Sidney Blumenthal, here, has a great article on Katrina, placing the storm's after-effects in the context of the Army Corps of Engineers' strange brand of city planning; reduced federal funds for the protection of urban infrastructure; over-developed coastal landscapes; climate change; and even the financial black-hole of Operation Iraqi Freedom. "In early 2001," he reports, "the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City." And both have now come true... (What was the third?) See also this New York Times graphic.
15 Comments
also, check out this article by Will Bunch (via planetizen)
Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
Hundreds of millions in federal dollars originally intended to shore up levees and build pumping stations around New Orleans were diverted to the pay for the war in Iraq.
This is also an interesting article mid-disaster: Hurricane Provides New Money-Making Opportunity for Red Cross
Hugo "Che" Chavez rails against Bush on the failure to prepare for Katrina - Reuters
The third is a major earthquake in Los Angeles. This via not from the report but from an interview of the FEMA director on CNN.
I'm not too sure if spending issues are the culprit here. More likely it's the practices. In 1993, there was a little flood higher up the Mississippi River. The Army Corps claimed humility and promised to implement less rigid flood controls to more in keeping with natural systems and processes. But have they really?
The 'natural systems and processes,' however, are already so covered over and replaced by Corps-related engineering projects that the landscape, at this point, can't possibly go back to natural - even this post-Katrina flooding, paradoxically, is an artificial (i.e. manmade) phenomenon (caused by earlier human practices). But I definitely agree about the *practices* here being at fault; financing further landscape alterations, as per the FEMA document, could possibly have helped, but the lower Mississippi delta is like a huge Rube Goldberg contraption of dams and levees and flood walls protecting against the effects of other dams and levees and flood walls further upstream - while the 'real' earth, the 'real' landscape, has eroded, silted up behind retaining walls, or been washed out to sea. Call it military geotechnics. The negative effects thereof.
two words mangrove forests
Oh, I'm certainly not advocating a return to the "natural," which itself is very problematic from the outset, because what can "natural" even mean when "natural" (or Nature or nature) is a cultural construct. And then it becomes even more problematic when deciding out how far "back to natural" we have to go? For example, a corn field Illinois: does going "back to natural" stop at the wetlands of 1800s or the prairie of 5,000 BCE or the glacier landscape of 15,000 BCE?
Even in an artificial landscapes, "natural systems and processes" are at work. And we've all seen that when Katrina, i.e. an amalgam of atmospheric, geo-axial-rotational, solar radiation, etc. systems and processes (NS&P) plowed through Louisiana and Mississippi and points farther afield. And yes, this post-Katrina flooding is an artificial phenomenon, but is it any wonder? Apart from gravity and evaporation (and evapotranspiration if you count some of the surviving trees), this Army Corp landscape cannot be said to be open much to other NS&P. Hence, the complete structural and system failure. But imagine a system open to hydrological systems (e.g. periodic flooding will prevent silting of streambed so rivers will not magically elevate higher than an adjoining city, rivers meander, stormflow is less with less concrete pavement, wetlands detain a lot of water and release it slowly, etc. etc. etc.) and other NS&P. Would we see what we're seeing on CNN now? Who knows. Even the most earthquake-proofed building isn't totally immune. But nevertheless an alternative worth exploring in the future.
And as for whether these would be "real" earth/landscape, it would rather be a moot point and frankly an uninteresting question.
(Perusing Archinect is not what some people call a vacation. Those people are also insane.)
Three articles in the *Engineering News-Record* take up the hurricane: plugging broken levees; the obliteration of N.O.'s local architectural history; and more about pollution and the broken levee system. Then there's this essayistic response to the post-Katrina disaster from The New Republic...
| The Man-Made Disaster. NYT | LAT> What the Times Picayune said in 2002: "It's a matter of when, not if. Eventually a major hurricane will hit New Orleans head on, instead of being just a close call. It's happened before and it'll happen again." In that installment, McQuaid and Schleifstein reported that "a major hurricane could decimate the region, but flooding from even a moderate storm could kill thousands. It's just a matter of time.... Evacuation is the most certain route to safety, but it may be a nightmare. And 100,000 without transportation will be left behind.... Hundreds of thousands would be left homeless, and it would take months to dry out the area and begin to make it livable. But there wouldn't be much for residents to come home to. The local economy would be in ruins....
"People left behind in an evacuation will be struggling to survive. Some will be housed at the Superdome, the designated shelter in New Orleans for people too sick or infirm to leave the city. Others will end up in last-minute emergency refuges that will offer minimal safety. But many will simply be on their own.... Thousands will drown while trapped in homes or cars by rising waters. Others will be washed away or crushed by debris. Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days." wow
That New York Times link, in Javier's post, is intense: the question of "whether rescue operations were hampered because almost one-third of the men and women of the Louisiana National Guard, and an even higher percentage of the Mississippi National Guard, were 7,000 miles away, fighting in Iraq..." In other words, all part of the untrackably disastrous overlapping aftereffects of geographic, geotechnic, military-imperialist, and tropical-atmospheric causes - aka why New Orleans may now have to be "abandoned for months"...
is a brief history of FEMA and how it is being "systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security." As terrorism becomes not only our primary concern now over natural disaster, but counter-terrorism has become our only mode of response. Current state of N.O? "a proverbial witches brew of petrochemical slush and pestilence." Unbelievable.
Amy Goodman w/ some good stories:
The Drowning of New Orleans: Hurricane Devastation Was Predicted (conversation with John McQuid and Mark Fischetti)
Homeland Emergency: Disaster Relief is Suffering Under New DHS Bureaucracy (conversation with Matthew Brzezinski)
"Katrina's Real Name is Global Warming" (conversation with Ross Gelbspan)
- George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom.
Fats Lives
Just posted to this to the 'Blogosphere' entry comments, but here's a new video-blog piece on Al Gore's TV network; a guy taking his boat through New Orleans to rescue survivors. 5 minutes long.
Sorry if this is posted up elsewhere, but check out this transcript of the New Orleans mayor, it's hilarious, sad, totally right-on, almost heartbreaking and - just read it: CNN. "And they don't have a clue what's going on down here. They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn -- excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed."
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.