"The water's rising pretty fast," eastern New Orleans resident Chris Robinson told The Associated Press in a cell phone interview at the height of the storm. "I got a hammer and an ax and a crowbar, but I'm holding off on breaking through the roof until the last minute. Tell someone to come get me, please. I want to live."I can only imagine the horror this must be like and when I read it could have been avoided but wasn't because of a "funding" issue when we are spending billions on a bullshit war, it sort of makes me angry. Here's the snippets...
"Especially hard hit was the Lower Ninth Ward, a poor neighborhood squeezed between a marsh on the north, the river on the south and a shipping canal on the west. In adjoining St. Bernard Parish, local officials estimated that 40,000 homes had flooded. In Jefferson Parish, another county contiguous to New Orleans, authorities had received calls from residents stranded on roofs. Blanco said her office had reports of 20 building collapses in New Orleans.http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usnola0830,0,2629774.story?coll=ny-main-breakingnewslinksMore bad news: Late Monday, the first hard evidence emerged of possible gasoline supply disruptions. Valero Energy Corp. said its giant St. Charles, La., refinery was flooded, powerless and shut for at least a week.http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/nation/12508335.htmAll of these areas were struggling to get much needed assistance to fund improvements to their levee system. The problem was, there was no money to give them.
" The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.
The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.
The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink, he said. I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_20040216/ai_n10174605Also, it appears that any further improvements for 2006 were going to be cut as well.
New Orleans district, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cut by Bush
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2042880&mesg_id=2042880Bush is such a dick-head, he makes me sick.
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