I found this jewel of an article reposted on Timebomb2000.com, and felt it covered all the bases of survival in hard times (disaster, ecomonic downturn, civil strife, etc.) that I just had to make sure it was seen by a wider audience.   Many of the items here could by applied and used in worse case scenarios, including pandemic bird flu, which seems to have the biggest echo on the governments “Fear Radar”.

Rich

From the old Greenspun board

Fair use
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0011Lt

How to Survive Really Hard Times
greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread
Moderator: ed@yourdon.com

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How to Survive Really Hard Times
In the old days, folks were accustomed to periodically having to live through hard times. They knew how to survive the hard times with the least amount of wear and tear on their families. Nowadays, most folks don’t know what hard times really are. Even those folks who think they have it hard right now can usually still depend on some type of government handout or charity assistance, and therefore they don’t truly know what hard times really are.

My definition of hard times is when things ain’t what they use to be and they don’t look like they will return to normal anytime soon. This frequently happens in times of war, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Which are also usually accompanied by power failures that last for days, weeks, or months.

Following are some suggestions for surviving these types of hard times.

Shelter:

Let’s start by assuming you now live in some type of dwelling and your dwelling is not in the immediate path of a flood, hurricane, marching troops, etc.

First, stay inside unless you must absolutely go outdoors. In the old days, folks had enough sense to come in out of the rain. During hard times, you don’t need to get wet, cold, or frost bitten. That just makes matters worse.

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How to Survive Really Hard Times

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Look out…2006 is going to be another banner year for Hurricanes…better batten down the hatches NOW!

Rich

Storm ‘hindcast’ sketches hurricane picture for 2006
By Patrick O’Driscoll, USA TODAY

Don’t expect much of a breather from this year’s record-setting onslaught of hurricanes. A leading tropical forecast team predicted Tuesday that next year’s season will be “very active,” with a well-above-average number of major storms.

Dr. Gray predicted an 81% chance that at least one major hurricane would make U.S. landfall in 2006.
The Weather Channel

Unlike this year’s record assault on U.S. shores, there is a “very low” probability that so many intense hurricanes will strike the USA, according to the Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University.

In its first outlook for 2006, the project team expects 17 named tropical storms in the June-through-November season. In a normal year, the Atlantic produces about 10 storms. This year, it had its most on record with 26, including four hurricanes that blasted U.S. shores: Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma. The 26th storm, Hurricane Epsilon, was still churning in the Atlantic as the new forecast was announced.

The team, led by scientist Philip Klotzbach and professor William Gray, predicts nine storms next year will become hurricanes, five of them major, with at least Category 3 intensity (winds 111 mph or more). On average, the Atlantic basin gets six hurricanes a year, two to three of them major.

Coastal regions of the USA were battered by four hurricanes both this year and last, with Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne hitting Florida in 2004. Gray says it is too early to say how many might reach land in 2006. The number will depend on short-term weather patterns and ocean wind currents.

The new forecast does predict an 81% probability that at least one major hurricane will strike the USA in 2006. Gray says the prediction is based on two factors: how many reached land in similarly active years in the past century, and water temperatures in the north Atlantic. The warmer the water, the more storms are likely to hit — and the ocean now is warm, he says.

This month’s forecast will be updated five times from April through October. Never before has the December outlook called for so many storms.

Gray says that’s because the December prediction is a “hindcast,” based mainly on statistics of past seasons. He says certain global patterns at this time of year help predict how active next season will be. This year they include winds in the stratosphere, ocean currents, and warm sea temperatures.

“We’ve never had one year that has as many favorable signals at this stage for the next year’s season,” Gray adds. His December calculations have correctly predicted either an above-average or below-average season in five of seven years since 1999.

The names for the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season are Alberto, Beryl, Chris, Debby, Ernesto, Florence, Gordon, Helene, Isaac, Joyce, Kirk, Leslie, Michael, Nadine, Oscar, Patty, Rafael, Sandy, Tony, Valerie and William.

Source from Washington Post

FEMA Speeds Katrina Relief
Owners in Areas With Worst Damage To Receive $26,200

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 5, 2005; Page A01

Faced with the daunting task of inspecting hundreds of thousands of damaged homes, federal officials have decided to award the maximum relief aid possible to people in neighborhoods presumed destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has begun notifying 60,000 renters and property owners in nine Louisiana and Mississippi parishes and counties that they will immediately receive as much as $26,200, the most Congress has authorized for individual households battered by Katrina. The determination of who gets the money is being based on satellite imagery of the worst flooding or wind damage, broken down by Zip code, where individual inspections have not been done.

Although it may be possible that some homes in those areas escaped serious damage and their owners do not require the aid, FEMA has decided not to wait for case-by-case inspections.

“It is presumed these homes are uninhabitable, and these persons will be eligible for the maximum amount they can receive,” said FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews. “Basically if you lived here, . . . if you lost everything you owned, which is presumable, you’ll probably receive the $26,200,” though renters will receive less.

The move was not formally announced by FEMA but will complete the agency’s cash obligation to a large number of victims of Katrina, which hit on Aug. 29. With the onset of cold weather, officials have estimated that as many as 600,000 families require long-term housing. The agency’s multibillion-dollar plans to temporarily place people

aboard cruise ships, in hotels, mobile homes or trailers have been criticized as wasteful and ill-conceived.

The aid would not be discounted by any money for hotels FEMA is paying for 200,000 residents who fled the storm. But it would be offset by any other FEMA cash aid — including rental assistance for apartments — those people may be receiving. The affected nine-digit Zip codes are in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Plaquemines parishes in Louisiana, and Jackson, Harrison and Hancock counties in Mississippi.

FEMA said yesterday that its estimated cost in Louisiana alone will be $41.4 billion, about five times what it spent on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack in New York. The state’s share would be $3.7 billion — the equivalent of about half of Louisiana’s state annual general fund.

So far, 2.8 million households have applied for federal aid from Katrina and from Hurricane Rita, which struck the Texas and Louisiana coast four weeks later, Andrews said. Based on past disasters, about two-thirds will qualify for help.

The $26,200 is the most money homeowners can receive. There are eligibility limits and restrictions on what the money can be spent on, but it can pay for home repairs, for temporary housing and to replace a car.

House inspections are continuing outside the devastated areas covered by FEMA’s decision. Officials are scrambling to find adequate housing for those people in hotels, with the goal of having all of them out by Dec. 1. The three-month apartment assistance program for 496,000 families begins to phase out after Dec. 23, although FEMA could decide to extend the help for some individuals.

Barbara Sard, housing policy director for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the Bush administration last week dedicated $390 million to move as many as 65,000 Katrina families who were homeless or in public housing before the storm into the Section 8 low-income rental assistance voucher program, a change advocates had sought.

Sard encouraged the White House to convert the apartment assistance program into a similar voucher program. “How can you make case-by-case decisions on 400,000 people without making wildly different results for similarly situated people?” Sard asked. “How is that fair and how can anyone plan, recognizing you’ve got a very difficult situation?”

FEMA used such a voucher program to house 22,000 families displaced by the 1994 Northridge earthquake near Los Angeles at a cost of $200 million, said Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings Institution’s metropolitan policy center and a former Clinton housing official.

Source from CNN

Levee repairs may not protect New Orleans

WASHINGTON (AP) — Repairs to New Orleans’ levees may be insufficient to protect residents moving back to the devastated city if another hurricane comes before the tropical storm season ends this month, engineers said Wednesday.

Dozens of breaches continue to mar the city’s levee system, including a large seep at the Industrial Canal last week, according to engineering experts who have examined the floodwalls.

Repairs have gotten better in recent days, the experts told a Senate panel investigating floodwall failures after Hurricane Katrina. But the initial rebuilding process was done with little or no engineering guidance and perhaps substandard materials, they said.

“Short term, without a storm, they are probably adequately safe,” said Dr. Peter Nicholson, a University of Hawaii engineering professor, representing the American Society of Civil Engineers. “Certainly with a large storm, as we are not yet out of hurricane season, and certainly for next hurricane season, there is significant risk.”

At the Industrial Canal levee, which abuts New Orleans’ obliterated Ninth Ward, repairs to breaches “were not adequate for a high-water incidence — for instance, another hurricane storm surge with the storm season that isn’t yet behind us, or even a very high tide,” said Raymond Bolton Seed. Seed, a University of California at Berkeley engineering professor, participated in a National Science Foundation study investigating the levee failures.

The large seep at that levee, which occurred October 24, “was not entirely unexpected,” Seed told the panel.

However, he said, deeper walls “that will be far more stable than they were before” have been dug in at least some areas since the NSF first examined the levees.

“I don’t think there is a long-term risk to the city of New Orleans,” Seed said.

The findings highlighted what Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chaired the panel, called troubling concerns about whether the repairs have been insufficient.

“These rebuilt levees may be at risk of failing in another storm, a disturbing finding that raises questions about the safety of the city’s returning residents,” Collins said. She heads the Senate Homeland Security committee, which was holding a hearing on why New Orleans’ floodwalls failed after Katrina hit on August 29.

Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, top Democrat on the panel, said reconstruction efforts were done, “we all understand, in haste and in very urgent circumstances.” But he echoed Seed’s questions about whether the levees could now “protect the city of New Orleans from high tides, let alone another hurricane.”

The Senate hearing also examined the NSF’s report showing that the levees may not have been designed to protect a major city. Moreover, engineers who designed the levees did not fully consider the porousness of the Louisiana soil or make other calculations that would have pointed to the need for stronger floodwalls, the study shows.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/11/02/levee.probe.ap/index.html

Source from CNN

Lawmaker: E-mails show Brown ‘out of touch’ during Katrina

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former Federal Emergency Management Director Michael Brown, who resigned after stinging criticism of his handling of the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina, exchanged e-mails about his appearance on the day of the storm and seemed “out of touch” after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, a Louisiana congressman charged Wednesday.

“In the midst of the overwhelming damage caused by the hurricane and enormous problems faced by FEMA, Mr. Brown found time to exchange e-mails about superfluous topics,” including “problems finding a dog-sitter,” according to Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Louisiana, who posted the e-mails on his Web site. (Copies of e-mails — PDF)

Some of the e-mails from Brown indicate he may have been overwhelmed by his responsibilities, Melancon said.

In an e-mail he sent the morning of the hurricane to Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of public affairs, Brown wrote, “Can I quit now? Can I come home?” A few days later, Brown wrote to an acquaintance, “I’m trapped now, please rescue me.”

Melancon, whose district south of New Orleans was devastated by the hurricane, said Brown’s lack of leadership and concern is illustrated in more than 1,000 e-mails provided to the House committee now assessing responses to the disaster by all levels of government.

Melancon said that on August 26, just days before Katrina made landfall, Brown e-mailed his press secretary, Sharon Worthy, about his attire, asking: “Tie or not for tonight? Button down blue shirt?”

A few days later, Worthy advised Brown: “Please roll up the sleeves of your shirt all shirts. Even the President rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this [crisis] and on TV you just need to look more hard-working.”

On August 29, the day of the storm, Brown exchanged e-mails about his attire with Taylor, Melancon said. She told him, “You look fabulous,” and Brown replied, “I got it at Nordstroms. … Are you proud of me?”

An hour later, Brown added: “If you’ll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you’ll really vomit. I am a fashion god,” according to the congressman.

The e-mails came from Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, who oversees FEMA, following a request by Melancon and Rep. Tom Davis, R-Virginia, chairman of a House committee appointed to investigate what went wrong during Katrina, Melancon said.

Although Chertoff has not turned over all the documents requested by the committee, Melancon charged that the material received so far contradicts testimony by Brown before the committee in which he described himself as an effective leader.

Brown resigned in September amid accusations that FEMA acted too slowly after Katrina hammered Louisiana and Mississippi, killing more than 1,200 people. He defended the government’s response and blamed leaders in Louisiana for failing to act quickly as the hurricane approached.

He acknowledged he made some mistakes as FEMA’s director, but he stressed that the agency “is not a first responder,” insisting that role belonged to state and local officials.

Brown could not be reached for comment Wednesday night on the e-mails and Melancon’s charges.

The lawmaker cited several e-mails that he said show Brown’s failures. (Melancon’s analysis of e-mails — PDF)

For instance, two days after Katrina, Marty Bahamonde, one of the only FEMA employees in New Orleans, wrote to Brown that “the situation is past critical.”

“Here are some things you might not know. Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water. Hundreds still being rescued from homes,” Bahamonde said.

“The dying patients at the DMAT (Disaster Medical Assistance Team) tent being medivac. Estimates are many will die within hours. Evacuation in process. Plans developing for [Superdome] evacuation but hotel situation adding to problem. We are out of food and running out of water at the dome, plans in works to address the critical need.

“FEMA staff is OK and holding own. DMAT staff working in deplorable conditions. The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out. Phone connectivity impossible.”

Brown’s entire response was: “Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?”

Two days later, on September 2, Brown received a message with the subject “Medical help.” At the time, thousands of patients were being transported to the New Orleans airport, which had been converted to a makeshift hospital. Because of a lack of ventilators, medical personnel had to ventilate patients by hand for as long as 35 hours, according to Melancon.

The text of the e-mail reads: “Mike, Mickey and other medical equipment people have a 42 ft. trailer full of beds, wheelchairs, oxygen concentrators, etc. They are wanting to take them where they can be used but need direction.

“Mickey specializes in ventilator patients so can be very helpful with acute care patients. If you could have someone contact him and let him know if he can be of service, he would appreciate it. Know you are busy but they really want to help.”

Melancon said Brown didn’t respond for four days, when he forwarded the original e-mail to FEMA Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks Altshuler and Deputy Director of Response Michael Lowder.

The text of Brown’s e-mail to them read: “Can we use these people?”

Melancon also charged that few of the e-mails from Brown show him assigning specific tasks to employees or responding to pressing problems

On September 1, FEMA officials exchanged e-mails reporting severe shortages of ice and water in Mississippi. They were to receive 60 trucks of ice and 26 trucks of water the next day, even though they needed 450 trucks of each.

Robert Fenton, a FEMA regional response official, predicted “serious riots” if insufficient supplies arrive.

Brown was forwarded the series of e-mails about the problem, but no response from him is shown in the e-mails provided to the committee, Melancon said.

Katrina came ashore along the Louisiana-Mississippi state line, after being downgraded from a Category 5 to a Category 4 storm. It flooded 80 percent of New Orleans. It was followed about a month later by Hurricane Rita, which caused more damage and flooding.

Melancon and several other Democrats from districts directly affected by Katrina were invited to participate as a ex-officio members of the Katrina investigative committee, though they have no formal role. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi refused to appoint any Democrats to the panel after GOP leaders rebuffed Democratic demands for an independent probe.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/03/brown.fema.emails/index.html

Source From MotherJones.com / Commentary / Columns

Hard Questions About the Big Easy
The New Orleans disaster could yet change American politics—but only if we keep talking about it.
Paul Rogat Loeb
October 31 , 2005

As the New Orleans disaster recedes from the headlines, citizen activists face a choice. We can focus exclusively on other newer issues. Or we can work to make the disaster one of those key turning points with the potential to transform American politics. For this to happen, we need to consciously create new dialogue, reaching well beyond the core converted.

If we think back to the 9/11 attacks, which have shaped American politics ever since, a brief window of critical reflection opened up in their immediate wake. Middle East experts critical of U.S. policies had op-eds in our largest newspapers and appeared on network TV. Ordinary citizens mourned the victims, while asking what would make the attackers so embittered they’d be willing to murder 3,000 innocent people. The next day, when I spoke about possible root causes, with even more frankness than usual, at a community college in the overwhelmingly Republican suburbs just north of Dallas, the response was amazingly receptive.

But by a few weeks later visible public questioning had largely ceased. Most Americans accepted the Bush administration’s definition of a war of absolute good versus absolute evil. John Ashcroft warned that anyone who disagreed was an “ally of terrorism.” The space for reflection had closed.

New Orleans has revealed far too much about the cost of this administration’s priorities to similarly strengthen Bush’s current standing. Republican cheerleaders are trying their best to spin its lessons as a mandate for even greater mistrust of all government, as if our sole hope lies in a survivalist individualism. But no matter what they do, the legacy of this disaster creates a political liability for this administration, highlighting their lack of sound environmental policies, support for critical infrastructure, and the valuing of experience over political cronyism, not to mention their heedlessness of America’s growing economic and racial divides. The danger is that the disaster’s most far-reaching lessons will be quickly forgotten, as the voices of the city’s exiles grow quiet and fresh crises and issues dominate the news.

We can change that by helping our fellow citizens wrestle with the legacy of the disaster while it remains strong in common memory-to give it its due as one of those iconic moments with the power to transform political life and individual hearts and souls. For now America is still wrestling with what happened and why, with what it will mean for those now exiled, with how the disaster affects our common future. From my own recent talks in the heart of red state America, the disaster has led many to begin to rethink core assumptions about this country’s priorities. Through the lens of New Orleans, I’ve been able to raise all sorts of challenging issues to audiences that would have been far more resistant just a few months before. But like the post-9/11 reflection, this newfound concern won’t continue automatically. It needs a context in which to bloom.

Some of this is already being created, as we weave lessons from the disaster into arguments we’re already making on issues from global warming to the war in Iraq, to the dangers of selling America’s every institution to the highest bidder. But the tragedy also calls for specific responses. Suppose progressive citizen activists worked to convene conversations in every community about Katrina’s lessons and legacy. These conversations could include MoveOn and The Sierra Club and local social justice groups, but also mainline and conservative churches, synagogues and mosques, civic groups like Rotary and Kiwanis, maybe even Chambers of Commerce-as many institutions of civil society as would be willing to participate. Suppose every college or high school made New Orleans a focus over the coming year, working, from the perspective of every possible discipline, to explore the interconnected roots and lessons of the disaster.

After 9/11, author Vicki Robin and some colleagues created what they called “conversation cafes” (www.conversationcafe.org), which brought together people of differing beliefs to reflect on how to move forward from the tragedy. Though their outreach was relatively limited, the cafes offered a powerful experience for those who participated, and a model to build on. Imagine if we extended these conversations on a broader scale, mixing brainstorming, exchange of perspectives and emotional sustenance. In a time when it’s easy to feel overloaded, paralyzed with “compassion fatigue,” Robin sees a chance to create “containers where people can grieve, process, see deeper truths, have new creative ideas.”

Another model comes from community discussions that transformed Nebraska’s tax codes forty years ago. In the early 1960s, a group of University of Nebraska economists used the University’s statewide network of adult education extension offices to organize workshops, county by county, where people could discuss different ways to make a highly regressive state tax system more fair. The existing system had long weighed disproportionately on family farmers and low-income residents. Now, involving local organizations such as the Farmer’s Union, Farm Bureau, and the Grange, the economists invited people to see for themselves how a range of approaches would affect them and their neighbors. “If people just really had a chance to look at the numbers,” one of the faculty members recalls, “we felt they could come to an intelligent decision. But they had to have a context to analyze the system, and this seemed a perfect use of educational networks that were already in place.”

The workshop leaders pursued their task without laptops, computerized spreadsheets, interactive Websites, or any of the other tools that would now make a comparable process far easier. But participants examined who was getting a free ride, how to make the system more equitable, and the likely results of specific policy changes. Local and statewide media amplified the debates. It took a half-dozen years of follow-up education and debate, but Nebraska finally passed a far more progressive graduated income tax, which a Republican governor signed into law.

The issues embodied in Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans are more difficult than a single state’s tax codes, but could be addressed through a similar process of discussion exploring a series of interconnected questions: What are the costs of neglecting America’s core infrastructure, like the Bush administration’s $71 million cuts in the budgets for maintaining and repairing the levees? How do we challenge a pervasive cronyism, where being the friend of a top Republican fundraiser places the former head of the International Arabian Horse Association in charge of America’s national disaster responses? What are the hidden costs of choices of destroying swamps that traditionally acted as buffers to tropical storms? How do we address America’s widening economic and racial divides, embodied by those left behind in the rising floodwaters? How do we rebuild a devastated New Orleans in a way that it won’t just get flooded again, while honoring the right of return for those outside the sleek tourist zones? At what level of disaster do we take seriously the costs of global warming, and begin joining other nations in acting on it? Can we do any of this while giving $120 billion a year in tax cuts to the wealthy and fighting a $100 billion-a-year Iraqi war? And how can we keep our hope for change alive in a time of so much disaster and human pain?

The US has never faced the comparable destruction of one of our major cities, so we’re all in new territory. We need to resist Bush administration proposals to lift wage and environmental protections, give no-bid contracts to companies like Halliburton, and pay for rebuilding by slashing other social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, child welfare programs, and student financial aid. But if we’re going to have a chance of succeeding in offering more proactive alternatives, we’ll need to involve some of those ordinary and often apolitical Americans who watched in horror as the floodwaters rose.

We could complement the more intimate discussions with visible public forums. During the height of the nuclear arms race, Physicians for Social Responsibility scheduled multi-day forums throughout the country to focus public attention on the nuclear threat. They involved a variety of high profile speakers, including Nobel laureates, talking about the impact of the nuclear arms race attack from every perspective they could muster–the likely immediate death toll in the wake of a nuclear attack, technological escalations that were reducing the margin for human error, the arms race’s economic cost, and alternatives for de-escalation. The events mobilized large numbers of citizens and got major media coverage wherever they were held. They played a significant role in challenging the arms race.

We could adopt a similar model around New Orleans. Create a tour with high-profile experts on global warming, the politics of infrastructure, America’s economic and radical divides. Include voices from the city and those now exiled. Challenge Americans to think again about why the disaster happened, and what how we can best proceed in its wake.

We could also use the wake up call of the disaster to take a similar approach with one of the most difficult challenges it raises-the impact of global warming. Focusing just on that one overarching issue, we could hold high-profile local forums about the increase in extreme climate events like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts and forest fires; about impacts on public health through the migration of disease-carrying insects like the mosquitos that carry West Nile virus; about the impact on agriculture of changing weather patterns. These could feature scientists, journalists, religious leaders, businesspeople like alternative energy experts or representatives of insurance companies increasingly hit by climate-related property casualty losses. The goal would be to use the window of concern opened by Katrina to foster serious discussion in communities that aren’t normally exposed to it.

Finally, we can complement local conversations with coordinated national discussions. As David Dyssegaard Kallick writes in The Nation, New York City citizen groups came together in the wake of 9/11 to create the Labor Community Advocacy Network to Rebuild New York (LCAN). Their members met among themselves to determine their joint priorities, then pushed, with some success, for more equitable directions for post-9/11 reconstruction. (Their suggestions for the displaced Gulf Coast communities are available at www.goodjobsny.org) Major labor, environmental and social justice groups could similarly meet and talk out issues like where to generate the funding for reconstruction, how to balance protection against future floods with rebuilding the devastated communities, how give displaced residents the maximum possible voice. The more we can clarify our own priorities, the more effectively we can articulate them to others.

We tend to think of crises as highly visible calls to action, but real crises build up in the shadows. They’re revealed when clear disaster strikes or when citizens succeed in sufficiently dramatizing their impact on the public stage. Legal segregation was a daily crisis if you were African American, but not if you were white-until activists made it visible. The poisoning of our environment was unnoticed until ordinary citizens raised hard questions. Few talked about the destruction of America’s infrastructure until the water from Lake Pontchartrain spilled over the levees. What we do from this point forward will determine whether the underlying crises that created and compounded the New Orleans disaster get addressed.

If we reach out broadly enough, progressive activists wouldn’t control the direction of the resulting conversations, but we’d have a chance to talk to others of differing views and reflect on our own. From my experience, the disaster has opened up a space where citizens ordinarily resistant to key questions about our nation’s direction are suddenly far more receptive. Whether that opening leads to a new wave of citizen engagement or closes with distraction and time depends on the opportunities for reflection and participation we can create.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of fall 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association, and of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.paulloeb.org.

This story is a tough one. On the one hand, most of the officers were probably looking after their families, who were just as threatened as the other thousands of families in New Orleans. These cops are human, too. But, on the other hand, they were sworn to uphold the law and stay on post.

Problem is…the city of New Orleans should have had plans to deal with EXACTLY the kind of disaster that happened…sufficient levees, large and powerful (and working) pumps, a city that is NOT 7 feet below sea level, and a large enough fleet of transportation buses to move mass volumes of citizens out of harms way.

You have to uphold the law above all else…otherwise, you have anarchy…uhm…er…like New Orleans had for a bit.

Go figure.

Source

45 New Orleans cops fired for desertion
Friday, October 28, 2005; Posted: 7:23 p.m. EDT (23:23 GMT)

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) — Fifty-one members of the New Orleans Police Department — 45 officers and six civilian employees — were fired Friday for allegedly abandoning their posts before or after Hurricane Katrina.

“They were terminated due to them abandoning the department prior to the storm,” acting superintendent Warren Riley said. “They either left before the hurricane or 10 to 12 days after the storm and we have never heard from them.”

Police were unable to account for 240 officers on the 1,450-member force following Katrina. The force has been investigating them to see if they left their posts during the storm.

The mass firing was the first action taken against the missing officers. Another 15 officers resigned when placed under investigation for abandonment.

“This isn’t representative of our department,” Riley said. “We had a lot of heroes that stepped up after the storm.”

Another 45 officers resigned from the force after the August 29 storm. The resignations were for personal reasons ranging from relocation to new employment, Riley said.

The fired officers do not have the right to appeal, Riley said.

“The regulation says that if you leave the job for a period of 14 days without communication you can be terminated,” Riley said. “I don’t think they have the right to a civil service appeal.”

Lt. David Benelli, president of the New Orleans police union, said he had no sympathy for those who abandoned their post.

“The worst thing you can call a police officer is a deserter,” Benelli said.

None of the officers had contacted the union about fighting the dismissals, he said.

Two former New Orleans police officers and a New Orleans firefighter were rejected for jobs in the Dallas Police Department because of allegations they deserted their jobs during Hurricane Katrina.

“When you are ready and take an oath of office and you do not fulfill that office, that’s an issue for us and it should be an issue for law enforcement in general,” Dallas Deputy Chief Floyd Simpson said Thursday.

Hearings for the New Orleans officers that remain under investigation for abandonment will begin November 8 and last four to six months, Riley said.

The department is also investigating the beating of a man during his arrest and the alleged assault of an Associated Press television producer.

“It’s still ongoing, but we hope to have a conclusion within a few weeks,” Riley said.