Sigh. All my friends are relatively self sufficient and would understand this without explanation. I’ve got to stop assuming what other people know.
The buildings would retain the water in the plumbing lines. If you go to the highest outlet and open it then the water will flow with gravity because there is no longer a vacuum holding it in the pipes. Plumbers (and therefore building maintenance personnel) would know this because you can’t solder a joint with water and the only way to drain a line would be to open a facet at the highest point. You can find the idea on FEMA’s web site.
Charity Hospital Emergency Handbook: In case of disastrous hurricane, when you’ve got a spare minute, log on to FEMA’s website for possible water options (y’all have a plumber, right?).
And what happens if they’ve already been using the water from the top floor outlets? Trying to find the story, but the ICU was on the 16th floor, I think.
This is my last posting to you outside of the Pit. Your postings describing other people’s posts, especially those of mine, are dishonest. That dishonest description, as Bricker has ably pointed out just above, is based on your personal ignorance. Evidently you don’t care about facts, as shown by your casual–and ignorant–dismissal of the points brought to your attention by other posters in this thread. Your stunningly ignorant comment about the Army in response to my query also belies your prejudice. You may want to pretend that it doesn’t, but it does. As a matter of fact, which you will of course ignore, your OP is based on your prejudice, not others’.
As I said above, I prefer honest debate. You obviously don’t.
You’d think that, but no (or a qualified maybe). I’ve been in the business for 25 years so I’ll weigh in with what I know. I’ve dealt everything from 6-place Navaho’s to Russian SU-125’S (bigger than a C-5A). Same thing with trucks. If it can be lifted I’ve moved it.
In any given metro area you are going to have a range of 25-50 trucks available on any given day. Advanced warning might increase that number. When I say available I’m talking about a 50 foot trailer with a single driver. There are many more trailers than drivers because of pre-stage float. If teams are required that number drops significantly. Anything farther than about 550 miles would require a team. I’m also assuming normal commerce continues. In the affected disaster area you will lose the freight companies (no freight to pick up) but gain the idled truckers.
The companies that you mentioned have people that do exactly what you are talking about except they do it in a regional manner. All the major freight companies have regional hubs and logistics is handled on that level. It would be possible, and a damn good idea, for FEMA to put together a National Guard style team consisting of people in my field. They would be called up as needed. To be effective they would have to specifically look for people in all parts of the country (assuming you want to move freight from all parts of the country). It’s not just the skill of logistics, it’s the knowledge of the surrounding areas that is useful.
All this potential planning would not have worked in this case. Flooding and riots prevented access to the areas needed. No sane company is going to send a driver and $150,000 worth of truck/trailer into either situation (insurance doesn’t cover riots and drivers are fond of breathing). I watched a trucker on the news (I recognized the company) who said he came out of Dallas days before but was held back by his company. I expect the same thing to happen in similar situations so the simplest solution would be to pre-stage freight just as the military would do in a war. From that point the National Guard units would move the material using military equipment made for the job.
I have to tell you, from a logistics standpoint, this disaster has driven me nuts. I would like to take the Mayor and the Governor and clunk their heads together. FEMA was folded into Homeland Security so the coordination of assets should have improved. They were pre-staged for the effects of the hurricane yet there seems to be no method of transition when local efforts fail. This situation didn’t need the sophisticated planning of a military campaign but it needed SOMETHING. It required a small group of logistics planners and some communication devices. A map of the city is all that was needed to start plotting out the affected areas and coordinate the assets available.
??? walk downstairs, fill container, walk upstairs. Repeat as necessary. Hospitals have lots of sinks/showers so there will be a lot of stored water in those buildings relative to an office complex. Understand, I’m not passing judgement on the medical staff because they’re busy 25 hrs a day during an emergency. My expectations are with the support group. It may come to light that they used all the water for patients and medical use.
While I’m Monday morning quarterbacking the situation I have to question the location of the emergency generators on floors that are vulnerable to flooding. It’s New Orleans for crying out loud. Put the friggin thing on the roof or a nearby parking garage.
Ya. The story I was trying to find, they mentioned that it was just a happy coincidence that the ICU was that high up, and I thought, I hope it’s not just a coincidence.
We’re all Monday morning quarterbacking, to an extent. But I started quarterbacking on Wednesday, along with everybody else, and it was still a few more days until our team was even on the field.
The evidence so far to me definitely doesn’t look good, but because to me it points to incompetence, negligence, and heads-up-their-fundaments-ence of various and sundry authorities who by now should know better. IOW, what I’m getting is that the authorities were caught with their pants not just down, but back at the tailor’s. You are asking us to consider the possibility that the slow response is the result of an inured, institutional attitude of "who cares, it’s just a bunch of poor n**rs, no rush". OK, I’m considering it, and finding that it’s not convincing – to me.
BTW, I think the title of the thread frames the issue in a way that can send us down the wrong argument. It could be interpreted as a claim that the level of assistance and mobilization for the hundreds of thousands across a wide area that were endangered by the Katrina aftermath, be equivalent on a per-capita basis to the relatively small numbers, in highly-localized locations, directly affected by 9/11 (BTW, how white were the bus staff of Windows of the World? How rich were the police and firefighters?) .
What’s really in question is the promptness, decisiveness and scale of response – which EVEN George W. admits were “unacceptable”, in his usual distractedly understated way – and the adequacy of planning (a failure). In the case of the latter it looks extra-bad because unlike 9/11 a hurricane strike and/or the New Orleans levees breaching IS something you plan for. In the case of the former, there have been brought up here a lot of really good reasons why it may have been unrealistic to expect quick, massive deus-ex-FEMA action, but the fact is that there IS an expectation created that a disaster in the USA, short of a planetary-scale catastrophe, does NOT make people wait 5 days w/o supplies for relief to arrive in-force. And as you yourself put it, there is a gut reaction, an emotional response that on one hand says “goddammit, gotta do something, ANYTHING!!”, and on the other says “no way, I refuse to believe we can’t!”.
But he IS trying to be a part of the solution – the well thought out, carefully organized solution.(*) You’re telling him that the emotionally driven gut-reaction solution takes precedence.
(* That should have been well thought out and organized and made ready BEFORE the damn emergency!!!)
How wise it is to base our operational decisions in a crisis on an emotional urge to “do something, anything!” we will never resolve to everyone’s satisfaction. I don’t know if I’m getting you right but you seem to be claiming that the public will either refuse to believe that there was a rational reason for the delay, or that even if they understand so they will refuse to accept it, and that it doesn’t matter if they’re wrong, because “people are dying, do something, anything!”.
Now, it may well be indeed sound peacekeeping policy (or rather politics) for FEMA Director Bricker to allow a show of a token effort of immediate relief so that all those emotional people will at least feel someone is doing something. But then he’d get slammed as to “where the hell was the government” anyway, and you know it.
BTW – re: Charity Hospital and dehydration – a Hospital overrun with patients, probably not just to nominal capacity but half again or even twice over plus many of their relatives AND a couple of shits’ worth of stranded staff, with no resupply and NO ELECTRICITY to run distillers and purifiers because the generator was out of commission (flooded, out of fuel, or burned out from overload), will run out of their residual supply of safe water pretty damn fast.
No, help was there on day one. The necessary ground support was held back because the NG wasn’t called in immediately to stop the violence. 2 days were lost and that’s a big deal when your emergency plan consists of an invitation to an empty stadium.
Should the Major have anticipated the unrest? If he was on top of things I’d say yes. I plotted all the murders in my city for a year just for the hell of it so I know what to expect from each precint. Some are more violent (exponentially) than others. New Orleans is one of the most violent cities in the United States and only recently lost the title to Gary IN. I would hate to see a Superbowl there.
This was not a single crisis but a series of them, each building on the other. The hurricane destroyed property, infrastructure and killed people. It was widespread and required a dispersal of assets. The flood that followed was an ongoing event that destroyed more property in a localized area. The riots prevented the transfer of material and resulted in a terciary level of deaths in the flooded area. It was a multi-day timeline of events, not a single event.
Shits/Shifts, either way you’re dehydrated. Yes, water pressure is key to sanitary water but for short periods of time it is more useful to drink standing water than dehydrate. Not sure if hospitals still keep iodine in stock or if it’s possible to properly dilute it. They were in survival mode.
I will add that there is good reason to fear un-pressurized water during a flood. Homes that were without water should avoid what comes out until the system has been properly re-pressurized and flushed. Underground water pipes are often damaged in floods by shifting earth and pose a real health hazard. It is currently suspected in dysentery cases in New Orleans.
Thank you for a rational rebuttal of by theory.
I don’t think, I actually suggested driving the trucks to the flood zone, I was asking about staging them as near as possible and therefore a lot closer than several states away. I believe a few miles north of the Rt10 bridge that stayed operational would have been a good and useful staging area. From this location, I would expect Helicopters to ferry the relief materials in.
As you said, there are a lot of empty trailers every day that don’t get used. A large percentage of commercial truckers are owner operators now.
according to http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs021.htm and http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos246.htm
In Thousands:
Truck drivers, heavy and tractor-trailer 721
Over 10 percent of all truck drivers and driver/sales workers were self-employed. Of these, a significant number were owner-operators who either served a variety of businesses independently or leased their services and trucks to a trucking company. This means there are approximately 72,000 owner operators. If 1% responded to a call for help that would at least be 720 Drivers with rigs. If the **28,000 trucking companies ** could risk perhaps 280 additional truck teams, then I have my WAG of 1000 trucks.
Trailers are available, I think you all will at least give me that.
Now we need coordination:
I will use FedEx as an example only because I have a friend that works in the Memphis Hubs data center. He has told me that FedEx has **excess capacity ** for dispatching because of the needs for Christmas capacity. He said his center could probably handle about 100-200 extra trucks with about 6 hours lead time.
Now I **forgot ** to ask about where the other hubs are and how many. It sounds like FedEx may have been capable of handling the dispatching by themselves.
I think UPS must have similar capacity, as they are the largest trucker in the world, but this is definitely a WAG.
Could 100 trucks from 1000 different locations have put together a truckload of Food, water, Flashlight, batteries, blankets, Generators and etc on 12 hours notice? I think so, I have seen NYC area put together 80 trucks in donations in 24 hours. This was for a Florida Hurricane, I think Andrew.
As far as Corporation not risking there assets:
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (Aug. 28, 2005) – While Gulf Coast residents brace for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina, **Anheuser-Busch ** Cos. Inc. is preparing to supply emergency drinking water immediately after the storm. http://www.anheuser-busch.com/news/Katrina082905.htm
Sounds like they were more prepared than FEMA.
Now the hardest part. Where do we get the Helicopter from?
Okay, I’m stumped on this one. Out of my league and guessing that a huge number of Navy, Marine & Army Helicopters are deployed overseas.
**Who can help me ** with rough locations of domestic helicopters that may have been available if notice went out quicker?
Point taken - it appears that New Orleans probably had access to a sufficient number of buses. However, having access to those buses and ramping up an evacuation effort using those buses to get 50 to 100 thousand people out of New Orleans are two different things - such an evacuation plan would be difficult under the best of circumstances. I read where to effectively evacuate New Orleans it would take between 48 to 72 hours. Having a plan (and periodically practicing such a plan) would have needed to take place well in advance of such an actual scenario.
Also, while it’s one thing to have a plan to evacuate people using buses, you also need a plan on what to do with people once you evacuate them. This involves a plan that coordinates with other plans involving the metopolitan area and state (not to mention the federal government).
I should point out that I am in no way excusing what happened; but rather pointing out the difficulties inherent in planning such an evacuation scenario (logistically, but more imporantly, from a command, communication, and control perspective). One may have access to sufficient resources; however, without effective CCC to ramp up and oversee operations to utilize those resources, then it’s a moot point.
Okay, please forgive my sarcasms , I think I misunderstood you.
By BIL & SIL are safe in Florida now.
He spent the first 2 days of the flood wading over to Charity and then back to Tulane to be with my SIL. He could not do the wade the after that and stayed at Tulane. It was Tulane they where air lifted out of Friday Morning around 2am arriving in Lafayette around 3am. The Generator was apparently fine, no one was able to get fuel to them after it ran out at either hospital.
They kept respirator patients going by constant non-stop hand respiration. (Good god that is amazing, they kept these patients alive for 2 straight days by hand)
The never ran out of water but they did run low and ran low on food. Charity was worse off.
From a logistics perspective, it’s also driving me nuts. I would like to clunk the heads, of the mayor, governor, head of FEMA, DHS, and select number of other people.
I agree, the situation didn’t need sophisticated military planning, but some kind of plan should have been in place. Every major city (and state) should have a cadre of logistics planners to prepare for severe scenarios such as Katrina (DHS and/or FEMA as well). In addition, serious attention should have been placed on practicing for such a scenario - both from a logistical and CCC - command, communications, and control - perspective. Constant practice would have highlighted where the kinks in the operation were (and could be ironed out before having to actually implement such a plan).
They kept respirator patients going by constant non-stop hand respiration. (Good god that is amazing, they kept these patients alive for 2 straight days by hand)
[QUOTE]
OH MY GOD. That is no easy task to go through for an hour. 2 days… WOW! The medical people in those 2 hospitals must be exhausted beyond reason.
I remember a program involving iron lungs during a power outage. They had to pump the machines by hands. I think it was done in 15 minute shifts. Brutal.
I spoke to my SIL for about 20 minutes today. She could not say enough about the nurses and the rest of the staff. To get some patients to the makeshift Helo pads, 8 doctors & nurses lifted a gurney up several flights of stairs. Stopping at
each landing to make sure they weren’t losing the patient. I don’t have the total numbers but they rescued all but 2 critical patients.
On Wednesday a desperate man actually swam up to the hospital to beg for milk for his 6 month old baby. The hospital had none left to give him.
She mentioned that they (Tulane had armed guards and they never had trouble with Looters as the ground floor was under water by that time.
She saw Coast Guard and Forestry/ Games commission service from day 1.
(She did not say so, but she stayed on as a volunteer to help in any way possible, even though she has her doctorate in Medical Biology and nothing related to patients)
My BIL is a Doctor and he stayed on rather than leave. He went beyond the Hippocratic oath by helping 2 hospitals.
Sorry I’m stepping in a little late, but they apparently wouldn’t have had to “ask” FedEx, or anyone else for that mater, for “donated” equipment, nor would they be “illegally committing equipment,” according to “The Mayor’s mandatory evacuation order, issued through the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans, [which, in part,] declares:”
So the phone call to FedEx could’ve actually gone, "“Hey, GIVE us 1000 trucks,” and they would’ve had to, by legal order.
