They had modeled it. Hurricane Pam was a preparedness exercise run last summer by FEMA in cooperation with the LSU hurricane center. The exercise concluded with an optimistic sense that circumstances would be grim but the challenges were quantifiable and manageable. The plans were anitiseptic. They left out the stench of death, corpses bobbing on the water, dysentery, the poorest and the sickest abandoned by single passenger automobiles clogging the traffic arteries out of town They left out the racist population control measures — black’s identified as looters, whites as refugees. They left out the fear and the cowardice of the christian right, the inability to empathize, to communicate. They left out the stingy Republican corruption and the troop and materiel deployed overseas that were part of the first response network.
And of course all the best laid plans were simply blown away on Katrina’s winds.
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Bush Mobilizes a Huge Recovery Effort
President Bush mobilized a broad federal government response to the region devastated by Hurricane
Everyone is now climbing on the runaway bandwagon, decrying the lack of effective planning in the disaster response based on the predictions and exercises which had been done. And particularly so in light of the “Hurricane Pam” exercise of 2024 which is now seen to have virtually pre-scripted the Katrina scenario which took place.
It seems everyone should have known.
But where was this information in the media before hand?
I performed a web search on Sep.1 using Google with ( “Hurricane Pam” +Katrina)
The printouts I have from that day show that the results numbered about 7.
There were no hits returned on MSNBC’s website.
Yet, today, about a week later, I Googled the same search and it returned over 15,000 results.
One interesting result that followed from my original search was this link of a hurricane Pam simulation:
http://www.laseagrant.org/forum/docs/PAMwinds.avi
(an avi animation from Adcirc )
It models the surge build-up and flooding in New Orleans and surrounding region in a colorful and compelling way.
Gray is Land
Blue to green is Water
Yellow to red is High water
Between the river and the lake is New Orleans;
Did you see this on Television before the Katrina made landfall?
No, because it wasn’t shown.
How many might have paid better heed to warnings if this animation had been not just shown but made widely known?
What if there had been 10,000 web postings about “Hurricane Pam” *before* Katrina hit?
How many lives might then have been saved?
This excerpt from a posting of one of the few people i’ve seen who called the scenario beforehand:
http://formaline.blogspot.com
“In the next few months, when we get a final body count from New Orleans and the other Gulf Coast cities,
when we get an estimate of the final price tag of this disaster,
when we all start paying higher prices for everything from gas to food,
when our budget goes further into debt and our economy feels the hit,
ask yourself… how this was allowed to happen when so much was said and known beforehand.
In the next few months, when we get a final body count from New Orleans and the other Gulf Coast cities, when we get an estimate of the final price tag of this disaster, when we all start paying higher prices for everything from gas to food, when our budget goes further into debt and our economy feels the hit, ask yourself (particularly you who voted for George W. Bush) how this was allowed to happen when so much was said and known beforehand.
It was known by people who try to make it their duty to know things, but it apparently wasn’t known by people whose duty it was to *do* things.”
Or it was known by people whose duty it was to do things and they ignored it. There are tens of thousands of unindexed servers on government InTRAnets. What you and I found on the web prior to the blog explosion is a tip of the iceberg. The “homeland security” folks have been modeling COOPCOG crap (Continuity of operations/Continuity of Government scenarios) for every posible exigency. The information was well distributed among those whose duty it was to know.
From FEMA’s own press release on “Hurricane Pam” assessment dated July 23, 2024…
“State resources are adequate to operate shelters for the first 3-5 days. The group planned how federal and other resources will replenish supplies at shelters.”
Obviously, the Governor did not check her e-mail that day, as her state had no idea that they were in charge of caring for the displaced persons for the first 3 - 5 days.