Katrina Tales: day 12 - Aid
suffers from poor direction
Fri Sep 9, 2005 13:59
64.140.158.82
Katrina Tales: day 12
Sam Knight, Times Online and agencies
Aid suffers from poor direction
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1772779,00.html
International aid meant for the victims of Hurricane Katrina is backing up at an Air Force base in Arkansas because relief lorries are being directed to the wrong places.
Civilian truck drivers hired to take food and supplies to Louisiana and Mississippi from Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas have been repeatedly diverted to places which already have what they need, according to Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Bret Archbold.
Forced to drive through the disaster zone, looking for places to drop off aid supplied by Russia, Italy, Spain and Britain, the drivers are taking two days instead of one to deliver their loads. Master Sergeant Archbold said the air base had been left in "lull status".
Wage cut for relief workers
Democrats have questioned new rules that allow contractors employed by the US Government in the relief effort not to pay their workers prevailing wages.
President Bush has used emergency powers to suspend sections of a federal law that requires government workers to be paid wages based on local surveys of union and nonunion pay.
"Hurricane Katrina took away their jobs, now President Bush will take away their wages when they find new jobs," said the House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat.
Legislators from both parties have expressed unease over the quick granting of more than $60 billion to pay for the relief effort. Representative Henry Waxman, from California, has criticised the dramatic increase in the purchasing powers given to relief workers.
Federal employees who previously had government-issued credit cards with a limit of $15,000 have had their limits raised to $250,000. "This is an unwise provision," said Mr Waxman.
Prayers and pop
President Bush has designated September 16, next Friday, a national day of prayer and remembrance for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Between now and then, there will be a series of fundraising concerts and telethons to raise money for survivors of the storm.
Tonight, six television networks are combining to host Shelter From The Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast, which will be broadcast to 95 countries. Sheryl Crow, Paul Simon, Alicia Keys and the Dixie Chicks are expected to perform.
A simultaneous event will take place on Black Entertainment Television, which will feature artists including Master P, Diddy, and Jay Z. Kanye West, a rapper, is also expected to appear, but he is not thought to have been asked to speak. Last week West caused controversy when he said: "George Bush does not care about black people".
Credit card confusion
Chaos over two credit card programmes for survivors left people faint from the heat in enormous queues outside the Houston Astrodome yesterday.
There was confusion between a credit programme being run by the American Red Cross and measures announced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) on Wednesday. Fema promised debit cards with up to $2,000 in funds, while the Red Cross offered credit to families on a case by case basis.
It was unclear whether families could qualify for both cards and hurricane survivors rushed to line up. Fema later announced it was suspending its debit card programme for all survivors not staying at the Astrodome. Other evacuees will receive direct bank deposits or cheques sent by post, the agency said.
------------------------
New Orleans 'holdouts' to be flushed out with force
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1772786,00.html
Katrina disaster chiefs 'have no experience'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1772753,00.html
Katrina Tales: day 12
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1772779,00.html
Body bags arrive as survivors are forced to leave
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1772194,00.html
Once a nursing home, now a house of horror
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1772020,00.html
-----------------------------------------
POSTED AT: http://www.apfn.org/APFN/KATRINA.HTM
This patch of land is all that's left of a neighborhood in Waveland.
CNN has a story here. http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/obliterated.town.ap/index.html
About a mile inland, we caught up with Jake Erwin at what was left of a Kmart.
The former local mayor was handing out water and supplies in a parking lot full of cars. Some neatly parked, others flipped or stacked on one another. He pointed out the ones that where they found bodies.
Then he pulled out a pair of rubber boots caked in mud. They’re his “inside the house” shoes. His first floor, which sits 18 feet off the ground, is covered in three inches of mud.
Video: http://www.operationflashlight.com/wp-content/waveland94.mpg
mirrored http://www.apfn.org/Movies/waveland4.mpg
http://www.operationflashlight.com/?p=13
==================================================
We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point.
People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore.
==================================================
DAVID BROOKS, NY TIMES
The Bursting Point
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 4, 2005
As Ross Douthat observed on his blog, The American Scene, Katrina was the anti-9/11.
On Sept. 11, Rudy Giuliani took control. The government response was quick and decisive. The rich and poor suffered alike. Americans had been hit, but felt united and strong. Public confidence in institutions surged.
Last week in New Orleans, by contrast, nobody took control. Authority was diffuse and action was ineffective. The rich escaped while the poor were abandoned. Leaders spun while looters rampaged. Partisans squabbled while the nation was ashamed.
The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled. Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield. No wonder confidence in civic institutions is plummeting.
And the key fact to understanding why this is such a huge cultural moment is this: Last week's national humiliation comes at the end of a string of confidence-shaking institutional failures that have cumulatively changed the nation's psyche.
Over the past few years, we have seen intelligence failures in the inability to prevent Sept. 11 and find W.M.D.'s in Iraq. We have seen incompetent postwar planning. We have seen the collapse of Enron and corruption scandals on Wall Street. We have seen scandals at our leading magazines and newspapers, steroids in baseball, the horror of Abu Ghraib.
Public confidence has been shaken too by the steady rain of suicide bombings, the grisly horror of Beslan and the world's inability to do anything about rising oil prices.
Each institutional failure and sign of helplessness is another blow to national morale. The sour mood builds on itself, the outraged and defensive reaction to one event serving as the emotional groundwork for the next.
The scrapbook of history accords but a few pages to each decade, and it is already clear that the pages devoted to this one will be grisly. There will be pictures of bodies falling from the twin towers, beheaded kidnapping victims in Iraq and corpses still floating in the waterways of New Orleans five days after the disaster that caused them.
It's already clear this will be known as the grueling decade, the Hobbesian decade. Americans have had to acknowledge dark realities that it is not in our nature to readily acknowledge: the thin veneer of civilization, the elemental violence in human nature, the lurking ferocity of the environment, the limitations on what we can plan and know, the cumbersome reactions of bureaucracies, the uncertain progress good makes over evil.
As a result, it is beginning to feel a bit like the 1970's, another decade in which people lost faith in their institutions and lost a sense of confidence about the future.
"Rats on the West Side, bedbugs uptown/What a mess! This town's in tatters/I've been shattered," Mick Jagger sang in 1978.
Midge Decter woke up the morning after the night of looting during the New York blackout of 1977 feeling as if she had "been given a sudden glimpse into the foundations of one's house and seen, with horror, that it was utterly infested and rotting away."
Americans in 2005 are not quite in that bad a shape, since the fundamental realities of everyday life are good. The economy and the moral culture are strong. But there is a loss of confidence in institutions. In case after case there has been a failure of administration, of sheer competence. Hence, polls show a widespread feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events and try to fundamentally change the way things are.
Reaganite conservatism was the response to the pessimism and feebleness of the 1970's. Maybe this time there will be a progressive resurgence. Maybe we are entering an age of hardheaded law and order. (Rudy Giuliani, an unlikely G.O.P. nominee a few months ago, could now win in a walk.) Maybe there will be call for McCainist patriotism and nonpartisan independence. All we can be sure of is that the political culture is about to undergo some big change.
We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore.
E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com
==================================================
Beware Of Mold: Moisture Can Cause Serious Problems
Sep 3, 2005, 08:17 PM
http://www.14wfie.com/Global/story.asp?S=3804450&nav=3w6re7hY
Web Producer: Jason Bailey
Thousands of homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and those that were damaged will need major repairs and cleanup with special attention to preventing mold.
But it doesn't take a water soaked home to bring out the mold spores.
Families faced with flooding should be aware that water and moisture can create a health hazard, mold. Ear, nose and throat specialist Dr Frank Astor explains what inhaling or touching spores can do.
Frank Astor, M.D., is an ear, nose and throat specialist.
He says, "You may have difficulty swallowing, infections of the pharynx, in the lungs, you may have symptoms of wheezing such as asthma, shortness of breath, or you can also have coughing. In the eyes, you may have redness and skin may become red or blistery."
While toxic mold has gotten a lot of attention, common mold spores can be very irritating to those who are sensitive.
"People who have asthma, people who have allergies are susceptible. People who have respiratory diseases either in the sinuses or the lungs," says Dr. Astor.
The Centers for Disease Control says controlling moisture is the key to keeping mold under control.
Drying out flooded areas might require a pump or a wet/dry vacuum cleaner. Open windows and doors and use dehumidifiers that blow out, not in.
When cleaning up, an 'N-95' respirator is recommended so you don't breathe in spores. Also wear gloves and goggles.
The Environmental Protection Agency does not recommend using chlorine beach for routine mold clean up.
Large cleanup jobs require professional help because you want to make sure there are no spores in your ac or vents.
========================
The BEST toxic mold site on the web...the truth; answers
The world's largest TOXIC MOLD web site with the latest mold news, insurance
updates, medical research, solutions, images, toxic mold forum, personal mold ...
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,020,000 for Toxic Mold.
====================
http://www.mold-help.org/
================
Offering Help and Hope to the Victims of Katrina
http://www.sohmission.org/KatrinaHelp.html
===================
A Grand Plan
The scientists, engineers and politicians who had been squabbling realized how close the entire delta had come to disaster, and Bahr says that it scared them into reaching a consensus. Late in 1998 the governor's office, the state's Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and all 20 of the state's coastal parishes published Coast 2050--a blueprint for restoring coastal Louisiana.
http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00060286-CB58-1315-8B5883414B7F0000
MOLD. . .What is it all about?
Posted by David R. H.
Monday, 30 July 2001
Mold has certainly made it's way into people's homes as well as the headlines recently. Many people still don't fully understand the health hazards of fungal exposure. The term toxic mold is somewhat misleading as it connotates an idea that certain molds are toxic, when actually certain types of molds produce secondary metabolites that produce toxins. The correct term is mycotoxins. Airborne mycotoxins from can definitely destroy one's health. Sometimes, people are unaware that they are breathing mold spores and mycotoxins until they are very sick. Certain people have a minor allergic reactions to the non-toxic mold, but once you leave the affected area they most likely recover with few serious side effects. However, if they have been exposed to the dangerous molds such as Stachybotrys or Chaetomium, they could suffer from a myriad of serious symptoms and illnesses such as chronic bronchitis, learning disabilities, mental deficiencies, heart problems, cancer, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple chemical sensitivity, bleeding lungs and much more.
This website is dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who have lost their lives, health, and homes to this scourge as our government, insurance companies, social service organizations, and disaster management groups have ignored them in their greatest time of need. We offer the finest education, resources, and solutions regarding what everyone must know about the most devastating health hazard of this millennium.
http://www.mold-help.org/
Sam Knight, Times Online and agencies
Aid suffers from poor direction
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1772779,00.html
International aid meant for the victims of Hurricane Katrina is backing up at an Air Force base in Arkansas because relief lorries are being directed to the wrong places.
Civilian truck drivers hired to take food and supplies to Louisiana and Mississippi from Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas have been repeatedly diverted to places which already have what they need, according to Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Bret Archbold.
Forced to drive through the disaster zone, looking for places to drop off aid supplied by Russia, Italy, Spain and Britain, the drivers are taking two days instead of one to deliver their loads. Master Sergeant Archbold said the air base had been left in "lull status".
Wage cut for relief workers
Democrats have questioned new rules that allow contractors employed by the US Government in the relief effort not to pay their workers prevailing wages.
President Bush has used emergency powers to suspend sections of a federal law that requires government workers to be paid wages based on local surveys of union and nonunion pay.
"Hurricane Katrina took away their jobs, now President Bush will take away their wages when they find new jobs," said the House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat.
Legislators from both parties have expressed unease over the quick granting of more than $60 billion to pay for the relief effort. Representative Henry Waxman, from California, has criticised the dramatic increase in the purchasing powers given to relief workers.
Federal employees who previously had government-issued credit cards with a limit of $15,000 have had their limits raised to $250,000. "This is an unwise provision," said Mr Waxman.
Prayers and pop
President Bush has designated September 16, next Friday, a national day of prayer and remembrance for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Between now and then, there will be a series of fundraising concerts and telethons to raise money for survivors of the storm.
Tonight, six television networks are combining to host Shelter From The Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast, which will be broadcast to 95 countries. Sheryl Crow, Paul Simon, Alicia Keys and the Dixie Chicks are expected to perform.
A simultaneous event will take place on Black Entertainment Television, which will feature artists including Master P, Diddy, and Jay Z. Kanye West, a rapper, is also expected to appear, but he is not thought to have been asked to speak. Last week West caused controversy when he said: "George Bush does not care about black people".
Credit card confusion
Chaos over two credit card programmes for survivors left people faint from the heat in enormous queues outside the Houston Astrodome yesterday.
There was confusion between a credit programme being run by the American Red Cross and measures announced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) on Wednesday. Fema promised debit cards with up to $2,000 in funds, while the Red Cross offered credit to families on a case by case basis.
It was unclear whether families could qualify for both cards and hurricane survivors rushed to line up. Fema later announced it was suspending its debit card programme for all survivors not staying at the Astrodome. Other evacuees will receive direct bank deposits or cheques sent by post, the agency said.
------------------------
New Orleans 'holdouts' to be flushed out with force
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1772786,00.html
Katrina disaster chiefs 'have no experience'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1772753,00.html
Katrina Tales: day 12
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1772779,00.html
Body bags arrive as survivors are forced to leave
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1772194,00.html
Once a nursing home, now a house of horror
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23889-1772020,00.html
-----------------------------------------
POSTED AT: http://www.apfn.org/APFN/KATRINA.HTM
This patch of land is all that's left of a neighborhood in Waveland.
CNN has a story here. http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/obliterated.town.ap/index.html
About a mile inland, we caught up with Jake Erwin at what was left of a Kmart.
The former local mayor was handing out water and supplies in a parking lot full of cars. Some neatly parked, others flipped or stacked on one another. He pointed out the ones that where they found bodies.
Then he pulled out a pair of rubber boots caked in mud. They’re his “inside the house” shoes. His first floor, which sits 18 feet off the ground, is covered in three inches of mud.
Video: http://www.operationflashlight.com/wp-content/waveland94.mpg
mirrored http://www.apfn.org/Movies/waveland4.mpg
http://www.operationflashlight.com/?p=13
==================================================
We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point.
People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore.
==================================================
DAVID BROOKS, NY TIMES
The Bursting Point
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 4, 2005
As Ross Douthat observed on his blog, The American Scene, Katrina was the anti-9/11.
On Sept. 11, Rudy Giuliani took control. The government response was quick and decisive. The rich and poor suffered alike. Americans had been hit, but felt united and strong. Public confidence in institutions surged.
Last week in New Orleans, by contrast, nobody took control. Authority was diffuse and action was ineffective. The rich escaped while the poor were abandoned. Leaders spun while looters rampaged. Partisans squabbled while the nation was ashamed.
The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled. Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield. No wonder confidence in civic institutions is plummeting.
And the key fact to understanding why this is such a huge cultural moment is this: Last week's national humiliation comes at the end of a string of confidence-shaking institutional failures that have cumulatively changed the nation's psyche.
Over the past few years, we have seen intelligence failures in the inability to prevent Sept. 11 and find W.M.D.'s in Iraq. We have seen incompetent postwar planning. We have seen the collapse of Enron and corruption scandals on Wall Street. We have seen scandals at our leading magazines and newspapers, steroids in baseball, the horror of Abu Ghraib.
Public confidence has been shaken too by the steady rain of suicide bombings, the grisly horror of Beslan and the world's inability to do anything about rising oil prices.
Each institutional failure and sign of helplessness is another blow to national morale. The sour mood builds on itself, the outraged and defensive reaction to one event serving as the emotional groundwork for the next.
The scrapbook of history accords but a few pages to each decade, and it is already clear that the pages devoted to this one will be grisly. There will be pictures of bodies falling from the twin towers, beheaded kidnapping victims in Iraq and corpses still floating in the waterways of New Orleans five days after the disaster that caused them.
It's already clear this will be known as the grueling decade, the Hobbesian decade. Americans have had to acknowledge dark realities that it is not in our nature to readily acknowledge: the thin veneer of civilization, the elemental violence in human nature, the lurking ferocity of the environment, the limitations on what we can plan and know, the cumbersome reactions of bureaucracies, the uncertain progress good makes over evil.
As a result, it is beginning to feel a bit like the 1970's, another decade in which people lost faith in their institutions and lost a sense of confidence about the future.
"Rats on the West Side, bedbugs uptown/What a mess! This town's in tatters/I've been shattered," Mick Jagger sang in 1978.
Midge Decter woke up the morning after the night of looting during the New York blackout of 1977 feeling as if she had "been given a sudden glimpse into the foundations of one's house and seen, with horror, that it was utterly infested and rotting away."
Americans in 2005 are not quite in that bad a shape, since the fundamental realities of everyday life are good. The economy and the moral culture are strong. But there is a loss of confidence in institutions. In case after case there has been a failure of administration, of sheer competence. Hence, polls show a widespread feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events and try to fundamentally change the way things are.
Reaganite conservatism was the response to the pessimism and feebleness of the 1970's. Maybe this time there will be a progressive resurgence. Maybe we are entering an age of hardheaded law and order. (Rudy Giuliani, an unlikely G.O.P. nominee a few months ago, could now win in a walk.) Maybe there will be call for McCainist patriotism and nonpartisan independence. All we can be sure of is that the political culture is about to undergo some big change.
We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore.
E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com
==================================================
Beware Of Mold: Moisture Can Cause Serious Problems
Sep 3, 2005, 08:17 PM
http://www.14wfie.com/Global/story.asp?S=3804450&nav=3w6re7hY
Web Producer: Jason Bailey
Thousands of homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and those that were damaged will need major repairs and cleanup with special attention to preventing mold.
But it doesn't take a water soaked home to bring out the mold spores.
Families faced with flooding should be aware that water and moisture can create a health hazard, mold. Ear, nose and throat specialist Dr Frank Astor explains what inhaling or touching spores can do.
Frank Astor, M.D., is an ear, nose and throat specialist.
He says, "You may have difficulty swallowing, infections of the pharynx, in the lungs, you may have symptoms of wheezing such as asthma, shortness of breath, or you can also have coughing. In the eyes, you may have redness and skin may become red or blistery."
While toxic mold has gotten a lot of attention, common mold spores can be very irritating to those who are sensitive.
"People who have asthma, people who have allergies are susceptible. People who have respiratory diseases either in the sinuses or the lungs," says Dr. Astor.
The Centers for Disease Control says controlling moisture is the key to keeping mold under control.
Drying out flooded areas might require a pump or a wet/dry vacuum cleaner. Open windows and doors and use dehumidifiers that blow out, not in.
When cleaning up, an 'N-95' respirator is recommended so you don't breathe in spores. Also wear gloves and goggles.
The Environmental Protection Agency does not recommend using chlorine beach for routine mold clean up.
Large cleanup jobs require professional help because you want to make sure there are no spores in your ac or vents.
========================
The BEST toxic mold site on the web...the truth; answers
The world's largest TOXIC MOLD web site with the latest mold news, insurance
updates, medical research, solutions, images, toxic mold forum, personal mold ...
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,020,000 for Toxic Mold.
====================
http://www.mold-help.org/
================
Offering Help and Hope to the Victims of Katrina
http://www.sohmission.org/KatrinaHelp.html
===================
A Grand Plan
The scientists, engineers and politicians who had been squabbling realized how close the entire delta had come to disaster, and Bahr says that it scared them into reaching a consensus. Late in 1998 the governor's office, the state's Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and all 20 of the state's coastal parishes published Coast 2050--a blueprint for restoring coastal Louisiana.
http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00060286-CB58-1315-8B5883414B7F0000
MOLD. . .What is it all about?
Posted by David R. H.
Monday, 30 July 2001
Mold has certainly made it's way into people's homes as well as the headlines recently. Many people still don't fully understand the health hazards of fungal exposure. The term toxic mold is somewhat misleading as it connotates an idea that certain molds are toxic, when actually certain types of molds produce secondary metabolites that produce toxins. The correct term is mycotoxins. Airborne mycotoxins from can definitely destroy one's health. Sometimes, people are unaware that they are breathing mold spores and mycotoxins until they are very sick. Certain people have a minor allergic reactions to the non-toxic mold, but once you leave the affected area they most likely recover with few serious side effects. However, if they have been exposed to the dangerous molds such as Stachybotrys or Chaetomium, they could suffer from a myriad of serious symptoms and illnesses such as chronic bronchitis, learning disabilities, mental deficiencies, heart problems, cancer, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple chemical sensitivity, bleeding lungs and much more.
This website is dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who have lost their lives, health, and homes to this scourge as our government, insurance companies, social service organizations, and disaster management groups have ignored them in their greatest time of need. We offer the finest education, resources, and solutions regarding what everyone must know about the most devastating health hazard of this millennium.
http://www.mold-help.org/
