HURRICANE EXPERT THREATENED FOR PRE-KATRINA WARNINGS - Palast

[helderheid]

HURRICANE EXPERT THREATENED FOR PRE-KATRINA WARNINGS

A Greg Palast special investigation for Democracy Now!




Monday, August 28. From New Orleans.

DON'T blame the Lady. Katrina killed no one in this town. In fact, Katrina missed the city completely, going wide to the east.

It wasn't the hurricane that drowned, suffocated, de-hydrated and starved 1,500 people that week. The killing was done by a deadly duo: a failed emergency evacuation plan combined with faulty levees. Behind these twin failures lies a tale of cronyism, profiteering and willful incompetence that takes us right to the steps of the White House.

Here's the story you haven't been told. And the man who revealed it to me, Dr. Ivor van Heerden, is putting his job on the line to tell it.

Van Heerden isn't the typical whistleblower I usually deal with. This is no minor player. He's the Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center. He's the top banana in the field -- no one knew more about how to save New Orleans from a hurricane's devastation. And no one was a bigger target of an official and corporate campaign to bury the information.

Here's what happened. Right after Katrina swamped the city, I called Washington to get a copy of the evacuation plan.

Funny thing about the murderously failed plan for the evacuation of New Orleans: no one can find it. That's right. It's missing. Maybe it got wet and sank in the flood. Whatever: no one can find it.

That's real bad. Here's the key thing about a successful emergency evacuation plan: you have to have copies of it. Lots of copies -- in fire houses and in hospitals and in the hands of every first responder. Secret evacuation plans don't work.

I know, I worked on the hurricane evacuation plan for Long Island New York, an elaborate multi-volume dossier.

Specifically, I'm talking about the plan that was written, or supposed to have been written two years ago by a company called, "Innovative Emergency Management."

Weird thing about IEM, their founder Madhu Beriwal, had no known experience in hurricane evacuations. She did, however, have a lot of experience in donating to Republicans.

IEM and FEMA did begin a draft of a plan. The plan was that, when a hurricane hit, everyone in the Crescent City would simply get the hell out in their cars. Apparently, the IEM/FEMA crew didn't know that 127,000 people in the city didn't have cars. But Dr. van Heerden knew that. It was his calculation. LSU knew where these no-car people were -- they mapped it -- and how to get them out.

Dr. van Heerden offered this life-saving info to FEMA. They wouldn't touch it. Then, a state official told him to shut up, back off or there would be consequences for van Heerden's position. This official now works for IEM.

So I asked him what happened as a result of making no plans for those without wheels, a lot of them elderly and most of them poor.

"Fifteen-hundred of them drowned. That's the bottom line." The professor, who'd been talking to me in technicalities, changed to a somber tone. "They're still finding corpses."

Van Heerden is supposed to keep his mouth shut. He won't. The deaths weigh on him. "I wasn't going to listen to those sort of threats, to let them shut me down."

Van Heerden had other disturbing news. The Hurricane Center's computer models showed the federal government had built the levees around the city a foot-and-a-half too short.

After Katrina, the Hurricane Center analyzed the flooding and found that, had the levees had just that extra 18 inches, they would have been "overtopped" for only an hour and a half, not four hours. In that case, the levees would have held, and the city would have been saved.

He had taken the warning about the levees all the way to George Bush's doorstep. "I myself briefed senior officials including somebody from the White House." The response: the university's trustees threatened his job.

While in Baton Rouge, I dropped in on the headquarters of IEM, the evacuation contractors. The assistant to the CEO insisted they had "a lot of experience with evacuation" -- but couldn't name a single city they'd planned for when they got the Big Easy contract. And still, they couldn't produce the plan.

An IEM press release in June 2004 boasted legendary expert James Lee Witt as a member of their team. That was impressive. It was also a lie. In fact, Witt had nothing to do with it. When I asked IEM point blank if Witt's name was used as a fraudulent hook to get the contract, their spokeswoman said, weirdly, "We'll get back to you on that."

Back at LSU, van Heerden astonished me with the most serious charge of all. While showing me huge maps of the flooding, he told me the White House had withheld the information that, in fact, the levees were about to burst and by Tuesday at dawn the city, and more than a thousand people, would drown.

Van Heerden said, "FEMA knew on Monday at 11 o'clock that the levees had breached… They took video. By midnight on Monday the White House knew. But none of us knew ...I was at the State Emergency Operations Center." Because the hurricane had missed the city that Monday night, evacuation effectively stopped, assuming the city had survived.

It's been a full year now, and 73,000 New Orleanians remain in FEMA trailers and another 200,000, more than half the city's former residents, remain in temporary refuges. "The City That Care Forgot" -- that's their official slogan -- lost a higher percentage of homes than Berlin lost in World War II. It would be more accurate to call it, "The City That Bush Forgot."

Should they come home? Rebuild? Is it safe? Team Bush assures them there's nothing to worry about: FEMA won't respond to van Heerden's revelations. However, the Bush Administration has hired a consulting firm to fix the failed evacuation plan. The contractor? A Baton Rouge company named "Innovative Emergency Management." IEM.

******
Watch this special investigative report about Katrina on Democracy Now! this morning or hear it on your local Pacifica or NPR station. You can also download it at DemocracyNow.org.

And catch the one-hour special report, "Who Drowned New Orleans?" on LinkTV, with Greg Palast in New Orleans plus an exclusive interview with Amy Goodman. (Get it on Direct TV channel 375 and Dish TV channel 9410. Or check your cable listing at LinkTV.com.)

And for more on IEM and Katrina, read Greg Palast's new NYT bestseller, "Armed Madhouse" (Penguin 2006).



A Jacquie Soohen BigNoise Films Production, produced by Matt Pascarella.

And very, very, special thanks to our Associate Producers on this particular story -- without their generosity and financial support this report would not have been possible.

******

[liberal N proud]

1. History will someday tell the true tale, just corrupt the bu$h regime is

I don't think we yet know just how deep the corruption runs.

[gademocrat7]

2. Excellent article.

Palast show what a complete and utter failure shrub ans his cabal are. A year later and people are still displaced. We can not take care of our own. What a disgrace.

[babylonsister]

3. Murder, pure and simple. No One can find the evacuation plan?

http://www.ieminc.com/Whats_New/Press_Releases/pressrelease060304_Catastrophic.htm

IEM Team to Develop Catastrophic Hurricane Disaster Plan for New Orleans & Southeast Louisiana

June 3, 2004

IEM, Inc., the Baton Rouge-based emergency management and homeland security consultant, will lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans under a more than half a million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Now WHY is this the first I've heard of this company?


http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1103863,00.html

Madhu Beriwal equates disaster planning with marathon running. "You train and time yourself and figure out what you need to do to achieve it," she says. As the president of Innovative Emergency Management, Inc., in Baton Rouge, La., Beriwal knows about training for marathon-size catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina. Her company played a role in the Hurricane Pam simulation, which involved almost 300 officials getting ready for a major-category storm hitting New Orleans. But after witnessing the devastation left by Katrina and the blundered response from relief officials, Beriwal wonders if the training needs to be rethought. "The system failed," she told TIME when asked who in the end was to blame. "We all share the blame." After saying this, she begins to cry.

Beriwal is a native of Calcutta, India, who came to the U.S. 25 years ago. After earning a master's degree in urban planning, she gained a reputation in Louisiana as an expert in disaster preparation. Like many others in similar roles, Beriwal feels a measure of guilt when watching the images of flood victims. She’s also aware that some of the tragedy was because of the "disaster sub-culture" of any population—which is a certain level of resistance to pre-storm evacuation. Some people simply won’t evacuate.

It’s worth noting that I.E.M.'s Pam preparedness plan, which FEMA contracted for almost $1 million, helped 80 percent of the population of the New Orleans area evacuate before Katrina made landfall on August 29th—one of the highest rates ever for a hurricane. But more than 100,000 people didn’t escape the city boundaries—mostly citizens without cars. That’s because there weren’t enough buses available in time, a problem for which disaster preparedness planners hadn’t apparently accounted.

Beriwal says, in her defense, that the Pam Plan had never been fully implemented—that it was just the first version and that they had not yet addressed critical areas of response such as security and communication. Critics say that even the parts of the Pam Plan that were used to didn’t hold up to the chaos after the storm. For Beriwal the marathoner, time had run out.

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. kick

[rosesaylavee]

28. Murderous bitch

She better be doing more than crying.

[never_get_over_it]

63. Here is another interestng blurb

from IEM website

http://www.ieminc.com/Katrina/index.html

blood money me thinks - about $67 for each NOLA dead body

may Ms Beriwal rot in hell....

[malaise]

4. Van Heerden has been exposing

these murderers from day one. He's lucky they haven't kicked him all the way back to South Africa. He warned them all way in advance.

[druidity33]

5. K&R n/t

[chat_noir]

6. send to Olbermann, Stewart, and Maher

It would be great if at lease one of them booked Van Heerden as a guest.

[leftchick]

7. thank you

I remember seeing him a lot on TV right after Katrina. Now I understand why he has disappeared from the M$M.

[KittyWampus]

9. The GOP is just on one long lucky streak. Now NOLA will be a red state

isn't it amazing when you play cards with someone who keeps pulling aces for themselves.

[Cobalt Violet]

10. K&R.

[spinbaby]

11. Kick

To the top.

[helderheid]

12. mornin kick

[bananarepublican]

44. ... and deservedly so. Great post! n/t

[TheFriedPiper]

13. K&R - these people make me sick

"But Mr President, people will drown and die!"

"But only poor people, right?"

"Mostly"

"Ok then, let's go play guitar"

[MountainLaurel]

14. Definitely will check that out

At what point does a "tragedy" become negligent homicide?

[helderheid]

15. that is the question for sure. Time for some more hearings.

[NicoleM]

16. Do you have a link?

Thanks.

[Fridays Child]

22. Link...

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/28/1342209

[klook]

17. The levees were undermined, not overtopped.

Van Heerden is a great guy who knows exactly what needs to be done over the next 5 to 10 years to prevent another Katrina (or Betsy, for that matter). I saw him on CSPAN 2 yesterday talking about his book, The Storm.

Actually, the levees and walls weren't overtopped in NOLA. They were undermined, literally as well as figuratively. Van Heerden examined them himself after the flood subsided. They need to be rebuilt with much deeper and more solid footings. Also, the wetlands south of the city must be restored, and they need to build barrier islands in the Gulf as well. These are among the ideas he discussed in his talk at Octavia Books, which was broadcast on CSPAN 2.

It's just unbelievable that the state of Louisiana and the Army Corps of Engineers have a world-class expert like this at their disposal and are actively keeping him out of the discussion.

[EFerrari]

20. Not unbelievable when you consider that keeping him out

gives them control of the flow of information.

Control of that flow allows them to drive the poor out and allows developers to make their blood money.

It's all of a piece. :(

[helderheid]

21. extremely important points!

[EFerrari]

18. Kick

[uppityperson]

19. kick

[Fridays Child]

23. K&R. Everyone needs to see this report. Here's the link...

Top Hurricane Expert Says Officials Threatened His Job Over Pre-Katrina Warnings

[helderheid]

36. THANK YOU! I'm watching now!

[marmar]

24. This administration is an organized crime syndicate...

:scared:

[Initech]

25. No one can find the evacuation plan? Unreal.

:argh:

[Straight Shooter]

32. What's unreal about it? Iraq doesn't have an evac plan, either.

That's how bush operates. Make a mess or ignore a catastrophe, let someone else fix it.

Someday, the Universe is coming for george w. bush. When his time comes, may he reap what he has sown ...

[pnwmom]

26. In 10/05 FEMA awarded same company $15 mil for chemical disaster

planning!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1997013

[helderheid]

30. oh man

:puke:

[pnwmom]

39. you said it.

[helderheid]

27. .

[rman]

29. f*d up evacuation - shades of 9-11

Shortly after the South tower was hit, people in the North who were evacuating were told it was safe for them to return to their place of work.

[Kailassa]

61. You are repeating a lie here, regarding the New Orleans evacuation.

It was the most successful evacuation ever carried out on American soil.

However this lie is repeated by the media in order to remove blame for the deaths
from Fema and the Buschco administration.

I'm not calling you a liar, btw, I'm just saying that the statement in the OP,
which you are repeating, is a lie.

[rman]

65. well, i think you're repeating the government lie about the evacuation.

[rman]

66. Here's the New Orleans evacuation "lie",

as you call it.


Trapped in New Orleans
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2008961

<snip>

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the city. Those who didn't have the requisite $45 each were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and newborn babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute they arrived at the city limits, they were commandeered by the military. By Day Four, our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously bad. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that "officials" had told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the city, we finally encountered the National Guard. The guard members told us we wouldn't be allowed into the Superdome, as the city's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. They further told us that the city's only other shelter--the convention center--was also descending into chaos and squalor, and that the police weren't allowing anyone else in.

<more>

[Kailassa]

68. And that is relevent how?

All evacuation plans expected these hotels to weather the hurricane safely, and they did.

The trouble was caused by the flooding later, and by then the previous evacuation plans, which had worked, were no longer relevant.

Yes, these people should have been evacuated by this stage, but that was an on the spot decision to be made by FEMA, and FEMA proved it did not give a damn about the people remaining in New Orleans.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

71. Kailassa's right. It's a lie.

The evacuation was a success. The rescue was botched.

[rman]

76. Well, the both of you are entitled

to your opinions.

[spinbaby]

31. Another kick

:kick:

[dogday]

33. K&R For The Truth

blood is on their hands

[Joanne98]

34. If we had an opposition party... Oh nevermind.

[me b zola]

35. "Katrina killed no one in this town"

That's why I refer to what happened to NOLA as KatrinaBush. I cringe whenever I hear the media refer to the devestation and horror committed against the residents of NO as being caused by Katrina, which seems to relieve bush* of the responsiblity of his actions and lack there of.

Language matters.


KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBushKatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush KatrinaBush

[bullwinkle428]

37. Van Heerden was sounding the alarm before Katrina even hit -

I recall seeing him interviewed a day or two before it came ashore, predicting dire consequences for the city based on the poor infrastructure. These administration morons are completely unwilling to listen to anyone who might have actual knowledge about a given situation... :banghead:

[markus]

38. Maybe I could send GP the plan

I have a copy. It was on the city of New Orleans web site, and may still be.

The plan was largely executed successfully, and 90% of the citizens were evacuated, the most successful exercise of its kind in history. The 10% who remained were divided among the hard core who never leave, and those people without means to get out.

And before you start. There. Were. Not. Enough. Buses. To. Evacuate. Everyone. Left. Period. Anywho who tells you different doesn't know wtf they're talking about. FEMA won't let you evacaute the elderly on unairconditioned school buses, for example. And Mayor (dont' get me started about him) Nagin had no authority to use the school buses except to route a request through FEMA. Per the state (and city) plan.

Try evacuating any other major American city in 48 hours, moving a million and a half people over the 18 available traffic lands. And they didn't have 48 hours warning. The hurricane watch wasn't put in place until 4:00 am Saturday, and Nagin i called for voluntary evacuation (the first step in teh plan; you can't have everybody try to get out at the same time or it will be chaos. Think ferry scene in War of the Worlds), and a mandatory evacuation.

[redqueen]

49. Perhaps you could at least link to this evacuation plan you speak of?

Thanks.

[helderheid]

50. best I could find - not what I was looking for

http://www.nola.com/hurricane/areweready2006/t-p/index.ssf?/hurricane/areweready2006/stories/evacuation.html

[markus]

51. The City of New Orleans Plan

http://thinknola.com/wiki/New_Orleans_Wiki/nolaplan

[helderheid]

52. thanks markus!

[redqueen]

53. Thank you! Gotta wonder what this guy's talking about, then...

:shrug:

[markus]

54. It did disappear from the city website

I have no idea if its up at the indicated URL or somewhere else. This is the copy I pulled off last fall as soon as the city site came back online.

[redqueen]

55. Aha... curious.

And thanks again.

[helderheid]

40. yo evening crowd

[helderheid]

41. just curious...about DU front page

Does Palast ever make it?

[madrchsod]

42. there is another cover-up of sorts

the next big hurricane to hit that area from houston to new orleans the oil and gas fields and worse the pipelines from the gulf to the land will be destroyed. in many places pipes that were safely anchored to the gulf floor are floating "lose" and pipelines buried under ground are exposed. the oil industry is very worried about the condition of the fields. they need new orleans rebuilt and the workers back to repair the fields and they also realize the land has to be restored to cover the pipelines.

[robbedvoter]

43. 1500 dead? more like double that. At least.

How interesting that no one knows/points out that the death toll was larger than 911!

[hlthe2b]

45. Bump... this is really important, I think..

[Kailassa]

46. More lies ... The evacuation was the most successful ever

in American history.

People not able to leave were considered to be safe if they came to the dome or convention centre or were in hospitals. And they were safe, from the hurricane. It was the flooding and denial of electricity, food, water and medical supplies to the area that killed people.

The points people never consider when they say that everyone should have been got out are:

1. How much reason was there beforehand to believe that the area would become such a death-trap?

2. How does the evacuation rate and numbers involved compare with other hurricanes in America?

3. How much danger is caused by a huge evacuation?

4. And Where were the people who couldn't evacuate themselves, who were mostly poor and black, to go?

The people who joked about the NO residents and blamed the victims for their own deaths would be the last ones to want them to come to their town. The fact is, if Nagin had bused the remainder out ... How many were left behind? 100,000? Where could he have sent them? Who, in America, wanted all those poor blacks? They would have been called cowards, before the disaster, and told to go back home.

Even afterwards, when they had to be evacuated, the media labelled them as criminals, and people were angry and afraid of having them in their towns.

[helderheid]

48. I heard them say this and about jumped out of my skin.

[veness]

47. K&N! n/t

[BeHereNow]

56. Impeach. Now... (Kick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) n/t

BHN

[opihimoimoi]

57. A small Kaneohe kick

:kick:

now, come, we go drink....

[BeHereNow]

59. I'd love to have a drink with YOU.

I"m a secret opihimoimoi admirer for a long time.
BHN:toast:
Better yet, NSMA has told me we must make time
for a trip to Catalina Island. I've lived in LA nearly
24 years and never been!
You should come with us.:evilgrin:
The place would never be the same...
They might actually have to REname the Island
after we 3 are through with it...Heh.

[opihimoimoi]

60. Someday you come Hawaii and we have many drinks, we eat, laugh

and sing... :toast: :beer: :bounce: :hi: :golf: :hang gliding: :surfin: :More beer: :toast: :beer: :bounce: :hi: :golf: :hang gliding: :surfin: :More beer:

[BeHereNow]

62. Silly me...this close to Hawaii and never been there either...

Can NSMA come too?
If so, you're on!
BHN

[opihimoimoi]

64. Sorry, I can't put you up, but can arrange for DU meetups and small kine

BBQs etc

and if I couls ask, what is NSMA?

[McCamy Taylor]

58. How about a civil suit?

[pitohui]

73. you mean against the army corps of engineers?

there will be civil suits but you are often not allowed to sue government entities or persons performing a gov't job, otherwise, everyone who ever got arrested would be suing the police for every little thing

a judge has to agree to allow such suits to be heard

if you mean aga. the city of new orleans, same deal, also to sue a city w. no money just to harass them seems counter-productive in the extreme

there are structural reasons why no mandatory evacuation had ever been performed in new orleans, i have little use for ray nagin, but the reality is that as far as the evacuation goes, he did what has never been done and many more people were safely evacuated than predicted in ANY projection or study ever published

i don't quite think you can sue someone for going above and beyond the call...

[hedgehog]

67. I haven't had a chance to catch up on my reading yet. Can anyone

tell me how much of the damage in New Orleans was from the hurricane itself and how much from the failure of the levees? I remember everyone breathing a sigh of relief when the hurricane passed with little damage only to hear a few hours later that the levees had breached and the city flooded.

[markus]

70. I don't know a figure

Hurricane (wind) damage was minimal. The distribution is probably 90/10 (90 flood) or higher. A look at insurance statistics would be instructive.

[pitohui]

72. wind damage was not minimal

it only seems minimal by contrast w. the total devastation caused by the flooding

even w.out the flood katrina would have been the biggest financial/insurance natural disaster in the united states of all time, far surpassing andrew, yes, andrew was a cat 5 and katrina only a cat 4 (and only a cat 3 at new orleans) but most extremely strong storms are small, katrina (and rita and wilma) packed the one-time punch of combining abnormal size with abnormal strength

it is hard to get a grip on this storm but to provide some perspective, hundreds of miles away and to the north, at meridien, mississippi, the entire county THERE was a declared a disaster area and i saw almost every structure along the highway had its roof taken off, with some buildings completely crushed and destroyed, that's just one street

wind damage was horrendous and widespread beyond any imagining

our minds just can't get around the size of this thing

as for new orleans, even if you didn't flood, you still needed a new roof because they were just blown off the houses like so much paper, if you drove through an unflooded area of uptown after the storm, as i did, it was still absolutely horrifying the scope and extent of the damage

[markus]

74. Fair Enough

I didn't see the city in the immediate aftermath. I know my house in Mid-City got re-roofed and the neighbors was torn up. But it would have been another Betsy (there was overtopping at the junction if the IHNC aka Industiral Canal and the MRGO)

[OldSiouxWarrior]

69. To add a foot and a half to the top of a levee, you also have to add it

to the sides. The levee has to be made wider to support the added water pressure at the base. And that has to be done along the entire levee. That makes it a major construction project, not a quick patch.

[aikoaiko]

75. I found this part odd....

IEM and FEMA did begin a draft of a plan. The plan was that, when a hurricane hit, everyone in the Crescent City would simply get the hell out in their cars. Apparently, the IEM/FEMA crew didn't know that 127,000 people in the city didn't have cars. But Dr. van Heerden knew that. It was his calculation. LSU knew where these no-car people were -- they mapped it -- and how to get them out.

Dr. van Heerden offered this life-saving info to FEMA. They wouldn't touch it. Then, a state official told him to shut up, back off or there would be consequences for van Heerden's position. This official now works for IEM.

So I asked him what happened as a result of making no plans for those without wheels, a lot of them elderly and most of them poor.

"Fifteen-hundred of them drowned. That's the bottom line." The professor, who'd been talking to me in technicalities, changed to a somber tone. "They're still finding corpses."

There was a plan to get the carless out, but some people wouldn't go and others couldn't get to the buses or even get in contact with the service. hmmmmm.