News Intelligence Analysis
Directory
of Disasters
Endemic Problem of Safety
Hurricane
Disasters
I. Two Agencies: FEMA and ICE
II. The Story of Hurricane Katrina
Flu Disasters
I. The Coming Flu Disaster
NEW: Video Shows Bush Was
Warned Before Katrina
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP)—In dramatic and
sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster
officials warned President Bush and his homeland
security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that
the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in
New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers,
according to confidential
video footage.
NEW: Video
Shows Bush Being
Warned on Katrina
Officials Detailed a Dire
Threat to New Orleans
By Spencer S. Hsu and
Linton Weeks
A newly leaked video recording of high-level
government deliberations the day before Hurricane
Katrina hit shows disaster officials emphatically
warning President Bush that the storm posed a
catastrophic threat to New Orleans and the Gulf
Coast, and a grim-faced Bush personally assuring
state leaders that his administration was
"fully prepared"
to help.
NEW: Bush
Could Seize Absolute
Control of U.S. Government
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jan 13, 2006, 07:42
President George W. Bush has
signed executive
orders giving him sole authority to impose martial
law, suspend habeas corpus and ignore the Posse
Comitatus Act that prohibits deployment of U.S.
troops on American streets. This would give him
absolute dictatorial power over the government
with
no checks and balances.
NEW:
Endemic Problem of Safety
in Coal Mining
By GARDINER HARRIS
Once every few years, a disaster in
a tiny Appalachian town reminds
the nation that coal mining remains
a dangerous occupation. The cause
of the latest incident, which claimed
12 lives at the Sago Mine in West
Virginia, is unknown and
under
investigation.
Coal Horror
Past Evil Returning?
Look at coal industry records,
and you’ll
be horrified. A sickening total of 686 West
Virginia miners were killed on the job in 1925.
The next year, the toll was 574. The next, it
was 590. Armies of diggers were sent into black
holes with little protection for their lives. A single
underground explosion at Monongah, Marion
County, killed 362 in 1907 — the worst mine
disaster in U.S. history. It caused Congress
to create the U.S. Bureau of Mines
to seek
safety
Mine Safety
Deaths Preventable
Thirteen miners were trapped
by an explosion in
an Upshur County coal mine early Monday. ..But
the bitter truth is that this tragedy was not a surprise
— both because the mine had a disturbing safety
record, and because the Bush administration in
Washington has been undercutting mine
safety.
Calls Intensify for Congressional
Hearings on Sago Mine
By Paul J. Nyden
Staff writer
A congressional investigation into the Sago
Mine blast should focus on more than just
the disaster, two key lawmakers say. Any
hearings should also review how Congress
cut federal safety enforcement funds last
year and why the Bush administration named
company executives to top enforcement
positions at the Mine Safety and Health
Administration, according to Reps. George
Miller, D-Calif., and Major Owens, D-N.Y.,
leading members of the House Committee on
Education
and the Workforce.
Hurricane Disasters
The Questions: Did FEMA
and the Bush Administration
Deliberately let New Orleans flood? Did they intentionally
obstruct rescue operations?
Evidence from Past Performance:
Over 45 Articles! Don't miss one of
the great journalistic investigations of
the decade!
FEMA
Under Bush Leaves
a Long Trail of Corruption
Investigations
by Florida's Sun-Sentinel
Reporters Reveal Republican Miami-Dade
County, which suffered little or no hurricane
damage, received the bulk of the aid, while
Broward County, a Democratic stronghold
received little. Here are over 45 stories
revealing a trail of stunning corruption
and mismanagement including the
fact that 20% of FEMA inspectors had
criminal
records:
When Hurricane
Frances hit South Florida Labor
Day weekend, 100 miles north of Miami-Dade
County, but Sun-Sentinel reporters found
that the federal government approved $28
million in storm claims there for new furniture
and clothes and thousands of new televisions
microwaves, refrigerators and other appliances.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency
paid for new cars, dental bills and a funeral
even though the Medical Examiner recorded
no deaths from Frances... The reports have
prompted calls for investigations by federal
and state officials and the beginnings of an
inquiry by the Inspector General for the
Department of Homeland
Security.
Destroying FEMA
By Eric Holdeman
Tuesday, August 30, 2005; A17
In the days to come, as the nation
and
the people along the Gulf Coast work to
cope with the disastrous aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina, we will be reminded
anew, how important it is to have a federal
agency capable of dealing with natural
catastrophes of this sort. This is an
immense human tragedy, one that will
work hardship on millions of people. It
is beyond the capabilities of state and
local government to deal with. It requires
a national response. Which makes it al
the more difficult to understand why, at
this moment, the country's premier
agency for dealing with such events --
FEMA -- is being, in effect, systematically
downgraded and all but dismantled by the
Department of Homeland Security.
The 'Stuff Happens' Presidency
By Harold Meyerson
Consider the congressional testimony of Joe
Allbaugh, George W. Bush's 2000 campaign
manager, who assumed the top position at
FEMA in 2001. He characterized the organization
as "an oversized entitlement program," and
counseled states and cities to rely instead
on "faith-based organizations . . . like the
Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster
Service."
FEMA
Prepared for Mass
Destruction of U.S. Cities
Starting in 2002
Crash
effort was made to create temporary
cities to handle millions of displaced
persons
by January of 2003.
$300 million
dollars of contracts awarded:
So where are
they?
ICE Deploys Over 700 Law
Enforcement Officers to
Golf Coast
Sept. 8, 2005
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today
announced that over the past ten days it
has deployed roughly 725 law enforcement
and support personnel from around the country
to the Gulf Coast as part of the government’s
response to Hurricane
Katrina.
Read about the Camps of ICE
Where in the past the US Immigration
authorities
have detained their prisoners in various holding
facilities, to include County Jails, Municipal Jails,
Federal Prisons, they have embarked upon this
‘ENDGAME’ plan which will make them the largest
jailer of human
beings in all of history.
The End Game
The Department of Homeland Security
and its bureau,
ICE, are planning to build temporary cities that will hold
millions of undocumented aliens. The ramifications of
these plans are mind numbing, especially if the best of
intentions get waylaid. We urge you to download the
PDF document titled "Endgame." It's worth the time
and effort. It's 1257 kb. 
II. The Story of Hurricane Katrina
NEW: Video
Shows Bush Being
Warned on Katrina
Officials Detailed a Dire
Threat to New Orleans
By Spencer S. Hsu and
Linton Weeks
A newly leaked video recording of high-level
government deliberations the day before Hurricane
Katrina hit shows disaster officials emphatically
warning President Bush that the storm posed a
catastrophic threat to New Orleans and the Gulf
Coast, and a grim-faced Bush personally assuring
state leaders that his administration was
"fully prepared"
to help.
NEW: GAO Report Reveals Millions
in Fraudulent Payouts for Katrina
PDF
FILE
NEW: FEMA Flagged for Katrina ‘Fraud
and Abuse’
Audit finds agency never
verified identity of aid
recipients, wasted millions
By Lisa Myers & the
NBC Investigative Unit
Updated: 7:37 p.m. ET Feb. 10, 2006
WASHINGTON - The first investigation
of how the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did
in paying benefits to Hurricane Katrina victims suggests
massive fraud and the waste of millions of dollars of millions
of taxpayer money.
NEW: Senators
Blast pre-Katrina
Preparations
Agency predicted severe New
Orleans damage
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senators lambasted
the
Bush administration on Tuesday for failing to
heed devastating predictions from a hurricane
preparedness test that began a year before
Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.
The top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs Committee also accused
the White House of trying to block or delay the panel's
inquiry into the government's sluggish response
to Katrina.
NEW: White
House Got Early Warning
on Katrina
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
In the 48 hours before Hurricane
Katrina hit,
the White House received detailed warnings
about the storm's likely impact, including eerily
prescient predictions of breached levees,
massive flooding, and major losses of life
and property, documents show. A 41-page
assessment by the Department of Homeland
Security's National Infrastructure Simulation
and Analysis Center (NISAC), was delivered
by e-mail to the White House's "situation room,"
the nerve center where crises are handled, at
1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, the day the storm hit,
according to an e-mail cover sheet
accompanying
the document.
NEW: Back
to Memos: Hurricane Katrina
Would Destroy New Orleans
"I don't think
anybody anticipated the breach
of the levees."
-- George W. Bush, September 1, 2005.
But in the hours before Hurricane
Katrina made
landfall, the White House received exactly that level
of specificity about the threat posed to New Orleans
by the storm. And
still, it did nothing.
The President's Gulf
Coast Wage Cut
By Rep. George Miller
(D-CA)
The President suspended wage standards for
workers on the Gulf Coast before he declared
a national emergency. That means he was so
focused on cutting the wages of people who'd
be returning to the Gulf Coast to rebuild their
lives and their communities that, in order to
hasten the suspension, he failed to follow
the law.
Trailer town opens for
Katrina victims
By KEVIN McGILL, Associated Press
Published: Thursday, October 6, 2005
Updated: Thursday, October 6, 2005
BAKER, La. (AP) - What was to
be
Louisiana's first great stride in providing
temporary housing for Hurricane Katrina
victims turned out to be more of a stutter
step Thursday, with only about 50 new
residents arriving to fill a trailer community
built for upward
of 2,000.
FEMA Breakdowns Marked
Path From Hurricane to Anarchy
By ERIC LIPTON, CHRISTOPHER
DREW,
SCOTT SHANE and DAVID ROHDE
The governor of Louisiana was "blistering mad."
It was the third night after Hurricane Katrina
drowned New Orleans, and Gov. Kathleen
Babineaux Blanco needed buses to rescue
thousands of people from the fetid Superdome
and convention center. But only a fraction of
the 500 vehicles promised by federal authorities
had arrived.
Bush Requests $51.8 Billion More
for Relief
GOP Leaders Launch Inquiry
on Katrina
Preparation and Response
By Jonathan Weisman and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
President Bush sent Congress
a request for
$51.8 billion in additional hurricane relief yesterday,
raising Katrina's cost to the federal government
to $62.3 billion so far, easily a record for domestic
disaster relief. Separately, Republican leaders
moved to try to contain the political fallout from
Katrina, forming a joint House-Senate revie
committee of senior lawmakers who will
investigate the government's preparation
and initial response to the catastrophe.
Democrats called again for an independent
probe similar to the investigation of the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks
FEMA Turned Away Aid, Rescue
Crews, Cut Emergency Communication
Lines:
Witnesses Agency draws ire
of frustrated
volunteers and donors
by Dru Oja Jay
In the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina, several witnesses
have alleged that the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) turned away volunteers who were
ready to help New Orleans residents people trapped
in their flooded homes. Other witnesses have said that
FEMA turned away offers of aid, prevented water and
fuel from reaching people on the ground, and cut
emergency communications
lines.
Why FEMA failed
Ideologically opposed to a strong
federal role in disaster relief and obsessed
with terrorism, the Bush administration
let a once-admired agency fall apart.
By Farhad Manjoo
Sept. 7, 2005 | Days before Hurricane
Katrina struck
the Gulf Coast, the city of Chicago drew up a list of
resources it was willing to make available for relief
efforts in areas that might be hit by the storm. Chicago
told the Federal Emergency Management Agency
that in the event of disaster, it could spare more than
100 Chicago police officers, 36 Fire Department
personnel, eight emergency medical experts, more
than 130 staff from Chicago's Department of Public
Health, 140 staff from the Department of Streets &
Sanitation, dozens of trucks and
two boats.
Historic MSNBC Meet the Press
with Tim Russert Transcript Reveals
FEMA'S Acts of Potentially Criminal
Magnitude
Transcript for September 4
Michael Chertoff, Marc
Morial, Mike Tidwell,
Mark Fischetti, David Wessel, Haley Barbour
and Aaron Broussard
Techniques of Bush Administration
Exposed: Senior White House Official Lied to
Washington Post. Here is the Correction:
A Sept. 4 article on
the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov.
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared
a state of emergency. When in fact, she declared
an emergency on Aug. 26. The corrected article
with inserts is below:
Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still
Waiting
White House Shifts Blame
to State and Local
OfficialsBy Manuel Roig-Franzia
and Spencer Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 -- Tens of thousands of
people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from
this ruined city, as Bush administration officials
blamed state and local authorities for what leaders
at all levels have called a failure of the country's
emergency management.
Governor Blanco Declares State
of Emergency
Governor Kathleen Babineaux
Blanco today issued
Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005, declaring a state
of emergency for the state Louisiana as Hurricane
Katrina poses an imminent threat, carrying severe
storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause
flooding and damage to private property and public
facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the
citizens of the state of Louisiana The state of emergency
extends from Friday, August 26, 2005, through Sunday,
September 25, 2005, unless
terminated sooner.
Read the full Statement
of the Document
that Exonerates Louisiana Officials
Copy of Letter
from Governor Blanco to
President Bush
Dated August 28, 2005
Dear Mr. President:
Under the provisions of Section 401 of the Robert T.
Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance
Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 5121-5206 (Stafford Act), and
implemented by 44 CFR § 206.36, I request that
you declare: an expedited major disaster for the
State of Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina, a Category
V Hurricane approaches our coast south of New
Orleans; beginning on August 28, 2005 and continuing.
The affected areas include all the southeastern
parishes including the City of New Orleans directly
impacted by the brunt of the storm and the mid state
and northern parishes accepting the thousands of
citizens forced to evacuate from the impacted areas
directly affected
by Hurricane Katrina.
In July, 2005: Coastal Advocates
Dismayed by Bush's Opposition
Date: 7/22/2005
Gov. Kathleen Blanco released a copy of a letter to
President Bush on Wednesday in which she encourages
him to visit Louisiana to see the state's coastal-erosion
problems firsthand. In it, she touches on concerns
that the deteriorating Louisiana coast threatens critical
oil-industry infrastructure, including transportation
routes and pipelines. Although budget constraints
are said to be the reason for the Bush administration's
opposition, Blanco said, "please consider the far
greater costs of not addressing the catastrophic
coastal land loss occurring in Louisiana, land loss
that puts our nation's energy security and economic
future at risk.
The Lethal Tardiness of the Bush
Administration
By Matthew Rothschild
The scope of the disaster that goes by the
name Hurricane Katrina is difficult to fathom
at a distance. All the video on TV and all the
photographs and words in newspapers,
magazines, and on-line cannot adequately
describe the loss. A million people homeless,
a death toll likely to rise over 1,000, a great
city submerged, a region devastated-the
enormity was too great to take in.
Even in the first seventy-two hours after Katrina
came ashore near New Orleans, it became
obvious that government had
failed, at every level.
Here's the Story Behind the Hurricane
In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency ranked a major hurricane strike on New
Orleans as "among the three likeliest, most
catastrophic disasters facing this country," directly
behind a terrorist strike on New York City.
One of the strongest storms in recorded history
rocked the Gulf Coast, bringing 145 mph winds
and floods of up to 20 feet.
Two months ago, President Bush
took an
ax to budget funds that would have helped New
Orleans prepare for such a disaster. The New
Orleans branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
suffered a "record $71.2 million" reduction in federal
funding, a 44.2 percent reduction from its 2001 levels.
Reports at the time said that thanks to the cuts,
"major hurricane and flood protection projects will
not be awarded to local
engineering firms.
Homeland Security won't let Red Cross
deliver food
Saturday, September 03,
2005
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
As the National Guard delivered food to the New
Orleans convention center yesterday, American
Red Cross officials said that federal emergency
management authorities would not allow them
to do the same.
The Bursting Point
By DAVID BROOKS
On Sept. 11, 2001 Rudy Giuliani
took control. The
government response was quick and decisive.
The rich and poor suffered alike. Americans had
been hit, but felt united and strong. Public
confidence in institutions surged. Last week in
New Orleans, by contrast, nobody took control.
Authority was diffuse and action was ineffective.
The rich escaped while the poor were abandoned.
Leaders spun while looters rampaged. Partisans
squabbled while the nation was ashamed.
The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of
crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled.
Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral
equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield.
No wonder confidence in civic institutions
is
plummeting.
Falluja Floods the Superdome
By FRANK RICH
AS the levees cracked open and
ushered hell into
New Orleans on Tuesday, President Bush once
again chose to fly away from Washington, not
toward it, while disaster struck. We can all enumerate
the many differences between a natural catastrophe
and a terrorist attack. But character doesn't change:
it is immutable, and it is destiny.
As always, the president's first priority, the one that
sped him from Crawford toward California, was saving
himself: he had to combat the flood of record-low poll
numbers that was as uncontrollable as the surging of
Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another
disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the
cataclysm that defined his first term, 9/11, even at the
price of failing to recognize the emerging fiasco
likely
to engulf Term 2.
Homeland Security Chief Defends
Federal Response
By ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 - Michael
Chertoff, secretary of
the Department of Homeland Security, gave his most
detailed explanation to date for the troubled federal
response to Hurricane Katrina on Saturday, saying
the storm was particularly unpredictable and that the
government had not expected large sections of the
levees protecting New Orleans to fail.
Mr. Chertoff also expressed confidence in Michael
D. Brown, a Homeland Security undersecretary and
the Federal Emergency Management Agency director,
who has coordinated federal
efforts at the scene.
Bush and Katrina
Reasserting presidential
leadership amid a
political hurricane.
Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, September 6, 2005 12:01 a.m.
The White House is slowly recovering
from its first-week
stumbles responding to Katrina, with President Bush
taking his second trip to New Orleans yesterday. His
quick elevation of John Roberts to Chief Justice is
another welcome sign of energy. But Mr. Bush can't
afford to stop there, because the aftermath of Katrina
poses a threat to his entire second term...But what
Americans want now is proof that their government
understands the nature of the challenge and is acting
forcefully to meet it.
Katrina's Shock to the System
By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: September 4, 2005
DRIVERS waiting in line for hours, and occasionally
in vain, to fill up their tanks. Gasoline prices shooting
up 50 percent or more overnight. The president urging
everyone to curtail driving and conserve energy at home.
Dark rumors of hoarding and market manipulation
starting to spread. Economists warning that soaring
energy costs will certainly slow economic growth -
and maybe snuff it out
completely.
Bush Pledges More Troops as
Evacuation Grows
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
The pace of evacuations in New
Orleans picked
up markedly yesterday, and President Bush
said that he had ordered 7,000 additional troops
to the city and the Gulf Coast states to crack
down on lawlessness and to evacuate thousands
of refugees.
Most of the hurricane survivors have been cleared
from the New Orleans Superdome and the
convention center, where they huddled in squalor
and chaos for days. At least 19,000 have been
reported evacuated from the area, with
thousands
bused to Texas.
The Fallout
After Failures, Government Officials Play
Blame Game
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: September 5, 2005
As the Bush administration tried to show a more
forceful effort to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina,
government officials on Sunday escalated their
criticism and sniping over who was to blame for
the problems plaguing the initial
response.
White House shifts blame for Katrina
response
Administration, embattled
FEMA chief point
to state, local officials
By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Spencer
Hsu
The Washington Post
Sept. 4, 2005
NEW ORLEANS - Tens of thousands of people
spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this
ruined city, as Bush administration officials
blamed state and local authorities for what l
eaders at all levels have called a failure of the
country's emergency management...But there
remained an overwhelming display of human
misery on the streets of New Orleans, where
the last 1,500 people were being evacuated from
the Convention Center amid an overpowering odor
of human waste and rotting garbage. The evacuees,
most of them black and poor, spoke of violence,
anarchy and family members who died for lack
of food, water
and medical care.
United States of Shame
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 3, 2005
Stuff happens. And when you combine
limited
government with incompetent government,
lethal stuff happens.
America is once more plunged into a snake pit
of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding
thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered
infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient
troop levels and criminally negligent government
planning. But this time it's happening in America.
W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and
it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think
anyone anticipated the breach of the levees,"
he told Diane Sawyer.
As White House Anxiety Grows, Bush
Tries to Quell Political Crisis
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
and ADAM NAGOURNEY
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 - Faced with
one of the
worst political crises of his administration,
President Bush abruptly overhauled his September
schedule on Saturday as the White House scrambled
to gain control of a situation that Republicans said
threatened to undermine Mr. Bush's second-term
agenda and the party's long-term ambitions. In a sign
of the mounting anxiety at the White House, Mr. Bush
made a rare Saturday appearance in the Rose Garden
before live television cameras to announce that he was
dispatching additional active-duty troops to the Gulf
Coast. He struck a more somber tone than he had at
times on Friday during a daylong tour of the disaster
region, when he had joked at the airport in New Orleans
about the fun he had had in his younger days in Houston.
His demeanor on Saturday was similar to that of his
most somber speeches after
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Katrina's Assault on Washington
Do not be misled by Congress's
approval of $10.5
billion in relief for the Hurricane Katrina victims.
That's prompted by the graphic shock of the
news coverage from New Orleans and the region,
where the devastation catapults daily, in heartbreaking
contrast with the slo-mo bumblings of government.
There are dozens of questions Americans will
demand to have answered once this emergency
has passed. If the Homeland Security Department
was so ill prepared for a natural disaster that
everyone knew was coming, how is it equipped
to handle other kinds of crises? Has the war in
Iraq drained the nation of resources that it needs
for things like flood prevention? Is the National
Guard ready to handle a disaster that might be
even worse, like a
biological or nuclear attack?
Unrest Intensifies at Superdome
Shelter
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Fights and trash fires broke out, rescue helicopters
were shot at and anger mounted across New Orleans
on Thursday, as National Guardsmen in armored vehicles
poured in to help restore order across this increasingly
desperate and lawless city. ''We are out here like pure
animals. We don't have help,'' the Rev. Issac Clark, 68,
said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where
corpses lay in the open and evacuees complained that
they were dropped
off and given nothing.
Local Officials Criticize Federal
Government
Over Response
By JOSEPH B. TREASTER and DEBORAH SONTAG
Despair, privation and violent
lawlessness grew so extreme
in New Orleans on Thursday that the flooded city's mayor
issued a "desperate S O S" and other local officials,
describing the security situation as horrific, lambasted
the federal government as responding too
slowly to the
disaster.
Lawmakers of Both Parties Criticize
U.S. Response
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 - Members
of Congress
from both parties acknowledged on Friday that
the federal response to Hurricane Katrina had
fallen far short and promised hearings into what
had gone wrong."Hard lessons have been learned;
tragic lessons have been learned," said
Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No.
3 Republican in the House, adding, "We have to
respond more quickly; we have to respond in the
right ways and be sure
our priorities are right."
Waiting for a Leader
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. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration,
the president appeared a day later than he was needed.
He then read an address of a quality more appropriate
for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds
of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken
Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted
to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that
everything would work
out in the end.
Superdome: Haven Quickly Becomes
an Ordeal
By JOSEPH B. TREASTER
NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 31 - The sick
and the disabled
were the first to be led out. But late Wednesday
afternoon, as the slow evacuation of the Superdome
began, it was not always easy to distinguish them
from the rest of the 20,000 or more storm refugees
who had steeped for days in the arena's sickening
heat and stench, unbathed, exhausted and hungry.
They had been crammed into the Superdome's
shadowy ramps and corridors, spread across its vast
artificial turf field and plopped into small family
encampments in the plush orange, teal and purple
seats that rise toward the top of the dome. They had
flocked to the arena seeking sanctuary from the
winds and waters of Hurricane Katrina. But understaffed,
undersupplied and without air-conditioning or even
much lighting, the domed stadium quickly became
a sweltering and surreal vault, a place of overflowing
toilets
and no showers.
News Analysis: Hard New Test
for President
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 - Not since
he sat in a
Florida classroom as the World Trade Center
burned a thousand miles away has President
Bush faced a test quite like the one he returned
to Washington to confront this afternoon. President
Bush inspected the damage from Hurricane
Katrina while flying over New Orleans on
Air Force One.
Even before Hurricane Katrina, governors were
beginning to question whether National Guard
units stretched to the breaking point by service in
Iraq would be available for domestic emergencies.
Those concerns have now been amplified by scenes
of looting and disorder. There is also the added
question of whether the Department of Homeland
Security, designed primarily to fight terrorism, can
cope with what Mr. Bush called Wednesday "one
of the worst natural disasters
in our country's history."
Flu Disasters
I. The Flu Disaster
Bush Plan Shows U.S. Is
Not Ready for Deadly Flu
By GARDINER HARRIS
A plan developed by the Bush
administration to
deal with any possible outbreak of pandemic flu
shows that the United States is woefully unprepared
for what could become the worst disaster in the nation's
history.
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