The levees collapsed, and with them, social bonds. Mass robberies, rapes, fights, and murders began. Corpses floated in the streets, and thousands of residents camped on rooftops. President George W. Bush was vacationing at the Texas Prairie Chapel Ranch. On August 30, he played a round of golf and sang at a barbecue with country singers. He woke up only a day later.
Returning to Washington, he ordered the pilot to fly over Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. One of the photojournalists took a picture of him looking at the flooded areas with a bored expression. The photo went around the world. Arianna Huffington wrote: “It is a symbol of his entire presidency (…) Passive, callous, indifferent, he prefers to watch suffering – whether caused by the war in Iraq or a hurricane – from a distance.”
Chaos and lawlessness were growing in New Orleans. Residents waited for evacuation or at least food or drinking water, while the rescue operation unfolded like madness. At the Superdome sports hall, where flood victims were being taken, there were terrifying scenes broadcast live on television. The poorest people did not heed the evacuation order because they did not have the money to leave.
Left-wing commentators wrote that Bush did not care about the poor and therefore did not reach out to the relevant services. When he finally reached out to the flood victims, the largest local newspaper greeted him with the headline “We are furious with you, Mr. President!” He made another mistake by ordering the flags on government buildings to be lowered after the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. It was already known that hundreds of people had died in New Orleans, and the president did not think to declare a national mourning for that.
The media also accused him of cutting government spending to virtually dismantle the Federal Disaster Relief Agency (FEMA), which Clinton had led to its zenith. To replace its legendary director, James Lee Witt, he appointed his former law firm boss, Joe Allbaugh, and then Allbaugh’s college friend Michael Brown, who had lost his job as a private-sector horse trader due to ineptitude.
Katrina exposed the disparity between white and black Americans. The latter, as then-Senator Barack Obama put it, “couldn’t put their families in a car, put a hundred dollars’ worth of gas in it, and check into a hotel using a credit card.”
The post-Katrina bailout was a turning point in Bush’s presidency. It marked the beginning of a steep decline in support from which the Republican never recovered. In addition, Americans were awakening from the lethargy they had fallen into after the September 11 attacks. They suddenly stopped supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush emerged as one of the most unpopular leaders in the United States.
Mess and waste
The flooding caused by Katrina was the most costly in U.S. history. It destroyed one of the country’s most beautiful cities and killed an estimated 1,500 people. Bush didn’t feel entirely fair to the victims. He visited Louisiana a dozen times. Unfortunately, it was too soon.
According to the congressional report, the president’s statements during the disaster showed that he was not kept informed about the development of the situation. “If his advisers had explained to him that he should be directly involved in the rescue operation, the delay that cost the lives of hundreds of people could have been avoided,” the experts wrote.
The report says authorities at all levels have failed, and the federal government, focused on the threat of terrorism, has neglected to prepare for natural disasters and their effects. Tens of millions have gone into training security services to combat the effects of an unlikely chemical or biological attack, while the fight against the disasters that constantly threaten America has taken a back seat.
The relief effort was no less chaotic than the rescue effort. Fraud, abuse and neglect cost $2 billion. Bureaucrats bought half a billion worth of trailers that no one used. Later, gutted and riddled with holes, they sat rusting in a huge parking lot in Arkansas, where taxpayers paid a quarter of a million a month to rent them.
The renovation of the shelter in Alabama cost 416,000 PLN. hole. per flood victim accommodated there. The Department of Homeland Security’s emergency purchases included beer-making kits and several dozen MP3 players. However, 110 laptops, 22 printers and 12 boats were missing. Given the quality of the goods purchased by the government for flood victims, it can be assumed that the boats sank.
The Wellington boots for rescue dogs bought for $68,000 didn’t sink. Even in Washington, a city where wasting government money is the main goal of citizens’ active activities, the scale of abuse was appalling. Typically, during natural disasters, 1 to 3 percent of the money goes to waste. Help. During Katrina, 11 percent went to waste.
In the southeastern United States, hurricanes are not a weather anomaly, but a permanent part of the game. What’s more, they will become stronger as the temperature of the water in the oceans increases, and with it the amount of energy that the clouds use to spin around the eye of the storm.
So if local authorities fail to protect exposed coastlines from erosion and flooding, the situation will become increasingly dangerous. But no one likes paying the higher taxes needed to rebuild infrastructure, and some right-wing politicians still deny climate change.
With a rifle against a hurricane
President Trump has been cutting federal funding for research that would help us better understand what is happening to our planet and how Americans should defend themselves against future natural disasters. Biden has revived only a few of the programs, fighting with Congress for money for more politically lucrative projects.
Although far fewer people die from disasters today than a few decades ago, material losses are increasing. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma cost the US economy $290 billion. The former caused massive flooding in Texas as a result of prolonged heavy rains. Irma, on the other hand, had stronger storm surges and moved slowly along the coast, so that in some places winds exceeded 150 km/h for up to 12 hours.
In total, both disasters reduced the US GDP by 1.5%. This huge sum included, among others: losses of production and service companies, increased unemployment, destruction of crops, homes, public buildings and municipal facilities, as well as increases in fuel prices.
Most Americans don’t die during hurricanes or tropical downpours, but after they happen. And it’s not the elements that kill them, but — to put it mildly — recklessness. When the fear subsides, people emerge from their basements and start cleaning up. And if they’ve heeded the evacuation order, they want to get home as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, a two-foot-deep stream of water flowing down the street is enough to blow a car off the road and push it into a river, swamp, pond, or even a flood control canal. Downed power lines may still be energized.
A broken branch, a loose beam, or a gutter can fall on your head. Especially since most American single-family homes are scaffolding made of wooden beams sheathed with boards and Styrofoam and divided into rooms with drywall walls. From above, this frame is covered with bituminous shingles, on the sides – a vinyl facade. When in a Hollywood movie someone gets punched in the face and flies through a wall, it does not indicate the director’s vivid imagination, but rather a sense of realism.
Furthermore, we should take into account the fact that our neighbors do not always behave rationally. As Irma approached the United States, a witty 22-year-old Ryon Edwards encouraged his compatriots on Facebook to “shoot first the bad guy who wants to drive us out of our homes,” and more than 50,000 people expressed interest in the event.
Since a handgun or rifle is as common a tool as a hammer in the U.S., the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office warned people not to try to shoot the eye of the cyclone. The warning was similar in style to Edwards’ post, but the officers supplemented it with a graphic “scientifically proving” that during a hurricane, bullets return like a boomerang to the shooter due to “atmospheric turbulence.”
