[quote:d6c04]
Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith are reporting that the authorities have just
locked everyone in the Convention Center with no escape, and a checkpoint is stopping people from leaving New Orleans. They set up a check point at the bottom of the bridge out of New Orleans, it's the only way out, per Shep Smith, and if you go the checkpoint they turn you around and send you back to New Orleans. Jesus.
Geraldo started crying in the convention center on camera. Shep Smith is going nuts. And then Hannity tries to defend Bush and the government and Shep and Geraldo will have nothing of it. My God, every FOX News viewer just watched this this evening. FOX's own anchors saying the entire federal relief effort is a fiasco. Geraldo is holding a ten month old baby in his arms, who's also trapped in the convention center, he then started chanting "let them go, let them out of here."
OMG. This is an absolute disaster.
Bush needs to finally start acting like the president and accept that the buck stops at his desk. It's time for Bush to step aside and let someone competent handle this crisis before anyone else dies. [/quote:d6c04]
http://www.globalnewsmatrix.com/modules ... e&sid=2401
[quote:d6c04]
National Guard not allowing aid into the city
by SB Friday, Sep. 02, 2005 at 1:11 AM
National guard not allowing aid into the city
From
http://getyouracton.com.
I am copying the information from the site about this. Just posted at 9:00PM
Get Your Act On! (Jeffrey and Andrea) are currently in Waco, TX. We are organizing a relief effort to bring much needed supplies directly into the City of New Orleans as almost NOTHING is getting in via 'official' channels (we have spoken to people still in the city).
Our house is still standing and should be relatively free of flood waters by now, so it will be used as a base for relief efforts as we are just 6 blocks from the lower 9th ward, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods. We will be purchasing a van or getting a large UHaul, filling it with supplies and driving it back to New Orleans.
If you can donate to our relief effort, please do so via this paypal link. If you do not wish to donate money directly, if you would like to purchase supplies that we can pick up (ie, from Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart), that would be great. A lot more info about our effort will be posted here by tonight as we get more details together. We can be reached via call at 254.640.8441 (Andrea) or 254.640.8442 (Jeffrey)
7:15PM Thurs Sept. 1 Update: It looks like the most economical thing to do is purchase a large van - we should be able to do this for $1000-$2000. If anyone has connections to people in the position to make a good sized donation, please ask them if they can help with this. Thanks!
9:30PM Thurs Sept 1. Update: Please help spread this message:
There are supplies sitting in Baton Rouge for the folks in New Orleans, but the National Guard has the city surrounded and is not letting anyone in or out. They are turning away people with supplies, claiming it is too dangerous. If we have planes that can drop bombs on people in Iraq, certianly we can air drop supplies into the city. Our goverment is KILLING the people of New Orleans. This is the message I am now sending to all major media sources, national and worldwide, as well as posting to email lists, blogs, etc. The story is getting out that the people there are not getting supplies, but the truth of WHY is not. Please help spread the word, we must get this story out. Please so not let any more of my friends die.
I can be reached at 254.640.8441 - feel free to call me or give my number to any media that needs a contact person to talk to.
Here is my message:
I am a resident of the Bywater in New Orleans (9th Ward). I am one of the lucky ones that was able to evacuate before the storm.
I have recently managed to speak to some friends stranded in New Orleans. They are starving and dehydrating and there is no news of when they will be receiving food and water. I have spoken to relief efforts and understand that there are plenty of supplies waiting for these people, BUT THEY ARE NOT BEING ALLOWED INTO THE CITY.
The National Guard has the city surrounded and is not letting anyone in or out, except the buses being evacuated. The excuse that they can not bring supplies into New Orleans because of the looting and gun fire is not a valid excuse - if they are too afraid to enter the streets of New Orleans, they need to be air dropping supplies into the city. If the United States is capable of sending planes that can withstand enemy fire to drop bombs in Iraq, certainly they are capable of air dropping supplies into a city where the worst of the gunfire they could encouter would be from semi-automatics.
Our government is killing the people of New Orleans. By witholding supplies, they are ensuring more deaths, and I hold them complicit.
Please bring this matter to the attention of the people of the United States. They need to know that New Orleans is deliberatly being denied food and water. Perhaps if the people there had food and water, they might not be shooting off guns.
Please feel free to call me for further information or with any questions. I appreciate your attention to this most serious matter.
I fear for my friends.
Sincerely,
Andrea Garland
Get Your Act On! (getyouracton.com)
On another note, Jeffrey and I are in the process of getting a large vehicle and loading it up with donated supplies needed for longer term cleanup efforts (generators, chain saws, solar cooking equipment, etc.). Some basic info and a paypal link is at Get Your Act On!(getyouracton.com) and more detailed info will be posted later. Please help spread the word about this, as well. We live 6 blocks from one of the hardest hit areas in New Orleans, so we intend to bring these necessary tools to our neighbors.
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 part of the Bywater. So now I know who is responsible for flooding my house - not Katrina, but our government.[/quote:d6c04]
[quote:d6c04]
Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food
Posted on Saturday, September 03 @ 09:29:40 EDT by Lisa
National
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.
Other relief agencies say the area is so damaged and dangerous that they doubted they could conduct mass feeding there now.
"The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans," said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.
"Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders."
Calls to the Department of Homeland Security and its subagency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, were not returned yesterday.
Though frustrated, Hosler understood the reasons. The goal is to move people out of an uninhabitable city, and relief operations might keep them there. Security is so bad that she fears feeding stations might get ransacked.
"It's not about fault and blame right now. The situation is like an hourglass, and we are in the smallest part right now. Everything is trying to get through it," she said. "They're trying to help people get out."
Obstacles in downtown New Orleans have stymied rescuers who got there. The Salvation Army has two of its officers trapped with more than 200 people -- three requiring dialysis -- in its own downtown building. They were alerted by a 30-second plea for food and water before the phone went dead.
On Wednesday, The Salvation Army rented three boats for a rescue operation. They knew the situation was desperate, and that their own people were inside, said Maj. Donna Hood, associate director of development for the Army.
"The boats couldn't get through," she said. Although she doesn't know the details, she believes huge debris and electrical wires made passage impossible.
"We have 51 emergency canteens on the ground in the other affected areas. But where the need is greatest, in downtown New Orleans, there just is no access. That is the problem every relief group is facing," she said.
"America is obviously going to have to rethink disaster relief," said Jim Burton, director of volunteer mobilization for the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The Southern Baptists, who work under the Red Cross logo, are one of the largest, best-equipped providers of volunteer disaster relief in the United States. Most hot meals for disaster victims are cooked by Southern Baptist mobile kitchen units. Burton is a veteran of many hurricanes.
"Right now everybody is looking at FEMA and pointing fingers. Frankly, I have to tell you, I'm sympathetic. When in your lifetime have we experienced this? Even though we all do disaster scenario planning, we have to accept the reality that this is an extraordinary event. This is America's tsunami, that struck and ravaged America's most disaster-vulnerable city," he said.
Because New Orleans remains under water, it is different from other cities where Katrina struck harder, but where relief efforts are proceeding normally. Agencies place workers and supplies outside disaster areas before storms, to move in quickly. But there are always delays, Burton said, because nothing is deployed until experts survey the damage and decide where to most effectively put relief services.
The Southern Baptists operate more than 30 mobile kitchens that can each produce 5,000 to 25,000 meals daily, as well as mobile showers and communications trucks equipped with ham radios and cell phones. They are supporting refugee centers in Texas and Tennessee, and doing relief in Mississippi and Alabama. They have placed mobile kitchens around New Orleans to feed people as they come out.
Initially they tried to drive a tractor-trailer kitchen into New Orleans from Tennessee. It was stopped by the Mississippi Highway Patrol because the causeway it would have to cross had been destroyed, Burton said.
His agency has planned for missing bridges. The Southern Baptists' worst-case planning is for reaching Memphis after an earthquake on the New Madrid fault, which in 1812 whiplashed at a stone-crushing 8.1 on the Richter scale. Burton envisions the Mississippi without bridges.
So when state and local Southern Baptists raise money to build a mobile kitchen, he tells them to design it to be hoisted in by helicopter.
After Katrina, he thought he would have to airlift a feeding unit to one isolated town, but a road was cleared, he said. He doubts that dropping a kitchen into the New Orleans' poisoned waters, filled with raw sewage, dead bodies and possible industrial contaminants, would do any good. It made sense to prepare meals outside the area and truck them in or bring people out.
"The most important thing is to get the people out of that environment," he said.
He expects unusual problems to continue, because victims of Katrina flooding will need emergency food for far longer than the usual week or so. He's planning on at least two months.
Like the military, relief work requires a supply chain. Because business management favors just-in-time inventory, rather than stockpiling goods in warehouses, there isn't a huge stock of food to draw on, he said.
"When you go into a local area, it doesn't take long to wipe out the local food inventories," he said.
The Red Cross serves pre-packaged food, including self-heating "HeaterMeals" and snacks, that require no preparation. Yesterday the Red Cross was running evacuation shelters in 16 states, and on Thursday, the last day for which totals were available, served 170,000 meals and snacks in 24 hours.
While emergency shelters typically empty out days after a hurricane or other natural disaster, in Katrina's case they are becoming more crowded, Hosler said. People who had evacuated to the homes of relatives or hotels are moving in because they're out of money or want to be closer to what is left of their homes. [/quote:d6c04]
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm
[quote:d6c04]
Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans
By Joseph R. Chenelly
Times staff writer
NEW ORLEANS — Combat operations are underway on the streets “to take this city back” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”
Jones said the military first needs to establish security throughout the city. Military and police officials have said there are several large areas of the city are in a full state of anarchy.
Dozens of military trucks and up-armored Humvees left the staging area just after 11 a.m. Friday, while hundreds more troops arrived at the same staging area in the city via Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters.
“We’re here to do whatever they need us to do,” Sgt. 1st Class Ron Dixon, of the Oklahoma National Guard’s 1345th Transportation Company. “We packed to stay as long as it takes.”
While some fight the insurgency in the city, other carry on with rescue and evacuation operations. Helicopters are still pulling hundreds of stranded people from rooftops of flooded homes.
Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and police helicopters filled the city sky Friday morning. Most had armed soldiers manning the doors. According to Petty Officer 3rd Class Jeremy Grishamn, a spokesman for the amphibious assault ship Bataan, the vessel kept its helicopters at sea Thursday night after several military helicopters reported being shot at from the ground.
Numerous soldiers also told Army Times that they have been shot at by armed civilians in New Orleans. Spokesmen for the Joint Task Force Headquarters at the Superdome were unaware of any servicemen being wounded in the streets, although one soldier is recovering from a gunshot wound sustained during a struggle with a civilian in the dome Wednesday night.
“I never thought that at a National Guardsman I would be shot at by other Americans,” said Spc. Philip Baccus of the 527th Engineer Battalion. “And I never thought I’d have to carry a rifle when on a hurricane relief mission. This is a disgrace.”
Spc. Cliff Ferguson of the 527th Engineer Battalion pointed out that he knows there are plenty of decent people in New Orleans, but he said it is hard to stay motivated considering the circumstances.
“This is making a lot of us think about not reenlisting.” Ferguson said. “You have to think about whether it is worth risking your neck for someone who will turn around and shoot at you. We didn’t come here to fight a war. We came here to help.”[/quote:d6c04]
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1- ... 077495.php
It's a good thing Cheney conjured up that martial law plan!
09-02-2005, 11:55 AM
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