Below are many highly revealing one-paragraph excerpts of important Hurricane Katrina articles reported in the mainstream media. Links are provided to the full articles on major media websites. If any link should fail to function,
click here. These Hurricane Katrina articles are listed by article date. For the same list by order of importance,
click here. For the list by date posted to this list,
click here. By choosing to educate ourselves on these important issues and to
spread the word, we can and will
build a brighter future.
Aide Says FEMA Ignored Warnings
2005-10-21, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR20051020008...
For 16 critical hours, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials, including former director Michael D. Brown, dismissed urgent eyewitness accounts by FEMA's only staffer in New Orleans that Hurricane Katrina had broken the city's levee system the morning of Aug. 29 and was causing catastrophic flooding. Marty Bahamonde, sent to New Orleans by Brown, said he alerted Brown's assistant shortly after 11 a.m. that Monday with the "worst possible news" for the city: The Category 4 hurricane had carved a 20-foot breach in the 17th Avenue Canal levee. Bahamonde said he called Brown personally after 7 p.m. to warn that 80 percent of New Orleans was underwater and that he had photographed a 200-foot-wide breach. Testifying to a bipartisan Senate panel investigating the response to the hurricane, Bahamonde said his accounts were discarded by officials in Baton Rouge and Washington. President Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Richard B. Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have all said they were told that the city's flood walls did not fail until Aug. 30. Bahamonde said he found it "amazing" that New Orleans officials continued to let thousands gather at the Superdome, even though they knew that the area around it was going to flood. Ten people later died at the Superdome.
Brits sent 400,000 meals but U.S. didn't use them
2005-10-14, San Francisco Chronicle/Washington Post
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/15/MNG5VF8PJI1.DTL
In the early days of September, as military helicopters plucked desperate New Orleanians from rooftops and Red Cross shelters swelled with the displaced, nearly 400,000 packaged meals landed on a tarmac at Little Rock Air Force Base and were whisked by tractor-trailer to Louisiana. But most of the $5.3 million worth of food never reached the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Instead, because of fears about mad cow disease and a long-standing ban on British beef, the rations routinely consumed by British soldiers have sat stacked in an Arkansas warehouse. Now, with some of the food set to expire in early 2006 and U.S. taxpayers spending $16,000 a month to store the meals, the State Department is quietly looking for a needy country to take them. No fewer than six federal agencies or departments had a role in accepting, distributing and rejecting the food.
Note: This unbelievable news was first reported by the London Times and WantToKnow.info a month prior to this recent article. Why didn't the US press report it back then?
$11 Million a Day Spent on Hotels for Storm Relief
2005-10-13, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/national/nationalspecial/13housing.html?ex=...
The federal government has moved hundreds of thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina into hotel rooms at a cost of about $11 million a night, a strategy local officials and some members of Congress criticize as incoherent and wasteful. The number of people in hotels has grown by 60 percent in the past two weeks as some shelters closed, reaching nearly 600,000 as of Tuesday. The reliance on hotels has been necessary, housing advocates say, because [FEMA] has had problems installing mobile homes and travel trailers for evacuees and has been slow to place victims in apartments that real estate executives say are available throughout the southeast. Critics point out that hotel rooms, at an average cost of $59 a night, are significantly more expensive than apartments and are not suitable for months-long stays. Even conservative housing experts have criticized the Bush administration's handling of the temporary housing response. "I am baffled," said Ronald D. Utt, a former...Reagan administration aide who is now a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. "This is not incompetence. This is willful."
Note: Do you ever wonder if the current administration might be trying to bankrupt our country? For more excellent information on the hurricanes: http://www.WantToKnow.info/050927hurricanecoverupcorruption
25 questions about murder of the Big Easy
2005-10-02, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/02/INGSHEVHR31.DTL
The most toxic debris in New Orleans isn't the sinister gray sludge that coats the streets..., but all the unanswered questions that have accumulated in the wake of so much official betrayal and hypocrisy. Where outsiders see simple "incompetence" or "failure of leadership," locals are more inclined to discern deliberate design and planned neglect -- the murder, not the accidental death, of a great city. Here are 25 of the urgent questions that deeply trouble the local people we spoke with on a trip to New Orleans and South Louisiana. Until a grand jury or congressional committee begins to uncover the answers, the moral (as opposed to simply physical) reconstruction of the New Orleans region will remain impossible. 20. Who is responsible for the suspicious fires that have swept the city? Why have so many fires occurred in blue-collar areas that have long been targets of proposed gentrification? 23. Why isn't FEMA scrambling to create a central registry of everyone evacuated from the greater New Orleans region? Will evacuees receive absentee ballots and be allowed to vote in the crucial February municipal elections that will partly decide the fate of the city?
U.S. paying a premium to cover storm-damaged roofs
2005-09-29, Duluth News Tribune/Knight Ridder
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/nation/12775741.htm
Across the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast, thousands upon thousands of blue tarps are being nailed to wind-damaged roofs, a visible sign of government assistance. The blue sheeting...isn't coming cheap. Knight Ridder has found that a lack of oversight, generous contracting deals and poor planning mean that government agencies are shelling out as much as 10 times what the temporary fix would normally cost. The government is paying contractors an average of $2,480 for less than two hours of work to cover each damaged roof - even though it's also giving them endless supplies of blue sheeting for free. Steve Manser, the president of Simon Roofing and Sheet Metal of Youngstown, Ohio, which was awarded an initial $10 million contract to begin "Operation Blue Roof" in New Orleans, acknowledged that the price his company is charging to install blue tarps could pay for shingling an entire roof.
Note: Google news shows that though many small papers reported this story, no major media did.
Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
2005-09-26, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/26/national/nationalspecial/26spend.html?ex=12...
Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse. Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA. Bills have come in for deals that apparently were clinched with a handshake, with no documentation. Kellogg, Brown & Root, which was given $60 million in contracts, was rebuked by federal auditors for unsubstantiated billing from the Iraq reconstruction and criticized for bills like $100-per-bag laundry service.
Blackwater Down
2005-09-22, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/22/opinion/main878822.shtml
The men from Blackwater USA arrived in New Orleans right after Katrina hit. The company known for its private security work guarding senior U.S. diplomats in Iraq beat the federal government and most aid organizations to the scene. About 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans. When asked what authority they were operating under, one guy said, "We're on contract with the Department of Homeland Security." Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, "He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary." Says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, "These private security forces have behaved brutally, with impunity, in Iraq. To have them now on the streets of New Orleans is frightening and possibly illegal." Blackwater is operating under a federal contract...[that] was announced just days after Homeland Security Department spokesperson Russ Knocke told the Washington Post he knew of no federal plans to hire Blackwater. With President Bush using the Katrina disaster to try to repeal Posse Comitatus (the ban on using U.S. troops in domestic law enforcement)...the war is coming home in yet another ominous way. As one Blackwater mercenary said, "This is a trend. You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."
Experts blame flooding on faulty levees
2005-09-21, MSNBC News/Washington Post
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9419053
Louisiana's top hurricane experts have rejected the official explanations for the floodwall collapses that inundated much of New Orleans, concluding that Hurricane Katrina's storm surges were much smaller than authorities have suggested and that the city's flood-protection system should have kept most of the city dry. With the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina's surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls. Ivor van Heerden, the Hurricane Center's deputy director, said the real scandal of Katrina is the "catastrophic structural failure" of barriers that should have handled the hurricane with relative ease. "We are absolutely convinced that those floodwalls were never overtopped," said van Heerden. On a tour Tuesday, researchers...showed a "debris line" that indicates the top height of Katrina's waves was at least four feet below the crest of Lake Pontchartrain's levees. They contended that the pattern of destruction behind the breaches was consistent with a localized "pressure burst," rather than widespread overtopping. Former representative Bob Livingston, (R-La.)...noted that the earthen levees along Lake Pontchartrain had all held, while concrete floodwalls had failed. He was especially concerned about the 17th Street barrier, saying it "shouldn't have broken." If Katrina did not exceed the design capacity of the New Orleans levees, the federal government may bear ultimate responsibility for this disaster.
Cold-war device used to cause Katrina?
2005-09-20, USA Today/Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2005-09-20-wacky-weatherman_x.htm
An Idaho weatherman says Japan's Yakuza mafia used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina in a bid to avenge itself for the Hiroshima atom bomb attack. Meteorologist Scott Stevens, a nine-year veteran of KPVI-TV in Pocatello, said he was struggling to forecast weather patterns starting in 1998 when he discovered the theory on the Internet. It's now detailed on Stevens' website, www.weatherwars.info. Stevens...says a little-known oversight in physical laws makes it possible to create and control storms -- especially if you're armed with the Cold War-era weapon said to have been made by the Russians in 1976. Stevens' bosses at KPVI-TV say their employee can think and say what he wants as long as he keeps the station out of the debate and acknowledges that his views are his own opinion. Bill Fouch, KPVI's general manager, said. "He's very knowledgeable about weather, and he's very popular."
Note: Former
U.S. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen in a 1997 news briefing stated:
"Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can
alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use
of electromagnetic waves." To verify this quote on the U.S. Department of Defense website, click here.
If terrorist organizations have the capability to set off earthquakes
and other major natural disasters, do you think huge military research
laboratories might have some of the same capabilities? For more,
click here and
here.
FEMA twice failed to give Congress plan to evacuate New Orleans
2005-09-18, CNN/Associated Press
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/17/katrina.evacuation.ap
Eight years
ago Congress...set aside $500,000 for FEMA to create "a comprehensive
analysis and plan of all evacuation alternatives for the New Orleans metropolitan
area." Frustrated two years later that no study had materialized, Congress
strengthened its directive. This time it ordered "an evacuation plan
for a Category 3 or greater storm, a levee break, flood or other natural disaster
for the New Orleans area." The $500,000 that Congress appropriated for
the evacuation plan went to a commission that studied future options for the
24-mile bridge over Lake Pontchartrain.
Going (Down) by the Book
2005-09-17, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/17/opinion/17tierney.html?ex=1284609600&en=7a8...
When the Federal
Emergency Management Agency's paperwork slowed the evacuation of patients
from the airport, Acadian's frustrated medics waited with empty helicopters.
"At one point I had 10 helicopters on the ground waiting to go,"
said Marc Creswell, an Acadian medic, "but FEMA kept stonewalling us
with paperwork. Meanwhile, every 30 or 40 minutes someone was dying."
The company sent in outside doctors and nurses. FEMA rejected the help because
the doctors and nurses weren't certified members of a National Disaster Medical
Team. "When the doctors asked why they couldn't help these critically
ill people lying there unattended," Mr. Creswell recalled, "the
FEMA people kept saying, 'You're not federalized.' "
Bush Has Declared Katrina-Related Emergencies in 40 States
2005-09-15, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1129802
The dire conditions created by Hurricane Katrina may be confined to the Gulf Coast, but on paper the emergency is all over the country. President Bush has declared that Katrina-related emergencies exist in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Some, such as California, Massachusetts and North Dakota, are far removed from Katrina's wrath. Apparently it does not take much to qualify as an emergency.
Note:
These "emergencies" also give the president extraordinary powers
to curtail civil liberties.
Bush Has Declared Katrina-Related Emergencies in 40 States
2005-09-15, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1129802
The dire conditions
created by Hurricane Katrina may be confined to the Gulf Coast, but on paper
the emergency is all over the country. President Bush has declared that Katrina-related
emergencies exist in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Apparently it
does not take much to qualify as an emergency.
Note:
These "emergencies" also give the president extraordinary powers
to curtail civil liberties.
Bush allies getting Katrina work
2005-09-13, CNN News/Reuters
http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/12/news/economy/katrina_contracts.reut
Companies with
ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some
of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts
in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. At least two major corporate clients
of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former
head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped
to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast. One is...Halliburton
Co. (Research) subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney
is a former head of Halliburton. Allbaugh formally registered as a lobbyist
for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root in February. Allbaugh is
also a friend of Michael Brown, director of FEMA who was removed as head of
Katrina disaster relief and sent back to Washington amid allegations he had
padded his resume. Halliburton continues to be a source of income for Cheney,
who served as its chief executive officer from 1995 until 2000. According
to tax filings released in April, Cheney's income included $194,852 in deferred
pay from the company.
Finally fooling none of the people
2005-09-13, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer13sep13,0,2708046....
The Federal
Emergency Management Agency is now run by political hacks appointed by Bush
who know zilch about disaster relief. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of
a job," the president said to Michael Brown a few days before the FEMA
chief was relieved of his oversight of the relief efforts. Brown, who reportedly
doctored his unimpressive resume and didn't have a background in emergency
management, resigned Monday. He had secured this plum job because he was a
college buddy of his predecessor, Joe Allbaugh, who managed Bush's 2000 presidential
campaign.
Hurricane Katrina: Compilation of FEMA's Rejections of Qualified Help
2005-09-12, Chicago Tribune/New York Times/Washington Post/CNN/More
http://www.WantToKnow.info/femafailureskatrina
FEMA refuses
hundreds of personnel, dozens of vehicles - Chicago Tribune, 9/2/05
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050902daley,1,2011979.story
FEMA won't let
Red Cross deliver food - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/3/05
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm
FEMA fails to
utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board - Chicago Tribune, 9/4/05
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509040369sep04,1,4144825.story
FEMA turns away
state-of-the-art mobile hospital from Univ. of North Carolina - CNN, 9/5/05
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/09/04/katrina.sick.redtape.ap/
FEMA won't accept
Amtrak's help in evacuations - Financial Times, 9/5/05
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e
FEMA turns back
Wal-Mart supply trucks - New York Times, 9/6/05
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05blame.html
FEMA prevents
Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel - New York Times, 9/6/05
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05blame.html
FEMA blocks 500-boat
citizen flotilla from delivering aid - News Sentinel, 9/8/05
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/12595873.htm
FEMA asks media not to take pictures of dead - Washington Post, 9/8/05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702126.html
FEMA turns
back German government plane loaded with 15 tons of food - Spiegel,
9/12/05
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,374268,00.html
FEMA: "First
Responders Urged Not To Respond" Unless Dispatched - FEMA's own website
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470
For those who
are ready to go even deeper, read about FEMA's shady beginnings by clicking here. Then, to see Online Journal's revealing analysis article "New Orleans: Dress rehearsal for lockdown of America," click here.
New FEMA boss is 'Duct Tape Man'
2005-09-12, MSNBC: Keith Olbermann blog
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8514671/#050912a
In another gesture symbolizing the continued confusion of the federal response, the man President Bush immediately named to succeed “Brownie,” proves to have been the same FEMA official who, two-and-a-half years ago, suggested that Americans stock up on duct tape to protect against a biological or chemical terrorist attack. David Paulison, then the government's Fire Administrator, joined with the then-head of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, on February 10th, 2003, to say that duct tape and plastic sheeting should be part of any home's "survival kit" in preparation for a terrorist attack. That set off a run on duct tape at stores, and widespread criticism of the administration. It might have been the first time after 9/11 that a large number of Americans wondered if the government really knew what it was talking about when it came to disaster preparedness. And the man behind that politically explosive proposal, has just been named to succeed the man who had been the face of the politically explosive response to Hurricane Katrina.
Earwitness says explosives blew Industrial Canal levee
2005-09-11, ABC News (Video Clip)
http://www.total411.info/leveeboom.rm
DAVID MUIR,
ABC NEWS: This is the actual levee that runs along the canal on the eastern
side of the city. You can see the massive breach here and...what the water
did to the Lower Ninth Ward. It completely destroyed neighborhoods. JOE EDWARDS,
JR., 9TH WARD RESIDENT: I heard something go "boom"!!! MUIR: Joe
Edwards rushed to get himself and as many neighbors as possible into his truck.
They drove to this bridge, where they've been living ever since. Was it solely
the water that broke the levee, or was it the force of this barge? Joe Edwards
says neither. People...in this neighborhood...actually think the city did
it, blowing up the levee to save richer neighborhoods like the French Quarter. MUIR: So you're convinced... EDWARDS: I know this happened! MUIR: They broke
the levee on purpose? EDWARDS: They blew it.
Cheney orders rural electric crews to work on oil pipeline from Texas
2005-09-11, WKYC (Ohio NBC affiliate)
http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_fullstory.asp?id=40633
Shortly after
Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity
and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline
that sends fuel to the Northeast. That order...delayed efforts by at least
24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems.
Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Mike Callahan said the U.S. Department
of Energy called him [stating that] opening the fuel line was a national priority.
Manager Dan Jordan said Vice President Dick Cheney’s office called and left
voice mails twice shortly after the storm struck, saying the Collins substations
needed power restored immediately. Callahan said energy officials told him
gasoline and diesel fuel needed to flow through the pipeline to avert a national
crisis from the inability to meet fuel needs in the Northeast. “Our concern
was that...it would be a national crisis for Mississippi,“ Callahan said.
Key Hurricane Katrina Media Articles in Major Media
