Category: Katrina

  • A Little Understanding, Please…

    Aside from the very slight chances of a hurricane and a flood occurring coincidentally, planners had to identify and assign personnel according to their skills. It must be remembered: –Every hurricane or flood is different. Some call for public-safety skills, boats and sandbagging, while others require clockmakers and paleontologists. –The records had to be, by…

  • Is the national guard stopping aid from getting in to New Orleans?

    That’s the word on indymedia.org and getyouracton.com. One show-stopping excerpt: Also heard that part of the reason our house flooded is they dynamited part of the levee after the first section broke – they did this to prevent Uptown (the rich part of town) from being flooded. Apparently they used too much dynamite, thus flooding…

  • Donate to Habitat for Humanity

    Help Hurricane Victims Rebuild Their Lives The situation on the Gulf Coast is grave. Reports of devastation are staggering. Thousands of families are left homeless or with homes that are severely damaged. Katrina was nothing short of catastrophic–especially for families in low-income housing and mobile home parks. In a disaster like this, families who were…

  • What took so long

    Can anyone verify the following assertions (from a mailing list I’m on)? Halliburton hired for storm cleanup 01 Sep 2005: The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. & Roof Installation Newton repair roofs, restore electric power and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform…

  • Government by photo-op

    Is this really the best way to help the relief effort? It goes to show how overwhelming things are here right now that I encountered the First Lady yesterday and I almost forgot to put it in this e-mail. It actually couldn’t have been a worse experience; a team of us were working to put…

  • FEMA Chief Brown: An Unqualified Success

    Talking Points Memo on the qualifications of FEMA chief Michael Brown (aka “Brownie”): The news out today about FEMA Director Michael Brown tells the ugly tale. So let’s just review what we now know — with key new details first from a diarist at DailyKos and now confirmed in more depth in this morning’s Boston…