Congratulations to Mike Keller and Joshua Norman

And to the rest of the Sun Herald for winning a 2006 Pulitzer Prize.

Awarded to the Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss., for its valorous and comprehensive coverage of Hurricane Katrina, providing a lifeline for devastated readers, in print and online, during their time of greatest need.

You might remember these guys from Dancing with Katrina, and from Mike’s mooning of Katrina. I guess I can say I knew them (or at least Mike, whom I know a little better) from my Columbia days in 2005.

And with that, they bid you farewell:

We stayed in the newsroom through the storm, were out in the shit every day for weeks, cried more times than I’d care to recount (although Keller’d never admit it), and had our hands in as much as half of the articles that went out from our paper in the weeks afterwards. I feel more than confident in saying that we contributed mightily to the win.

No, this blog’s content had nothing to do with the win, technically. Our editors have long since distanced themselves from it, and we never do it during work or allow our work here to trump what we do for the paper.

However, we did bring great notoriety to the paper. We did provide insight into the region that was unavailable elsewhere, and for that I feel like we contributed to the win and for that I am proudest.

This blog was great to do.

My hat is off to you and the rest of the Sun Herald’s staff. Congratulations, gentlemen.

Hurricane Katrina Playlist

I know this is a bit late, but every time I come across these songs in iTunes I can’t help but think of the Katrina victims.

Blondie – The Tide is High
The Be Good Tanyas – Lakes of Pontchartain
Dave Cuomo – When The Ship Comes In (Written by Bob Dylan)

The Category 5 General

WashPost:

Mayor Ray Nagin called [Lt. Gen. Russell] Honoré (pronounced ah-NOR-ay) “one John Wayne dude” when the general arrived here after the storm and started taking charge. It seemed the city had spiraled out of anyone’s control when the 6-foot-2 general with the pencil mustache and caramel skin appeared from obscurity and threw his weight against the mayhem.

“He’s got the power to make things happen,” Firestone says. Nearby, Honoré is pledging to a volunteer that the Army will find a way to retrieve 1,000 pounds of meat the man wants to donate for the troops. “It’s awesome that he came here,” Firestone says. “He’s the first general I’ve seen come down here.”

Every day, he’s there — or somewhere: New Orleans, the Mississippi-Alabama coast, or Camp Shelby up near Hattiesburg, Miss., where Joint Task Force Katrina is based. From there he commutes via Black Hawk helicopter after each day’s Battle Update Briefing, where his pronouncements are punctuated with choice phrases like one that bursts from his lips during a brief tirade Saturday over another commander’s statements about weapons status for Joint Task Force Katrina: “It ain’t his [expletive] job! I mean, how the [expletive] did he do that?”

That’s the general, the farmer turned career military man of 36 years, speaking his mind, propriety be damned.

Yes, he offers in an interview aboard his Black Hawk, his wife of 34 years, Beverly, has admonished him from time to time about that intimidating public manner, about “using the word ‘b.s.’ on TV,” he says. (The recent usage came when a reporter told Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that a Louisiana politician had complained there was too much red tape facing victims. Before Chertoff could answer, Honore snapped: “That’s b.s.!”)

But he also believes that “it takes a big personality to command the army east of the Mississippi River.”

That’s the region of the Army’s 1st Division, and he is its commanding general, based in Atlanta, overseeing the preparations of units being deployed to Iraq. As leader of the Joint Task Force Katrina, he now commands all active-duty troops from all military branches devoted to the storm recovery operation. As of Saturday, those troops numbered 20,800, and more are coming. (National Guard troops number 50,000, but they are not under Honoré’s command.) And yes, he says he is a John Wayne fan, has seen all his movies. But he asserts that the troops in general are taking the battle (recovery) to the enemy (Katrina’s destruction).

“This ain’t about me,” he says, there amid the troops. “This is about us.”

With his leadership of U.S. armed forces in the post-Katrina operation, he burst onto the public stage with broadcast images of him deploying troops on New Orleans streets and growling, “Lower your weapons!”

A few days later, when he is heard barking at a soldier to “sling it” (meaning his M-16), he explains, “It’s a zero-threat environment” and he doesn’t want soldiers’ demeanor to suggest “that the city is under siege.”

And yet the water-logged streets of New Orleans are filled with troops, police, firefighters, FEMA recovery officials. With the vast majority of New Orleanians evacuated since the storm, the beleaguered city is one huge work zone.

In the thick of the recovery, a typical day (Saturday, for instance) took Honoré from Camp Shelby to the USS Iwo Jima, anchored on the Mississippi River in New Orleans, where he met with other military leaders to strategize on the remaining search-and-rescue or recovery operations. He met also with Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, the newly appointed lead federal representative here following the recall to Washington of embattled FEMA Director Michael Brown.

He has spoken to the media so often that he has honed his message, his preferred lines (which his aides say he devised himself). He repeatedly says, as he did in an appearance with Allen, that “the storm turned back technology 80 years” in the region by knocking out all communication systems and that the region’s first responders were themselves victims.

And, fending off early criticism of the federal government’s response to the crisis, he says, “It’s like the first quarter of a football game. You’re losing 25 to nothing. What in the hell is the coach gonna do?

“You can beat [the players] up and tell them how stupid and dumb they are and degrade them,” he continues, or you can take a new tact, find new approaches and remember “there’s still three quarters of the game left.”

Another Columbia J-School ’05er Writes

From Channing Joseph, a New Orleans native, and classmate of mine from the Class of 2005:

I’m in New York, and most of my immediate family was able to evacuate before the storm hit. They are now scattered across the country but physically unharmed. Not all of our homes fared as well, though. The house I grew up in is beyond repair, and my uncle lost one of his dogs (whom he had left behind, thinking it would just be a temporary evacuation). I called a cousin of mine whose house was spared (and who has since moved back in), and she tells me that even my little suburb looks like a war zone. The water may not be potable for years to come, and the new New Orleans may have to make do with cuisine sans shellfish — a staple — (which easily absorb the toxic chemicals now polluting the waters). But we are trying to be optimistic, and we appreciate being in your thoughts. So far the plans are to rebuild what we can, since our property has been in the family for generations, and it seems a waste to abandon all our history.

PayPal Freezes Out Katrina Aid

Wired News:

By Cyrus Farivar

02:00 AM Sep. 08, 2005 PT

On the morning of Sept. 3, Rich Kyanka set up a PayPal account to raise money for Hurricane Katrina victims, with the intention of donating the money to the American Red Cross.

Kyanka runs the popular Something Awful web community, which is based in New Orleans, and donations came in quickly. Within nine hours, Something Awful readers had donated $27,695.41. Kyanka donated an additional $3,000 from his own pocket.

“While we are a very cynical and bitter and adult humorous site, when actual tragedies strike, we try to band together and try to help out,” the 29-year-old said.

But just as Kyanka prepared to send the money to the Red Cross, the account was locked by PayPal, which launched an investigation into possible fraud.

Kyanka said he thinks PayPal became suspicious because too much money came in too quickly. PayPal spokeswoman Amanda Pires would not discuss details of the case, citing “privacy concerns.”

Barbara Bush: Things Working Out ‘Very Well’ for Poor Evacuees from New Orleans

AmericaBlog has two gems this morning:

HED: Bush says today he will investigate himself

That’s nice. Bush is going to investigate his OWN bungling of Hurricane Katrina.

That’s nice. Will he be investigating why he remained on vacation until the 3d day AFTER the hurricane destroyed New Orleans? Will he be investigating why Condi Rice went on vacation to NYC for most of the week? Why Dick Cheney and Andy Card STAYED on vacation even after the hurricane struck? Why it took Bush until Wednesday to chair a meeting at the White House with his cabinet to address the catastrophe?

Talk about your conflict.

HED: 3 Duke students travel to New Orleans, rescue people, come back while feds say they couldn’t help anybody

But hey, in all fairness, George Bush was on vacation.

A trio of Duke University sophomores say they drove to New Orleans late last week, posed as journalists to slip inside the hurricane-soaked city twice, and evacuated seven people who weren’t receiving help from authorities.

The group, led by South Carolina native Sonny Byrd, say they also managed to drive all the way to the New Orleans Convention Center, where they encountered scenes early Saturday evening that they say were disgraceful.

“We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn’t go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai,” said Hans Buder, who made the trip with his roommate Byrd and another student, David Hankla….

At 2 p.m., the trio decided to head for New Orleans, Buder said. After looking around, they swiped an Associated Press identification and one of the TV station’s crew shirts, and found a Kinko’s where they could make copies of the ID.

They were stopped again by authorities at the edge of New Orleans, but this time were able to make it through.

“We waved the press pass, and they looked at each other, the two guards, and waved us on in,” Buder said….

“Anyone who knows that area, if you had a bus, it would take you no more than 20 minutes to drive in with a bus and get these people out,” Buder said. “They sat there for four or five days with no food, no water, babies getting raped in the bathrooms, there were murders, nobody was doing anything for these people. And we just drove right in, really disgraceful. I don’t want to get too fired up with the rhetoric, but some blame needs to be placed somewhere.”

And finally, from Daily Kos (via E&P):

“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this (she chuckled slightly)–this is working very well for them.”

– Barbara Bush, as recorded on APM’s Marketplace, after touring Katrina refugees in Houston.

77320

LA Times

So many refugees now live in the Astrodome that the U.S. Postal Service has issued the 77320 ZIP Code to the former professional stadium. The move makes it easier for refugees to receive letters and care packages.

SciAm 2001: “New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen.”

Dave Winer points to four times in the last four years that major media outlets have predicted a major disaster if a major hurricane hit New Orleans.

Time Magazine, July 10, 2000:

If a flood of Biblical proportions were to lay waste to New Orleans, Joe Suhayda has a good idea how it would happen. A Category 5 hurricane would come barreling out of the Gulf of Mexico. It would cause Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans, to overflow, pouring down millions of gallons of water on the city. Then things would really get ugly. Evacuation routes would be blocked. Buildings would collapse. Chemicals and hazardous waste would dissolve, turning the floodwaters into a lethal soup.

USA Today, July 2000:

The storm surge — water pushed into a mound by hurricane winds — would pour over the Pontchartrain levee and flood the city. A severe hurricane could push floodwaters inside the New Orleans bowl as high as 20-30 feet, covering most homes and the first three or four stories of buildings in the city, he says. “This brings a great risk of casualties.”

In this type of scenario the metro area could be submerged for more than 10 weeks, says Walter S. Maestri, Director of Emergency Management for Jefferson Parish, which encompasses more than half of the city. In those 10 weeks, residents would need drinking water, food and a dry place to live.

NOW with Bill Moyers, Sept. 20, 2002:

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Do you expect this kind of hurricane and this kind of flooding to hit New Orleans in our lifetime?

JOE SUHUYDA: Well, there– I would say the probability is yes. In terms of past experience, we’ve had three storms that were near-misses that could’ve done at least something close to this.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So emergency management officials are trying to get ready… they’re playing a hurricane version of war games.

WALTER MAESTRI: A couple of days ago we actually had an exercise where we brought a fictitious Category Five hurricane–

DANIEL ZWERDLING: The worst.

WALTER MAESTRI: –the absolute worst, into the metropolitan area

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Walter Maestri is basically the czar of public emergencies in Jefferson Parish. It’s the biggest suburb in the region.

WALTER MAESTRI:Well, when the exercise was completed it was evident that we were going to lose a lot of people we changed the name of the storm from Delaney to K-Y-A-G-B… kiss your ass goodbye… because anybody who was here as that Category Five storm came across… was gone.

Scientific American, October 2001:

The boxes are stacked eight feet high and line the walls of the large, windowless room. Inside them are new body bags, 10,000 in all. If a big, slow-moving hurricane crossed the Gulf of Mexico on the right track, it would drive a sea surge that would drown New Orleans under 20 feet of water. “As the water recedes,” says Walter Maestri, a local emergency management director, “we expect to find a lot of dead bodies.”

New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh–an area the size of Manhattan–will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. Scientists at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die. The body bags wouldn’t go very far.

“Let’s fix the biggest goddamned crisis in the history of this country.”

The more I read about the fallout from Hurricane Katrina, the more riled up I get. I want to help, but there’s not much that I can do from the other side of the country. I’m sending $140 to relief efforts (the money that I will be paid from the piece that I filed yesterday to Wired News). Half of it is going to my journalistic bretheren down at The Sun Herald, where my Columbia classmates Michael Keller and Josh Norman in Biloxi to help in their coverage. I’m sitting here in my office in San Francisco writing about stuff that really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, wanting to do more.

I’m not a doctor, I’m not a engineer, but I’m a journalist. My job is to inform people and to communicate the news. On 9/11, after getting over the initial shock of what happened I ran down to the newsroom of The Daily Californian and spent the whole day on the phone calling nearly the entire Berkeley engineering department trying to get someone to explain to me physically how it happened that the building collapsed. I was a science and technology writer. That’s my trade. I can put it to good use. Unfortunately there’s really not a whole lot that I can do from here without being in New Orleans as a journalist. They probably have more journalists than they know what to do with. In fact, I just got an email from the Columbia 2005 alumni list-serv from a dude in New York who’s got an extra plane ticket down there to start stringing. I can’t do that, but I want to help.

These guys are helping the world know what’s going down there. I’m sending the other $70 to further relief efforts with the Red Cross.

If you don’t realize how fucked up things are, go listen to this interview with the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Negin (transcript)

And finally, occasionally the foreign press gives you a tidbit that really hammers things home:

Le Monde:

Le secrétaire à la sécurité intérieure, Michael Chertoff, a reconnu que les secouristes faisaient face à d’énormes difficultés, la région ayant été frappée par plusieurs catastrophes successives : le cyclone, puis la rupture des digues et les inondations. La surface dévastée, a-t-il rappelé, est équivalente à 235 000 km2 carrés, soit près de la moitié de la surface de la France.

“The devastated area, he recalled, is equivalent to 235,000 square kilometers, nearly half of the area of France.”

“The aftermath is nothing short of a nightmare.”

Josh Norman on “Eye of the Storm” :

I have now been told several times that this must have been “cool” or “fun.”
It is not.
The anticipation was fun. The reality was terrifying. The aftermath is nothing short of a nightmare.
Let’s start with my personal problems, which are nothing relative to the greater problem.
1) There is nowhere to poop. I went in a plastic bag the other day and haven’t gone since.
2) My apartment stinks because my apartment complex flooded. I’m on the second floor. The carpet from my downstairs neighbor is rotting and making my place smell like rotten egg.
3) I haven’t showered since Sunday. My head itches. My crotch itches. I smell.
4) I haven’t eaten properly. non-pershiable goods usually translates to junk food.
5) I am mentally exhausted. you can imagine why.
6) I am almost out of beer.
Now onto the more important and bigger problems.
1) This place is destroyed.
2) People are roaming around begging for food and water in parts.
3) Whole neighborhoods and lives were “disappeared” Pinochet-style.
4) Disease is likely to be rampant soon.
5) I actually, thinking about it, don’t even know how to list all that has gone wrong.