...and a recall effort against the Mayor.

From what I understand, the feds,volunteers & the military are in the process of taking on the S&R roles in order to free up both police & national guard troops for getting the looting under control. That need appears to be growing pretty critical:

http://apnews.myway.com//article/200...D8CB55082.html
Managers at a nursing home were prepared to cope with the power outages and had enough food for days, but then the looting began. The home's bus driver was forced to surrender the vehicle to carjackers.

Bands of people drove by the nursing home, shouting to residents, "Get out!" Eighty residents, most of them in wheelchairs, were being evacuated to other nursing homes in the state.

"We had enough food for 10 days," said Peggy Hoffman, the home's executive director. "Now we'll have to equip our department heads with guns and teach them how to shoot."

I also believe, although it isn't being talked about in much more than hints right now, that there's a growing belief that the search & rescue phase is starting to transition into body recovery sooner rather than later.

The following link shows satellite imagery from around noon today, and I'm quite happy to say that my MIL and my place are two of the few dry areas in the town. If the looters can just be kept away, we might be in good shape..

However, my grandfather (wife's GF) has called the fire department and they say his house is almost under water in Kenner :( (which it looks like on the satellite.)


Edit: Forgot the link:
http://www.wwltv.com/perl/common/vid...ing_083105.wmv

Ok I have to say this - the Governor of LA really irritates me. She needs to suck it up, and get her emotions in check. It really drives me nuts when female politicos act like a bunch of blubbering women.

Although I'm sure Sen.Landrieu (D-LA) will manage to tick me off royally at some time in the future, I thought she did a pretty good job on Larry King Live just now.

She basically said that everybody - Congressmen, Senators, the President, the Feds, the state government, the local sheriffs, the mayor & staff, basically Everybody - is doing every thing they can as fast as they can.

She mentioned that the military was coming, adding a "hurry" to the end of it, but I really didn't get the feeling even that was a slam about their timeline, just an honest plea for the help they can bring. She also mentioned that her brother, the Lt. Governor (I don't think I realized they were related) had spent the past two days recovering bodies & helping with rescues, came across not as a "oh what a great guy my brother" but more like "My God, the Lt.Governor of a state is out there in a rowboat, if we're doing that don't you think we're doing everything humanly possible?"

She appeared to me to be taking the high road tonight, didn't try to score any political points nor make any political statements. She also scored high for getting visibly ticked off at Larry in an earlier segment.

I guess it just stood out to me because I'd just finished reading a piece on how strategists are already working on how to use Katrina against the President shortly & her performance was a pretty stark contrast vs what I'd read just minutes earlier. Props to her.

Reading one of the blogs at nola.com and you see more and more reports from hospitals that armed looters are breaking in and taking over the hospitals.

Sad. :(

I can't blame the female politicos. I have seen and heard more men crying over this on radio, TV, and on the phone (military friends who are have been called up) than any other event outside of 9/11

At the very least, the initial report of looters breaking in to Children's Hospital were completely false. The staff at the hospital apparently had to exert a lot of effort debunking that rumor today.

Hopefully, the other reports are also false; although, I fear conditions in the city tonight are going to be very bad.

This mean that a "Shoot to Kill" order is out on the looters then?

Haven't watch her. Is she crying alot, flip-flopping?

I believe in the end, people are going say they (the governor and mayor) were constantly a day late and a dollar short. For example, the mandatory evac orders should have gone out the day before and that martial (<--- look, I can spell that right - unlike some of the news media) law should have been declared yesterday. Of course there were political, legal and cultural ramifications that kept things from happening quicker. Even Dr Maestri is alluding to that.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I think the black civil liberty leaders will have the mayor crucified.

Just saw on my local news here that two little boys, both 8 years old, saw the hurricane coverage on the news and wanted to help. They took their piggy banks down to the Salvation Army headquarters downtown and donated all their money. About $60 total.

Warm fuzzies.

it comes down to this: what's more important to you, your integrity or your reputation afterwards.

Can we merge this with the "people suck" thread? Fucking looters destroying their own communities. I hope they each catch some hideous disease as a result of running around town slogging through debris, waste, and whatever other biohazards are out there. Would be quite deserving.

I'm hating the politicizing of this from the media. I just watched Aaron "Smacky" Brown's report on CNN, and he's just itching to blame everything on Bush*.

He was interviewing correspondents, and asking very leading questions about the speed in which Washington has provided aid. He was clearly upset when one answered that the Guard was on the scene very quickly (Bush had signed the National Disaster declarations in advance to make that easier).

So then he asked if the "military" part of the Guard was on the scene fast enough (something the governor would have had to request) then encouraged speculation that perhaps it didn't because everyone's in Iraq.

Just disgusting. I know every news outlet does this, and CNN is no exception. I know Brown is one of the worst. But to use all this suffering to make your case against Bush should be beneath the network. Not so, I guess.

I feel like making fun of Brown's stupid toupee right now.

* standard disclaimer - I have never voted for anyone named Bush, nor did I support W.'s candadacy in 2000 or 2004.

Actually, it looks like this news channel (Phoenix Channel 3) is running a telethon for the Salvation Army throughout their broadcast. They have news anchors answering phones during the breaks. How cool is that?

Do feel a tad guilty now for ragging on journalists earlier this afternoon.

Something else crossed my mind while wwltv again. Knowing how much donations to Red Cross (and Salv Army) will go directly to helping, do you think it might be more cost beneficial for the Federal Govt to give some of their millions to them as well? Seems to me it could do a lot of good very quickly.

Wasn't there a controversy over how the Red Cross handled the 9/11 donations?

And as far as the Salvation Army goes - I can hear the ACLU lawyering up on that one now.

Really? I was just told tonight that Kenner is in good shape, considering. I think maybe a certain lady is telling her daughter fairy tales so that she'll let her go back home (she is afraid she is losing too much Real Estate business. What Real Estate business?).

That's a good point (from wwltv) in that the news have been dominated by the outlawness but there are much more good going with tremendous humanitarian efforts being performed by many. Wonder why we don't see more of this? Oh wait....

The local news here has been giving the local efforts a lot of press (because everybody is tuned in around here). But as for the national coverage? Of course, you go with what butters the bread...

And Nancy Grace is covering the Natalie-Aruba case. Kinda interesting.

What else would you want her doing? She has a specialty: court proceedings.

From what I've heard and seen Kenner has water problems all over. Its hard to tell how deep exactly though. It could just be a foot of water everywhere, it could be more. But the word was everything from the lake to the interstate had a good amount of water.

The only video evidence I saw of Jefferson Parish was a quick shot of what looked like Williams Blvd near the Treasure Chest under water(which obviously would be no surprise) and the often shown shot of Clerview Mall and Vets with water. Both shots it was hard to tell how much water exactly.

My Grand Father (I love the guy and consider him my GF - he is really Mrs. Eaglesfan's GF - He is VERY colorful) is a retired fireman and has many friends that still serve. The information is very accurate. His home has between 8-10 feet of water in Kenner unfortunately :(

"It bleeds, it leads." In the end, people really don't care about the humanitarian mission, they want to see action, whether it's rescues or lootings. We're an ADD nation, and it needs to be exciting and dynamic to keep our attention for five seconds.

This is cool and I think more sports teams could help with this as well:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?...nfl&id=2148336

Where in Kenner is that EF? All my Aunts and Uncles and my Grandmother live in one little area of Kenner. They are on the West Esplanade side of Vintage(right off of Power), so I am hoping they didn't get 10 feet of water, but nothing short of no water in their homes would surpise me now.

Mrs. Eaglesfan is already asleep, so I can't tell you exactly where they are at. However, I think they are west of Loyola. I know they are a little west and north of the Esplanade Mall. However, Mrs. Eaglesfan usually drives and I think she takes exit 221 (Loyola I believe) and we go a bit north and west from there.

Dola - Actually it is a fair distance north of I-10 (at least 2 miles) and is close to the lake. I know we pass some very nice houses on the right that I was considering as possible buys. We also were looking at some houses a bit further north of their place that were very close to the lake.

Ack yea, I am not too surprised that that area would be hit hard, unfortunately. As if sinking houses in Kenner weren't bad enough. I wonder what impact, if any, standing water for a long period of time will have on houses that are still sinking in that area? It can't be good.

I'm a bit surprised given the inevitable stories with a sports angle that I haven't seen any articles talking about the Manning family. I'm assuming Archie and his wife got out of town ahead of the hurricane, and maybe Peyton and Eli don't want to make a big deal out of their connection to New Orleans at the moment.

I did see they interviewed Peyton on espn after the hurricane, but there are so many players from the New Orleans / South Mississippi area it would be hard to talk to them all...

These links may have already been posted, but they are some of the best images I have seen of the city.

Before: http://www.digitalglobe.com/images/k...h9_2004_dg.jpg

After: http://www.digitalglobe.com/images/k...31_2005_dg.jpg

The 17th St canal is on the left edge. You can see the breech about 1/6 from the top.

The older areas of the city are along the river and are dry. The French Quarter is in the lower right corner right at the big bend in the river.

The 9th ward is east of the image and is severely flooded, and uptown is south of the image and did not flood. The small bit of land in the very bottom right is the west bank which did not flood.

Kenner is significantly west of this image.

You don't think she could talk about other things? She does also have a show on Court TV.

dola

On the left side near the center of the image you see a what appear to be many very small buildings. These are a couple of large cementaries with the above ground crypts.

Let me know if you would like any other landmarks pointed out.

Breaking News now: AOne of the buses that got to Houston WASN'T from the superdome!
As per CNN. Seems that it was commandeered from someplace. This should have been coordinated beforehand.

Dola: It seems that stories from riders didnt gel with actual things that took place in the dome. Seems that there's no security and coordination. Youd think that there wuld be escorts on these things and a running password and checkpoiint checks. Damn what a mess.

While true, in a perfect world, either everyone can do all the paperwork, dot all the i's and cross all the t's, and make sure everything is perfectly coordinated (mind you, on something of this scale, we're talking about there still being a 5% chance of a screw up due to the number of people involved) and they could head out tomorrow or Friday or do it as fast as possible and hope to do the best they can.

SI

It's not about paper work it's about OPSEC (Operational Security) and following SOP's for Convoy ops and such. Just gets me irritated how those ''infiltrators'' breached the system and got into a ''secure'' area. Operations this big you'd think there would be verification of manifests and id cards and such.

I don't know why the media acts so surprised that others (not in the Superdome) would be trying to evacuate once they saw all the announcements, I know if I had a bus I'd be loading it with people to try to evacuate the place.

FNC (Phil Keating live report) is reporting there were gunshots in the Superdome just now.

CNN is reporting shot fired at a helicopter involved at the Superdome.

Why on earth would someone shoot at a helicopter right now?

I have no idea. People are crazy?

Is wwltv down for everyone right now?

Those aren't people shooting at a helicopter ... those are animals who happen to walk on two legs.

I spent much of yesterday thinking this but I don't believe I ever said it here.
NOW I'm ready to say it: we've got the wrong kind of helicopters in the air over New Orleans. Time to move the S&R choppers out & the gunships in.

Who is this idiot on CNN, and who exactly pissed in his cheerios? When he he was interviewing Haley Barbor awhile ago, he kept pushing him and pushing him to say the Feds aren't doing enuogh to the point Barber was like "look, I don't have time to argue. I'm just trying to give you an update on the situation." Then he interviewed a woman at the Astrodome, and was basically throwing gasoline on her anger to get her to break down.