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Thu Sep 8 08:36:31 PDT 2005

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THE BLAME GAME
Sep 7th 2005  

Most of those in need of food, water and medical help after Hurricane
Katrina have now been reached, engineers have started to pump water out
of New Orleans, and the authorities have begun forcibly evacuating
residents who refuse to leave. Who is to blame for the botched relief
effort: George Bush, local officials, or no one in particular?

THE evacuation of New Orleans was finally nearing completion on
Wednesday September 7th, more than a week after the breaching of the
low-lying city's levees in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. National
Guardsmen, regular troops and federal marshals--many of whom had been
brought in late last week following criticism of the sluggish relief
effort--had moved into the worst-affected districts and were making
house-to-house searches for the remaining survivors. However, an
estimated 5,000-10,000 residents were still refusing to leave. As a
result, the authorities began on Tuesday to enforce a compulsory
evacuation order. "We'll do everything it takes to make this city
safe," said Edwin Compass, New Orleans's police superintendent. "These
people don't understand they're putting themselves in harm's way."

With most of the survivors now taken care of, the focus is shifting to
those who perished in the storm and subsequent flood. The official
death toll in the three worst-hit states--Louisiana, Mississippi and
Alabama--is still in the low hundreds. But the final toll could be as
high as 10,000. Many corpses have sunk in the water that still covers
around three-fifths of New Orleans. On Monday, the US Army Corps of
Engineers said it had plugged a big gap in the levees and started to
pump water out of the city. But it could be two to three months before
the task is completed, and up to a year before those who have left can
return. The economic costs of this, and of the damage done to the
region's oil and gas facilities, are still being counted (see
article[1]).

Perhaps 100,000 people either could not or would not leave New Orleans
when warned to do so before Katrina struck. Tens of thousands ended up
at either the city's Superdome stadium or its convention centre for
days, turning them into sinks of hot and smelly misery. By the weekend,
these refugees had been bussed out. Some 20 states have offered to
house and school refugees temporarily. But the strain is already
starting to show in neighbouring states. In Texas, home to almost half
of those who fled New Orleans, officials say they are struggling to
cope and have asked that any further refugees be airlifted to other
states. On Tuesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it
would fly evacuees at New Orleans's airport to five air bases around
the country, where beds have become available because of soldiers going
to Iraq.

If the world was saddened by the devastation wrought by Katrina, it was
shocked by the breakdown of law and order that followed. Looters roamed
the streets, stealing food and water in desperation but also computers,
sporting equipment and guns in opportunism. Rapes and car-jackings were
reported, and there were angry confrontations between roving thugs and
the few shop- and homeowners who stayed. Some saw the social tension as
having a racial element, since most of those left behind were poor and
black.

Though New Orleans was flooded on Tuesday of last week, it wasn't until
Friday that the relief effort gained real momentum, with the arrival of
thousands of national guardsmen. Kathleen Blanco, the governor of
Louisiana, gave warning that "they know how to shoot to kill", and by
the weekend they had restored order to most parts of the city. But they
and other emergency personnel are under huge pressure, with many of
them working round the clock; the NEW YORK TIMES quoted Mr Compass as
saying that at least 200 of his 1,500 police officers had refused to do
their job.

LET DOWN, BUT BY WHOM? 
While Katrina was a powerful storm, the extent of the chaos and
suffering in her wake has nonetheless been surprising. America has
dealt with ferocious hurricanes before, and New Orleans's
vulnerabilities were well known. Thus many are starting to point
fingers in relation to both the short-term response and long-term
policy failures. 

Ray Nagin, New Orleans's mayor, showed increasing frustration
throughout last week, especially with the federal government's response
and its press conferences: "They're feeding the people a line of bull,
and they are spinning and people are dying...Get off your asses and
let's do something." An under-pressure President George Bush criticised
the relief effort on Friday, calling it "not acceptable", before flying
to the region to see the damage. Later, he suggested that local
officials had made some mistakes. This earned him the threat of a punch
from one Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu.

Many of the immediate difficulties are understandable. As Michael
Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, pointed out, the disaster
has in fact been a double one. The hurricane's winds flattened homes on
the Gulf of Mexico coast, and shortly thereafter the rains burst the
levees, the latter creating a "dynamic" situation while authorities
responded to the former. 

Nevertheless, many Americans are blaming the man at the top. Mr Bush
should have gone to the region sooner, his critics say. (He made a
second trip on Monday.) Some Bush supporters worry that the botched
relief effort could hurt the president at a time when his ratings are
already low, thanks to the troubles of Iraq.

A WASHINGTON POST/ABC poll, conducted on Friday, found that the nation
was split down the middle, with 46% saying Mr Bush had handled the
crisis well and 47% saying he had done badly. By Tuesday, support for
the president appeared to have slipped: in a CNN/USA TODAY/Gallup poll,
42% of respondents rated his response to the disaster as "bad" or
"terrible", while 35% said it was "good" or "great". Only 35% described
the response of state and local officials as bad or terrible, with
slightly more, 37%, saying it was good or great. But when asked who was
responsible for the problems in New Orleans after Katrina struck, fewer
blamed Mr Bush (13%) than federal agencies (18%) or state and local
officials (25%); 38% blamed no one.

In an effort to head off criticism, the president has said that he will
lead an investigation into his administration's response to the
disaster. The House of Representatives and the Senate will hold their
own probes. Politicians on both sides are angry. On Tuesday Susan
Collins, a Republican senator who will lead an investigation by the
chamber's Homeland Security Committee, said: "If our system did such a
poor job when there was no enemy, how would the federal, state and
local governments have coped with a terrorist attack that provided no
advance warning and that was intent on causing as much death and
destruction as possible?"

Mr Bush's critics argue that some of his administration's longer-term
policy decisions have made the response to the disaster more difficult.
The war in Iraq, it has been noted, has depleted the number of
available national guardsmen by a third or more in Louisiana,
Mississippi and Alabama; many of those serving in Iraq are trained
emergency personnel. Others allege that the war has squeezed the
budget, causing a postponement last year of projects to improve the
levees--though it is far from clear that these could have been
completed in time to stop the flooding after Katrina.

Even if some failures can be attributed to the Bush administration, the
most important reasons for Katrina's deadliness may lie in decisions
that predate the current president, from Jean Baptiste le Moyne de
Bienville's decision to found the city in its precarious location, in
1718, to the more recent "improvements" in the area's maritime
navigability that have damaged south-eastern Louisiana's wetlands. For
much of the 20th century the federal government tampered with the
Mississippi, to help shipping and--ironically--prevent floods. In the
process it destroyed large swathes of coastal marshland around New
Orleans--something which suited property developers, but removed much
of the city's natural protection against flooding. Support may now grow
for a multi-billion-dollar plan to restore the wetlands, though a
similar project in Florida has proved difficult.

It is an uncomfortable fact that millions of Americans have made the
decision to live in areas prone to this kind of disaster. Though
Congress has authorised an immediate $10.5 billion relief package and
Mr Bush has said he will seek another $40 billion for the first phase
of rebuilding, Denny Hastert, the speaker of the House, has questioned
whether huge amounts of money should be spent on reconstruction in a
location as exposed as New Orleans (though he later backpedalled). But
there remain important questions to be asked at both the local and
national level about the failures that led to Katrina's destruction and
chaos. It has provided yet another reminder that decisions made without
due regard for the consequences can prove painful indeed later on.

-----
[1] http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4362200

See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4366649&fsrc=nwl

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