead and theirs.