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Blogfest 2005 - Aug 31, 2005 - Printable Version
- They're Trying to Wash Us Away....
by Mark Faulk
History seems to be repeating itself. In 1927, the flood dubbed The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 covered more than 16 million acres of land, and displaced almost a million people. In that flood, levees on the Mississippi River collapsed in 145 places in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, killing 246 people and leaving 900,000 homeless. Now, almost eighty years later, the similarities are eery: levees collapsing, hundreds of thousands homeless, and hundreds (and possibly many more) killed. While the tragedy unfolds in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama following Hurricane Katrina, and while Bush finishes his scheduled month-long vacation in Crawford, Texas, before even visiting the disaster site, questions already are beginning to arise amongst the rubble of New Orleans, LA, Biloxi, MS, and the numerous other towns and parishes devastated by Katrina. Is this continually unfolding drama just a unpreventable freak of nature, or were there things that could have.....and should have.....been done to lessen the impact of this hurricane?
First of all, let's look at the obvious. The National Guard is the first line of defense against the massive looting that is rampant in New Orleans and every other major city affected by the hurricane. But 40 percent of Mississippi's National Guard force, and 35 percent of Louisiana's, is in Iraq, which quite simply means less help against looters, as well as much-needed assistance in shelters, rescue efforts, medical help, and the countless other efforts that they are supposed to be available for. Traditionally our first line of defense in domestic disasters, they have been deployed in greater numbers to fight in Iraq than in any war in our country's history, and now we're paying the price.
This isn't news, though. Bush has been criticized in recent months by several Western states for deploying National Guard troops that are heavily relied on to help fight forest fires and other natural disasters, including Montana, where 44 percent of the state's guard are in Iraq, over double the national average.
But that's only part of the tragedy here. Of even greater concern are the massive budget cuts that have left these low-lying areas vulnerable to disaster in the first place, budget cuts that have left levee and other flood projects underfunded and unfinished, even though last year's hurricane season was the worst in decades. Budget cuts that have been directly attributed to the war in Iraq.
A quote from Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; that appeared in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on June 8, 2004, now seems prophetic: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
A $750 million project, the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project in Southeast Louisiana, has been left unfinished and underfunded for the past three years, leaving levees in disrepair and sinking.....the same lake where massive sections of the bridge connecting Interstate 10 from Louisiana to Mississippi have collapsed, and whose waters have already flooded over 80% of New Orleans. Funding cuts to other flood control projects have left New Orleans vulnerable to massive flooding from major hurricanes, most notably the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA, where this year's funding was slashed from $36.5 million to $10.4 million, leaving many of the flood control and levee projects in the New Orleans area unfinished. Among the unfinished SELA projects was the 17th Street Canal levee and bridge project, which was the major breach that left 80% of New Orleans underwater, and the water's still rising.
Tuesday night, it was reported on Radio Air America that Louisiana officials begged the Bush Administration for the $65 million dollars needed to complete all of the projects that might have saved New Orleans and the surrounding areas from massive and deadly flooding. Sixty-five million dollars, enough money to cover the cost of the war in Iraq.....for eight hours. Now, early estimates put the overall cost of the damage from Katrina at over $25 BILLION, and climbing. Was it worth it?
Could we, as a country, have done more to prepare for the inevitable force of nature that Hurricane Katrina brought down on Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama? Did Bush's obsession with financing the war in Iraq leave our own shorelines vulnerable to the massive destruction that we're now seeing 24 hours a day on every news channel? The answer is obvious....by slashing budgets to build sorely needed levees and complete flood control projects in the Gulf of Mexico in order to finance "Bush's Folly" in Iraq, and by sending the vast majority of our National Guardsmen over to fight a war that most now agree was wrong to begin with, it's quite possible that we have just added hundreds of indirect casualties of war to the list of lives lost due to our reckless quest to control the Mideast.
Louisiana 1927
By Randy Newman
What has happened down here is the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline
The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has done
To this poor crackers land."
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
(Editor's note: As it turns out, early estimates of the possible death toll and the monetary costs of Hurricane Katrina were woefully short. As of September 8, the death toll estimates are now as high as 10,000 or more, and the monetray costs will easily top $100 billion. I expect both numbers to be much higher before it's all said and done.)
(Another Editor's note: This is an entry from The Faulking Truth blog, ingeniously entitled "Blogfest 2005". If you'd like to spend more of your valuable time blogging, go to www.faulkingtruth.com/blog/ )
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